Sir Francis Drake
Thomas, Hugh
Drake's Drum Sounds a Muffled Note Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate Harry Kelsey Yale University Press / 566 pages / $35 REVIEWED BY Hugh Thomas S it Francis Drake is still commonly...
...Hence the English royal support for the eleven Caribbean expeditions mounted against the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean between 1572 and 1577...
...It is true that he did so without consulting Philip II, but the English did not know that...
...In his new biography, Harry Kelsey mounts an attack which would in a different age have been seen as a Spanish propaganda counterattack...
...All the same, Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate is the product of a great deal of original and important research, and will now take its place as the most up-to-date biography...
...Plans to kill the head of state of a foreign power would properly be regarded as a cause for war in any age...
...Drake's Drum Sounds a Muffled Note Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate Harry Kelsey Yale University Press / 566 pages / $35 REVIEWED BY Hugh Thomas S it Francis Drake is still commonly seen as one of England's heroes...
...Were, in fact, bowls played in 1588...
...It is a little odd to speak of Lope de Vega as "the Spanish dramatist and cleric...
...But he seems to have been noticeably lacking in charm, and was incapable of commanding more than a few vessels...
...NI The American Spectator • January 1999 71...
...His raids on Spanish cities in both the old world and the new have the unmistakable smack of piracy...
...Kelsey does not set Drake's achievements against the history of the Spanish and English clashes and wars of the time...
...But it is quite possible to justify his conduct in relation to Spain on the ground that war had really begun...
...In 1571, King Philip decided to support the so-called Ridolfi plot to overthrow Elizabeth and replace her by Mary, who would marry the Duke of Norfolk, who in turn would in the meantime have murdered Elizabeth...
...Elizabeth] never trusted Spain again...
...Kelsey's own writing...
...When in 1988 an excellent exhibition was staged at Greenwich to commemorate the 400th anniversary of the Spanish Armada, and Drake was not mentioned, the nationalist Daily Mail complained...
...As Geoffrey Parker says in his excellent new study, The Grand Strategy of Philip II, this plot "marked 1 a turning point in Anglo-Spanish relations...
...Kelsey will try and alter his text to take into account the major weaknesses I have indicated above...
...For the fact is that Mr...
...hence the royal support for Drake's voyage of circumnavigation which the Queen knew would include attacks on Spanish towns and colonies...
...His impertinence, courage, persistence, and capacity for understatement have inspired generations of schoolboys...
...No doubt they were not gentlemanly according to the chivalrous rules of war of the Middle Ages...
...Kelsey as not being much of "a penman," and the same could sometimes be said of Mr...
...Even earlier, Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador to England, had from the beginning of his time in London in 1568, worked indefatigably to put Mary Queen of Scots in touch with English Catholics...
...Kelsey does not have an instinctive understanding of English titles andstyles of address and he even shows some unfamiliarity with English geography: The Isle of Wight is never referred to as "Wight" by itself, even if perhaps it should be...
...from the Portuguese in Africa and carry them to the West Indies to the Spanish settlers...
...Kelsey's portrait is indeed so unattractive that the reader grasps desperately for some kind of counter-argument to his chapters of denigration...
...In the book to which I have referred, Geoffrey Parker quotes the Duke of Alba, the commander of the Spanish forces in the Netherlands, conceding that the Ridolfi plot had turned England from neutral observer to covert enemy, and even "regarded the queen as quite justified in what she had done and was doing" against Spain — including the raids in the Caribbean...
...S]he openly welcomed and succored rebels against Philip...
...Then it would seem that, apart from that understated declaration, Drake's contribution to the defeat of the Armada was confined to capturing one ship and making off with the money and other things on board...
...But there was certainly something like a cold war under way from about 157o, when the Pope excommunicated Queen Elizabeth...
...Should there be a second or foreign editions, I hope Mr...
...The author seems not to be fully aware of the nature of the papal division of responsibility between Portugal and Spain in Africa which, of course, governed the slave trade, as it governed all other commerce...
...Drake is described by Mr...
...Drake was brave, it is true, and never refused a difficult assignment...
...He was a minor villain, that is, not a major hero, from the moment that he set off with John Hawkins to steal slaves HUGH THOMAS is the author most recently of The Slave Trade (Simon Schuster...
...This is available...
...The book does not quite live up to its billing by its publisher, Yale University Press, as being a study of "Drake the fake...
...When he became rich and famous, Drake began to use the coat of arms of another family, the Drakes of Ashe, to which, however, he does not seem to have been related...
...All the same it presents a picture of Drake as a ruthless, money-grubbing ruffian, paranoiac, a man who did not scruple to pursue an enemy (for example Thomas Doughty) to his death even if there was no evidence against him, and whose grandest exploit, the circumnavigation of the world in the Golden Hind, was characterized by a series of violent raids on unsuspecting and peaceful Spanish colonial communities...
...War between the two countries may not really have broken out till 1585 when the plans of conquest for the great Armada were begun in Spain...
...70 January 1999 • The American Spectator Drake's attacks on Spain and her possessions seem to have quite a different character when this side of relations between Spain and Britain is taken into account...
...It is a difficult and doubtful task to write a successful biography of someone one despises and perhaps even hates, unless, that is, the person under scrutiny is such a major figure, a Stalin or a Hitler, say, that the study is a history of an administration or an era...
...It is not even clear that he did make the famous remark on Plymouth Hoe when playing bowls that there was "time enough to finish the game and beat the Spaniards too...
Vol. 32 • January 1999 • No. 1
