Reginald W. Jeffery - The History of the Thirteen Colonies of North America - 1497-1763 (Illustrated)

One man in particular could not fail to be moved to enthusiasm by these voyages of discovery. The dream of a great country in the far West, peopled by the Anglo-Saxon race, was ever before the eyes of Sir Walter Raleigh. The character of this great man of action was not without many faults, for it was composed of much fine gold tempered with clay. His endeavours, however, to extend the limits of Britain's rule excite the imagination and entrance the mind of the reader. The mantle of Gilbert fell upon the shoulders of Raleigh, who at once attempted to carry on the work of colonisation which had been started by his half-brother in Newfoundland; and the road to which was about to be pointed out by Richard Hakluyt in his Discourse of Western Planting . Raleigh must have appreciated the appeal made by Sir George Peckham, friend of Gilbert, when he said, "Behold heere, good countreymen, the manifold benefits, commodities and pleasures heretofore unknowen, by Gods especiall blessing not onely reveiled unto us, but also as it were infused into our bosomes, who though hitherto like dormice have slumbered in ignorance thereof, being like the cats that are loth for their prey to wet their feet: yet if now therefore at the last we would awake, and with willing mindes (setting frivolous imaginations aside) become industrious instruments to ourselves, questionlesse we should not only hereby set forth the glory of our heavenly father, but also easily attaine to the end of all good purposes that may be wished or desired." 27Up to this time, by a curious chance, the coastline of the modern United States, from the St Lawrence to the Savannah River, had scarcely been visited and was, in fact, very little known. Here then was an opportunity for Raleigh; and a land, where, if effort was made, the greatest success might be achieved. The land had been unspoilt and untouched by the Spaniards; those few hardy seamen who had entered harbour or creek had found no signs of gold, and had sailed away again. But it was a land of excellent climate, freed from the ice and fogs of the more northern latitudes in which the Elizabethan seamen had shown such pluck and powers of endurance. Captain Carlile, the son-in-law of Francis Walsingham, had already in 1583 issued his encouraging report concerning American trade. Raleigh could not fail to be struck by the sentence, "that whereas one adventureth in the great enterprise, an hundred for that one will of themselves bee willing and desirous to adventure in the next." 28Gilbert's patent for the colonisation of North America had been transferred to Raleigh, who, with great caution, in 1584 dispatched two sea-captains, Amidas and Barlow, to spy out this land of promise. The narrative of these adventurers as given in Hakluyt's Voyages is extremely picturesque. They steered a more southerly course than that of any previous British explorer, and finally reached the island of Roanoke, now within the limits of North Carolina. They described it as a land flowing with milk and honey. "The second of July, we found shole water, wher we smelt so sweet and so strong a smel, as if we had been in the midst of some delicate garden abounding with all kinde of odoriferous flowers.... We found the people most gentle, loving, and faithfull, voide of all guile and treason, and such as live after the maner of the golden age." 29Amidas and Barlow thus brought back to their patron Raleigh a story full of hope and wondrous possibilities. They had found a land worthy of colonisation and well suited to the English; and this land of promise and of future greatness was christened by the Virgin Queen—Virginia.

The days of exploration and discovery by sea in the West had practically come to an end; the great epoch of colonisation was about to begin. When Elizabeth came to the throne, English ships had seldom sailed further than Iceland in the north and the Levant in the south-east, where a lucrative trade had sprung up as early as 1511. But by the end of the sixteenth century, owing to the encouragement of the Tudor sovereigns, the religious persecutions, and the "peculiar" policy of Elizabeth, the English flag had been proudly borne into all the seas of the world. The globe had been circumnavigated by Drake and Cavendish; trade through Archangel had been established with Russia; spices had been brought from the Indies by the East India Company; "the commodious and gainful voyage to Brazil" 30was regularly undertaken by the merchants of Southampton; while a vast fishing trade had steadily grown up off the coasts of Newfoundland. Above all the "navigations, voyages, traffiques, and discoveries of the English nation" had laid the foundation for greater things. Raleigh's dreams were to be accomplished, though not by himself. Like so many others he was attracted by gold; his thoughts lay too readily in the discovery of an El Dorado in South America, of which the Elizabethan poet wrote:—

"Guiana whose rich feet are mines of gold."

The grain of mustard seed had, however, been planted; the idea had been put forth to the world; a new nation was to rise in the Western hemisphere; and, although no definite results were to be seen by the eyes of the Elizabethans, yet their wild adventures, their acts of knight-errantry, their perils and their sufferings had paved the way for the industrious, sober, steady, and more prudent enterprises of Stuart Cavaliers and of Puritan Pilgrims.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Hakluyt's Voyages (ed. 1904), vii. p. 154.

2. Hakluyt's Voyages , vii. p. 143.

3. Bacon's Works (ed. 1870), vi. 196.

4. Hakluyt's Voyages (ed. 1904), vii. p. 153.

5.Barrett, History and Antiquities of Bristol (1789), p. 172.

6. Hakluyt's Voyages (ed. 1904), vii. p. 155.

7.It is thought by some that Cabot sailed to Greenland. Cf. Biggar, Voyages of the Cabots and of the Corte Reals (Paris, 1903).

8. Hakluyt's Voyages , vii. p. 150.

9. Ibid. , viii. p. 37.

10. Hakluyt's Voyages , viii. p. 3.

11. Ibid. , viii. p. 5.

12. Ibid. , viii. p. 7.

13. Hakluyt's Voyages , x. p. 2.

14. Ibid. , viii. p. 9.

15. Ibid. , viii. p. 10.

16. Hakluyt's Voyages , vii. p. 149.

17.Fletcher, Cornhill Magazine , Dec. 1902.

18. Hakluyt's Voyages , ii. p. 178.

19. Hakluyt's Voyages , vii. p. 212.

20. Ibid. , vii. p. 320.

21. Ibid. , vii. p. 321.

22. Ibid. , vii. p. 38.

23. Hakluyt's Voyages , viii. p. 54.

24. Hakluyt's Voyages , viii. p. 74.

25. Ibid. , x. pp. 6, 7.

26.Egerton, Origin and Growth of the English Colonies , p. 65.

27. Hakluyt's Voyages (ed. 1904), viii. p. 123.

28. Hakluyt's Voyages (ed. 1904), viii. p. 141.

29. Ibid. , viii. pp. 298 and 305.

30. Hakluyt's Voyages , xi. p. 25.

Table of Contents

The English settlers in America may be less romantic and less interesting figures than their Elizabethan predecessors, but they were undoubtedly fitter instruments for the specific work. The Elizabethan seamen had played their part, and men now arose who were to fulfil a greater destiny. The Gilberts and the Drakes were of a race which had ceased to be, and Fuller justly remarks "how God set up a generation of military men both by sea and land which began and expired with the reign of Queen Elizabeth, like a suit of clothes made for her and worn out by her; for providence so ordered the matter that they almost all attended their mistress before or after, within some short distance, unto her grave." 31Although the adventurous spirit of the Golden Age had passed away, men were still left who could echo the words of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and say, "and therefore to give me leave without offence always to live and die in this mind, that he is not worthy to live at all that for fear or danger of death shunneth his country's service and his own honour, seeing death is inevitable and the fame of virtue immortal." 32The one great figure who appears to connect the old period with the new was Sir Walter Raleigh. As has already been mentioned, he had sent out an expedition in 1584 to see what possibility there was of establishing a colony in America. The glowing accounts brought back by his two captains made Raleigh decide upon an undertaking which, though it proved a failure, must ever be regarded as memorable in the world's history.