The Rev. Francis Fletcher, Vicar of Tickhill 1596-1620 and previously Chaplain to Sir Francis Drake
A number of Tickhill’s vicars have intriguing back stories but none more so than the Rev. Francis Fletcher who accompanied Sir Francis Drake as chaplain on his circumnavigation of the globe in 1577-1580. Not a great deal is known of Fletcher’s time as vicar. For example, he married Margaret Balland in St Mary’s Church on 21 January 1606. Of course, he conducted many church services and dutifully recorded baptisms, marriages and burials in the parish register which Fletcher put into a new format from 1599. He was buried at St Mary’s on 19 February 1620. He also bequeathed a plot of land known as All Hallows churchyard, to the north of Tickhill, first to his wife and eventually to future vicars at St Mary’s.
However, as a result of the log he kept when he sailed with Drake on the Golden Hind, more is known about Fletcher’s time as a circumnavigator. He called himself ‘Minister of Christ and preacher of the Gospel, adventurer and traveller’. One item in Fletcher’s log is this map he made in 1578 after sailing through the Strait of Magellan then surviving a severe storm. The island was one of three to the south of the Strait claimed for England by Drake and named ‘Elizabeth Island’. (Fletcher’s log survives as a transcript made by John Conyers in the 17th century.)
It is hoped to publish a detailed account of Fletcher’s experiences, meanwhile here is an indication of the clashes between Fletcher and Drake as they appeared in an account The world encompassed republished in 1854 by the Hakluyt Society.
In a sermon preached on board in January 1580, Fletcher suggested that the problems the mariners had recently faced off Celebes (the ship at one point was stuck on rocks and provisions, ammunition and other items except the spoils captured from the Spaniards were jettisoned to help refloat the ship) resulted from the unjust death of fellow mariner Thomas Doughty. Drake had ordered Doughty to be beheaded on 2 July 1578 for treachery and incitement to mutiny.
Fletcher’s critical opinion of Drake’s behaviour led to a breakdown in relations between the two men with the following result:
Memorandum that Drake excommunicated Fletcher shortly after they were come off the rock in this manner, viz, he caused him to be made fast into the hatches by one of his legs with a …. and a staple knocked fast into the hatches in the forecastle of his ship. He called all the company together, and then put a …. lock about one of his legs, and Drake sitting cross legged on a chest, and a pair of pantoffles in his hand, he said:
Francis Fletcher I do here excommunicate thee out of ye Church of God and from all benefices and graces thereof, and I denounce thee to the devil and all his angels; and then he charged him upon pain of death not once to come before the mast, for if he did, he swear he should be hanged; and Drake caused a ‘posy’ to be written and bound about Fletcher’s arm, with charge that if he took it off he should be hanged. The ‘posy’ was: ‘Francis Fletcher ye falsest knave that liveth’.
At some point during the voyage back to England, Fletcher was able to remove the label without dire consequences. Whereas Drake was knighted by Elizabeth I and continued his maritime career after the circumnavigation, Fletcher became a parish priest.
The map is taken from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elizabeth_Island.jpg. The full attribution is ‘John Conyers (fl 1677) after Francis Fletcher (c.1555-1619) public domain’.
The full text of The world encompassed is available on the Google Books website.
See also Perry, W. S., ‘Francis Fletcher: explorer and priest’, The Sewanee Review Vol. 2, February 1894, No. 2, pages 129-139, The Johns Hopkins University Press.