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TO HEAVEN BY SEA

SIR HUMPHREY GILBERT may have been temporarily silenced, but he had not given up. In 1583, as Fenton was limping home, his dreams of emulating the great Sir Francis Drake in tatters, Gilbert was in Cawsand Bay, a protected haven near the entrance to Plymouth harbor, readying a fleet for his most ambitious venture of all—one that would establish a network of great colonies in northern America. Gilbert would not be crowned, as Drake had claimed to be in Nova Albion, nor would he be proclaimed king, as Fenton had hoped to be. But he would be the next best thing, a governor with power over a vast territory, ruling in the name of Queen Elizabeth.

Gilbert still held the letters patent, issued by Elizabeth in 1578, which gave him license to “discover, search and find out” new territories, and he was determined to do just that before the patent expired in 1584. He drafted a statement that amounted to a founding constitution for his imagined American domain. Gilbert and his wife, Anne, along with their sons and daughters, would hold dynastic and commercial rights to the lands. All merchants who did business in regions he controlled would have to pay him hefty customs duties on their trading activities.1

The colony would not be entirely nostalgic and feudal, however. Indeed, it would have a strikingly forward-looking and democratic feature that seems remarkably modern. As governor, Gilbert would be advised by a group of colonists who would be “chosen by the consent of the people”—that is, elected. This was a radical departure from the Privy Council, whose members were chosen on the basis of social status and royal favoritism.2

Gilbert’s imperial vision was going to be costly to realize, but his finances were in a parlous state after his last abortive enterprise to “annoy” the king of Spain. In his first effort to capitalize on his royal patent, he had frittered away his wife’s inheritance and, as he confided to Walsingham, had been forced to sell her “clothes from her back.” Also, he had suffered enduring damage to his reputation, complaining he was “subject to daily arrests, executions, and outlawries.”3

But by the terms of his license, Gilbert held an incredibly desirable asset that was potentially more valuable than any treasure or trade. That asset was land. In England, land was precious because it was scarce. In the New World, land was unknowably plentiful, but it was no less valuable for all that. For the younger sons of great families, such as Sir Humphrey, who could not inherit the family estate, the abundance of land offered an opportunity to claim an exalted place in the world that was denied them in England.

The letters patent did not set territorial limits, and given that Dee had confirmed England’s right to empire, Gilbert could consider all of America as his own property, and he did just that. In May 1582, he attracted his first major investor—Philip Sidney, Walsingham’s son-in-law and grandson of John Dudley. Gilbert, rather arbitrarily it would seem, assigned Sidney 3 million acres, an area about the size of Yorkshire or Jamaica.4

Then, Gilbert managed to attract another set of investors who pictured a colony devoted to a very different purpose: a haven for Catholics. In mid-July, Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, reported that Walsingham had “secretly” approached two “Catholic gentlemen” about Gilbert’s venture.5 Almost certainly, these two gentlemen were Sir George Peckham and Sir Thomas Gerrard. The two men bought into the arrangement, committing unspecified sums of money in Gilbert’s expedition.6

Given Gilbert’s track record, particularly his ferocious slaying of Catholics in Ireland, his willingness to deal with Catholic investors seems out of character. On the other hand, Gilbert knew Peckham: they had been co-investors in a planned expedition through the Magellan Strait in the mid-1570s, and Peckham had some involvement in Gilbert’s 1578 venture.7 Also, through Peckham, Gilbert may have known Gerrard, since Peckham’s daughter married Gerrard’s son. Gerrard, who also hailed from a renowned Catholic family, had previously flirted with the idea of overseas colonization. In March 1570, he had petitioned Elizabeth for rights to develop a part of the Ards peninsula in Ireland that eventually went to Sir Thomas Smith.8

According to Mendoza, Peckham and Gerrard were “spendthrift gentlemen,” facing ruin.9 This may have been another reason that the prospect of a great deal of land, along with the freedom to act on that land as they pleased, was attractive to them. Certainly, life was not easy for Catholics in England at this time. Although Peckham was a moderate Catholic, and was knighted by Elizabeth in the year that she was excommunicated by the Pope, he had, by 1580, become more outspoken, even doing a stint in prison for sheltering the renowned Jesuit Edmund Campion, who had secretly come to England.10 Gerrard had also spent some time in prison for his participation in a plot to free Mary, Queen of Scots, who was living in England under a kind of house arrest having long before fled her homeland after a Protestant coup d’état.11

When Elizabeth had first come to the throne, she endeavored to take a tolerant approach in religious matters—a via media, or middle way. She herself was Protestant, but she did not abandon the crucifix in her chapel, despite opposition from her advisers.12 After 1570, when the Pope excommunicated her, Elizabeth became the target of many Catholic plots, and she got much tougher on Catholic practices. There were no persecutions or bloodlettings in England to rival the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris in 1572, but there were new prohibitions and tougher laws. In 1581, the English Parliament passed a bill authorizing a fine of twenty pounds per month to be levied on people who refused to attend English church services—a hefty amount and certainly enough, over time, to ruin a Catholic of modest means.13

Elizabeth and her councillors had little interest in expelling Catholic recusants, as they were called. Instead, they preferred to keep them at home, where they could monitor their movements, and, through fines, reduce their ability to organize any action of their own. If Catholics were ousted or banished from the country, so the reasoning went, they might join forces with fellow Catholics in France or Spain, plan an invasion, coup, or assassination, or further torment Protestant groups in those countries.

However, the idea of sending Catholics far from England—to a distant, unpopulated place such as America—was an altogether more appealing proposition. In the New World, they would not pose a serious threat and they could follow their religion without being seen to defy the practices of the English church. Walsingham seems to have come to the conclusion that the time was right for contemplating a colony of Catholics, and that is probably why he helped smooth the path for a deal between Gilbert, Peckham, and Gerrard.

Gilbert granted the two men 1.5 million acres of land, a massive estate, about the size of the state of Connecticut or the county of Devon. As an extra incentive, he threw some islands into the deal—although they were unidentified, undiscovered, and may not have actually existed. Also he granted the Catholic colonists the freedom to trade without regulation. In return, Gilbert was to receive rental income, customs duties, and two-fifths of any gold and silver they discovered on their land. As the negotiations progressed, Gilbert doubled the land grant to 3 million acres in exchange for the Catholic colonists’ pledge to supply armed ships and men for a colonial militia. Then, he granted a further 1.5 million acres to Peckham and his son, near a scoop of water that John Dee had marked on his map as Dee River, and is now known as Narragansett Bay.14

Peckham and Gerrard, perhaps concerned about Gilbert’s past violence toward Catholics, sought some assurances from Walsingham about the details of the grant.15 They wanted guarantees that, when the time came, their colonists, including recusants, would be permitted to leave England and travel to the new territories, as Gilbert had promised them. In return, they agreed that their colonists would not leave America, once there, and travel to any other foreign realm. Nor would they participate in any treacherous act that might cause a breach between the queen and “any other Prince.” Also, they promised that one in ten of their colonists would be a person unable to “maintain themselves in England.” This would help England with the problem of “idle persons.”

According to Mendoza, Elizabeth accepted the terms and gave Peckham and Gerrard a “patent under the Great Seal of England to settle in Florida”—as the entire east coast of America was known. But Peckham and Gerrard’s vision did not seem to inspire others, and the two men struggled to generate support from fellow Catholics. They were not helped by Mendoza, who fought a kind of rearguard action to scuttle the plan. He instructed Catholic clergymen to warn prospective colonists that the lands in the New World belonged to Spain, and if they dared travel there, “they would immediately have their throats cut.”16

The specter of Spanish retaliation on American colonists could prove disastrous to the undertaking, so Peckham sought to confirm that England had the necessary sovereignty, turning to the expert who knew most about it: John Dee. Peckham asked Dee if their proposed estate would constitute an encroachment on Spanish rights, contrary to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Dee assured him that the lands did not fall within Spain’s domain. Peckham rewarded Dee with five thousand acres in the New World, a tiny sliver of his millions.17

EVEN WITH FINANCIAL support from Sidney, Peckham, and Gerrard, Gilbert needed to attract a broader group of investors to raise the full amount of capital required to found a colony in the New World. To do this, he embarked on a far-reaching marketing campaign. He had seen the value of promotional literature when his A Discourse of a Discovery of a New Passage to Catai was published to help promote Frobisher’s voyages. So when a young former Oxford don named Richard Hakluyt stepped forward, perhaps on Walsingham’s recommendation, and suggested he might write just such a pamphlet, Gilbert gratefully accepted the offer.18

Hakluyt was beginning to establish a reputation as a powerful advocate of English overseas endeavor. He first came to public notice with the appearance of a report, completed in 1580, that made a compelling case for England’s taking possession of the Strait of Magellan—although no such audacious move took place. After gathering information from John Winter, Francis Drake’s second-in-command on the voyage around the world, Hakluyt wrote that “the Strait of Magellan is the gate of entry into the treasure of both the East and the West Indies, and whosoever is Lord of this Strait may account himself Lord also of the West Indies.”19

But Hakluyt had been in the thrall of travelers’ tales, voyages of discovery, and explorers since he was a schoolboy. When he was about sixteen, he paid a visit to his cousin, also named Richard. The elder Hakluyt was a lawyer, but his real passion was for maps and geography. There, lying on the table in his study, were “certain bookes of cosmography with an universal map,” Hakluyt remembered, years later. Seeing his young cousin’s interest, the elder Hakluyt picked up his “wand” and pointed out the “seas, gulfs, bays, straits, capes, rivers, empires, kingdoms, dukedoms, and territories of each part.” He identified the commodities available in each place, the needs of the people there, and talked about the “traffic and intercourse of merchants” supplying them.20

All of this made such an impression on the young Richard that he resolved to study geography when he went on to university. Indeed, soon after, Hakluyt went up to Oxford, where he read widely on the subject and, thanks to scholarships from two livery companies—the Skinners and the Clothworkers—gained an understanding of merchants and the commercial impulse. After taking his master of arts degree, he embarked on a series of lectures, presenting to his audiences a variety of “Maps, Globes, Spheres, and other instruments of this Art,” much to the “singular pleasure, and general contentment” of his listeners.21

Now, ahead of Gilbert’s intended voyage, Hakluyt began putting together a compendium of narratives, maps, and other information that traced the story of English exploration. Published in May 1582 as Divers Voyages Touching the Discovery of America and the Islands Adjacent, it was dedicated to Philip Sidney.22 But if Hakluyt’s immediate goal was to promote Gilbert’s venture, his larger goal was to ignite a whole new spirit of adventure for overseas enterprise. He marveled “not a little” that, since the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus, the Spanish and Portuguese had accomplished “great conquests and plantings” in the New World. By contrast, during the same period, “we of England” had not had “the grace to set fast footing in such fertile and temperate places.” This was puzzling to Hakluyt and, in his eyes, a national failing.23

He was an optimist, however, and believed that the time was right for England to take her fair share in those parts of America and other regions that were “as yet undiscovered.” He argued that the purported motive of the Spaniards and the Portuguese for their ventures of exploration and colonization—to convert and bring salvation to the heathens—had been exposed for what it was: a false and cynical cover-up for their real intentions. All the Spanish and Portuguese really wanted, Hakluyt proclaimed, was “the goods and riches” of the New World.

Hakluyt asserted England’s historical right, based on John Cabot’s claim of 1497, to inhabit the vast American territory from modern-day Florida to 67 degrees north (roughly the northern border of modern Canada). He argued that England’s need to expand had become an urgent one because the prisons were full to bursting, and such “superfluous people” could be sent to inhabit the “temperate and fertile parts of America.”24 He exhorted that the effort would take grit and determination—and, frankly, a change of attitude. “If there were in us that desire to advance the honor of our country which ought to be in every good man,” he wrote, the English would have long ago taken advantage “of those lands which, of equity and right, appertain to us.”25

To put together Divers Voyages, Hakluyt was fortunate to have access to Michael Lok’s extensive collection of maps, historical documents, and other items pertaining to the Frobisher voyages, including a sketch of Meta Incognita and the Northwest Passage. In return, Hakluyt went out of his way to praise the merchant, who was still trying to rebuild his reputation after the Frobisher debacle. Hakluyt lauded Lok for his expertise in languages and cosmography, asserting that he was a man capable of doing “his country good” and that he deserved a “good reputation and better fortune.”26

Hakluyt’s work was well received. Walsingham personally thanked him, praising the young scholar for shedding “much light for the discovery of the Western parts yet unknown.” In a letter, he urged Hakluyt to continue his efforts, since this would not only be for the young man’s “own good” but also bring “public benefit of this Realm.” He signed the letter “your loving friend.”27

It seems that Divers Voyages did have the desired effect and stimulated investment in Gilbert’s colonial venture. In November 1582, a few months after its publication, Gilbert was able to launch a new corporation with the self-aggrandizing name “the Merchant Adventurers with Humphrey Gilbert.” The entity was to have a governor, treasurer, agent, and secretary—all four senior officials chosen by Gilbert—and eight assistants or directors chosen by the members. It was to be headquartered in the port of Southampton, where Gilbert had concentrated his fund-raising efforts and where he promised to establish an exclusive staple for the American trade. This was a calculated snub to London’s merchants—specifically those from the Muscovy Company who had previously prevented Gilbert from pursuing his American dream.

For Southampton’s merchants, the draw was land, just as it was for Sidney, Peckham, and Gerrard. Under the terms of Gilbert’s offer, those who put in money, but did not go themselves, were to receive one thousand acres if they sent five men and two thousand acres if they sent ten. Those who went but did not invest cash were to be granted a piece of land according to the equipment they brought with them. For example, the man who came furnished with a “sword dagger and arquebuse” would be granted 120 acres. The adventurer who went himself, recruited others to join him, and bore all expenses, got the best deal. If he brought five men, he would be granted 2,000 acres of land. If he could put together a company of ten, he would receive 4,000 acres.28 To avoid the kind of trouble Michael Lok had got himself into, Gilbert promised to reward investors who delivered their funds up front, in advance of the sailing, with an additional eleven hundred acres.

Just as Gilbert casually dispensed land he knew nothing about, the crown also made an extravagant pledge. The queen, according to a report by Mendoza, promised to dispatch 10,000 people, at the government’s expense, to conquer the new land and inhabit the plantation, just as soon as Gilbert had landed and fortified a suitable place.29 If Mendoza’s information was correct—and it may not have been—this would have been Elizabeth’s biggest commitment to any overseas expedition.

Nearly fifty people from Southampton invested in Gilbert’s venture—cloth merchants as well as the middling sort, including bakers, brewers, and a tailor. Walsingham also invested, putting in a relatively modest fifty pounds. To beef up the list of associates, Gilbert granted free trade rights to those who had invested in his first voyage, including Thomas Smythe, and to a number of “grave and honorable personages,” including Cecil, the Dudley brothers, and Sir Christopher Hatton.30

Although the number of investors sounds impressive, most of the financial commitments were small, with many investments of just five to fifteen pounds. In total, Gilbert raised no more than a thousand pounds. As a result, he had to turn to his relatives for extra funds. Walter Ralegh, Sir Humphrey’s half-brother, contributed the Bark Raleigh, an investment worth upward of two thousand pounds. So, while the rhetoric was lofty, enthusiasm ran high, and the venture had friends in high places, the truth was that it was underfunded—which is never a propitious way to begin.31

EVEN WITH LIMITED funds, Gilbert managed to assemble a fleet of five ships and recruit a company of 260 men. There was just one final hurdle to overcome: Elizabeth’s blessing for him to make the journey. She had denied Ralegh permission to participate in the voyage, even though he had contributed his ship. Also, initially, she had refused Gilbert’s request to sail because he was not, as she delicately put it, “of good hap by sea”—which had certainly been demonstrated in his previous voyage.32 Elizabeth only relented and allowed Sir Humphrey to sail after Ralegh pleaded with her on behalf of his half-brother. As Gilbert prepared to embark, Ralegh wrote to him from Richmond, where Elizabeth was holding court, saying that the queen wished him “as great good hap and safety to your ship as if herself were there in person,” enclosing a gift from her: a pendant bearing “an anchor guided by a Lady.”33

The fleet of the Merchant Adventurers with Humphrey Gilbert set sail from Plymouth on June 11, 1583. Gilbert owned the Swallow and the tiny Squirrel. The bark Raleigh was the fleet’s largest vessel at two hundred tons. The Delight, the admiral of the fleet, was captained by William Winter, son of Sir William, surveyor of the navy. The Golden Hind—no doubt named in honor of Drake’s famous ship—was captained by its owner, Edward Hayes. He was an enthusiastic supporter of overseas expansion, had subscribed to Gilbert’s 1578 voyage, was well known to Cecil and his circle, and had agreed to write an account of the voyage.34 On board were men with the wide range of skills needed for the founding of a colony—including shipwrights, masons, carpenters, and smiths, as well as “mineral men” and refiners.35

Gilbert had originally intended to sail south and then proceed north to Newfoundland. But because they were getting a late start and facing contrary winds, they decided to set sail to Newfoundland first. They set off, but after two days at sea, many members of the Raleigh crew were “infected with a contagious disease,” and the ship turned back for Plymouth. This was a severe blow, but Gilbert kept on.36

En route, the ships encountered bad weather, temporarily separated, but managed to rendezvous in Newfoundland at the beginning of August. They gathered at the entrance to St. John’s harbor, where, by Hayes’s count, thirty-six fishing vessels “of all nations” were at work. Although Gilbert’s little group of ships looked relatively modest in comparison to the vast fishing fleet, he prepared to implement the plan of conquest he had laid out in his treatise, A Discourse How Her Majesty May Meet with and Annoy the King of Spain. He “made ready” to fight any of the ships that might resist him. But confrontation turned out to be unnecessary. The captains of the English fishing fleet came aboard Gilbert’s ships, and when he presented them with his commission from Elizabeth they agreed to support him.

Gilbert went ashore and read his commission aloud to the fishermen. He declared that he thereby “took possession” of St. John’s Harbor and all lands within two hundred leagues of it, in every direction, in the name of the queen. He further explained that the fishermen would henceforward be governed by three new laws. First, all “public exercise” of religion had to conform with the practices of the Church of England; second, anyone who acted against Elizabeth’s right of possession would be prosecuted as if it were a case of high treason; and third, any person uttering words “to the dishonor of her Majesty” would have his ears cut off, his ship seized, and his goods confiscated. Gilbert then laid out the new financial arrangement that would be enforced in Her Majesty’s territory. The fishermen would have to pay a tax for the right to fish along the Newfoundland coast. Also, they would have to pay rent on the plots of land they used for camping and processing fish—even though they had been occupying and using them free of charge for years.37

To complete the act of taking possession, Gilbert and his men erected “a pillar of wood,” engraved in lead with the English coat of arms, much as Drake had done four years earlier on the west coast of America. Now, with Gilbert’s claim of Newfoundland and Drake’s claim of Nova Albion, Elizabeth could claim sovereignty on both sides of America.

Although Gilbert and Drake’s claims may seem spurious, they were consistent with the widely accepted rules of territorial ownership at the time. These derived from the work of Justinian, the sixth-century Byzantine emperor who vainly sought to restore the fragmented Roman empire to its former greatness. Justinian defined four ways in which one nation could claim sovereignty over another. The first was the physical occupation of land not already under the jurisdiction of another state. In this, Gilbert’s claim to Newfoundland could not be challenged. He had set foot on the territory and no one, no European at least, had prior claim to it. The second was a right of “prescription,” meaning that the claimant has held possession of the place for an extended period of time, even if it has not been occupied. Here again, Gilbert was within his rights if one accepted that Newfoundland had been discovered and claimed by John Cabot nearly a century earlier. The third way of achieving dominion was through the acquisition of a territory by means of a treaty with the current holder of the land. There was no such holder of Newfoundland that Gilbert knew of or might recognize as such. The fourth path to dominion was through “subjugation,” which meant that one nation could take land belonging to another state through conquest. Again, this did not apply to Gilbert’s claim to Newfoundland. He had encountered no resistance and conquered nothing.38

After laying claim to Newfoundland (and evidently taking no account of the rights or views of the native people of the place), Gilbert set about learning as much as possible about the region. Some of his men searched for commodities, others drew “plats” or maps of the harbors and roadsteads. One of the mineral men—a Saxon metallurgist—came across a piece of ore that looked as if it contained silver, and in the mountains they discovered what they thought could be traces of iron, lead, and copper.39

These were promising finds, and after a month in Newfoundland, Gilbert told Hayes that he was ready to sail home. However, he had a duty to his investors to explore farther south. Many of Gilbert’s crew, however, felt no such obligation. They did not mutiny, but some plotted to steal a ship and sail home, others hid in the woods hoping to gain passage aboard some other vessel, and some developed a sudden sickness. In the end, Gilbert agreed to leave the Swallow in Newfoundland to take on provisions and ferry the disaffected and diseased back to England.

Gilbert departed St. John’s on August 20 and headed south with three ships—the Delight, the Golden Hind, and his favorite, the Squirrel. Nine days later, they encountered a storm of “rain and thick mist.” The Delight ran aground, broke apart, and the crew was cast overboard, though some were able to clamber aboard their pinnace. They eventually made their way back to Newfoundland, keeping themselves alive thanks to “no better sustenance then their own urine.”40

Disheartened by the loss of the Delight and with winter coming on, Gilbert and Hayes decided to return to England. Although Gilbert had not identified a suitable location for his colony, he remained optimistic that one could eventually be found. He even expressed confidence to Hayes that Elizabeth would loan him £10,000 for a voyage the following year and he would be able to carry out his grand plan. Although he had lost all his documents, much to his distress, he knew he would be able to draw on Hayes’s written account when preparing a new petition.

But Gilbert did not get the chance. On September 9, the ships ran into another storm. The Squirrel, overloaded with equipment, was top-heavy and unstable.41 Gilbert’s officers entreated him to come aboard the Golden Hind, but he refused. As the little vessel churned alongside the Golden Hind, Hayes saw Gilbert sitting on deck reading a book, which some have suggested was Sir Thomas More’s Utopia. Gilbert called out to Hayes, “We are as near to heaven by sea as by land!”—perhaps paraphrasing More’s comment that the “way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance.” That night, the lights on the Squirrel flickered out and the ship and its commander were “devoured and swallowed up of the Sea,” never to be seen again.42

“The first great English pioneer of the West,” observed Sir Winston Churchill in his history of the English-speaking peoples, “had gone to his death.”43