DRACO. 



DRAKE, SIR FRANCIS. 



643 



happy ; while his sentimental young ladies and gentlemen of the Ethel 

 and Clive Newcome class are " most tolerable and not to be endured." 

 Since he ceased in 1850 to contribute to 'Punch,' Mr. Doyle has 

 illustrated various fairy tales, &c., besides publishing his admirable 

 Christmas book, 'The Foreign Tour of Messrs. Brown, Jones, and 

 Robinson ;' but his later works have hardly the light mirthfulness or 

 the vigour of those he executed under the stimulus of. constant 

 occupation, constant applause, and the assurance that every satirical 

 or humorous touch would produce its immediate and intended effect. 



DRACO, an Athenian legislator, who flourished about the 39th 

 Olympiad, B.C. 621. Suidas tells us that he brought forward his code 

 of laws in this year, and that he was then an old man. Aristotle says 

 (' Polit.,' ii., at the end), that Draco adapted his laws to the existing 

 constitution, and that they contained nothing peculiar beyond the 

 severity of their penalties. The slightest theft was punished capitally 

 as well as the most atrocious murder, and Denudes remarked of his 

 laws that they were written with blood, and not with ink. (Plutarch^ 

 'Solon,' cxvii.) Draco however deserves credit as the first who 

 introduced written laws at Athens, and it is probable that he improved 

 the criminal courts by his transfer of cases of bloodshed from the 

 archon to the epheta. 1 (Jul. Pollux, viii. 124, 125), since before his time 

 the archon had a right of settling all cases arbitrarily, and without 

 appeal a right which they enjoyed in other cases till Solon's time. 

 (Bekker's ' Anecdota,' p. 449, 1. 23.) It appears that there were some 

 offences which he did not punish with death ; for instance, loss of the 

 civil rights was the punishment for an attempt to alter one of his 

 laws. (Demosth., 'C. Aristocr.,' p. 714, Bekk.) Draco was archon 

 (Pausan., ix. 36, 8), and consequently an eupatrid ; it is not therefore 

 to be supposed that his object was to favour the lower orders, though 

 his code seems to have tended to abridge the power of the nobles, lie 

 died in the island of yEgina. On the legislation of Draco in general, 

 see Wachsmuth, 'Hellenische AHerthumskund?,' ii. 1, p. 239, and 

 following. 



DRAKE, SIR FRANCIS, was born in or after the year 1539 

 (Barrow's ' Life of Drake,' ch. i.) in an humble cottage on the banks 

 of the Tavy, in Devonshire. His father, who was, according to the 

 common accounts, a poor and obscure yeoman, had twelve sons, of 

 whom Francis was the eldest. According to Camden, who derived 

 hU information from Drake himself, Francis Russel, afterwards earl 

 of Bedford, stood as his godfather, and John Hawkins, a distinguished 

 navigator, defrayed the slight expenses of his short school education. 

 In the days of persecution under Queen Mary, his father, who was 

 known in his neighbourhood as a zealous Protestant and a man of 

 some acquirements, fled from Devonshire into Kent, where Drake was 

 brought up; " God dividing the honour," says Fuller, "betwixt two 

 counties, that the one might have his birth and the other his educa- 

 tion.' Under Elizabeth his father obtained an appointment "among 

 the .seamen in the king's navy to read prayers to them ; " and Boon 

 afterwards is stated by Camden and others to have been ordained 

 deacon, and made vicar of Upnor church on the Medway, a little 

 below Chatham, where the royal fleet usually anchored. But there 

 must be some inaccuracy here, as " there is not now and never was 

 either church or chapel at Upnor, but a small castle was built there 

 by Elizabeth to protect the anchorage." (Barrow.) The suggestion 

 of Mr. Barrow has considerable likelihood : "he was more probably 

 one who in those days bore the title of ' preacher' or ' minister,' who 

 had received holy orders, but was without church preferment, and 

 engaged in giving instruction to the neighbouring people, and reading 

 prayers to them." 



Francis thus grew up among sailors; and while he was yet very 

 young, his father, " by reason of his poverty, apprenticed him to a 

 neighbour, the master of a bark, who carried on a coasting trade, and 

 sometimes made voyages to Zeeland and France." This master kept 

 Drake close to his work, and " pains, with patience in his youth," 

 rays Fuller, " knit the joints of his foul, and made them more solid 

 and compact" When his master died, having no children of his own, 

 he bequeathed to young Drake the bark and its equipments. With 

 this he continued in the old trade, and had got together some little 

 money, and was in the fair way of becoming a thriving man, when 

 his imagination was inflamed by the exploits of his protector Haw- 

 kins in the New World; and suddenly gelling his ship, ho repaired to 

 Plymouth, and embarked himself and his fortunes in that com- 

 mander's last and unfortunate adventure to the Spanish Main. In 

 this disastrous expedition Drake lost all the money he had in the 

 world ; he suffered moreover somewhat in character, being charged 

 with having disobeyed orders, and deserted his superior. He however 

 showed skilful seamanship, and brought the vessel he commanded 

 the ' Judith,' a small bark of fifty tons safely home. A chaplain 

 belonging to the fleet comforted Drake with the assurance that, as he 

 had been treacherously used by the Spaniards, he might lawfully 

 recover in value upon the King of Spain, and repair his losses upon 

 him whenever and wherever he could. Fuller says, " The case was 

 clear in sea divinity; and few are such infidels as not to believe 

 doctrines which make for their profit. Whereupon Drake, though a 

 poor private man, undertook to revenge himself on so mighty a 

 monarch, who, not contented that the sun riseth and setteth in his 

 dominions, may seem to desire to make all his own where he shineth." 

 Being readily joined by a number of sea adventurers, who mustered 



among them money enough to fit out a vessel, Drake made two or 

 three voyages to the West Indies, to gain intelligence and learn the 

 navigation of those parts ; but Camden adds, that ho also got some 

 stora of money there, " by playing the seaman and the pirate." In 

 1570 he obtained a regular commission from Queen Elizabeth, and 

 cruised to some purpose in the West Indies. In 1572 he sailed again 

 for the Spanish Mam, with the ' Pasha' of seventy tous, and the ' Swan ' 

 of twenty-five tons, the united crews of which amounted to seventy- 

 three men and boys the oldest man being fifty, all the rest under 

 thirty years of age. At Port Pheasant on the coast of South America 

 he landed and put together the three pinnaces, of which they had 

 brought the frame-work with them, and here they were joined by 

 another bark, from the Isle of Wight, with thirty-eight men. With 

 this insignificant force he partly plundered the town of Nombre de 

 Dios, and made great spoil among the Spanish shipping. He partially 

 crossed the Isthmus of Darien, and obtained a view of the great 

 Pacific, an ocean aa yet closed to English enterprise ; and with his 

 eyes anxiously fixed upon its waters, he prayed God to grant him 

 " life and leave once to sail an English ship in those seas." After some 

 extraordinary adventures, Drake returned to England, with his frail 

 barks absolutely loaded and crammed with treasure and plundered 

 merchandise ; and on the 9th of August 1573 anchored at Plymouth. 

 It was a Sunday, and the townsfolk were at church ; but when the 

 news spread thither that Drake was come, " there remained few or no 

 people with the preacher," all running out to welcome the Devon- 

 shire hero. A ' Relation ' of this voyage, revised by Drake himself, 

 was published by his nephew in 1646 in a small and now very rare 

 quarto volume. In this ' Relation ' Drake himself asserts strongly 

 that the voyage was undertaken by him expressly to avenge himself 

 for his treacherous usage by the viceroy of Mexico. 



Drake being employed in the interval in the service of the queeu 

 in Ireland, was forestalled in the honour of being the first English- 

 man to sail on the Pacific by one John Oxenham, who had served 

 under him as common sailor and cook ; but as this man merely floated 

 a ' pinnace ' on the South Sea, and was taken by the Spaniards and 

 executed as a pirate, he could scarcely be an object of envy. 



In 1577, under the secret sanction of Queeu Elizabeth, Drake 

 departed on another marauding expedition, taking with him five 

 vessels, the largrst of which was of 100, and the smallest of 15 tons. 

 The united crews of this miniature fleet amounted to 1(54 men, 

 gentlemen and sailors. Among the gentlemen were some young men 

 of noble families, who (not to mention the plunder anticipated) " went 

 out to learn the art of navigation." After many adventures along the 

 coasts of the South American continent, where some of his attacks 

 were completely successful, Drake and his choice comrades came to 

 Port Julian, on the coast of Patagonia, near the Straits of Magalhaeus, 

 where they were much comforted by finding a gibbet standing a 

 proof that Christian people had been there before them. Drake, 

 during his stay in Port Julian, put to death ' Master Doughtic,' a 

 gentleman of birth and education, whose fate is still involved in some 

 mjstery, notwithstanding the laudable endeavours of Dr. Southcy 

 and Mr. Barrow to rescue the fame of one of our greatest naval heroes 

 from the suspicion of a foul murder. 



On the 20th of August Drake reached Cape Virgenes, and sailed 

 through the Strait of Magalhaeus, being the third navigator who had 

 performed that passage. On the seventeenth day after making Cape 

 Virgenes he cleared the strait, and entered the Pacific or South Sen. 

 Having obtained an immense booty by plundering the Spanish towns 

 on the coast of Chili and Peru, and by taking, among many other 

 vessels, a royal galleon called the ' Cacafuego,' richly laden with plate, 

 he boldly determined to sail in his little vessel of 100 tons, with its 

 diminished and sickly crew, to the north-east, in the hope of finding 

 in that direction a passage back to the Atlantic. He reached 48" 

 North lat., where the extreme severity of the cold discouraged his men, 

 and contrary winds arising he put back ten degrees, and took shelter 

 in Port San Francisco. Here lie established friendly relations with the 

 natives, and formally took possession of the country, which he named 

 New Albion, in the name of the Queen of England. After staying 

 five weeks in that port, he determined to follow the example of 

 Magalhaeus, and steer across the Pacific for the Moluccas. He made 

 Ternate, one of the Molucca group, in safety, and thence set his course 

 for Java. From Java he sailed right across the Indian Ocean to the 

 Cape of Good Hope, which he doubled without accident, and thence 

 shaped his course homewards. 



Drake arrived at Plymouth on Sunday the 26th of September 1579, 

 after an absence of two years and nearly ten months, during which he 

 had circumnavigated the globe, and spent many mouths on the almost 

 unknown south-western coasts of America. Drake was most graciously 

 received at court, and Elizabeth now asserted more firmly than ever her 

 right of navigating the ocean in all its parts, and denied the exclusive 

 right which the Spaniards claimed over the seas and lauds of the 

 New World. And though the queen yielded so far as to pay a con- 

 siderable sum out of the treasure Drake had brought homo to the 

 procurator of Certain merchants who urged, " with some reason," that 

 they had been unjustly robbed, enough was left to make it a profitable 

 adventure for the privateers, who appear to have received payment at 

 the rate of ill. for every 11. ventured. (Barrow, p. 177.) At her 

 orders Drake's ship was drawn up in a little creek near Deptford, 



