Chapter XXV: Appendix: C

SIR JOHN HAWKYNS

The question whether Hawkyns was dishonest is not in one sense of much importance, since it is admitted that he was skilful as a seaman, and efficient as an administrator. In another sense the good or ill fame of a national worthy is of the highest importance as interwoven with national history, and therefore a factor in the memories which make for the self-respect of a nation. As in the _Dictionary of National Biography_, a work which will be the standard authority for posterity, Hawkyns is considered to have been guilty, it is fitting that, in a study of Elizabethan naval administration, the charges should be examined somewhat minutely. His memory has suffered from his reputed introduction of the slave trade into English commerce, and from the cumulative effects of accusations brought against him, which have been accepted without investigation of their nature or of the character of the accusers. His reputation has also suffered from the indiscriminate praise lavished upon him by ill-advised panegyrists. In view of his environment it must be admitted there is a strong _prima facie_ probability that he or any other Elizabethan official was a thief; ‘the spacious times of Great Elizabeth’ included much more than literary excellence, colonising genius, and naval success. Sufficient evidence has been given in this work to show the low standard existing among all ranks of naval officials, and more, relating to other classes of society, could be extracted from the State Papers. The court was proverbially corrupt, and a recent writer[1547] gives striking illustrations of the lax morality characterising all grades of the Elizabethan social system.

It was said that Hawkyns neither built nor repaired the ships according to his contract, that he used old cables and rotten oakum, that he blackmailed shipwrights and workmen, and that he was in partnership with a private builder, in whose yard he built ships for himself with government timber, and fitted them out with government stores. If these things were true the whole naval administration must have been in a state in which the least strain would have brought it down in ruin, but the more serious allegations are sufficiently disproved[1548] by the fact that when the fate of England depended on the condition of the fleet, it was found, in the hour of need, to be absolutely efficient in all the many details for which Hawkyns was responsible. If, however, we are to suppose that he confined his malpractices to matters not likely to injure the _matériel_ of the Navy, it can only be remarked that they can have been but very small in extent, and that fraudulent officials are not usually so considerately and judiciously patriotic. In considering what may or may not have been true, it is only fair to Hawkyns to emphasise the fact that these anonymous indictments—and many of those urged against him were anonymous—were levelled against nearly every person holding an administrative position in the service of the crown; delation, whether religious, political, or social, was a recognised occupation requiring no capital, offering the possibility of large rewards, and welcome to the government and the Queen. Hawkyns, when he was appointed, made a clean sweep of many naval abuses of long standing, and had certainly made enemies in Sir William Wynter[1549] and others, with whom at least one informer,[1550] who also had personal reasons for disliking the Treasurer, appears to have been on very friendly terms.

Hawkyns not only received no help from his brother Officers, but had to contend with their open or secret hostility.[1551] Wynter was the person to whom everyone who had a grievance against Hawkyns, went for help and advice; and if we may judge of Wynter’s hopes and intentions by his capacity for treachery he must have been a dangerous antagonist. In 1585, he wrote to Burghley, of Hawkyns and his work, ‘As I desier compfort in Gods handes there is nothinge in it but cunninge and crafte to maynteine his pride and ambision and for the better fillinge of his purse ... he careth not to whom he speaketh nor what he sayeth, blushe he will not.’[1552] But in 1587, he wrote,[1553] ‘Wee are thorowlye perswaded in our conscience that he hath for the time since he took that bargaine[1554] expended a farre greater somme in carpentrie uppon her Majesties shippes then he hath had eny wage allowance for;’ the moorings, shipkeepers’, and clerks’ wages, ‘have byn payde and sufficientlye done by him.’ As a commentary on this last letter, we have a statement of the same year, not it is true, by Wynter, but by Wynter’s servant, that the friendship now shown was only a pretence, and that ‘You knowe howe many wayes my master hath sought against him and could never prevaile and therefore he closeth with him to catch him at a suer advantage.’[1555] As Surveyor Wynter was a brother Officer of equal rank, and nearly equal power, with whom Hawkyns had to work. But putting aside any criticism of the code of honour here shown, it may fairly be asked why should Wynter have displayed this eagerness to ruin Hawkyns, at all costs and by any means. There could be only one of two reasons; either an honest desire to save the Queen and state from deceit and robbery, or a selfish desire to regain the position and perquisites of which the reforms initiated by Hawkyns, and the latter’s masterful personality had deprived him. I do not think that any student of Elizabethan history will hesitate as to which reason moved him. As for Borough, he wrote to Burghley, in 1584, that Hawkyns deserved hanging; but that did not prevent his joining Wynter in the letter of 1587, doubtless with the same intentions.[1556] In another paper of 1587, and endorsed by Burghley as being by Thos. Allen, the writer, after a long arraignment, kindly offers to undertake Hawkyns’ duties.[1557] It is an extremely important fact that most of these men obviously hoped to gain some personal advantages by displacing him. Allen was ‘Queen’s merchant,’ or purchaser of Dantzic cordage and, according to another informer, had been so friendly with Hawkyns as to receive a bribe of £60 from him out of the first contract of 1579.[1558] He eventually quarrelled with the other Officers he was now supporting, and in 1592, complained of them to Burghley. The internal history of the Navy Office at this period is a perfect maze of intrigue, and there was not one of these men who, at some time, was not doing his best to supplant others with whom before and afterwards he was, or became, friendly, perhaps to quarrel again in due course. No doubt the appointment of Hawkyns was regarded as a piece of family jobbery, and, as a fact, was very likely more due to influence than merit. By both seniority and reputation Wynter had, in 1578, a much better claim to such an important post.

That Hawkyns used his official position to obtain discounts, commission on contracts, and other such emoluments, is quite possible; such things are not unknown even now, are distinct from deliberate embezzlement, and would hardly be condemned by public opinion in the sixteenth century. It can hardly be made an article of accusation against him that he became a wealthy man, even if there were much left after the expenses were paid of his last unlucky voyage. The yearly fee of the Treasurer was not large—£220, 18s 4d, out of which he had to pay his travelling expenses when on the Queen’s service—and it was expected and permitted, in both his contracts, that he should keep any outstanding balance as profit, provided the work was properly done; and there was nothing in the ethics of his position, as then understood, debarring him from shipping and other mercantile transactions. The best proof that both Elizabeth and Burghley were satisfied that his gains were not too great lies in the fact that both contracts were determined at his own request, and that, notwithstanding his supposed peculations, their knowledge of them, and the efforts made to remove him, he held his post till the day of his death. He is accused of being in partnership with Richard Chapman, the master shipwright. Chapman appears to have had a private yard, but there is no warrant for the precise statement beyond the words of another anonymous writer that he ‘used Richard Chapman’s yard.’[1559] There is no guide to the year or years in which he is said to have had work done by Chapman. This man did not become a crown shipwright till about 1582, and it may very well be that Hawkyns employed him before he was taken into the service of the crown. Another reflection is that in these transactions with Chapman there must have been witnesses, in the shape of workmen and others, not one of whom was ever brought forward. In all these papers we are only given the statements of the writers; there is never a suggestion of corroborative evidence. The anonymous writer just quoted says, among many other things, that the ships are in such bad condition that ‘they are brought to their last end and dangerous state.’ This was in October 1587, and the events of the next year proved that to be a peculiarly unfortunate assertion. This particular delator was ignorant of that necessity for verisimilitude which is one of the first requirements of his business. He charges Hawkyns with illicit profits on the remains of victuals returned from sea, not apparently knowing that the Navy Treasurer had as little connection with, and as little control over, the victualling as over Westminster Abbey. Again, he goes on to say, ‘the shipwrights are his instruments to serve his purpose and cloak for his dissembling,’ and thereupon it is to be observed that some of these writers represent him as sharing dishonest gain with the shipwrights, while others pathetically deplore the shipwrights’ hard fate in being subjected to his terrorism; some represent him as quarrelling with the men with whom others maintain he was secretly in league for underhand purposes. We know, however, that Hawkyns possessed vessels of his own and the circumstance that he had them repaired in a private yard, when he might have used the government slips is really a strong point in his favour, although used by his enemies as the basis of truth on which to build up the liberal superstructure of ‘unjust and deceitful dealings.’

It is said that, although there was no formal inquiry made into the truth of the allegations against Hawkyns, Burghley satisfied himself that they were not unfounded, and drew up a set of stringent regulations intended to prevent their recurrence, noting on the rough draft, ‘Remembrance of abuses past, John Hawkyns was half in the bargain with Peter Pett and Mathew Baker.’ Nothing exists but this rough draft[1560] which includes notes relating to the other Officers as well as to Hawkyns, to shipwrights, and a memorandum on the increased scale of wages recently come into operation. There is no evidence that any inquiry was held, other than which took shape in the explanations Hawkyns offered in his numerous letters to Burghley still existing. Moreover if these regulations were issued with an especial reference to Hawkyns it is to be noticed that it would be his duty as the chief administrative Officer of the Navy to enforce them and apply them to himself. Was Burghley usually so confiding?

In January 1587-8 Pett and Baker were called upon to report on the second contract and how far it had been accomplished.[1561] Their report was unfavourable, but it will be remembered that, by this second ‘bargain,’ Hawkyns had undertaken, at a cheaper rate, the work they did under the first one, and reduced them from an independent to a subordinate position.[1562] Their feeling in the matter is shown by the way they dealt with the third article, on the repair of ships, which Hawkyns had taken out of their hands. They remarked that it was done better before—that is when they were doing it—‘for before the master shipwrights did direct but now they are to be directed.’ This was the grievance. Not only were they both displaced competitors, but Baker had long been connected with the Wynter faction; and Pett and Hawkyns had, in 1587, fallen ‘at variance upon accomptes.’ In 1585 Pett had joined Hawkyns in condemning Baker; now his interests brought him into line with Baker.[1563] Burghley cannot have believed that, in 1587 at any rate, Hawkyns was in confederacy with these two men, or it is hardly likely that they would immediately afterwards have been chosen to sit in judgment upon him, especially as Burghley must have known that Pett was a new, and Baker an old enemy. Further, there is a curious similarity between Burghley’s note and a passage in Allen’s attack before referred to,—‘Mathew Baker sayeth that when Peter Pett and he did the repayringe of her Maties Shippes Hawkyns would needes be hallfe with them.’ The resemblance between Burghley and Allen suggests the possibility that the former paraphrased his note from the latter without independent inquiry; but, in any case, it may be pointed out that it is an indirect report of what Baker said, that according to this account Baker permitted himself to be blackmailed although he had for years been at enmity with Hawkyns, and that he concealed his woes from all his superiors until he poured them into the sympathetic ear of Mr Allen. There was nothing to prevent his petitioning Burghley as everyone else did; and it is still more strange that, so far as we know, he was never called up and examined on this statement made to Allen. The two lines in Burghley’s handwriting comprise in truth the only evidence of any weight against Hawkyns, but they are mysterious as they stand for they imply that he put himself in the power of avowed enemies, and we are left quite ignorant of the proofs—if there were any—on which they are based, or how far Burghley subsequently modified his opinion. That he did so modify it, or perhaps altogether change it, is, I think, proved by the letter quoted _supra_ p. 147. There is significance in the fact that, so far as rivals and inferiors were concerned, these attacks practically ceased after 1588; it must have become known that Burghley no longer received them trustingly.

The supervision Elizabeth exercised over his accounts, the ‘mystrust’ of which he complained, has been attributed to the good reason she had for doubting his integrity. That Elizabeth haggled over his accounts proves nothing by itself, for it would be difficult to name any one of her officials whose figures were not subjected to the same suspicions and distrustful scrutiny. But it has yet to be shown that his contemporaries, other than the subordinates whose perquisites he had extinguished, and the rivals whom he had displaced, doubted his integrity. Sir Robert Mansell is quoted as saying that Hawkyns combined ‘malice in dissimulation, rudeness in behaviour, and was covetous in the last degree.’ Hawkyns may have been rude—he was not so successful at court as Mansell, though he was more successful at sea. But, without going into Mansell’s value, as a witness—and he, on evidence of a very different order, has been shown to have stolen hugely as Treasurer—it will be noticed that, although moved by evident animus, he makes no accusation of dishonesty. Again, Sir Robert Cotton in his report (1608) on the then abuses of naval administration has, in referring to previous conditions, occasion to mention Hawkyns frequently, and invariably takes the period of his control as a standard during which the business of the Navy was well and honestly done. Monson’s opinion is important as that of an undoubtedly competent and trustworthy observer, and one of unstained repute as a commander. He commenced his naval career in 1588, so that it was in part contemporaneous. He desires, when criticising the Navy Office of the reign of Charles I, to ‘bring it to the state of Hawkyn’s and Burrough’s time who were perfect and honest men in their places, the one Treasurer and the other Comptroller.’[1564] There is matter for further consideration in the circumstance that all the men who depose against Hawkyns—Peter Pett, Baker, Wynter, Mansell, Sir Peter Buck, the writers in the State Papers and the _Lansdowne MSS._—are persons of tarnished honesty, or interested motives, and at least four of them known to have been his personal enemies; while on the other side we have Cotton, Monson, Nottingham, and—after 1588—Burghley, witnesses of very different force. In the absence of a verdict proceeding from a judicial inquiry, their evidence must be allowed more weight than that made up of the stabs of anonymous slanderers, jealous rivals, and envious subordinates.

Hawkyns was doubtless a rough, masterful man, readier with the iron hand than with the velvet glove, more popular with the seamen whose ranks he had left than with the officials whose ranks he had joined. He was not a great man, but his services to England were great, and entitle him to kindly consideration at the hands of all Englishmen. But, before branding his memory with the stain of systematic fraud, it is well to examine closely the doubtful shreds and tatters of scandal on the strength of which he is to be condemned, or—worse still—offered the contemptuous charity of condonation.