THIRTEEN COLONIES
OF NORTH AMERICA established by the Yorks of England
EARLY ENGLISH VOYAGES TO NORTH AMERICA
It would be out of place in this small book to give in detail a history of all the discoveries which were made along the shores of North and South America at the end of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth centuries. As the main object is to depict briefly the political history of the Thirteen English Colonies on the North American seaboard, it will be unnecessary to say more than a few words about the discoverers whose enterprise and bravery made colonisation possible. With the Spanish, French, and Dutch voyagers it is not proposed to deal; their stories are well known, and affected but little the establishment of our early settlements in the West. Like the British nation, these three peoples also strove to create lasting empires in America; but unlike their rival, they failed. The Spaniards made the fatal error of attempting to settle during the period of exploration. They based their colonies upon slavery, and a mistaken commercial policy; and the sparseness of their colonists made them incapable of contending against the pressure of surrounding savagery. The result was that they, who were without the traditions [Pg 2]of public morality and who were to a certain extent lacking in administrative powers, became intermixed with the inferior races with whom they came in contact. The French were no more successful in their endeavours to establish a New France beyond the sea; they failed, partly because of the French temperament, and partly through obvious errors. The French character was buoyant and cheerful—both excellent natural gifts for colonists—but they were unable to combine the spirit of adventure with that patient commercial industry which so wonderfully distinguished the Puritan emigrants. The Dutch might have proved serious rivals to the British in the West had they been able to rise from the position of mere traders, and had they had a sufficiently large population on which to draw. Their commercial system deteriorated, becoming uneconomic and non-progressive; while their arduous and gallant struggle against Philip II. and Alva had necessarily handicapped them in the race for colonial aggrandisement.The English, in strong contrast to these competitors, never drew a distinct or sharp line between the soldier and the trader. The story of Great Britain's expansion contains the names of hundreds of gallant heroes, but they were at the same time sober and industrious men. The plodding and commercial characteristics possessed by the British colonial saved him from perpetrating those foolish errors of the Spaniard which arose from a desire to gain rapid wealth and a tawdry glory. One fact stands out pre-eminent amongst the reasons of British success—the English kept their period of exploration almost entirely separate from their epoch of settlement. The glorious dreams of Eldorado, the visions of the golden [Pg 3]city of Manoa had been dispersed like a morning mist when the period of colonisation dawned bright and clear at the beginning of the seventeenth century.
The period which coincides with the reign of Henry VII. forms one of the greatest epochs of history; it was indeed the veritable Renaissance, the birth of the New World. It was at this moment that the history of America, the modern history of England, and the present history of Europe practically began. These startling facts were due to the simultaneous discoveries in the East and the West. The voyages of Bartholomew Diaz, of Christopher Columbus, and of Vasco de Gama might well have astonished the world, but seem to have had very little effect upon the English as a nation. England was not yet ready to take up the position of Mistress of the Seas; the time was not yet ripe for colonial advancement. The country, from both political and social points of view, was still suffering from the confusion and anarchy which had resulted from the rule of the Lancastrians, and from the chaos left by the Wars of the Roses. Two men, however, seem to have understood something of the possibilities that lay open to them in the West. John and his son Sebastian Cabot, of Genoese stock, but sometime resident in Venice, sailed, under the patronage of Henry VII., from Bristol, in 1497, to discover the island of Cathay. John Cabot is described as one who had "made himself very expert and cunning in knowledge of the circuit of the world and Ilands of the same, as by a Sea card and other demonstrations."[1] The royal charter, granted to these men in March 1496, contained a most important clause, "to saile to all parts, countreys, and seas of the [Pg 4]East, of the West, and of the North, under our banners and ensignes, ... to set up our banners and ensignes in every village, towne, castle, isle, or maine land of them newly found ... as our vassals, and lieutenants, getting unto us the rule, title, and jurisdiction of the same."[2] Bacon, in his History of Henry VII., refers to Cabot's now celebrated voyage. "There was one Sebastian Gabato, a Venetian living in Bristow, a man seen and expert in cosmography and navigation. This man seeing the success and emulating perhaps the enterprise of Christopherus Columbus in that fortunate discovery towards the south-west, which had been by him made some six years before, conceited with himself that lands might likewise be discovered towards the north-west. And surely it may be that he had more firm and pregnant conjectures of it than Columbus had of his at the first. For the two great islands of the Old and New World, being in the shape and making of them broad towards the north and pointed towards the south, it is likely that the discovery just began where the lands did meet. And there had been before that time a discovery of some lands which they took to be islands, and were indeed of America towards the north-west."[3] Bacon is here calling attention to what has since become the great controversial question of whether or not the Norsemen discovered the American continent in the eleventh century. It is very improbable that the Cabots knew anything of this tradition; and this voyage was solely the outcome of the discoveries of Columbus. Their object is definitely stated to have been a "great desire to traffique for the spices as the Portingals [Pg 5]did."[4] It is a remarkable fact that very little is known of this voyage, and there are practically no English records available in which to find the history of so great an event. A Bristol book contains this terse mention of the exploring expedition: "In the year 1497, the 24th of June, on St John's day, was Newfoundland found by Bristol men in a ship called the Mathew."[5] Carrying out the commands of the charter, John Cabot and his son planted the English standard upon American soil, but they did little besides: no explorations were made into the interior; they were completely satisfied with the all-important fact of discovery. As a proof of their success, Sebastian Cabot brought back three Indians "in their demeanour like to bruite beastes," but who seem to have settled down and taken up English customs, for Robert Fabian says, "of the which upon two yeeres after, I saw two apparelled after the maner of Englishmen in Westminster pallace, which that time I could not discerne from Englishmen.
The restless ambition of the Cabots incited them to a further voyage in February 1498, the charter on this occasion being granted only to the father. They again started from Bristol, and sailed along the North American coasts from the ice-bound shores of Newfoundland[7] to the sunny Carolinas or Florida. The younger Cabot afterwards wrote that he sailed "unto the Latitude of 67 degrees and a halfe under the North Pole ... finding still the open Sea without any maner of impediment, he thought verily by that [Pg 6]way to have passed on still the way to Cathaia which is in the East."[8] This voyage is recorded by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and was frequently quoted as a reason for England's claim to North America. "The countreys lying north of Florida, God hath reserved the same to be reduced unto Christian civility by the English nation. For not long after that Christopher Columbus had discovered the Islands and continent of the West Indies for Spaine, John and Sebastian Cabot made discovery also of the rest from Florida northwards to the behoofe of England."[9] The Cabots disappear from English history for a time and there are no records of the reception of this voyage. It was undoubtedly of twofold importance; it started that "will o' the wisp" of the North-West Passage, that led so many men to risk and lose their lives; and it may also be regarded as the foundation-stone of the English power in the West
The next few years of the history of the exploration of America is filled with the records of Spaniards, Italians, and Frenchmen. The voyage of the Bristol merchants by which North America had just been discovered had no effect, and awakened no enthusiasm in the hearts of the English during the early portion of the sixteenth century. Henry VII. and his more adventurous son were both such severe and orthodox Catholics that they hesitated to trespass upon the limitations laid down by the bull of Alexander VI., by which everything on the western side of an imaginary line between the forty-first and forty-fourth meridians west of Greenwich belonged to Spain; while the Brazil coast, the East Indies, and Africa south of the Canary Islands fell to Portugal. Between [Pg 7]1500 and 1550 only two true voyages of discovery have been chronicled. The first was in 1527, when a canon of St Paul's, erroneously named Albert de Prado, sailed with two ships in search of the Indies. It is probable that this was the voyage of John Rut of the Royal Navy, with whom, there is reason to suppose, a Spaniard, called Albert de Prado, sailed. They failed to make any real discoveries, but brought back a cargo of fish from the inhospitable shores of Newfoundland and Labrador. The second voyage was that of Master Hore, in 1536, who, it is supposed, set out in the spirit of a Crusader, but who was more probably a briefless barrister accompanied by "many gentlemen of the Innes of Court and of the Chancery."[10] They were shipwrecked on the Newfoundland coast, where, as none of them knew how to fish, and although Hore told them they would go to unquenchable fire, they began to eat one another. "On the fieldes and deserts here and there, the fellowe killed his mate, while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe, and cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them."[11] Luckily for the remainder, a French ship was blown into the harbour, and they seized her with all the food she had on board, sailing home in safety, leaving the French sailors to a horrible fate, which they seemed to have escaped; for "certaine moneths after, those Frenchmen came into England and made complaint to King Henry the 8: the king ... was so mooved with pitie, that he punished not his subjects, but of his owne purse made full and royale recompense unto the French.
The great voyager Sebastian Cabot returned to England in 1548 from his sojourn in Spain. Under the patronage of Charles V. he had made several voyages, including one of particular importance to the Rio de la Plata. On his arrival in England he was rewarded by Edward VI. with a pension of £166, 13s. 4d., as a slight evidence of that king's appreciation of his manifold services. Old man though he was, his mind still ran on the discovery of a North-West, or North-East Passage to the Indies, and he became the governor of a company of merchant adventurers for the discovery of regions beyond the sea. He did not participate in any of these discoveries, "because there are nowe many yong and lustie Pilots and Mariners of good experience, by whose forwardnesse I doe rejoyce in the fruit of my labours and rest with the charge of this office."[16] Amongst the young and lusty pilots were Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor, who turned their attentions to a North-East passage. The former died on his vessel in the midst of the ice floes in 1553, while the latter succeeded in reaching Archangel, and so brought about, through a successor, Anthony Jenkinson, the foundation of the Muscovy Company.
It was, however, the discovery of America, and in particular of the North-West Passage, that offered great inducements to Englishmen. The American continent had an ever fascinating attraction, for the reports of its vast wealth drew adventurous spirits as with a magnet. The gold of Mexico and Peru dazzled their eyes and made them hope to find [Pg 10]some similar hoard on every barren strip of shore from Patagonia to Newfoundland. "It was thought that in those unknown lands, peopled by 'anthropophagi and men whose heads did grow beneath their shoulders,' lay all the treasures of the earth. That was an irresistible temptation to the great merchants of England, citizens of no mean city, pursuing no ignoble nor sordid trade."[17] Thus early in the reign of Elizabeth there was an attempt at American plantation; it certainly was only an attempt, for it in no way furthered the schemes of colonisation. Thomas Stukeley, a member of a good Devonshire family, planned, with the sanction of the queen, in 1563, to colonise Florida. He made the fatal mistake of so many others, of converting a colonising expedition into one of mere buccaneering. Spanish and French vessels were his real objects, not the foundation of an English settlement in the New World. The scheme naturally failed; and Stukeley removed his activities to Barbary, where he met a glorious death amongst the chivalry of Portugal upon the classic field of Alcazar.
The search for the North-West Passage was even more tempting than the projection of imaginary colonies in the South; it opened before the eyes of speculative voyagers a promise of all the wealth of the East. A large proportion of Hakluyt's great prose epic—that marvellous work of adventure—is filled with the search for Cathay. That mystic land became the purpose and the goal of hundreds of seamen who, during the centuries, struggled and toiled through overwhelming perils, ever to be baffled by the solid and impenetrable ice. Those wild north seas seem [Pg 11]to have caused little terror to the Tudor sea-dogs; Master Thorne, for example, deserves to live in the memory of Englishmen for all time simply for one remark with which he is credited. When the objection of the ice was proposed to him, he waived it on one side with words which might well be taken as the motto of the British Empire: "There is no land unhabitable and no sea innavigable."[18] Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in particular, tried to encourage men to push forward in their adventurous discoveries, and there is no doubt that his famous work, A Discourse to prove a passage by the North West to Cathaya and the East Indies, did a great deal to stimulate men in their hopeless task.
It was largely due to this Discourse that Martin Frobisher sailed to find the tantalising passage, in June 1576, under the patronage of the all-powerful Earl of Warwick. He sighted Greenland, and then reached that inlet on the American coast which he called Frobisher Bay. He brought back with him samples of a black stone which were supposed to contain gold, and thus added the temptation of easily acquired wealth to the sufficiently delusive and dangerous task of discovering the passage. The possibility of mineral wealth in the Arctic Regions brought about the formation of the Company of Cathay, under the government of Michael Lok; and as its Captain-General, Frobisher undertook a second voyage in May 1577. His object was "the further discovering of the passage to Cathay, and other Countreys, thereunto adjacent, by West North-West navigations: which passage or way is supposed to be on the North and North-West part of America ... [Pg 12]where through our Merchants may have course and recourse with their merchandise."[19] Frobisher took possession of the barren territory, and on his return Queen Elizabeth "named it very properly Meta Incognita, as a marke and bound utterly hitherto unknown."[20] The gold-refiners of London were still deceived by the black stones; and again Frobisher sailed, in May 1578, to work this imaginary mine. He took with him on this occasion "a strong fort or house of timber" for the shelter of "one hundreth persons, whereof 40 should be mariners for the use of ships, 30 Miners for gathering the gold Ore together for the next yere, and 30 souldiers for the better guard of the rest, within which last number are included the Gentlemen, Gold finers, Bakers, Carpenters & all necessary persons."[21] This might be regarded as an early attempt to found a colony, for Frobisher seems to have hoped to establish a thriving industry in this desolate and ice-bound land; but as a matter of fact these "necessary persons" did nothing at all except to discover an island which existed only in their imaginations, and they returned to England in the autumn. Frobisher's efforts as a discoverer now ceased; for his seamanship and courage were required in home waters for the protection of his native land.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Raleigh, was the "first of our nation that carried people to erect an habitation and government in those northerly countreys of America."[22] He was a man bold in action and chivalrous in character; he was one of those giants of the Elizabethan period, and if he had any faults they were only those of his age, while his virtues [Pg 13]were all his own. As early as 1563 he was connected with schemes for colonisation in the formation of a company for the discovery of new trades. He it is who has the proud position of being the founder of our premier colony, Newfoundland. In 1578, letters patent were granted to him by Queen Elizabeth for establishing a colony in North America. He made his first voyage in that year, sailing from Dartmouth in September. The expedition was a complete failure, and fearing lest his patent should expire, he undertook that voyage which has made him one of the most famous men in history. In 1583 he sailed to Newfoundland, and took possession in the name of the Virgin Queen, "and signified unto al men, that from that time forward, they should take the same land as a territorie appertaining to the Queene of England."[23] His great action was not allowed to be forgotten; the gallant knight himself never saw England again, but passed to his grave beneath the rough waters of the Atlantic. Hakluyt, however, printed the story of an eye-witness, Edward Hayes, who gave a graphic account of the whole expedition. Gilbert insisted on returning in the Squirrel, a small crazy craft, rather than in the larger vessel, known as the Hinde. The weather became very foul; and on Monday afternoon, the 9th of September, Hayes says, "the frigate was neere cast away oppressed by the waves, yet at that time recovered: and giving foorth signes of joy the Generall, sitting abaft with a booke in his hand cried out unto us in the Hind (so oft as we did approach within hearing) We are as neere to heaven by sea as by land." About twelve that night, the frigate being ahead of the Hinde, her [Pg 14]suddenly went out; and after a minute's awful silence, the men of the Hinde exclaimed, "the General was cast away."[24] Thus the hero, strong in his belief and fear of God, with chivalrous and stainless name, found his last resting-place in the sea. He was a forerunner of the very noblest type, an example to the men of his own generation, and to those fearless adventurers who have helped to create the British Empire in all parts of the world.
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