From: Gregory Charles Loudon Bourland
Date: Thursday, May 04, 2000 2:40 AM
John Drake son of Robert Drake (brother of Edmund)
Being interrogated as to his childhood the prisoner said that at the age
of six months he was taken to the house of his grandmother Margery Drake
and brought up there. Until his eight year and that after that he
remained in the house of his mother for about a year and a half. He said
futher that when ten years old his cousin Captain Francis Drake took him
with in and that he served him as his page and went with him to Ireland
and that he was with him all the time of his great voyage around the
world. Spent 14 to 15 years with Sir Francis.
Francis Drake’s young cousin, John Drake, while he was a prisoner
Of the Spaniards in South America after having been captured in
connection with a later expedition under Edward Fenton, The youthful
John—not to be confused with Francis Drake’s brother, also named John
but killed in the Caribbean in 1572-lacked notes too refresh his memory
when under interrogation by the Spaniards, so he gives no dates.
John declared his genealogy in the following from January 8, 1587 to
Inquistor Licentiate Antonio Guttierez de Ulloa as: Father and Mother:
Robert and Anna Drake natives of Tavistock; that his father was dead,
that he left his mother alive, father was gentlman and lived on his farm
in the said place. Paternal Grandparents: John Drake Margery Drake lived
Tavistock had lived on farm. Maternal Grandparents: not know but were
from Tavistock
Uncles His father’s brothers: John1, John 2, Edmond. His cousins: Sir
Francis, Thomas. Brothers and sisters: Dorothy, John 1 who was died,
Isabbel who was died John 2 was not married but later married a spanish
wife
These two depositions were and in translation, and in 1914 were also
translated in part by Zelia Nuttall in her valuable New light on Drake.
>>From the book Drake’s Island of Thieves, by Willialm A. Lessa, professor
of anthropology at the University of California at Los Angles. 1975
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