Francis Pretty

Francis Pretty
Occupation	Man-at-Arms
Language	English
Nationality	English
Period	Elizabethan
Genre	Diarist
Subject	Exploration

Francis Pretty was a Suffolk gentleman, diarist, sailor, and man-at-arms, who wrote detailed accounts of two separate circumnavigation of the globe, first with Sir Francis Drake (1577-1580) and later with Thomas Cavendish (1588). Due to the dubious legality of these expeditions, accounts were officially suppressed; the earliest unofficial accounts were published in Dutch by Emanuel van Meteren who purchased both diaries and mixed elements of one with the other. Excerpts of both diaries were also included in Richard Hakluyt's 1582 and 1589 treatises on British explorations of North America, before he published the Cavendish diary in its entirety in 1600.

In his account of Drake's expedition, Pretty describes the privateer's contact with native peoples along the coast near 43°N (present-day Oregon). There he left a large "plate, nailed upon a fair great post, whereupon was engraved her Majesty's name, the day and year of our arrival there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her Majesty's hands, together with her Highness' picture and arms, in a piece of six pence of current English money, under the plate, whereunder was also written the name of our General." This description provided the basis for the famous Drake's Plate hoax.

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