Originally from Tavistock, Devon, Hawkins’ forebears settled in Plymouth in the early sixteenth century. His grandfather, William, the first recorded Englishman to trade with South America, became the town’s wealthiest merchant, serving as mayor and representing Plymouth three times in Parliament between 1539 and 1553. An active privateer, he was also imprisoned in 1545 by the Privy Council on a charge of piracy.
Hawkins, who was reputedly born at Plymouth, was either illegitimate or the product of an undocumented marriage. He himself stated that Katherine Gonson, his father’s first recorded wife and the woman commonly identified as his mother, was actually his step-mother. Whatever the true circumstances of his birth, Hawkins was acknowledged by his father, who had no legitimate children. He apparently remained in his grandfather’s care when Sir John settled in London in the mid-1560s, and once he came of age he received a half-share in his father’s Plymouth house.
In June 1593 Hawkins set out at the head of his own expedition, planning to sail to the East Indies via the Magellan Straits. During the following spring he raided the Pacific coast of South America, but in mid-June he was engaged at sea by much superior Spanish forces. After three days’ fighting, believing himself to be mortally wounded, he surrendered.
Once back in England, Hawkins laid claim to his inheritance. His father had left him an estate worth around £140 per annum, with further properties to follow after the death of his stepmother, Lady Margaret, Sir John’s second wife. Dissatisfied with these terms, Hawkins extracted an additional £4,200 from Margaret, the bulk of which was the sum originally intended to pay his ransom. This concession left him a comparatively wealthy man, but he claimed in the following year that his long imprisonment had cost him £30,000, and the spectre of financial ruin continued to haunt him. As soon as formal discussions began for peace with Spain in 1604, he organized a new trading venture to the West Indies in partnership with Sir Thomas Myddelton I*, but this expedition ended in disaster when the crew of one of his ships was massacred at San Domingo. Hawkins, who claimed that the shareholders thereby lost at least £3,000, promptly requested the Privy Council to seek redress on his behalf, but without success.
At the same time that he tried to revive his finances through the West Indies trading venture, Hawkins sought to rebuild his career in England. It was probably at around this time that he wrote an account of his ill-fated Pacific voyage, in which he set out his credentials as a naval expert, but the imminent peace with Spain apparently persuaded him to delay publication.
Even so, Hawkins rapidly attracted accusations of corruption. He clearly hoped to make money from his office, as he paid lord admiral Nottingham £300 for a moiety of the rights and profits of the vice-admiralty. His patent allowed him to compound with offenders, a useful option when the evidence against them was doubtful, and he took full advantage of this. However, he was widely believed to drop charges in return for bribes, and some of his deals were certainly lucrative. In November 1603 Josias Goodwyn was released without charge after Hawkins confiscated £40 or £50 in gold from him. In the following year he secured a windfall of £100 when one Captain Fall, an alleged privateer, agreed to hand over his ship. Far from denying that he had made such profits, Hawkins complained in 1610 that what he had gained by such means was more than cancelled out by his official expenses, and that it was all accounted for with the lord admiral.
As a serving mayor, Hawkins was ineligible to stand for Parliament, but in February 1604 he returned himself regardless as Plymouth’s senior Member after taking the precaution of concealing his corporation role on the indenture.
During the following year Hawkins’ problems as vice-admiral continued. In May he was summoned before the Admiralty Court in London to answer complaints about his handling of a Spanish cargo captured by Dutch privateers, though he was cleared of any impropriety.
His anxiety to return home may well have been linked to the mounting protests against his behaviour as vice-admiral. Matters came to a head in May or June 1606, when the lord admiral’s secretary, Humphrey Jobson, arrived in Plymouth with a commission to investigate Hawkins’ conduct. The vice-admiral, who claimed that he was the victim of a conspiracy by his local enemies, including James Bagg I* and John Harris I*, retaliated by arresting Jobson before racing to London to plead his case. Bagg in turn urged Nottingham to dismiss Hawkins, and in August the vice-admiral was suspended from office, pending further inquiries. An Admiralty Court hearing shortly afterwards failed to resolve the situation. Jobson, undeterred, persisted with his investigation well into the autumn. Meanwhile Hawkins tried to convince the Privy Council that Bagg, who was now joint acting vice-admiral, was himself guilty of colluding with pirates in his capacity as a Plymouth customs official.
This dispute was still raging when, like Bagg, Hawkins resumed his seat as a Plymouth Member for the 1606-7 session of Parliament. Prior to the Christmas recess he received only one nomination, to scrutinize the free trade bill (26 November). He supplied evidence on 20 Feb. in support of ‘one Hawkins’, a servant of his kinsman Sir Warwick Hele*, who had been arrested in breach of parliamentary privilege. Thereafter, he was named to three legislative committees, concerned with a Devon school’s funding, disorderly clergy, and badly behaved sailors (25 Feb., 9 Mar., 1 May). Hawkins was appointed on 3 Mar. to consider relief measures following the major floods around the Bristol Channel. He no doubt welcomed his involvement in another committee, established on 28 Feb. to examine a petition from London merchants ‘touching the cruelties and wrongs of the Spaniard’, and also served on its subcommittee (26 March). Although not recorded as receiving leave to depart, he once again missed the session’s final weeks, as he was paid wages only up to 6 May. From this sum of £45 6s. 8d., the corporation deducted £6 to cover three years’ unpaid rents.
Hawkins’ urgent return to Devon was most likely prompted by the lifting of his suspension from office around early May 1607. However, his reputation did not fully recover. During the previous winter, Jean Guerrin had resumed his efforts to obtain compensation for his losses in 1603, and Guillaume Bouillon also returned to the fray in early 1607. In March that year, much to Hawkins’ fury, a royal commission found in favour of one of these Frenchmen, though the financial consequences of this verdict are not known.
For once, luck was on Hawkins’ side. The first parliamentary session of 1610 was now underway, and he successfully petitioned the king for his imprisonment to be suspended, pleading his privilege as a Member of the Commons.
Hawkins’ punishment was in fact relatively short-lived, and in March 1611 rumours circulated that he would soon ‘be even with all his enemies’. Three months later he sued his successor as vice-admiral, Sir Richard Cowper, alleging numerous abuses of office, though if he expected to be restored to office he was mistaken. Despite this setback, Hawkins remained a Devon magistrate. Moreover, with a subsidy assessment of £20 in April 1611, he was easily Plymouth’s wealthiest resident, despite his earlier financial difficulties, which tends to suggest that his detractors’ allegations of wholesale financial impropriety were justified. By now Hawkins had acquired a country estate at Slapton, a few miles from Dartmouth, but a life of rural gentility held little appeal for him.
The government finally acknowledged Hawkins’ naval skills again in 1620, when he was appointed vice-admiral of the fleet that was to be sent to the Mediterranean to attack the Barbary pirates. Nominated by the expedition’s admiral, Sir Robert Mansell*, who regarded him as ‘a very grave, religious and experienced gentleman’, he sailed that autumn with the guarantee that he would assume full command if Mansell was killed or incapacitated. Hawkins was commended in dispatches for his actions during the attack on Algiers in May 1621, but the campaign achieved little, and he arrived home in July after part of the fleet was recalled.