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The Mus- the first of that series of sagacious and
covy Com- daring combinations of capital of which
pany. the East India Company has been the most famous. It was afterwards more briefly known as the Muscovy Company. Under its aus- pices, on the 21st of May, 1553. an English fleet of exploration, under Sir Hugh Willoughby, set sail down the Thames while the cheers of thronging citizens were borne through the windows of the palace at Greenwich to the ears of the sick young king. The ill-fated expedition, seeking a northeast- erly passage to Cathay, was wrecked on the coast of Lapland, and only one of the ships got home, but the interest in maritime adventure grew rapidly. A few days before Edward's death, Richard Eden published his "Treatyse of the Newe India," which was largely devoted to the discoveries in America. Two years later, in 1555, Eden fol-
1
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THE SEA KINGS.
lowed this by his " Decades of the Nowe World," in great part a version of Peter Martyr's Latin. This delightful book for the first time made the English people acquainted with the re- Richard sults of maritime discovery in all quar- Eden. ters since the great voyage of 1492. It enjoyed a wide popularity ; poets and dramatists of the next generation read it in their boyhood and found their horizon wondrously enlarged. In its pages doubtless Shakespeare found the name of that Patagonian deity Setebos, which Caliban twice lets fall from his grotesque lips. Three years after Eden's second book saw the light the long reign of Queen Elizabeth began, and with it the antag- onism, destined year by year to wax more violent and deadly, between England and Spain.
Meanwhile English mariners had already taken a hand in the African slave-trade, which since 1442 had been monopolized by the Portuguese. It is always difficult to say with entire confidence just who first began anything, but William Haw- kins, an enterprising merchant of Plym- John Haw- kins and the African slave-trade. outh, made a voyage on the Guinea coast as early as 1530, or earlier, and carried away a few slaves. It was his son, the famous Captain John Hawkins, who became the real founder of the English trade in slaves. In this capacity Americans have little reason to remember his name with pleasure, yet it would be a grave mistake to visit him with unmeasured condemna- tion. Few sturdier defenders of political freedom for white men have ever existed, and among the valiant sca kings who laid the foundations of
₹
16 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
England's maritime empire he was one of the foremost. It is worthy of notice that Queen Eliza- beth regarded the opening of the slave-trade as an achievement worthy of honourable commemora- tion, for when she made Hawkins a knight she gave him for a crest the device of a negro's head and bust with the arms tightly pinioned, or, in the language of heraldry, " a demi-Moor proper bound with a cord." Public opinion on the subject of slavery was neatly expressed by Captain Lok, who declared that the negroes were " a people of beastly living, without God, law, religion, or com- monwealth," 1 so that be deemed himself their ben- efactor in carrying them off to a Christian land where their bodies might be decently clothed and their souls made fit for heaven. Exactly three centuries after Captain Lok, in the decade preced- ing our Civil War, I used to hear the very same defence of slavery preached in a Connecticut pul- pit ; so that perhaps we are not entitled to frown , too severely upon Elizabeth's mariners. It takes men a weary while to learn the wickedness of any- thing that puts gold in their purses.
It was in 1562 that John Hawkins made his first famous expedition to the coast of Guinea, where he took three hundred slaves and carried them over to San Domingo. It was illicit traffic, of course, but the Spanish planters and miners were too much in need of cheap labour to scrutinize too jealously the source from which it was offered. The Englishman found no difficulty in selling his negroes, and sailed for home with his three ships
1 Froude, History of England, viii. 439.
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THE SEA KINGS
loaded with sugar and ginger, hides and pearls. The profits were large, and in 1564 the experiment was repeated with still greater success. On the way home, early in August, 1565, Hawkins stopped at the mouth of the St. John's River in Florida, and found there a woebegone company of starving Frenchmen. They were the
Hawkins and Laudon- nière.
party of René de Laudonnière, awaiting the return of their chief commander, Jean Ribaut, from France. Their presence on that shore was the first feeble expression of the master thought that in due course of time originated the United States of America, and the author of that master thoughit was the great Admiral Coligny. The Huguenot wars had lately broken out in France, but already that far-sighted statesman had seen the commercial and military advantages to be gained by founding a Protestant state in America. After an unsuccessful attempt upon the coast of Brazil. he had sent Jean Ribaut to Florida, and the little colony was now suffering the frightful hardships that were the lot of most new-comers into the American wilderness. Hawkins treated these poor Frenchmen with great kindness, and his visit with them was pleasant. He has left an interesting account of the communal house of the Indians in the neighbourhood, an immense barn-like frame house, with stanchions and rafters of untrimmed logs, and a roof thatched with palmetto leaves. Hawkins liked the flavour of Indian meal, and in his descriptions of the ways of cooking it one easily recognizes both "hasty pudding " and hoe-cake. He thought it would have been more prudent in
18 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
the Frenchmen if they had raised corn for them- selves instead of stealing it from the Indians and arousing a dangerous hostility. For liquid refresh- ment they had been thrown upon their own re- sources, and had contrived to make a thousand gallons or more of claret from the native grapes of the country. A letter of John Winthrop reminds us that the Puritan settlers of Boston in their first summer also made wine of wild grapes, 1 and accord- ing to Adam of Bremen the same thing was done by the Northmen in Vinland in the eleventh cen- tury,2 showing that in one age and clime as well as in another thirst is the mother of invention.
As the Frenchinen were on the verge of despair, Hawkins left them one of his ships in which to return to France, but he had scarcely departed when the long expected Ribaut arrived with rein- forcements, and soon after him came that terrible Spaniard, Menendez, who butchered the whole
Massacre of company, men, women, and children,
Huguenots : about 700 Huguenots in all. Some half
the painter
Le Moine. dozen escaped and were lucky enough to get picked up by a friendly ship and carried to England. Among them was the painter Le Moine, who became a friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and aroused much interest with his drawings of Amer- ican beasts, birds, trees, and flowers. The story of the massacre awakened fieree indignation. Hos- tility to Spain was rapidly increasing in England, and the idea of Coligny began to be entertained by a few sagacious heads. If France could not
1 Winsor, Varr. and Crit. Hist. iii. 61.
2 See my Discovery of America, i. 209.
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THE SEA KINGS.
plant a Protestant state in America, perhaps Eng- land could. A little later we find Le Moine con- sulted by the gifted half-brothers, Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Raleigh.
Meanwhile, in 1567, the gallant Hawkins went on an eventful voyage, with five stout ships, one of which was commanded by a very capable and well educated young man, afterwards and until Nelson's time celebrated as the greatest Francis of English seamen. Francis Drake was Drake. a native of Devonshire, son of a poor clergyman who had been molested for holding Protestant opinions. The young sea king had already gath- ered experience in the West Indies and on the Spanish Main ; this notable voyage taught him the same kind of feeling toward Spaniards that Han- nibal cherished toward Romans. After the usual traffic among the islands the little squadron was driven by stress of weather to seek shelter in the port of San Juan de Ulua, at the present site of Vera Cruz. There was no force there fit to resist Hawkins, and it is droll to find that pious hero, such a man of psalms and prayers, pluming him- self upon his virtue in not seizing some Spanish ships in the harbour laden with what we should call five million dollars' worth of silver. The next day a fleet of thirteen ships from Spain arrived upon the scene. Hawkins could The affair of San Juan de Ulua. perhaps have kept them from entering the harbour, but he shrank from the responsibility of bringing on a battle in time of peace ; the queen might disapprove of it. So Hawkins parleyed with the Spaniards, a solemn covenant of mutual
20 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
forbearance was made and sworn to, and he let them into the harbour. But the orthodox Catholic of those days sometimes entertained peculiar views about keeping faith with hereties. Had not his Holiness Alexander VI. given all this New World to Spain? Poachers must be warned off; the Huguenots had learned a lesson in Florida, and it was now the Englishmen's turn. So Hawkins was treacherously attacked, and after a desperate combat, in which fireships were used, three of his vessels were destroyed. The other two got out to sea, but with so scanty a larder that the erews were soon glad to eat cats and dogs, rats and mice. and boiled parrots. It became necessary to set 114 men ashore somewhere to the north of Tam- pico. Some of these men took northeasterly trails, and mostly perished in the woods, but David Ingrain and two companions actually made their way across the continent and after eleven months were picked up on the coast of Nova Scotia by a friendly French vessel and taken back to Europe. About seventy, led by Anthony Goddard, less pru- dently marched toward the city of Mexico, and fell into the clutches of the Inquisition ; three were burned at the stake and all the rest were cruelly flogged and sent to the galleys for life. When the news of this affair reached England a squadron of Spanish treasure-ships. chased into the Channel by Ilugnenot cruisers, had just sought refuge in English harbours, and the queen detained them in reprisal for the injury done to Hawkins.
News had lately arrived of the bloody vengeance wreaked by Dominique de Gourgues upon the
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THE SEA KINGS.
Spaniards in Florida, while the cruelties of Alva were fast goading the Netherlands into rebellion. Next year, 1570, on a fresh May morning, the Papal Bull " declaring Elizabeth deposed and her subjects absolved from their allegiance was found nailed against the Bishop of London's door," 1 and when the rash young gentleman who had Growing hostility to Spain in England. put it there was discovered he was taken back to that doorstep and quartered
alive. Two years later came the Paris Matins on the day of St. Bartholomew, and the English am- bassador openly gave shelter to Huguenots in his house. Elizabeth's policy leaned more and more decidedly toward defiance of the Catholic powers until it culminated in alliance with the revolted Netherlands in January, 1578. Meanwhile the interest in America quickly increased. Those were the years when Martin Frobisher made his glorious voyages in the Arctic Ocean, soon to be followed by John Davis. Almost yearly Drake crossed the Atlantic and more than once attacked and ravaged the Spanish settlements in revenge for the treach- ery at San Juan de Ulua. Books and pamphlets about America began to come somewhat frequently from the press.
It is worth our while here to pause for a moment and remark upon the size and strength of the nation that was so soon to contend suc- Size and strength of Elizabeth's England. cessfully for the mastery of the sea. There is something so dazzling in the brilliancy of the age of Queen Bess, it is so crowded with romantic incidents, it fills so large a 1 Froude, Ilistory of England, s. 59.
22 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
place in our minds, that we hardly realize how small England then was according to modern standards of measurement. Two centuries earlier. in the reign of Edward III., the population of England had reached about 5,000,000, when the Black Death at one fell swoop destroyed at least half the number. In Elizabeth's time the loss had just about been repaired. Her England was therefore slightly less populous, and it was surely far less wealthy, than either New York or Penn- sylvania in 1890. The Dutch Netherlands had perhaps somewhat fewer people than England, but surpassed her in wealth. These two allies were pitted against the greatest military power that had existed in Europe since the days of Constantine the Great. To many the struggle seemed hope- less. For England the true policy was limited by circumstances. She could send troops across the Channel to help the Dutch in their stubborn re- sistance, but to try to land a foree in the Spanish pen nsula for aggressive warfare would be sheer madness. The shores of America and the open How the sea sea were the proper field of war for Eng-
became Eng- land's field land. Her task was to paralyze the giant
of war. by cutting off his supplies, and in this there was hope of success, for no defensive fleet, however large, could watch all Philip's enormous possessions at onee. The English navy, first per- manently organized under Henry VIII .. grew rapidly in Elizabeth's reign under the direction of her incomparable seamen; and the policy she adopted was erowned with such success that Philip If. lived to see his treasury bankrupt.
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THE SEA KINGS.
This policy was gradually adopted soon after the fight at San Juan de Ulua, and long before there was any declaration of war. The extreme laxness of that age, in respect of international law, made it possible for such things to go on to an extent that now seems scareely com- Loose ideas
prehensible. The wholesale massaere of of interna- tional law.
Frenchmen in Florida, for example, oe-
eurred at a time of profound peace between France and Spain, and reprisal was made, not by the French government but by a private gentleman who had to sell his ancestral estate to raise the money. It quite suited Elizabeth's tortuous policy, in contending against formidable odds, to be able either to assume or to diselaim responsibility for the deeds of her captains. Those brave men well understood the situation, and withi earnest patriot- ism and chivalrous loyalty not only accepted it, but even urged the queen to be allowed to serve her interests at their own risk. In a letter handed to her in November, 1577, the writer begs to be allowed to destroy all Spanish ships caught fishing on the banks of Newfoundland, and adds, "If you will let us first do this we will next take Bold advice the West Indies from Spain. You will to Elizabeth. have the gold and silver mines and the profit of the soil. You will be monarch of the seas and out of langer from every one. I will do it if you will allow me ; only you must resolve and not delay or dally -- the wings of man's life are plumed with the feathers of death." 1 The signature to this bold letter has been obliterated, but it sounds like Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and is believed to be his.
1 Brown's Genesis of the United States, i. 9.
24 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
In connection with this it should be remembered that neither in England nor elsewhere at that time had the navy become fully a national affair as at present. It was to a considerable extent supported by private speculation, and as occasion required a commercial voyage or a voyage of discovery might be suddenly transformed into a naval campaign. A flavour of buccaneering pervades nearly all the The sea kings were not bucca- neerd. maritime operations of that age and often leads modern writers to misunderstand or misjudge them. Thus it sometimes hap- pens that so excellent a man as Sir Francis Drake, whose fame is forever a priceless possession for English-speaking people, is mentioned in popular books as a mere corsair, a kind of gentleman pirate. Nothing could show a more hopeless con- fusion of ideas. In a later generation the war- fare characteristic of the Elizabethan age degen- erated into piracy, and when Spain, fallen from her greatness, became a prey to the spoiler, a swarm of buccaneers infested the West Indies and added another hideous chapter to the lurid history of those beautiful islands. They were mere robbers, and had nothing in common with the Elizabethan heroes except courage. From the deeds of Drake and Hawkins to the deeds of Henry Morgan, the moral distance is as great as from slaying your antagonist in battle to. murder- ing your neighbour for his purse.
It was Drake who first put into practice the policy of weakening Philip II. by attacking him in America. It served the direct purpose of destroy- ing the sinews of war, and indirectly it neutral-
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THE SEA KINGS.
ized for Europe some of Spain's naval strength by diverting it into American waters for self-defence. To do such work most effectively it seemed desir- able to carry the warfare into the Pacific Ocean. The circumstances of its discov- Why Drake carried the war into the Pacific Ocean. ery had made Spanish America almost more of a Pacific than an Atlantic power.
The discoverers happened to approach the great double continent where it is narrowest, and the hunt for precious metals soon drew them to the Cordilleras and their western slopes. The moun- tain region, with its untold treasures of gold and silver, from New Mexico to Bolivia, became theirs. In acquiring it they simply stepped into the place of the aboriginal conquering tribes, and carried on their work of conquest to completion. The new rulers conducted the government by their own Spanish methods, and the white race was super- posed upon a more or less dense native population. There was no sort of likeness to colonies planted by England, but there were some points of resem- blance to the position of the English in recent times as a ruling race in Hindustan. Such was the kind of empire which Spain had founded in America. Its position, chiefly upon the Pacific coast, rendered it secure against English conquest, though not against occasional damaging attacks. In South America, where it reached back in one or two remote points to the Atlantic coast, the chief purpose was to protect the approach to the silver miues of Bolivia by the open route of the river La P'ata. It was this military need that was met by the growth of Buenos Ayres and the settle-
26 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
ments in Paraguay, guarding the entrance and the lower reaches of the great silver river.
Soon after the affair of San Juan de Ulua, Drake conceived the idea of striking at this Spanish do-
Drake upon main upon its unguarded Pacific side. In
a peak in 1573, after marching across the isthmus Darien. of Darien, the English mariner stood upon a mountain peak, not far from where Bal- boa sixty years before had stood and looked down upon the waste of waters stretching away to shores unvisited and under stars unknown. And as he looked, says Camden, "vehemently transported with desire to navigate that sea, he fell upon his knees and implored the divine assistance that he might at some time sail thither and make a perfect discovery of the same." On the 15th of Noveni- ber, 1577, Drake set sail from Plymouth, on this hardy enterprise, with five good ships. It was a curious coincidence that in the following July and August, while wintering on the Patagonia coast at Port St. Julian, Drake should have discovered symptoms of conspiracy and felt obliged to be- head one of his officers, as had been the case with Magellan at the same place. By the time he had passed the straits in his flagship, the Golden Hind,1 he had quite lost sight of his consorts, who had deserted him in that watery labyrinth,
Voyage of the Golden Hind.
as Gomez had stolen away from Magel-
lan. For men of common mould a voyage in the remote South Sca still had its terrors; but the dauntless captain kept on with his single ship
! Originally the Pelican ; see Barrow's Life of Drake, pp. 113, 106, 171.
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THE SEA KINGS.
of twenty guns, and from Valparaiso northward along the Peruvian coast dashed into seaports and captured vessels, carrying away enormous treas- ures in gold and silver and jewels, besides such provisions as were needed for his crew. With other property he meddled but little, and no acts of wanton cruelty sullied his performances. After taking plunder worth millions of dollars, this cor- sair-work gave place to scientifie discovery, and the Golden Hind sailed far northward in search of a northeast passage into the Atlantic. Drake visited a noble bay, which may have been that of San Francisco, and sailed some distance along that coast, which he called New Albion. It is proba- ble, though not quite certain, that he saw some portion of the coast of Oregon. Not finding any signs of a northeast passage, he turned his prow westward, crossed the Pacific, and returned home by way of the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Plymouth in September, 1580. Some time after- ward he went up the Thames to Deptford, where the queen came to dinner on board the Golden Hind, and knighted on his own quarter-deck the bold captain who had first carried the English flag around the world. The enthusiastic chronicler Hol- inshed wished that in memory of this grand achieve- ment the ship should be set upon the top of St. Paul's Cathedral, "that being discerned farre and neere, it might be noted and pointed at of people with these true termes : Yonder is the barke that bath sailed round about the world." 1 A different care :r awaited the sturdy Golden Hind; for many
1 Barrow's Life of Drake, p. 167.
28 OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
a year she was kept at Deptford, a worthy object A noble ban- of popular admiration, and her cabin quet room. was made into a banquet room wherein young and old might partake of the mutton and ale of terry England ; until at last, when the venerable ship herself had succumbed to the tooth of Time, a capacious chair was carved from her timbers and presented to the University of Oxford, where it may still be seen in the Bodleian Library. In it sat Abraham Cowley when he wrote the poem in which occur the following verses : -
" Drake and his ship could not have wished from Fate A happier station or more blest estate. For lo ! a seat of endless rest is given To her in Oxford and to him in heaven."
Meanwhile in the autumn of 1578, while the coasts of Chili were echoing the roar of the Golden Hind's cannon, a squadron of seven ships sailed from England, with intent to found a per- manent colony on the Atlantic coast of North America. Its captain was one of the
Voyage of
Gilbert and most eminent of Devonshire worthies, Raleigh.
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and one of the ships was commanded by his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, a young man of six-and-twenty who had lately returned from volunteer service in the Nethi- erlands. The destination of the voyage was " Nor- umbega," which may have meant any place be- tween the Hudson and Penobscot rivers, but was conceived with supreme vagueness, as may be seen from Michael Lok's map of 1582.1 This little
1 See below, p. 61; and compare my Discovery of America, ii. 525.
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THE SEA KINGS.
fleet had at least one savage fight with Spaniards, and returned to Plymouth without accomplishing anything. In 1583 Gilbert sought a favourable place for settlement on the southern coast of New- foundland, probably with a view to driving the Spaniards away from the fishing grounds, but an ill fate overtook him. On the American coast his principal vessel crushed its bows against a sunken rock and nearly all hands were lost. With two small ships the captain soon set sail for home, but his own tiny craft foundered in a terrible Shipwreck
storm near Faval, As she sank, Gilbert of Gilbert. cheerily shouted over the tafferel to his consort, "The way to heaven is as near by sea as by land," a speech, says his chronicler, " well beseem- ing a soldier resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testify he was."
It was not Raleigh's fault that he did not share the fate of his revered half-brother, for the queen's mind had been full of forebodings and she had refused to let him go on the voyage. It was since the former disastrous expedition that Raleigh had so quickly risen in favour at court; that he had thrown down his velvet cloak as a mat for Eliza- beth's feet and had written on a window-pane the well-known verse which that royal coquette so elev- erly capped. He became Captain of the Queen's Guard and Lord Warden of the Stannaries, and was presented with the confiscated estates of trai- tors in England and Ireland. In 1584, Gilbert's pa-
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