"In passage thereunto, Stuckley lands at Portugal, just when Sebastian, the king thereof, with two Moorish kings, were undertaking a voyage into Africa. Stuckley, scorning to attend, is persuaded to accompany them. Some thought he wholly quitted his Irish design, partly because loath to be pent up in an island (the continent of Africa affording more elbow-room for his achievements); partly because so mutable his mind, he ever loved the last project (as mothers the youngest child) best. Others conceive he took this African in order to his Irish design; such his confidence of conquest, that his breakfast on the Turks would the better enable him to dine on the English in Ireland.
"Landing in Africa, Stuckley gave council which was safe, seasonable, and necessary; namely, that for two or three days they should refresh their land soldiers; whereof some were sick, and some were weak,
by reason of their tempestuous passage. This would not be heard; so furious was Don Sebastian to engage; as if he would pluck up the bays of victory out of the ground, before they were grown up; and so, in the battle of Alcaser, their army was wholly defeated: where Stuckley lost his life.
'A fatal fight, where in one day was slain,
Three kings that were, and one that would be fain!'
"This battle was fought anno 1578, where Stuckley, with his eight hundred men, behaved himself most valiantly, till overpowered with multitude." Worthies of England, by Nuttall, i. 414.
Mr. Dyce, in his prefatory note to Peele's Battle of Alcazar, having cited the above extract with several poetical notices of Stukeley, mentions another play founded on this adventurer's exploits (The Famous Historye of the Life and Death of Captaine Thomas Stukely), acted in 1596, and printed in 1605 (Peele's Works, ii. 85).
The ballad is from The Crown-Garland of Golden Roses (Percy Society, vol. vi.) p. 33. There are some verses on Stukeley's projected voyage to Florida in Mr. Collier's Old Ballads, in the first volume of the Percy Society, p. 73.
In the west of England
Borne there was, I understand,
A famous gallant in his dayes,
By birth a wealthy clothier's sonne;
Deeds of wonder he hath done,5
To purchase him a long and lasting praise.
If I should tell his story,
Pride was all his glory,
And lusty Stukely he was call'd in court;
He serv'd a bishop of the west,10
And did accompany the best,
Maintaining still himselfe in gallant sort.