Their arrival with their astonishing freight of riches in gold, silver, pearls, precious stones, silks, spices, and with their amazing tales of adventure, was a momentous event. All England was stirred by the story of the marvellous voyage. At first men of affairs were chary and avoided a recognition of Drake’s achievements, knowing that they must lead to complications with Spain. The queen withheld her approbation while an official inquiry into his conduct was proceeding. In the meantime some critics in high places raised a clamour against him, and termed him the “Master Thief of the Unknown World.” But, with the increasing tension in the relations between the two nations, sentiment changed. On the fourth of April, 1581, five months after his return, the queen visited him in state on the “Golden Hind,” now at Deptford, and at the close of a banquet on the deck of the famous ship, she formally knighted him for his services, and conferred upon him a coat of arms and a crest. At the same time she gave directions for the preservation of the “Golden Hind,” as a monument to his own and England’s glory. So this ship remained for more than a century. Then, having fallen into decay, she was broken up, and from remnants of her frame a chair was made which found a permanent place in the Bodleian Library at Oxford. Drake made no more voyages of discovery. His subsequent exploits on the sea were all for the harassment of Spain. In 1585 he was admiral, with Martin Frobisher vice-admiral, as we have seen, of a fleet sent to intercept the Spanish galleons from the West Indies, and to “revenge the wrongs” offered England by Spain. In 1587 he sailed a fleet to Lisbon and there burned many ships, which he termed “singeing the King of Spain’s beard.” In 1588 he was the resourceful vice-admiral of the great fleet against the Spanish Armada. In 1589 he commanded the fleet sent to restore Dom Antonio to the throne of Portugal. Lastly, he was with his old leader, Sir John Hawkins, again in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main. And here, in 1595, he died, on board his own ship, near Nombre de Dios, the object of his first assault in his first voyage of reprisal, a quarter of a century before. XVIII GILBERT’S VOYAGES Less than a fortnight after the departure of Martin Frobisher on his third and last Northwestern voyage, in May, 1578, Humphrey Gilbert had obtained the letters-patent which he had long coveted from Queen Elizabeth for the “inhabiting and planting of our people in America”; and before the summer was far advanced he had organized an expedition of his own with these objects.