Elizabeth ultimately sided with the hawkish Protestant wing of her Privy Council, secretly keeping Drake's treasure, apportioning enormous shares to herself and Drake, and signaling it publicly by knighting him aboard the Golden Hind.

11:58Protestant, the Puritan wing of the privy council, they are all in favor of Drake and that is partly because they've invested in his voyage, but it is also very ideological. And so the result is that the Privy Council is split and effectively it is therefore down to Elizabeth. The big question, which way will she jump? And the answer reaches Drake a few weeks after his arrival in

12:18Plymouth. And she sends him a letter and says, "Fear not for your safety. Bring me some of the loot." And so Drake [laughter] gets [snorts] a a train of pack horses and he loads them down with gold and silver that he's plundered from the Spanish and he heads for London. And when he arrives there, the queen grants him a 6-hour interview and she is obviously dazzled by the treasure that

12:40he's brought back from his adventures. But I think she is also very smitten by Drake himself. She loves his stories, the Straits of Mellan, New Albian, the Spice Islands, you know, she loves um a valiant shioalier. Um so she admires his boldness, his courage, his kind of sea dog swagger. >> He is Lord Flashheart um in the Black Adder series. I think he makes her go a

13:06little weak at the knees. And so she decides, I think Drake's great. He's brought me lots of treasure. I want to keep it. Uh, and I, you know, I'm going to give Drake a massive reward. Now, obviously, this is tricky. It's a delicate, tight rope to tread. If she's going to reward Drake, she wants to do it in a way that doesn't make it obvious and offend the Spanish too much, but she

13:27pulls it off absolutely brilliantly. So, what she does, she tells Drake officially, "Rgister the treasure that you've taken um and have it sent to the tower." >> Mhm. But unofficially, she tells him, "Look, siphon off £10,000 of this £400,000." And just to put it, you know, that is more than her entire annual income. So £10,000 is a colossal fortune. I mean, enormous. >> I mean, super rich level, you know,

13:56millions upon millions upon millions. >> And also, I think this reflects very well on both Drake and and Elizabeth. Um, she winks at his quietly taking £14,000 for his men. So, they are all going to profit massively as well. >> Wow. Yeah. >> And Drake also very quietly uh donates £100,000 directly to the queen. And again, all this is being done off the books. It's, you know, behind the

14:18scenes. Mendoza, you know, I mean, he strongly suspects what's going on, but he doesn't have proof. And Elizabeth handles him with a very, very cool display of duplicity. He is demanding all this time, I want to see you. I want to complain about this. Um, and she retorts to him, well, I will not see you until I you have given me a full account of this Spanish invasion that you have

14:39launched of my kingdom in Ireland. >> Yeah. >> And it helps that by this point, so we're in November, the rebellion in Ireland has been crushed. So, um, the Spanish task force has been wiped out at a place called Smurwick. So, that is now dead and buried. So, Elizabeth's hand is slightly stronger. And Mendoza, of course, is not going to apologize for it. So, there is a standoff and that