First English Settlements
These twenty sundering years, from the end of this abortive
colony in 1587 to the beginning of the first permanent colony in
1607, constitute a period that saw the close of one age and the
opening of another in every relation of Anglo-American affairs.
Nor was it only in Anglo-American affairs that change was rife. 'The
Honourable East India Company' entered upon its wonderful career.
Shakespeare began to write his immortal plays. The chosen
translators began their work on the Authorized Version of the
English Bible. The Puritans were becoming a force within the body
politic as well as in religion. Ulster was 'planted' with Englishmen
and Lowland Scots. In the midst of all these changes the great
Queen, grown old and very lonely, died in 1603; and with her ended
the glorious Tudor dynasty of England. James, pusillanimous and
pedantic son of Darnley and Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne
as the first of the sinister Stuarts, and, truckling to vindictive
Spain, threw Raleigh into prison under suspended sentence of death.
There was a break of no less than fifteen years in English efforts
to colonize America. Nothing was tried between the last attempt at
Roanoke in 1587 and the first attempt in Massachusetts in 1602, when
thirty-two people sailed from England with Bartholomew Gosnold,
formerly a skipper in Raleigh's employ. Gosnold made straight for
the coast of Maine, which he sighted in May. He then coasted south
to Cape Cod. Continuing south he entered Buzzard's Bay, where he
landed on Cuttyhunk Island. Here, on a little island in a lake--an
island within an island--he built a fort round which the colony was
expected to grow. But supplies began to run out. There was bad blood
over the proper division of what remained. The would-be colonists
could not agree with those who had no intention of staying behind.
The result was that the entire project had to be given up. Gosnold
sailed home with the whole disgusted crew and a cargo of sassafras
and cedar. Such was the first prospecting ever done for what is now
New England.
The following year, 1603, just after the death of Queen Elizabeth,
some merchant-venturers of Bristol sent out two vessels under Martin
Pring. Like Gosnold, Pring first made the coast of Maine and then
felt his way south. Unlike Gosnold, however, he 'bore into the great
Gulfe' of Massachusetts Bay, where he took in a cargo of sassafras
at Plymouth Harbor. But that was all the prospecting done this time.
There was no attempt at colonizing.
Two years later another prospector was sent out by a more important
company. The Earl of Southampton and Sir Ferdinando Gorges were the
chief promoters of this enterprise. Gorges, as 'Lord Proprietary of
the Province of Maine,' is a well-known character in the subsequent
history of New England. Lord Southampton, as Shakespeare's only
patron and greatest personal friend, is forever famous through the
world. The chief prospector chosen by the company was George
Weymouth, who landed on the coast of Maine, explored a little of the
surrounding country, kidnapped five Indians, and returned to England
with a glowing account of what he had seen.
The cumulative effect of the three expeditions of Gosnold, Pring,
and Weymouth was a revival of interest in colonization. Prominent
men soon got together and formed two companies which were formally
chartered by King James on the 10th of April, 1606. The 'first' or
'southern colony,' which came to be known as the London Company
because most of its members lived there, was authorized to make its
'first plantation at any place upon the coast of Virginia or America
between the four-and-thirty and one-and-forty degrees of latitude.'
The northern or 'second colony,' afterwards called the Plymouth
Company, was authorized to settle any place between 38 deg. and 45
deg. north, thus overlapping both the first company to the south and
the French to the north.
In the summer of the same year, 1606, Henry Challons took two ships
of the Plymouth Company round by the West Indies, where he was
caught in a fog by the Spaniards. Later in the season Pring went out
and explored 'North Virginia.' In May, 1607, a hundred and twenty
men, under George Popham, started to colonize this 'North Virginia.'
In August they landed in Maine at the mouth of the Kennebec, where
they built a fort, some houses, and a pinnace. Finding themselves
short of provisions, two-thirds of their number returned to England
late in the same year. The remaining third passed a terrible winter.
Popham died, and Raleigh Gilbert succeeded him as governor. When
spring came all the survivors of the colony sailed home in the
pinnace they had built and the enterprise was abandoned. The reports
of the colonists, after their winter in Maine, were to the effect
that the second or northern colony was 'not habitable for
Englishmen.'
In the meantime the permanent foundation of the first or southern
colony, the real Virginia, was well under way. The same number of
intending emigrants went out, a hundred and twenty. On the 26th of
April, 1607, 'about four a-clocke in the morning, wee descried the
Land of Virginia: the same day wee entered into the Bay of
Chesupioc' [Chesapeake]. Thus begins the tale of Captain John Smith,
of the founding of Jamestown, and of a permanent Virginia, the first
of the future United States.
Now that we have seen one spot in vast America really become the
promise of the 'Inglishe nation' which Raleigh had longed for, we
must return once more to Raleigh himself as, mocked by his
tantalizing vision, he looked out on a changing world from his
secular Mount Pisgah in the prison Tower of London.
By this time he had felt both extremes of fortune to the full.
During the travesty of justice at his trial the attorney-general,
having no sound argument, covered him with slanderous abuse. These
are three of the false accusations on which he was condemned to
death: 'Viperous traitor,' 'damnable atheist,' and 'spider of hell.'
Hawkins, Drake, Frobisher, and Grenville, all were dead. So Raleigh,
last of the great Elizabethan lions, was caged and baited for the
sport of Spain.
Six of his twelve years of imprisonment were lightened by the
companionship of his wife, Elizabeth Throgmorton, most beautiful of
all the late Queen's maids of honor. Another solace was the "History
of the World", the writing of which set his mind free to wander
forth at will although his body stayed behind the bars. But the
contrast was too poignant not to wring this cry of anguish from his
preface: 'Yet when we once come in sight of the Port of death, to
which all winds drive us, and when by letting fall that fatal
Anchor, which can never be weighed again, the navigation of this
life takes end: Then it is, I say, that our own cogitations (those
sad and severe cogitations, formerly beaten from us by our health
and felicity) return again, and pay us to the uttermost for all the
pleasing passages of our life past.'
At length, in the spring of 1616, Raleigh was released, though still
unpardoned. He and his devoted wife immediately put all that
remained of their fortune into a new venture. Twenty years before
this he thought he could make 'Discovery of the mighty, rich, and
beautiful Empire of Guiana, and of that great and golden city, which
the Spaniards call El Dorado, and the natives call Manoa.' Now he
would go back to find the El Dorado of his dreams, somewhere inland,
that mysterious Manoa among those southern Mountains of Bright
Stones which lay behind the Spanish Main. The king's cupidity was
roused; and so, in 1617, Raleigh was commissioned as the admiral of
fourteen sail. In November he arrived off the coast that guarded all
the fabled wealth still lying undiscovered in the far recesses of
the Orinocan wilds. "Guiana, Manoa, El Dorado"--the inland voices
called him on.
But Spaniards barred the way; and Raleigh, defying the instructions
of the King, attacked them. The English force was far too weak and
disaster followed. Raleigh's son and heir was killed and his
lieutenant committed suicide. His men began to mutiny. Spanish
troops and ships came closing in; and the forlorn remnant of the
expedition on which such hopes were built went straggling home to
England. There Raleigh was arrested and sent to the block on the
29th of October, 1618. He had played the great game of
life-and-death and lost it. When he mounted the scaffold, he asked
to see the axe. Feeling the edge, he smiled and said: 'Tis a sharp
medicine, but a cure for all diseases.' Then he bared his neck and
died like one who had served the Great Queen as her Captain of the
Guard.
Back to: English Exploration of America
