Part 3 (1/2)

[Sidenote: _Colonization_]

Elizabeth herself devised for the virgin land discovered in the reign of a virgin queen the appellation of Virginia Possibly the naanda coia This h, in the _History of the World_, 'You wear good clothes,' which the settlers supposed to be the reply to their question of the na's name may have assisted the choice Spenser entitles Elizabeth, in the dedication of his great poeinia' Ralegh had a seal of his arh, nia, 1584, amore et virtute' He hastened to realize his lordshi+p, which was still soh his brother, Carew Ralegh, could not prevail upon the Exeter merchants to becoue of the e,' which certainly it was not On April 9, 1585, 'at the pleasant prime,' says Holinshed, a fleet of seven sail set forth froeneral of the expedition Mr Ralph Lane was Governor of the colony, and Captain Philip Amadas was his Deputy Lane had an Irish commission Elizabeth ordered that a substitute should be found for hih drew up rules, which have been lost, for the political governlobe, and Tho the colonists Hariot, who describes hih,' was commissioned to survey and report He published a remarkable description of the territory in 1588 Manteo and Wanchese returned to America with the expedition On the way out, by Hispaniola and Florida, Grenville took two Spanish frigates He reached Wokoken in June, and visited the mainland He was not happy in the conduct of the expedition, being reported by Lane, writing to Walsingham on September 8, 1585, to have exhibited intolerable pride and aust 25, not a day too soon, he had sailed for England He had, he reported at his return to Walsingham, peopled the new country, and stored it with cattle, fruits, and plants He left Governor Lane and 107 colonists On the hoe a third Spanish shi+p was captured Stukely, a kinsh, ith Grenville on board the Tiger For soht hi to his estimate, as reported by his mendacious son, Sir Lewis, the whole orth 50,000 Much of the treasure consisted of a cabinet of pearls

Sir Lewis Stukely alleged that Ralegh charged Elizabeth with taking all to herself 'without sohie pearls as he

[Sidenote: _Failure_]

Grenville had pro supplies by the next Easter at latest Lane and his cooodliest soil under the cope of heaven, as they described it They had planted corn, and perceived signs of pearl fisheries andthe native use of tobacco, had tried and liked it The nutritious qualities of the tubers of the potato had been discovered Unfortunately the planters quarrelled with the natives, who andWingina and his chiefs without warning, for alleged plots At this crisis Sir Francis Drake arrived with a fleet of twenty-five sail, fresh froave Lane a bark of seventy tons, pinnaces, and provisions, and lent him two of his captains But a store, insisted on being taken home On June 19, 1586, they set sail, on the eve of the arrival of a shi+p laden with provisions, which Ralegh had sent A fortnight later came Grenville with three shi+ps, also well stored He could do nothing but leave fifteen men with supplies on Roanoke and return Not even noas Ralegh disheartened In the spring of 1587 he fitted out a fourth expedition He had o It coht their wives with thericultural implements were taken Captain John White was in command He and eleven others of the company were incorporated as the Governor and assistants of the City of Ralegh in Virginia Ralegh had fixed upon Chesapeake Bay as the site of the settlement Roanoke was preferred White could detect no trace of Grenville's fifteen round

Vainly the new colonists endeavoured to conciliate or awe the natives by baptizing and investing Manteo with the Barony of Roanoke Jealousies arose between theravated their difficulties byin error a number of friendly Indians Misfortunes of various kinds beset them Supplies failed, and Governor White cahty-ninethehter, Eleanor Dare, and her child The tio had been laid on all shi+pping, in expectation of the Spanish invasion By Ralegh's influence it was raised in favour of a couple of e, on condition that they transported h they embarked White, they took no colonists They chased Spanish shi+ps, fought with land shattered

[Sidenote: _Ralegh's persistency_]

Ralegh had other calls upon his resources For the present he could do no inia He reckoned he had spent 40,000 on the plantation As Hakluyt wrote, 'it dehly fulfilled without lingering' Elizabeth was not willing to play the part of Godmother in the fairy-tale sense For a substitute, the founder, being in difficulties, had recourse to the very modern expedient of a coht to trade in Virginia, not his patent, to Thomas Smith, John White, Richard Hakluyt, and others He reserved a fifth of all the gold and silver extracted The Adventurers were not very active Ralegh still felt himself responsible for the colony, if it could be described as one Such expeditions as sailed he mainly promoted Southey's accusation that he 'abandoned the poor colonists' is ludicrously unjust

If, as has without due cause been ie in the essay on Plantations of the sinfulness of 'forsaking or destituting a plantation once in forwardness' refer to Ralegh, Bacon would be as caluhter and grandchild, and the rest of the vanished planters Ralegh despatched other expeditions for the same object, and with as little success One, under Samuel Mace, with that purpose sailed in 1602 or 1603 By the time Mace returned, the Chief Governor was attainted, and his proprietorshi+p of Virginia had escheated to the Crown

[Sidenote: _Reward of an idea_]

Ralegh never relinquished hope in his nursling 'I shall yet live,' he wrote just before his fall, 'to see it an English nation' In 1606 a new and strong colony was sent out, and his confidence was justified From an old account of the career of his nephew, Captain Ralph Gilbert, a son of Sir Humphrey, it would seem he still considered in 1607 that his connexion with the country continued In that year Ralph Gilbert is said to have voyaged to Virginia on his behalf Though his direct exertions were confined to the region of the Janized The terinia covered a very wide area

It included, not only the present Virginias, but the Carolinas and inally was supposed to be comprised

Captain Gosnold, Captain Bartholomew Gilbert, and others, when they planned the occupation of Martha's Vineyard in 1602, described it as 'the north part of Virginia,' and sought and obtained Ralegh's perement Posterity has rewarded his faith and perseverance He never set foot anywhere in the country called generally Virginia His expeditions by deputy were themselves confined to the part which is now North Carolina All his experiments at the colonization of that were failures His 40,000, his colonists, and the polity he framed for them, had disappeared before any white settlement took root But he will always be esteemed the true parent of North American colonization

An idea like his has life in it, though the plantup at once When it rises above the surface the sower can claiion of the New World not eventually becolish settlement, he would still have earned themovement As Humboldt has said, without hirown into a houe

[Sidenote: _Potatoes and Tobacco_]

Ralegh's Virginian scheave hi

His distant seigniory excited the English in with a new real enriched his country with new fruits, plants, and flowers The nature of thebut immediately it appropriated itself to hiany into England froarden of his wife's uncle, Sir Francis Carew, at Beddington; and he has been credited with their first introduction The Spaniards first brought potatoes into Europe Hariot and Lane first discovered thehal, and they became his Hariot discoursed learnedly on the virtues of tobacco, and Drake conveyed the leaf to England Ralegh save the taste vogue, teaching the courtiers to s them with the leaf Sir John Stanhope excuses hie Carew in Ireland any 'tabacca, because Mr Secretary and Sir Walter have stored you of late' Till he doh, of his devotion to this his faed him at Sherborne with spiced ale to put out the coers of the Queen that he could weigh vapours; how he smoked as Essex died Society stared to see hiilt leather tobacco case was a prize for a Yorkshi+re s, he was the observed of all observers He was active in twenty different directions at once He was always before the eyes of the world His name was on every lip

[Sidenote: _Pioneer and Privateer_]

Anation at the spectacle of the Spanish lish sympathy The people heartily shared his detere Spain He had the Viking spirit, and he burnt with a freebooter's passion for the sea But he had an intuition also of the national capacity for colonization, in which the purest patriot must have concurred He was resolved to direct the e to that definite end He succeeded, though destined to the lot rather of Moses than of Joshua His outlay on Virginia did not bound his expenditure in these ways Adrian his half-brother, and his habitual associate, had resumed Sir Humphrey Gilbert's old project for the discovery of a North-West Passage to India and China A patent was granted hih joined Captain John Davys was appointed commander, and two barks were equipped Davys discovered Davis's Straits Mount Ralegh, shi+ning like gold, he christened after one of his h had thrice contributed with the forwardest to Davys's North-West voyages From a mixture of patriotisain, he e as a regular business Privy Council h his officers, of Spanish shi+ps, with 600 Spaniards, at the Newfoundland fisheries He sent forth in June, 1586, his shi+ps Serpent and Mary Spark, under Captains Jacob Whiddon and John Eveshaht the Spaniards at the Azores In a battle of thirty-two hours, against twenty-four Spanish shi+ps, they failed to capture two great caracks which they coveted They brought home three less valuable, but remunerative, prizes Don Pedro Sarellan, and other captives orth heavy ransoh repeats in the History, 'a pretty jest' told him 'merrily' by the worthy Don Pedro, on whoh heavily, how the draftsman of the chart of the Straits invented an island in the specially her own in the chart In the sa expedition of the Earl of cuh he was not allowed to be often at sea in person, he vindicated by his eager proht to be entered, as we find him in January, 1586, in an official list of 'sea captains'

[Sidenote: _Charges of Piracy_]

[Sidenote: _His Defence_]

As Vice-Ades beyond most for private raids upon Spanish commerce When he was not on the spot, his faithful and affectionate deputy in Devonshi+re, Sir John Gilbert, was at hand to look after his shi+ps' stores Doubtless outrages were committed under shelter of his Court favour He joined the evil experiences of the sailor with those of the soldier and courtier in his dying regrets Occasionally the Privy Council had to expostulate energetically In 1589 a shi+p of his took two barks of Cherbourg He and his officers were charged to 's subjects In the sah's captain of the Roebuck Another of his captains, John Floyer, in 1592, was accused of having captured a shi+p of Bayonne with a load of cod, beside a waistcoat of carnation colour, curiously embroidered Filippo Corsini sued him in that year for a shi+p his people had seized In 1600 the Republic of Venice was aggrieved at the capture of a Venetian merchantman by Sir John Gilbert, junior, eldest son of Sir Huh's vessels At other tioods in Spanish bottoainst the claim Sometimes the Governed It was always reluctant to discourage the buccaneering trade, which it knew to be very lucrative For instance, Ralegh and eleven other adventurers in 1591 equipped, at a cost of 8000, privateers which brought home prizes worth 31,150 The profit to the partnershi+p was 14,952, which must be h places no repugnance to the pursuit was felt The Queen not rarely adventured, and looked for the lion's share of the spoil Robert Cecil, after he had succeeded to his father's ascendency, illing to speculate, if his association h, I thank God, I have no otherthan becometh an honest man in any of my actions, yet that which were another h's views and character obliged him to no bashful dissi seeal, and unequivocally laudable He boasted in 1586 that he had consu the tyrannous prosperity of Spain He acted as much in defence and retaliation as for offence He stated in the House of Commons in 1592 that the West Country had, since the Parliaan, been plundered of the worth of 440,000 In 1603 he wrote that a few Dunkirk privateers under Spanish protection had 'taken from the West Country merchants within two years above three thousand vessels, beside all they had gotten froland' He himself, as the State Papers testify, had often to lah Spanish and French privateers

Public opinion entirely justified the vigour hich he conducted his retaliation If he were unpopular a his countrymen, or any section of them, the fact is not to be explained by the ehts upon foreign colishmen never objected to the most fearful odds, when 'royals of plate and pistolets' were in view Theypromoter of lucratively perilous enterprises; and in the West they were

CHAPTER VI

PATRON AND COURTIER (1583-1590)

[Sidenote: _Hakluyt_]

In social and private as well as public life Ralegh was open-handed and liberal in kind offices Those are not unpopular characteristics He was a patron of letters His name ratuitous Martin Bassaniere of Paris inscribed to him very appropriately his publication of Laudonniere's narrative of the French expedition to Florida Richard Hakluyt, junior, during his residence in France, had lighted upon Laudonniere's manuscript From him Bassaniere received it He translated the voluh Hakluyt had to thank Ralegh also for material assistance both with money and with advice in the coes The uese narrative of de Gaht for 60 by Ralegh, who presented it to hies' towards the production by the French painter, Jacques Morgues, of a series of coloured illustrations of Florida, whither he had accompanied Laudonniere In 1586 the publisher of John Case's _Praise of Music_ dedicated it to Ralegh, as a virtuoso In 1588 Churchyard dedicated to him the _Spark of Friendshi+p_ Hooker, the antiquary, introduced the continuation of the Irish history of Giraldus Cambrensis with a fervent encomium on the illustrious Warden of the Stannaries, as 'rather a servant than a commander to his own fortune' A medical treatise was inscribed to hins for ches, shows that as early as 1592 he had paid attention to medicine He appears to have kept a manuscripts Thus, John Peirson who, in 1585, was in trouble in connexion with a tract entitled _Reasons why the King of Scots is unacceptable to the People of England_, deposed that he delivered one of the five copies he h, my master'

[Sidenote: _Hariot_]