Chapter I (2)

A Bristol ship[39] having first discovered North America, it might have been expected that the years succeeding Cabot's voyages would have been fruitful in English adventure to the West; but, as far as records show, little was done by Englishmen during the first half of the sixteenth century to open up the New World; and even Cartier's bold exploits roused little or no spirit of rivalry in Great Britain. Indeed, all through {25} this century no English voyager seems to have turned his mind to Canada and its river. The explorers went to the Arctic seas, the would-be colonizers to Newfoundland or Virginia. Between 1500 and 1550 two voyages alone have been actually chronicled, though passing reference is made to others. Of these two, the first was in 1527, when Albert de Prado, a canon of St. Paul's, sailed with two ships in search of the Indies, reaching Newfoundland and the North American coast. The second was in 1536, under a leader named Hore--a voyage of which a graphic account is given in Hakluyt. On the coast of Newfoundland the adventurers suffered the last extremes of starvation, until at length even cannibalism began among them; and the survivors owed their safety to the coming of a French ship, which they seized and in which they returned home. It is clear, however, that before the middle of the century the Newfoundland fisheries had become a recognized branch of English trade, for the traffic was safeguarded by two Acts of Parliament, one passed in 1540, in Henry VIII's reign, the other in 1548, in the reign of King Edward VI. The object of the second Act was to prohibit the exaction of any dues by way of licence from men engaged in the Iceland or Newfoundland fishing trade, and Hakluyt's note upon it is that 'by this Act it appeareth that the trade out of England to Newfoundland was common and frequented about the beginning of the reign of Edward VI, namely, in the year 1548.'[40]

[Footnote 39: For this passage, see Doyle's _History of the English in America_, vol. i, chap. iv.]

[Footnote 40: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 170.]

[Sidenote: _Return of Sebastian Cabot to England._]

About this date Sebastian Cabot again appears upon the scene. In 1512 he had entered the Spanish service; and, after a visit to England, had returned to Spain, where, from 1518 to 1547, he held the appointment of Pilot-Major to the King and Emperor Charles V.[41] At the end of 1547 or the beginning of 1548, he was induced in his old age to come back to the land, for and from which, more than half a century {26} before, his or his father's great discovery had been made; and King Edward VI rewarded his services by appointing him Grand Pilot in England. His mind was still set on finding a way to the Indies by the Northern Sea. He became governor of 'the mystery and company of the Merchant Adventurers for the discovery of regions, dominions, islands, and places unknown'; and in Hakluyt's pages[42] may be found his instructions 'for the direction of the intended voyage for Cathay.'

[Footnote 41: See _The Dictionary of National Biography_, s. v.]

[Footnote 42: Vol. i, p. 251.]

[Sidenote: _The North-East Passage and Sir Hugh Willoughby._]

[Sidenote: _The Muscovy Company._]

The company was not finally incorporated by royal charter till 1554-5, but in the preceding year, 1553, they sent out an expedition of three ships to try for a North-East Passage. The leader of the expedition, Sir Hugh Willoughby, was, with the crews of two ships, frozen to death on the coast of Lapland; but Richard Chancellor, the captain of the third ship, reached the port on which the town of Archangel now stands, and made his way overland to Moscow. This was the beginning of British trade with Russia. The Merchant Adventurers became known as the Muscovy Company, and their efforts were directed to the overland traffic between Asia and Europe, which came by Bokhara, Astrakhan, and the Volga, to the meeting of the east and west at Novgorod.

[Sidenote: _Martin Frobisher._]

But, important as was this new development of trade, the British explorers, whose names have lived, still took their way for the most part over the Atlantic, making ever for the West. In June, 1576, Martin Frobisher sailed from Blackwall to the north-west 'for the search of the straight or passage to China.'[43] He sighted Greenland; and, sailing west, came to the inlet in the American coast, north of the Hudson Straits, which, after him, was called Frobisher Bay. This arm of the sea he took to be a passage between the two continents, the right-hand coast, as he went west, seeming to be Asia, the left-hand coast America. He came back {27} to Harwich in October, bringing with him a sample of black stone supposed to contain gold; and thus, to the vain hope of a short passage to the Indies, he added the more dangerous attraction of possible mineral wealth in the Arctic regions. Men's hopes were raised; a company of Cathay was formed, with Michael Lok for governor; and, as their Captain-General, Frobisher sailed again in May, 1577, 'for the further discovering of the passage to Cathay.'[44] Again he sighted Greenland. Again he reached the bay which had been the turning-point of his former voyage. He took possession of the barren northern land in his Queen's name; and, when he came back in September, 'Her Majesty named it very properly Meta Incognita, as a mark and bound utterly hitherto unknown.'[45] The voyage was fruitless, but the stones brought home were still thought to promise gold, and so, in the following May, Frobisher started once more on a third voyage to the north. Fifteen ships went with him from Harwich, bearing 'a strong fort or house of timber'[46] to be set up on arrival in the Arctic regions, and intended to shelter one hundred men through the coming winter. The hundred men included miners, goldfiners, gentlemen, artisans, 'and all necessary persons'[46]--as though this desolate region were to become the scene of a thriving colony. They set sail, reached the coast of Greenland, and claimed it in the Queen's name. They fell in with the Esquimaux; they crossed the channel now known as Davis Strait to the Meta Incognita; and they came back in the autumn with no result beyond the report of a new imaginary island. This was the end of Frobisher's enterprise, but in the next forty years other English sailors followed where he had gone before, and opened up to geographical knowledge fresh stretches of icebound coast and wintry sea. Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and others, gave their names to straits and bays, but it is impossible here to trace the record of their courage and endurance. {28} No quest has ever been so fruitful of daring, patient seamanship, none has ever been so barren of practical results, as that for the North-West Passage. What Frobisher went to find in the sixteenth century, Franklin still sought in the nineteenth: and through all the ages of British exploration has run the ever receding hope of finding a short way through ice and snow to the sunny lands of the East.

[Footnote 43: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 52.]

[Footnote 44: Ibid. p. 56.]

[Footnote 45: Ibid. p. 104.]

[Footnote 46: Ibid. p. 105.]

[Sidenote: _Sir Humphrey Gilbert._]

In Great Britain the sixteenth century was the age of adventurers, casting about for ways to other worlds, or freebooting where Spain and Portugal claimed ownership of land and sea; but in that time two men stand out as having had definite views of settlement, and as having been colonizers in advance of their age. They are Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh. Edward Hayes, the author of a narrative of Gilbert's attempt to found a colony in Newfoundland, speaks of him as 'the first of our nation that carried people to erect an habitation and government in those northerly countries of America,'[47] and no nobler Englishman could well be found to head the list of English colonizers of the New World. Chivalrous in nature, bold in action, he was at the same time 'famous for his knowledge both by sea and land';[48] and it was his _Discourse to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathaia and the East Indies_, which is said to have determined Frobisher to explore the north.

[Footnote 47: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 185.]

[Footnote 48: From Fuller's _Worthies of Devonshire_.]

[Sidenote: _His patent of colonization._]

In June, 1578, Gilbert obtained from Queen Elizabeth his celebrated patent 'for the inhabiting and planting of our people in America.'[49] The grant was a wide one. It gave him full liberty to explore and settle in any 'remote heathen and barbarous lands, countries, and territories, not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people'; and it constituted him full owner of the land where he settled, within {29} a radius of two hundred leagues from the place of settlement. It was subject only to a reservation to the Crown of one-fifth of the gold and silver found, and to a condition that advantage should be taken of the grant within six years. For three or four years Gilbert's efforts to colonize under this patent were fruitless; he organized an expedition which came to nothing, and other men, to whom he temporarily resigned his rights, were equally unsuccessful.

[Footnote 49: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 174.]

[Sidenote: _His voyage to Newfoundland._]

At length, on June 11, 1583, he set sail from Cawsand Bay, near Plymouth, to try his luck for the last time in the western world. There were five ships, one of which was fitted out by Ralegh,[50] and one, the _Golden Hind_, had for its captain and owner, Edward Hayes, the chronicler of the voyage. The company numbered 260 men all told, including shipwrights, carpenters, and other artisans, 'mineral men and refiners,' 'morris dancers' and other caterers of amusement 'for solace of our people and allurement of the savages.'[51] These last were evidence that more was projected than mere temporary exploration. It was intended, writes Hayes, 'to win' the savages 'by all fair means possible'; and with this end in view the freight of the ships included 'petty haberdashery wares to barter with those simple people.' On the third of August the little fleet entered the harbour of St. John's in Newfoundland, where they found thirty-six ships of all nations. They came expecting resistance, but met with none. When Gilbert made known his intention to proclaim British sovereignty over the island, the sailors and fishermen present seem to have willingly acquiesced; and when he wanted to revictual and refit his ships, the necessary supplies were readily forthcoming.[52]

[Footnote 50: This ship deserted soon after starting.]

[Footnote 51: Hakluyt, vol. iii, pp. 189, 190.]

[Footnote 52: Hayes says, 'The Portugals (above other nations) did most willingly and liberally contribute' (Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 192). See above, p. 15.]

[Sidenote: _Newfoundland declared to be a British possession._]

The want of a settled authority, of some guarantee for law {30} and order, in the harbours and on the coasts of Newfoundland, was no doubt felt by those who came year by year to the fisheries, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert's name and high repute may well have been known to others than his own countrymen. Two days after his arrival he took formal possession of the land, with ceremony of rod and turf, in the name of his sovereign; the arms of England were set up; three simple laws were enacted--providing that the recognized religion should be in accordance with the forms of the Church of England, safeguarding the sovereign rights of the Queen of England, and enjoining due respect for her name; and then Gilbert issued land grants as proprietor of the soil. In the words of one of the accounts which Hakluyt has preserved,[53] 'he did let, set, give, and dispose of many things as absolute Governor there, by virtue of Her Majesty's letters patents.'

[Footnote 53: Peckham's account, Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 209.]

Thus was Newfoundland declared to be a British possession, and such are its claims to be our oldest colony. The annexation was complete in form and substance; no protest was entered against it by those whom it concerned; land was granted by the recognized proprietor, and nothing was wanting to constitute a claim which should last, and has lasted, to all time. Frobisher proclaimed the sovereignty of England over Arctic lands, but his proclamation was as barren as the shores over which it extended. Gilbert, on the contrary, went to a place where European sailors had long foregathered; he went there as an English Governor; his authority was unquestioned, his grants were accepted, and when he read his commission and set up the arms of England at the harbour of St. John, he took the first step, and a very long step, towards British dominion in the New World.

[Sidenote: _Gilbert's death._]

Gilbert had great hopes of finding precious metal in Newfoundland; and his principal mining expert, a Saxon, {31} promised him a rich yield of silver from the ore which was collected in the island. That ore, however, was lost early on the voyage home, and the miner himself was lost with it in the wreck of the largest ship--the _Delight_. A far greater loss, however, was in store for the ill-fated expedition. They left St. John's on August 20, making for Sable Island, which had been stocked years before by the Portuguese.[54] In a few days the _Delight_ foundered on a rock; and the weather became so bad that, at the end of the month, Gilbert consented to make for home. He was in the smallest ship, the _Squirrel_, a little ten-ton vessel, as being the best suited to explore the creeks and inlets of the American coast; and, in spite of the remonstrances of his companions, he would not leave her on the return voyage. 'We are as near heaven by sea as by land,' were his last words, before the ship went down in the middle of the Atlantic with all on board; and thus, fearless and faithful unto death, he found his resting-place in the sea. The story is one which stands out to all time in the annals of English adventure and English colonization. It was meet and right that the founder of the first English colony should be a Devonshire sailor of high repute, of stainless name, chivalrous, unselfish, strong in the fear of God. It was no less meet that his grave should be in the stormy Atlantic, midway between the Old World and the New. Thus those who came after had a forerunner of the noblest type; and the ships, which from that time to this have carried Englishmen to America, may ever have been passing by where Humphrey Gilbert went to his rest.

[Footnote 54: See above, p. 16.]

[Sidenote: _Sir Walter Ralegh._]

[Sidenote: _His attempts to colonize Virginia._]

Gilbert's half-brother, Sir Walter Ralegh, was cast in the same mould, but the record of his doings lies in the main beyond the range of this book. Virginia and Guiana were the scenes of his attempts at colonization, not Newfoundland or the coasts and rivers of Canada. In 1584, the year after {32} Gilbert had been lost at sea, Ralegh obtained from Queen Elizabeth a patent which was practically the same as Gilbert's grant of 1578; and, at the end of April, he sent out two ships, commanded by two captains named Amidas and Barlow, to explore and report upon a likely place for an English settlement.[55]

[Footnote 55: Accounts of this and the following voyages are given in the third volume of Hakluyt. See also the first book of John Smith's general history of Virginia, _The English Voyages to the Old Virginia_, in Mr. Arber's edition, _The English Scholar's Library_.]

They sailed more towards the south than previous English explorers, and eventually reached the island of Roanoke, which is now within the limits of North Carolina. Everything seemed bright and sweet and healthful, and the natives of the country were friendly and hospitable, 'such as live after the manner of the golden age.'[56] So they came back in the autumn with a story full of hope for the future, and the virgin Queen christened the land of promise Virginia.

[Footnote 56: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 304.]

Ralegh lost no time in sending out settlers. In the next year, 1585, seven ships started with 108 colonists on board. The expedition was commanded by Sir Richard Grenville, and among other captains with him was Thomas Cavendish, afterwards celebrated, like Drake, for sailing round the world. Ralph Lane, a soldier of fortune, was chosen to remain in charge of the colony, and with him was Amidas, the explorer of the previous year, who was styled 'Admiral of the country.' They went by the West Indies, touching at the Spanish islands of Porto Rico and Hispaniola, and, at the end of June, they reached Roanoke. Here they formed their settlement, and, when Grenville and his ships left in August and September, they brought back as bright a report as Amidas and Barlow had given the year before.

Already, however, before Grenville's departure, there had been friction between the Indians and the new-comers; and, as months went on, the new-born colony became in constant {33} danger of extermination. Still Lane contrived to hold his own, exploring north and west, gleaning reports of pearls and mines, and a possible passage to the south sea, until the winter and spring were past and the month of June had come again. A fleet of twenty-three ships was then seen out at sea, and, to the joy of the settlers, proved to be an English expedition under Sir Francis Drake, who was returning home laden with spoils from the Spanish main. Drake, at Lane's request, placed one of his ships with seamen and supplies at the disposal of the colony; but a storm arose, and the ship was blown out to sea. Daunted by this fresh trouble, the settlers determined to give up their enterprise and return home. They asked for passages on board Drake's vessels: the request was granted; and they abandoned Roanoke only a fortnight before Grenville arrived with relief, long expected and long delayed. Finding the island deserted, Grenville left fifteen men in possession and himself came home.

So far, Ralegh's scheme had failed; but the failure was due to untoward circumstances, not to the nature of the country, and he still persevered in his efforts. The very next year, in 1587, he sent out a fresh band of settlers, 150 in number; giving them for a leader John White, who had taken part in the former expedition. The arrangements for forming a colony were more fully organized than before; and to White and twelve Assistants Ralegh 'gave a charter and incorporated them by the name of Governor and Assistants of the city of Ralegh in Virginia.'[57] When the colonists reached Roanoke, they found that the fifteen men left by Grenville had disappeared, driven out, as they learnt, by the Indians. Notwithstanding, they renewed the old settlement; and, in the face of native enmity, began again the work of colonizing America. Before the end of the summer, White sailed for England, to give an account of what had been done; and, on his return home, Ralegh prepared to send {34} relief to the colony. But war with Spain was now on hand, freebooting was more attractive than colonizing, one attempt and another to send ships to Virginia miscarried; and when at length, late in 1589, White reached the scene of his settlement, he found it dismantled and deserted. So ended the first attempt to colonize Virginia. Success was not to come for a few more years, until the sixteenth century had passed and gone.

[Footnote 57: Hakluyt, vol. iii, p. 341.]

[Sidenote: _General results of the sixteenth century._]

Before 1600, Newfoundland had been annexed by Great Britain, but not one single English or French colony had as yet taken root in America. Nevertheless the century was far from barren of results. The way had been made plain, the ground had been cleared, the wild oats of adventure and knight-errantry had been sown, and the peoples were sobering down to steadier and more prudent enterprise. Beaten on the sea, raided and plundered in their own tropical domain, the Spaniards were ceasing to be a terror and a hindrance to the nations of Northern Europe; and, as the latter grew from youth to lusty manhood, the map of the great North American continent unfolded itself before their eyes. Then Champlain went to work in Canada, and John Smith in Virginia; Jesuits on the St. Lawrence, and Puritans in the New England states; and so the grain of mustard-seed, cast into American soil, grew into a great tree, which already, before three centuries have ended, bids fair to overshadow the earth.

N.B.--The references to Hakluyt made in the notes above are to the 1810 edition.

Among modern books most use has been made in this chapter of:--

PARKMAN'S _Pioneers of France in the New World_;
DOYLE'S _History of the English in America_, vol. i; and
JUSTIN WINSOR'S _Narrative and Critical History of America_.

Reference should also be made to Sir J. BOURINOT'S monograph on 'Cape Breton,' first published in the _Proceedings and Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada_, vol. ix, 1891, and since published separately.

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