Of course, Bill, you have inferred that punishment was the CAUSE of the mutiny aboard a Drake ship, and I have no problem one way of the other with your analysis, since I do not know.  What I differ with is your conclusion that such punishment was viewed as "cruelty" by the standards of the Elizabethan Navy; a subtle difference, but a very important one in writing genealogy.

By OUR standards, the executions by burning of Joan of Arc and Col. Wm. Crawford - and untold thousands of others - were cruel beyond imagination, but in those periods many devout, honest, and decent folks felt no remorse whatever and, indeed, thought that those folks got their "just desserts".

So, were the Indians who burned Crawford or the French who burned Joan "cruel"?  Intellectual honesty requires that I say that to them it MAY - MAY - have been cruelty; to us it WAS, indeed just that.  As Mr. Justice Holmes said, "A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanging.  It is, rather, the skin of a living thought, and its meaning may vary greatly with the time and the context in which it is found."  The date and time make all the difference, don't those??       
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Bill Cross 
  To: [log in to unmask] 
  Sent: Tuesday, August 31, 2004 4:01 PM
  Subject: Re: Sir Francis discussion



  ....That Drake's methods were cruel even by their time is evidenced by the existence of mutiny (and hence the severe punishment for that crime). ....
  Bottom line: we must be careful about judging others, but that doesn't mean that certain practices are just plain cruel no matter what the age.

  Bill Cross

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