singham's orders, "had great trust with the Spaniards," and had earned his money Colonel Foss quotes "direct "direct family tradition" for this exploit of John Smollett, Esq., of Cameron House, Dumbarton, and cites the author of 'Peregrine Pickle' himself: "In one of several bays of safe anchorage which Mull affords, the Florida, a ship of the Spanish Armada, was blown up by one of Mr Smollett's ancestors." It may be asked how Smollett came to be trusted by the Spaniards. It was his trade to provision the western islands, as Irving says in his History of Dumbartonshire.' In course business, in victualling the ship, he would have ample opportunity to "throw in a lunt." Having established the facts, we need not linger over the legendary explanations given by Mr J. P. Maclean in his 'History of Clan Maclean.' Nor need we prove by Scottish official records, as we can, that Maclean did take into his service 100 Spanish musketeers, who aided him in his campaign against the Macdonalds of the Isles and of Ardnamurchan.

of

I quote, however, the news sent to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, in the end of 1588, by Richard Egerton, commanding an English garrison at Knockfergus.

As we see, Egerton had first made inquiries of Scottish merchants, and then pushed researches "at mine own chardge," probably in Argyll.1

"Right honorable my bounden duetie most humblie remembred: takinge occasion heretofore to trouble your Lordship in advertisement touchinge the Kinge of Spaine's shippe that was burnte in M'Lane's countrie, as then I supposed the same to be true upon the reporte of Scottishe merchantes aryving here, so for my owne assuerance therein I have sithence made some further meanes of my owne chardge, that thereby I might manifest an undoubted trueth unto your Lordship, so that your Honor may be assured that that shippe was a gallion of Vennis (Venice) of 1200 tunns, burned by the like accident as I tofore advertised your Honour in which was the twoe chiefe Captens burned; V. of M'Lane's pledges, and 700 souldiers and sailors, savinge twoe or three that were blowen on the shoare with the upper decke, so that nothinge was saved that was in her at that instant, and what remained unburned is nowe suncke under water. One captain of smale accompt, with 100 souldiers, was with M'Lane on the shoare, whoe be yet all with him, and take paie of him."

All returned safely to Edinburgh, as Asheby reported. Twenty-four men on board the vessel also escaped.

In this version the tonnage and number of soldiers are much exaggerated; only two or three Armada ships were of 1200 tons, none carried 400 soldiers, not to speak of 700. The ship is not Tuscan, but Venetian; by the Pilot-General's account, it is RagusanRagusa being then Venetian. The 100 musketeers are safe on shore: this was unknown to the men of the Valencera who were so long in Scotland, but Maclean may have concealed the fact, as he still needed their services. By "the

twoe chiefe Captens" of the ship, Egerton probably means Don Diego Tellez Enriquez, and his brother, Don Pedro Enriquez, who was with him, and, as we saw, lost a hand in action. The incident of the extraordinary escape of two men of the ship, who were blown on shore by the explosion, must have lingered in the tradition of the people of Mull. In a Memorandum written by the ninth Earl of Argyll in 1677 he says: "two men standing upon the cabin were cast safe on shore." Maclean, on March 23, 1589, received a full pardon for his treatment of the Macdonalds, but not for the burning of the galleon-of which he was innocent.

In 1641, when Charles was trying to propitiate "gleyed Argyll," he made him a Marquis, and induced the Duke of Lennox, Great Admiral of Scotland, to hand over to him all the Spanish vessels supposed to be wrecked on the west coast. The ninth Earl, heavily in debt, made various efforts to raise the Tobermory galleon, but only recovered large In guns in bronze and iron. 1677 he had a suit with the Duke of York (James II.) for the right to the ship, and won his case. He now made a Memorandum, of which I have only an abridgment in the Argyll papers published by

1 A Memorandum of 1677.

on Historical MSS.,' p. 627 a.

the Hist. MSS. Commission.3 He says that the vessel "is reputed to have been the Admiral of Florence, fifty-six guns" (fifty-two in the Florencia, May 1588), "with thirty million of money on board." The Admiral of Florence! No ship was thus named or was likely to be. Argyll must have misread a crabbed Spanish hand of, say, 1600, which gave "the Almiranta" (vice-flagship) "of Flores"-Don Diego Flores. That vice-flagship was the San Juan Bautista, wrecked off Ireland ('Scotsman,' Sept. 20, 1910).

The 30,000,000 "imagination boggles at." I find that in several cases flagships of squadrons carried 50,000 ducats: for expenses of the squadron, I presume, but the San Juan Bautista was not a flagship.

But now consider the following apparently veracious description of the sunk vessel by Archibald Millar, of Greenock, writing in 1683 (when the ninth Earl was a proscribed rebel) to the Duke of York.

(MSS. Rawlinson, A. 189, f. 423.) Bodleian Library.

"INFORMATION by ARCHIBALD MILLAR anent the Ship Sunck in Tippermorie in ye Sound of Mull. The Ships name is the Florence of Spaine.

"The Ship lyes Sunck off the Shore, about one-finger stone-cast, her Sterne lyes into the Shore Norwest,

3 Sixth Report, p. 627 a.

and her Head to the Southwest, shee lyes under ye water at ye deepest Nine fatham at a low water, & twelve fatham at a full Sea on High

water.

"There is no Deck upon her Except in ye Hinder part, there is one great heap of Timber wch I take to be the Cabbin, I did see one doore there wch I take to be the Steerage doore, and within that doore I did see a number of Dishes both great & small of a White blewish Colour, but whether they are pewter or plate I know

not.

"Neer this place I did see one great Gun & her Mussle upright on end, as big or bigger than the Gun I lifted wch would carry a 48 lb. ball, there is a great heap of Cannon shot about Midship, & upon the Shot lyes three Iron Gunns.

"In the fore part of the Ship lyes many great Ballast stones & some shot amongst them, & there wee found one Silver bell about 4 li weight, wee got within the Ship at a prety distance the said great Gun wth other two (all Brass Gunns) the great Gun is eleaven feet length, & seaven inches & one fourth part of measure in the bore, th' other two were Minions, wee also got two Demy Culverins, two Falcons, two slings all Brass.

"We lifted three Anchors whereof "We lifted three Anchors whereof one was eighteen feet of length, th'

other was fifteen and the third was ten, I got two brass sheeues weighing Sixty pounds, I lifted also the Rother, & took eight Iron pykes of it, It was twenty eight foot of Length, but there was no peece broken of the

same.

"I lifted the Kemp stone of Curious worke, pauled wth a Spring at every inches end, I cannot tell ye bigness, the thing I found would have been

two foot in the Diamiter.

"I saw something like a Coat of Armes but I could not reach it being entangled, I saw Guild (gilt) upon severall standing peeces of the Ship.

"I saw one paper of Lattin Extracted out of the Spanish Records that there was thirty millions of Cash on board the said Ship, and it tells it lay under ye Sell of the Gunroome.

"The Lieftenant of the Ship reports the same to the Earle of Argile I mean

the Marques's father, & wch paper holds goods of the Lieftenants report.

"I found something like Mettle betwixt the Ship & shore in soft Osie ground in severall places & thinck they were Gunns.

"The properest time to Dive is to begin about ye Twentieth of May, & continue untill the midst of Augt, I found a Crowne or Diadem & had hooked the same, but being Chained it fell amongst the Timbers, this Crowne is also in ye Spanish Records.

"I thinck the Goods of ye Ship may be recovered provided the Timber could be taken away, and I doe not doubt but all may be taken away, provided my pains & expences be allowed and to shew that this is not a Simulated Informacion, though I be an old man I am willing yet to goe alone upon due consideration, for it is a pity that such a great business should be lost where it may be recovered by industry as Witness my hand at Grinock this Twentith day of November 1683.

"I was Mastr of the whole Employmt myself for ye space I dived. 66 ARCHIBALD MILLAR.

"Jo. Tailfer, Witnes.
"J. Young, Witnes.
"Wm. Mathie, Witnes.”

(MS. found by Mr Purnell in the Bodleian, and published by him in 'The Times,' October 22, 1910. I take my copy from the original.)

This Crown, hooked by Millar, I know, is remembered in the local traditions about the galleon. More trustworthy evidence is that of the Council of the States of Zealand, writing officially to Queen Elizabeth from Middelburg, the 16th of August. Their fleet, they say, blockaded the Duke of Parma in Dunkirk, prevented him from joining hands with Medina Sidonia, and took three partly wrecked Spanish galleons; they send the noblemen captured to England. They

then mention a report that Philip II. was to give to the Duke of Parma (as Viceroy of England) "the Crown and sceptre of England blessed by the Pope."1 The Pope may have blessed the Crown for Philip, but Philip could never extract from him one coin of his promised million of ducats in gold.2

Here we have all that I can find about the Crown hooked and lost by Archibald Millar, who seems more interested in the kemp-stone of curious work. Returning to Archibald Millar, the galleon, with "a Crown or diadem" aboard, and silver bell weighing 4 lb., seems opulent enough! It is more important that Millar says that he saw a "lattin" extract from Spanish records mentioning the "30,000,000 cash" and the Crown, and that it is corroborated by the "report of the Lieutenant of the ship" to the Earl of Argyll of 1588. In that year the Earl was a boy of thirteen, which would permit him to believe in the 30,000,000 of money, but would not account for the Latin extract from the archives of Spain, which also mention the Crown hooked by Archibald Millar!

Now, where and when did Archibald see these astonishing documents ? I answer, at Inveraray Castle, on April 6, 1680! At that place and time Archibald made

his bargain with the Earl for his services in salvaging the property in the sunk galleon. The ninth Earl believed in these documents. He notes that if the famous Crown be recovered, it is to be reserved for Charles II. What can we say to these documents? Did the seventh Earl get them when, as a Catholic convert, he was an exile in Spain? Were they part of a Spanish practical joke?

But there is another conceivable explanation of the "30,000,000 cash." According to Don Alonzo de Luzon, commanding the Nuestra Señora de la Rosa, and examined at Drogheda, October 13, the talk of the Armada ran that the whole of the king's treasure on board the fleet was from 600,000 to 700,000 ducats. Put the ducat at its present nominal value of eleven shillings (and not at the silver ducat of three shillings), and this brings us to a sum (at 700,000 ducats) of over £300,000, which is very like the value of 30,000,000 rials, taking the rials, loosely, at a hundred to the pound sterling. Moreover, we know from his own despatch to Philip' that Medina Sidonia carried jewels of great value. Why, on a distant and dangerous expedition, was the Duke carrying "precious jewels"? Perhaps Philip, in his unusual

con

blazing with diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, as he sat on the Stone of Destiny in Westminster Abbey to Abbey to be consecrated King of England! English accounts from Ireland speak, even the LordLieutenant speaks, of the gold and jewels of the unhappy prisoners. But his Lordship adds that the Irish have got hold of them. Those of Don Diego (not Tellez) Enriquez were seized by Irishmen, whose names are given in the State Papers. The Duke of Medina Sidonia writes that, through Portuguese channels, the English learn that, "in addition to supplies, there were 500,000 ducats in the Armada, and that His Majesty [Philip II.] had arranged for sight - bills in Lisbon for 300,000 ducats to be sent, which money had already been sent thither." This is rather more probable than the report of the Spanish commander of the forces of Sicily, who gives 16,000,000 ducats as carried by the Armada! He is Don Alonzo de Pimentel, son of the Marquis de Tavara. He commanded the San Mateo (850 tons).2

1

It is nowise impossible that Spanish archives did contain records of treasure to the amount, in rials, of, say, £300,000. The fleet did carry abundance of wealth. The seventh Earl, in Spain, may have had an extract made to

1 'Cal. Span.,' p. 265. 3 Ibid., p. 23.

is of, say, £300,000— which the ninth Earl conceived to apply to the treasure on board of his Tobermory galleon.

66

Nine ships, I remark, are mentioned as having 'great store of money and plate" by the Portuguese Gregorio de Sotomayor, under examination. The San Juan Bautista is not one of these nine, nor is the Florencia, if that matters! Among the nine is the captured vessel of Pedro de Valdes, taken on July 31. The sea captain, Vicente Alvarez, of Valdes' flagship, puts the treasure "in a chest of the king's at 52,000 ducats, with plate and “great store of precious jewels of the Duke and Don Pedro." Don Pedro puts it at "near 20,000 ducats"; Drake at 25,300,— "this I confess to have." Had nobody else any of the treasure? Purser Coco states it at 50,000.

I fear that Valdes minimised.5 The Santa Ana, a flagship, carried 50,000 ducats.

But the fighting San Juan Bautista of Sicily was no flagship or vice-flagship: she did not carry the pay-chest of a squadron-did she? There is just one outside chance that she carried treasure beyond the money, plate, and jewels of her officers. It is this: On July 31 the gunpowder of Admiral Oquenda's vice- flagship, the San Salvador, exploded, severely damaging the vessel. It was said that a Spanish officer had