Sir Francis Drake: A Pictorial Biography by Hans P. Kraus

The Catalogue of the Collection

Introduction

1. MANUSCRIPTS
2. PRINTED BOOKS
3. MAPS AND VIEWS
4. MEDALS AND PORTRAITS

ALL SECTIONS ARE ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY

I. MANUSCRIPTS

1.

MEMORIA de la Costa Rica del Mar del norte [with three other narratives]. Manuscript on paper, written in clear and legible cursive script. 30 lines. 24 pp. Folio (308 x 220 mm.). Stains in lower margins; back margins frayed (texts not affected).

Spain, last quarter of the 16th century.

The four distinct narratives in this manuscript are all of great interest, and two of them (especially Nos. 3 and 4, below) are valuable sources for history. They are:

1. Memoria de la Costa Rica del mar del norte Dende la ciudad de Granada los Puertos y Rios son los siguientes. (Pp. 1-5)
2. Relacion delas provincias del Piru y dela gente y disposicion dellas y costas y caminos por donde se navegan y andan. (Pp. 5-16)
3. Gallego de Andrade, Hernán Lamero. Declaracion del estrecho de Magallanes. (Pp. 17-20)
   See illus. p. 116
4. Silva, Nunho da. Relacion del viage del corsario yngles que dio el piloto Nuño de Silva ante su excelencia del Virrey de Mexico a 20 de Mayo de [15]79. [Side note:] Llama se Franc[is]o Drac este cossario. (Pp. 20-24)
   See illus. pp. 107-108

All the above narratives could have been composed at about the same date--some time during the twenty years after da Silva's deposition of 1579 on his voyage with Drake. This time limit is shown by internal evidence which can be deduced from close study of the information recorded in each passage.

Although there was not much communication between the dominions of Spain in America, these documents cover a wide geographical area. The manuscript must therefore have been written in Spain rather than America; in all likelihood it is a series of direct transcriptions from reports originally composed in the New World. The assembly of the passages in one continuous text suggests that the manuscript was intended to serve as a digest of important information for some dignitary in the Spanish administration, e.g. the President of the Council of the Indies, or one or more royal secretaries, for use at council meetings. The combination of texts, at first sight rather odd, indicates that the subject of such meetings must have been the exclusion of foreigners like Drake from the Pacific coast of Spanish America. Thus No. 1, which describes both coasts of much of Central America, would concern defense against any attempt to cross the continent at its narrowest point, "America being shaped somewhat like an hourglass". ¹ Drake had raided extensively in this area in 1572-1573. No. 2 analyzes the wealth and communications of the Viceroyalty of Peru, which had been the main target of Drake's attack. No. 3 contains up-to-date and unpublished first-hand information on the Strait of Magellan, through which Drake had entered the Pacific. No. 4 is a first-hand account of Drake's incursion: moreover, it may be significant that it terminates as soon as its narrative takes Drake well clear of the Strait.

1. A detailed description of the coasts of Central America, including both the Atlantic and the Pacific shores. The portions covered comprise parts of the coasts of the present-day states of El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama. In every paragraph interesting and valuable information upon anchorages, winds, landmarks and access is given: the account is plainly intended to help in assessing the possibilities for commerce and navigation in the area. This original, first-hand description of these coasts appears to be otherwise unknown. It has been compared with accounts already printed, such as that of the coasts of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Costa Rica written in 1576 by the pioneer maritime writer Dr. García de Palacio, and that drawn up by the royal cosmographer Juan López de Velasco from the body of source material on American geography collected by Philip II around 1570. Although information from López de Velasco's sources--the first attempt at a census in America--confirms the accuracy of much of what is recorded in this manuscript, it is clear that this account is an original one, hitherto unrecorded. ² In his account here of the Pacific coast the writer refers to

   los llanos de Cheriqui q[ue] h]ay] muy lindo puerto y antiguamente estaua poblado de españoles con vn capitan que se llamaua Vadajos al qual mataron los yndios por quitalle el oro... ³

   This is a reference to Captain Gonzalo de Badajoz, who had accompanied Nicuesa in his expedition to Tierra Firme in 1510. In 1515 he tried to conquer this area of Coiba, which was on the Pacific coast, to the west of the present city of Panama. He crossed the watershed via the Chagres River (near the present Panama Canal) and invaded Coiba. In early successes he captured booty reputed to have been worth 80,000 gold pesos, but this was taken back by the Indians when the cacique Parizo trapped and defeated him. This gave Badajoz the dubious distinction of being the first conquistador to be vanquished by Indians on the mainland of America. However, he was not, in fact, killed by them (as this reference claims): with very few men left, he struggled back, and had to accept a position of subservience to the fiery governor of Castilla del Oro, the dreaded Pedro Arias de Avila. ⁴ In 1526-1527 he served as Pedro Arias' lieutenant in the Governor's newly founded settlement of Bruselas in Costa Rica. The Governor described him as "persona antigua en la tierra e de esperiencia e consejo." ⁵
2. A description of the greater part of the Spanish vice-royalty of Peru, indicating--among other things--the navigation from the city of Panama to Callao, the port of Lima. The narrative gives information on settlements, population and overland routes in most of the present area of Peru, and also in much of what is now Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina (around Tucumán, then included in Upper Peru). There are individual accounts of Tumbez, Piura, Lima, Arequipa, Cuzco, La Paz, Potosí, etc. The piece ends with brief mentions of Chile, the Strait of Magellan and the provinces of the Río de la Plata. Its concentration upon the population of the towns, and its racial composition, shows that the account was written in response to the questionnaire formulated by Philip II in 1568 to obtain information for his pioneering census of America. When collected and arranged, the resulting Relaciones geográficas were studied by Philip II and the Council of the Indies. For many years regarded as highly confidential documents, they were never printed as a collection, although a number relating to Peru were assembled and published by Marcos Jiménez de la Espada in the late nineteenth century. As this description does not appear there or anywhere else, it ranks as an unpublished source document of considerable importance. For the purposes of the present study, it is sufficient to note that its reference to the governing audiencia of Chile shows that it was written some time before the re-founding of that body in 1606: this provides an indisputable terminus post quem for the whole document. ⁶
3. This Declaracion of Hernán Gallego is certainly the most striking piece in this manuscript. So far as we can establish, it is unpublished and entirely unknown up to the present day. Gallego describes in it the exploring expedition sent to the Strait of Magellan in 1553 by the Governor of Chile, Pedro de Valdivia. The Governor, who was killed that year in battle with the Indians, had hoped to establish a direct route to Spain through the Strait, which he could use to ship home the gold and silver he expected to find in Chile. The expedition was commanded by one Francisco de Ulloa, with Hernán Gallego as its pilot: it had previously been known only through passing references to it in the narratives of Juan Fernández de Ladrillero's expedition of 1557-1558, in which Gallego also served as pilot. Information about this expedition of 1553 was discovered in the papers of Don Juan Bautista Muñoz, and printed only in the Anuario Hidrográfico de Chile , in 1879, where it is stated that the Ulloa expedition had gone no further south than 51° and that it probably reached only the Nelson Strait. In 1895 Captain Fernández Duro was of the opinion that it had reached a point 30 leagues up the Strait, but could not prove it. As the 1879 account concludes, "como no se ha conservado narración alguna, es poco menos que imposible restablecer la verdad." ⁷ It is, however, known that Valdivia believed that the Atlantic was easily accessible frgm the Pacific, and hoped that Ulloa would make rendezvous on the coast of Patagonia with another expedition, sent out under Francisco de Villagra, which was to discover a passage into the Atlantic believed to start near Villarrica, Chile. ⁸ Apart from this, the outcome of the voyage has remained unknown, as no document explaining it was available for printing in any of the relevant collections of documents--those of Markham (1911), Father Pastells (1920) or Kosenblat (1950). ⁹ The discovery of the present narrative dispels all this uncertainty. In it, Gallego states that the expedition arrived at the entrance to the Strait of Magellan in 52° south; that he and his companions entered the Strait, and passed through it in four days; that its total length was 100 leagues, more or less; and that they arrived safely at the Atlantic end of the Strait. At that point they were forced to turn back on account of a shortage of victuals. When Gallego's ship reentered the Pacific, gales drove it to 55° south, and on the way back, she put into a harbor at 53½° south. The narrative is detailed and accurate, containing much information about the sailing directions followed, the landmarks and the Indian inhabitants of the region. It is, therefore, a most important addition to the literature of the exploration of America. There were partial passages of the Strait of Magellan from west to east by one of Don Alonso de Camargo's ships and by Sir Francis Drake's companion John Winter in the Elizabeth (both of which wintered in, or at the mouth of, the Strait, in 1540 and 1578 respectively, and then returned to the Atlantic). As neither of them left the Strait on the Pacific side, they did not have to face the problems of locating the western mouth among the maze of islands at the southern end of the coast of Chile. This difficulty, and not the strong current alleged to flow through the Strait from east to west, was the real task with which a ship proceeding from west to east had to contend. ¹⁰ It has always been supposed that the first ship to accomplish the full passage from west to east was that of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa in 1579; but this document establishes the Ulloa-Gallego expedition as the first to make the passage in that direction. The later history of Hernán Gallego is most interesting, as it brought him into close contact with the two other famous pioneers mentioned, Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa and Sir Francis Drake. His full name was Hernán Lamero Gallego de Andrade. He served as pilot in the subsequent expedition of Juan Fernández de Ladrillero to southern Chile and the Strait of Magellan in 1557-1558, but his greatest exploit was his service in the voyage across the Pacific under Alvaro de Mandaña in 1568. The Solomon Islands were discovered by this expedition, in which Sarmiento also served. ¹¹ Gallego (Lamero) was the owner of one of the smaller ships on the Solomon Islands voyage: this ship was captured by Francis Drake in 1578, while on his voyage of circumnavigation. It was one of Drake's luckier robberies, for from it he seized and took a large quantity of gold, variously stated to have totalled from 24,000 up to 200,000 pesos. Shortly after this, Gallego was heavily criticized for furnishing information about Drake so misleading that the Viceroy of Peru, Don Francisco de Toledo, was induced to send off Pedro Sarmiento on a wild goose chase to Panama in an effort to intercept him. ¹²
4. Nunho da Silva was a Portuguese from Oporto. In December 1577 he was sailing to Brazil with a cargo of wine when, near the Cape Verde Islands, he was captured by Drake, who needed a pilot skilled in the navigation of the coast of Brazil. Drake put a prize crew into da Silva's vessel, which he renamed the Mary , and for the time being appointed Thomas Doughty to command her. Witnesses described da Silva as "short, with a dark complexion and...a long beard; not very gray...a man of rather less than sixty years than more...", who could speak (or had been taught by Drake) excellent English. He was treated with respect by Drake and dined at his table. ¹³ He more than returned this favor by completing Drake's charts, keeping him informed, and bringing him successfully through the Strait of Magellan: his up-to-date method of performing this difficult feat has been analyzed in print. ¹⁴

He remained with Drake, sharing all his adventures, until April 13, 1579, when Drake dumped him at the port of Huatulco on the Pacific coast of New Spain. There he was arrested by the Inquisition, taken to Mexico City for trial and for examination by the Viceroy, and rigorously interrogated: he was shipped as a prisoner to Spain, in 1582. ¹⁵ The present manuscript is a copy of a deposition made in Mexico City, relating the events of the voyage. It does not contain da Silva's testimony in its entirety, as the story given here ends with Drake's arrival on the coast near Santiago de Chile in December 1578. The termination of the narrative at this point in the present copy is deliberate, since the better part of the last page has been left blank: this much of the story may have been all that was officially required for the purpose for which this document was written.

Hitherto only two texts of this deposition in the original Spanish have been known--one in the Archivo General de Indias, Seville, and one in the Museo Naval (previously the Depósito Hidrográfico), Madrid, which is almost certainly an eighteenth-century copy of the first. ¹⁶ Richard Hakluyt used this text to print an abbreviated version of da Silva's story in English as early as 1600; but this omits portions related in this manuscript. ¹⁷

1. Thomas Fuller, "Life of Sir Francis Drake," in his The Holy ...(and) The Profane State (Cambridge, 1642), p. 135.

2. Diego García de Palacio, "Relación..." (1576), in: Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de América ...(First series), VI, pp. 5-40; Juan López de Velasco, Descripción universal de las Indias , edited by Justo Zaragoza (Madrid, 1894); Gonzalo Menéndez-Pidal, Imagen del Mundo hacia 1570 (Madrid, 1944).

3. P. 4 in the present document.

4. Colección de documentos inéditos ... América , II, XX, XXXVII, passim ; Sir Arthur Helps, The Spanish Conquest of America (4 vols., London, 1900), I, p. 285; Carl Ortwin Sauer, The early Spanish Main (Berkeley, 1966), pp. 256, 261, 270, 273.

5. Manuel María de Peralta, Costa Rica, Nicaragua y Panamá en el siglo XVI (Madrid, 1883), pp. 715, 720-724.

6. Marcos Jiménez de la Espada, Relaciones geográficas de Indias: Perú (4 vols., Madrid, 1881-1897); López de Velasco, op. cit. ; Ernesto Schäfer, El Consejo Real y Supremo de las Indias (2 vols., Seville, 1935-1947), II, pp. 504, 516-517; Howard F. Cline, "The Relaciones Geográficas of the Spanish Indies, 1577-1586," in: Hispanic American Historical Review , XLIV (1964), pp. 341-374.

7. Anuario Hidrográfico de Chile , V (1879), p. 48; Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Armada española desde la unión de los reinos de Castilla y de Aragón (9 vols., Madrid, 1895-1903), I, p. 303.

8. Miguel Luis Amunátegui, Descubrimiento i Conquista de Chile (Santiago de Chile, 1913), p. 311.

9. Sir Clements Markham (ed.), Early Spanish Voyages to the Strait of Magellan (Hakluyt Society Second Series, 28, London, 1911); Pablo Pastells (ed.), El descubrimiento del Estrecho de Magallanes (2 vols., Madrid, 1920); Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Viajes al Estrecho de Magallanes, 1579-1584 , edited by Angel Rosenblat (2 vols., Buenos Aires, 1950).

10. Helen M. Wallis, "English enterprise in the region of the Strait of Magellan," in: Merchants and Scholars: essays in the history of exploration and trade collected in memory of John Ford Bell , edited by John Parker (Minneapolis, 1965), p. 202.

11. Lord Amherst of Hackney and Basil Thomson (eds.), The Discovery of the Solomon Islands by Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568 (Hakluyt Society Second Series 1 and 2, 2 vols., London, 1901), I, pp. xi-xiv; II, p. 451; José Toribio Medina, El Piloto Juan Fernández ...(Santiago de Chile, 1918), pp. 203-210. The document printed by Medina proves the connection between Mendaña's pilot and the later exploits of Gallego: Amherst and Thomson had thought that there might have been two men of the same name, although they established a link between Gallego and Ladrillero's expedition of 1557.

12. Amherst and Thomson, I, p. xiii; Henry R. Wagner, Sir Francis Drake's voyage around the world , p. 389.

13. Wagner, pp. 46, 337, 376, 380.

14. E. G. R. Taylor, "The Dawn of modern Navigation," in: Journal of the Institute of Navigation , I (1948).

15. W. S. W. Vaux (ed.), The World Encompassed of Sir Francis Drake ...(Hakluyt Society First Series, 16, London, 1854), pp. 175-176; Wagner, pp. 129, 487.

16. Zelia Nuttall (ed.), New Light on Drake (Hakluyt Society Second Series, 34, London, 1914), p. 256.

17. Richard Hakluyt, Principal Navigations ...(3 vols., London, 1598-1600), III, pp. 742-748. [See No. 30.]

2.

TOLEDO, DON FRANCISCO DE, VICEROY OF PERU. Rel[aci]on de la entrada q[ue] hizo por el estrecho el Navio yngles, y de lo q[ue] se previno contra el. 3 leaves. Manuscript on paper. Folio (307 x 220 mm.). Bound in full crimson morocco by Zaehnsdorf. Los Reyes (Lima), 1579.

See illus. p. 112

The original draft of the letter from the Viceroy of Peru to the Governor of the Río de la Plata (resident at Buenos Aires) recounting Drake's depredations on the Pacific coast of Spanish America during his voyage of circumnavigation and the measures taken there against him. The numerous inter-linear and marginal additions and correction throughout this version of the letter prove that it is the original draft. This piece was probably written from dictation, with the Viceroy indicating additions and cancellations as he went along.

The letter states that a ship belonging to English raiders (in Spanish parlance, corsarios --corsairs) had passed through the Strait of Magellan in 1578 and had plundered a ship laden with gold, in the harbor of Santiago de Chile. Toledo then complains bitterly that the officials at Santiago had taken no steps to warn him, so that when the raiders later arrived on the coast of Peru they were able to capture mother treasure ship. At the time he wrote this letter the Viceroy did not know that the English ship was Drake's Golden Hind.

Here he announces that he is sending an expedition to the Strait to see whether any English garrison had been left there, and to discover a suitable place for a Spanish fort and settlement. He proposes that the expedition pass through the Strait into the Atlantic and spend the winter (July-August, in the southern hemisphere) in the province of the Río de la Plata or its vicinity. He requests the Governor to assist the two ships of the expedition, to send any dispatches from it to him overland, by way of Tucumán, and to inform him of any other English ships off the coasts of the Río de la Plata. The letter of which this is the draft was, of course, sent to La Plata by the overland route. Sarmiento de Gamboa is not named here as the commander of the expedition, probably because he had not been selected yet. The expedition encountered many delays during its preparation: and in fact Sarmiento did not receive his official appointment as its commander until October 9, 1579, only three days before it finally sailed. ¹

This voyage by Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa is important for a number of reasons. It was the second traversal of the Strait of Magellan, but the first in which an accurate survey and a detailed description were made. It led to the first effort to establish a settlement at the southernmost extremity of the American mainland--the ill-fated colonization venture also led by Sarmiento, in 1581-1584. The first west-to-east passage of the Strait of Magellan was that accomplished by Hernán Lamero Gallego de Andrade in 1553--as demonstrated by a newly discovered manuscript in this Collection, described elsewhere. ² The same pilot, Gallego, navigated for Sarmiento in the expedition envisaged here: in view of the great difficulty of the eastward voyage through the Strait (for reasons ascertained and reasons imagined), it is unlikely that the Viceroy would so readily have taken up the idea of an expedition to reach the Atlantic from Peru had he not known of Gallego's experience.

The present manuscript is, without any doubt, the draft which was owned by Eugenio de Alvarado in 1768. It was then printed among the preliminaries to the Sarmiento narrative of 1581-1583; the texts agree completely, although Alvarado modernized the spelling in his version. ³ From this printing Sir Clements Markham made a translation which appears in the volume he edited. ⁴ Father Pastells noted and very briefly summarized what is apparently mother copy of the dispatch; his version bears the date February 20, 1579. ⁵

Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa (1532-1592), "the Spanish Ulysses," was one of the most outstanding explorers of the 16th century. He first arrived in America in about 1555; he went first to Mexico and Guatemala and then, in 1557, to Peru. He was chief pilot in the 1567-1569 expedition under Alvaro de Mendaña which crossed the Pacific Ocean, discovering the Solomon Islands. Upon his return to Peru he was appointed second in command of the force which pursued and captured the last Inca, Tupac Amaru. He strongly favored the execution of the latter, and wrote reports on the history of the Peruvian Indians which enthusiastically supported the efforts of the great Viceroy Don Francisco de Toledo to prove that Spanish rule in Peru was based on justice, and that far from subjecting the Indians to terrorism and exploitation, it had rescued them from the tyranny of the Incas. ⁶

The Viceroy appointed him, in 1579, first to pursue Drake, and then to search for English garrisons reported to be holding the Strait of Magellan. By his careful record of the voyage he pioneered knowledge of the transit from west to east. The companion vessel lost contact with him and returned to Valdivia. Sarmiento himself continued, as instructed by Toledo, to the River Plate. Thence he eventually reached Spain, after an adventurous voyage in which he narrowly escaped capture near the Azores by Portuguese opposing Philip II's assumption of the crown of Portugal. ⁷ On making his report, Sarmiento was appointed by the King first governor of a new colony to occupy the Strait (now renamed Strait of the Mother of God) for Spain. The long preparation of this expedition, which set out from Spain late in 1581 on board a fleet commanded by Diego Flores Valdés, and its tragic vicissitudes in crossing the Atlantic and attempting to found the planned settlements of Nombre de Jesús and Don Felipe el Rey (Philippopolis) are an epic in themselves. ⁸

When returning to Europe in 1586, in desperate haste to beseech aid for his forgotten colonists at the Strait, Sarmiento was captured off the Azores by a ship fitted out by Walter Ralegh. However, in England he was made welcome by Ralegh and by Queen Elizabeth, and after talking with both was released with a safe-conduct. Nevertheless, on his way home through France he was captured near the Spanish frontier by Huguenots. He languished in a noisome French dungeon for three years, until late in 1589, by which time his failing colony in the Strait had vanished altogether. Sarmiento's last appointment was as second-in-command of a squadron of warships instructed to escort the annual New Spain fleet to Vera Cruz; he died at sea within a month or two of writing his last letter to Philip II, dated from the mouth of the Guadalquivir on April 24, 1592. ⁹

1. Pablo Pastells, S. J. (ed.), El descubrimiento del Estrecho de Magallanes (2 vols., Madrid, 1920), II, p. 862, no. 13.

2. See No. 1.

3. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Viage al Estrecho de Magallanes ...(Madrid, 1768).

4. Sir Clements Markham (ed.), Narratives of the Voyages of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa to the Strait of Magellan (Hakluyt Society First Series, 91, London, 1895), pp. 206-208.

5. Pastells, II, p. 861, no. 9, printed from a manuscript in the Archivo de Indias, Seville, 1-1-1/32, no. 6.

6. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Geschichte des Inkareiches ...( Segunda Parte de la Historia general llamada Indica ...), edited by Richard Pietschmann (Abhandlungen der Königlichen Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen, Berlin, 1906); [in English translation] Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, History of the Incas , translated and edited by Sir Clements Markham (Hakluyt Society Second Series, 22, Cambridge, 1907).

7. Cesáreo Fernández Duro, Armada española ...(9 vols., Madrid, 1895-1903), II, p. 479; Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique (1504-1650) (II vols., Paris, 1955-9), III, p. 288.

8. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa, Viajes al Estrecho de Magallanes (1579-1584) , edited by Angel Rosenblat (2 vols., Buenos Aires, 1950); Amancio Landín Carrasco, Vida y Viajes de Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa ...(Madrid, 1945), pp. 115-176.

9. Martín Fernñndez de Navarrete, Biblioteca Marítima Española (2 vols., Madrid, 1851), II, pp. 616-625; Landín Carrasco, pp. 175-211; Chaunu, III, p. 522.

2a.

MERCATOR, GERARD. Autograph letter signed, in Latin. 1 page. Folio (310 x 240 mm.).

To Abraham Ortelius.

Duysburg (Duisburg), December 12, 1580.

See illus. p. 87

This letter is one of the most exciting pieces in the famous correspondence between the greatest cartographer and the leading map publisher of Drake's day, whose productions Drake almost certainly used himself. ¹ It speculates on the possible connection between Francis Drake's circumnavigation of the globe (completed about ten weeks before this letter was written) and the secret voyage of Arthur Pett and Charles Jackman in search of the North East Passage, which had left England in June. By the time of their departure nothing since the return of Drake's subordinate John Winter in the Elizabeth from the Strait of Magellan had been heard of Drake's expedition, save threatening reports from Spain of heavy losses of treasure on the Pacific coast of America. ² Fears for Drake were mounting, and it was thought that if it was as easy to reach the Pacific by the North East Passage as some people supposed, Pett and Jackman could search for Drake by that route.

Rumold Mercator (1546/8-1599), mentioned in line 3 of this letter, was the youngest son of the great Gerard (1512-1594). ³ He was a friend of the younger of the two Richard Hakluyts, who was the source of the news that Gerard Mercator had received from Abraham Ortelius (1527-1598). ⁴ Probably inspired by the report of the Strait of Magellan as Drake's expedition had seen it, brought home by Winter, ⁵ Hakluyt had already anticipated Drake's return with the urgings of his "Discourse of the Commodity of the Taking of the Straight of Magellanus," written ten years before his Principall Navigations [27] first appeared: the "Discourse" also argued that "good foresight requireth, that the discoverie of the north-east be taken in hand...to cut Spaine from the trade of the Spicerie, to the abating of hir navie, hit welthe and high credit in the worlde." ⁶ The latter were the objectives that Drake was largely achieving at the time Hakluyt was writing, in 1579-80.

The scheme that this letter shows was being kept so secret was one supposedly complementary to Drake's voyage: its proposers intended that the financially strong Russia Company (the "merchants who trade with the Muscovites" here mentioned) should fit out an expedition to explore the coast of Siberia much further east than the islands of Nova Zemlya and Vaigatz already reached by Stephen Borough (brother of the William Borough who in 1587 served under Drake) in 1556. ⁷ Geographers and the Muscovy merchants were afraid that the good relations between England and Russia might not outlast the life of the now elderly Tsar Ivan the Terrible, and thought that they could insure against this risk, and cut off Spanish trade to the Far East, if the English could discover the direct sea route to Japan and Cathay (or China) round the north of Asia. ⁸ The theoretical champion of this plan was Dr. John Dee, adviser to the Muscovy Company, who had collected maps of China, and was convinced that the sea passage was possible. ⁹ Many disagreed with him, but Dee's belief rested partly on the maps of the writer and the recipient of the present letter (for both Mercator and Ortelius affirmed the existence of a North East Passage), and partly on notes in Dutch and Latin sent him directly by Gerard Mercator, which alleged that the Passage had already been explored by the British many centuries past. ¹⁰

Both Dr. Dee and the elder Richard Hakluyt, the lawyer, prepared notes and instructions for Pett's voyage. ¹¹ But the younger Richard Hakluyt was less confident about the prospects and more concerned to look for Drake, and it was he who decided, through the good offices of Rumold Mercator, to check on the possibility of Pett's voyage with Gerard Mercator, from whose views the scheme originally sprang. Since Hakluyt wrote to Mercator only on June 19, 1580, the latter had to send his reply after Pett set sail, writing that "it grieved me much that...I could not give any convenient instructions: I wish Arthur Pet had bene informed before his departure of some speciall points." But he pointed out that the sea beyond Nova Zemlya would be extremely difficult to cross: "...that there is such a huge promontorie called Tabin, I am certainely perswaded not onely out of Plinie, but also other writers, and some Maps (though somewhat rudely drawen)...the pole of the Loadstone is not far beyond Tabin...because the Loadstone hath another pole then that of the worlde [ i.e. , pointed to magnetic, not true, north],...the neerer you come unto it, the more the needle of the Compasse doth varie from the North...," and went on, rather disappointingly, that "if master Arthur bee not well provided in this behalfe...I feare least in wandering up and downe he lose his time, and be overtaken with the ice in the midst of the enterprise. For that gulfe [the Kara Sea], as they say, is frosen every yere very hard." ¹²

The present letter shows that Mercator knew Pett had provisions aboard for much longer than the period of a year which he and Dee believed was all the time necessary to reach China from England, ¹³ and this was one reason why he believed a rendez-vous with Drake in the Pacific had been intended. The letter gives another reason for his guess, for it explains that Martin Frobisher's voyages of 1576, 1577 and 1578 had shown what a difficult way home for Drake's heavily laden ship the North West Passage would have been. ¹⁴ In actual fact, nothing came of this idea, for Drake reached Plymouth quite straight-forwardly, around the Cape of Good Hope, on September 26, 1580, while in August of that year Pett reached the Kara Sea and could go no farther, finding an "innumerable quantitie of ice" to the east and north, exactly as Mercator had predicted; on Christmas Day 1580, soon after the present letter was written, he was back in the Thames. ¹⁵ It is significant that, in suspecting a connection between Drake's voyage and Pett's, Mercator's view was shared by his close friend William Camden, who contrasted the navigators' fortunes in his Historie [43]: "Whilest Drake sayled thus prosperously round about the world, Iackman and Pett two famous Pilost, being sent forth by the Londoners with two shippes, fought as unprosperously to discover a neerer way to East-India by the Cronian or Frozen Sea. For having passed a few leagues beyond the Isles called Waigats, they met with such uncertaine tydes, so many shelfes, and such heapes of Ice piled together, that they could get no farther forward, and very much adoe they had to returne." ¹⁶

The present letter, previously printed only in the original Latin, ¹⁷ relates to the whole scope of English exploration. It shows the cartographers of Europe at least as avid to learn about the Far East as to improve the maps of France, about which Mercator here records fresh information. Ortelius had been collecting reports of China for years. ¹⁸ The theoretical concern of Mercator and Ortelius for the accuracy of world maps was, of course, shared in practice by Drake, whose voyage did much to improve them. The present letter shows the collaboration of the celebrated mariners of the day with one another and with the merchant venturers, and reveals the links of English geographers like Dee and Hakluyt with their counterparts abroad. It demonstrates that months after Drake's return people so much in the confidence of English promoters as Mercator and Ortelius still remained ignorant of the true route by which he returned to England. ¹⁹ From the fact, as Mercator here records, that differing reports of the course were circulated, it can be seen how carefully the secrets of the circumnavigation were guarded. By contrast, this security precaution highlights the eagerness of European observers to have real news of the ventures of such Englishmen as Pett, Frobisher and, most of all, Drake. ²⁰

1. Henry R. Wagner, Sir Francis Drake's voyage around the world (San Francisco, 1926), pp. 36-38.

2. Calendar of State Papers, Spanish , Vol. II (1568-79), pp. 683, 694-695. "Siete cartas de Don Antonio de Padilla sobre Francisco Draque contestadas al margen por Felipe II," in: Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España (112 vols., Madrid, 1842-95), XCIV, pp. 458-471; Zelia Nuttall (ed.), New Light on Drake (Hakluyt Society Second Series, 34, London, 1914), pp. 401-407.

3. H. Averdunk and J. Müller-Reinhard, Gerhard Mercator und die Geographen unter seinen Nachkommen (Gotha, 1914), pp. 2, 53, 152-157.

4. E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, 1485-1583 (London, 1930), p. 127.

5. E.G.R. Taylor, "More Light on Drake," in: Mariner's Mirror , XVI (1930). pp. 134-151.

6. In: E. G. R. Taylor (ed.), The original writings and correspondence of the two Richard Hakluyts (Hakluyt Society Second Series 76-77, 2 vols., London, 1935), I, pp. 143-144.

7. T. S. Willan, The history of the Russia Company, 1553-1603 (Manchester, 1956), pp. 14-15.

8. John Dee, Volume of Great and Rich Discoveries (1577), British Museum Cottonian MS. Vitellius C.vii, printed in Taylor, Tudor Geography , pp. 278-280; Hakluyt, in Taylor's edition of The original writings , I, pp. 140, 143; Willan op. cit. , pp. 133, 166.

9. E. G. R. Taylor, "John Dee and the map of North-East Asia," in: Imago Mundi , XII (1955), pp. 103-106.

10. Gerard Mercator to John Dee, 20 April 1577, transcribed from Dee's MSS. in E. G. R. Taylor, "A Letter dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee" in: Imago Mundi , XIII (1956), pp. 56-68.

11. Printed by Richard Hakluyt in the 1589 edition of Principall Navigations [27], pp. 455-463, together with the commission to Pett and Jackman from the Russia Company, and instructions for them by William Borough; the 1598-1600 edition [30], I, pp. 433-442, reprints all these, but then omits one of the 1589 eiditon's narratives of the expedition: cf. Taylor, Tudor Geography, pp. 128-134.

12. Gerard Mercator to Richard Hakluyt, 28 July 1580, in: Principall Navigations (1589) [27], pp. 483-485; ibid. , (1598-1600) [30], I, pp. 443-445.

13. Taylor, Tudor Geography , p. 128.

14. William Bourne, A Regiment for the Sea (London, 1580), edited by E. G. R. Taylor (Hakluyt Society Second Series, 121, Cambridge, 1963), preface; Hakluyt, Principall Navigations (1589) [27], especially pp. 630-635; ibid. , (1598-1600) [30], III, pp. 39-45, 76-93; Richard Collinson (ed.), The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher in search of a Passage to Cathaia and India by the North-West, A.D. 1576-8 ...(Hakluyt Society First Series, 38, London, 1867).

15. Hakluyt, Principall Navigations (1589) [27], pp. 463-482, especially p. 479

16. William Camden, The Historie of the Life and Reigne of the most Renowned and Victorious Princesse Elizabeth...(London, 1630) [43], II, p. 117; the closeness of his relations with Mercator is made clear in: J. van Raemdonck, Gérard Mercator, sa vie et ses oeuvres (St.-Nicolas, 1869), pp. 292-293.

17. In J. H. Hessels (ed.), Ecclesiae Londini-Batavae Archivum ... Abrahami Ortelii ... et virorum eruditorum ad eundem ... Epistolae ...(Cambridge, 1887), as letter 99, pp. 238-240; and partially in Taylor, Tudor Geography , pp. 261-262.

18. Hessels, op. cit. , letter 62.

19. Wagner, op. cit. , p. 230.

20. Averdunk and Müller-Reinhard, op. cit. , pp. 115-116.

3.

MEDINA SIDONIA, ALONSO PéREZ DE GUZMAN EL BUENO, SEVENTH DUKE OF. Autograph draft of a reply to a memorandum recommending changes in the naval defense of Spanish America and its sea-borne trade. Manuscript on paper, with corrections and sectional headings, all in Medina Sidonia's hand. 5 leaves, followed by a leaf blank except for docket. Folio (315 x 215 mm.). In a half leather case.

Spain, 1586.

See illus. p. 130

This hitherto unknown manuscript in Medina Sidonia's autograph is, in effect, addressed to King Philip II of Spain. It relates to Drake's depredations along the Pacific coast of Spanish America (1578-1579) and in the Caribbean (1585-1586) and suggests measures which should be taken to avert further disasters of this sort. It recommends a thorough overhaul of Spanish naval strategy and new arrangements to protect communications and the transport of bullion from America to Spain. Although it concentrates upon the defense of the Pacific coast of South America (all the way from the Strait of Magellan to the Isthmus of Panama) and the defense of its commerce, it includes suggestions relating to the ports on the Atlantic coast as well.

The docket of the present manuscript is endorsed:

Respuesta del Mem[oria]l q[ue] se dio a Su M[agesta]d
Por don di[eg]o Maldonado en lo de la Mar del Sur.
Embiose a xxv de 8bre 1586--

which may be translated as: "reply to the memorandum given to His Majesty by Don Diego Maldonado in the matter of the South Sea. It was sent October 25, 1586." The other endorsement, also in Medina Sidonia's autograph, is the Duke's "filing instruction": "Instruçiones diferentes / año 1586"-- i.e. , "Miscellaneous orders, 1586", together with the Duke's own cipher or monogram ( rúbrica ), in place of a signature, which would not have been appropriate for a paper to be retained.

Although the document is unsigned, its authorship is attested by this unmistakable cipher and by the rapid, clear handwriting, which is identical with the distinctive flowing script employed by Medina Sidonia in other documents, of proven authorship. The document is arranged in paragraphs, which relate respectively to the sections or capitulos (chapters) of the primary memorandum. Opposite each of these paragraphs is a sectional heading, probably extracted from the opening of each section of the original recommendations. In this document the paragraphs make up not so much an independent connected text of alternatives as a series of replies to the recommendations in the other paper. These, and the Duke's additional observations, were all intended to be read in the context of Maldonado's memorandum.

Maldonado's Memorial must have been submitted to the King at some date previous to October 1586; it must then have been referred by one of the royal secretaries or by the Council of the Indies for the Duke's opinion. The present paper is the draft of the confidential expert advice the Duke was asked to send to assist the deliberations in Madrid. Diego Maldonado was serving as a naval administrator at Seville: a professional seaman, he had held the highest posts in the Spanish Atlantic navigation. In 1575 he was Captain-General of the annual flota to New Spain, returning the next year, and carried out identical duties in 1577-1578; in 1579 he went to the Spanish Main commanding the armada and flota. As he was also a ship-owner, he returned in his own vessel the same year, with Don Cristóbal de Eraso. ¹ He again commanded the flota for the Spanish Main, making voyages to and from America, in 1582-1583. ²

Section I of the present manuscript deals with the difficulties of navigation in the Strait of Magellan, pointing out the heavy losses of ships experienced there by Drake, by Sarmiento de Gamboa and his chief pilot Antonio Pablo. This had happened even though they had attempted the navigation only in the southern summer ( i.e. , between November and February).

Section 2 emphasizes that much of the danger to which treasure shipments were exposed in the Pacific could be avoided if only the Viceroy of Peru would carry out his orders to see that they reached Panama by February in every year. Section 3 declares that only the strongest ships should be used for this purpose, while Section 4 estimates that the King actually has strong forces on the coast of the Main: if the armada formed to protect the Indies trade joined the merchant fleet bound for the Main no fewer than 44 great armed ships would be available to protect the trans-shipment of treasure and sweep marauders from the coast of Venezuela. Sections 5 (which consists only of the heading), and 6 criticize Maldonado's plan, which was evidently to send guns and munitions secretly to America in vessels specially provided. Instead the Duke proposes here that such guns as are required should be removed from ships being broken up in American ports, while gunpowder, match, ammunition, etc., should be diverted to Peru from the supply that Alvaro Flores de Quiñones was due to take to Havana and Florida.

Section 7 details the procedure for dispatching armaments from Panama to Callao, incidentally using them to form a squadron to defend the Pacific coast; in Section 8 the Duke assures the King that if the requisite rigging and naval stores are sent from Europe suitable ships may in future be built in the Indies, from American timber. In Sections 9 and 10 the Duke refers to previous pieces of advice, categorically stating that Sarmiento de Gamboa's colonists will be of no use for defending the Pacific coast: "de la Jente q[ue] Ai en el estrecho se Puede hazer Poco fundamento, pues se crehe estara Acabada," he remarks interestingly. (Trans.: "We can build little hope on the people at the Strait, since it is believed they must have perished.") ³

In Section II the Duke approves Maldonado's views assuring the King that the defense of the Caribbean coasts required the presence of galleons. He is glad to report that galleys had enjoyed general success there since they had been based on Cartagena, as no foreign force had dared raid the coast, except for Drake's. Even then, thought the Duke, the galleys might have defended the town adequately had they been properly handled--a reference to the poor performance of the galleys against Drake in February 1586, for which their commander, Don Pedro Vique Manrique, was then standing trial. ⁴

The remarks in Section 13 express strategic ideas that were to coalesce in the sending of the Armada against England in 1588. They clearly suggest that in order to defend Spanish America and its trade with Spain Philip II must take the offensive by building up a fleet of warships as a mobile striking force. However, the writer here envisages a psychological rather than a directly military effect: he recommends no more than that the war-fleet should enter the English Channel, and that alarums and sounds of warlike preparation should be broadcast to England from all over the Spanish empire.

The present document reveals very vividly the preoccupation of some of the most important people in Spain with the defense of America and of its sea-borne trade. Among their fears the most acute were inspired by the attacks of Francis Drake. First his brilliantly successful passage through the Strait of Magellan had allowed him to plunder at will the Spanish ships he had taken by surprise in the Pacific; then his startling assaults on some of the main harbors for Spanish fleets in the Caribbean--notably Cartagena--showed that they were well within the grasp of an assailant with up-to-date large warships. The Spaniards quite rightly feared that Drake's example would be followed by other English mariners, and even by raiders from other countries. By late in 1586 they realized that they faced widespread war, and were desperately keen to get the greatest possible return from the heavy defense expenditure Drake had forced them to make.

The authorship of the document is highly significant. It casts light upon the advance of strategic thinking in the most powerful nation of the time, and upon the process of decision-making in Philip II's government. It confirms the industry of the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the esteem in which he was held in Spanish official circles--the more so as he still held no formal position in the royal service. ⁵

The mere existence of so detailed and trenchant a document in the Duke's own autograph shows both the importance attached to the subject of the paper and the falsity of almost everything that has been written about the Duke's character and functions. In the light of the careful weighing of alternatives, the technical grasp of maritime and military questions and the willingness to assimilate information that Medina Sidonia shows here, the statement that "the Duke was a fool and a poltroon--and he knew it" ⁶ can no longer be accepted. Nor, even, can the later, more charitable view that while he was reasonably intelligent and knowledgeable, Medina Sidonia's main use to Philip II was as "a personage whom the lesser folk were willing to obey as a dignified reprentative of the Sovereign." ⁷ Doubtless the Duke had good secretarial, legal and financial assistants, and secured the best technical advice--but this is to his credit, for he undoubtedly needed them in order to discharge his heavy and varied responsibilities. These are ideas from his own mind: a grandee of Spain would never have spent his time in copying out the compositions of others--that was work for clerks, not dukes.

Many other points of great interest in the text can be examined in a more detailed study of it which is attached to the manuscript. For instance, it shows the Duke eager to acquire data on trade with China and the Spice Islands (Section 9); he can be seen to have had moderate and well-informed opinions on the relative merits of oared and sailing ships (a subject of lively concern at that time, as Drake's campaigns showed). He also saw the possibility of relieving pressure on America by an aggressive European policy, incidentally appreciating the potential force of propaganda (Section 13). ⁸

It is ironical that this passage by the man who within eighteen months took command of the Armada nowhere suggests that the Spanish Navy should actually engage English forces--still less attempt to conquer the country. This in turn raises the question of whether, for some Spanish policy-makers, the threat of the Armada was intended as a bluff, which the English eventually called, and forced them to make real. This document is the most substantial paper on the subject that Medina Sidonia produced. It is unpublished; indeed, it goes unmentioned in all existing works on the Spanish Navy, the Spanish-American trade or the war against England. ⁹

1. Cf. Don Cristóbal de Eraso's plans and view of new defenses proposed for the castle of San Juan de Ulúa at Vera Cruz [Nos. 46 and 47].

2. Martín Fernández de Navarrete, Biblioteca marítima española (2 vols., Madrid, 1851), sub nomine ; Huguette and Pierre Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique, 1504-1650 (11 vols., Paris, 1955), III, pp. 208, 230, 236, 258, 262, 274-275, 306, 332.

3. This was at the time of Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa's capture in the Atlantic by Ralegh's men [see No. 2].

4. Cf. Don Pedro Vique Manrique's appeal against sentence of death in his trial for negligence and misfeasance at Cartagena [No. 28].

5. The Duke was not appointed Captain-General of the Coast of Andalusia until January 7, 1588, only a month before the King ordered him to command the Armada: patent in Museo Naval, Madrid, Colección Navarrete, III, document 17, folio 236; printed in Colección de documentos inéditos para la historia de España (112 vols., Madrid, 1842-1895), XXVIII, pp. 376-378.

6. Martin A. S. Hume in: The Cambridge Modern History , Vol. III (Cambridge, 1905), p. 505.

7. E. M. Tenison, Elizabethan England (13 vols., Learnington Spa, 1933-61), VII, p. lxix.

8. Cf. the many facets of the Duke's diplomatic, administrative and martial activity touched on in: the Duke of Maura, El designio de Felipe II y el episodio de la Armada Invencible (Madrid, 1957), and his close attention to the defense of North America and the West Indies recorded in: D. B. Quinn, "Some Spanish reactions to Elizabethan colonising enterprises," in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Fifth Series, I (1951), pp. 1-23; id., The Roanoke Voyages 1584-1590 (Hakluyt Society Second Series, 104-105, 2 vols., Cambridge, 1955), II, pp. 772, 779, 817.

9. Fernández de Navarrete, op. cit. ; Cesáreo Fernández Duro, La Armada Invencible ( 2 vols., Madrid, 1884-5); id., Armada española (9 vols., Madrid, 1895-1903); Clarence H. Haring, Trade and navigation between Spain and the Indies in the time of the Hapsburgs (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1918); Woodrow Borah, Early colonial navigation between Mexico and Peru (Berkeley, 1954); Chaunu, op. cit.; Garrett Mattingly, The Armada (Boston, 1959); Michael Lewis, The Spanish Armada (London, 1960).

4.

PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN. Letter signed, to the Duke of Medina Sidonia, giving instructions in view of the expected intentions of the English squadron under Drake reported to be then attacking Cadiz. Dated Aranjuez, May 4, 1587. 2 pp. Folio (315 x 215 mm.). Written on paper in Spanish in a clear scribal hand, with an addition of three lines (24 words), after the date, in the King's autograph. Signed by the King "Yo El Rey."

Aranjuez, May 4, 1587.

See illus. p. 132

This letter clearly demonstrates the intimate contact between the Duke of Medina Sidonia and the Court. It exemplifies Philip II's reaction to the extremely unwelcome news that the English were not merely taking the preparation of an Armada against them seriously, but were trying to prevent it from ever getting to sea, and even dared to enter his own harbors to attack it. This is the celebrated episode when Drake, as he put it, "singed the King of Spain's beard."

In the letter the King states that he has received news of the damage done to the ships in Cadiz Bay by the English, but has also learnt that Medina Sidonia has been attending to the defense of the town, and expresses his satisfaction and gratitude for the Duke's services. He writes further that although he had understood from Seville that Drake left the bay on May 1st, another dispatch had come from there saying that it was reported at Puerto de Santa María (on the other side of the bay from Cadiz) that Drake had been reinforced and had returned. If this was true, it could only be with the idea of taking the city itself, and the King gives express orders that the Duke should hand over command there to others and on no account allow himself to be shut up in the city. Philip explains that he considers Medina Sidonia too knowledgeable, authoritative and loyal for him not to be greatly missed if he does not retire from Cadiz. He exhorts him to obtain infantry, cavalry, arms and support from the nobles and towns of Andalusia and then take the offensive from outside the city against the English if they do land. The King's autograph addition, translated, reads: "I would be more greatly worried about this situation if you were not in charge; therefore I expect it will have a good outcome."

The letter appears to have been written in some haste, as shown by the autograph addition and by the fact that, unlike almost all Spanish royal letters, it shows no secretary's counter-signature. It bears witness to the confusion caused by Drake's attack and to the disorganization of the Spanish defenses his audacity revealed. The King's affection for the Duke and his esteem for his services--well before Medina Sidonia's eventual appointment to command the Armada--are also obvious. What is also made clear is the difficulty the King had in keeping informed and in control of events when he was so far from his principal ports. Supplying the royal demand for information and maintaining a correspondence with the intensity the King liked represented a severe burden for the men on the spot.

This letter is unpublished, except for an extract printed in Gabriel Maura Gamazo, Duque de Maura, El designio de Felipe II (Madrid, 1957), p. 213.

5.

MEDINA SIDONIA, ALONSO PéREZ DE GUZMáN EL BUENO, SEVENTH DUKE OF. Manuscript dispatch in Spanish. Unsigned: drafted as the model for letters sent by the Duke to authorities in Spanish settlements in the Caribbean area, informing them of Drake's recent attack on Spanish shipping at Cadiz and warning them that he may intend to attack them. Paper, 1¼ pp. Folio (315 x 215 mm.), with attached slip. Endorsed on verso of second (blank) folio.

San Lúcar de Barrameda, May (no day, but probably 18), 1587.

See illus. pp. 135-136

This endorsed "Copy of the letter the duke my lord wrote to the governors of the Indies in the year 1587" is the official "model" of a set of letters sent by the Duke at the behest of King Philip II of Spain. The attached slip is a list of the addressees: it specifies the governors of Havana ( i.e. , of Cuba), of Cartagena, of Puerto Rico and of Florida (Pedro Menéndez Marqués, whose name is here entered), the audiencias (governing supreme courts) of Santo Domingo and Panama, the alcaldes (chief magistrates) of the lesser islands of Jamaica and La Margarita, and Alvaro Flores de Quiñones, the Captain-General of the armed fleet expected to return that year from America via Havana.

In the dispatch the Duke gives a first-hand report that Drake had arrived in the bay of Cadiz on April 29, with 27 ships, and had burnt or sunk 23 ships in the bay, the city being rescued from sack only by the presence of the galleys of Spain. Medina Sidonia says that although it was feared that on leaving Drake had set course for the West Indies, he was sighted off Cape Saint Vincent on May 5 and had entered Lagos Bay, Portugal, on the 12th. The Duke still thought it possible Drake might make for the Indies and asked the authorities to prepare to resist him, assuring them that Drake had with him only five or six ships of any size. He promises them that the day is near when there will be a Spanish squadron detailed to give permanent protection to the West Indies, and assures them that the royal warships (at Lisbon under the Marquess of Santa Cruz) will put to sea as soon as Drake's ultimate intentions are known.

Here is valuable evidence that up to the very end of Drake's expedition the Spanish authorities were completely uncertain about his intentions. Although this document is not dated with the day of the month, it cannot have been written earlier than the middle of May, and was probably sent with a series of dispatches the Duke is known to have sent on May 18, to these and other officials in Spanish America, which gave individual instructions in case of Drake's arrival, varying according to their circumstances. The letter conveys valuable facts and figures on Drake's attack; it raised great hopes in America by its announcement that a squadron of warships would in future be kept on station, so that at last the Spanish West Indies would be protected.

This dispatch has been published only by the Duke of Maura, in his El designio de Felipe II , pp. 211-212, where it is printed with gross inaccuracies. See also Calendar of State Papers, Venetian , Volume VIII, pp. 271-281, which reports events in Madrid; and H. and P. Chaunu, Séville et l'Atlantique, 1504-1650 , Volume III (1587), which has notes on the warnings sent to America and the effects on Atlantic trade.

6.

PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN. Manuscript document signed (signature is a woodcut stamp). 1 page. Folio (307 x 202 mm.). Partly backed, margin strengthened. Countersigned by Andres de Alva. In a cloth case.

Madrid, June 15, 1587.

See illus. p. 143

Don Pedro de Sotomayor is by this document appointed to serve under the Marquess of Santa Cruz in the "large armada to go and seek the one that has sailed from England and which wanders through the seas of these my kingdoms" (trans.). The situation at this date was indeed unfavorable for Spain. Drake had descended upon Cadiz on April 29, 1587, and had burned up ships and supplies there; had cruised back and forth along the coasts of Spain and Portugal for a month and a half; had captured a rich East Indies galleon laden with merchandise and treasure; and at this date was on his way back to England. The great Armada itself was intended to sail against England in 1587, but Drake's cruise had upset all these plans, and despite frantic efforts by the King and his subordinates, Spain could not even get a fleet to sea to fight him.

The document does not state the exact position to be held by Sotomayor, but as it refers to "vuestras arms"("your arms") it may be surmised that he was to serve as an officer of the infantry forces generally stationed on the larger Spanish ships. His pay was 10 escudos per month. The Marquess of Santa Cruz died early in 1588, after which the Armada sailed out to its defeat under the command of the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

The document is accompanied by a transcription and translation.

7.

HAWKINS, SIR JOHN. Final portion of a document signed. 1 page. Folio (410 x 285 mm.).

In a cloth case.

N. pl., before 1588.

See illus. p. 51

A legal document in regard to a loan of money, connected with the office of the Treasurer of the Navy, to which post Hawkins had been appointed in 1573. As he was knighted in 1588, and does not use his title here, it can be assumed that the present document falls somewhere between those years.

The document begins imperfectly; though it is unusually badly written, one can see that a legal proceeding of claim is involved, since it speaks of "Counsell learned in the Lawe". It concerns also a claim for payment of expenses connected with the delivery of money in repayment of the loan money. There are a number of interlinear additions, and some passages are struck through, which would indicate that this is a preliminary drafting of the document. A single-word docket "Loane," is on the blank verso of the first leaf.

Hawkins (1532-1595) was an associate of Drake through out his life; he served as Rear-Admiral (third in command under Howard and Drake) of the English fleet which defeated the Invincible Armada. Hawkins' signature is in his usual, large bold style.

8.

DALE, DR. VALENTINE. Letter signed. 1 page. Folio (350 x 225 mm.). With attached address leaf. To Sir Francis Walsingham, "Principal Secretarie to the Q:[ueen's] Ma[jes]tie."

Bourborough (Bourbourg, between Calais and Dieppe), July 25, 1588.

See illus. pp. 138, 141

A letter concerning the futile diplomatic negotiations between an English delegation (the Earl of Derby, Sir James Crofts, Lord Cobham, John Rogers, and Dr. Dale), and the Duke of Parma, representing the King of Spain. Meetings began late in 1587, but Parma had been instructed by Philip II to procrastinate and come to no agreement on any point, as the King intended the negotiations to be simply a cover-up for his war preparations. Dale reports a very threatening remark of the Duke of Parma, "a battail lost by the Queen was the loss of her crowne", to which Dale stoutly replied that "one battail was not enough to carie away the mater". He gives his opinion that if the Armada does not reach the Channel, the expense of keeping Parma's large army mobilized would make the Spaniards more inclined to peace.

Dale (d. 1589) was a noted lawyer and diplomatist, being English ambassador to Flanders and France, and he acted for the Lord High Admiral of England while the post was temporarily in commission (1585).

The Armada was in fact on its way to England at the date of this letter(July 25 new style, or 15 old style), it having put out from La Coruña on July 22 (new style). For the history of these last-minute negotiations, see Mattingly, The Spanish Armada , pp. 192-193, and Wernham, Before the Armada , pp. 389-390, 393-394.

9.

BURGHLEY, WILLIAM CECIL, BARON, AND SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM. Document signed (contemporary copy). 1 page. Folio (330 × 222 mm.). With an attached leaf bearing a 5-line docket.

London, October 11, 1588.

See illus. p. 163

A source for the history of the Drake-Norris expedition against Spain and Portugal, which was planned and organized immediately after the defeat of the Invincible Armada, and which was carried out in the following year, 1589. In this document, Sir Henry Billingsley (d. 1606), then an Alderman of London, and a wealthy merchant; Peter Osborne (1521-1592), a "remembrancer to the Lord Treasurer in the Exchequer", a leading Treasury official of the reigns of Edward VI and Elizabeth I; and Edward Fent, are charged with the duty of controlling and auditing the financial accounts of the Drake-Norris expedition. The enterprise had been organized as a sort of joint-venture, financed by investments by the Queen and private persons.

A pencil notation on the document page states that the piece was formerly in the John Evelyn collection; the single word "Drake", in pencil on the docket page, appears to be in the handwriting of W. Upcott, who acquired many manuscripts from the Evelyn family papers in the 19th century.

The manuscript is of about 260 words in all (including the docket), and is accompanied by a typed transcript.

It is unpublished, so far as we can determine.

10.

(DRAKE-NORRIS EXPEDITION). "A Brief note of the accompte of the voyage intended by Sir John Norreis and Sir Francis Drake knyghts 17 December 1588" (docket). Document. 1 page. Folio (270 x 197 Mm.). With attached leaf bearing a 7-line docket. In a cloth folder. (London), December 17, 1588.

See illus. p. 164

An extract from the "Booke of accompte" of the Drake-Norris expedition which was then being prepared for sailing in 1589. The total sum so far paid in by the joint-venturers was £26,450 11s.; of this, the Queen had invested £16,000, and Drake and others the balance. There are a number of corrections in the figures of the account, and a number of amusing blunders in addition and subtraction of the various sums. As the document specifically mentions the surplus of the Queen's investment over that of the others, the account may have been prepared for her use; it certainly was issued by Billingsley, Osborne, and Fent, the financial controllers of the expedition. A pencil note states that the manuscript is from the collection of John Evelyn. It is apparently unpublished.

A typed transcript accompanies the document.

11.

(DRAKE, SIR FRANCIS). Document on vellum, signed by Alderman Paul Banninge of London. 1 page. Large Folio (640 x 370 mm.). With Banninge's pendant wax seal. In a cloth case. From the collection of R. A. Meyrick, collateral descendant of Drake. (London), May 28, 1593.

See illus. p. 170

The record of Drake's sale of a 71-year lease of a house called "The Herbar" in the Dowgate ward of London. It is Drake's own copy, signed by Banninge; the counterpart copy signed by Drake was given to Banninge, and is not known to be extant.

The document is in English, and is clearly written and legible. It comprises 39 lines (about 1700 words) and is in fine condition. Signatures of two witnesses, Thomas Fytch and W. Spencer, are also on the document. On the verso are two contemporary dockets, and also one of the 19th century.

"The Herbar" was once a royal residence, being occupied by King Richard III, and later (1571-1578) by the Spanish diplomatic mission in London. It had recently been rebuilt and modernized by the Lord Mayor, Sir Thomas Pullison, and must have been a valuable property, as it fronted on the Thames, and was next to the Steelyard, the headquarters of the Hanseatic League in London. Apparently unpublished.

Cf. John Stow, A Survay of London (London, 1598), p. 183; Lady Eliott-Drake, The family and heirs of Sir Francis Drake , I, pp. 107-108.

12.

WINSLADE, TRISTRAN. De praesenti statu Cornubiae et Devoniae quae duae Provinciae sunt Hispaniae proximiores. 8 leaves. (Second title, in Italian:) Consideracioni al Re Cattolico per li Cattolici di Ingliterra. 3 leaves. Manuscript on paper. Together, 16 leaves, the last 5 blanks. With a manuscript folding map of England, in outline except for Cornwall and Devon, which display detail. Small quarto (230 x 180 nm.). In a cloth case.

Spain, c. 1595.

See illus. pp. 152, 153

An unpublished manuscript, dealing with matters in the "top secret" category. It is indeed remarkable that such a document is extant outside of an official state archive. From the Italian heading of the second part of the report (in a different hand), we may surmise that it was a copy prepared in Spain for the use of the Papal court, as it is most unlikely that any such report would have been supplied to any other Italian authority.

The work is a lengthy intelligence report given to King Philip II of Spain by one of the English Catholic exiles who had fled from England when Elizabeth I became Queen and had entered Spanish service as a soldier. Winslade begins his description with a general survey of Cornwall and Devon, stating that those two counties, together with Somerset and Dorset, formed a peninsula easily defensible on the line of the Stour River from attack from other parts of England. He speaks of the ancient prosperity of Cornwall and Devon and their present misery from high taxes and other exactions; of the former devotion of the people to the Catholic cause; and of notable men of the present generation (Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Francis Drake, "the two Hawkins"--no doubt Sir John and Sir Richard Hawkins), from Devon, and Sir Richard Grenville and others from Cornwall, who had distinguished themselves by their attacks upon Spain and the Spanish possessions. He then goes on to name various Catholic notables of the two counties and the ways in which they could act or use their influence in an uprising to seize control of England. Winslade speaks with confidence of the death of Queen Elizabeth, which he seems to consider imminent (perhaps from an assassination plot), and discusses means for the re-establishment of Catholicism in England. He requests that if this should take place, that he be restored to the lands and income which his family had owned before they lost all from their devotion to Catholicism. This part of the work is illustrated by the folding manuscript map of England.

In the second part of the work, Winslade discusses the government of England in general, with special mention of Sir Walter Ralegh, William Cecil, Baron Burghley, and others, and means to be used in the extirpation of heresy in England, Scotland and Ireland. He informs Philip that with the conquest of England the Spanish possessions in America would no longer be menaced and that he would be spared the expense of a defensive navy there, and that he could then proceed to the conquest of other Protestant lands.

It is evident that, literally, "heads would have rolled" if this document with its numerous references to Englishmen who, so says Winslade, would take arms for Philip against Elizabeth, had ever fallen into the hands of the English government.

The manuscript must be dated after 1581, when Drake was knighted (he is referred to as "Eques" = Knight); it probably is a preparatory intelligence report for Philip II's second Spanish Armada sent against England. The campaign itself was a total failure, the fleet of over 60 ships being driven from the English coasts by contrary winds. However, it was quite clear that the Spaniards were not going to give up, especially when they held a capacious and well-defended naval base in Brittany from which they could dominate the Channel. In any event, a dangerous raid from this port, at Blavet, in 1595 delayed and nearly diverted the expedition to the West Indies being prepared by Sir Francis Drake and Sir John Hawkins, and showed that their home counties were very much an object of Spanish attack:

Towards the end of July a start appeared probable, and then the Brittany Spaniards made a move. They sent out from Blavet four galleys full of soldiers. These men landed one morning on the Cornish coast and began to burn the fishing villages in Mount's Bay. So sudden was the surprise that Mousehole, Newlyn and Penzance were destroyed before defense forces could gather. The Spaniards then put to sea and made off. Everyone was perturbed by their boldness, and not least the Queen, who took it to be the portent of a new invasion... ¹

The Queen was eventually convinced that an expedition fitted out for the West Indies was not suitable for a reprisal on the coast of Spain, but this raid on the West Country was so alarming that she insisted that Drake and Hawkins must not stay away for more than six months.

According to documents reported by Loomie (see below), Tristran Winslade was born about 1552. He must have emigrated from his native Devon early in the 1570's, as in 1597 he is stated to have been in the Spanish service for 23 years. He is reported as having served in Flanders, in Ireland, and in "the Armada against England." Presumably the Irish service mentioned refers to the dispatch of Spanish officers to Ireland in the 1590's to prepare the way for an invasion there; the "Armada against England" is surely the Invincible Armada of 1588. Winslade is reported in 1597 as having returned to Flanders, where he was in the service of the Cardinal-Archduke Albert, Viceroy of the Netherlands, and in that year he was granted a pension of 25 escudos. A Gabriel Denis ("Dionysius" in the manuscript) often referred to by Winslade was also an English exile; he was born c. 1537, emigrated in 1561, and had served as a confidential adviser on English affairs to Don Juan of Austria. ²

The present manuscript is in Latin, in an elegant "Italic" hand. It is not signed by Winslade, but he refers to himself as its author several times in the text, e.g. , 4 verso, line 19.

1. J. A. Williamson, Sir Francis Drake (New York, 1962), p. 116.

2. Albert Loomie, S. J., The Spanish Elizabethans. English Exiles at the Court of Philip II , (1963), pp. 263, no. 153; 248, no. 65; Cambridge Modern History (1905), III, 528-530.

13.

ARMENTEROS, ANDRES. Letter signed, in Spanish. 1 page, with attached leaf blank except for docket. Folio (305 x 210 mm.). In a cloth folder. To the Duke of Medina Sidonia. Seville, June 20, 1596.

See illus. p. 177

News of the death of Drake, one of Medina Sidonia's principal adversaries in the Armada battles of 1588. Armenteros was a lawyer, as his title of "Licenciado" shows, and at this time was a member of the Council of the Indies (see Schaefer, Indice de la Colección de Documentos Inéditos de Indias , I, p. 41). His report, certainly unpublished, states that the ships of Drake's raiding expedition had arrived back in England, having suffered heavy losses in both men and ships, with Drake's body preserved in a barrel of beer. This latter news was false, as he had been buried at sea. Armenteros goes on to say that this had ruined the plans for a great English-Dutch fleet, since the expenses were to be paid from the 2,000,000 ducats which Drake had been falsely credited with plundering at Puerto Rico. Armenteros further reports on the siege of Calais, which had been captured by the Archduke Albert in April.

Any satisfaction which Medina Sidonia might have felt on hearing of the death of his old adversary did not last very long. As these lines were being written, the English-Dutch fleet which Armenteros so confidently refers to as "undone" (trans.) was off the Spanish coast on its way to Cadiz, under the command of the Earl of Essex and Lord Howard of Effingham. A few days later it entered that port, and the city and the navy and merchant ships stationed there were burned up.

This defeat was far more damaging to the reputation of Medina Sidonia in Spain than was that of the Armada. The latter was ascribed to adverse winds and storms. The loss of Cadiz, which was under Medina Sidonia's military jurisdiction as the Captain General of Andalusia, was widely attributed to his lack of capacity. When the English evacuated Cadiz after remaining there for two weeks, Miguel de Cervantes wrote a sarcastic sonnet on the event, which concludes with a bitter sneer at the Duke.

For detailed accounts of these events, see Tenison, Elizabethan England , Vols. IX and X. A transcript and translation accompanies this piece.

14.

LEMON, PETER. Document signed. 1 page. Folio (310 x 215 mm.).

Antony House (near Plymouth), Cornwall, November 7, 1596.

See illus. p. 154

Peter Lemon's testimony gives, in brief outline, a fascinating escape-narrative; it was made on the eve of Philip II's last "Spanish Armada," the one of 1597. It is entitled "The depositione of peeter Lemman of Mylbrooke, taken by Richard Carew of Antony in Cornwayle the 7th of November, 1596." He tells how he "went out of England with Sir ffrauncis Drake"--this was with Drake's last voyage, 1595-1596. He was captured, then sent to Spain with other English prisoners, arrived at San Lucar, the port of Seville, escaped thence to Seville, then to Madrid, Bayonne, and back to England. He landed at Fowey in Cornwall, and made this statement to Richard Carew (1555-1620), who was High Sheriff of Cornwall, and deputy-lieutenant, under Sir Walter Ralegh, in command of the regiment charged with the defense of Cawsand Bay, just at the entrance to Plymouth Harbor.

Lemon's statement is almost entirely concerned with the preparations for Philip II's third Armada against England--the earlier ones were of 1588 and 1595.

In the narrative of Drake's last voyage printed by Hakluyt (1903-5 ed., X, p. 236), Lemon's capture is noted; it is stated that he was in a pinnace captured by Spanish galleys from Cartagena. From the phrasing of this report it would appear that he was a minor officer in command of the pinnace; this is further implied by his remark in this deposition about "certaine Englishmen of his companie." His name is written "Lemman" in the heading of this piece; "Lemond" in Hakluyt; but his signature here is "Lemon."

15.

HOWARD OF EFFINGHAM, CHARLES, LORD, [later EARL OF NOTTINGHAM]; THOMAS SACKVILLE, EARL OF DORSET; AND OTHERS. Privy Council order for the payment of ration and transportation money for a body of troops. Manuscript on paper, written in Elizabethan English cursive script. Signed by Howard ("Notingham"); Sackville ("T. Buckhurst"); Roger Baron North, Privy Councillor; Robert Cecil, Secretary of State; Thomas Egerton, Baron Ellesmere, Privy Councillor; William Knollys, Earl of Banbury, Privy Councillor; and George Carey, Baron Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain. 1 page. Folio (305 x 215 mm.). With attached leaf bearing address and docket. In a cloth folder.

From the Court at Greenwich, August 17, 1598.

See illus. p. 150

The order provides for the payment of £562 12 s. 10 d. for provisions and transport of soldiers to Ireland recruited in Wales "and other counties adioyninge." The most notable of the signatories was Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admiral of England, commander of the English fleet which defeated the Spanish Armada of 1588. Other signers who took part in the 1588 campaign were Knollys, who commanded a force of infantry, and Carey, Governor of the Isle of Wight, an important position.

Thomas Sackville is well known as a poet and dramatist; he planned and wrote part of the noted poem "A Myrrour for Magistrates" (1559-1563), and he collaborated with Thomas Norton in "The Tragedy of Gorbuduc" (1565), the first English tragedy in blank verse. Sackville later became first Earl of Dorset, and he began the great mansion of the Sackvilles at Knole, in Kent.

The dispatch of these troops tb Ireland was undoubtedly connected with the rebellion of Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone, which was then in progress, and English fears that Tyrone would be assisted by the landing of a Spanish army (one actually did land in 1600).

Cf. Cyril Falls, Elizabeth's Irish wars (London, 1960).

16.

FENEKE MUñOZ, CARLOS. Tratado Tocante el Armar y disciplina de las Galeras. Dedicado al muy digno y Illustre Ambrosio Spinola, Duque de Sanceverino...General de las galeras de su Catholica Mag[esta]d en los estados de Flandes. Manuscript signed by the author, on paper; written in a clear cursive script. 48 leaves. Small quarto. Original vellum. From the library of Ambrogio Spínola; with contemporary note "delo heredio spinola" on front leaf.

Bruges, September 1, 1603.

See illus. p. 156

An unpublished manuscript of great interest for the study of sea-power in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, for the history of the Eighty Years War between the Dutch and Spain and for assessing the performance of galleys in the Spanish Armada of 1588; it gives the role of oared vessels in the attack on England extended discussion. Feneke has here produced a treatise resuming recent developments in naval tactics in order to examine the possible uses of this type of ship in Spanish service in the Netherlands.

The treatise discusses the advantages and disadvantages of galleys, makes suggestions for improving them and for their more effective use in future. In general, Feneke emphasizes that the standard Mediterranean galley was very poorly constructed for naval action on the northern seas; in illustration of this contention he records the failure of oared vessels in the Armada campaign (ff. 14-17). He discusses past and projected use of galleys by the Spanish command in the Netherlands.

In his dedicatory letter to Ambrogio Spínola, Feneke, who is apparently unknown except as author of this piece, describes himself as a gentleman soldier with 24 years' experience in the Spanish service. He had been a trusted subordinate of Ambrogio's younger brother Federico Spínola (1571-1603), who had joined his brother in the Spanish Netherlands expressly to command the galleys there. Feneke states that this work is based on his discussions with Federico and also on papers he had left.

Federico Spínola had been convinced that galleys--in the use of which the Spaniards were, of course, expert--could, if properly equipped and handled, strike decisive blows against both the English and the Dutch. But off Sluys, on May 26, 1603, Dutch sailing warships outmaneuvered him and ran his ships down. This event set the seal on a whole century of evolution in naval warfare, writing finis to the long period in which oared vessels had had freedom of action while sailing vessels had acted as carts at sea, fit only for moving bulky commercial cargoes. More than a century of improvement in hull construction, of rationalization in rigging and innovation in mounting more and more heavy guns had made the sailing warship with its fearsome broadside armament the queen of the seas--a position it was to hold for two centuries and a half. Galleys and similar vessels had indeed been very useful in conducting coastal raids and amphibious operations in the Netherlands, but Drake's fleets, and ships owned by the English Levant Company had shown they could trounce Spanish galleys at Cartagena de Indias, in the Mediterranean and at Cadiz--in 1586-1587. Nevertheless, Spain's adversaries had continued to fear attacks from oared vessels. Even Drake had acquiesced in this preoccupation, for the program of naval building approved by him, Hawkins and others as an immediate consequence of the 1588 Armada campaign included vessels specially designed to counter galleys. Spínola's defeat in 1603 doomed the galley in unsupported operations against sailing ships and largely banished it from northern waters where, as Feneke says in the present manuscript, it had performed so poorly in 1588. This proved Drake and other English observers to have been even righter than they had thought in believing that galleys could never seize command of the Channel or the North Sea, nor effectively invade England.

The manuscript is in a clear secretarial hand, and is signed by Feneke at the end of the dedicatory letter. A later inscription on the title interprets his name as "Fonst," but this is clearly merely a misreading.

On Federico Spínola and his battles, see: Jean Orlers and Henry Haestens, Description et représentation de toutes les Victoires ...(Leyden, 1612), pp. 258-260 [see No. 35]; Sir Julian Corbett, Successors of Drake (London, 1900), pp. 277-289, 386-395. Notes upon the use of oared vessels in northern waters at this time are set down by R. C. Anderson, Oared Fighting Ships (London, 1962), and R. H. Boulind, "The Crompster in Literature and Pictures," in: Mariner's Mirror , LIV(1968), pp. 1-17.

II. PRINTED BOOKS

17.

BRETON, NICHOLAS. A Discourse in commendation of the valiant as vertuous minded Gentleman, Maister Frauncis Drake, with a reioysing of his happy adventures. 8 leaves. With a type ornament border on the title. (Upper margin trimmed, touching the toplines). Small octavo. 18th century English brown calf. From the collection of Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), with his shelf-marks on the front end paper. London, John Charlewood, 1581.

See illus. p. 82

FIRST EDITION: an unrecorded work by one of the most prolific of the writers of the Elizabethan-Jacobean period. Drake's great voyage of circumnavigation began in 1577 and lasted until September 26, 1580, when his ship, the Golden Hind , anchored again at Plymouth. Queen Elizabeth paid a visit to Drake's ship on April 14, 1581, at which time knighthood was conferred on him; the present work must have been published, therefore, before that date, as he is here called only "Gentleman" and "Maister."

The work begins (after the title-leaf) with a dedicatory letter to Drake, followed by a poem of three 6-line stanzas. The Discourse itself follows on leaves 3-8, the last paragraph being printed in a smaller face of black letter to avoid having to run a few lines of text on to another page. In it, Breton speaks, in the racy prose of that era, of "heving at ancors, hoising up sailes, hawling at cables, & such other sea work"; of "Our Countrey man [who] hath gone rounde about the whole world"; of"the Lande where Treasure lies, the way to come by it and ye honor by the getting of it"; etc. Significantly, though Breton repeatedly mentions the cargo of loot brought home by Drake, he is silent as to just where it was acquired; this undoubtedly is a reflection of Drake's anomalous position, since England and Spain were nominally at peace, and some of Elizabeth's counsellors were urging her to disavow him and restore the plunder to the Spaniards. She chose to support Drake, however, and shared in the treasure of perhaps a million pounds sterling or more, to the tune of about £300,000.

This is the first extant prose work of Breton, only three little volumes of his poetry preceding it in his literary output. Works of this author are of notorious rarity, in spite of the large number of his publications (see STC nos. 3631-3715), most of which are extant in only one or two copies.

Breton (c. 1545-1622) was the son of a wealthy London tradesman and landowner. "As a literary man Breton impresses us most by his versatility and his habitual refinement" (DNB, article by Sir Sidney Lee). The present work is full of the euphuistic conceits so characteristic of the Elizabethans. In his day, Breton was very highly esteemed as a writer, and he was eulogized by such outstanding men as Ben Jonson, Francis Mores, and Sir John Suckling. The discovery of this hitherto unknown work, connecting him with the greatest navigator of his day, is a notable event in English literary history.

18.

MEDINA SIDONIA, DON ALONSO PéREZ DE GUZMáN EL BUENO, SEVENTH DUKE OF. Don Alonso Perez de Guzman el Bueno Duque de la Ciudad de Medina Sidonia...Capitan General del Mar Oceano...y desta Real Armada y Exercito...Lo Que Ordeno y Mando Que hazar y cumplan los Generales, [y] Maestros de Campo...que vinieren en esta dicha Armada todo el tiempo que durare esta Jornada, es lo siguente. (Caption title). 4 leaves. Folio. In a cloth case.

(Lisbon), 1588.

See illus. p. 144

THE FIRST EDITION (unrecorded, and apparently unique) of the General Orders for the Invincible Armada of 1588. This is the personal copy of the commander-in-chief of the fleet, the Duke of Medina Sidonia. It may be extant in only this present copy. The text has been known from its publication by Captain Fernández Duro, who obtained it from a manuscript copy by Navarrete (Fernández Duro, La Armada Invencible , II, no. 99, pp. 22-32). It is also known through the very rare contemporary translation into English [see No. 19].

A manuscript docket on the verso of the last leaf reads "Instrucjon Jen[era]l que se dio al arm[a]da. año 1588" ("General order which was given to the Armada. Year 1588"). This is in the handwriting of the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

The document begins with regulations for the discipline of the enlisted men and officers, both sailors and soldiers; gives regulations for communication with Medina Sidonia's flagship San Martín de Portugal ; orders that the smaller supply and escort ships remain close to the flagship, except for the number assigned to the flagships of the wings; appoints various places of rendezvous for ships which have become detached from the main fleet; gives the signals to be used (by cannon, flags, or lantern); gives directions for the issue of rations, for fire prevention, and for the maintenance in good order of the artillery and small arms; and, finally, for the public reading of these general orders.

At the end it is stated that copies to be circulated to the ships by the fleet are to be signed by Medina Sidonia; there is a blank space for the insertion of month and day of issue. The present copy is not signed or dated.

Drake's service against the Armada as Vice-Admiral, under Howard of Effingham, is one of the high points of his career. He captured the galleon Nuestra Señora del Rosario , flagship of the Andalusian squadron, with its Admiral Pedro de Valdés; he led the attacks on the Armada off Portland and the Isle of Wight, and inflicted great damage on the enemy in the final battle between the fleets off Gravelines.

19.

MEDINA SIDONIA, THE DUKE OF. Orders, Set down by the Duke of Medina, Lord general of the King's Fleet. to be observed in the voyage toward England. Translated out of Spanish into English by T. P. Black letter. 8 leaves. Small quarto. Blue morocco, triple gilt line borders, gilt back, inner gilt borders, g.e., by F. Bedford.

London, Thomas Orwin for Thomas Gilbert, 1588.

See illus. p. 145

THE FIRST ENGLISH EDITION. It is a translation of the previous number. The Short Title Catalogue (and the Bishop and Ramage supplements) locates only four copies of this piece: British Museum, Harmsworth (now Folger), Huntington, and Harvard.

STC 19625.

20.

BIGGES, WALTER, AND MASTER CROFTES. Expeditio Francisci Drake Equitis Angli in Indias Occidentales A(nno). M.D. LXXV. 21, (1) pp., 1 blank leaf. With a woodcut vignette of a ship on the title. Engraved views of the Drake attacks upon Santiago, Santo Domingo, and Cartagena (in a separate half morocco folder); the St. Augustine view not present [see No. 49]. Small quarto. Old marbled boards (17th century), leather back. In a half morocco case. Leyden, Fr. Raphelengius, 1588.

See illus. pp. 120, 124-125

FIRST LATIN EDITION; an edition in French appeared the same year (no priority known). This is one of the earliest publications to mention Virginia. The text is somewhat abridged from the original English version, which was published in two editions in the following year [see Nos. 21 and 22].

The Baptista Boazio view-plans (four in number of which three accompany this copy) are probably the most interesting and important published graphic work pertaining to Drake and his career. They exist in two different engravings; one set measures c. 205 x 300 mm. (as the present ones); the other c. 405 x 520 mm. (as reproduced by Thomas Greepe, David W. Waters (ed.), The true and perfecte Newes ...). Of the larger size, nine sets are known; of the smaller, only seven (not including the present set of three).

Each of these view-plans gives a bird's-eye view of the various cities and the surrounding country, showing Drake's attacks in progressive stages. These are apparently the first published views of each of these localities. Many fea