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This is page 6 of a 10 page article. Go to previous page. Go to Introduction.
II. Thomas Doughtie: the Martyr – The Atlantic Crossing
Whatever may have passed in Plymouth, once the fleet had left in earnest, matters seemed to go smoothly well after they reached the shores of Africa. It is clear that Doughtie is still in Drake’s trust, for Cooke reports he is sent ashore as a leader on an expedition to gain provisions on the Isle of Mayo – an incident which is also mentioned in the accounts of Francis Pretty and Edward Cliffe, both of whom try to speak as little of Doughtie as possible. More than this, Drake held Doughtie in high enough esteem to give him command of the prize ship somewhere off the coast of Santiago. It was on board this ship that Doughtie’s troubles began.
An incident was to happen upon the newly renamed Mary which was, for Doughtie, surely a no-win situation. Drake had given orders that no one was to meddle with the cargo of the prize ship – probably quite a good idea since one of the primary items it carried was wine. John Wynter was to speak of the “Discommodities it bred though disorder” (Kelsey 97). Unfortunately, the first to meddle was Thomas Drake, Drake’s younger brother, who Cooke would describe as “not the wysest man in Christendom” (191). Young Drake openly broke into a chest, which put Doughtie in a conundrum, for Thomas Drake begged him not to report the offense to his brother. Doughtie’s solution was to tell Drake the truth, but promise Thomas Drake to play down the incident (192).
True to the courtier that he was, Doughtie attempted to navigate a difficult situation with diplomacy; it might have worked if he did not already have enemies plotting against him. Why the trumpeter John Brewer hated Doughtie is unclear; since we know that he was also Hatton’s man (Kelsey 83), it is possible that the grudge originated even before the fleet left England. In Cooke’s narrative, Ned Bright’s reason for resenting Doughtie is revealed much later by Drake to John Doughtie after Thomas is already dead: Thomas Doughtie gossiped that Bright’s wife had “an yle name in Cambridge” (210). Drake mockingly implies that Doughtie lied, but even if Doughtie had delivered a truthful report from his days at university, it may have been enough to shame Bright into a desire for revenge.
What Bright and Brewer did is set down in the account of Francis Fletcher. Before Doughtie could get to Drake, the two men intercepted him with a tale that Doughtie himself had broken into the hold. Drake was furious, and when a nonplussed Doughtie reported the theft by Drake’s brother, Drake flew into a rage, seeing it as an attempt to shift the blame onto his own kin, thus dishonoring his own name. By the time the truth about Doughtie’s "stolen goods" was revealed – he had in his possession some gloves, a few coins and a ring freely given to him by some of the Portuguese prisoners in front of other witnesses (Drake 62 Fletcher note), the damage had been done. As Cooke tells it, from that point on, Drake’s dislike of Doughtie grew so quickly that “a man of any judgement would verily thinke that his love towards hym in England was more in brave words then harty good will or frindly love” (192).
Fletcher goes on to report that Leonard Vicarye intercedes for his friend, and a truce is struck. Doughtie, guilty of no wrongdoing, cannot be made to seem dishonored, but young Drake must not be made to look guilty of any wrongdoing, either. So Thomas Drake is given the captaincy of the Mary while Doughtie is to be sent back to the Pelican as its captain. Drake steps back from direct command, assuming the role of commander of the fleet, but stays on board the Mary to keep a watchful eye on his brother. It is a solution of remarkable elegance with one small problem: Doughtie the gentleman was sent away from his friends into a hornet’s nest of Drake’s “man pirates,” while Drake remained with his brother, Brewer and Bright at his side, regaling him with tales of Doughtie’s evils and playing on the nascent paranoia which Kelsey argues Drake displayed upon every long voyage (295).
Doughtie’s attempt to assert his command upon the Pelican had, in fact, the opposite effect among Drake’s loyal followers, who saw him as overstepping his authority. There is also one serious incident during his tenure as captain which must be dealt with at length, since it is one of the few charges of any weight brought against him at his trial. Much has been made of Francis Fletcher’s partisanship towards Doughtie in light of his apparent willingness to testify against him (Vaux xxvi) even to the speculation that this is why Drake will later hang a sign around him saying “ye falsest knave that liveth,” (“Memoranda” 176). But most of the supposed charges Fletcher makes are attestations to innocuous comments, such as Doughtie had invested in the voyage, or had brought Drake to the attention of the court. Many of these statements were made within the hearing of others, and it seems hardly meet to expect a man of God to perjure himself no matter how much he esteems the accused; hostile witnesses are routinely called in any courtroom. But on one occasion something happened which surely caused a moral dilemma for Fletcher: apparently there was mutinous talk amongst the men, and some rumor of a plan to steal away the Pelican. When he requested that Doughtie report the problem to Drake, Doughtie refused, saying, “I shal be suspected,” (“Documents” 165) and earnestly pleading with Fletcher not to go to Drake himself. To Fletcher, this must have seemed a serious dereliction of duty; to the jury at Doughtie’s trial, an indication that Doughtie was trying to hide the sedition and therefore a party to it. But in the context of recent events, it seems clear that Doughtie’s fear was not unjustified. He had learned a bitter lesson about tattling to Drake, apparently concluding that it was best not to get involved lest the accusation land at his feet, just as it had on the Mary.
In the meantime, Bright and Brewer vilified the unsuspecting Doughtie. Somehow the tale that he was a conjurer got about; Kelsey speculates that the rumor may have been due to astrological charts Doughtie prepared (102). But a more interesting idea can be derived from the outcome of the next incident, when John Brewer visits the Pelican. His friends give him a “cobbey,” a traditional maritime roughhousing. Doughtie participates somewhat reluctantly – one wonders if he felt that not participating would alienate the gentleman further from his crew. The incident, recorded by Cooke, is worth quoting at length:
...Mastar Dowghty puttying in his hand, said fellowe John, you shall have in my hand, althowghe it be but lyght amongst the rest, and so laynge his hond on his buttoke, which perceyved of John trumpet, he began to swere wounds and blud to ye company t let hym lose, for they are not all (qd he) the Generales frinds that be here, and with that turned hym to Mastar Dowghty and sayde vnto hym (as hym self presently aftar tolde me in the price), Gods wounds, Dowghty, what doste thow meane to vse this familiaritie with me, consyderynge thou art not the Generals frind? who answered hym: What, fellow John, what moves you to this and to vse these words to me, that am as good and sure a frind to my good Generall as any in this flete, and I defye hym that shall saye the contrarye? but is the matter thus, why yet, fellow John, I pray the lett me lyve vntill I come into England? (Cooke 193-194)
Again, as in the Essex affair, Doughtie shows not guile, nor skill at manipulation, but naiveté and verbal honesty. In retrospect, it probably wasn’t wise of him to put that sort of idea into Brewer’s head!
When Brewer reports this incident, Drake acts in a peremptory way by making Doughtie come across to the Mary in the pinnace, then refusing to allow him on board or even to let him speak, but immediately transferring him to the command of the flyboat Swan. This is more than just a calculated insult, for the master of the Swan, John Saracold, is little better than a thug and will proceed to make Doughtie’s life miserable for – well, for the rest of his short, unhappy life.
But why did Drake overreact so extremely to this incident? It is quite possible that, under the influence of Bright and Brewer, Drake was looking for a reason to malign his former friend. But another interesting possibility is raised in a brief comment by Retha M. Warnicke in a review of John Cummins' book Francis Drake: the Lives of a Hero. She wonders if perhaps Drake could have interpreted the touching of Brewer’s buttocks as sexual, and if the idea of Doughtie as a conjurer must be interpreted in the context of witchcraft involving homoerotic unions with the devil. The idea seems far fetched, but there is other evidence to consider. Warnicke is certainly not the only one to pick up on the undertones of the incident; consider the grossly distorted fictive history represented in Bawlf’s account of the circumnavigation, where Doughtie himself instigates the cobbey in a very provocative manner: “Thomas Doughty had him [Brewer] seized and bent over a barrel, and under the pretext of an amusement, invited the assembled crew to join him in delivering a ‘cobbey’ – a rough spanking to Brewer’s naked buttocks,” (92).
Throughout the metahistory of the Doughtie incident, the phrase “Italianate Englishman” keeps surfacing in relation to Thomas Doughtie. William Wood describes the friendship between Drake and Doughtie thusly: “Drake returned to England with a new friend, Thomas Doughtie, a soldier-scholar of the Renaissance, clever and good company, but one of those 'Italianate' Englishmen who gave rise to the Italian proverb: Inglese italianato e diavolo incarnato -- 'an Italianized Englishman is the very Devil'.” Corbett uses the phrase, complaining that it was a type of man “which from our habit of regarding the Elizabethan age as one of burly English manhood is much lost sight of, though its influence was felt in every fibre of the time, and not always for good,” (Tudor Navy 209). In the book Before Pornography: Erotic Writing in Early Modern England, Ian Frederick Moulton explores at great length the connection between being perceived as “Italianate,” effeminate and a sodomite. “The two issues-Italianate corruption and the decline of English manhood-were often linked,” (113). The phrase also carries a connotation of deception and manipulation in a political sphere as well; in 1593 John Eliot would say that “If italianate Englishmen learn their villainy from Machiavelli, they get their filthiness from Aretino...” (145). Perhaps this connection is best summed up in one phrase written in 1904, “Thomas Doughty, the Italianate Englishman who was charged with sorcery, treachery and conspiracy to mutiny, laid his head upon the block and ceased intriguing for ever,” (Fletcher 397).
Perhaps Doughtie's "Italianate" habits were enough to stir Drake’s paranoia about sorceries and seditions, or perhaps it runs deeper. Perhaps it was on the Mary that Ned Bright revealed some of the things that would later comprise his testimony against Doughtie, whether they were true or not:
In my cabin abord the Pellycan, he the sayd T.D. cam to me, when their had certayne words passed betwixt William Leange and me, wch T.D. sayd that the captayne was very much offended wt me, and yt or captayne wold set me in the Bylbos; but he the said T.D. sayd he wold not suffer it, and that our Captayn should not offer it me; ffor I was one of them whom he the sayd T.D. loved and made account of, and bade me kepe my cabbyn two or three dayes, and then the captayne and I should be ffrends agayne, and byd me so ffarewell, and be ruled by him and he wold do me good. (“Documents” 172).
It is certainly perplexing to determine what appeared to be seditious in this exchange: Bright apparently falls afoul of the captain; Doughtie, the captain’s good friend, offers to patch up the fight out of friendship for Bright. The implication which was certainly intended to impress the jury – that Doughtie was attempting to seduce Bright to mutiny – appears not nearly as obvious as an alternate implication – that Doughtie was attempting to seduce Bright. Perhaps this occurred to Drake as well, and the accumulating hints touched upon a homophobic streak in Drake exploited by Bright and Brewer. It was hardly necessary for Doughtie to be homosexual or even bisexual any more than it was necessary for him to be practicing witchcraft – Drake just had to be convinced that Doughtie was a gay sorcerer to be gripped by insane paranoia.
Or perhaps the idea hit Drake a little too close to home. He was, after all, a man like many sailors, who barely found time to visit with his wife, a man who would remain childless his whole life. As mentioned earlier, Sir Francis Drake the Younger manages somehow to sublimate the Doughtie affair into an inadvertent romance where Drake falls in love at first sight with the man for whom his affection was more than brotherly. It is always difficult to know how far to read the concept of “romantic friendship” into a narrative such as this, especially from the perspective of an age like ours which cannot grasp the concept at all. It may also well be true that the lines of straight and gay are blurred intentionally in such friendships when they take place in homophobic cultures. But by comparison, none of Drake’s friendships are ever described with anything close to the same effusion. Sexual or not, Sir Francis the Younger’s fictive history is a love affair, one that the third part of this article will show to have left lasting imprint on both literature and history.
This certainly does not of necessity imply that Drake was homosexual; he probably wasn’t, at least on a conscious level. Drake built a reputation based upon his “manliness,” as is demonstrated on the title page of his nephew’s 1626 book about the raid on Panama, entitled Sir Francis Drake Revived: Calling vpon this Dull or Effeminate Age to folowe his Noble Steps for Golde & Silver. He he may have been aware that his relationship with Doughtie was crossing a certain line, shading too far into something wherein the “manliness” was suspect. Far easier for Drake to believe that Doughtie, the Italianate conjuror, had crossed that line than he, the epitome of Elizabethan patriarchal firmness, had crossed it of his own volition. But a solution to the problem would prove itself to be at hand; in fact, later commentators on the incident inadvertently reveal the stakes in their propitious phraseologies: “The execution of Doughty is a true revelation of Drake’s manhood,” Raymond Mixell gushes.
By this point, the fleet had reached the coast of South America, and had been subjected to repeated incidence of bad weather – severe storms and freakish moments of calm. Tensions were high, and the sailors, always a superstitious lot, looked for a scapegoat. On the voyage of Christopher Columbus, the problem was solved by blaming the ungodly practice of gambling with “the devil’s picture book” and throwing the decks of playing cards overboard. Drake’s paranoid reaction was more vicious. Indeed, had Doughtie been thrown overboard, he might have been luckier. Separated from his onetime friend, in the company of Doughtie’s enemies, Drake seemingly becomes convinced that the conjuration charges are true. According to Cooke, “any tyme we had any fowle weather, he would say that Thomas Dowghty was the occasyoner therof, and wolde say that it came out of Tom Dowghtys capcase,” (195). Off the coast of Brazil, the flyboat is temporarily lost in a storm, and Drake, of course, blames Doughtie.
Far from the romantic vision of The World Encompassed, on the flyboat, Doughtie has wandered into Lord of the Flies as scripted by George Orwell. He seems to have become aware of the severity of his situation, for at the trial, John Sarocold reports, “at his coming abord he declared yt he was sent as a prisoner and as one suspected for a congerer and treator to the generall, of the wch he sayd he wold purge himself in England affore their better yt dyd accuse him, iff lawe wold sarue him, as he knewe it wold, and to their greate shame,” (165). It is an indication of Doughtie’s situation that this protestation of innocence is read at the trial as one of the charges against him! From the start he faces the resentment of the captain of the tiny boat, John Chester, who forbids interaction between his crew and Doughtie. It is here that the supposed charges of mutiny arise: Doughtie apparently gives a brush to Hugh Smythe, promising him more in friendship later, and offers to loan £40 to Henry Spindelay, the gunner, upon their return to England. That it was not unusual for Doughtie to loan money, as is evidenced by his will, is not something understood by the sailors, to whom £40 must have seemed an astronomical sum, more than a ship’s master would make in a year. These gestures are read as an attempt to bribe the men. And perhaps they were – but not necessarily for a sinister purpose. At this point, can Doughtie be blamed for wanting to assure himself of some friends in a hostile environment?
Chester himself had little authority on the ship; his command was nominal, most of the ship’s daily operations being handled by the master, John Sarocold. Sarocold apparently harbored great resentment against anyone who opposed him or exceeded him in social standing; it is not known whether Chester’s treatment worsened with the arrival of Doughtie, but it was bad enough for Doughtie to be shocked, remarking, according to Cooke, “I marvayle, Mastar Chestar, that yow will take it at his hands to be thus vsed, consyderinge yow were here aucthorised by the Generall,” (196). According to Smythe, at first Doughtie believes that Chester is “his enimye, whom he would neuer forgive,” (“Documents” 166) but he soon realizes that Chester and he are in the same boat, quite literally. Sarocold subjects them both to a series of humiliations and abuses, including putting them on short rations while he and his accomplices eat extremely well.
Doughtie, resentful of his treatment, continued to stress both his innocence and that he was being ill used by Drake, who owed him much, including preferment with the Earl of Essex and the Queen of England. These comments must have seemed to Doughtie nothing more than the truth, but to the common seamen who reported them at his trial, they were, at best, idle boasting, and, at worst, an attempt to undermine Drake’s authority. Matters come to a head in a direct confrontation with Sarocold; it is here that Doughtie makes remarks, which, taken out of context, will become the bulk of the real evidence of his alleged mutiny, or in Cooke’s words, “the especiall matter that he had be out of his head for.” Doughtie begins by a demand to be treated with more respect, and that he should be “vsed as well as other men, consyderynge his adventure,” (his investment in the voyage.) Interestingly, despite the general preconception that Doughtie’s gentleman adventurers were trouble because they demanded special treatment, what Doughtie is demanding here is that he be treated the same as the sailors. Sarocold replies, “Thou an adventure here?...I will not gyve a point for the nor thye aventure,” (197). To admit that Doughtie had a financial stake in the voyage is to admit that he should have a say in the way it is conducted, a line of logic which reaches its ultimate conclusion when Doughtie’s claims that he invested in the venture become evidence to be used against him at his trial.
The fight escalates, centering on the victualling situation, blows are exchanged and Sarocold taunts him, “Wilt thou have victualles, thow shalt be glad...the rather to eate that which falls from my tayle,” (Cooke197; Kelsey 101.) Such an insult might infuriate anyone, especially someone who was hungry and had good reason to feel used, abused and persecuted – to this, the stigma of being a gentleman accosted thusly by a common sailor may be added. Understandably, Doughtie was livid. His response, reported by a number of people, including in a somewhat softened form by Cooke, is to turn to Chester and implore him to take back his command: his “talke unto Mr. Chester was, yt whereas Mr. Chester’s auctoritye semed to be taken away by the Mr, yt iff he wold be ruled by him, he wold geve his aucthorytye agayne, and wold put the sword into his hands to rule as he thought good,” The sequel, which Cooke omits, is most likely the statement that damned Doughtie: “...and yt iff Mr. Chestar wold be ruled, he wold make the companye to be redye to cutt one another’s throte,” (“Documents” 167).
Discontent in the fleet, especially growing hostility between the sailors and the gentlemen, ran high, and Drake, surrounding himself with the sailors, did nothing to alleviate the tension. Doughtie’s unfortunate phrasing implied an armed rebellion, yet it is clear from the context that his intent was not mutiny, but rather to restore order by returning authority to the rightful captain of the ship. Far from the clever and manipulative schemer we shall see throughout the Drake-based historical fictions, in reality Doughtie appears to be impulsive and incautious in his speech, blurting out that which might better have been kept silent – a trait which we earlier witnessed in the Essex affair and will see again upon numerous occasions.
After numerous separations due to bad weather, the fleet finally assembled at the mouth of the Rio Deseado, what was later to be named Port Desire. At this point, citing the logistical difficulties and loss of crew, Drake ordered the burning of the Swan and the transfer of her supplies to the other ships. Returning to the Pelican, Doughtie finally confronted Drake, and in an angry exchange accused him of bad faith, as Drake reported at the trial, “...the worst word of the mothe of his, the sayd Thomas, was of more than 3 of the others of our sayd generall,” (“Documents” 174). Drake struck him and ordered him bound to the mast by none other than John Sarocold, who, according to Cooke, “toke a little panye with hym,” (198). Then Drake ordered Doughtie and his brother transferred to the canter, an act which Doughtie protested, being now in fear of his life from the thuggish Sarocold and “some other desperate and vnhonest people.” Drake’s response was to have John and Thomas Doughtie removed by force, hoisting them over to the canter with the ship’s tackle.
By this point, it would appear that Drake had it in mind to put Doughtie on trial. If Cooke’s account is to be believed, Drake asked one Thomas Cuttle, formerly master of the Pelican, to witness to something he considered false. Cuttle was apparently well-liked by Doughtie, and at one point Doughtie offered to stake £100 for him to take part in another venture when they returned to England. This accusation was reported at Doughtie’s trial as evidence of the use of bribery to buy a mutiny, with little attention to the fact that the financially astute and generous Doughtie was constantly loaning money – among the debtors he forgave in his will were his wife’s uncle, his old comrade from Ireland Richard Broughton, and even Leonard Vicarye! Under the circumstances, it must have been clear that having Doughtie’s friendship was a detriment, and yet Cuttle was so incensed at Drake’s request that he went ashore with his gun, telling the others that he preferred to take his chances alone with the “cannibals” rather than “accuse this gentleman of that as I take God to wytnes I knowe not by hym...I nevar knewe any thinge by hym but to be the generals frend,” (Cooke 199). Drake sent a boat ashore and after being entreated by the crew, Cuttle eventually returned to the Pelican, but his name never appears on any of the accusations against Doughtie.
The fleet did not go far before hitting more bad weather, and the canter vanished for a space. During the interval, Drake blamed Doughtie for all their troubles, accusing him of conjuring the storm despite his imprisonment. According to Cooke, there was considerable sympathy for Doughtie, but no one dared to speak out. When the canter was found again, Drake ordered it also burned, and transferred the Doughties to the Elizabeth. He addressed the crew with the sternest warnings not to speak to the brothers, nor to let them read or write, a command which he later relaxes, simply warning to keep their literature in plain sight, written in English, perhaps for fear that Doughtie was inscribing black magical formulae in a foreign tongue. Drake’s invective at the time presages his eventual intent, for he said he “dyd not know how to cary alonge with hym this voyadge” the two brothers, John whom he accused of being a witch and a poisoner, and Thomas, guilty of conjury, sedition, “a very badd and lewed fellow” (Cooke 200). Even so, the Elizabeth contained a number of men sympathetic to the Doughties, one even willing to provide them with a cabin, despite Drake’s command that the two men get the worst lodging and provisions that the ship had to offer. Drake was to retaliate against this man by depriving him of his station.
Next page - Thomas Doughtie: the Martyr - The Ugly Trial and Beautiful Death of Thomas Doughtie
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