Conquerors first, prospectors second, then the pioneers: that is the
order of those by whom America was opened up for English-speaking
people. No Elizabethan colonies took root. Therefore the age of
Elizabethan sea-dogs was one of conquerors and prospectors, not one of
pioneering colonists at all.
Spain and Portugal alone founded sixteenth-century colonies that have
had a continuous life from those days to our own. Virginia and New
England, like New France, only began as permanent settlements after
Drake and Queen Elizabeth were dead: Virginia in 1607, New France in
1608, New England in 1620.
It is true that Drake and his sea-dogs were prospectors in their way.
So were the soldiers, gentlemen-adventurers, and fighting traders in
theirs. On the other hand, some of the prospectors themselves belong to
the class of conquerors, while many would have gladly been the pioneers
of permanent colonies. Nevertheless the prospectors form a separate
class; and Sir Walter Raleigh, though an adventurer in every other way
as well, is undoubtedly their chief. His colonies failed. He never
found his El Dorado. He died a ruined and neglected man. But still he
was the chief of those whom we can only call prospectors, first,
because they tried their fortune ashore, one step beyond the conquering
sea-dogs, and, secondly, because their fortune failed them just one
step short of where the pioneering colonists began.
A man so various that he seemed to be
Not one but all mankind's epitome
is a description written about a very different character. But it is
really much more appropriate to Sir Walter Raleigh. Courtier and
would-be colonizer, soldier and sailor, statesman and scholar, poet and
master of prose, Raleigh had one ruling passion greater than all the
rest combined. In a letter about America to Sir Robert Cecil, the son
of Queen Elizabeth's principal minister of state, Lord Burleigh, he
expressed this great determined purpose of his life: _I shall yet live
to see it an Inglishe nation_. He had other interests in abundance,
perhaps in superabundance; and he had much more than the usual
temptations to live the life of fashion with just enough of public duty
to satisfy both the queen and the very least that is implied by the
motto _Noblesse oblige_. He was splendidly handsome and tall, a perfect
blend of strength and grace, full of deep, romantic interest in great
things far and near: the very man whom women dote on. And yet, through
all the seductions of the Court and all the storm and stress of Europe,
he steadily pursued the vision of that West which he would make 'an
Inglishe nation.'
He left Oxford as an undergraduate to serve the Huguenots in France
under Admiral Coligny and the Protestants in Holland under William of
Orange. Like Hawkins and Drake, he hated Spain with all his heart and
paid off many a score against her by killing Spanish troops at Smerwick
during an Irish campaign marked by ruthless slaughter on both sides. On
his return to England he soon attracted the charmed attention of the
queen. His spreading his cloak for her to tread on, lest she might wet
her feet, is one of those stories which ought to be true if it's not.
In any case he won the royal favor, was granted monopolies, promotion,
and estates, and launched upon the full flood-stream of fortune.
He was not yet thirty when he obtained for his half-brother, Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, then a man of thirty-eight, a royal commission 'to
inhabit and possess all remote and Heathen lands not in the possession
of any Christian prince.' The draft of Gilbert's original prospectus,
dated at London, the 6th of November, 1577, and still kept there in the
Record Office, is an appeal to Elizabeth in which he proposed 'to
discover and inhabit some strange place.' Gilbert was a soldier and
knew what fighting meant; so he likewise proposed 'to set forth certain
ships of war to the New Land, which, with your good licence, I will
undertake without your Majesty's charge.... The New Land fish is a
principal and rich and everywhere vendible merchandise; and by the gain
thereof shipping, victual, munition, and the transporting of five or
six thousand soldiers may be defrayed.'
But Gilbert's associates cared nothing for fish and everything for
gold. He went to the West Indies, lost a ship, and returned without a
fortune. Next year he was forbidden to repeat the experiment.
The project then languished until the fatal voyage of 1583, when
Gilbert set sail with six vessels, intending to occupy Newfoundland as
the base from which to colonize southwards until an armed New England
should meet and beat New Spain. How vast his scheme! How pitiful its
execution! And yet how immeasurably beyond his wildest dreams the
actual development to-day! Gilbert was not a sea-dog but a soldier with
an uncanny reputation for being a regular Jonah who 'had no good hap at
sea.' He was also passionately self-willed, and Elizabeth had doubts
about the propriety of backing him. But she sent him a gilt anchor by
way of good luck and off he went in June, financed chiefly by Raleigh,
whose name was given to the flagship.
Gilbert's adventure never got beyond its base in Newfoundland. His ship
the _Delight_ was wrecked. The crew of the _Raleigh_ mutinied and ran
her home to England. The other four vessels held on. But the men, for
the most part, were neither good soldiers, good sailors, nor yet good
colonists, but ne'er-do-wells and desperadoes. By September the
expedition was returning broken down. Gilbert, furious at the sailors'
hints that he was just a little sea-shy, would persist in sticking to
the Lilliputian ten-ton _Squirrel_, which was woefully top-hampered
with guns and stores. Before leaving Newfoundland he was implored to
abandon her and bring her crew aboard a bigger craft. But no. 'Do not
fear,' he answered; 'we are as near to Heaven by sea as land.' One wild
night off the Azores the _Squirrel_ foundered with all hands.
Amadas and Barlow sailed in 1584. Prospecting for Sir Walter Raleigh,
they discovered several harbors in North Carolina, then part of the
vast 'plantation' of Virginia. Roanoke Island, Pamlico and Albemarle
Sounds, as well as the intervening waters, were all explored with
enthusiastic thoroughness and zeal. Barlow, a skipper who was handy
with his pen, described the scent of that fragrant summer land in terms
which attracted the attention of Bacon at the time and of Dryden a
century later. The royal charter authorizing Raleigh to take what he
could find in this strange land had a clause granting his prospective
colonists '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.'
Next year Sir Richard Grenville, who was Raleigh's cousin, convoyed out
to Roanoke the little colony which Ralph Lane governed and which, as we
have seen in an earlier chapter, Drake took home discomfited in 1586.
There might have been a story to tell of successful colonization,
instead of failure, if Drake had kept away from Roanoke that year or if
he had tarried a few days longer. For no sooner had the colony departed
in Drake's vessels than a ship sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh,
'freighted with all maner of things in most plentiful maner,' arrived
at Roanoke; and 'after some time spent in seeking our Colony up in the
countrey, and not finding them, returned with all the aforesayd
provision into England.' About a fortnight later Sir Richard Grenville
himself arrived with three ships. Not wishing to lose possession of the
country where he had planted a colony the year before, he 'landed
fifteene men in the Isle of Roanoak, furnished plentifully with all
maner of provision for two yeeres, and so departed for England.'
Grenville unfortunately had burnt an Indian town and all its standing
corn because the Indians had stolen a silver cup. Lane, too, had been
severe in dealing with the natives and they had turned from friends to
foes. These and other facts were carefully recorded on the spot by the
official chronicler, Thomas Harriot, better known as a mathematician.
Among the captains who had come out under Grenville in 1585 was Thomas
Cavendish, a young and daring gentleman-adventurer, greatly
distinguished as such even in that adventurous age, and the second
English leader to circumnavigate the globe. When Drake was taking
Lane's men home in June, 1586, Cavendish was making the final
preparations for a two-year voyage. He sailed mostly along the route
marked out by Drake, and many of his adventures were of much the same
kind. His prime object was to make the voyage pay a handsome dividend.
But he did notable service in clipping the wings of Spain. He raided
the shipping off Chile and Peru, took the Spanish flagship, the famous
_Santa Anna_, off the coast of California, and on his return home in
1588 had the satisfaction of reporting: 'I burned and sank nineteen
sail of ships, both small and great; and all the villages and towns
that ever I landed at I burned and spoiled.'
While Cavendish was preying on Spanish treasure in America, and Drake
was 'singeing the King of Spain's beard' in Europe, Raleigh still
pursued his colonizing plans. In 1587 John White and twelve associates
received incorporation as the 'Governor and Assistants of the City of
Ralegh in Virginia.' The fortunes of this ambitious city were not
unlike those of many another 'boomed' and 'busted' city of much more
recent date. No time was lost in beginning. Three ships arrived at
Roanoke on the 22nd of July, 1587. Every effort was made to find the
fifteen men left behind the year before by Grenville to hold possession
for the Queen. Mounds of earth, which may even now be traced, so
piously have their last remains been cared for, marked the site of the
fort. From natives of Croatoan Island the newcomers learned that
Grenville's men had been murdered by hostile Indians.
One native friend was found in Manteo, a chief whom Barlow had taken to
England and Grenville had brought back. Manteo was now living with his
own tribe of sea-coast Indians on Croatoan Island. But the mischief
between red and white had been begun; and though Manteo had been
baptized and was recognized as 'The Lord of Roanoke' the races were
becoming fatally estranged.
After a month Governor White went home for more men and supplies,
leaving most of the colonists at Roanoke. He found Elizabeth, Raleigh,
and the rest all working to meet the Great Armada. Yet, even during the
following year, the momentous year of 1588, Raleigh managed to spare
two pinnaces, with fifteen colonists aboard, well provided with all
that was most needed. A Spanish squadron, however, forced both pinnaces
to run back for their lives. After this frustrated attempt two more
years passed before White could again sail for Virginia. In August,
1590, his trumpeter sounded all the old familiar English calls as he
approached the little fort. No answer came. The colony was lost for
ever. White had arranged that if the colonists should be obliged to
move away they should carve the name of the new settlement on the fort
or surrounding trees, and that if there was either danger or distress
they should cut a cross above. The one word CROATOAN was all White ever
found. There was no cross. White's beloved colony, White's favorite
daughter and her little girl, were perhaps in hiding. But supplies were
running short. White was a mere passenger on board the ship that
brought him; and the crew were getting impatient, so impatient for
refreshment' and a Spanish prize that they sailed past Croatoan,
refusing to stop a single hour.
Perhaps White learnt more than is recorded and was satisfied that all
the colonists were dead. Perhaps not. Nobody knows. Only a wandering
tradition comes out of that impenetrable mystery and circles round the
not impossible romance of young Virginia Dare. Her father was one of
White's twelve 'Assistants.' Her mother, Eleanor, was White's daughter.
Virginia herself, the first of all true 'native-born' Americans, was
born on the 18th of August, 1587. Perhaps Manteo, 'Lord of Roanoke,'
saved the whole family whose name has been commemorated by that of the
North Carolina county of Dare. Perhaps Virginia Dare alone survived to
be an 'Indian Queen' about the time the first permanent Anglo-American
colony was founded in 1607, twenty years after her birth. Who knows?
These twenty sundering years, from the end of this abortive colony in
1587 to the beginning of the first permanent colony in 1607, constitute
a period that saw the close of one age and the opening of another in
every relation of Anglo-American affairs.
Nor was it only in Anglo-American affairs that change was rife. 'The
Honourable East India Company' entered upon its wonderful career.
Shakespeare began to write his immortal plays. The chosen translators
began their work on the Authorized Version of the English Bible. The
Puritans were becoming a force within the body politic as well as in
religion. Ulster was 'planted' with Englishmen and Lowland Scots. In
the midst of all these changes the great Queen, grown old and very
lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended the glorious Tudor dynasty of
England. James, pusillanimous and pedantic son of Darnley and Mary
Queen of Scots, ascended the throne as the first of the sinister
Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive Spain, threw Raleigh into prison
under suspended sentence of death.
There was a break of no less than fifteen years in English efforts to
colonize America. Nothing was tried between the last attempt at Roanoke
in 1587 and the first attempt in Massachusetts in 1602, when thirty-two
people sailed from England with Bartholomew Gosnold, formerly a skipper
in Raleigh's employ. Gosnold made straight for the coast of Maine,
which he sighted in May. He then coasted south to Cape Cod. Continuing
south he entered Buzzard's Bay, where he landed on Cuttyhunk Island.
Here, on a little island in a lake—an island within an island—he built
a fort round which the colony was expected to grow. But supplies began
to run out. There was bad blood over the proper division of what
remained. The would-be colonists could not agree with those who had no
intention of staying behind. The result was that the entire project had
to be given up. Gosnold sailed home with the whole disgusted crew and a
cargo of sassafras and cedar. Such was the first prospecting ever done
for what is now New England.
The following year, 1603, just after the death of Queen Elizabeth, some
merchant-venturers of Bristol sent out two vessels under Martin Pring.
Like Gosnold, Pring first made the coast of Maine and then felt his way
south. Unlike Gosnold, however, he 'bore into the great Gulfe' of
Massachusetts Bay, where he took in a cargo of sassafras at Plymouth
Harbor. But that was all the prospecting done this time. There was no
attempt at colonizing.
Two years later another prospector was sent out by a more important
company. The Earl of Southampton and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were the
chief promoters of this enterprise. Gorges, as 'Lord Proprietary of the
Province of Maine,' is a well-known character in the subsequent history
of New England. Lord Southampton, as Shakespeare's only patron and
greatest personal friend, is forever famous through the world. The
chief prospector chosen by the company was George Weymouth, who landed
on the coast of Maine, explored a little of the surrounding country,
kidnapped five Indians, and returned to England with a glowing account
of what he had seen.
The cumulative effect of the three expeditions of Gosnold, Pring, and
Weymouth was a revival of interest in colonization. Prominent men soon
got together and formed two companies which were formally chartered by
King James on the 10th of April, 1606. The 'first' or 'southern
colony,' which came to be known as the London Company because most of
its members lived there, was authorized to make its 'first plantation
at any place upon the coast of Virginia or America between the
four-and-thirty and one-and-forty degrees of latitude.' The northern or
'second colony,' afterwards called the Plymouth Company, was authorized
to settle any place between 38° and 45° north, thus overlapping both
the first company to the south and the French to the north.
In the summer of the same year, 1606, Henry Challons took two ships of
the Plymouth Company round by the West Indies, where he was caught in a
fog by the Spaniards. Later in the season Pring went out and explored
'North Virginia.' In May, 1607, a hundred and twenty men, under George
Popham, started to colonize this 'North Virginia.' In August they
landed in Maine at the mouth of the Kennebec, where they built a fort,
some houses, and a pinnace. Finding themselves short of provisions,
two-thirds of their number returned to England late in the same year.
The remaining third passed a terrible winter. Popham died, and Raleigh
Gilbert succeeded him as governor. When spring came all the survivors
of the colony sailed home in the pinnace they had built and the
enterprise was abandoned. The reports of the colonists, after their
winter in Maine, were to the effect that the second or northern colony
was 'not habitable for Englishmen.'
In the meantime the permanent foundation of the first or southern
colony, the real Virginia, was well under way. The same number of
intending emigrants went out, a hundred and twenty. On the 26th of
April, 1607, 'about four a-clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land
of Virginia: the same day wee entered into the Bay of Chesupioc'
[Chesapeake]. Thus begins the tale of Captain John Smith, of the
founding of Jamestown, and of a permanent Virginia, the first of the
future United States.
Now that we have seen one spot in vast America really become the
promise of the 'Inglishe nation' which Raleigh had longed for, we must
return once more to Raleigh himself as, mocked by his tantalizing
vision, he looked out on a changing world from his secular Mount Pisgah
in the prison Tower of London.
By this time he had felt both extremes of fortune to the full. During
the travesty of justice at his trial the attorney-general, having no
sound argument, covered him with slanderous abuse. These are three of
the false accusations on which he was condemned to death: 'Viperous
traitor,' 'damnable atheist,' and 'spider of hell.' Hawkins, Drake,
Frobisher, and Grenville, all were dead. So Raleigh, last of the great
Elizabethan lions, was caged and baited for the sport of Spain.
Six of his twelve years of imprisonment were lightened by the
companionship of his wife, Elizabeth Throgmorton, most beautiful of all
the late Queen's maids of honor. Another solace was the _History of the
World_, the writing of which set his mind free to wander forth at will
although his body stayed behind the bars. But the contrast was too
poignant not to wring this cry of anguish from his preface: 'Yet when
we once come in sight of the Port of death, to which all winds drive
us, and when by letting fall that fatal Anchor, which can never be
weighed again, the navigation of this life takes end: Then it is, I
say, that our own cogitations (those sad and severe cogitations,
formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) return again, and
pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our life
past.'
At length, in the spring of 1616, Raleigh was released, though still
unpardoned. He and his devoted wife immediately put all that remained
of their fortune into a new venture. Twenty years before this he
thought he could make 'Discovery of the mighty, rich, and beautiful
Empire of Guiana, and of that great and golden city, which the
Spaniards call El Dorado, and the natives call Manoa.' Now he would go
back to find the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland, that
mysterious Manoa among those southern Mountains of Bright Stones which
lay behind the Spanish Main. The king's cupidity was roused; and so, in
1617, Raleigh was commissioned as the admiral of fourteen sail. In
November he arrived off the coast that guarded all the fabled wealth
still lying undiscovered in the far recesses of the Orinocan wilds.
_Guiana, Manoa, El Dorado_—the inland voices called him on.
But Spaniards barred the way; and Raleigh, defying the instructions of
the King, attacked them. The English force was far too weak and
disaster followed. Raleigh's son and heir was killed and his lieutenant
committed suicide. His men began to mutiny. Spanish troops and ships
came closing in; and the forlorn remnant of the expedition on which
such hopes were built went straggling home to England. There Raleigh
was arrested and sent to the block on the 29th of October, 1618. He had
played the great game of life-and-death and lost it. When he mounted
the scaffold, he asked to see the axe. Feeling the edge, he smiled and
said: 'Tis a sharp medicine, but a cure for all diseases.' Then he
bared his neck and died like one who had served the Great Queen as her
Captain of the Guard.