Page 90 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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90 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST
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liter period than that with which we must now deal, but for
the sake of completeness the remaining facts may be told
i here. He proceeded with Sir Henry Middleton’s fleet to
Bantam and there embarked for home in the Peppercorn,
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commanded by Nicholas Downton. The voyage proved a
very unhealthy one, and more than half the company on
board died, the victims including Hawkins. His wife went
on to London in the Peppercorn, and not long afterwards
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contracted a marriage with Gabriel Towerson, a prominent
1 * commander in the Company’s service, who subsequently
became famous as the central victim in the massacre of
Amboina. We shall meet him again, but Mrs. Hawkins,
or Towerson as she must now be called, fades from the scene
shortly after this. She distinguished herself in London by
l' i* some transactions relative to a very valuable diamond
which she had brought with her, probably as part of her
first husband’s spoils of office. The last glimpse of her
is later on at Surat, where on her return to India, she, with
one or two other ladies, gave the local representatives of
. ■ the English Company an infinite amount of trouble by her
:
demands on their resources. She must have been a woman
of above the ordinary degree of ability and seems to have
had over Hawkins a remarkable influence. Hawkins
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himself was an exceptionally clever man—tactful, resource­
ful and endowed to a marked degree with that masterful­
ness which, when combined with the afore-mentioned
qualities, is so sure a passport to success with Orientals.
! His cannot, perhaps, be regarded as a great name in the
list of seventeenth century adventurers in the East, but
it is emphatically an interesting one.

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