VII - Papers Relating to Sir John Hawkins as Treasurer of the Navy

Summary

John Hawkins was a central figure in the story of the Elizabethan Navy. It was his slaving and piratical expeditions in the 1560s which first engaged the Queen's support and complicity. He enjoyed high favour at court, and it was through him that Francis Drake (with whom he fell out in his later years) became ‘the Queen's pirate’. The letter which he wrote to the Queen on his return to England in September 1565 [33] neatly expresses his self confidence, both as adventurer and courtier. Relations with Spain were at a low ebb in 1570, following Hawkins's debacle at San Juan de Ulúa and the diversion of Alba's payships in 1568, which had provoked the suspension of trade with the Low Countries. Alba had toyed with the idea of assisting the northern rebels in 1569. In the following year Pope Pius V had excommunicated Elizabeth, and was looking hopefully towards Philip II to carry out the sentence. However, the countries were not at war, and the coup which Hawkins is suggesting to Leicester in the second of his letters here [34] would have been an act of piracy on a grand scale. The ‘extreme injuries’ referred to were mainly Hawkins's own losses, because, although the Merchant Adventurers had suffered from the interruption of trade, they had managed to shift their mart to Emden, which was not under Alba's control. The reception of his suggestion seems to have been less than enthusiastic. His projection of the value of the fleet, at ‘sixty hundred thousand pounds’ (i.e., £6 million) is sceptically scaled down to £600,000 in a marginal note. Although the former estimate may have been nearer the mark, it would have been a big exaggeration. A second note deflates the estimate of losses sustained to no more than £200,000; in other words nowhere near justifying such a massive seizure. Whoever was responsible for the annotations, ‘Her Highnesses free consent’ was clearly not forthcoming, because nothing came of the suggestion and, given the state of international relations at the time, that is not surprising.

Hawkins's credit was in no way diminished by this failure, although it was recognised both by the Queen and Cecil (and probably by Leicester as well) that he needed a curb rather than a spur.