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A Frenchman knighted Francis Drake
A crowd at Deptford
On April 1, 1581, the Golden Hind lay docked at Deptford, down the Thames from London, and the whole city seemed to have turned out. Elizabeth was stingy with knighthoods, and Drake was the grandson of a yeoman farmer. Her own spy chief, Francis Walsingham, had waited until 1577, after years of service, for his.
Spectators got so excited that loads of them tried to pile over the gangplank onto the ship. It gave way and dropped them all in the mud. On deck, Elizabeth coyly but ostentatiously lost a garter.
The Frenchman's role
The man who knighted Drake was Monsieur de Marchaumont, who was in London as the agent and marriage broker for the Duke of Anjou, the French king's brother and Elizabeth's suitor. Marchaumont also picked up the fallen garter, and the whole scene was flirty. It was a public message to Spain about how close England stood to France, which made the ceremony a provocation to the Spanish.
The version that stuck shows a gorgeous Queen Bess knighting a swashbuckling Drake in front of cheering crowds in ruffs. It remains one of the most iconic scenes in English history, and nothing in it shows the mud or the Frenchman.
How did a garter become a royal order?
The Order of the Garter was founded by Edward III around 1348 and is England's oldest order of chivalry. A legend says it began when a lady's garter slipped at a court dance and the king picked it up. The order's motto, Honi soit qui mal y pense, means shame on him who thinks evil of it. Its members still wear a blue garter below the left knee.
What happened to the Golden Hind afterward?
Elizabeth ordered the ship preserved at Deptford, where it became a tourist attraction and the site of a banquet. Over the following decades the timbers decayed and the ship broke up. Some of its wood was used to make a chair that is kept in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.
Why was Deptford where the ship docked?
Henry VIII founded the Royal Dockyard at Deptford in 1513, making it one of the first royal naval dockyards in England. It sat on the Thames close enough to London for crowds and the court to reach it easily. Deptford later served as a base for victualling and shipbuilding for the navy for centuries.
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