Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/42

38 particular enterprise upon which they were about to embark.

Lancaster's selection for the supreme office, though plainly indicated by his skill as a seaman and his exceptional knowledge of the region which the promoters had marked out for their operations, was not made without a struggle. He had a rival, a rather formidable one, in Sir Edward Michelborne, a gentleman adventurer who had served under the Earl of Essex in the Island Voyage of 1597, and who, possessing Court influence, was strongly recommended for the position by the Lord Treasurer. The shrewd city merchants in whose hands the arrangements for the voyage were placed, with a lively recollection probably of Fenton's disastrous enterprise, declined to entertain the proposal on the sensible ground that the business in hand was more suitable for one of their own class than for a Court favourite. Michelborne was so incensed at the decision that he declined to pay the subscription for which he had made himself responsible, and his name was in consequence removed from the Company's roll. We shall meet him again a prominent actor on the stage of Eastern adventure, but for the time being he may be allowed to drop into the background nursing his grievance.

The discriminating care which was shown by the directors in their choice of a commander was reflected in the other arrangements for the voyage and notably in the selection of men for the subordinate commands. By far the most famous of these lieutenants of Lancaster was John Davis, of Sundridge, in Devon, the brilliant navigator whose name will ever be associated with the efforts made in the latter part of the sixteenth century to discover a North-West passage to India. Sir Clements Markham, in