R. Nisbet Bain - The Cambridge Modern History

As the struggle between the Catholics and Protestants of France became more and more desperate, the idea of founding a Protestant colony in America was revived: and it was now resolved to use for this purpose the immense tract which Verrazzano’s voyage was understood to have acquired for the French Crown. Coligny, with the assent of Charles IX, equipped two vessels which he despatched on February 18, 1562, under the command of Jean Ribault, to found the first colony attempted in North America since the return of Roberval in 1540. After exploring the coast, Ribault chose Port Royal Sound in the present State of South Carolina, as the most promising site for a colony; began the construction of a fort, to which he gave the name of Charles-fort, for the protection of those whom he intended to leave behind; and returned to Europe. Their supplies being exhausted, the colonising party fell into dissensions, mutinied against the rigorous discipline enforced by their captain, and assassinated him. No reinforcements arriving from Europe, they built a pinnace, intending to return, put to sea, suffered indescribable hardships, and put back again, more dead than alive, towards the American shore. They were picked up by a homeward-bound English barque, one of whose crew had been with Ribault on the outward voyage. Some were landed in France; while those who were not too exhausted to continue the voyage were taken on to England, where the liveliest interest was by this time felt in the question of North American colonisation. How this revived interest arose, may now be briefly explained.

The history of English enterprise in connexion with the New World goes back in substance to the period of the Discovery itself. Even before this, Bristol seamen had sought for the mythical St Brandan’s in the expanses of the Atlantic; possibly the ancient connexion of that port with Iceland had brought the Norse sagas to their ears, and the quest pursued by them was in substance the search for “Vineland” or New England. John Cabot, having obtained on March 5, 1496, the patent referred to on an earlier page, evidently sailed in quest of the “New Land” or “New Island” of the Northmen, and between that date and August, 1497, when he returned to Bristol, reached and investigated the shores of Labrador and Newfoundland which represent the coast called by the Northmen “Hellu-Land” (stony land). A voyage was attempted by him to the New Land in 1498, but not accomplished, and thenceforward English interest in the continent of America relaxed, although the Newfoundland waters were increasingly frequented by fishermen of other nations; so that the voyage of 1496-7 was practically forgotten, when, nearly sixty years afterwards, Englishmen began once more to turn their attention to America. From the untroubled early years of Henry VIII, when America, as yet wholly savage, and its discovery received conspicuous notice in a serious philosophical drama, to the marriage of Philip and Mary, when it stood forth in the eyes of Europe as the source of more wealth than the world had ever seen, the New World is scarcely mentioned in English literature, though the continental press teemed with accounts of it and allusions to it. But an old dramatist’s picture of the new continent, as it presented itself to English eyes about 1515, becomes all the more striking through its isolation. The play, or “interlude,” is entitled The Four Elements; the leading personage, named Experience, discourses at some length on the “Great Ocean”—”so great that never man could tell it, since the world began, till now these twenty year”—and the new continent lately found beyond it; a continent “so large of room” as to be “much longer than all Christendom,” for its coast has been traced above 5000 miles. The inhabitants, from the south, where they “go naked alway,” to the north, where they are clad in the skins of beasts, are everywhere savages, living in woods and caves, and knowing nothing of God and the devil, of heaven and hell, but worshipping the sun for his great light. The fisheries, the timber, and the copper of America are named as its chief sources of wealth; and the speaker laments, in stanzas perfectly rhythmical, though the accent is somewhat forced, that England should have missed the opportunity of discovering and colonising this vast country:

O what a [great] thing had been then, If that they that be Englishmen

Might have been the first of all That there should have taken possession, And made first building and habitation,

A memory perpetual!

And also what an honourable thing, Both to the realm, and to the king, To have had his dominion extending

There into so far a ground, Which the noble king of late memory, The most wise prince the seventh Harry,

[Had] caused first for to be found!

Nor is this all that England has lost. Hers would have been the privilege of introducing civilisation and preaching the Gospel in this Dark Continent—of leading its brute-like tribes “to know of men the manner, and also to know God their Maker.” This task, it is evidently felt, would more fittingly have fallen to the lot of England than of Castile and Portugal.

The American coast was doubtless occasionally sighted from English vessels. But it was only gazed on as a curious spectacle. The Northern shore, the only part accessible to English adventurers without encroachment on the transatlantic possessions of a friendly power, yielded little or nothing to commerce which could not be obtained with less trouble in Europe itself. During these sixty years, which saw no break in the friendly relations between England and Spain, many English merchants resided in the latter country, who must have heard with astonishment, and probably a certain envy, of the rich treasure-districts which exploration revealed in quick succession, and occasionally visited them, or some of them, in person. Not until the marriage of the English Queen with the Spanish heir-apparent was it ever suggested that England should aspire to share in the wealth which the fortune of events had poured into the lap of Spain. About this time Mexico and Potosi shone forth with tempting lustre in the eyes of Europe. These districts were mere patches on the map of a continent which probably contained gold and silver in all its parts, and which had been designed by nature to be the treasure-house of the world. Nine-tenths of it remained unexplored. The events of the Franco-Spanish wars had proved the Spaniards incapable of excluding from it other nations whose seamen were better than their own; and English seamen, then as now, acknowledged no superiors. Other Mexicos and Potosis doubtless awaited the first adventurer bold enough to strike the blow that should secure them. Why should England again neglect her opportunity?

It was not, however, exactly in this aspect that the suggestion of “America for the English” was first put forward. The writer who earned the credit of it—one Richard Eden, Hakluyt’s precursor, who to book-learning added a keen personal interest in sailors and sailors’ tales—was a clerk in Philip’s “English Treasury.” Possibly he owed this post to a volume published by him in the year preceding that of Philip’s marriage, containing a translation of a somewhat meagre account of the New World compiled by a German geographer. The object of this volume, in his own words, was to persuade Englishmen to “make attempts in the New World to the glory of God and the commodity of our country,” and the sole inducement held out was America’s wealth in the precious metals. Only a few years had elapsed since the produce of the mines of Potosi was first registered in the books of the Spanish King. Had Englishmen, writes Eden, been awake to their interests, “that Rich Treasury called Perularia (the bullion-warehouse of Seville) might long since have been in the Tower of London!” At this date Edward VI, a Protestant, with whom Spain’s papal title to the New World was not likely to find recognition, was on the throne. His future marriage remained undecided; but it was anticipated that he would intermarry with a French princess, and that England and France, henceforth in strict alliance, would continue the process of despoiling Spain, which France alone had so successfully begun. By the death of Edward and the succession of Mary the political outlook was changed. On July 19, 1554, Philip of Spain arrived in England, and in the next week was married to Mary at Winchester. He brought with him immense quantities of gold and silver borne on the backs of a hundred horses. Eden’s regretful comment was now misplaced, for the contents of “that Rich Treasury called Perularia” were actually on their way to the Tower of London! On October 2 there arrived at the Tower £50,000 in silver, destined to form the nucleus of Philip’s “English Treasury,” in which Eden had obtained a clerkship. He watched the entry of the newlymarried sovereigns into the metropolis; and his former vision, in a modified shape, now floated before him as a consequence of the match. An ancient commercial alliance was now fortified by a dynastic one; Spain and England must surely henceforth deal with the New World as partners. Eden now resolved to translate the first portion of the “Decades” of Peter Martyr, which contained a lively and popular account, in a series of Latin letters, written in the fashion of the day, of American history from the Discovery to the Conquest of Mexico. Other matter of a similar description filled up his volume; and in the preface he eloquently urges English sailors and merchants to quit the well-worn tracks of traditional commerce, and adventure boldly to the coasts of Florida and Newfoundland.