prefacing his account, Eden asserts that the English can only get to Africa, and
so beyond it, through the Portuguese, the “Lordes of halfe the world,” whose
“voyages to Calicut” have opened up Africa’s eastern shores ( 6 : 141 , 144 ). While
on the one hand he acknowledges that those who did the work of “discover-
ing and conquering...such landes ought by good reason to have certaine
privileges, preheminences, and tributes for the same,” on the other he argues
that it is “agaynst good reason and conscience,” “agaynst the charitie that
ought to be among Christian men, that such as invade the dominions of other
[sic] should not permit other friendly to use the trade of marchandise in
places neerer, or seldome frequented of them, whereby their trade is not hin-
dered in such places” ( 6 : 141 ). Notably, here the Guineans drop out of the pic-
ture: it is the traffic of the Portuguese that the English mean to share, and
Eden’s strong, if not defensive, insistence that any obstruction to this “use”
goes against good reason, conscience, and Christian charity suggests that the
Portuguese have stood in England’s way.
In detailing the voyage itself, Eden casts an accepting but wary eye on En-
gland’s dependence on these rivals. His hero is the “expert Pilot” Antonio Pin-
teado who had been one of Portugal’s top naval commanders but who had
defected to England in 1552. Eden not only praises Pinteado as “a wise, dis-
creet, and sober man” ( 6 : 145 ); he also contrasts him to the English co-captain,
Thomas Wyndham, “a terrible Hydra” and “an unequal companion,” “with
vertues few or none adorned” ( 6 : 146 – 47 ). The conflict between them, in fact,
defines and derails the venture, with Wyndham first flattering Pinteado and
then denying him his due command. According to Eden, when the mariners
reached their destination, the problem escalated to the point that Wyndham,
not satisfied with the amount of gold his men had collected, overrode Pin-
teado’s urging that, with intemperate weather approaching, the English
should return home. Calling Pinteado a “whoreson Jew” and threatening to
“cut off his eares and nail them to the maste,” Wyndham demanded that the
company press on to Benin ( 6 : 148 ). Pinteado acquiesced, but while he and a
small party were on shore there, negotiating with the king (“a blacke Moore”
who spoke Portuguese “which he had learned of a child”), Wyndham “brake
open” all of Pinteado’s “chestes, spoiled such provision of cold stilled waters
and suckets as he had provided for his health, and left him nothing, neither
of his instruments to saile by, nor yet of his apparell” ( 6 : 149 , 151 ).^45 Wyndham
died before Pinteado returned, but “certaine of the mariners and other offi-
cers” aboard continued to oppose and demean their Portuguese captain,
“spit[ting] in his face, some calling him Jewe,” holding him aboard ship
56 chapter two