SIR FRANCIS DRAKE REHABILITATED AND MEMORIALISED. 85 
the bottom if they could get at them, yet if they came home with 
their spoil the Spanish government had no valid claim on the 
Queen, either for their punishment or restitution of the booty. In 
this opinion, as the Queen had the lion's share of Drake's spoils, 
they might be sure she willingly acquiesced. Nor could the Ply- 
mouth Corporation have had any more reason to object ; for when 
Drake sailed for the West Indies, Sir John Trelawny, Receiver for 
the Corporation, had paid to Sir F. Drake £26 for the town's 
share of adventure in his voyage, and received from Drake as profit 
for the town's adventure £18 15s. 1 
Having quoted a few entries of the real nature of the transac- 
tions of Drake from the Domestic State Papers of the reign of 
Elizabeth, Mr. Eisk went on to say that Drake was not only a 
spoiler, but an avenger. He could appeal to the numerous cases 
of English seamen who had perished miserably in the prisons of 
Mexico, the galleys of Cadiz, or under the tortures and burnings 
which the Inquisition had inflicted at Seville. As a matter of fact, 
they knew that he prevented not a few such deaths by his terrific 
threats of reprisals if his warnings passed unheeded. And that 
these warnings were necessary none could doubt. Instance after 
instance abounded of unhappy wretches tortured to madness, who, 
to escape further agony, either hanged or flung themselves down 
from their prison windows, and were dashed to pieces. The feel- 
ing of the time had risen to fever heat, and could they wonder 
that Drake, following up his Irish experiences at Cork, found his 
readiest means of retaliation by rending to pieces the flimsy theories 
of property vented on the seas about the Indies. No Englishman, 
whatever be his creed — for all creeds then served in defence of 
England — could think without pride of those glorious days which 
laid the foundations of England's pre-eminence on the seas. None 
can doubt the part which Drake and the other sea-dogs of old 
England played then in that momentous crisis of England's 
destinies. Where would our modern England have been if Drake, 
and Frobisher, and Hawkins, and Howard of Effingham, had not 
fought like British heroes, regardless of all differences of creed and 
rank, or condition? He could not refrain from quoting the words 
which Woollcombe, in his manuscript history of Plymouth, summed 
up the whole question of Drake's merits and his fame : 
" It was reserved for the genius of Drake to devise the means by 
1 See Plym. Inst. Trans. 1881, p. 459, 
VOL. VIII. F 
