the coast of Mexico. Here after three days he was attacked by a Spanish
fleet of twelve vessels, and all of his ships were destroyed except the
_Judith_ and another small vessel, the _Minion_, which was so crowded
that one hundred men risked the dangers on land rather than go to
sea with her. On this last voyage Hawkins and Drake had among their
companions the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, who were then, like
other young Elizabethans, seeking fame and fortune. It is noteworthy
that in all that he did Hawkins seems to have had no sense of cruelty or
wrong. He held religious services morning and evening, and in the spirit
of the later Cromwell he enjoined upon his men to "serve God daily, love
one another, preserve their victuals, beware of fire, and keep good
company." Queen Elizabeth evidently regarded the opening of the
slave-trade as a worthy achievement, for after his second voyage she
made Hawkins a knight, giving him for a crest the device of a Negro's
head and bust with the arms securely bound.

[Footnote 1: Edward E. Hale in Justin Winsor's _Narrative and Critical
History of America_, III, 60.]

France joined in the traffic in 1624, and then Holland and Denmark, and
the rivalry soon became intense. England, with her usual aggressiveness,
assumed a commanding position, and, much more than has commonly been
supposed, the Navigation Ordinance of 1651 and the two wars with the
Dutch in the seventeenth century had as their basis the struggle for
supremacy in the slave-trade. The English trade proper began with the
granting of rights to special companies, to one in 1618, to another in
1631, and in 1662 to the "Company of Royal Adventurers," rechartered
in 1672 as the "Royal African Company," to which in 1687 was given the
exclusive right to trade between the Gold Coast and the British colonies
in America. James, Duke of York, was interested in this last company,