fault of his) failed in the attempt of Lisbon, and returned with the loss, by sickness and otherwise, of eight thousand men; what wonder is it (but that mine is the last), being followed with a company of volunteers who for the most part had neither seen the sea nor the wars; who, some forty gentlemen excepted, had with me the very scum of the world, drunkards, blasphemers, and such others as their fathers, brothers, and friends thought it an exceeding good gain to be discharged of, with the hazard of some thirty, forty, or fifty pounds, knowing they could not have lived a whole year so cheap at home; I say, what wonder is it that I have failed, where I could neither be present myself, nor had any of the commanders (whom I most trusted) living, or in state to supply my place?

Now whereas it was bruited, both before and since my departure out of England, and by the most men believed, that I meant nothing less than to go to Guiana; but that being once at liberty, and in mine own power, having made my way with some foreign prince, I would turn pirate, and utterly forsake mine own country; my being at Guiana, my returning into England unpardoned, and my not taking the spoil of the subjects of any Christian prince, háth (I doubt not) destroyed that opinion.

But this is not all; for it hath been given out by an bypocritical thief, who was the first master of my ship, and by an ungrateful youth which waited on me in my cabin, (though of honourable and worthy parents,) and by others, that I carried with me out of England twenty-two thousand pieces of twenty-two shillings the piece, and therefore needed not, or cared not, to discover any mine in Guiana, nor make any other attempt elsewhere: which report being carried secretly from one to another in mine own ship, (and so spread through all the ships in the fleet, which stayed with me at Trinedado while our land forces were in Guiana,) had like to have been my utter overthrow in a most miserable fashion; for it was consulted, when I had taken my barge, and gone ashore, (either to discover or otherwise as I often did,) that my ship should have set sail, and left me there;

where either I must have suffered famine, been eaten with wild beasts, or have fallen into the hands of the Spaniards, and been flayed alive, as others of the English, which came thither but to trade only, had formerly been.

To this report of riches, I make this protestation; that if it can be proved, either now or hereafter, that I had in the world, either in my keeping or in my power, either directly or indirectly, in trust or otherwise, above one hundred pieces, when I departed from London, of which I had left forty-five pieces with my wife, and fifty-five I carried with me; I acknowledge myself for a reprobate, a villain, a traitor to the king, and the most unworthy man that doth live, or ever hath lived upon the earth.

It is true, that such as thought to find some great deceit in me in the detaining a great part of the monies adventured, in perusing the bills of adventure written by scriveners, found above fifteen thousand pounds more than all my charge demanded came unto; but of the money I never received any penny, for the monies and provisions adventured with all the other captains amounted to very nearly twenty thousand pounds, for the greatest part whereof I gave the bills.

Now whereas the captains that left me in the Indies, and captain Baily, that ran from me at Lancerota, have, to excuse themselves, objected for the first, that I lingered at Plymouth when I might have gone thence, and lost a fair wind, and the time of the year, or to that effect; it is strange that men of fashion and gentlemen should so grossly belie their own knowledge; that had not I lived nor returned to have made answer to this fiction, yet all that knew us in Plymouth, and all that we had to deal withal, knew the contrary: for after I had stayed at the Isle of Wight divers days, the Thunder, commanded by sir Warram St. Leger, by the negligence of her master, was at lee in the Thames; and after I arrived at Plymouth, captain Pennington was not come then to the Isle of Wight, and being arrived there, and not able to redeem his bread from the bakers, he rode back post to London to entreat help from my wife to pay

for it; who having not so much money to serve his turn, she wrote to Mr. Wood of Portsmouth, and gave him her word for thirty pounds, which she soon after paid him, without which (as Pennington himself protested to my wife) he had not been able to have gone the journey: sir John Ferne I found there without all hope of being able to proceed, having neither men nor money, and in great want of other provision; insomuch as I furnished him by my cousin Herbert with a hundred pounds, having supplied him also in Wales with a hundred pounds before his coming to Plymouth; and procured him a third hundred pounds from the worthy and honest dean of Exeter, doctor Sutcliffe. Captain Whitney, whom I also stayed for, had a third part of his victuals to provide, insomuch as having no money to help him withal, I sold my plate in Plymouth to supply him. Baily I left at the Isle of Wight, whose arrival I also attended here some ten or twelve days, as I remember. And what should move Baily, not only to leave me as he did at the Canaries, from whence he might have departed with my love and leave, and at his return to do me all the wrong he could devise, I cannot conceive; he seemed to me from the beginning not to want any thing; he only desired of me some ordnance and some iron-bound cask, and I gave it him: I never gave him ill language, nor offered him the least unkindness to my knowledge: it is true, that I refused him a French shallop which he took in the bay of Portugal outward bound; and yet after I had bought her of the French, and paid fifty crowns ready money for her, if Baily had then desired her, he might have had her. But to take any thing from the French, or from any other nation, I meant it not.

True it is, that as many things succeed both against reason and our best endeavours; so it is most commonly true, that men are the cause of their own misery, as I was of mine, when I undertook my late enterprise without a pardon; for all my company having heard it avowed in England before they went, that the commission I had was granted to a man who was non ens in law; so hath the

want thereof taken from me both arms and actions, which gives boldness to every petty companion to spread rumours to my defamation, and the wounding of my reputation, in all places where I cannot be present to make them knaves and liars.

It hath been secondly objected, that I put into Ireland, and spent much time there, taking care to revictual myself, and none of the rest.

Certainly I had no purpose to see Ireland when I left Plymouth, but, being encountered with a strong storm some eight leagues to the westward of Scilly, (in which captain Chudley's pinnace was sunk, and captain King thrust into Bristol,) I held it the office of the commander of many ships, and those of divers sailings and conditions, (of which some could hull and trye, and some of them beat it up upon a tack, and others neither able to do the one nor the other,) rather to take a port, and keep his fleet together, than either to endanger the loss of masts and yards, or to have it severed far asunder, and to be thrust into divers places; for the attendance of meeting them again at the next rendezvous would consume more time and victual (and perchance the weaker ships might be set upon, taken, or disordered) than could be spent by recovering a harbour, and attending the next change of wind.

That the dissevering of fleets hath been the overthrow of many actions I could give many examples, were it not in every man's knowledge. In the last enterprise of worth, undertaken by our English nation with three squadrons of ships, commanded by the earl of Essex, the earl of Suffolk, and myself, where was also present the earl of Southampton; if we, being storm-beaten in the bay of Altashar, or Biscay, had had a port under our lee, that we might have kept our transporting ships with our men of war, we had in all likelihood both taken the Indian fleet and the Azores.

That we stayed long in Ireland it is true, but they must accuse the clouds, and not me, for our stay there, for I lost not a day of a good wind; and there was not any captain of the fleet but had credit, or might have had, for a great

deal of more victuals than we spent there, and yet they had of me fifty a beeves among them, and somewhat else.

For the third accusation, that I landed in hostile manner at Lancerota; certainly captain Baily had great want of matter when he gave that for an excuse of his turning back; for I refer myself to Mr. Barney, who I know will ever justify a truth, to whom (when he came to me from captain Baily, to know whether he should land his men with the rest) I made this answer; that he might land them if it pleased him, or otherwise keep them aboard; for I had agreed with the governor for a proportion of victual which I hourly expected: and it is true, that the governor being desirous to speak with me with one gentleman with him, with their rapiers only, which I accepting, and taking with me lieutenant Bradshaw, we agreed that I should send up an English factor, (whose ship did then ride in the road,) and that whatsoever the island could yield should be delivered at a reasonable rate: I sent the English factor according to our agreement, but the governor put it off from one morning to another, and in the end sent me word, that, except I would embark my men which lay on the sea-side, the islanders were so jealous as they durst not sever themselves to make our provisions. I did so ; but when the one half were gotten aboard, two of our sentinels were forced, one slain, and the English factor sent to tell me that he had nothing for us, whom he still believed to be a fleet of the Turks, who had lately taken and destroyed Puerto Sancto. Hereupon all the companies would have marched towards the town, and have sacked it; but I knew it would not only offend his majesty, but that our merchants having a continual trade with those islands, that their goods would have been stayed, and, amongst the rest, the poor Englishman riding in the road, having all that he brought thither ashore, would have been utterly undone.

Hereof I complained to the governor of the grand Canaries, whom I also desired that we might take water without any disturbance; but, instead of answer, when we landed Eighty beeves, MS. Ashmole.

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