Purchas observes, “being not to be believed in truths.” Hawkins made no more voyages for a period of two decades. In 1572 he was returned to Parliament from Plymouth, and the next year was made treasurer of the navy. He was a vice-admiral in the fleet against the Spanish Armada (1588), commanding the “Victory,” and he was created a knight for his effective services in that great engagement. His last voyage was made in 1595, again with Drake, and once more against the Spanish West Indies: and there he died, at Porto Rico, on the twelfth of November that year. Drake returned from the bitter experience at San Juan d’Ulloa the implacable foe of Spaniards. After fruitless efforts to obtain compensation from Spain for his losses in the San Juan affair, he determined on a campaign of revenge, and in 1570 he was found again at sea on the forerunner of astonishing voyages of reprisal. From these buccaneering expeditions he was led to his greater exploit in “ploughing a furrow” round the globe, with the incidental discovery of California for the English. XVI DRAKE’S GREAT EXPLOITS Francis Drake was born near Tavistock, Devonshire, where a colossal statue of the great navigator now stands. The date of his birth is uncertain. By local tradition it is given as about 1545, and this is generally accepted by his later biographers, but some authorities place it five years earlier. Authorities also differ as to his parentage. Some contemporary writers aver that his father was Robert Drake, first a sailor, afterward a preacher; according to others he was Edmond or Edmund Drake, also a sailor turned preacher, who, in 1560, became vicar of Upchurch in Kent, and died there in 1566. The second Sir Francis Drake, nephew of the navigator, related of the father that he suffered persecution, and “being forced to fly from his home near South Tavistocke in Devon unto Kent,” was there obliged “to inhabit in the hull of a shippe, wherein many of his younger sonnes were born.” He had twelve sons in all, “and as it pleased God to give most of them a being on the water so the great part of them dyed at sea.” William Camden, the contemporary historian and antiquarian, recorded that the father, after coming to Kent, earned his living by reading prayers to the seamen of the fleet in the River Medway.