Francis Drake had a kinsman at Plymouth who had been the first Englishman to sail to the Brazils--William Hawkins, father of John, a rich merchant and shipowner. Drake's father, Edmund, had been a sailor in his youth, and was settled near Tavistock when Francis was a child; he was a strong "Reformation man," and his preaching had made him enemies, so that he had to fly and take shelter in an old ship at Chatham, where his friends obtained for him the post of Reader of Prayers to the Royal Navy. Thus little Francis drank in at a very early age the sights and sounds of the sea, while his mind was nursed on denunciations of Rome and hatred of religious tyranny. A man with twelve children must plant them out early, and Francis was apprenticed as a boy to the skipper of a small craft that traded to Holland. As a boy he thus was brought into contact with Flemings flying from persecution, and the horrors of the Inquisition were his daily subject of talk. The rough usage of those days built him up into a sturdy, thick-set, rollicking youngster; he must have shown a rare spirit even then, for his master liked him so well that at his death he left Francis the vessel on which he served. In 1564 Spain closed her ports to the English, so Drake sold his ship and entered the service of his kinsmen, John and William Hawkins. John had just returned from his first slaving voyage, and was being lionised in London on account of the enormous profits of his expedition. Francis Drake sailed to Biscay under William, and at St. Sebastian met some Plymouth sailors who had just emerged half-dead from the dungeons of the Inquisition. Thus little by little the "Scourge of the Spanish Main" was being moulded by sights and sounds of cruelty to fight against Philip. Then he sailed under Fenner to the West Indies and saw some sharp conflicts, was treacherously attacked, and came home empty-handed. Again, in 1567, he sailed as pilot under John Hawkins to Guinea, took a prize, _The Grace of God_, and was made its captain. It is very strange how history repeats itself, for Las Casas, the apostle to the Indians, was even then urging the employment of negroes to take the place of the Indians in South America, who died too quickly in their forced service: just as the Chinese were recently brought over to the Rand to save the lives of the Kaffirs. So John Hawkins had good authority for his kidnapping of African slaves, and may have thought he was doing good, not evil. How the voyage prospered has been told in an earlier chapter. But it sent home Hawkins and Drake in a temper that boded ill for Philip, if ever opportunity should make a great revenge a possibility. Drake no sooner arrived at Plymouth than he was bidden by William Hawkins to ride post-haste to London to inform the Council of his ill-treatment. It was another argument in favour of war with Spain.