Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 25.djvu/231

H who urged that formal promises made by the king's officers must be kept (, Annales, iii. 683).

Notwithstanding his sufferings and losses, Hawkyns on his return home seems to have been still a wealthy and energetic man. He was knighted on 23 July 1603; was member of parliament for Plymouth in 1604, and vice-admiral of Devon, a title which at that time was far from honorary. The coast was swarming with pirates, and the vice-admiral's duties were real and multifarious, and occasionally brought him into antagonism with his neighbours (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1603–10, pp. 207, 437, 457; Hist. MSS. Comm. 9th Rep. App. 269 a). In June 1604 he memorialised the commissioners for the peace, setting forth the losses which his father and he had sustained from the Spaniards, and begging that ‘either a clause of satisfaction from the king of Spain unto me may be inserted in the articles of peace, or that I may not be concluded by them, but left free to seek my remedy according as the law of God and nations alloweth.’ The claims were absurd, including one for 100,000l. taken by treachery in time of peace from his father at San Juan de Lua, of which only a small portion belonged to John Hawkyns, even if the claim for compensation had been otherwise admissible. In 1614, when the governors of the East India Company were considering a proposal, which proved abortive, to send a ship through the Straits of Magellan into the South Sea, Hawkyns was named as a suitable commander, and expressed his willingness to undertake the voyage, either as an officer of the company or as a joint adventurer (Cal. State Papers, East Indies, 1513–1616, Nos. 706, 711, 744). In 1617 he was again an unsuccessful candidate for the command of the company's fleet (ib. 1617–21, Nos. 143, 159, 205) [see ; and ]. In 1620–1 Hawkyns was vice-admiral, under Sir Robert Mansell [q. v.], of the fleet sent into the Mediterranean to reduce the Algerine corsairs, and must share the blame which attaches to the miserable failure (, in Churchill's Voyages, iii. 227;, Naval History, p. 459; , Hist. of England, iv. 224). The vexation may possibly have acted unfavourably on his health. In his will, executed on 16 April 1622, he describes himself as ‘sick and weak in body but of perfect mind and memory.’ The next day (17 April) he was seized with a fit while attending the privy council on business connected with his late command, and died, as we are led to suppose, actually in the council chamber (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 17 April). By his wife Judith, who survived till 1629, he had issue, besides four daughters, two sons, John and Richard, from both of whom Mr. C. Stuart Hawkins of Hayford Hall, near Plymouth, claims descent.

Hawkyns had perhaps a higher repute than his actual services warranted, not only as his father's son, but chiefly on account of his ‘Observations in his Voiage into the South Sea, Anno Domini 1593’ (8vo, 1622). This was in the press at the time of his death, and was published shortly afterwards. it is a work of great interest, describing what he saw and the details of nautical life. It is full, too, of historical instances; but on these, as well as on the details of his voyage, it would be unsafe to rely. He wrote from memory, after the lapse of thirty years, and makes extraordinary blunders. His account of his father firing on the Spanish admiral in Catwater in 1567 (, p. 118) has passed into current history, but is altogether fictitious. Of like character is his account of the launch and the naming of the Dainty by his step-mother, or, as he calls her, his mother-in-law (ib. p. 90); whereas a comparison of the dates shows that the Dainty was launched and in active service, as the Dainty, more than two years before his own mother's death [see, (1532–1595)]. Many similar instances of misstatement might be adduced.

No known portrait of Sir Richard Hawkyns is in existence. The picture of which a reproduction is given by Miss Hawkins in her ‘Plymouth Armada Heroes’ (p. 115) may possibly be one, but, on the evidence which she brings forward (p. 137; cf., p. xxi), cannot be accepted with certainty. 

HAWKINS, SUSANNA (1787–1868), Scottish poetess, daughter of a blacksmith near Ecclefechan, was born in 1787. Dedicating her poems to a lady of the house of Queensberry, she describes her birthplace as adjoining ‘the famed camp of Burnswark, where the brave Caledonians fought against the Romans.’ Receiving a meagre education, Susanna was in early life a herd and a domestic servant, but at length obtained some elementary knowledge, and became an author