ASSOCIATES

COLLECTORS OF RARE English books always speak reverently and even

mysteriously of the ‘quarto Hariot’ as they do of the ‘first folio.’ It

is given to but few of them ever to touch or to see it, for not more

than seven copies are at present known to exist. Even four of these are

locked up in public libraries, whence they are never likely to pass

into private hands.

One copy is in the Grenville Library; another is in the Bodleian; a

third slumbers in the University of Leyden; a fourth is in the Lenox

Library; a fifth in Lord Taunton’s; a sixth in the late Henry Huth’s;

and a seventh produced £300 in 1883 in the Drake sale.

The little quarto volume of Hariot’s Virginia is as important as it is

rare, and as beautiful as it is important. Few English books of its

time, 1588, surpass it either in typographic execution or literary

merit. It was not probably thrown into the usual channels of commerce,

as it bears the imprint of a privately-printed book, without the name

or address of a publisher, and is not found entered in the registers of

Stationers’ Hall. It bears the arms of Sir Walter Raleigh on the

reverse of the title, and is highly commended by Ralfe Lane, the late

Governor of the Colony, who testifies, ‘I dare boldly auouch It may

very well pass with the credit of truth even amongst the most true

relations of this age.’ It was manifestly put forth somewhat hurriedly

to counteract, in influential quarters, certain slanders and aspersions

spread abroad in England by some ignorant persons returned from

Virginia, who ‘woulde seeme to knowe so much as no men more,’ and who

‘had little vnderstanding, lesse discretion, and more tongue then was

needful or requisite.’ Hariot’s book is dated at the end, February

1588, that is 1589 by present reckoning. Raleigh’s assignment is dated

the 7th of March following. It is probable therefore that the

‘influential quarters’ above referred to meant the Assignment of

Raleigh’s Charter which would have expired by the limitation of six

years on the 24th of March, 1590, if no colonists had been shipped or

plantation attempted. It is possible also that Theodore De Bry’s

presence in London, as mentioned below, may have hastened the printing

of the volume.

Indeed, the little book professes to be only an epitome of what might

be expected, for near the end the author says, ‘this is all the fruits

of our labours, that I haue thought necessary to aduertise you of at

present;’ and, further on, ‘I haue ready in a discourse by it self in

maner of a Chronicle according to the course of times, and when time

shall bee thought conuenicnt, shall also be published.’ Hariot’s

‘Chronicle of Virginia’ among things long lost upon earth ! It is to be

hoped that some day the historic trumpet of Fame will sound loud enough

to awaken it, together with Cabot’s lost bundle of maps and journals

deposited with William Worthington ; Ferdinand Columbus’ lost life of

his father in the original Spanish; and Peter Martyr’s book on the

first circumnavigation of the globe by the fleet of Magalhaens, which

he so fussily sent to Pope Adrian to be read and printed, also lost!

Hakluyt, in his volume of 1589, dated in his preface the 19th of

November, gives something of a chronicle of Virginian events,

1584-1589, with a reprint of this book. But there are reasons for

believing that this is not the chronicle which Hariot refers to. As

White’s original drawings have recently turned up after nearly three

centuries, may we not still hope to see also Hariot’s Chronicle?

However, till these lost jewels are found let us appreciate what is

still left to us. Hariot’s ‘True Report’ is usually considered the

first original authority in our language relating to that part of

English North America now called the United States, and is indeed so

full and trustworthy that almost everything of a primeval character

that we know of ‘Ould Virginia’ may be traced back to it as to a first

parent. It is an integral portion of English history, for England

supplied the enterprise and the men. It is equally an integral portion

of American history, for America supplied the scene and the material.

Without any preliminary flourish or subsequent reflections, the learned

author simply and truthfully portrays in 1585-6 the land and the people

of Virginia, the condition and commodities of the one, with the habits

and character of the other, of that narrow strip of coast lying between

Cape Fear and the Chesapeake, chiefly in the present State of North

Carolina. This land, called by the natives Wingandacoa, was named in

England in 1584 Virginia, in compliment to Queen Elizabeth. This name

at first covered only a small district, but afterwards it possessed

varying limits, extending at one time over North Virginia even to 45

degrees north.

Raleigh’s Virginia soon faded, but her portrait to the life is to be

found in Hariot’s book, especially when taken with the pictures by

Captain John White, so often referred to in the text. This precious

little work is perhaps the most truthful, trustworthy, fresh, and

important representation of primitive American human life, animals and

vegetables for food, natural productions and commercial commodities

that has come down to us. Though the ‘first colonie’ of Raleigh, like

all his subsequent efforts in this direction, was a present failure,

Hariot and White have left us some, if not ample, compensation in their

picturesque account of the savage life and lavish nature of

pre-Anglo-Virginia, the like of which we look for in vain elsewhere,

either in Spanish, French, or English colonization.

Indeed, nearly all we know of the uncontaminated American aborigines,

their mode of life and domestic economy, is derived from this book, and

therefore its influence and results as an original authority cannot

well be over-estimated. We have many Spanish and French books of a

kindred character, but none so lively and lifelike as this by Hariot,

especially as afterwards illustrated by De Bry’s engravings from

White’s drawings described below.

The first breath of European enterprise in the New World, combined with

its commercial Christianity, seems in all quarters, particularly the

Spanish and English, to have at once taken off the bloom and freshness

of the Indian. His natural simplicity and grandeur of character

immediately quailed before the dictatorial owner of property and

civilization. The Christian greed for gold and the civilized cruelty

practised without scruple in plundering the unregenerate and unbaptized

of their possessions of all kinds, soon taught the Indian cunning and

the necessity of resorting to all manner of savage and untutored

devices to enable him to cope with his relentless enemies for even

restrained liberty and self-preservation; nay, even for very existence,

and this too on his own soil that generously gave him bread and meat.

All these by a self-asserted authority the coming European civilizer,

with Bible in hand, taxed with tribute of gold, labour, liberty, life.

This has been the common lot of the western races.

It is therefore refreshing to catch this mirrored glimpse of Virginia,

her inhabitants, and her resources of primitive nature, before she was

contaminated by the residence and monopoly of the white man. It may

have been best in the long run that the European races should displace

the aborigines of the New World, but it is a melancholy reflection upon

‘go ye into all the world and preach the gospel unto every creature,’

that no tribe of American Indians has yet been absorbed into the body

politic. Many a white man has let himself down into savage life and

habits, but no tribe of aborigines has yet come up to the requirements,

the honours, and the delights of European civilization. Like the tall

wild grass before the prairie-fire, the aboriginal races are gradually

but surely being swept away by the progress of civilization. Now that

they are gone or going the desire to gather real and visible memorials

of them is increasing, but fate seems to have swept these also from the

grasp of the greedy conqueror. Cortes gathered the golden art treasures

of Montezuma and sent them to Charles the Fifth, but the spoiler was

spoiled on the high seas, and not a drinking-cup or ringer-ring of that

western barbaric monarch remains to tell us of his island splendour.

A historical word upon the events that led up to Raleigh’s Virginia

patent may not be out of place in a bibliographical Life of Hariot. The

patent was no sudden freak of fortune but was the natural outgrowth of

stirring events. Had it not been allotted to Raleigh it would doubtless

soon after have fallen to some other promoter. But Raleigh was the

Devonshire war-horse that first snuffed the breeze from afar. He

fathered and took upon himself the burden of this newborn English

enterprise of Western Planting.

Though unsuccessful himself, Raleigh lifted his country into success

more than any other one man of his time. To this day he is honoured

alike in the old country that gave him birth, and in the new country to

which he gave new life. His energy, enterprise, and fame are now a part

of England’s history and pride, while his disgrace and death belong to

his king. Thomas Hariot was for nearly forty years his confidential

lieutenant throughout his varied career.

From his youth Raleigh had sympathized, like many intelligent

Englishmen, with the Huguenot cause in France. As early as 1569, at the

age of seventeen, he had been one of a hundred volunteers whom

Elizabeth sent over to assist and countenance Coligni. He thus probably

became better acquainted with the great but unsuccessful scheme of

colonizing Florida. At all events the history of that disastrous French

Huguenot colonization was first published under his auspices, and a

chief survivor, Jacques Le Moyne, became attached to his service and

interests. The story is in brief as follows.

Gaspar de Coligni, Admiral of France, often in our day called the

French Raleigh, was a Protestant, and firm friend of England. One of

his captains, Jean Ribault, of Dieppe, also a Protestant, had written

an important paper on the policy of preserving peace with Protestant

England. That paper, transmitted by the Admiral to England, is still

preserved in the national archives. Ribault became the leader of

Coligni’s preliminary expedition in 1562 into Florida to seek out a

suitable place, somewhere between 30° north latitude and Cape Breton,

for the discomfited Huguenots to retire to and found a Protestant

colony. The previous Brazilian project had already been abandoned as

impracticable and unsuccessful.

Hitherto the Spanish Roman Catholic maritime doctrine had been that to

see or sail by any undiscovered country gave possession. But the French

Protestants, now firmly rejecting the Pope’s gift, required occupation

in addition to discovery to secure title. Hence Florida at that time,

not being occupied by the Spanish, was considered open to the French.

Ribault sailed from Havre the 18th of February 1562, taking a course

across the Atlantic direct, and, as he thought, new, making his land

fall on the 30th of April at 29½ degrees; but Verrazano had in 1524

sailed also direct for Florida, taking a similar course, with the

difference that he started from Madeira. Thence coasting northward,

seeking for a harbour, touching at the river of May, and proceeding up

the coast to 32½ degrees, Ribault found a good harbour into which he

entered on the 27th of May, and named it Port Royal. He was so well

pleased with the country that, perhaps contrary to instructions, he

left a colony of thirty volunteers, under Capt. Albert de la Pierria,

and returned home with the news, arriving in France, after a quick

voyage, on the 20th of July, 1562.

Ribault, on leaving Port Royal, intended to explore up the coast to

40°, that is, to the present site of New York, but gives various

reasons for not doing so, one of which was ‘the declaration made vnto

vs of our pilots and some others that had before been at some of those

places where we purposed to sayle and have been already found by some

of the king’s subjects.’ This little colony of Port Royal, after nearly

a year of danger and privation, built a ship and put to sea, hoping to

reach France. After incredible sufferings, they were relieved by an

English ship, which, after putting the feeble on shore, carried the

rest to England, having on board a French sailor who had come home the

previous year with Ribault. These surviving colonists were all

presented to Queen Elizabeth, and attracted much attention and great

sympathy in England. Some found their way back to France, while others

entered the English service. Thus England became acquainted with the

aim, object, success, and failure of the first Florida (now South

Carolina) Protestant French colony. Thomas Hacket published in London

the 30th of May 1563, Ribault’s ‘True and last Discouerie of Florida,’

purporting to be a translation from the French; but no printed French

original is now known to exist.

The year of bigotry, 1563, in France having passed, a second expedition

of three vessels under Réné de Laudonnière, who had been an officer

under Ribault in 1562, sailed for Florida from Havre, April 22, 1564,

and arrived at the river of May the 25th of June. There were men of

courage and consequence in this company of adventurers, among whom was

Le Moyne, the painter and mathematician. The story of the sufferings of

this second colony has often been told, and need not be repeated here.

Suffice it to say that it was greatly relieved in July 1565, by Captain

John Hawkins on his return voyage from his second famous slave

expedition to Africa and the West Indies. Hawkins, after generously

relieving the French with food, general supplies, and friendly counsel,

returned to Devonshire, sailing up the coast to Newfoundland, and

thence home, bringing stores of gold, silver, pearls, and the usual

valuable merchandize of the Indies, but the store of information

respecting Florida and our Protestant friends, and especially the

geography of the American coast, was worth more to England than all his

vast store of merchandize.

In 1565 a third French expedition was fitted out, again under Ribault,

to supply, reinforce, and support Laudonnière. After many disappointing

and vexatious delays, Ribault, late in the season, put to sea, but by

stress of weather was forced into Portsmouth, where he remained a

fortnight. This gave England still more information respecting the

French Protestant projects of southern colonization, as well as of

Florida, which at that time extended very far north of its present

limits. At length on the 14th of June Ribault left the hospitable

shores of England with a fair north east wind to waft his seven ships,

freighted with above three hundred colonists including sailors and

soldiers, and taking the new ‘French route’ north of the Azores and

south of Bermuda, entered the river of May on the 27th of August, just

one month after the departure of Hawkins, and just one day before the

arrival of the Spaniards at the river of St John, a few miles south.

We find no hint of any opposition in England to these French colonizing

schemes, but on the contrary they were looked upon as an advantageous

barrier to Spanish greed of territorial extension northward under the

vicegerent’s gift. There are still existing hints of English projects

of western voyages at this time, about the year 1565, to the American

coast. Elizabeth, however, was friendly to the Huguenots, and evinced

great sympathy with their Florida colonial scheme. England’s claim to

Newfoundland and Labrador, through discovery by the Cabots, had been

allowed to lapse chiefly from the Protestant doctrine of

non-occupation. The French occupation of Canada was not disputed. There

was some doubt, however, about the intermediate country between the New

France of Canada and the New France of Florida, and hence we find that

private plans of English occupation were hatching at this early period,

but they were not encouraged. This delicate question between France and

Spain was, however, soon settled by the well known course of events

with which England had nothing to do but to stand aside till the

contest was over, and then in due course of time, like an independent

powerful neutral, step in and reap the rewards.

It is well known that Laudonnière’s followers were not altogether

harmonious. Some restless spirits seceded, and seizing one of the

colony’s ships, entered successfully in the autumn and winter of

1564-65 into piracy on the rich commerce of Spain in the West Indies.

These French spoliations had been a sore point with the owners of West

India commerce since the days of Verrazano, so much so that the Spanish

Government had instituted a fleet of coastguards among the islands to

intercept and destroy the pirates. This fleet for some time had been

under the charge of an experienced, trusted, and efficient officer

named Pedro Menendez de Avilés. No doubt the provocation was great, and

the new piracy was not to be endured. The home government of Spain had

been kept informed of the Huguenot encroachments in Florida, a country

which had long ago been granted to Ponce de Leon, Ayllon and others,

and had been coasted by Estevan Gomez, but these encroachments had

hitherto been so long winked at that the French colonists began to feel

themselves to be in tolerable security.

French piracy and Calvinism, however, coming together were two

provocations too much for the patriotism and piety of the zealous Roman

Catholic Spanish commander in the West Indies. Besides, there was a

sorrow which roused his Spanish bigotry and induced him more than ever

to serve God and his king by exterminating heresy. Don Pedro, with his

new honors and high hopes, had left Cadiz on the 31st of May 1564, as

Captain-General of the West India, the Terra Firma, the Peruvian, and

the New-Spain fleets, his son under him commanding the ships to Vera

Cruz. This son on the homeward voyage in the autumn had been lost on

the rocks of Bermuda. This circumstance, with the Florida pirates, the

heretic French and his Spanish love of barbaric gold, fired his zeal.

The General rushed home to Spain for new powers. Early in 1565 he stood

again before Philip petition in hand. Besides his present dignities he

would be Adelantado of Florida. Florida in Spanish eyes extended not

only to St. Mary’s or the Bay of Chesapeake, but even to Newfoundland,

so as to embrace the whole northern continent west of the line of

demarcation. Philip had heard not only of Laudonnière and the French

Huguenots the last year, but was informed of Ribault’s new reinforcing

expedition from Dieppe. He at once not only granted the General’s

request, but enlarged his powers from time to time as additional news

came in of the French. Don Pedro became indeed a royal favourite. He

was now a veteran of forty-seven, who had done Philip and his father

personal service. He had cruised against blockaders and corsairs in

early youth, had convoyed richly-laden plate fleets from the Indies;

had turned the scale of victory at StQuintin in 1557 by suddenly

throwing Spanish troops into Flanders greatly to the advantage of

Philip; was the commanding general of the armada in which the king

returned in 1559 from Flanders to Spain; had been made in 1560

captain-general of the convoy or protecting fleets between Spain and

the West Indies, in which there was much active business in guarding

Spanish commerce from corsairs. In spoiling these spoilers the general

amassed much wealth, and was acknowledged the protector of the islands

and their commerce. In 1561 he had fallen into some difficulty which

caused his arrest by the Council of the Indies, but the king came to

his rescue, restored his appointments, and promoted him in 1562 and

1563, and still more, as we have seen, in 1564. In 1565 Philip gave him

almost unlimited power over Florida, with directions to conquer,

colonize, Christianize, explore and survey, and all these too at his

own expense. Such is the fascination of royal grants. He was given

three years to perform these wonders, in which so many others had

failed. He was to survey the coasts up to Chesapeake Bay, explore

inlets and find out the hidden straits to Cathay. Thus armed and

instructed this Spanish pioneer of Virginia history and geography

returned to his native Asturias, raised an army, manned and fitted out

a fleet with many soldiers and sailors, and 500 negro slaves. He

embarked at Cadiz with eleven ships on the 29th of June 1565, a

fortnight after Ribault with his seven ships had left Portsmouth. From

Porto Rico the Adelantado, in his hot haste to forestall the French,

took a new route north of StDomingo, through the Lucayan islands and

the Bahamas, to the coast of Florida at the River of StJohn, on the

28th of August, the day after the arrival of the French a few miles

north. Here Menendez entered the inlet, landed his five hundred African

negro slaves, founded a town, the first in what is now the United

States, and named it StAugustine, because he made his land-fall on the

saint’s-day of the great African bishop. Thus StAugustine became the

patron saint of this first town in the United States. Here slavery

struck root, and here the Spanish Papist and the French Huguenot,

brought out of civilized and Christianized Europe were set down

blindfolded on the wild and inhospitable shores of Florida, like two

game-cocks, to fight out their religious and implacable hatred. It was

here that these ‘children of the sun’ showed the red men of the

American forests that they too were human and mortal. Here, a few days

later, the Spaniards began that merciless cut-throat religious butchery

of Huguenots, to the astonishment of the savages of the primeval

forests of America which finds a parallel on the pages of history only

in the lesson which it taught in refined Paris just seven years later

on St Bartholomew’s day.

All the world knows how the swift vengeance of Pedro Menendez de Aviles

descended upon the unfortunate colonists of Laudonnière and Ribault and

destroyed them, with very few exceptions, in September 1565. On the

other hand, every one has heard how the Spaniards, almost all except

the absent leader, expiated their murderous cruelty in April 1568,

under the retributive justice of De Gourgues. The Spanish settlers of

Florida were thus as completely exterminated by the French as the

French three years before had been exterminated by the Spaniards.

After this till 1574, the Spaniards maintained possession of Florida,

as far north as the Chesapeake Bay, under Menendez, who had been

appointed at first Adelantado of Florida, and subsequently also

Governor of Cuba. He caused an elaborate and official survey of the

whole coast to be made and recorded, both in writing and in charts.

Barcia tells the whole interesting story, but the charts seem to have

been lost, though the description, or parts of it, remains. Menendez

returned to Spain and died in 1574, just as he had been invested with

the command of an ‘invincible’ armada of three hundred ships, and

twenty thousand men to act against England and Flanders. All his North

American acquisitions and surveys seem to have at once fallen into

neglect. Not a Spanish town had been founded north of StAugustine. His

Spanish missionaries sent among the Indians had gained no solid foot

hold. Spain however still claimed possession, on paper, of the whole

coast up to Newfoundland, though she could not boast of a single place

of actual occupation.

England at this time began to see the coast clear for the spread of her

protestant principles in America, and for her occupation of some of

those vast countries she now professed to have been the first to

discover by the Cabots. No friendly power any longer stood in her way.

Her relations with Spain had settled into patriotic hatred and open

war. The voyages of Hawkins and Drake into the West Indies had revealed

to Englishmen the enormous wealth of the Spanish trade thither, as well

as the weakness of the Spanish Government in those plundered papal

possessions. Frobisher had matured his plans, secured his grant, and in

1576 made his first voyage to find the north west passage. The same

year the half-brother of Raleigh, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, published his

‘discourse for a discouerieof a new passage to Catai,’ with a map

showing the coast of North America, and the passage to China. This was

the result of years of study, and though the elaborate work was written

out hastily at last, we know that while others were advocating the

north east passage, Sir Humphrey always persisted in the north western.

Frobisher’s expedition is said to have been an outgrowth of Gilbert’s

efforts and petitions. These projects were long in hand, but Gilbert,

in June 1578, obtained his famous patent from Elizabeth for two hundred

leagues of any American coast not occupied by a Christian prince. This

grant was limited to six years, to expire the eleventh of June 1584 in

case no settlement was made or colony founded. The story of Gilbert’s

efforts, expenditures of himself and friends, his unparalleled

misfortunes and death, need not be retold here. Part of his rights and

privileges fell to his half-brother Walter Raleigh who had participated

somewhat in the enterprise. After Gilbert’s death and before the

expiration of the patent, Raleigh succeeded in obtaining from Elizabeth

another patent, with similar rights, privileges, and limitations, dated

the 25th of March 1584, leaving the whole unoccupied coast open to his

selection. On the 27th of April, only a month later, he despatched two

barks under the command of Captains Amadas and Barlow, to reconnoitre

the coast, as Ribault had done, for a suitable place to plant a colony,

somewhere between Florida and Newfoundland. This patent also, like

Gilbert’s, in case of negligence or non-success, was limited to six

years. But it required the confirmation of Parliament. Though there

were many rival interests, some of which had perhaps to be conciliated,

the patent was confirmed.

It ought perhaps to be mentioned here that five of Gilbert’s six years

having already expired without his obtaining success or possession,

several others, anticipating a forfeiture of the patent, began

agitation for rival patents in 1583. Carleil, Walsingham, Sidney,

Peckham, Raleigh, and perhaps others were eager in the strife. Mostof

the papers are given in Hakluyt’s 1589 edition. The ‘Golden Hinde’

returned in September 1583 with the news of the utter failure of the

expedition and the death of Sir Humphrey. Raleigh succeeded in

obtaining the royal grant, and then all the rest joined him in getting

the patent confirmed by Parliament.

Raleigh was now thirty-three, a man of position, of large heart and

large income, a popular courtier high in royal favor, a man of foreign

travel, great experience and extensive acquirements. He had served

under Coligni with his protestant friends in France; subsequently

served under William of Orange in Flanders; had served his Queen in

Ireland; under Gilbert’s patent, contemplated a voyage to Newfoundland

in 1578; and in 1583 was ready to embark himself again, but by some

happy accident did not go, though he fitted out and sent a large ship

at his own cost bearing his own name, which ship however put back on

account of the outbreak of some contagion. Fully alive to the wants,

plans, and desires of the Huguenots, he had not only informed himself

of their Florida schemes, but had promoted the publication of their

history, and secured the interest and active co-operation of the most

important survivor of them all, Jaques LeMoyne, the painter, who having

escaped landed destitute in Wales, and subsequently entered the service

of Raleigh who had him safely lodged in the Blackfriars. He had also,

how or when precisely is not known, secured the active aid and facile

pen of the geographical Richard Hakluyt, who wrote for him, as no man

else could write, in 1584, a treatise on Western Planting, a work

intended probably to prime the ministry and the Parliament, to enable

Raleigh first to secure the confirmation of his patent, and afterwards

the co-operation and active interest of the nobility and gentry in his

enterprise. This important hitherto unpublished volume of sixty-three

large folio pages in the hand writing of Hakluyt, after having probably

served its purpose and lain dormant for nearly three centuries, was

bought at Earl Mountnorris’s sale at Arley Castle in December 1852, by

Mr Henry Stevens of Vermont, who, as he himself informs us, after

partly copying it, and endeavouring in vain to place it in some public

or private library in England or the United States, threw it into

auction, where it was sold by Messrs Puttick and Simpson in May 1854,

for £44, as lot 474, Sir Thomas Phillipps being the purchaser. The

manuscript still adorns the Phillipps library at Cheltenham. In 1868 a

copy of this most suggestive volume was obtained by the late Dr Leonard

Woods for the Maine Historical Society, and has since been edited with

valuable notes by Mr Charles Deane of Cambridge and with an

Introduction by Dr Woods. It appeared in 1877 as the second volume of

the second series of the Society’s Collections.

This Treatise of Hakluyt under Raleigh’s inspiration may be regarded as

the harbinger of Virginia history. Though intended for a special

purpose, it is of the highest importance in developing the history of

English maritime policy at that time, and defining the growth of the

English arguments, advantages and reasons for western planting. The

book is full of personal hints, and is immensely suggestive, showing us

more than anything else the master hand of Master Hakluyt in moulding

England’s ‘sea policie’ and colonial navigation. No mere geographical

study by Hakluyt could alone have produced this remarkable volume. It

is the combination of many materials, and the result of compromising

divers interests. Hakluyt had already, though still a young man under

thirty, entered deeply into the study of commercial geography, and had

in 1582 published his _Divers Voyages_ dedicated to his friend Sir

Philip Sidney, son-in-law to the chief Secretary Walsingham. In the

Spring of 1583 the Secretary sent Hakluyt down to Bristol with a letter

to the principal merchants there to enlist their co-operation in a

project of discovery and planting in America somewhere between the

possessions of the French in Canada and the Spaniards in Florida, which

his son-in-law Master Christopher Carleil was developing under the

auspices of the Muscovie Company, and for which they were about to ask

the Queen for a patent independent of Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s.

In the summer of 1583 Hakluyt thought to go to Newfoundland with

Gilbert’s expedition, according to the letter of Parmenius, but

fortunately did not go. But in the autumn of the same year Walsingham

sent him to Paris nominally as chaplain to the English Ambassador at

the French court, Sir Edward Stafford, but really to pursue his

geographical investigations into the west and learn what the French and

Spanish were doing in these remote regions, and what were their

particular claims, resources and trade.

Before his departure for Paris, the ‘Golden Hinde’ had returned to

Falmouth with the heavy news of the fate of Gilbert and the consequent

certain forfeiture of his patent, notwithstanding it had still some

nine months to run. Though Sir Humphrey had taken formal possession of

Newfoundland, as no colony was left there, his rights and privileges

would lapse as a matter of course.

Western planting now became the talk and fashion. Many projects were

hatching for new patents. Raleigh alone succeeded. Hakluyt’s position

and circumstances in Paris seem made for the occasion, and he soon

found all these western eggs put into his basket. The materials of the

several previous writers and of the rival claimants were all apparently

thrust upon him. He thus became in 1583-4, though perhaps

unconsciously, the mouthpiece of a snug family party all playing into

the hands of Raleigh. There were Walsingham, and Sidney, and Carleil,

and Leicester, all connected with each other and with Raleigh. Then

there were the papers of Sir George Peckham, Edward Hayes, Richard

Clarke master of the Delight, and Steven Par-menius, rich alike in

hints and facts. The interests of these distinguished persons were by

family ties or other influence suddenly merged into a single patent and

that Raleigh’s. The papers mostly passed through Raleigh’s hands into

Hakluyt’s, who acknowledges himself indebted to him for his chiefest

light.

Raleigh, besides being the half-brother and representative of Sir

Humphrey Gilbert, held also a large share in that venture. Gilbert’s

real aim, policy and plan, in this last yearof his patent, to prospect

for a suitable place in which to take possession and found a colony,

was to begin at the south and work northward as the French had done,

but his previous failures since 1578, the inevitable impediments and

delays, the advanced season of this his last year 1583, and the

necessity of making a final strike for success, in behalf of himself

and his assignees, compelled him at the last hour to go direct to

Newfoundland, take possession, and then, if thought best, work

southward. He was however unquestionably influenced or professed to be

by rumours of metals or gold mines in Newfoundland. This northern

passage was his fatal mistake. Had he taken a middle or southern course

say between 37° and 42° he might perhaps have succeeded.

Under these circumstances Hakluyt’s Discourse of Western Planting was

written, and may be considered as a digest of many plans without much

originality and a consolidation of many interests. Hakluyt and Raleigh

were at Oxford together, but we find no particular evidence of their

intimacy before the Spring of 1584, when Hakluyt had returned to London

from Paris with his Discourse, or perhaps it was partly written in

England. It is pretty certain that it was not shown to the Queen before

the date of the Patent, the 25th of March, as Hakluyt speaks of her

seeing it in the summer. It was probably intended principally for the

promotion of the interests of the Patent in Parliament.

At all events with his investigations in France Hakluyt’s Discourse

became thoroughly English in its tone and tenor, and from this time he

labored zealously in the interests of Raleigh. A main point of inquiry

in Paris was to avail himself of the many opportunities at the Spanish

and Portuguese embassies, and with the French merchants and sailors of

Paris, Rouen, Havre and Dieppe, to pick up the particulars of the West

India trade of the Spaniards, and the nature of the French dealings in

Cape Breton and Canada. This led him to set forth the advantages of

direct English western trade independent of France and Spain, and of

French and Spanish routes.

The fisheries of Newfoundland and the Banks were extensive, and by

repeated treaties neutral, but gave no exclusive rights on the

adjoining territory to any one of the fishing nations; though in all

cases the English by common consent exercised leadership in the

Newfoundland harbors among the fishing ships, of which there were now

some six or eight hundred a year, notwithstanding the English still

fished also at Iceland.

It was necessary however in the interests of England for Hakluyt in

this Discourse to revive and substantiate the English rights in America

by putting forward the prior discovery by the Cabots in 1497-1498.

Though he presents this direct claim modestly, yet like Sir Humphrey

Gilbert he founds it upon insufficient evidence. In a loose manner he

speaks of Cabot and not the Cabots, and attributes to Sebastian the son

what properly belongs to John the father. He reposes full confidence in

the loose and gossiping statements of Peter Martyr that Sebastian

Cabot, a quarter of a century after the discovery, told him that at the

time, 1497 or 98,he had explored the coast to the latitude of

Gibraltar, that is to Chesapeake Bay and the longitude of Cuba or the

city of Cincinnati, a thing not probable, in as much as the active old

pilot mayor was never able to declare, down to the time of Gomez, that

he had been on that coast before. It would have been foolish in him to

fit out in 1524 Gomez to ‘discover’ what the pilot mayor had already

explored in 1497.

Hakluyt’s arguments and historical statements in this Discourse of 1584

to the present time have always been presented by English diplomatists

with confidence, especially against the French. Yet the French

continued to maintain their occupation of Cape Breton, the Gulf of St

Lawrence and Canada, which together they called New France. It is now

however made apparent from contemporary historical documents that have

recently been brought to light from the archives of Spain and Venice

that John Cabot, accompanied by his son Sebastian, then a youth of some

nineteen or twenty years, in 1497 took possession of Cape Breton in the

names of Venice and England conjointly, and raised the flags of St Mark

and St George. There is not yet any trustworthy evidence that they went

south of Cape Breton either in that or the voyage of 1498.

Hakluyt in his Divers Voyages in 1582 did not venture to make this

Cabot claim so strong as in this Discourse. In his dedication to Sir

Philip Sidney he quaintly says that he ‘put downe the title which we

haue to this part of America which is from Florida to 67 degrees

northwarde by the letters patentes graunted to John Cabote and his

three sonnes,’ simply meaning that he had printed the first patent of

5th May 1496. In his title page he speaks of the Discoverie of

America,’ made first of all by our Englishmen and afterwards by the

Frenchmen and Bretons.’ He does not question the rights and privileges

of Frenchmen to the Gulf of St Lawrence and Canada, because they were

in the occupation of a Christian prince.

This Discourse of Western Planting therefore, and the voyage of Amadas

and Barlow, in 1584, at the instigation and expense of Raleigh, based

on a thorough knowledge of the Huguenot and Spanish expeditions to

Florida in 1562-1568, are all parts of Virginia history, and therefore

are preliminary to Hariot’s Report. It should be borne in mind that

these terms Florida and Virginia as used by the Spaniards, French, and

English, included the whole country from the point of Florida through

the Carolinas and Virginia to the Chesapeake Bay, or perhaps even to

Bacalaos.

Raleigh’s patent, in which all interests were thus consolidated, came

before Parliament in the Autumn of 1584 well fortified in its

historical and geographical bearings by Hakluyt’s learned Discourse. In

the House of Commons the matter was adroitly referred to a Commitee of

which Walsingham and Sir Philip Sidney, Sir Christopher Hatton and Sir

Francis Drake were members. The bill having passed the House was sent

up to the Lords, and there read the first time on Sunday the 19th of

December 1584, as appears by the following entry in the Lords’ Journal,

volume ii, page 76. ‘Hodie allatae sicut a Dome Communi 4 Billae;

_Prima,_ For the Confirmation of the Queen’s Majesty’s Letters Patents,

granted to Walter Raughlieghe, Esquire, touching the Discovery and

Inhabiting of certain Foreign Lands and Countries, quae ia _vice_ lecta

est.’ It does not appear precisely at what date the Bill received the

Queen’s signature, but probably as early as Christmas or New Year.

Having now early in 1585 secured the Confirmation of this much coveted

patent which liberally permitted him in the name and under the aegis of

England to plant a ‘colonie’ and found an English empire in the New

World at his own expense of money, men, and enterprise; having pocketed

the geographical results and valuable experience of the French in

Florida and Canada; having vainly attempted a visit to Newfoundland in

1578, and having succeeded to the rights and privileges of his noble

half-brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert; having received by the return in

September of his two reconnoitring barks favorable reports as to the

properest place to begin his Western Planting in Wingandacoa ; and

being thoroughly supported by the good wishes and hearty co-operation

of the Queen and many of her prominent and influential subjects,

Raleigh rose superior to all jealousies and opposition.

This lasted as usual just so long as he was successful and no longer.

But he was blessed in his household, or at his table, or in his

confidence, with four sterling adherents who stuck to him through thick

and thin, through prosperity and adversity. These were Richard Hakluyt,

Jaques Le Moyne, John White and Thomas Hariot. When Wingandacoa makes

up her jewels she will not forget these Four, whom it is just to call

Raleigh’s Magi.

With marvellous energy, enterprise, and skill Raleigh collected and

fitted out in an incredibly short time a fleet of seven ships well

stocked and well manned to transport his ‘first colonie’ into the wilds

of America. It was under the command of his valiant cousin, Admiral Sir

Richard Grenville, and sailed from Plymouth on the 19th of May 1585.

Never before did a finer fleet leave the shores of England, and never

since was one more honestly or hopefully dispatched. There were the

‘Tyger’ and the ‘Roe Buck’ of 140 tons each, the ‘Lyon’ of 100 tons,

the ‘Elizabeth’ of 50 tons, the ‘Dorothea’, a small bark, and two

pinnaces, hardly big enough to bear distinct names, yet small enough to

cross dangerous bars and enter unknown bays and rivers. In this

splendid outfit were nearly two hundred souls, among whom were Master

Ralfe Lane as governor of the colony. Thomas Candish or Cavendish

afterwards the circumnavigator, Captain Philip Amadas of the Council,

John White the painter as delineator and draughtsman, Master Thomas

Hariot the mathematician as historiographer, surveyor and scientific

discoverer or explorer, and many others whose names are preserved in

Hakluyt.

The fleet had a prosperous voyage by the then usual route of the West

Indies and fell in with the main of Florida on the 20th of June, made

and named Cape Fear on the 23d, and a first landing the next day, and

on the 26th came to Wococa where Amadas and Barlow had been the year

before. They disembarked and at first mistook the country for Paradise.

July was spent in surveying and exploring the country, making the

acquaintance of the natives, chiefly by means of two Indians that had

been taken to England and brought back able to speak English. On the

5th of August Master John Arundel, captain of one of the vessels, was

sent back to England, and on the 25th of August Admiral Grenville,

after a sojourn of two months in Virginia, took his leave and returned,

arriving at Plymouth on the 18th of October. There were left in

Virginia as Raleigh’s ‘First Colonie,’ one hundred and nine men. They

remained there one whole year and then, discontented, returned to

England in July 1586 in Sir Francis Drake’s fleet coming home

victorious from the West Indies.

One of these 109 men was Thomas Hariot the Author of the Report of

Virginia. Another was John White the painter. To these two earnest and

true men we owe, as has been said, nearly all we know of ‘Ould

Virginia.’ Their story is briefly told by Hakluyt.

Sir Francis Drake in the true spirit of friendship went out of his way

to make this call on the Colony of his friend Raleigh. He found them

anything but contented and prosperous. They had long been expecting

supplies and reinforcements from home, which not arriving, on the

departure of Drake’s fleet becoming dejected and homesick, they

petitioned the Governor for permission to return. Immediately after

their departure a ship arrived from Raleigh, and fourteen days later

Sir Richard Grenville himself returned with his fleet of three ships,

new planters and stores of supplies, only to find the Colony deserted

and no tidings to be had. Leaving twenty men to hold possession the

Admiral made his way back to England.

It has already been stated how and under what circumstances the epitome

of the labours and surveys of Hariot came to be printed, but it may be

well to show how it came to be united with John White’s drawings and

republished a year or two later as the first part of De Bry’s

celebrated collections of voyages. Hakluyt returned to Paris at the end

of 1584. and remained there, perhaps with an occasional visit to

London, till 1588, always working in the interests of Raleigh. In April

1585, a month before the departure of the Virginia fleet, he wrote to

Walsingham that he ‘was careful to advertise Sir Walter Raleigh from

tyme to tyme and send him discourses both in print and in written hand

concerning his voyage.’ Rene Goulaine de Laudonnière’s Journal had

fallen into Hakluyt’s hand, and he induced his friend Basanier the

mathematician to edit and publish it. This was done and the work was

dedicated to Raleigh and probably paid for by him. Le Moyne the painter

and mathematician who had accompanied the expedition, one of the few

who escaped into the woods and swamps with Laudonnière the dreadful

morning of the massacre, was named by Basanier. He also mentions a lad

named De Bry who was lucky enough to find his way out of the clutches

of the Spanish butchers into the hands of the more merciful American

Savages. This young man was found

by De Gourgues nearly three years later among the Indians that joined

him in his mission of retribution against the Spaniards, and was

restored to his friends well instructed in the ways, manners and

customs of the Florida Aborigines.

This journal of Laudonnière carefully edited by Basanier was completed

in time to be published in Paris in 1586, in French, in octavo. It was

dedicated to Sir Walter Raleigh. Hakluyt translated it into English,

and printed it in small quarto in London the next year and it

reappeared again in his folio voyages of 1589. The French edition fell

under the eye of Theodore De Bry the afterwards celebrated engraver of

Frankfort, formerly of Liege. Whether or not this engraver was a

relative of young De Bry of Florida is not known, but we are told that

he soon sought out Le Moyne whom he found in Raleigh’s service living

in the Blackfriars in London, acting as painter, engraver on wood, a

teacher and art publisher or bookseller.

De Bry first came to London in 1587 to see Le Moyne and arrange with

him about illustrating Laudonnière’s Journal with the artist’s maps and

paintings, and remained here some time, but did not succeed in

obtaining what he wanted, probably because Le Moyne was meditating a

similar work of his own, and being still attached to the household of

Raleigh was not free to negotiate for that peculiar local and special

information which he had already placed at Raleigh’s disposal for his

colony planted a little north of the French settlement in Florida, then

supposed to be in successful operation, but of which nothing had yet

been published to give either the world at large or the Spaniards in

the peninsula a premature clue to his enterprise.

There is still preserved a good memorial of De Bry’s visit to London in

the celebrated funeral pageant at the obsequies of Sir Philip Sidney in

the month of February 1587, drawn and invented by T. Lant and engraved

on copper by Theodore de Bry in the city of London, 1587. A complete

copy is in the British Museum, and another is said to be at the old

family seat of the Sidneys at Penshurst in Kent, now Lord de L’lsle’s;

while a third copy not quite perfect adorns the famous London

collectionof Mr Gardner of St John’s Wood Park.

LeMoyne died in 1588, and De Bry soon after came to London a second

time and succeeded in purchasing of the widow of Le Moyne a portion of

the artist’s drawings or paintings together with his version of the

French Florida Expeditions. While here this time De Bry fell in with

Richard Hakluyt, who had returned from Paris in November 1588,

escorting Lady Sheffield.

Hakluyt at the end of this year, or the beginning of 1589, was engaged

in seeing through the press his first folio collection of the voyages

of the English, finished, according to the date in the preface, the

17th of November, though entered at Stationers’ Hall on the strength of

a note from Walsingham the first of September previous. Hakluyt with

his mind full of voyages and travels was abundantly competent to

appreciate De Bry’s project of publishing a luxurious edition of

Laudonnière’s Florida illustrated with the exquisite drawings of Le

Moyne. Ever ready to make a good thing better, Hakluyt suggested the

addition of Le Moyne’s and other Florida papers; and introduced De Bry

to John White, Governor of Virginia, then in London.

White, an English painter of eminence and merit, was as an artist to

Virginia what Le Moyne his master had been to Florida. Le Moyne had

twenty years before mapped and pictured everything in Florida from the

River of May to Cape Fear, and White had done the same for Raleigh’s

Colony in Virginia (now North Carolina) from Cape Fear to the

Chesapeake Bay. Le Moyne had spent a year with Laudonnière at Fort

Caroline in 1564-65, and White had been a whole year in and about

Roanoke and the wilderness of Virginia in 1585-86 as the right hand man

of Hariot.

Together Hariot and White surveyed, mapped, pictured and described the

country, the Indians, men and women; the animals, birds, fishes, trees,

plants, fruits and vegetables. Hariot’s Report or epitome of his

Chronicle, reproduced by the Hercules Club, was privately printed in

February 1589. A volume containing seventy-six of White’s original

drawings in water colours is now preserved in the Grenville library in

the British Museum, purchased by the Trustees in March 1866 of Mr Henry

Stevens at the instigation of Mr Panizzi, and placed there as an

appropriate pendant to the world-renowned Grenville De Bry. This is the

very volume that White painted for Raleigh, and which served De Bry for

his Virginia. Only 23 out of the 76 drawings were engraved, the rest

never yet having been published. Thus Hariot’s text and map with

White’s drawings are necessary complements to each other and should be

mentioned together.

Knowing all these men and taking an active part in all these important

events, Hakluyt acted wisely in inducing De Bry to modify his plan of a

separate publication and make a Collection of illustrated Voyages. He

suggested first that the separate work of Florida should be suspended,

and enlarged with Le Moyne’s papers, outside of Laudonnière. Then

reprint, as a basis of the Collection, Hariot’s privately printed

Report on Virginia just coming out in February 1589, and illustrate it

with the map and White’s drawings. Hakluyt engaged to write

descriptions of the plates, and his geographical touches are easily

recognizable in the maps of both Virginia and Florida.

In this way De Bry was induced to make Hariot’s Virginia the First Part

of his celebrated PEREGRINATIONS, with a dedication to Sir Walter

Raleigh. Florida then became the Second Part. The first was illustrated

from the portfolio of John White, and the second from that of Jaques Le

Moyne. Both parts are therefore perfectly authentic and trustworthy.

Thus the famous Collections of De Bry may be said to be of English

origin, for to Raleigh and his magi De Bry owed everything in the start

of his great work. Being thus supplied and instructed, De Bry returned

to Frankfort, and with incredible energy and enterprise, engraved,

printed, and issued his VIRGINIA in four languages, English, French,

Latin and German, in 1590, and his Florida in Latin and German, in

1591. The bibliographical history of these books, the intimacy and

dependence of the several persons engaged; and the geographical

development of Florida-Virginia are all so intertwined and blended,

that the whole seems to lead up to Thomas Hariot, the clearing up of

whose biography thus becomes an appropriate labor of the Hercules Club.

Little more remains to be said of Raleigh’s Magi who have been thus

shown to be hand and glove in working out these interesting episodes of

French and English colonial history. To Hakluyt, Le Moyne, White, De

Bry and Hariot, Raleigh owes an undivided and indivisible debt of

gratitude for the prominent niche which he achieved in the world’s

history, especially in that of England and America ; while to Raleigh’s

liberal heart and boundless enterprise must be ascribed a generous

share of the reputation achieved by his Magi in both hemispheres.

Of Hakluyt and De Bry little more need be said here. They both hewed

out their own fortunes and recorded them on the pages of history, the

one with his pen, the other with his graver. If at times ill informed

bibliographers who have got beyond their depth fail to discern its

merits, and endeavour to deny or depreciate De Bry’s Collection,

charging it with a want of authenticity and historic truth, it is hoped

that enough has been said here to vindicate at least the first two

parts, Virginia and Florida. The remaining parts, it is believed, can

be shown to be of equal authority.

Whoever compares the original drawings of Le Moyne and White with the

engravings of De Bry, as one may now do in the British Museum, must be

convinced that, beautiful as De Bry’s work is, it seems tame in the

presence of the original water-colour drawings. There is no

exaggeration in the engravings.

Le Moyne’s name has not found its way into modern dictionaries of art

or biography, but he was manifestly an artist of great merit and a man

of good position. In addition to what is given above it may be added

that a considerable number of his works is still in existence, and it

is hoped will hereafter be duly appreciated. In the print-room of the

British Museum are two of his drawings, highly finished in

water-colours, being unquestionably the originals of plates eight and

forty-one of De Bry’s Florida. They are about double the size of the

engravings. They came in with the Sloane Collection. There is also in

the Manuscript Department of the British Museum a volume of original

drawings relating chiefly to Florida and Virginia (Sloane N° 5270)

manifestly a mixture of Le Moyne’s and White’s sketches. They are very

valuable. There is also in the Museum library a printed and manuscript

book by Le Moyne, which speaks for itself and tells its own interesting

story. It is in small oblong quarto and is entitled ‘La/ Clef des

Champs,/ pour trouuer plusieurs Ani-/maux, tant Bestes qu’Oyseaux,

auec/ plusieurs Fleurs & Fruitz. . . / Anno. I586./ ¶ Imprimé aux

Blackfriers, pour Jaques/ le Moyne, dit de Morgues Paintre/’. The book

consists of fifty leaves, of which two are preliminary containing the

title and on the reverse and third page a neat dedication in French ‘A

Ma-dame Madame/ De Sidney.’/ Signed’ Voftre tres-affectionne,/ JAQVES

LE MOINE dit

de/ MORGVES Paintre.’/ This dedication is dated ‘Londres/ ce xxvi. de

Mars.’/ On the reverse of the second leaf, also in French, is ‘¶ A Elle

Mesme,/ Sonet’ with the initials I.L.M.

Then follow forty-eight leaves with two woodcuts coloured by hand on

the recto of each leaf, reverse blank. These ninety-six cuts sum up

twenty-four each of beasts, birds, fruits and flowers, with names

printed under each in English, French, German and Latin. Although the

book is dated the 26th of March 1586, it was not entered at Stationers’

Hall until the 31st of July 1587. It there stands under the name of

James Le Moyne alias Morgan. Madame Sidney is given as Mary Sidney. She

was sister of Sir Philip, countess of Pembroke, ‘Sidney’s sister,

Pembroke’s mother.’ There is no allusion to Sir Philip in the

dedication, and therefore we may infer that it was penned before the

battle of Zut-phen. Both the dedication and the sonnet show the

artist’s intimacy and friendship with that distinguished family.

There are two copies of this exceedingly rare book in the British

Museum, both slightly imperfect, but will together make a complete one,

but the more interesting copy is that in 727 c/2 31, in the Sloane

Collection. It has bound up with it thirty-seven leaves on which are

beautifully drawn and painted flowers, fruits, birds &c. There can be

little doubt that these are Le Moyne’s own paintings. It is curious to

find that all these scattered works in the different departments came

in with the Sloane Collection which formed the nucleus of the British

Museum. It is to be hoped that other samples of Le Moyne’s art may be

found or identified, and that all of them may be brought together or be

described as the ‘Le Moyne Collection.’ How Sir Hans Sloane became

possessed of them does not yet appear.

Capt. John White’s name in the annals of English art is destined to

rank high, though it has hitherto failed to be recorded in the art

histories and dictionaries. Yet his seventy-six original paintings in

water-colours done probably in Virginia in 1585-1586 while he was there

with Hariot as the official draughtsman or painter of Raleigh’s ‘First

Colonie’ entitle him to prominence among English artists in Elizabeth’s

reign. There are some other works of his in the Manuscript department

mingled with those of his friend and master Le Moyne.

As Raleigh’s friend and agent White’s name deserves honorable mention

in the history of ‘Ould Virginia.’ He was an original adventurer in the

‘First Colonie’ and was one of the hundred and nine who spent a whole

year at and about Roanoke and returned with Drake in 1586. He went

again to Virginia in April 1587 as Governor of Raleigh’s’ Second

Colonie,’ consisting of one hundred and fifty persons in three ships,

being the fourth expedition. Raleigh appointed to him twelve assistants

‘to whome he gave a Charter, and incorporated them by the name of

Governour and Assistants of the Citie of Raleigh in Virginia,’ intended

to be founded on the Chesapeake Bay. It never became more than a ‘paper

city.’

This Second Colony landed at Roanoke the 20th of July, but finding

themselves disappointed and defeated in all points, the colonists

joined in urging the Governor to return to England for supplies and

instructions. He reluctantly departed the 27th of August from Roanoke,

leaving there his daughter, who was the mother of the first child of

English parents born in English North America, Virginia Dare. He

intended immediately to return to Virginia with relief, but the

embarrassments of Raleigh, the

stirring times, and the ‘Spanish Armada’ defeated Sir Walter and

frustrated all his plans.

On the 20th of November 1587 Governor White having reached home

apprised Raleigh of the circumstances and requirements of the Colony.

Sir Walter at once ‘appointed a pinnesse to be sent thither with all

such necessaries as he vnderstood they stood in neede of,’ and also

‘wrote his letters vnto them, wherein among other matters he comforted

them with promise, that with all conuenient speede he would prepare a

good supply of shipping and men with sufficience of all thinges

needefull, which he intended, God willing, should be with them the

Sommer following.’ This promised fleet was got ready in the harbor of

Bideford under the personal care and supervision of Sir Richard

Grenville, and waited only for a fair wind to put to sea. Then came

news of the proposed invasion of England by Philip King of Spain with

his ‘invincible armada,’ so wide spread and alarming that it was deemed

prudent by the Government to stay all ships fit for war in any ports of

England to be in readiness for service at home ; and even Sir Richard

Grenville was commanded not to leave Cornwall.

Governor White however having left about one hundred and twenty men,

women and children in Virginia, among whom were his own daughter and

granddaughter, left no stone unturned for their relief. He labored so

earnestly and successfully that he obtained two small ‘pinneses’ named

the ‘Brave’ and the ‘Roe,’ one of thirty and the other of twenty-five

tons, ‘wherein fifteen planters and all their provision, with certain

reliefe for those that wintered in the Countrie was to be transported.’

The’ Brave’ and the ‘Roe’ with this slender equipment passed the bar of

Bideford the 22nd of April, just six months after the return of the

Governor, a small fleet with small hope. Had it been larger its going

forth would not have been permitted. The Governor remained behind,

thinking he could serve the Colony better in England. But the sailors

of the little ‘Brave’ and ‘Roe’ had caught the fighting mania before

they sailed, and instead of going with all speed to the relief of

Virginia, scoured the seas for rich prizes, and like two little

fighting cocks let loose attacked every sail they caught sight of,

friend or foe. The natural consequence was that before they reached

Madeira (they took the southern course for the sake of plunder) they

had been several times thoroughly whipped, and ‘all thinges spilled’ in

their fights. ‘By this occasion, God iustly punishing the theeuerie of

our euil disposed mariners, we were of force constrained to break of

our voyage intended for the reliefe of our Colony left the yere before

in Virginia, and the same night to set our course for England.’ In a

month from their departure they recrossed the bar of Bideford, their

voyage having been a disgraceful failure, yet the doings of these two

miniature corsairs are recorded in Hakluyt manifestly only as specimens

of English pluck, a British quality always admired, however much

misdirected. Meanwhile no tidings of the ‘Second colonie’ and worse

still, no tidings or help had the Second Colony received all this long

time from England. And even to this day the echo is ‘no tidings’ and no

help from home. This then may be called the first and great human

sacrifice that savage America required of civilized England before

yielding to her inevitable destiny.

And so it was that Virginia and the Armada Year shook the fortunes of

Raleigh and compelled him to assign a portion of his Patent and

privileges under it to divers gentlemen and merchants of London. This

document, in which are included and protected the charter rights of

White and others in the ‘City of Raleigh,’ bears date the 7th of March

1589. Matters being thus settled, with more capital and new life a

‘Fifth Expedition’ was fitted out in 1590 in which Governor White went

out to carry aid, and to reinforce his long neglected colony of 1587.

Not one survivor was found, and White returned the same year in every

way unsuccessful. He soon after retired to Raleigh’s estates in

Ireland, and the last heard of him is a long letter to his friend

Hakluyt ‘from my house at Newtowne in Kylmore the 4th of February

1593.’

Raleigh’s Patent, like that of Gilbert, would have expired by the

limitation of six years on the 24th of March 1590 if he had not

succeeded in leading out a colony and taking possession. His first

colony of 1585 was voluntarily abandoned, but not his discoveries. His

second colony of 1587 was surrounded with so much obscurity that though

in fact he maintained no real and permanent settlement, yet it was

never denied that he lawfully took possession and inhabited Virginia

within the six years and also for a time in the seventh year, and

therefore was entitled to privileges extending two hundred leagues from

Roanoke. As long as Elizabeth lived no one disputed Raleigh’s

privileges under his patent, though partly assigned, but none of the

Assignees cared to adventure further. The patent had become practically

a dead letter. As late however as 1603 the compliment was paid Raleigh

of asking his permission to make a voyage to North Virginia. As no

English plantation between the Spanish and the French possessions in

North America at the time of the accession of James was maintained the

patent was allowed nominally to remain in force. But no one claimed any

rights under it. It has been stated by several recent historians that

the attainder of Raleigh took away his patent privileges, but evidence

of this is not forthcoming. It is manifest that James the First, who

had little regard for his own or others’ royal grants or chartered

rights in America, considered the coast clear and as open to his own

royal bounty as it had been long before to Pope Alexander the Sixth. It

was easier and safer to obtain new charters than to revive any

questionable old ones.

But to all intents and purposes the interesting history of Virginia

begins with Raleigh. Whence he drew his inspiration, how he profited by

the experience of others, how he patronized his Magi and bound them to

himself with cords of friendship and liberality; how by his very

blunders and misfortunes he transmitted to posterity some of the most

precious historical memorials found on the pages of English or American

history, we have, perhaps at unnecessary length, endeavoured to show in

this long essay on the brief and true Report of Thomas Hariot, his

surveyor and topographer in Virginia, which must ever serve as the

corner-stone of English American History, by a man who, though long

neglected and half forgotten, must eventually shine as the morning star

of the mathematical sciences in England, as well as that of the history

of her Empire in the West.

It remains now to give some personal account of Thomas Hariot, whose

first book as the first of the labors of the hercules club has been

reproduced. Every incident in the life of a man of eminent genius and

originality in any country is a lesson to the world’s posterity

deserving careful record. Hitherto dear quaint old positive

antiquarianly slippery Anthony à Wood in his _Athenes Oxoniensis_

embodies nearly all of our accepted notions of this great English

mathematician and philosopher. Anthony was indefatigable in his

researches into the biography of Hariot who was both an Oxford man and

an Oxford scholar. He happily succeeded in mousing out a goodly number

of recondite and particular occurrences of Hariot’s life. He managed,

however, to state very many of them erroneously ; and he drew hence

some important inferences, the reverse, as it now appears, of

historical truth. This naturally leads one to inquire into his

authorities. Wood’s account of Hariot appeared in his first edition of

1691, and has not been improved in the two subsequent editions. For

most of his facts he appears to have been indebted to Dr John Wallis’s

Algebra, first published in 1685, though ready for the printer in 1676

; and for his fictions to poor old gossiping Aubrey; while his

inferences, in respect to Hariot’s deism and disbelief in the

Scriptures, are probably his own, as we find no sufficient trace of

them prior to the appearance of his Athenæ, unless it be in Chief

Justice Popham’s unjust charge at Winchester in 1603, when he is said

to have twitted Raleigh from the bench with having been ‘bedeviled’ by

Hariot. Dr Wallis appears to have obtained part of his facts from John

Collins, who had been in his usual indefatigable manner looking up

Hariot and his papers as early as 1649, and wrote to the doctor of his

success several letters between 1667 and 1673, which maybe seen in

Professor Rigaud’s Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeenth

Century, 2 vols, Oxford, 1841, 8°.

Since 1784, from time to time, several other writers have partly

repeated Wood’s estimate and added several new facts, as will be shown

further on. But it has been reserved for the Hercules Club, now just

three hundred years after Hariot left the University, to bring to light

new and important contemporary evidence, sufficient, it is believed, to

considerably modify our general estimate of Hariot’s life and

character, and to raise him from the second rank of mathematicians to

which Montucla coolly relegated him nearly a century ago to the

pre-eminence of being one of the foremost scholars of his age, not

alone of England but of the world. Had he been walled around by church

bigotry like his friend and contemporary Galileo he would

unquestionably by the originality and brilliancy of his observations

and discoveries have rivalled, or perhaps have shared that

philosopher’s victories in science. At all events it is believed that

the new matter is sufficient to reopen the courts of criticism and

revision in which some of the decisions respecting the use of

perspective glasses, the invention of the telescope, the discoveries of

the spots on the sun, the satellites of Jupiter and the horns of Venus

may be reconsidered and perhaps reversed. It is believed that in

logical analysis, in philosophy, and in many other departments of

science few in his day were his equals, while in pure mathematics none

was his superior.

Thomas Hariot was born at Oxford, or as Anthony à Wood with more than

his usual quaint-ness expresses it, ‘tumbled out of his mother’s womb

into the lap of the Oxonian muses in 1560.’ He was a ‘bateler or

commoner of St Mary’s hall.’ He ‘took the degree of bachelor of arts in

1579, and in the latter end of that year did compleat it by

determination in Schoolstreet.’ Nothing of his boyhood, or of his

family, except a few hints in his will, has come to light.

It is not known precisely at what time Hariot joined Walter Raleigh,

who was only eight years his senior. From what their friend Hakluyt

says of them both, their intimate friendship and mutually serviceable

connection were already an old story as early as 1587. On the eighth

calends of March 1587, that is on the 22d of February 1588, present

reckoning, Hakluyt wrote from Paris to Raleigh in London,

‘To you therefore I have freely desired to give and dedicate these my

labors. For to whom could I present these Decades of the New World [of

Peter Martyr] more appropriately than to yourself, who, at the expense

of nearly one hundred thousand ducats, with new fleets, are showing to

us of modern times new regions, leading forth a third colony [to

Virginia], giving us news of the unknown, and opening up for us

pathways through the inaccessible ; and whose every care, and thought,

and effort tend towards this end, hinge upon and adhere to it ? To whom

have been present and still are present the same ideas, desires, &

incentives as with that most illustrious Charles Howard, the Second

Neptune of the Ocean, and Edward Stafford our most prudent Ambassador

at the Court of France, in order to accomplish great deeds by sea and

land. But since by your skill in the art of navigation you clearly saw

that the chief glory of an insular kingdom would obtain its greatest

splendor among us by the firm support of the mathematical sciences, you

have trained up and supported now a long time, with a most liberal

salary, Thomas Hariot, a young man well versed in those studies, in

order that you might acquire in your spare hours by his instruction a

knowledge of these noble sciences ; and your own numerous Sea Captains

might unite profitably theory with practice. What is to be the result

shortly of this your wise and learned school, they who possess even

moderate judgment can have no difficulty in guessing. This one thing I

know, the one and only consideration to place before you, that first

the Portuguese and afterwards the Spaniards formerly made great

endeavours with no small loss, but at length succeeded through

determination of mind. Hasten on then to adorn the Sparta[Vir-ginia]

you have discovered; hasten on that ship more than Argonautic, of

nearly a thousand tons burthen which you have at last built and

finished with truly regal expenditure, to join with the rest of the

fleet you have fitted out.’

From this extract one might perhaps reasonably infer that Hariot went

directly from the University in 1580 at the age of twenty into

Raleigh’s service, or at latest in 1582 when Raleigh returned from

Flanders. As our translation of this important passage is rather a free

one the old geographer’s words are here added, in his own peculiar

Latin. Hakluyt in his edition of Peter Martyr’s Eight Decades, printed

at Paris in 1587, 8°, writes of his young friend Hariot in his

dedication to his older friend Sir Walter Raleigh, as follows :—

Tibi igitur has meas vigilias condonatas & confecratas efle volui. Cui

enim potius, quàm tibi has noui Orbis Decades offerem, qui centum ferè

millium ducatoru impenfa, nouis tuis clafsibus regiones nouas, nouam

iam tertiò ducendo coloniam, notas ex ignotis, ex inaccefsis peruias,

nouifsimis hifce teporibus nobis exhibes ? Cuius omnes curse,

cogitationes, conatus, hue fpeflant, haec verfant, in his inhaerent.

Cui cum Illuftrifsimo illo herôe, Carolo Hovvardo, altcro Oceani maris

Neptuno, Edoardi Staffbrdij, noftri apud regem Chriftianifsimum

oratoris prudentifsimi fororio, eadem ftudia, eaedem voluntates, iidem

ad res magnas terra maríque aggrediendas funt & fuerunt ani-morum

ftimuli. Cùm vero artis nauigatoriæ peritia, præcipuum regni infularis

ornamentum, Mathematicarii fcientiaru adminiculis adhibitis, fuu apud

nos fplendore poffe cofequi facile per-fpiceres, Thomas Hariotum,

iuuenem in illis difciplinis excellente, honeftifsimo falario iamdiu

donatum apud te aluifti, cuius fubndio horis fuccefsiuis nobililsimas

fcientias illas addifcercs, tuique familiarcs duces maritimi, quos

habes non paucos, cum praii theoria non fine fructu incredibili

coiungeret. Ex quo pulcherrimo & fapientifsimo inftitutotuo, quid breui

euentutum fit, qui vel mediocri iudicio volent, facilè proculdubio

diuinare poterunt. Vnum hoc fcio, vnam & vnicam rationem te inire, quaæ

primò Lufitani, deinde Caftellani, quod antea toties cum no exigua

iactura funt conati, tandem ex animoru votis perficerut. Perge ergo

Spartam quam nactus es ornare, perge nauem illam plufquam Argonauticam,

mille cuparum fere capace, quam fumptibus plane regiis fabricatam iam

tadem foelicitcr abfoluifti, reliquae tuae clafsi, quam babes egregiè

inftructam, adiungere.

From this early time for nearly forty years, till the morning of the

29th of October 1618, when Raleigh was beheaded, these two friends are

found inseparable. Whether in prosperity or in adversity, in the Tower

or on the scaffold, Sir Walter always had his Fidus Achates to look

after him and watch his interests. With a sharp wit, close mouth, and

ready pen Hariot was of inestimable service to his liberal patron. With

rare attainments in the Greek and Latin Classics, and all branches of

the abstract sciences, he combined that perfect fidelity and honesty of

character which placed him always above suspicion even of the enemies

of Sir Walter. He was neither a politician nor statesman, and therefore

could be even in those times a faithful guide, philosopher, and friend

to Raleigh.

In the year 1585, as has already been stated above, Hariot, at the age

of twenty-five, went out to Virginia in Raleigh’s « first Colonie’ as

surveyor and historiographer with Sir Richard Grenville, and remained

there one year under Governor Ralph Lane, returning in July 1586, in

Sir Francis Drake’s home-bound fleet from the West Indies. During the

absence of this expedition Raleigh had received triple favors from

Fortune. He had entered Parliament, been knighted, and had been

presented by the Queen with twelve thousand broad acres in Ireland.

These Irish acres were partly the Queen’s perquisite from the Babington

‘conspiracy.’ Other royal windfalls had considerably increased Sir

Walter’s expectations, and aroused his ambition. Hariot is known to

have spent some time in Ireland on Raleigh’s estates there during the

reign of Elizabeth, but it is uncertain when. It may have been between

the autumn of 1586 and the autumn of 1588. He was in London in the

winter of 1588-89 in time to get out hurriedly his report in February

1589. It is possible, however, that he went to Ireland after his book

was out. He was probably the manager of one of the estates there as

Governor John White was of another in 1591-93.

The next early author whom we find speaking of Hariot is his lifelong

friend and companion Robert Hues or Hughes in his ‘Tractatus de /

Globis et eo-

/ rvm vsv, / Accommo-datus iis qui Lon-/dini editi funt Anno I593,/

/ fumptibus

Gulielmi Sanderfoni / Ciuis Londinienfis/Confcriptus a Ro-/bertoHues./

Londini/ In ardibus Thomae Dawfon. / 1594.’ / 8°

In his dedication to Sir Walter Raleigh the author says :

Borealiora Europae noftrates diligentimme luftrarunt. Primo Hugo

Willoughby eques Anglus & Richardus Chanceler has oras apperuerunt.

Succedit eis Stephanus Borough, vlterius pro-grefsi funt Artunis Pet &

Carol. Iackman. Sufceptæ funt hae nauigationes, inftigante Sebaftiano

Caboto, vt, fiquâ pofset fieri traiectum in regiones Synanum & Cathayac

breuimmum confequeremur, at irreto haec omnia conatu, nifi quod his

medijs firmatum eft commercium cum Mofchouitis. Hâc cum non fuccederet,

inftitutx funt nauigationes ad Borealiora Americæ;, quas primo fuscepit

Martinus Frobifher, fecutus eft poftca Ioannes Dauis. Ex his omnibus

nauigationibus multi antiquiorum errores,magna eorum ignorantia

detectacft. Atque his conatibus minus fuccedentibus, gens noftra

nauibus abundans otij impatiens, in alias paries fuas nauigationes

inftituerunt. Humphredus Gilbert Eques, Americæ oras Hifpanis

incognitas, magno animo & viribus, fucceffu non aequali noftris aperire

conatus eft. Id quod tuis poftea aufpicijs (vir honoratifsime) felicius

fufceptum eft quibus Virginia nobis patefacta eft, præefecto clafsis

Richardo Grinuil nobili equite, quam diligentifsime luftrauit &

defcripfit Thomæ Hariotus.

In the English edition of Robert Hues’ work, London, 1638, this very

interesting but somewhat irrelevant passage appears as follows:

Among whom, the first that adventured on the discovery of these parts,

were, Sir Hugh Willoughby, and Richard Chanceler: after them, Stephen

Borough. And farther yet then either of these, did Arthur Pet, and

Charles Lackman discover these parts. And these voyages were all

undertaken by the instigation of Sebastian Cabot: that so, if it were

possible, there might bee found out a nearer pafsage to Cathay and

China : yet all in vane ; fave only that by this meanes a course of

trafficke was confirmed betwixt us and the Mofcovite.

When their attempts fucceeded not this way ; their next designe was

then to try, what might bee done in the Northern Coasts of America :

and the first undertaker of these voyages was Mr. Martin Frobisher: who

was afterward feconded by Mr. Iohn Davis. By meanes of all which

Navigations, many errours of the Ancients, and their great ignorance

was discovered.

But now that all these their endeavours fucceeded not, our Kingdome at

that time being well furnished in fhips, and impatient of idlenefse :

they resolved at length to adventure upon other parts. And first Sir

Humphrey Gilbert with great courage and Forces attempted to make a

discovery of those parts of America, which were yet unknowne to the

Spaniard : but the successe was not answerable. Which attempt of his,

was afterward more prosperously prosecuted by that honourable Gentleman

Sir Walter Rawleigh: to whose meanes Virginia was first discovered unto

us, the Generall of his Forces being Sir Richard Greenville : which

Countrey was afterwards very exactly furveighed and described by Mr.

Thomas Harriot.

This William Sanderson, the patron of Mollineux, Hood, and Hues, was a

rich and liberal London merchant, who had married a niece of Raleigh.

He contributed largely to Sir Walter’s first reconnoitring expedition

in 1584 under Amidas and Barlow, and was afterwards a liberal

adventurer and supporter of Raleigh in all his colonial schemes. He was

fond of the science of geography, and contributed largely to the

preparation and publication of the globes of Mollineux, and the

Descriptions of them by Hood and Hues in 1592 and 1594. He was also a

good friend of all Raleigh’s friends, and acted as Sir Walter’s fiscal

agent in regard to the Wine monopoly. On being called upon for a

settlement of the large amount due, as Raleigh supposed, after his

imprisonment in the Tower, Sanderson denied his indebtedness, was sued,

cast into the debtors’ jail, and died in poverty. His son published

severe comments against Raleigh.

Robert Hues, who was an intimate friend and associate of Hariot, was

born at Hertford in 1554. He became a poor scholar at Brazen nose, and

was afterwards at St Mary’s Hall with Hariot. He took his degree of

A.B.in 1579. He is said to have been a good Greek scholar, and after

leaving the University travelled and became an eminent geographer and

mathematician. He attracted the attention, probably through Raleigh, of

that noble patron of learning Henry Percy, 9th Earl of Northumberland,

who took him into his service, made him one of his scientific

companions while in the Tower, supported him partly at Sion, intrusted

him to instruct his children, and finally sent him to Oxford as tutor

at Christ Church of his eldest surviving son, Algernon Percy, who on

the death of his father on gunpowder treason day 1632, became the 10th

Earl of Northumberland. Hues died at Oxford the 24th of May, 1632, and

was buried in the cathedral of Christ Church, according to the

inscription on his monument. He is mentioned by Chapman in his

translation of Homer’s Works [ 1616 ] as ‘another right learned,

honest, and entirely loved friend of mine.’ See infra, p. 183.

In 1595 Hariot was mentioned as a distinguished man of science in his

Seaman’s Secrets by Captain John Davis the navigator, a friend and

partner of Raleigh.

On the eleventh of July 1596 Hariot under peculiar circumstances wrote

a long and confidential letter to Sir Robert Cecil, Chief Secretary of

State, in the interests of Raleigh’s Guiana projects. The letter is

here given in full, as it shows better than anything else the close and

confidential relations existing between Sir Walter and Hariot at that

time. Raleigh had returned from Guiana, his first El Dorado expedition,

in August 1595, and had in the mean time employed such energy and

enterprise that within about five months he had fitted out and

dispatched his second El Dorado fleet under his friend Captain Keymis.

This second expedition returned to Plymouth in June 1596, a few days

after Raleigh had gone with Essex and Howard of Effingham on that

world-renowned expedition against Cadiz. Sir Walter appears to have

left his affairs in the hands of his ever faithful Hariot, and hence

this sensible and timely letter in the absence of his patron. There

appears to have been no complaint against Keymis; but the master of his

ship, Samuel Mace, seems to have been less discreet. The letter tells

its own story, and gives a vivid picture of the intelligent earnestness

of Sir Walter respecting Guiana, and at the same time the earnest

intelligence of Hariot during Raleigh’s absence in Spain.

It has been denied that Raleigh really expected to find the El Dorado

in either his first expedition of 1595 or last in 1617, but this letter

goes to show that both he and Hariot had firm faith in the scheme.

Indeed in a German book of travels just published, entitled ‘Aus den

Llanos. Schildenung einer naturwisscn-schaftlichen Reise nach

Venezuela, Von Carl Sachs, Leipzig, 1879,’ the writer states that the

export of gold from Spanish Guiana in 1875 was 79,496 ounces. He says

that the richest mine, that of Callao, has of late years returned as

much as 500 per centum. After briefly narrating the expeditions of

Raleigh, which had been preceded by various Spanish expeditions, he

adds: ‘Now at this day, after nearly three centuries, the riches sought

for have been actually found In the very country where these

unfortunate efforts were made.’ Hariot’s letter is as follows: