{{short description|English diarist}} {{Infobox writer <!--For more information, see :Template:Infobox Writer/doc.--> | name = Francis Pretty | occupation = Man-at-Arms | language = English | nationality = English | period = Elizabethan | genre = Diarist | subject = Exploration }}
[[File:Title page of Beschryvinge vande overtreffelijcke ende wydtvermaerde zee-vaerdt vanden edelen heer ende meester Thomas Candisch.jpg|alt=Title page of the 1617 edition of Emanuel van Meteren's publication of Pretty's diaries in Dutch|thumb|Title page of the 1617 edition of Emanuel van Meteren's publication of Pretty's diaries in Dutch]]
'''Francis Pretty''' was a Suffolk gentleman,<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hart|first1=Albert Bushnell|last2=Curtis|first2=John Gould|title=American History Told by Contemporaries|year=1897|publisher=Macmillan|page=[https://archive.org/details/americanhistory04hartgoog/page/81/mode/1up 81]|url=https://archive.org/details/americanhistory04hartgoog|language=en}}</ref> diarist, sailor, and man-at-arms, who wrote a detailed account of the circumnavigation of the globe with Thomas Cavendish (1588). Due to the dubious legality of the expedition, accounts were officially suppressed; the earliest unofficial accounts were published in Dutch by Emanuel van Meteren who purchased the diary. Excerpts of the diary 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.
Pretty is also often credited for the account of Sir Francis Drake's circumnavigation (1577–1580).<ref name="Thompson2010">{{cite book| last=Thompson| first=Gunnar| title=Commander Francis Drake & the West Coast Mysteries| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Nh2mAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA103| year=2010| publisher=Lulu.com| isbn=978-0-557-49486-6| page=103}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=svtPzefAv-MC| title=Sir Francis Drake: The Queen's Pirate| last=Kelsey| first=Harry| publisher=Yale University Press| year=2001| isbn=0300084633| location=New Haven, CT| pages=88 (footnote 97)| language=en}}</ref><ref name="ThrowerStudies1984">{{cite book| editor=Thrower, Norman Joseph William| title=Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577–1580: Essays commemorating the quadricentennial of Drake's circumnavigation of the Earth| url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tPJVxZu8btoC&pg=PA201| year=1984| publisher=University of California Press| isbn=978-0-520-04876-8| page=201}}</ref><ref>The widely distributed Harvard Classics, Volume 33 of 1910 led to this generally-accepted error. {{cite book| url=https://archive.org/details/harvardclassics33elio/page/207/mode/1up| page=207| volume=33. Voyages and travels, ancient and modern| title=Harvard Classics| editor=C.W. Eliot| publisher=P.F. Collier and Son| year=1910| accessdate=19 March 2022| chapter=Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Around the World}}</ref> According to Henry Raup Wagner however, it is highly unlikely if not impossible for Pretty to have written the account, as there is no evidence that he took part in that expedition, while there is evidence that he did not do so.<ref>{{cite book| last=Wagner| first=Henry Raup| title=Sir Francis Drake's Voyage Around the World, Its Aims and Achievements| year=1926| url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015031460283| pages=[https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015031460283&view=1up&seq=278&skin=2021 238–240]| publisher=John Howell| location=San Francisco}}</ref> This is the account of Drake's expedition, in which the privateer's contact with native peoples along the coast near 38°N (present-day California) is mentioned. There Drake would have left ''"a plate, nailed upon a faire great poste, whereupon was ingraven her Maiesties name, the day and yeere of our arrivall there, with the free giving up of the province and people into her Maiesties hands, together with her highnes picture and armes, in a peece of six pence of current English money, under the plate, where under was also written the name of our Generall."''<ref>{{cite book| last=Hakluyt| first=Richard| title=The famous voyage of Sir Francis Drake into the South Sea and there hence about the whole Globe of the Earth| date=1589| url=https://archive.org/details/cihm_35668/page/n692/mode/1up| language=English}}</ref> This description provided the basis for the Drake's Plate hoax.
==External links== * {{Gutenberg author|id=1078}} * [http://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1580Pretty-drake.asp Modern History Sourcebooks] (Fordham University) * [http://bibliotecanacional.aw/digital/?item=BNA-DIG-KOSTBARE-0425 Van Meteren's ''Beschrijvinge'' (1617 edition)] (National Library of Aruba)
==References== {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Pretty, Francis}} Category:16th-century English sailors Category:16th-century English diarists Category:Writers from Suffolk