Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America by Giles Milton Page B

English mariners soon learned that they were to become the first victims of an auto-da-fé, or act of faith, a hideous yet compelling public torture ceremony that combined medieval barbarism with the theatricality of a real-life Day of Judgement. Philips and his men were dressed in yellow cloaks and, after being given cups of bitter wine, were marched to the marketplace where the local inhabitants had gathered to “heare the sentence of the Holy Inquisition against the English heretikes.”
    “Every man [was] alone in his yellow coat,” recalled Philips, “and a rope about his necke, and a great greene waxe candle in his hand unlighted, having a Spaniard appointed to goe upon either side of every one of us.” They were taken to the scaffold where “we found a great assembly of people” who had gathered to hear them receive their sentence for being heretics. Three of the men “had their judgement to be burnt to ashes,” while others were tortured and flogged. After many hours of whippings and beatings, the battered survivors were led away “with their backes all gore blood, and swollen with great bumps.”
    Philips eventually escaped from captivity and arrived back in the West Country more than sixteen years after leaving England. Other survivors trickled home slowly, “carrying still about them (and shal to their graves) the marks and tokens of those inhumane and more then barbarous cruell dealings.” Their horrific tales of suffering captivated both commoners and courtiers, and even the pious Richard Hakluyt could not stop himself from publishing them, with a cautionary note condemning “these superstitious Spaniards … that they thinke that they have done God good service when they have brought a Lutheran heretike to the fire to be burnt.”
    The West Country mariners that Ralegh hoped to employ on his
ships were horrified when they heard such tales. They had never trusted the Spanish, but the auto-da-fé was an extremely sinister development. They knew that anyone who had the misfortune to be captured during their passage through the Caribbean could expect much the same fate as Miles Philips and his men. Their terror was so great that many refused to sign up for Ralegh’s adventure, leaving him with a severe shortage of deckhands. His original patent had allowed him to take with him such men as gave their “assent and good-wylle,” but such was the reluctance of mariners to join the expedition that in January 1585 Ralegh asked to be given sweeping new powers by the queen. Her draft commission now allowed her “trusty and welbilovid servant” to impress mariners into service “in any [of] our portz, havons, crekes or other places within our countries of Devon, Cornewall and at Bristowe.” This was not all; he was also given full authority to impress “such shipping, maisters of ships, maryners, souldyours and all other provisions and munition whatsoever as he shall see to be mete and requisite for this service.” How much Ralegh used these powers is unclear, but several members of the expedition claimed to have been forced to go against their will. Such unwilling participants were to prove a dangerous liability, and Ralegh later regretted having used impressed seamen, claiming that they were “so ignorant in sea-service as that they know not the name of a rope and [are] therefore insufficient for such labour.”
    Towards the end of March, Grenville sailed the Tiger from London to Plymouth, where the rest of the fleet was awaiting him. He hoped to set sail for America on April 9, for the sun would rise at 5:19 a.m. on that day, enabling the fleet to be well under way by mid-morning. The immediate forecast was for “fayre and April shewers,” but the long-term outlook did not look so good. Within ten days, the weather was expected to worsen and there would be “dangerous tymes for all thynges, the ayre seditious and troublesome.”
    After a final check on supplies, the crews were brought on board,