COLONISING SCHEMES IN IRELAND 57 men, there was nothing to spare for more distant and less pressing enterprises. The influence of Irish experience in English colonial history deserves study, but only a passing reference can here be made to it. The names of the Elizabethan advocates of western planting are sufficient to indicate the community of ideas in regard to Ireland and America which made men turn in search of profit from Munster to Virginia, from Newfoundland to Kerry, and back again, without any radical change of thought. Even the phrases used in Ireland under the Tudors have a familiar ring in the ears of students of later colonial history. Terms like "native", "colony", "plantation", and "planting" were employed in connection with Ireland fifty years before any English settlement in America was thought of. Throughout Elizabeth's reign and down to the last and greatest plantation of Ulster under James I there were repeated schemes to attract English emigrants, and recruiting agents became expert in setting forth the alluring prospects for those who would settle on the Irish lands of the speculators who employed them. Many of these speculators in the early years of Elizabeth came from the ranks of the lesser gentry of the English west country or of unemployed officers who had seen service in the Irish wars. Thomas Stukely had dabbled in such speculations before he proposed his plantation in Florida, and it was in Ireland that his fellow-Devonian Humphrey Gilbert made his first colonising attempts. As was stated above, Gilbert was serving in the English army at Le Havre in 1562 and there became interested in the schemes for the expansion of French influence and commerce beyond the ocean which were being discussed among Coligny's followers. After his return to England he took shares in the Muscovy Company and tried to persuade its governors to resume their original purpose and pursue the discovery of a passage to Cathay by the north-east. Anthony Jenkinson,1 finding that his new trade to the East through Persia was very precarious, was about the same time taking up the idea of a sea passage. In May 1565 he presented a memorial to the Crown urging a fresh promotion of the discovery,2 and gave reasons derived from his own intercourse with men from Cathay to prove its practicability. A reorganisation of the Muscovy Company was then proceeding and no answer was returned to the memorial or to later joint representations by Gilbert and Jenkinson. Gilbert then proceeded alone with the project, but turned his attention from the north-east to the north-west, influenced probably by French stories of a water passage beyond the cod fisheries. He prayed for the grant of a licence for an enterprise to discover a passage to Cathay and all other rich parts of the world hitherto not found, together with the government of all territories discovered by him or by his advice 1 Vide supra, p. 41. towards any part of the north and west. Such a grant would infringe the exclusive privileges of the Muscovy Company which had just been confirmed by Act of Parliament1 and Gilbert's prayer was rejected. He turned instead to attempting a plantation in Ireland and under governmental patronage tried to found a settlement of west-countrymen on the shores of Lough Foyle in Ulster. But the attempt failed, and for the next few years Gilbert devoted himself to soldiering and planting in Munster. His continued interest in discovery is only evidenced during these years by the writing of a visionary tract that was circulated in manuscript among his friends and those whom he sought to engage in his schemes. x Between 1568 and 1574 the relations between England and Spain were very much disturbed. Embargoes and counter-embargoes put a stop to the usual flow of commerce, and seizures and reprisals on both sides were incessant. Anti-Spanish projects had a favourable hearing from the Government, but there was a sharp division of opinion in the Privy Council, and the Queen's decisions were incalculable. Burghley desired to pursue a temporising course, for he wished to maintain amicable relations as long as possible with Philip II, the ruler of our best market in the Netherlands. The Earl of Leicester and his ally, Walsingham, favoured a bolder policy and planned to weaken Spain, as France had done in the late war, by attacks upon her communications with the Indies. Their policy was in the ascendant in the early part of 1574, and the second serious proposition for the foundation of an English colony across the Atlantic dates from March in that year. Petitions were presented to the Queen and to Lord Admiral Lincoln by Richard Grenville and certain gentlemen of the west parts who were interested in privateering ventures. They prayed for a commission to embark at their own charges on a voyage for the settlement of "certain rich lands fatally and it seemeth by God's providence reserved for England and the honour of her Majesty". Special orders were sought "for establishing of her Majesty's dominion and amity in such place as they shall arrive unto" and for exclusive privileges of trade. The exact direction of the proposed voyage was not revealed in the petitions, but it was known to those associated with the projectors to lie towards the River Plate beyond the area effectively occupied by the Spaniards. There a colony was to be established as an advanced post whence expeditions might be sent out to penetrate by Magellan's Straits to the undiscovered lands of the great southern continent that was firmly believed to exist. The interest of the proposal lies in the direct 18 Eliz. c. 23. Not printed in Statutes of the Realm. See Page, W. S., The Russia Co. from 1553 to 1660. Cal. St. Pap. Col., E.I., 1513-1616, no. 20; Cal. St. Pap. Col., Am. and W.I. Addenda, 1574-1674, nos. I and 2; Corbett, J. S., Drake and the Tudor Navy, 1, 199, 203. 3 Depositions of John Butler and John Oxenham at Lima, 20 Feb. 1579. New Light on Drake (Hakluyt Soc., 1914), pp. 7, 9. See also Williamson, J. A., Sir John Hawkins, p. 386. THE COMPANY OF KATHAI 59 association of Walsingham with it through his stepson Christopher Carleill. This is the first indication of his policy for furthering antiSpanish colonising schemes that was of such importance a little later, but it had now to be dropped by reason of a change in the international situation. A new turn in French affairs brought Elizabeth and Philip II into more friendly relations. The Queen demanded from the projectors a security of £30,000 to £40,000 that they would not touch lands belonging to King Philip, and for a time she would consent to nothing that would be regarded by Spain as an unfriendly act. In August 1574 all outstanding claims between the two Powers were settled by the Convention of Bristol, and Walsingham had to put aside his patronage of the corsairs. Grenville and Drake returned to schemes in Ireland, and Carleill went back to his soldiering in the Netherlands. In 1553 Spanish pressure had diverted English activities for a time from Guinea to the northern seas, and in a similar way in 1574 Burghley furthered the revival of designs for the discovery of an English route to the East Indies by the north, to avoid danger to the old-established trade to Andalusia. The new attempt was financed and led by men who had been connected with the Guinea trade, among whom Martin Frobisher was prominent. He was a nephew of Sir John Yorke, one of the first promoters of the Guinea voyages under Edward VI, and found his first employment in ships trading there. He was for a time a prisoner at Elmina in 1554-5,1 and in 1566 he planned a piratical attack on the Portuguese there and was brought before the Privy Council and warned to desist.2 He then turned his attention to finding a way to the Spiceries by the north, but the prior rights of the Muscovy Company blocked his plans and he was unable to get any effective support. At length in 1574, with the aid of Gilbert's as yet unpublished tract A Discourse of a Discovery for a new Passage to Cataia,3 he succeeded in interesting Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, with whose powerful patronage he could approach the London financiers for funds. Michael Lock and others of his old masters among the Adventurers to Africa took up the scheme, the "Companye of Kathai" was launched as a joint stock, and public subscriptions were invited. The story of Frobisher's voyages to the Arctic and their disastrous results is told later, and we need only note here that the failure and the collapse of the boom in Kathai shares gave a severe blow to public confidence in projects of discovery and colonisation. A new field for the investment of English capital, especially from the west country, was about this time becoming of increasing importance. Englishmen from the western ports were sailing every season to the Newfoundland fisheries, and the trade not only proved a profitable investment, but became the nursery of skilful seamen and 1 Vide supra, p. 46. 2 Eliot, K. M., in Eng. Hist. Rev. XXXII, 89-92. * See Hakluyt, VII, 158-90. bold navigators that for centuries made it one of the most valued sources of recruits for the Royal Navy. It was not until the early years of Elizabeth's reign that English barks joined the annual fishing fleets in any considerable numbers. The older fishing trade to Iceland from the east coast ports decayed, and the fisheries of the North Sea were almost wholly monopolised by the Hollanders, who were building up great national prosperity on the produce of their fishing. In the Iceland trade, since Englishmen had to suffer the fierce competition of the Scots and the men of the Hansa, and to win their cargoes almost literally at the sword's point, our fishing vessels were customarily larger and better armed than the French and Portuguese boats, which were small and ill-found. Again, as the English climate is unsuited to the making of salt from sea-water, our fishermen had to purchase their salt at considerable cost in the south of Europe. They had therefore developed a process of curing their fish by drying it instead of heavily salting it. To carry on this process they preferred to fish from shallops near their drying stages on shore, while the French and Portuguese fished out on the banks direct from the barks in which they had crossed the ocean. They loaded their catch wet into their holds and barrelled it with salt, so that they came into harbour only rarely.1 In these circumstances the English "were commonly lords of the harbours from which they fished all summer, and used all strangers' help if need required...in respect of their protection of them against rovers or other violent intruders who did often put them from good harbours". The chief gathering place was in the harbour of St John's, where during the height of the season some hundreds of barks might assemble. The fishing in the Grand Bay, i.e. the estuary of the St Lawrence, was little visited by Englishmen; its fisheries were almost entirely in the hands of the men from Brest and St Malo, who made their headquarters at Cape Breton. The encouragement of the English fishing industry was an important part of Burghley's policy of gathering all sources of national wealth into English hands. His ordinances to compel the eating of fish in Lent and on fast days afforded matter for facetious comment by the Court wits, but they were parts of a carefully designed plan to encourage English shipping and to provide a nursery for seamen. The lands beyond the fisheries might afford the masts, pitch and other naval stores that England had to import at great cost from the Baltic, and thus be of much importance. Plans for securing control of the fisheries and following up English predominance in the harbours by colonising the inland territory became frequent from 1578 onwards. There is a continuous thread of ideas between Parkhurst's suggestions "that we shall be lords of the whole fishing" and the 1 See a letter from Anthony Parkhurst of Bristol to Richard Hakluyt the elder, of the Middle Temple, Nov. 1578, Hakluyt, vm, 9-16. 2 Ibid. vIII, 13. GILBERT'S PLAN TO ATTACK THE FISHING FLEETS 61 actual colonisation of the neighbouring shores of New England fifty years later, and always we find emphasis laid upon the joint advantages of fisheries and the provision of naval stores from sources under English control. To Burghley's concern at the prospect of war in 1579 and the need for supplying the Navy we may attribute his furtherance of the reorganisation of the old regulated company of the Eastland merchants and the grant to them of a new and exclusive charter for the Baltic trade. In the extraordinary complexities of European politics little attention could be spared by the Queen's ministers to affairs beyond the ocean, and Elizabeth herself never appears to have taken much interest in them. But Walsingham, one of the shrewdest and subtlest statesmen of his time, kept them in the forefront of his schemes and to him belongs the proud position of forerunner in English world policy. He held that a struggle with Spain could not be avoided and pointed to the Indies as offering the most vulnerable point for English attack when the time should come. Even the jealous vigilance of Philip II's spies could find no piratical designs in Frobisher's voyages for the Company of Kathai, and they were admitted to be legitimate ventures. But while public attention was focussed upon them, Walsingham and his friends were secretly preparing schemes that were incompatible with peace. In the autumn of 1577 the lull in AngloSpanish relations came to an end, and the whole country was in a fever of war. In November, with the connivance of certain members of the Privy Council, Drake slipped away from Plymouth to begin his great enterprise against the Spaniards in the South Sea, unnoticed by most Englishmen and unsuspected by his enemies,1 and in the same month Humphrey Gilbert presented to the Queen a Discourse proposing to fit out a powerful force which, under a pretence of colonising on the St Lawrence, should attack the Spanish, Portuguese and French fishing fleets in the harbours of Newfoundland, and, enriched by their spoils, should raid the Spanish colonies in the Caribbean. There seems to have been no real colonising intention as there had been in Grenville's propositions of 1574. "The diminishing of their forces by sea is to be done...by giving of licence under letters patents to discover and inhabit some strange place with special proviso for their safeties whom policy requireth to have most annoyed, by which means the doing of the contrary shall be imputed to the executors' fault: your highness' letters patents being a manifest show that it was not your Majesty's pleasure so to have it."2 Though the desired licence to sail was not sealed until June 1578, Walsingham assured Gilbert earlier in the year of the acceptance of 1 One of Drake's ships returned from Magellan's Straits in June 1578, but his exploits in the South Sea were unknown in Europe till late in 1579. 2 A Discourse how Her Majesty may annoy the King of Spain, in Gosling, W. G., Life of Sir H. Gilbert, pp. 133-9. |