Page 38 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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38 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

particular enterprise upon which they were about to »
embark.
Lancaster’s selection for the supreme office, though
plainly indicated by his skill as a seaman and his excep­
tional knowledge of the region which the promoters had
marked out for their operations, was not made without
a struggle. He had a rival, a rather formidable one, in
Sir Edward Micliclbornc, a gentleman adventurer who
had served under the Earl of Essex in the Island Voyage of
1597, and who, possessing Court influence, was strongly
recommended for the position by the Lord Treasurer.
The shrewd city merchants in whose hands the arrangements
for the voyage were placed, with a lively recollection pro­
bably of Fenton’s disastrous enterprise, declined to enter­
tain the proposal on the sensible ground that the business
in hand was more suitable for one of their own class than
for a Court favourite. Michclbornc was so incensed at
the decision that he declined to pay the subscription for
which he had made himself responsible, and his name was
in consequence removed from the Company’s roll. We
shall meet him again a prominent actor on the stage of
Eastern adventure, but for the time being he may be
allowed to drop into the background nursing his grievance.
The discriminating care which was shown by the direc­
tors in their choice of a commander was reflected in the
other arrangements for the voyage and notably in the
selection of men for the subordinate commands. By far
the most famous of these lieutenants of Lancaster was John
Davis, of Sundridge, in Devon, the brilliant navigator
whose name will ever be associated with the efforts made
in the latter part of the sixteenth century to discover a
North-West passage to India. Sir Clements Markham, in
.

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