'That Golden Knight': Drake and His Reputation
John Cummins uses the 400th anniversary of Sir Francis Drake's death to reassess the man, his life and the legends surrounding him.
To find one of England's best loved heroes described during his voyage of circumnavigation as a 'tyranous and cruell tirant', guilty of ‘murder, ... venome, ... conceyved hatred' and 'moaste tyranicall blud spillyng' is startling; one might expect such a view from a Spaniard, but not from an English companion of Drake in the initial stage of the voyage. John Cooke wrote these words after he had returned to England in John Wynter's ship the Elizabeth, which had lost contact with the Golden Hinde in a storm; he probably thought that Drake was dead. Similar criticism, however, was voiced in later years by more distinguished figures who knew Drake to be very much alive.
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