It

stern nor languid, a beauty which neither awes nor enervates. would be hard to find a spot richer in romantic influences; more fit to train up a child in those dreamy hopes which allured the seamen of that age.

An Eton and Oxford scholar, a soldier in the religious wars of the Continent, then governor of the province of Munster, Gilbert was thoroughly steeped in the literary culture and the military and political training of that versatile generation. Gradually all lesser aims and ambitions gave way before the great purpose of his life.

His first

About 1565 we meet with the first traces of Gilbert's project of colonization. In the autumn of that year a corporation was established by Act of Parliament, for the discovery of scheme. new trades. Gilbert was a member of it, and soon after we find him presenting a memorial to the queen in virtue of his position. The scheme suggested in this memorial included the discovery of a Northwest passage to Cathay, the establishment of a traffic with that country, and the colonization of the intermediate lands. His petition asks that he may have the use of two of the queen's ships for the first four voyages, with the right to press seamen, that he and his heirs may enjoy certain exemptions from customs, and certain shares on all profits, and that he may be appointed governor of all such lands as he may discover, with the right to nominate a deputy. The first effect of this proposal seems to have been to bring Gilbert into conflict with the Merchant Adventurers Company. The members of the company, however, showed themselves ready to accept a compromise. Anthony Jenkinson was deputed to confer with him, and the merchant adventurers formally proposed that Gilbert should accept the freedom of the company and be appointed to conduct a voyage on their behalf. Gilbert seems to have accepted the arrangement, but for some unknown reason the proposal bore no fruit.3

After this Gilbert seems for a while to have stood aloof from any practical attempt. He did not, however, neglect the great project of his life. Before long he wrote a pamphlet entitled "A Discourse to prove a passage by the Northwest to Cataya and

1 By a private Act in the eighth of Elizabeth.

2 The Memorial, with Cecil's reply, is published in an epitomized form in Mr. Sainsbury's Calendar of Colonial State Papers relating to the West Indies, No. 13.

Colonial Papers (East Indies). Nos. 12-15.

"Dis

GILBERT'S “DISCOURSE."

45

the East Indies." In it he sets forth the feasibility of the effort and the gain which may be expected to result from it. Like Gilbert's Thorne, he appears to ignore the possibility of an icecourse." bound sea, and to suppose that a continuous ocean necessarily implies the possibility of a passage. The sanguine and enthusiastic nature of the man, fitter to contrive than to execute, and more likely to show others the way to succeed than to achieve success himself, is manifest in every page. Every chance story that may serve to illustrate the possibility of a passage is pressed into his service. There is a characteristic mixture of the credulous, uncritical spirit of the middle ages with the restless, enterprising, half-scientific temper of the sixteenth century. For us the most interesting part of the document, and that which connects itself most closely with Gilbert's later scheme, is the summary of the advantages to be expected. He first appeals to that belief in unknown lands of boundless wealth which figured so largely in the dreamlike projects of the age. "It were the only way for our princes to possess all the wealth of the East parts (as they term them) of the world, which is infinite." Such promises were sober compared to the wild dreams of El Dorado which possessed the age and which could even enslave the vigorous mind of Raleigh. Gilbert then proceeds to appeal to more commonplace motives, and dwells upon the acquisition of a valuable eastern trade. With one of those strange appeals to Scripture which are not confined to the Puritans of that day, he points out the probable demand for European goods in the East, auguring from the example of "the great king of India, Assuerus, who matched the colored clothes wherewith his houses and tents were apparelled with gold and silver as part of his greatest treasure." But for us by far the most interesting feature of the discourse is the prospect which Gilbert holds out that "we might inhabit some part of those countries and settle there such needy people of our own which now trouble the commonwealth, and through want here at home are enforced to commit outrageous offenses, whereby they are daily consumed by the gallows."

Gilbert himself did not publish this pamphlet, thinking, perhaps, that it might be disapproved of at Court, as likely to embroil Frobisher's the country with Spain. Despite his precautions, it found its way into print, and brought about one of the

voyages.

This pamphlet is published in Hakluyt, iii. 32. Two copies of the original edition are in the British Museum.

2

3

most memorable adventures of the age. Among Gilbert's acquaintance was one George Gascoigne, a man of some literary fame, and, as it would seem, a friend of Raleigh. He, being struck with the " Discourse," obtained the manuscript of it, showed it to at least one of his friends, and, seemingly without Gilbert's approval, published it. The friend to whom Gascoigne showed the document was a kinsman of his own, Martin Frobisher, who was already meditating schemes of northern exploration. Gilbert's pamphlets gave a definite form to his vague aspirations. His exploits lie beyond our subject, yet they are not wholly foreign to it. There could be no more effective comment on the spirit which impelled the English discoverers of the sixteenth century, its heroic yet unstable temper, its mixture of far-reaching schemes with an absence of practical and detailed knowledge. The whole career of Martin Frobisher may indeed be looked on as a type and epitome of Elizabethan seamanship. He had served his apprenticeship in the Guinea voyages, and had been implicated in a charge of piracy, no serious drawback probably to his future success. He found a patron in Michael Lok, himself a merchant captain in the Levant, and the son of Sir William Lok, who, like many other London traders, had attained commercial and political greatness under Henry VIII.

In 1576, by Lok's exertions, Frobisher was furnished with the funds needful for his enterprise, and during that and the two following years he made three voyages to the northern seas. The records of that adventurous age can show few exploits more enterprising, none perhaps less fruitful. In his first voyage Frobisher reached the coast of Labrador. He brought home, not the report of a Northwest passage, but hopes as chimerical and more dangerous. A stone which he found was reported to contain gold. England was already gold-mad, and the prospect of a Northern Peru instantly awakened the enthusiasm of those who had been unmoved by the project of a Northwest passage. The Company of Cathay was formed, with Lok as Governor and Frobisher as High Admiral of the newly-discovered lands. The two voyages which ensued were disastrous failures. At the very

1 For the connection between Raleigh and Gascoigne see Edwards's Life of Raleigh, i. 36. Gascoigne's Introduction.

Full accounts of Frobisher's voyages are to be found in the third volume of Hakluyt. The East India Colonial Papers, above referred to, also contain many documents bearing on the subject. All these authorities have been carefully worked up by the Rev. F. Jones in his Life of Sir Martin Frobisher, 1878.

GILBERT'S FIRST VOYAGE.

47

outset they illustrated strikingly one of the chief dangers which beset English colonization. Frobisher obtained a royal license to take criminals from the gaols with whom to garrison the lands that he might discover. All that accrued from the two voyages was a vast freight of earth, supposed to be full of gold, but soon found to be wholly worthless. Had the colony been better planned, had the gold discoveries been real, Frobisher's faults of temper, his arrogance and harshness towards his men, his duplicity and brutality in dealing with the savages, would have insured. failure. The Company disappears with a storm of disputes and recriminations between Frobisher and Lok, and the curtain falls dramatically upon the figure of Isabella Frobisher petitioning to be delivered from the starvation which her husband's recklessness had brought upon herself and her children.

Gilbert's

The impulse of the age towards American colonization was too strong to be checked by this failure. In less than a year after Frobisher's last disastrous voyage Gilbert obtained a patent. patent of colonization from the Queen. This instrument gave him full power to inhabit and fortify all lands not yet possessed by any Christian prince or people. His choice of a situation was restricted by no geographical limits. Full proprietary rights were granted to him and his heirs and assignees over all land within two hundred leagues of the place in which during the next six years they should make their settlement. The only right reserved by the Crown was a royalty of one-fifth on all precious metals. The proprietors had full power of making laws and ordinances, "as near as conveniently might be to the laws of the realm, and not opposed to the Christian religion as professed by the Church of England." Should no colony be founded within six years the patent was to expire.

first voy

age.

On the strength of this patent a number of gentlemen associated themselves with Gilbert in his enterprise. Even after the Gilbert's royal license had been so far obtained there were still difficulties to be surmounted. For nearly half a century from this time English colonists had a persistent and watchful opponent in the Spanish Court. For one short and glorious interval that opposition was as little heeded by the English Government as by the English nation. But that time had not yet

come.

For the present Gilbert found that the Privy Council were fully inclined to support the Spanish Government in thwart

The Patent is given in Hakluyt, iii. 174.

In

ing his efforts. If it be true, as some have thought, that he was the author of a paper still extant, entitled "A Discourse how Her Majesty may annoy the King of Spain by fitting out a fleet of shippes of war under pretense of a voyage of discovery, and so fall upon the enemies shippes and destroy his trade in Newfoundland and the West Indies, and possess their country," we can well understand the uneasiness which his projects excited. April, 1579, just when Gilbert's laborious preparations had been completed, an order was forwarded to him from the Privy Council commanding him either to give up his voyage or to furnish securities for his good behavior. Before this difficulty had been surmounted a fresh one arose. Just in the very crisis on which the fate of the voyage depended, some of Gilbert's followers were accused of having attacked and plundered a Spanish ship lying in Warfleet Cove, near Dartmouth. Immediately an order came down from the Privy Council that restitution was to be made to the Spaniards, and that neither Gilbert himself nor any of his followers was to sail. The order either came too late or was disregarded, and on the 23d of September, 1578, Gilbert sailed from Dartmouth with a fleet of eleven ships, victualed for a year. The same ill fate which had so nearly kept the fleet from sailing seemed to dog it throughout. One of the ships leaked and had to be left behind, and soon after seven more deserted.2

The expedition was a complete failure, and left Gilbert too crippled in means to go on with his project. In 1580 he transferred his patent to Sir Thomas Gerrard and Sir George Peckham.3 They either did nothing in the matter or failed so completely that all trace of their effort is lost.

In 1583 Gilbert himself, rather than allow his patent to expire, made one more effort. By dint of selling a large part of his Gilbert's landed estate, and by the aid of Raleigh, who fitted up one ship at a cost of a thousand pounds, the need

second voyage.4

This document, which is still extant, is dated the 6th of Nov., 1571. An epitome of it is given in the Calendar of Domestic State Papers, 1547-1580; the signature has been erased, but the editor, Mr. Lemon, conjectures that it was H. Gylberte.

2 Our knowledge of this voyage is mainly derived from Edward Hayes (see below). The two orders of Council are given in Mr. Edward's Life of Raleigh, i p. 78.

Domestic Papers, 1580, p. 695.

4 There is a full account of this voyage written by Edward Hayes in Hakluyt, iii., 184. The author was the captain and owner of the "Golden Hind," the only vessel which accom plished the whole voyage and returned safe. With the exception perhaps of the story of Hore's voyage, Hayes's narrative is the most vivid and picturesque of all those collected by Hakluyt. There are also some particulars of the voyage given by Sir George Peckham in a pamphlet which will be hereafter mentioned The wreck of the "Delight" and the subsequent