Mynheer, Sir Francis, the valley society, the very smell of the river on his right purling along to the bay past fish weirs and rocks, and ahead the sleepy ribbon of moon-drenched road.

Instead of quelling the dissension, as many captains of the era would have done ( Sir Francis Drake lopped a man's head off under similar circumstances ), Hudson decided to be reasonable.

* 1740 – Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, English merchant banker ( d. 1810 )

* 1982 – 1990 Sir Francis Graham-Smith

He was then deluged with petitions urging him to call it together, and this agitation was opposed by Sir George Jeffreys and Francis Wythens, who presented addresses expressing abhorrence of the Petitioners, and thus initiated the movement of the abhorrers, who supported the action of the king.

Before he entered parliament, Disraeli was involved with several women, most notably Henrietta, Lady Sykes ( the wife of Sir Francis Sykes, 3rd Bt ), who served as the model for Henrietta Temple.

A Young Disraeli by Francis Grant ( artist ) | Sir Francis Grant, 1852

Of these only Henrietta Temple ( based on his affair with Henrietta Sykes, wife of Sir Francis William Sykes, 3rd Bt ) was a true success.

Similarly, the influences of philosophers such as Sir Francis Bacon ( 1561 – 1626 ) and René Descartes ( 1596 – 1650 ), who demanded more rigor in mathematics and in removing bias from scientific observations, led to a scientific revolution.

The first recorded English visitor was Sir Francis Drake in 1586, who reported that the caymanas were edible, but it was the turtles which attracted ships in search of fresh meat for their crews.

Trevor Huddleston, Sir Julian Huxley, Edward Hyams, the Bishop of Llandaff Dr Glyn Simon, Doris Lessing, Sir Compton Mackenzie, the Very Rev George McLeod, Miles Malleson, Denis Matthews, Sir Francis Meynell, Henry Moore, John Napper, Ben Nicholson, Sir Herbert Read, Flora Robson, Michael Tippett, the cartoonist ' Vicky ', Professor C. H. Waddington and Barbara Wootton.

In 1586, Sir Francis Drake captured the city of Santo Domingo, collecting a ransom for its return to Spanish rule.

The Neustra Señora del Rosario, the Spanish Armada's " payship " commanded by Admiral Pedro de Valdés, was captured along with all its crew by Sir Francis Drake.

* Piggott, Sir Francis.

* 1577 – Sir Francis Drake sets out from Plymouth, England, on his round-the-world voyage.

The modern field and term were first formulated by Sir Francis Galton in 1883, drawing on the recent work of his half-cousin Charles Darwin.

Elizabeth's reign is known as the Elizabethan era, famous above all for the flourishing of English drama, led by playwrights such as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe, and for the seafaring prowess of English adventurers such as Sir Francis Drake.

Mary may not have been told of every Catholic plot to put her on the English throne, but from the Ridolfi Plot of 1571 ( which caused Mary's suitor, the Duke of Norfolk, to lose his head ) to the Babington Plot of 1586, Elizabeth's spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and the royal council keenly assembled a case against her.

Meanwhile, Sir Francis Drake had undertaken a major voyage against Spanish ports and ships to the Caribbean in 1585 and 1586, and in 1587 had made a successful raid on Cadiz, destroying the Spanish fleet of war ships intended for the Enterprise of England: Philip II had decided to take the war to England.

With the exception of Lord Burghley, the most important politicians had died around 1590: The Earl of Leicester in 1588, Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, Sir Christopher Hatton in 1591.

On 23 March 1581 Sir Francis Walsingham advised the Earl of Huntingdon that two days earlier Anne Vavasour, one of the Queen's Maids of Honour, had given birth to a son, and that " the Earl of Oxford is avowed to be the father, who hath withdrawn himself with intent, as it is thought, to pass the seas ".

In 1590 he married Frances Walsingham, daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham and widow of Sir Philip Sidney, by whom he was to have several children, three of whom survived into adulthood.

After Throckmorton's death in 1571 there quickly evolved a political alliance between the Earl of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham, soon to be Secretary of State.

Sir Francis Walsingham, who trapped Mary, Queen of Scots | Mary Stuart in the Babington Plot.

Sir Francis Walsingham ( c. 1532 – 6 April 1590 ) was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death, and is popularly remembered as her " spymaster ".

William Walsingham served as a member of the commission that was appointed to investigate the estates of Cardinal Thomas Wolsey in 1530, and his elder brother, Sir Edmund Walsingham, was the lieutenant of the Tower of London.

Engraving of Queen Elizabeth I, William Cecil and Sir Francis Walsingham, by William Faithorne, 1655

He also painted Mary, Queen of Scots, Sir Nicholas Bacon, Sir Francis Walsingham, Lord High Admiral Howard.

After his education at St John's College, Cambridge, Salisbury was made Secretary of State following the death of Sir Francis Walsingham in 1590, and he became the leading minister after the death of his father in 1598, serving both Queen Elizabeth and King James as Secretary of State.

The son of Lord Burghley ( Queen Elizabeth's principal minister ) and a protégé of Sir Francis Walsingham ( Elizabeth's principal spymaster ), he was trained by them in matters of spycraft as a matter of course.

His mother was Frances Walsingham ( 1569 – 1631 ), the only daughter of Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth's spymaster.

Despite the Puritans ' rousing opposition in the country ( which her zealously anti-catholic councillor Sir Francis Walsingham secretly approves of ), Elizabeth seems taken with the witty and flower-tongued François.

Sir Francis Walsingham definitely thinks so, and will use any means to convince Elizabeth to eliminate Mary.

Even as Elizabeth rebukes the hawks ( privateers ) in her council ( both Walsingham and Sir Francis Drake ), with hopes of peace ( encouraged by Cecil, who is now Lord Burghley ), the Spanish Armada appears on the horizons of England.

* Sir Francis Walsingham, spy master to Elizabeth I, and his son, Sir Thomas Walsingham.

* Lady Murray, The Making of a Civil Servant: Sir Oswyn Murray, Secretary of the Admiralty 1917-1936 ( London, 1940 ).

Disraeli's proposal to extend the tax to Ireland gained him further enemies, and he was also hampered by an unexpected increase in defence expenditure, which was forced on him by Derby and Sir John Pakington ( Secretary of State for War and the Colonies ) ( leading to his celebrated remark to John Bright about the " damned defences ").

Sir John Simon MP, another future Foreign Secretary, was also horrified at the tactics being used.

" Churchill – who was himself only thirty-eight years old in 1912 – took to him immediately and he was appointed Private Naval Secretary to the First Lord against the advice of First Sea Lord Sir Arthur Wilson.

After the death of his father in 1562, he became a ward of Queen Elizabeth and received an excellent education in the household of her Principal Secretary, Sir William Cecil.

Because the 16th Earl held land from the Crown by knight service, after his father's death on 3 August 1562, Oxford became a royal ward of the 29-year-old Queen, and was placed in the household of Sir William Cecil, her Secretary of State and chief advisor.

Significant post-retirement activities of earlier Governors-General have included: Lord Tennyson was appointed Deputy Governor of the Isle of Wight ; Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson ( by now Lord Novar ) became Secretary of State for Scotland ; and Lord Gowrie became Chairman of the Marylebone Cricket Club ( Lord Forster had also held this post, before his appointment as Governor-General ).

The usual wording of official announcements of this nature was " The King has been pleased to appoint ...", but on this occasion the announcement said merely " The King has appointed ...", and his Private Secretary Lord Stamfordham asked the Solicitor-General, Sir Robert Garran, to make sure Scullin was aware of the exact wording.

He was Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between 1834 and 1835 and again Foreign Secretary between 1841 and 1846 under Sir Robert Peel. It was during his second stint as Foreign Secretary that he settled two disagreements with the US – the Northeast Boundary dispute by the Webster-Ashburton Treaty ( 1842 ), and the Oregon dispute by the Oregon Treaty of 1846.

Major was promoted to the Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1987, following the general election, and in a surprise re-shuffle in July 1989, a relatively inexperienced Major was appointed Foreign Secretary, succeeding Sir Geoffrey Howe.

Following his resignation as Prime Minister, Major briefly became Leader of the Opposition, and Shadow Foreign Secretary ( as Sir Malcolm Rifkind, who was Foreign Secretary prior to the election, had lost his seat ), and remained in this post until the election of William Hague as leader of the Conservative Party in June 1997.

Abbadie had also written, at the request of the king, Histoire de la dernière Conspiration d ' Angleterre, 1696, a history of the conspiracy of 1696, which was reprinted in Holland and translated into English, and for which the Earl of Portland and Secretary Sir William Trumbull placed original documents at the author's disposal.

was signed in London on 18 June 1935 by Ribbentrop and Sir Samuel Hoare, the new British Foreign Secretary.

Mansel, John Lawrence, younger brother of H. M. Lawrence, and of Sir Henry Elliot, Secretary to the Government of India.

In 1830 Captain Charles Sturt reached the river after travelling down its tributary the Murrumbidgee River and named it the Murray River in honour of the then British Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, Sir George Murray, not realising it was the same river that Hume and Hovell had encountered further upstream.

In 1785, Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, Secretary to the Prince of Wales, leased a large area of moorland from the Duchy of Cornwall estate, hoping to convert it into good farmland.

The Metropolitan Police was formed by Home Secretary Sir Robert Peel with the implementation of the Metropolitan Police Act, passed by Parliament in 1829.

The East India Company Governor, Sir Hudson Lowe ( 1816 – 1821 ), was appointed by and directly reported to Lord Bathurst, the Secretary for War and the Colonies, in London.

On April 20, 1960, Sir Milton Margai led the twenty four members of the Sierra Leonean delegation at the constitutional conferences that were held with Queen Elizabeth II and British Colonial Secretary Iain Macleod in the negotiations for independence held at the Lancaster House in London.