"THIS Drake," says Camden, "(to relate no more than what I have heard from himself) was born of mean parentage in Devonshire, and had Francis Russell (afterwards Earl of Bedford) for his godfather, who, according to the custom, gave him his Christian name. Whilst he was yet a child his father, embracing the Protestant doctrine, was called in question by the law of the Six Articles made by Henry VIII. against the Protestants, fled his country, and withdrew himself into Kent.”*

"Thus," says quaint old Fuller, "did God divide the honour betwixt two counties, that the one might have his birth and the other his education." The date of his birth is involved in great uncertainty, which has not been cleared up by his latest biographer, who quotes the inscriptions of two portraits, which disagree as to his

* Annals.

age. * The years 1539, 1541, and 1546, not to mention others, have been assigned by different writers; but the safest assertion to make is that he was born somewhere between those extreme periods, and probably about 1542. According to local tradition, Drake first saw the light in an humble cottage on the banks of the Tavy in Devonshire, and not far from South Tavistock. The cottage was demolished some forty years ago, till which time it had remained unchanged; a stall for cattle belonging to the farm-house hard by now stands, or recently stood, upon its site. Sir Francis Drake, the nephew of the great sea hero and the inheritor of his fortune and honours, in the dedication of the Voyage Revived,' gives some information of the family. He describes the poverty and the persecution for conscience' sake of the hero's father. He says, that after his flight into Kent, the good man was constrained to inhabit in the hull of a ship, wherein many of his younger sons were born. He adds, that he had twelve sons in all, and that "as it pleased God to give most of them a being upon the water, so the greatest part of them died at sea: but the youngest, though he went as far as any, yet dicd at home, whose posterity inherits that which he, by himself, and this noble gentleman the eldest brother (the great Francis), was hardly, yet worthily gotten."

"After the death of King Henry," continues Camden, "he (the father) got a place among the seamen in the king's navy, to read prayers to them; and soon after he was ordained deacon, and made vicar of the church of Upnor upon the river Medway, the road where the fleet usually anchoreth. But by reason of his poverty he put his son to the master of a bark, his neighbour, who used to coast along the shore, and sometimes to carry merchandise into Zealand and France."

Mr. Barrow has remarked, that there is not now, nor ever was, either church or chapel at Upnor, but that a small castle was built there by Queen Elizabeth to pro

John Barrow, Esq., Life, Voyages, and Exploits of Admiral Sir Francis Drake, &c. London, 1843.

† Southey, Lives of the British Admirals.

tect the anchorage. Yet, no doubt, there was a small chapel in that castle, and in this the father of the great Drake may have been chaplain. Or he may have been vicar of Hoo Church, which stands on the hill just behind Upnor, and which still serves as a parish church to that village. There may be a trifling slip as to a name, but there can be no doubt of Camden's correctness as to the fact that Drake's father held some church preferment in this immediate neighbourhood. He was no doubt a man of considerable acquirements, and one that took pains with the education of his sons. The great Drake, though sent so early to sea, was very far from being an illiterate man. In all times the coasting trade has been considered an admirable school for seamen. This was the training of Drake, as afterwards of Captain Cook. According to Fuller, his first master "held Drake hard to his business; and pains with patience in his youth knit the joints of his soul, and made them more solid and compacted." But, if a hard master in the beginning, the old skipper became very fond of his apprentice. "The youth," says Camden, "being painful and diligent, so pleased the old man by his industry, that, being a bachelor, he at his death bequeathed his bark unto him by will and testament." As master of this craft Drake continued his active and thriving way of life. He had gotten together some little money. At this time Captain Hawkins (afterwards Sir John) another Devonshire man, a bold sailor and a skilful navigator, was fitting out at Plymouth an expedition for the new world. Such expeditions presented irresistible attraction to adventurous seamen, and to many adventurers that were no seamen. There was no conceivable limit to the riches and beauty of the American continent; every man hoped to obtain a fortune by going thither and hitting upon some gold mine. Hawkins had made one or two voyages to the new world before. Drake, who appears to have been previously acquainted with him, resolved to accompany him in his present expedition; so selling his bark, and taking with him all the money and goods he had in the world, he hastened away to Plymouth and joined

VOL. IV.

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