Photographic Services & Permissions John Harris This title page says it all, proclaiming the excitement and newness of worldwide travel, exploration, and adventure, not to mention trade and wealth. The portraits are of four English heroes, privateers, or perhaps, unkindly, pirates, who captured Spanish treasure ships for the Crown and their own glory - note that one is an earl and three others knights. Clifford studied geography and math at Oxford, and fought on the Queen's ship, the Elizabeth Bonaventure, in the Armada battle. Walter Raleigh won fame for his privateering, capturing Spanish ships, and attempting to colonize Virginia, and for his poetry and his History of the World, unfinished when he was beheaded in 1618. Grenville was a cousin of Raleigh, and Grenville's fleet carried the first colonists to Roanoke in 1585. A brave fighter, he lost his life on board his ship the Revenge, single-handedly fighting off 15 Spanish ships - a battle commemorated in Tennyson's poem "The Revenge." John Hawkins was famed as a slaver. He fought the Armada on his ship the Victory, and was knighted. |
