At length they took a better turn; for on April 4th, 1581, Her Majesty, dining at Deptford in Kent, went on board Captain Drake's ship, where she conferred on him the honour of knighthood, and declared her absolute approbation of all that he had done, to the confusion of his enemies and to the great joy of his friends. She likewise gave directions for the preservation of his ship, that it might remain a monument of his own and his country's glory. In process of time, the vessel decaying, it was broken up; but a chair made of the planks was presented to the University of Oxford, and is still preserved.
In the year 1582 he was Mayor of Plymouth, and in 1584-5 a member of the House of Commons.
In 1585 he concerted a scheme of a West-Indian expedition with the celebrated Sir Philip Sidney. It was to be partly maritime and partly an invasion. The sea force was to be commanded absolutely by Sir Francis, the land troops by Sir Philip Sidney. The queen having required Sir Philip to desist from his scheme, Drake sailed, notwithstanding, to the West Indies, having under his command Captain Christopher Carlisle, Captain Martin Frobisher, Captain Francis Knollys, and many other officers of great reputation. In this expedition he took the cities of St. Iago, St. Domingo, Carthagena, and St. Augustine, exceeding even the expectation of his friends and the hopes of the common people, though both were sanguine to the last degree. Yet the profits of this expedition were but moderate; the design of Sir Francis being rather to weaken the enemy than to enrich himself. It was, to do him justice, a maxim from which he never varied, to regard the service of his country first, next the profit of his proprietors, and last, his own interest. Hence, though rich in wealth, he was richer still in reputation.
In 1587 he proceeded to Lisbon with a fleet of thirty sail, and having intelligence of a numerous fleet assembled in the Bay of Cadiz, which was to have made part of the Armada, he, with great courage, entered the port, and burnt upwards of ten thousand tons of shipping. Drake's policy was to attack the enemy in his own harbours and so prevent the possibility of his invading our coasts; and this policy he was continually pressing upon the home Government, but without success. There can be little doubt that if he had been allowed to follow up his success in the Bay of Cadiz by carrying out this policy the Spanish Armada might have never set sail. Not obtaining the support and authority he wanted, he now resolved to do his utmost to content the merchants of London, who had contributed, by a voluntary subscription, to the fitting out of his fleet. With this view, having intelligence of a large carack expected at Terceira from the East Indies, thither he sailed; and though his men were severely pinched through want of victuals, yet by fair words and large promises he prevailed upon them to endure these hardships for a few days. Within this time the East India ship arrived, and was found to contain wealth to the value of £100,000, which he took and carried home in triumph.
It was in consequence of the journals, charts, and papers, taken on board his East India prize, that it was judged practicable for us to enter into the Indian trade: for promoting which, the queen, by letters patent, in the forty-third year of her reign, founded our first India company. To this, we may also add that it was Drake who first brought in tobacco, the use of which was much promoted by the practice of Sir Walter Raleigh. How much this nation has gained by these branches of commerce, of which he was properly the author, I leave to the intelligent reader's consideration.
In 1588 Sir Francis Drake was appointed vice-admiral, under Charles Lord Howard of Effingham, High-admiral of England; here his fortune favoured him as remarkably as ever, for he made prize of a large galleon, commanded by Don Pedro de Valdez, who yielded on the bare mention of his name. In this vessel fifty thousand ducats were distributed among the seamen and soldiers. It must not, however, be dissembled that, through an oversight of his, the admiral ran the utmost hazard of being taken by the enemy; for Drake being appointed, the first night of the engagement, to carry lights for the direction of the English fleet, he being in full pursuit of some hulks belonging to the Hanse Towns, neglected it; which occasioned the admiral's following the Spanish lights, and remaining almost in the centre of their fleet till morning. However, his succeeding services sufficiently effaced the memory of this mistake; the greatest execution done on the flying Spaniards being performed by the squadron under his command.
The next year he was employed as admiral at sea over the fleet sent to restore Don Antonio, King of Portugal; the command of the land forces being given to Sir John Norris. They were hardly at sea, however, before these commanders differed; though it is on all hands agreed that there never was an admiral better disposed, with respect to soldiers, than Sir Francis Drake. The ground of their difference was this: the general was bent on landing at the Groyne, whereas Sir Francis and the sea-officers were for sailing to Lisbon directly; in which, if their advice had been taken, without question their enterprise would have succeeded, and Don Antonio would have been restored. For it appeared, on their invading Portugal, that the enemy had made use of the time they gave them to such good purpose that it was not possible to make any impression. Sir John Norris, indeed, marched by land to Lisbon, and Sir Francis Drake, very imprudently, promised to sail up the river with his whole fleet; but when he saw the consequences which would have attended the keeping of his word, he chose rather to break his promise than to hazard the queen's navy; for which he was grievously reproached by Norris, and the miscarriage of the whole affair was imputed to his failure in performing what he had undertaken. Yet Sir Francis fully justified himself on his return; for he made it manifest to the queen and council that all the service that was done was performed by him, and that his sailing up the river of Lisbon would have signified nothing to the taking the castle, which was two miles off; and without reducing that there was no taking the town.
In 1590 he seems to have devoted himself to civil engineering, for we find him contracting with the town of Plymouth to effect a water supply from the River Meavy, which he did by conducting a stream a distance of nearly twenty-five miles; after which he erected six mills for grinding corn in 1591. In 1593 he represented Plymouth in parliament.
His next service was the fatal undertaking in conjunction with Sir John Hawkins, in 1594, for the destroying of Nombre de Dios, referred to in the story of Sir John Hawkins, who died the day before Sir Francis made his desperate attack on the shipping in the harbour of Porto Rico. This was performed, with all the courage imaginable, on November 13th, 1595, and attended with great loss to the Spaniards, yet with very little advantage to the English, who, meeting with a more resolute resistance and much better fortifications than they expected, were obliged to sheer off. The admiral then steered for the main, where he took the town of Rio de la Hacha, which he burnt to the ground; a church and a single house belonging to a lady only excepted. After this, he destroyed some other villages, and then proceeded to Santa Marta, which he likewise burnt. The like fate had the famous town of Nombre de Dios, the Spaniards refusing to ransom any of these places, and the booty taken in them being very inconsiderable. On December 29th Sir Thomas Baskerville marched with seven hundred and fifty men towards Panama, but returned on January 2nd, finding the design of reducing that place to be wholly impracticable. This disappointment made such an impression on the admiral's mind that it threw him into a lingering fever, of which he died on the 28th of January, 1596, just two months after his distinguished kinsman, Sir John Hawkins, with whom he had been so often associated, and with so much glory.