Voyage of Gilbert and Raleigh.
Shipwreck of Gilbert.
Meanwhile in the autumn of 1578, while the coasts of Chili were echoing the roar of the Golden Hind's cannon, a squadron of seven ships sailed from England, with intent to found a permanent colony on the Atlantic coast of North America. Its captain was one of the most eminent of Devonshire worthies, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and one of the ships was commanded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, a young man of six-and-twenty who had lately returned from volunteer service in the Netherlands. The destination of the voyage was "Norumbega," which may have meant any place between the Hudson and Penobscot rivers, but was conceived with supreme vagueness, as may be seen from Michael Lok's map of 1582.[13]This littlefleet had at least one savage fight with Spaniards, and returned to Plymouth without accomplishing anything. In 1583 Gilbert sought a favourable place for settlement on the southern coast of Newfoundland, probably with a view to driving the Spaniards away from the fishing grounds, but an ill fate overtook him. On the American coast his principal vessel crushed its bows against a sunken rock and nearly all hands were lost. With two small ships the captain soon set sail for home, but his own tiny craft foundered in a terrible storm near Fayal. As she sank, Gilbert cheerily shouted over the tafferel to his consort, "The way to heaven is as near by sea as by land," a speech, says his chronicler, "well beseeming a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was."
Gilbert's patent granted to Raleigh.
It was not Raleigh's fault that he did not share the fate of his revered half-brother, for the queen's mind had been full of forebodings and she had refused to let him go on the voyage. It was since the former disastrous expedition that Raleigh had so quickly risen in favour at court; that he had thrown down his velvet cloak as a mat for Elizabeth's feet and had written on a window-pane the well-known verse which that royal coquette so cleverly capped. He became Captain of the Queen's Guard and Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and was presented with the confiscated estates of traitors in England and Ireland. In 1584, when his late half-brother's patent for land in America expired, it was renewed in Raleigh's name. On March 25th was sealed thedocument that empowered him to "hold by homage remote heathen and barbarous lands, not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, which he might discover within the next six years."[14]As had been the custom with Spanish and Portuguese grants to explorers, one fifth of the gold and silver to be obtained was to be reserved for the crown. The heathen and barbarous land which Raleigh had in view was the Atlantic coast of North America so far as he might succeed in occupying it. He knew that Spain claimed it all as her own by virtue of the bull of Pope Alexander VI., but Elizabeth had already declared in 1581 that she cared nothing for papal bulls and would recognize no Spanish claims to America save such as were based upon discovery followed by actual possession.[15]Raleigh's attention had long been turned toward Florida. In youth he had served in France under Coligny, and had opportunities for hearing that statesman's plan for founding a Protestant state in America discussed. We have seen Le Moine, the French artist who escaped from the Florida massacre, consorting with Raleigh and with Sir Philip Sidney. Upon those men fell the mantle of Coligny, and the people of the United States may well be proud to point to such noble figures standing upon the threshold of our history.
Promise of self-government.
One provision in the Gilbert patent, now renewed for Raleigh, is worth especial mention. It was agreed that the English colonies which shouldbe planted in America "should have all the privileges of free denizens and persons native of England, in such ample manner as if they were born and personally resident in our said realm of England," and that any law to the contrary should be of no effect; furthermore, that the people of those colonies should be governed by such statutes as they might choose to establish for themselves, provided that such statutes "conform as near as conveniently may be with those of England, and do not oppugn the Christian faith, or anyway withdraw the people of those lands from our allegiance." A more unequivocal acknowledgment of the rights of self-government which a British government of two centuries later saw fit to ignore, it would be hard to find. Gilbert and Raleigh demanded and Elizabeth granted in principle just what Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams demanded and George III. refused to concede.
Voyage of Amidas and Barlow, 1584.
The wealthy Raleigh could act promptly, and before five weeks had elapsed two ships, commanded by Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow, had started on a reconnoitring voyage. On the 4th of July, 1584, they reached the country now known as North Carolina, at some point not far from Cape Lookout. Thence a northerly run of over a hundred miles brought them to the New Inlet, through which they passed into Pamlico Sound and visited Roanoke Island. They admired the noble pine-trees and red cedars, marvelled at the abundance of game, and found the native barbarians polite andfriendly. Their attempt to learn the name of the country resulted as not uncommonly in such first parleys between strange tongues. The Indian of whom the question was asked had no idea what was meant and uttered at random the Ollendorfian reply, "Win-gan-da-coa," which signified, "What pretty clothes you wear!" So when Amidas and Barlow returned to England they said they had visited a country by the name of Wingandacoa; but the queen, with a touch of the euphuism then so fashionable, suggested that it should be called, in honour of herself, Virginia.
Ralph Lane's expedition, 1585.
Rescue of Lane by Sir Francis "the Dragon."
In the spring of 1585 Raleigh, who had lately been knighted, sent out a hundred or more men commanded by Ralph Lane, to make the beginnings of a settlement. They were convoyed by Raleigh's cousin, Sir Richard Grenville, with seven well-armed ships. They entered Pamlico Sound through Ocracoke Inlet, and trouble with the natives at once began. One of the Indians stole a silver cup, and Grenville unwisely retaliated by setting fire to their standing corn. Having thus sown the seeds of calamity he set the colonists ashore upon Roanoke Island and went on his way. The sagacious and energetic Lane explored the neighbouring mainland for many miles along the coast and for some distance into the interior, and even tried to find a waterway into the Pacific Ocean. He made up his mind that the country was not favourable for a new colony, and he gathered sundry bits of information which seemed to point to Chesapeake Bay as a much better place. The angry Indians mademuch trouble, and after a year had passed the colonists were suffering from scarcity of food, when all at once Sir Francis Drake appeared on the scene with a superb fleet of three-and-twenty ships. War between Spain and England had been declared in July, 1585, when Sidney and Drake were about ready to execute a scheme that contemplated the founding of an American colony by Sidney. But the queen interfered and sent Sidney to the Netherlands, where he was so soon to die a noble death. The terrible Drake, whom Spaniards, punning upon his name, had begun to call "Dragon," gave them fresh cause to dread and revile him. He had captured 20 ships with 250 cannon, he had taken and sacked Cartagena, St. Domingo, and St. Augustine, and on his way home looked in at Roanoke Island, in time to take Lane and his starving party on board and carry them back to England. They had not long been gone when Grenville arrived with supplies, and was astonished at finding the island deserted. Knowing nothing of Lane's change of purpose, and believing that his party must still be somewhere in the adjacent country, Grenville left a guard of fifteen men on the island, with ample supplies, and sailed away.
Cavendish's voyage around the world, 1586-88.
Drake "singes the beard" of Philip II.
The stirring days of the Armada were approaching. When Lane arrived in England, his services were needed there, and after a while we find him a member of the Council of War. One of this first American colonizing party was the wonderful Suffolk boy, Thomas Cavendish, aged two-and-twenty,who had no sooner landed in England than he set sail in command of three ships, made his way into the Pacific Ocean, and repeated the exploits of Drake from Chili to California, captured one of Spain's finest galleons, and then in two years more completed the circumnavigation of the globe. While the pupil was thus nobly acquitting himself, the master in the spring of 1587 outdid all former achievements. Sailing into the harbour of Cadiz, Drake defeated the warships on guard there, calmly loaded his own vessels with as much Spanish spoil as could safely be carried, then set fire to the storeships and cut their cables. More than a hundred transports, some of them 1,500 tons in burthen, all laden with stores for the Armada, became a tangled and drifting mass of blazing ruin, while amid the thunder of exploding magazines the victor went forth on his way unscathed and rejoicing. Day after day he crouched under the beetling crags of Cintra, catching and sinking every craft that passed that lair, then swept like a tempest into the bay of Coruña and wrought similar havoc to that of Cadiz, then stood off for the Azores and captured the great carrack on its way from the Indies with treasure reckoned by millions. Europe stood dumb with amazement. What manner of man was it that could thus "singe the King of Spain's beard"? "Philip one day invited a lady of the court to join him in his barge on the Lake of Segovia. The lady said she dared not trust herself on the water, even with his Majesty," for fear of Sir FrancisDrake.[16]Philip's Armada had to wait for another year, while by night and day the music of adze and hammer was heard in English shipyards.
White's colony on Roanoke Island, 1587.
Just as "the Dragon" returned to England another party of Raleigh's colonists was approaching the American coast. There were about 150, including 17 women. John White, a man deft with water-colours, who had been the artist of Lane's expedition, was their governor. Their settlement was to be made on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, but first they must stop at Roanoke Island and pick up the fifteen men left on watch by Grenville. Through some carelessness or misunderstanding or bad faith on the part of the convoy, the people once landed were left in the lurch with only one small vessel, and thus were obliged to stay on that fatal Roanoke Island. They soon found that Grenville's little guard had been massacred by red men. It was under these gloomy circumstances that the first child of English parents was born on the soil of the United States. The governor's daughter Eleanor was wife of Ananias Dare, and their little girl, born August 18, 1587, was named Virginia. Before she was ten days old her grandfather found it necessary to take the ship and return to England for help.
The Invincible Armada, 1588.
But the day of judgment for Spain and England was at hand, and lesser things must wait. Amid the turmoil of military preparation, Sir Walter was not unmindful of his little colony. Twice he fitted out relief expeditions, but the firstwas stopped because all the ships were seized for government service, and the second was driven back into port by Spanish cruisers. While the anxious governor waited through the lengthening days into the summer of 1588, there came, with its imperious haste, its deadly agony and fury, its world-astounding triumph, the event most tremendous, perhaps, that mankind have witnessed since the star of the Wise Men stood over the stable at Bethlehem. Then you might have seen the sea kings working in good fellowship together,—Drake and Hawkins, Winter and Frobisher, with Howard of Effingham in the Channel fleet; Raleigh and Grenville active alike in council and afield; the two great ministers, Burghley and Walsingham, ever crafty and vigilant; and in the background on her white palfrey the eccentric figure of the strangely wayward and wilful but always brave and patriotic Queen. Even after three centuries it is with bated breath that we watch those 130 black hulks coming up the Channel, with 3,000 cannon and 30,000 men on board, among them ninety executioners withal, equipped with racks and thumbscrews, to inaugurate on English soil the accursed work of the Inquisition. In camp at Dunkirk the greatest general of the age, Alexander Farnese, with 35,000 veterans is crouching for a spring, like a still greater general at Boulogne in later days; and one wonders if the 80,000 raw militia slowly mustering in the busy little towns and green hamlets of England can withstand these well-trained warriors.
Defeat of the Invincible Armada.
Battle of Cadiz, 1596.
In the English fleet there were about as manyships as the enemy had, much smaller in size and inferior in weight of metal, but at the same time far more nimble in movement. Of cannon and men the English had scarcely half as many as the Spaniards, but this disparity was more than offset by one great advantage. Our forefathers had already begun to display the inventive ingenuity for which their descendants in both hemispheres have since become preëminent. Many of their ships were armed with new guns, of longer range than any hitherto known, and this advantage, combined with their greater nimbleness, made it possible in many cases to pound a Spanish ship to pieces without receiving any serious hurt in return. In such respects, as well as in the seamanship by which the two fleets were handled, it was modern intelligence pitted against mediæval chivalry. Such captains as served Elizabeth were not reared under the blighting shadow of the Escurial. With the discomfiture of the Invincible Armada before Dunkirk, the army of Farnese at once became useless for invading England. Then came the awful discovery that the mighty fleet was penned up in the German Ocean, for Drake held the Strait of Dover in his iron grip. The horrors of the long retreat through northern seas have never been equalled save when Napoleon's hosts were shattered in Russia. In the disparity of losses, as in the immensity of the issues at stake, we are reminded of the Greeks and Persians at Salamis; of Spaniards more than 20,000 perished, but scarcely 100 Englishmen. The frightful loss of ships and guns announced theoverthrow of Spanish supremacy, but the bitter end was yet to come. During the next three years the activity of the sea kings reached such a pitch that more than 800 Spanish ships were destroyed.[17]The final blow came soon after the deaths of Drake and Hawkins in 1596, when Raleigh, with the Earl of Essex and Lord Thomas Howard, destroyed the Spanish fleet in that great battle before Cadiz whereof Raleigh wrote that "if any man had a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most lively figured."[18]
Mystery of the fate of White's colony.
It was not until March, 1591, that Governor White succeeded in getting to sea again for the rescue of his family and friends. He had to go as passenger in a West Indiaman. When he landed, upon the return voyage, at Roanoke Island, it was just in time to have celebrated his little grandchild's fourth birthday. It had been agreed that should the colonists leave that spot they should carve upon a tree the name of the place to which they were going, and if they should add to the name a cross it would be understood as a signal of distress. When White arrived he found grass growing in the deserted blockhouse. Under the cedars hard by five chests had been buried, and somebody had afterwards dug them up and rifled them. Fragments of his own books and pictures lay scattered about. On a great tree was cut in big letters, but without any cross, the wordCroatan, which was the name of a neighbouringisland. The captain of the ship was at first willing to take White to Croatan, but a fierce storm overtook him and after beating about for some days he insisted upon making for England in spite of the poor man's entreaties. No more did White ever hear of his loved ones. Sixteen years afterward the settlers at Jamestown were told by Indians that the white people abandoned at Roanoke had mingled with the natives and lived with them for some years on amicable terms until at the instigation of certain medicine-men (who probably accused them of witchcraft) they had all been murdered, except four men, two boys, and a young woman, who were spared by request or order of a chief. Whether this young woman was Virginia Dare, the first American girl, we have no means of knowing.[19]
Significance of the defeat of the Armada.
Nothing could better illustrate than the pathetic fate of this little colony how necessary it was to destroy the naval power of Spain before England could occupy the soil of North America. The defeat of the Invincible Armada was the opening event in the history of the United States. It was the event that made all the rest possible. Without it the attempts at Jamestown and Plymouth could hardly have had more success than the attempt at Roanoke Island. An infant colony is like an army at the end of a long line of communications; it perishes if theline is cut. Before England could plant thriving states in America she must control the ocean routes. The far-sighted Raleigh understood the conditions of the problem. When he smote the Spaniards at Cadiz he knew it was a blow struck for America. He felt the full significance of the defeat of the Armada, and in spite of all his disappointments with Virginia, he never lost heart. In 1602 he wrote to Sir Robert Cecil, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation."
In the following chapters we shall see how Raleigh's brave words came true.
A DISCOURSE OF WESTERN PLANTING.
Sixteenth century maps.
Inall the history of human knowledge there is no more fascinating chapter than that which deals with the gradual expansion of men's geographical ideas consequent upon the great voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is not a tale so written that he who runs may read it, but its events have rather to be slowly deciphered from hundreds of quaint old maps, whereon islands and continents, mountains and rivers, are delineated with very slight resemblance to what we now know to be the reality; where, for instance, Gog and Magog show a strong tendency to get mixed up with Memphremagog, where the capital of China stands a few hundred miles north of the city of Mexico, and your eye falls upon a river which you feel sure is the St. Lawrence until you learn that it is meant for the Yang-tse-Kiang. In the sixteenth century scarcely any intellectual stimulus could be found more potent than the sight of such maps, revealing unknown lands, or cities and rivers with strange names, places of which many marvels had been recounted and almost anything might be believed.
Richard Hakluyt.
One afternoon in the year 1568, the lawyer Richard Hakluyt was sitting at his desk in theMiddle Temple, with a number of such maps and sundry new books of cosmography spread out before him, when the door opened and his young cousin and namesake, then a boy of sixteen studying at Westminster School, came into the room. The elder Richard opened the Bible at the 107th Psalm, and pointed to the verses which declare that "they which go downe to the sea in ships and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep;" then he called the lad's attention to the maps, in which he soon became absorbed. This incident determined the career of the younger Richard Hakluyt, and led to his playing an important part in the beginnings of the United States of America. A learned and sagacious writer upon American history, Mr. Doyle, of All Souls College, Oxford, has truly said that it is "hard to estimate at its full value the debt which succeeding generations owe to Richard Hakluyt."[20]In 1570 he became a student at Christ Church, Oxford, and took his master's degree in 1577. His book called "Divers Voyages," dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, was published in 1582. From 1583 to 1588 he was chaplain of the English legation at Paris, and before his return he was appointed canon of Bristol, an office which he held till 1605. Thus for many years he lived in the city of the Cabots, the cradle of the new era of maritime adventure. He came to be recognized as one of the foremost geographers of the age and the greatest living English authority on matters relating to theNew World. The year following the defeat of the Armada witnessed the publication of his book entitled "Principal Voyages," which Froude well calls "the prose epic of the modern English nation."[21]In 1605 he was made a prebendary of Westminster, and eleven years later was buried with distinguished honours beneath the pavement of the great Abbey.
Adventures of a manuscript.
The book of Hakluyt's which here most nearly concerns us is the "Discourse of Western Planting," written in 1584, shortly before the return of the ships of Amidas and Barlow from Roanoke Island. It was not published, nor was immediate publication its aim. It was intended to influence the mind of Queen Elizabeth. The manuscript was handed to her about September, 1584, and after a while was lost sight of until after a long period of oblivion it turned up in the library of Sir Peter Thomson, an indefatigable collector of literary treasures, who died in 1770. It was bought from his family by Lord Valentia, after whose death it passed into the hands of the famous bibliophile Henry Stevens, who sold it to Sir Thomas Phillips for his vast collection of archives at Thirlestane House, Cheltenham. In 1869 a copy of it was made for Dr. Leonard Woods, President of Bowdoin College, by whom it was ably edited for the Maine Historical Society; and at length, in 1877, after a sleep of nearly three centuries, it was printed at our New England Cambridge, at the University Press, andpublished with valuable notes by the late Dr. Charles Deane.
Reasons for planting English colonies in America.
English trade with the Netherlands.
Hakluyt wrote this document at the request of Raleigh, who wished to persuade the queen to invest money in a colonizing expedition to the New World. Such an enterprise, he felt, was too great for any individual purse and needed support from government. No one had studied the subject so thoroughly as Hakluyt, and so Raleigh enlisted his services. In twenty-one brief chapters Hakluyt sets forth the various reasons why England should plant colonies on the coast of North America. The chief reasons are that such colonies will enlarge the occasions and facilities for driving Spanish ships from the Newfoundland fisheries and capturing Spanish treasure on its way from Mexico and the isthmus of Darien; they will be serviceable as stations toward the discovery and use of the northwest passage to Cathay; after a while they will furnish a valuable market for the products of English industry, especially woollen and linen cloths; they will increase the royal revenue by customs duties; they will afford new material for the growth of the navy; and in various ways they will relieve England of its idlers and vagrants by finding occupation for them abroad. In his terse quaint way, the writer emphasizes these points. As for the Spanish king, "if you touche him in the Indies you touche the apple of his eye; for take away his treasure, which isnervus belli, and which he hath almoste [all] out of his West Indies, his olde bandes of souldiers will soone be dissolved, his purposes defeated, ... his pride abated, and his tyranie utterly suppressed." "He shall be left bare as Æsop's proude crowe." With regard to creating a new market he says: "Nowe if her Majestie take these westerne discoveries in hande, and plant there, yt is like that in short time wee shall vente as greate a masse of clothe yn those partes as ever wee did in the Netherlandes, and in tyme moche more." In this connection he gives a striking illustration of the closeness of the commercial ties which had been knit between England and the Low Countries in the course of the long alliance with the House of Burgundy. In 1550, when Charles V. proposed to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands, it was objected that all English merchants would then quit the country, and the English trade would be grievously diminished. At this suggestion, "search was made what profite there came and comoditie grewe by the haunte of the Englishe marchantes. Then it was founde by searche and enquirie, that within the towne of Antwerpe alone there were 14,000 persons fedde and mayneteyned onlye by the workinge of English commodities, besides the gaines that marchantes and shippers with other in the said towne did gett, which was the greatest part of their lyvinge, which were thoughte to be in nomber halfe as many more; and in all other places of his Netherlandes by the indraping of Englishe woll into clothe, and by the working of other Englishe comodities, there were 30,000 persons more mayneteyned and fedd; which in all amounteth to the nomber of 51,000persons." When this report was given to Charles V. it led him to pause and consider, as well it might.
An American market.
The change from tillage to pasturage.
Growth of pauperism.
According to Hakluyt an English colony in America would soon afford as good a market for English labour as the Netherlands. He was impressed with the belief that the population of England was fast outrunning its means of subsistence. Now if the surplus of population could be drawn to America it would find occupation in raising the products of that new soil to exchange for commodities from England, and this exchange in its turn would increase the demand for English commodities and for the labour which produced them, so that fewer people in England would be left without employment. Such is Hakluyt's idea, though he nowhere states it quite so formally. It is interesting because there is no doubt that he was not alone in holding such views. There was in many quarters a feeling that, with its population of about 5,000,000, England was getting to be over-peopled. This was probably because for some time past the supply of food and the supply of work had both been diminishing relatively to the number of people. For more than a century the wool trade had been waxing so profitable that great tracts of land which had formerly been subject to tillage were year by year turned into pastures for sheep. This process not only tended to raise the price of food, but it deprived many people of employment, since sheep-farming requires fewer hands than tilling the soil. Since the accession ofHenry VIII. there had been many legislative attempts to check the conversion of ploughed land into grassy fields, but the change still continued to go on.[22]The enormous increase in the quantity of precious metals had still further raised the price of food, while as people were thrown out of employment the labour market tended to become overstocked so that wages did not rise. These changes bore with especial severity upon the class of peasants. The condition of the freeholding yeomanry was much improved during the sixteenth century. Stone houses with floors had taken the place of rude cabins with rushes carpeting the ground; meat was oftener eaten, clothes were of better quality. But it was otherwise with the peasants who held by servile tenures. In the abolition of mediæval serfdom which had been going on for two centuries and was completed in England so much earlier than in any other part of Europe, it was not all gain for the lowest grades of labourers. Some through energy and good fortune rose to recruit the ranks of freeholders, but many others became paupers and thieves. The change from tillage to pasturage affected this class more than any other, for it turned many out of house and home; so that, in the words of an old writer, they "prowled about as idle beggars or continued as stark thieves till the gallows did eat them."[23]The sudden destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII. deprived the pauper of such scanty support as he had been wont to get from the vast wealth of the Church, and besides it had let loose upon society a vast number of persons with their old occupations gone and set aside.[24]In Elizabeth's reign, therefore, for the various reasons here mentioned, the growth of pauperism began to attract especial attention as a lamentable if not formidable evil, and the famous "poor law" of 1601 marks a kind of era in the social history of England. Under such circumstances, for men disheartened by poverty and demoralized by idleness, struggling for life in acommunity that had ceased to need the kind of labour they could perform, the best chance of salvation seemed to lie in emigration to a new colony where the demand for labour was sure to be great, and life might be in a measure begun anew. So thought the good Hakluyt, and the history of the seventeenth century did much to justify his opinion. The prodigious development of the English commercial and naval marine, to which the intercourse with the new and thriving American colonies greatly contributed, went far toward multiplying the opportunities for employment and diminishing the numbers of the needy and idle class. Many of the sons of the men who had been driven from their farms by sheep-raising landlords made their home upon the ocean, and helped to secure England's control of the watery pathways. Many of them found new homes in America, and as independent yeomen became more thrifty than their peasant fathers.
Opposition to Hakluyt.
The queen's penuriousness.
While there were many people who espoused Hakluyt's views, while preachers might be heard proclaiming from the pulpit that "Virginia was a door which God had opened for England," on the other hand, as in the case of all great enterprises, loud voices were raised in opposition. To send parties of men and women to starve in the wilderness, or be murdered by savages or Spaniards, was a proceeding worthy of severe condemnation for its shocking cruelty, to say nothing of its useless extravagance. Then, as usual, the men who could see a few inches in front of their noses called themselves wise and practical,while they stigmatized as visionary theorizers the men whose imaginations could discern, albeit in dim outlines, the great future. As for the queen, who clearly approved in her innermost heart the schemes of Raleigh and Hakluyt, not much was to be expected from her when it came to a question of spending money. Elizabeth carried into the management of public affairs a miserly spirit inherited, perhaps, from her grandfather, Henry VII. When the Armada was actually entering the Channel she deemed it sound economy to let her sailors get sick with sour ale rather than throw it away and buy fresh for them. Such a mind was not likely to appreciate the necessity for the enormous immediate outlay involved in planting a successful colony. That such a document as Hakluyt's should be laid away and forgotten was no more than natural. To blame Elizabeth unreservedly, however, without making some allowance for the circumstances in which she was placed, would be crude and unfair. It was the public money that she was called upon to spend, and the military pressure exerted by Spain made heavy demands upon it. In spite of her pennywise methods, which were often so provoking, they were probably less ill suited to that pinching crisis than her father's ready lavishness would have been.
The beginnings of joint-stock companies.
That Raleigh should appeal to the sovereign for aid in his enterprise was to have been expected. It was what all explorers and colonizers had been in the habit of doing. Since the days of Prince Henry the Navigator the arduous work of discovering and subduing the heathen world outside of Europe had been conducted under government control and paid from the public purse whenever the plunder of the heathen did not suffice. In some cases the sovereign was unwilling to allow private capital to embark in such enterprises; as for example in the spring of 1491, when the Duke of Medina-Celi offered to fit out two or three caravels for Columbus and Queen Isabella refused to give him the requisite license, probably because she was "unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the profits in case the venture should prove successful."[25]Usually, however, such work was beyond the reach of private purses, and it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century, and in such commercial countries as the Netherlands and England, with comparatively free governments, that joint-stock companies began to be formed for such purposes. I have already alluded to the famous Muscovy Company, first formed in the reign of Edward VI., and from that time forth the joint-stock principle went on rapidly gaining strength until its approach to maturity was announced by the creation of the English East India Company in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. The latter was "the first great joint-stock company whose shares were bought and sold from hand to hand,"[26]and these events mark the beginning of a new era in European commerce.
This substitution of voluntary coöperationamong interested individuals for compulsory action under government control was one of the most important steps taken toward bringing in the modern era. Americans have no reason to regret that the beginnings of English colonization in the New World were not made by an English sovereign. There can be no doubt that the very slight connection between these colonies and the Crown was from the first extremely favourable to their free and untrammelled development. Far better that the worthy Hakluyt's essay should get tucked away in a pigeon-hole than that it should have fired Elizabeth to such zeal for Virginia as Louis XIV. a century afterward showed for New France!
Raleigh's difficulties.
By 1589 Raleigh seems to have despaired of finding the queen disposed to act as a fairy godmother. He reckoned that he had already spent £40,000 on Virginia, although this sum may perhaps have included his contributions toward the Arctic voyages of John Davis. Such a sum would be equivalent to not less than $1,000,000 of our modern money, and no wonder if Raleigh began to feel more than ever that the undertaking was too great for his individual resources. In March, 1589, we find him, as governor of Virginia, assigning not his domain but the right to trade there to a company, of which John White, Thomas Smith, and Rev. Richard Hakluyt were the most prominent members. He reserved for himself a royalty of one fifth of all the gold and silver that should be obtained. The Company did not show much activity. We may well believe that it was too soon after the Armada.Business affairs had not had time to recover from that severe strain. But Raleigh never lost sight of Virginia. Southey's accusation that he sent out colonists and then abandoned them was ill-considered. We have already seen why it proved impossible to send help to John White's colony.
The great Spanish carrack.
The Mermaid Tavern.
King James I.
In the pursuit of his various interests the all-accomplished knight sometimes encountered strange vicissitudes. With all his flattery of the crowned coquette, Elizabeth Tudor, the true sovereign of his heart was one of the ladies of the court, the young and beautiful Elizabeth Throckmorton. To our prosaic modern minds the attitude of the great queen toward the favourite courtiers whom she could by no possibility dream of raising to the dignity of prince-consort seems incomprehensible. But after a due perusal of the English dramatists of the time, the romance of Sidney, the extravagances of Lyly, the poetry of Spenser and Ronsard, or some of those tales of chivalry that turned good Don Quixote's brain, we are beguiled into the right sort of atmosphere for understanding it. For any of Elizabeth's counsellors or favourites to make love to any other lady was apt to call down some manifestation of displeasure, and in 1592 some circumstances connected with Raleigh's marriage[27]led to his imprisonment in the Tower. But his evil star was not yet in the ascendant. Within a few weeks one of his captains, Christopher Newport, whom we shall meet again, brought into Dartmouth harbour the great Spanish carrack Madrede Dios, with treasure from the Indies worth nearly four millions of modern dollars. A large part of Raleigh's own share in the booty was turned over to his sovereign with that blithesome grace in which none could rival him, and it served as a ransom. In 1594 we find him commanding an expedition to Guiana and exploring the vast solitudes of the Orinoco in search of El Dorado. On his return to England he found a brief interval of leisure in which to write that fascinating book on Guiana which David Hume declared to be full of lies, a gross calumny which subsequent knowledge, gathered by Humboldt and since his time, has entirely refuted. Then came the great battle at Cadiz in 1596, already mentioned, and the capture of Fayal in 1597, when Raleigh's fame reached its zenith. About this time, or soon after, began those ambrosial nights, those feasts of the gods, at the Mermaid Tavern, where Selden and Camden, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson and Dr. Donne, sat around the table with Raleigh and Shakespeare. In that happy time the opportunity for colonizing Virginia seemed once more to have come, and in 1602 Raleigh sent out Samuel Mace on an expedition of which less is known than one could wish, save that renewed search was made for White's lost colony. Otherwise, says the historian Stith, this Mace "performed nothing, but returned with idle stories and frivolous allegations."[28]When he arrived in England in 1603, sad changes had occurred. Thegreat queen—great and admirable with all her faults—had passed away, and a quaint pedantic little Scotchman, with uncouth figure and shambling gait and a thickness of utterance due partly to an ill-formed tongue and partly to excessive indulgence in mountain dew, had stepped into her place. A web of intrigue, basely woven by Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, had caught Raleigh in its meshes. He was hurried off to the Tower, while an attainder bereft him of his demesne of Virginia and handed it over to the crown.
Henry, Earl of Southampton.
Gosnold, Pring and Weymouth.
But other strong hands were taking up the work. That Earl of Southampton to whom Shakespeare ten years before had dedicated his "Venus and Adonis" had been implicated in Essex's rebellion and narrowly escaped with his life. The accession of James I., which was fraught with such ill for Raleigh, set Southampton free. But already in 1602, while he was still a prisoner in the Tower, an expedition organized under his auspices set sail for Virginia. It was commanded by one of Raleigh's old captains, Bartholomew Gosnold, and has especial interest as an event in the beginnings alike of Virginia and of New England. Gosnold came to a region which some persons called Norumbega, but was soon to be known for a few years as North Virginia, and always thereafter as New England. It was he who first wrote upon the map the names Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, and the Elizabeth Islands in what we call Buzzard's Bay. His return to England wasthe occasion of a fresh and strong renewal of interest in the business of what Hakluyt called "western planting." The voyage of Martin Pring to North Virginia, at the expense of sundry Bristol merchants, followed in 1603, and at the same time Bartholomew Gilbert, son of Sir Humphrey, coasted the shores of Chesapeake Bay, and was slain by the Indians with several of his men. Early in 1605 Captain George Weymouth set out in a vessel equipped by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Arundel of Wardour, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the garrison at Plymouth. After spending a month in North Virginia, Weymouth returned to England with five captive Indians, and the popular interest aroused by his arrival surpassed that which had been felt upon former occasions.
"Eastward Ho!"
The excitement over Virginia was promptly reflected upon the stage. The comedy of "Eastward Ho," written by Chapman and Marston, with contributions from Ben Jonson, was acted in 1605 and published in the autumn of that year. The title is a survival of forms of speech current when America was believed to be a part of the oriental world. Some extracts from this play will serve to illustrate the popular feeling. In the second act old Security, the money lender, is talking with young Frank Quicksilver about the schemes of Sir Petronel Flash. Quicksilver says, "Well, dad, let him have money; all he could anyway get is bestowed on a ship, nowe bound for Virginia." Security replies, "Now a frank gale of wind go with him, Master Frank!We have too few such knight adventurers. Who would not sell away competent certainties to purchase (with any danger) excellent uncertainties? Your true knight venturer ever does it." In the next act a messenger enters.
Messenger.Sir Petronel, here are three or four gentlemen desire to speak with you.Petronel.What are they?Quicksilver.They are your followers in this voyage, knight captain Seagull and his associates; I met them this morning and told them you would be here.Petronel.Let them enter, I pray you....Enter Seagull, Spendall, and Scapethrift.Seagull.God save my honourable colonel!Petronel.Welcome, good Captain Seagull and worthy gentlemen; if you will meet my friend Frank here and me at the Blue Anchor tavern, by Billingsgate, this evening, we will there drink to our happy voyage, be merry, and take boat to our ship with all expedition....Act III., Scene 2.Enter Seagull, Spendall, and Scapethrift in the Blue Anchor tavern, with a Drawer.Seagull.Come, drawer, pierce your neatest hogsheads, and let's have cheer,—not fit for your Billingsgate tavern, but for our Virginian colonel; he will be here instantly.Drawer.You shall have all things fit, sir; please you have any more wine?Spendall.More wine, slave! whether we drink it or no, spill it, and draw more.Scapethrift.Fill all the pots in your house with all sorts of liquor, and let 'em wait on us here like soldiers in their pewter coats; and though we do not employ them now, yet we will maintain 'em till we do.Drawer.Said like an honourable captain; you shall have all you can command, sir. [Exit Drawer.Seagull.Come boys, Virginia longs till we share the rest of her....Spendall.Why, is she inhabited already with any English?Seagull.A whole country of English is there, bred of those that were left there in '79 [Here our dramatist's date is wrong; White's colony, left there in 1587, is meant]; they have married [continues Seagull] with the Indians ... [who] are so in love with them that all the treasure they have they lay at their feet.Scapethrift.But is there such treasure there, Captain, as I have heard?Seagull.I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us; and for as much red copper as I can bring I'll have thrice the weight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans ... are pure gold; and all the chains with which they chain up their streets are massy gold; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds they go forth on holidays and gather 'em by the seashore to hang on their children's coats, and stick in their children's caps, as commonly as our children wear saffron-gilt brooches and groats with holes in 'em.Scapethrift.And is it a pleasant country withal?Seagull.As ever the sun shined on: temperate, and full of all sorts of excellent viands; wild boar is as common there as our tamest bacon is here; venison as mutton. And then you shall live freely there, without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers.... Then for your means to advancement, there it is simple and not preposterously mixed. You may be an alderman there, and never be scavenger; you may be any other officer, and never be a slave. You may come to prefermentenough, ... to riches and fortune enough, and have never the more villainy nor the less wit. Besides, there we shall have no more law than conscience, and not too much of either; serve God enough, eat and drink enough, and enough is as good as a feast.Spendall.Gods me! and how far is it thither?Seagull.Some six weeks sail, no more, with any indifferent good wind. And if I get to any part of the coast of Africa, I'll sail thither with any wind; or when I come to Cape Finisterre, there's a fore-right wind continual wafts us till we come to Virginia. See, our colonel's come.Enter Sir Petronel Flash with his followers.Sir Petronel.We'll have our provided supper brought aboard Sir Francis Drake's ship that hath compassed the world, where with full cups and banquets we will do sacrifice for a prosperous voyage.[29]
Messenger.Sir Petronel, here are three or four gentlemen desire to speak with you.
Petronel.What are they?
Quicksilver.They are your followers in this voyage, knight captain Seagull and his associates; I met them this morning and told them you would be here.
Petronel.Let them enter, I pray you....
Enter Seagull, Spendall, and Scapethrift.
Seagull.God save my honourable colonel!
Petronel.Welcome, good Captain Seagull and worthy gentlemen; if you will meet my friend Frank here and me at the Blue Anchor tavern, by Billingsgate, this evening, we will there drink to our happy voyage, be merry, and take boat to our ship with all expedition....
Act III., Scene 2.Enter Seagull, Spendall, and Scapethrift in the Blue Anchor tavern, with a Drawer.
Seagull.Come, drawer, pierce your neatest hogsheads, and let's have cheer,—not fit for your Billingsgate tavern, but for our Virginian colonel; he will be here instantly.
Drawer.You shall have all things fit, sir; please you have any more wine?
Spendall.More wine, slave! whether we drink it or no, spill it, and draw more.
Scapethrift.Fill all the pots in your house with all sorts of liquor, and let 'em wait on us here like soldiers in their pewter coats; and though we do not employ them now, yet we will maintain 'em till we do.
Drawer.Said like an honourable captain; you shall have all you can command, sir. [Exit Drawer.
Seagull.Come boys, Virginia longs till we share the rest of her....
Spendall.Why, is she inhabited already with any English?
Seagull.A whole country of English is there, bred of those that were left there in '79 [Here our dramatist's date is wrong; White's colony, left there in 1587, is meant]; they have married [continues Seagull] with the Indians ... [who] are so in love with them that all the treasure they have they lay at their feet.
Scapethrift.But is there such treasure there, Captain, as I have heard?
Seagull.I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us; and for as much red copper as I can bring I'll have thrice the weight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans ... are pure gold; and all the chains with which they chain up their streets are massy gold; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds they go forth on holidays and gather 'em by the seashore to hang on their children's coats, and stick in their children's caps, as commonly as our children wear saffron-gilt brooches and groats with holes in 'em.
Scapethrift.And is it a pleasant country withal?
Seagull.As ever the sun shined on: temperate, and full of all sorts of excellent viands; wild boar is as common there as our tamest bacon is here; venison as mutton. And then you shall live freely there, without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers.... Then for your means to advancement, there it is simple and not preposterously mixed. You may be an alderman there, and never be scavenger; you may be any other officer, and never be a slave. You may come to prefermentenough, ... to riches and fortune enough, and have never the more villainy nor the less wit. Besides, there we shall have no more law than conscience, and not too much of either; serve God enough, eat and drink enough, and enough is as good as a feast.
Spendall.Gods me! and how far is it thither?
Seagull.Some six weeks sail, no more, with any indifferent good wind. And if I get to any part of the coast of Africa, I'll sail thither with any wind; or when I come to Cape Finisterre, there's a fore-right wind continual wafts us till we come to Virginia. See, our colonel's come.
Enter Sir Petronel Flash with his followers.
Sir Petronel.We'll have our provided supper brought aboard Sir Francis Drake's ship that hath compassed the world, where with full cups and banquets we will do sacrifice for a prosperous voyage.[29]