laid up the treasure he brought by way of sequestration, that it might be forthcoming if the Spaniard should demand it. His ship she caused to be drawn up in a little creek near Deptford, upon the Thames, as a monument of his so lucky sailing round the world, where the carcass thereof is yet to be seen. And, having, as it were, consecrated it as a memorial with great ceremony, she was banqueted in it, and conferred on Drake the honour of knighthood. At this time a bridge of planks, by which they came aboard the ship, sunk under the crowd of people, and fell down with an hundred men upon it, who, notwithstanding, had none of them any harm. So that that ship may seem to have been built under a lucky planet." Drake's ship was preserved at Deptford till it was quite decayed; and at last, when it was broken up, a chair was made of one of the planks, and presented to the University of Oxford. As for the treasure brought home by the great navigator, it is probable that, although a considerable sum was afterwards paid out of it in satisfaction of claims made in the name of some Spanish merchants, the greater part of it was divided among the captors. Camden goes on to tell us that, although the common people admired and highly commended Drake, as judging it no less honourable to have enlarged the bounds of the name and glory than of the empire of their country, yet "nothing troubled him more than that some of the chief men at court refused to accept the gold which he offered them as gotten by piracy." The queen, however, stood firmly by him, and, when Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, complained in passionate terms of his having so much as dared to sail in the Indian Sea, she boldly replied, that she understood not why her subjects, or those of any other prince, should be debarred from the Indies (that is, the Americas), to which she could not admit that the Spaniard had any just title, either by the Bishop of Rome's donation or by any other claim. She maintained that no imaginary right of property, asserted either by the Spaniards or the Portuguese, could hinder other princes from trading to those countries, and, without any breach of the law of nations,VOL. I.
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