Doubtless he was connected with Seymour’s pirating scheme at Scilly, and took to pirating as an occupation like other Western gentlemen.  When Elizabeth became Queen, he introduced himself at Court and amused her with his conceit.  He meant to be a king, nothing less than a king.  He would go to Florida, found an empire there, and write to the Queen as his dearest sister.  She gave him leave to try.  He bought a vessel of 400 tons, got 100 tall soldiers to join him besides the crew, and sailed from Plymouth in 1563.  Once out of harbour, he announced that the sea was to be his Florida.  He went back to the pirate business, robbed freely, haunted Irish creeks, and set up an intimacy with the Ulster hero, Shan O’Neil.  Shan and Stukely became bosom friends.  Shan wrote to Elizabeth to recommend that she should make over Ireland to Stukely and himself to manage, and promised, if she agreed, to make it such an Ireland as had never been seen, which they probably would.  Elizabeth not consenting, Stukely turned Papist, transferred his services to the Pope and Philip, and was preparing a campaign in Ireland under the Pope’s direction, when he was tempted to join Sebastian of Portugal in the African expedition, and there got himself killed.

Stukely was a specimen of the foolish sort of the young Devonshire men; Hawkins was exactly his opposite.  He stuck to business, avoided politics, traded with Spanish ports without offending the Holy Office, and formed intimacies and connections with the Canary Islands especially, where it was said ’he grew much in love and favour with the people.’

At the Canaries he naturally heard much about the West Indies.  He was adventurous.  His Canaries friends told him that negroes were great merchandise in the Spanish settlements in Espanola, and he himself was intimately acquainted with the Guinea coast, and knew how easily such a cargo could be obtained.

We know to what the slave trade grew.  We have all learnt to repent of the share which England had in it, and to abhor everyone whose hands were stained by contact with so accursed a business.  All that may be taken for granted; but we must look at the matter as it would have been represented at the Canaries to Hawkins himself.

The Carib races whom the Spaniards found in Cuba and St. Domingo had withered before them as if struck by a blight.  Many died under the lash of the Spanish overseers; many, perhaps the most, from the mysterious causes which have made the presence of civilisation so fatal to the Red Indian, the Australian, and the Maori.  It is with men as it is with animals.  The races which consent to be domesticated prosper and multiply.  Those which cannot live without freedom pine like caged eagles or disappear like the buffaloes of the prairies.