Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/440

Drake unto him that the king of Spain would be revenged upon her majesty for all the injuries and wrongs that he and his subjects' had sustained ; and who also had shown him letters out of Spain, how the king of Spain had made proclamation' offering twenty thousand ducats for Drake's head ; that he had negotiated about this business with John Doughty, and had been directed to promise him in addition ` that if he should be apprehended in doing of this and committed unto prison, he should not want money to maintain him;' to which Doughty had answered ` that if he could get a fit company unto his content and upon some assurance for the payment of the said sum of money, he would take upon him to perform the same, under colour of his own quarrel' (State Papers, Dom., Elizabeth, vol. cliii. No. 49). About the same time Drake laid an information against Doughty for plotting his murder, and produced evidence of a letter in which Doughty said ` that that day wherein the queen did knight Drake, she did then knight the arrantest knave, the vilest villain, the falsest thief, and the cruellest murderer that ever was born, and that he would justify the same before the whole council' (ib. No. 50). The upshot of all which, as far as it can now be traced, was that Doughty was arrested, and that on 27 Oct. 1583 he wrote to the council begging that, as he had been imprisoned in the Marshalsea for sixteen months, he might be charged and called to answer or else might be set at liberty. It does not appear that either request was complied with, and no further mention of his name is to be found. This John Doughty was the brother of the Thomas Doughty who was executed at Port St. Julian ; he was present at St. Julian at the time, and apparently continued in the Golden Hind (, p. 584), where he at least concealed, even if he nursed, his ` own quarrel.' His name, however, does not appear among the signatures in favour of Drake's conduct, 8 Nov. 1580 (Notes and Queries, 7th ser. iv. 186). Of these Doughtys we really know nothing except, on the one hand, the very exaggerated eulogy of Thomas given in the name of Francis Fletcher (, p. 63 n.), and, on the other, a still earlier petition of John to the Earl of Leicester, praying him to intercede with the council for his release from prison, having been six months in the common gaol, ' a very noisome place replenished with misery' (Cal. State Papers, Dom., October 1576, p. 529), an antecedent that seems more in keeping with his later character of hired assassin.

Drake meantime seems to have virtually exercised the functions of admiral of the narrow seas, and to have directed, though not to have been personally engaged in, the maintenance of the queen's peace and the suppression of piracy (ib. 22 Sept. 1583; 31 July 1584). He was recommended for the office of captain of the isle and castle of St. Nicholas, as being ` one of the brethren of the town, and a gentleman most able and fit for that room' (ib. 13 Nov. 1583; 7 Jan. 1584); but whether he was appointed or not is uncertain. In the parliament of 1584-5 he sat as member for Bossiney, and was one of the committee on the act for supplying Plymouth with water (Transactions of Devonshire Assoc. 1884, p. 516). It was not till the autumn of 1585 that the long contemplated, long postponed expedition against Spain took final form. The king of Spain laid an embargo on all English ships and goods found in his country, and the queen replied by letters of reprisal, and by ordering the equipment of a fleet of twenty-five sail ` to revenge the wrongs offered her, and to resist the king of Spain's preparations ' (Monson's ' Naval Tracts ' in, Voyages, iii. 147). This fleet, commanded by Drake in the Elizabeth Bonaventure, sailed from Plymouth on 14 Sept. with Martin Frobisher as vice-admiral in the Primrose, Francis Knollys as rear-admiral in the Leicester, and Christopher Carleill in the Tiger as lieutenant-general of the land forces, which numbered upwards of two thousand. Visiting on their way the harbour of Vigo, from which they carried off property to the value of thirty thousand ducats, and of St. Iago, where they burnt the town in revenge for the murder of a boy, they watered at Dominica, spent their Christmas at St. Christopher's, and on New Year's day landed in force on Hispaniola, where the troops, under Carleill, took and ransomed the town of San Domingo. Here a negro boy, carrying a flag of truce, was barbarously killed by a Spanish officer. Drake immediately retaliated by hanging two friars, his prisoners, at the very place where the boy had been killed, at the same time sending a message to the effect that he would hang two more prisoners each day until the offender was delivered up. The next day the ruffian was brought in; ` but it was thought a more honourable revenge to make them there, in our sight, perform the execution themselves, which was done accordingly' (, Summarie and True Discourse, p. 18).

From San Domingo the expedition passed on to Cartagena, which was occupied and, after six weeks' dispute, ransomed for 110,000 ducats. Meantime the men were dying fast from sickness. Bigges himself, a captain of the land forces and the chronicler