Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/229

H vol. vi. No. 177), who, in pursuit of his policy of delay, demanded fuller and more accurate information (ib. vol. vi. Nos. 206, 226). Hawkins followed the emperor to Spain, and being a ‘sorry seaman’ begged Henry not to insist on his going by water. Writing to Cranmer from Barcelona, 11 June, he complained of the lowness of his funds—‘he had only forty pieces left’—and craved for news of ‘his country, his relations, and his friends.’ Cranmer replied, 17 June, in the well-known letter, describing the promulgation of the sentence of divorce at Dunstable and Anne Boleyn's private marriage with Henry (, Original Letters, 1st ser. ii. 33;, Remains, Parker Soc., ii. 244;, History, i. 457). Cranmer also sent Hawkins a bill for four hundred ducats out of his ‘alonely benevolence.’ During the latter half of the year letters frequently passed between the king and Hawkins, who had removed from Barcelona to ‘Almunia’ in Arragon. Henry dictated what Hawkins was to say to the emperor in justification of the divorce, and instructed him to show the emperor an exemplified copy of the sentence. Hawkins was specially enjoined to contradict the report that his aunt Katherine and the Princess Mary were ill-treated (ib. Nos. 775, 838, 855, 903, 1053). In December Hawkins received his last letter from Cranmer, announcing the birth of Elizabeth (, Remains, Parker Soc., ii. 272). Henry VIII designated Hawkins bishop of Ely late in 1533. But no formal election had taken place when the news arrived in England of Hawkins's death. He died of dysentery early in January 1533–4 ‘at a village named Balbase, in the realm of Arragon, two leagues from Mousa’ (Letters, &c., of Henry VIII, vii. No. 115, 2). According to his will, dated 29 Dec. 1533, as quoted by Bentham, he died ‘in civitate Barbatrensi,’ where he desired to be buried. Other authorities wrongly make Barcelona the place of his death. The emperor sent him medicines in his last illness. According to Chapuys, Anne Boleyn showed more grief at his death than the king, and suggested that he had been poisoned (ib. No. 171). According to Fuller (''Hist. of Cambr''. p. 152), Hawkins was ‘a person of such eminent charity that in a time of famine he sold all his plate and goods for the relief of the poor of Ely, being served in wooden dishes and earthen pots.’ 

HAWKINS or HAWKYNS, RICHARD (1562?–1622), naval commander, only son of Sir John Hawkyns (1532–1595) [q. v.], was brought up almost from infancy among ships and seamen, whether at Plymouth or Deptford. He probably made at an early age short voyages in coasting or cruising vessels, but went for the first time to the West Indies in 1582, under the command of his uncle, William Hawkyns (d. 1589) [q. v.] In 1585 he was captain of the Duck galliot in Drake's expedition to the West Indies, the Spanish main, and the coast of Florida; on the return voyage Hawkins was driven into Mount's Bay on 21 July 1586, and himself carried the news of Drake's success to Exeter in fourteen hours (Cal. of MSS. at Hatfield, iii. 152; Hist. MSS. Comm.) In 1588 he commanded the queen's ship Swallow against the ‘Invincible’ Armada, and in 1590 the Crane in his father's expedition to the coast of Portugal. Meantime he was meditating a voyage which, in his conception, was to surpass any yet made. This was not only a voyage round the world, arriving at ‘the islands of Japan, of the Philippines, and Moluccas, the kingdoms of China and East Indies, by the way of the Straits of Magellan and the South Sea,’ but he designed principally, he tells us, ‘to make a perfect discovery of all those parts where he should arrive, as well known as unknown, with their longitudes and latitudes, the lying of their coasts, their head-lands, their ports and bays, their cities, towns and peoplings, their manner of government, with the commodities which the countries yielded, and of which they have want and are in necessity’ (, p. 89). This was a project quite beyond his predecessors, Drake or Cavendish, whose principal end was to prey on the Spaniards, and who had been driven to sail round the world mainly by force of circumstances. There is nothing in Hawkyns's actions to show that his object was different from theirs; though when he wrote, thirty years afterwards, he may have persuaded himself that his voyage was primarily intended as one of scientific discovery. The ship in which he determined to go was built for his father in 1588, and named, in the first instance, the Repentance; afterwards the queen, admiring her graceful form, had ordered her to be re-named the Dainty, and as such she had sailed in the expedition to the coast of Portugal in 1590, and again in the voyage to the Azores in 1592. Hawkyns now bought her from his father, fitted her out in the river, sailed from Blackwall on 8 April 1593; and finally, after many mishaps and delays, left Plymouth about the middle of June, having a pinnace