THE ELIZABETHAN SEA-DOGS 107 the Squirrel. At last, on 9 September, when near the Azores, a great storm raised "terrible seas, breaking short and high pyramid-wise". Midst these the little pinnace laboured exceedingly, but at the last view from the Golden Hind, Gilbert was seen waving joyfully with a book in his hand and crying out "We are as neere to heaven by sea as by land". At midnight the Squirrel's lights were quenched, and with her went down as stout an adventurer as ever sailed. What was the book which consoled him in his last hours? Surely it was More's Utopia, in which he read these words "The way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance". For in spite of their hardness and occasional cruelty these Elizabethans had in them a strain of religious idealism which carried them through incredible hardships and difficulties. They feared God and nothing else. Nerved by that belief, they sailed in mere cockle-shells to brave Arctic ice, the heat and disease of the tropics, and the thumbscrews of the Inquisition, in order that they might dry up the wealth of Spain at its source. With this patriotic purpose were often mixed less worthy motives; but their hardihood and determination set to the nation a standard of achievement of priceless worth. Long battling with stormy seas and ice produced stout ships and stout hearts. A contemporary, William Harrison, reckons two well-found English ships a match for three or four foreigners; and he adds that "for strength, assurance, nimbleness and swiftness of sailing, there are no vessels in the world to be compared with ours". The crews were generally worthy of their leaders, Hawkins, Drake and Frobisher, who in the crisis of 1588 became great captains. Mocenigo, Venetian ambassador at Paris, feared that the English would triumph over the Armada; for they "never yield, and though driven back and thrown into confusion they always return to the fight".1 A people having in reserve these stores of spirit, skill and strength, was invincible; and the confidence with which it burst into a new oceanic career called forth exhilarating energies destined to influence every side of the national life. England now lived as she never lived before or since. In turn the Vikings, the Spaniards, Portuguese, English, Dutch and French had their heyday when they felt the throbs of new and fruitful worldcontacts: but that of the islanders was at once the most glorious and the most lasting of all; for, from a sure island base, their adventurers opened the way for traders, and these for settlers, in lands where new Englands could be founded. Nevertheless, this expansive impulse worked in English fashion by fits and starts. Elizabeth's warlike efforts were as short-lived as her whims. After the Armada no effective blow was struck at Philip II. The Azores, his vital link with the Indies, were never seriously attacked; and excessive individualism marred the work of our great explorers. Nothing tangible came of the annexations of Frobisher 1 Cal. St. Pap. Venetian, 1581–91, no. 706; also ibid. 1617–19, nos. 254, 921. and Drake, while that of Gilbert long remained valueless except to our west-country fishermen. Next, the unmanly fads of James I half stifled loyalty and enthusiasm. He took no interest in colonisation. "He seems" (wrote Lando, the Venetian ambassador) "to aspire to nothing beyond the limits which the sea has set him." Yet the Elizabethan spirit survived, manifesting itself in the north-western quests of Hudson, Baffin, and others unknown to fame. They were beaten by the stern facts of geography. Yet they had not striven in vain. They had secured for England the first claim to the lands north of Labrador and around Hudson Bay. Above all they had learned to press on despite endless rebuffs; and the hardening of the national fibre is an asset of priceless worth. No soft people, stumbling on empire, ever kept it. After the explorer comes the adventurer, after the adventurer the settler. Gold is the link between them, and few men loved gold as Sir Walter Raleigh did or sought it more assiduously. But he was much more than an avaricious and speculative adventurer. He possessed to an unusual degree that admixture of good and evil which makes the Elizabethan Age at once so interesting and so baffling. Transitional periods produce naturally these combinations of good and bad, but the impetuous individualism, which is also their outcome, found a valuable opening in overseas activities. If the rank and file of the early buccaneers and settlers helped in some small measure to relieve the vagrancy problem at home, their leaders also were better employed than if they had stayed behind to evict copyholders or to fall into the usurious clutches of a Spinola or a Paravicini. Religious zeal, too, found a healthier outlet in converting the native Virginians than in harrying unfortunate sectaries, and the soundest cure for an "Euphues" or an "Inglese Italianato" was a voyage to Guiana or a raid on Cadiz. Raleigh, "the man who had more genius than all the Council put together", represents therefore better than any other, save perhaps Sidney, the many-sidedness of the period. Less famous than Drake as a navigator, less adventurous than Davis as an explorer, inferior to Spenser as a poet and to Essex as a courtier, the idol of the West Country at one time and at another the most hated man in England, he is at once one of the most bewitching and one of the most exasperating figures of English history. Aubrey sums him up briefly and well: "he was a tall, handsome and bold man, but his naeve2 was, that he was damnable proud". Of his handsomeness, the portraits leave no doubt. If his boldness aided him to envisage an overseas empire as no man before had imagined it, his pride forced him ever to be at variance with superior and subordinate alike. Independence and 1 Cal. St. Pap. Venetian, 1621-3, no. 603. 2 Fault. SIR WALTER RALEIGH 109 subservience, tenderness and arrogance, hardiness and love of display, these contradictory characteristics appear over and over again, in his letters, in his more consecutive writings and, indeed, in all his words and actions. His achievements in literature are of high worth. If, rather reluctantly, Aubrey's verdict is accepted that "he was sometimes a poet but not often" it can be claimed at least that he was an unsurpassed master of vigorous and enchanting prose, and that half a page of the Report1 or the Discovery of Guiana is enough to conjure up the immortal exploits of Sir Richard Grenville or the exquisite thrills of pioneering on the Orinoco, with its riot of colour, its wealth of foliage and its infinite variety of fowl, fish and fruit. His interest in colonisation started early. After the death of his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1583, he took over his schemes and got his very comprehensive charter renewed in his own name. A series of experimental settlements followed, interesting as being among the first systematic attempts at colonisation made by Englishmen, but doomed to failure partly through inadequate resources and partly through the unwise choice of a site. "If these two captains" (Amadas and Barlow, sent out by Raleigh in 1584) "had first dropped anchor in the Chesapeake instead of in the modern Albemarle Sound, the successful colonisation of Virginia would probably have been anticipated by a quarter of a century." Then came White's voyage of 1587 and the tragic failure to find any trace of the colonists left behind at Roanoke. After this, Raleigh leased his patent to a company of merchants who did very little, and the real story of Virginia is not resumed till the granting of the charter in April 1606. But Raleigh's influence had been both direct and abiding; he had marked out once and for all the lines of future development. Virginia was to be a colony of white settlers, a home for Englishmen, not a mere trading depôt or the stronghold of a garrison. It was in anticipation of a great future that the charter of 1584 had guaranteed that the colonists should "enjoy all the privileges of free denizens of England". Moreover the economic incentive had not been overlooked by Raleigh, "the least that he hath granted being 500 acres".3 Legal security and economic independence were to go together. Nor was Raleigh ever disillusioned or discouraged; "I shall yet live to see it an English nation", he was bold enough to prophesy in the dark days just before his fall. This unquenchable faith was not the least valuable of his services to the Empire. In the meantime his interests had been diverted to Guiana, which meant then all the hinterland of the Orinoco, and far more than is suggested by the name to-day. He came back from his adventurous voyage of 1594 convinced of two things, the great potential value of the land and the importance of its being opened up and developed 2 Bruce, Economic History of Virginia, 1, 5. 1 In Hakluyt, v, 1–14. * Hariot, Briefe and true report of Virginia, London, 1588 (ed. of 1900, p. 69). in a more or less official way. "If it be left", he said in his Epistle Dedicatory,1 "to the spoil and sackage of common persons; if the loss and service of so many nations be despised, so great riches and so mighty an empire refused, I hope Her Majesty will yet take my humble desire and my labour therein in gracious part.' Subsequent explorers have confirmed many of his statements, such as the almost incredible rapidity with which the water rises in even the little inland creeks, and from the geographical point of view his narrative appears generally accurate. Unfortunately he was obsessed with the stories of El Dorado, and convinced that gold also was to be found in workable quantities in the white quartz which lay about abundantly. At any rate, little more is heard of Guiana until the fatal voyage of 1617, and meanwhile interest swings back again to Virginia. If Raleigh thought of plantations in terms of gold and empire, thus combining the ideas of the past and of the future, other men were impelled by other motives. The missionary aspect is to be noticed, and is, indeed, the only one mentioned in the preamble to the Letters Patent for Virginia (10 April 1606). "The Kingdom of God will be enlarged" says the author of Nova Britannia (1609) “and the tidings of His truth will be proclaimed among so many millions of savage men and women who now live in darkness in those regions." Robert Gray, writing his Godspeed to Virginia in the same year, is equally emphatic: "far be it from the hearts of the English that they should give any cause to the world to say that they sought the wealth of that country above or before the glory of God and the propagation of His Kingdom." Similarly Captain John Smith, in the preface to his General History of Virginia, stresses the point that "the gaining provinces addeth to the King's Crown, but the reducing heathen people to civility and true religion bringeth honour to the King of Heaven". The ingenious Hariot, Raleigh's mathematical expert, is also careful to point out that the astonishment produced in the natives by the sight of his clocks and compasses "caused many of them to give credit to what we spake concerning our God. In all places where I came, I did my best to make His immortal Glory known." As against this, we have the complaint of George Thorpe, some years later, that "all the past ill success was owing to the not seeking of God's glory in converting the natives". Thorpe himself was not to blame for this, as he had taken a direct personal interest, on the spot, in the scheme for founding a Missionary College, but his statement shows that in practice the religious aspect of colonisation tended to fade into the background. Among worldly motives, hostility to Spain took a prominent place. "That country", Sir Thomas Dale said of Virginia on his return to England in 1616, "being inhabited by His Majesty's subjects will put such a bit into our ancient enemy's mouth as will curb his 1 To the Discovery of Guiana. HOSTILITY TO SPAIN III haughtiness of Monarchy." Of Guiana, Raleigh had already written "whatsoever prince shall possess it shall be greatest, and if the King of Spain enjoy it he will become unresistible". "Are three molehills so much for us and so many Empires so little to him?" asked Captain Smith. It is only in their rarer moments of caution that men remember that James, with his constant inclination towards the Spaniards, must be humoured and persuaded that no real injustice is being done to them. It was not tactful to compare Alexander's famous Bull with the forged decretals, asserting contemptuously "the first donation is an ancient fable and the other is a joke and a ridiculous invention". Captain Smith, in a more conciliatory spirit, urged that "our most royal King James I hath place and opportunity to enlarge his ancient dominions without wronging any, which is a condition most agreeable to his just and pious resolution". Usually, however, the anti-Spanish feeling is expressed with the greatest frankness. Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, found in 1609 that "they are in a great state of excitement about that place [Virginia] and very much afraid lest your majesty should drive them out of it", and two years earlier the council in Virginia had written home for speedy assistance "lest that devouring Spaniard lay his ravenous hands upon these gold-shewing mountains". Raleigh is on occasion bitterest of all "against the ambitious and bloody pretences of the Spaniards who, seeking to devour all nations, shall be themselves devoured". But it was a race for time and the moment was assuredly propitious for a forward move. "The Spanish Empire hath been greatly shaken and hath begun of late years to decline. . . . But if the King of Spain can obtain peace upon any condition reasonable... he will soon grow to his former greatness and pride." This policy did not necessarily mean an immediate outbreak of hostilities, but merely the weakening of the Spanish power by a vigorous development of permanent settlements in those parts of the New World where the enemy had not yet shown himself. Gondomar himself quite realised this point; "they preserve these places very carefully", he wrote home to Philip, "as it appears to them that they will be very useful to England if there should be war with Spain". This attitude of Raleigh may appear curious when it is remembered that he had been, at any rate in 1586, a pensioner of Spain. But that this practice did not imply treason to England appears from the similar behaviour of such men as the Earl of Salisbury (Robert Cecil), the Earl of Dorset (Thomas Sackville) and Sir William Monson. Yet another motive for colonisation was to rid England of some of the surplus population from which many folk then believed her to be suffering. Naturally those thus forcibly emigrated were not of the best type (sent out, often enough, to "escape ill destinies" at home1), and this was even claimed as a virtue in discussions with the 1 Smith, John, Generall Historie of Virginia (1907 ed.), 1, 189. |