England in America, 1580-1652 Part 2

Most of the settlers who went with Lane were mere gold-hunters, but there were two who would have been valuable to any society--the mathematician Thomas Hariot, who surveyed the country and wrote an account of the settlement; and John White, who made more than seventy beautiful water-colors representing the dress of the Indians and their manner of living. When the engraver De Bry came to England in 1587 he made the acquaintance of Hakluyt, who introduced him to John White, and the result was that De Bry was induced to turn Hariot's account of Virginia into the first part of his celebrated _Peregrinations_, ill.u.s.trating it from the surveys of Hariot and the paintings of John White.[14]

If Raleigh was disappointed with his first attempt at colonization he was encouraged by the good report of Virginia given by Lane and Hariot, and in less than another year he had a third fleet ready to sail. He meant to make this expedition more of a colony than Lane's settlement at Roanoke, and selected as governor the painter John White, who could appreciate the natural productions of the country.

And among the one hundred and fifty settlers who sailed from Plymouth May 8, 1587, were some twenty-five women and children.

The instructions of Raleigh required them to proceed to Chesapeake Bay, of which the Indians had given Lane an account on his previous voyage, only stopping at Roanoke for the fifteen men that Grenville had left there; but when they reached Roanoke Simon Ferdinando, the pilot, refused to carry them any farther, and White established his colony at the old seating-place. None of Grenville's men could be found, and it was afterwards learned that they had been suddenly attacked by the Indians, who killed one man and so frightened the rest as to cause them to take to sea in a row-boat, which was never heard of again.

Through Manteo, a friendly Indian, White tried to re-establish amicable relations with the natives, and for his faithful services Manteo was christened and proclaimed "Lord of Roanoke and Dasamon-guepeuk"; but the Indians, with the exception of the tribe of Croatoan, to which Manteo belonged, declined to make friends. August 18, five days after the christening of Manteo, Eleanor Dare, daughter to the governor and wife of Ananias Dare, one of White's council, was delivered of a daughter, and this child, Virginia, was the first Christian born in the new realm.[15]

When his granddaughter was only ten days old Governor White went to England for supplies. He reached Hampton November 8, 1587.[16] He found affairs in a turmoil. England was threatened with the great Armada, and Raleigh, Grenville, Lane, and all the other friends of Virginia were exerting their energies for the protection of their homes and firesides.[17] Indeed, the rivalry of England and Spain had reached its crisis; for at this time all the hopes of Protestant Christendom were centred in England, and within her borders the Protestant refugees from all countries found a place of safety and repose. In 1585 the Dutch, still carrying on their struggle with Spain, had offered Queen Elizabeth the sovereignty of the Netherlands, and, though she declined it, she sent an army to their a.s.sistance. The French Huguenots also looked to her for support and protection. Spain, on the other hand, as the representative of all Catholic Europe, had never appeared so formidable. By the conquest of Portugal in 1580 her king had acquired control over the East Indies, which were hardly less valuable than the colonies of Spain; and with the money derived from both the Spanish and Portuguese possessions Philip supported his armies in Italy and the Netherlands, and was the mainstay of the pope at Rome, the Guises in France, and the secret plotters in Scotland and Ireland of rebellion against the authority of Elizabeth.

This wide distribution of power was, however, an inherent weakness which created demands enough to exhaust the treasury even of Philip, and he instinctively recognized in England a danger which must be promptly removed. England must be subdued, and Philip, determining on an invasion, collected a powerful army at Bruges, in Flanders, and an immense fleet in the Tagus, in Spain. For the attack he selected a time when Amsterdam, the great mart of the Netherlands, had fallen before his general the duke of Palma; when the king of France had become a prisoner of the Guises; and when the frenzied hatred of the Catholic world was directed against Elizabeth for the execution of Mary, queen of Scots.

How to meet and repel this immense danger caused many consultations on the part of Elizabeth and her statesmen, and at first they inclined to make the defence by land only. But Raleigh, like Themistocles at Athens under similar conditions, urgently advised dependence on a well-equipped fleet, and after some hesitation his advice was followed. Then every effort was strained to bring into service every s.h.i.+p that could be found or constructed in time within the limits of England, so that in May, 1588, when Philip's huge Armada set sail from the Tagus, a numerous English fleet was ready to dispute its onward pa.s.sage. A great battle was fought soon after in the English Channel, and there Lord Charles Howard of Effingham, and Raleigh and Drake and Hawkins joined with Grenville and Cavendish and Frobisher and Lane, and all the other glorious heroes of England, in the mighty overthrow of the Spanish enemy.[18]

Under the inspiration of this tremendous victory the Atlantic Ocean during the next three years swarmed with English cruisers, and more than eight hundred Spanish s.h.i.+ps fell victims to their attacks. So great was the destruction that the coast of Virginia abounded in the wreckage.[19] But the way to a successful settlement in America was not entirely opened until eight years later, when the English fleet, under Howard, Raleigh, and Ess.e.x, completed the destruction of the Spanish power by another great naval victory won in the harbor of Cadiz.

Amid all this excitement and danger Raleigh did not forget his colony in Virginia. Twice he sent relief expeditions; but the first was stopped because in the struggle with Spain all the s.h.i.+ps were demanded for government service; and the second was so badly damaged by the Spanish cruisers that it could not continue its voyage. Raleigh had spent 40,000 in his several efforts to colonize Virginia, and the burden became too heavy for him to carry alone. As Hakluyt said, "It required a prince's purse to have the action thoroughly followed out."

He therefore consented, in 1589, to a.s.sign a right to trade in Virginia to Sir Thomas Smith, John White, Richard Hakluyt, and others, reserving a fifth of all the gold and silver extracted, and they raised means for White's last voyage to Virginia.[20]

It was not until March, 1591, that Governor White was able to put to sea again. He reached Roanoke Island August 17, and, landing, visited the point where he had placed the settlement. As he climbed the sandy bank he noticed, carved upon a tree in Roman letters, "CRO," without a cross, and White called to mind that three years before, when he left for England, it had been agreed that if the settlers ever found it necessary to remove from the island they were to leave behind them some such inscription, and to add a cross if they left in danger or distress. A little farther on stood the fort, and there White read on one of the trees an inscription in large capital letters, "Croatoan."

This left no doubt that the colony had moved to the island of that name south of Cape Hatteras and near Ocrac.o.ke Inlet. He wished the s.h.i.+ps to sail in that direction, but a storm arose, and the captains, dreading the dangerous shoals of Pamlico Sound, put to sea and returned to England without ever visiting Croatoan.[21] White never came back to America, and his separation from the colony is heightened in tragic effect by the loss of his daughter and granddaughter.

What became of the settlers at Roanoke has been a frequent subject of speculation. When Jamestown was established, in 1607, the search for them was renewed, but nothing definite could be learned. There is, indeed, a story told by Strachey that the unfortunate colonists, finally abandoning all hope, intermixed with the Indians at Croatoan, and after living with them till about the time of the arrival at Jamestown were, at the instigation of Powhatan, cruelly ma.s.sacred.

Only seven of them--four men, two boys, and a young maid--were preserved by a friendly chief, and from these, as later legends have declared, descended a tribe of Indians found in the vicinity of Roanoke Island in the beginning of the eighteenth century and known as the Hatteras Indians.[22]

Sir Walter Raleigh will always be esteemed the true parent of North American colonization, for though the idea did not originate with him he popularized it beyond any other man. Just as he made smoking fas.h.i.+onable at the court of Elizabeth, so the colonization of Virginia--that is, of the region from Canada to Florida--was made fas.h.i.+onable through his example. His enterprise caused the advantages of America's soil and climate to be appreciated in England, and he was the first to fix upon Chesapeake Bay as the proper place of settlement.

When James I succeeded Elizabeth on the throne Raleigh lost his influence at court, and nearly all the last years of his life were spent a prisoner in the Tower of London, where he wrote his _History of the World_. In 1616 he was temporarily released by the king on condition of his finding a gold-mine in Guiana. When he returned empty-handed he was, on the complaint of the Spanish amba.s.sador, arrested, sentenced to death, and executed on an old verdict of the jury, now recognized to have been based on charges trumped up by political enemies.[23]

Raleigh never relinquished hope in America. In 1595 he made a voyage to Guiana, and in 1602 sent out Samuel Mace to Virginia--the third of Mace's voyages thither. In 1603, just before his confinement in the Tower, he wrote to Sir Robert Cecil regarding the rights which he had in that country, and used these memorable words, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation."[24]

[Footnote 1: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 81, II., 10.]

[Footnote 2: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1674, p. 17.]

[Footnote 3: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 82.]

[Footnote 4: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 184-208.]

[Footnote 5: Stevens, _Thomas Hariot_, 43-48.]

[Footnote 6: For the patent, see Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 297-301.]

[Footnote 7: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 13.]

[Footnote 8: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 301.]

[Footnote 9: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 302-310.]

[Footnote 10: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 144-145.]

[Footnote 11: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 322, IV., 10.]

[Footnote 12: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 323, 340.]

[Footnote 13: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 106.]

[Footnote 14: Stevens, _Thomas Hariot_, 55-62.]

[Footnote 15: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 340-345.]

[Footnote 16: Ibid., 346, 347.]

[Footnote 17: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 19.]

[Footnote 18: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 111.]

[Footnote 19: Brown, _Genesis of the United States_, I., 20.]

[Footnote 20: Stebbins, _Life of Raleigh_, 47.]

[Footnote 21: Hakluyt, _Voyages_, III., 350-357.]

[Footnote 22: Strachey, _Travaile into Virginia_, 26, 85.]

[Footnote 23: Edwards, _Life of Raleigh_, I., 706, 721.]

[Footnote 24: Ibid., 91.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROANOKE ISLAND, JAMESTOWN AND ST. MARY'S 1584-1632]

CHAPTER III

FOUNDING OF VIRGINIA

(1602-1608)

Though a prisoner in the Tower of London who could not share in the actual work, Sir Walter Raleigh lived to see his prediction regarding Virginia realized in 1607. He had personally given substance to the English claim to North America based upon the remote discovery of John Cabot, and his friends, after he had withdrawn from the field of action, were the mainstay of English colonization in the Western continent.

Bartholomew Gosnold and Bartholomew Gilbert, son of Sir Humphrey, with Raleigh's consent and under the patronage of Henry Wriothesley, the brilliant and accomplished earl of Southampton, renewed the attempt at colonization. With a small colony of thirty-two men they set sail from Falmouth March 26, 1602, took an unusual direct course across the Atlantic, and seven weeks later saw land at Cape Elizabeth, on the coast of Maine. They then sailed southward and visited a headland which they named Cape Cod, a small island now "No Man's Land," which they called Martha's Vineyard (a name since transferred to the larger island farther north), and the group called the Elizabeth Islands. The colonists were delighted with the appearance of the country, but becoming apprehensive of the Indians returned to England after a short stay.[1]

In April, 1603, Richard Hakluyt obtained Raleigh's consent, and, aided by some merchants of Bristol, sent out Captain Martin Pring with two small vessels, the _Speedwell_ and _Discovery_, on a voyage of trade and exploration to the New England coast. Pring was absent eight months, and returned with an account of the country fully confirming Gosnold's good report. Two years later, in 1605, the earl of Southampton and his brother-in-law, Lord Thomas Arundell, sent out Captain George Weymouth, who visited the Kennebec and brought back information even more encouraging.[2]

Meanwhile, Queen Elizabeth died March 24, 1603, and was succeeded by King James I. In November Raleigh was convicted of high-treason and his monopoly of American colonization was abrogated. By the peace ratified by the king of Spain June 15, 1605, about a month before Weymouth's return, the seas were made more secure for English voyages, although neither power conceded the territorial claims of the other.[3]