time he would present a spectacle to the world that would overawe any other nation that might have the temerity to measure swords with the Castilian. The Armada consisted of one hundred and thirty ships, the largest ever seen in Europe, bearing thirty thousand soldiers and three thousand heavy guns. Not only to chasten England for daring to claim a portion of the New World did Philip send forth this fleet, but especially to force back into the Church the straying Briton who had wandered from the Catholic fold.

Great was the excitement in the British Isles when the people knew of the hostile coming of the Armada. Europe stood aghast with consternation. Had England been conquered, France and the Netherlands would immediately have been attacked. But the English rose to the occasion. Forty thousand soldiers were soon under arms. The English fleet was much smaller than the Spanish, but the ships were swifter, and above all, they were manned by such masters of the sea as Lord Howard of Effingham and Hawkins Defeat of the and Frobisher and Drake, while the Armada was comSpanish Armada.

manded by the Duke of Medina Sidonia, a man of little skill and less experience. The gigantic fleet approached the Plymouth harbor in July, 1588, in the form of a grand crescent seven miles in extent. The English met the foe and destroyed many of their ships by making sudden dashes, then sailing beyond the reach of the Spanish guns, and again by sending fire ships among them. In a short time the Spanish fleet was greatly disabled, and, moreover, it was penned within the German Ocean. The conquest of England was now abandoned, and the remnant of the Armada, attempting to reach Spain by sailing around England and Scotland, encountered, near the Orkney Islands, a succession of terrific storms, and many more of the vessels found a bed in the depths of the sea. The soldiers perished by thousands, and comparatively few of them ever again reached their native land. Few events in history have been more far reaching in their results than the destruction of the Spanish Armada. It marked the end of Spanish dominion of the sea. It was the beginning of the end of the national greatness of Spain. From this time the Empire declined steadily and irresistibly, and three hundred and ten years later the downfall was completed in the short, decisive war with the United States of America. What England began in 1588 her child, then unborn, was to complete three centuries later; and the power of Spain was confined to the bounds of her own peninsula.

COLONIZATION-THE SOUTHERN COLONIES

59

The greatness of the modern British Empire takes its rise from the defeat of the Spanish Armada. As a maritime power England soon rose to the first place, and from that day to the present there has been none successfully to dispute her sway. The defeat of the Spanish Armada has been pronounced the opening event in the history of United States.1 From that moment North America was open to colonization with little danger of hindrance from the Spaniards. Even before that event England had made a beginning of colonizing America, and the first Englishman to engage in it was Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Obtaining a charter from Queen Elizabeth, he made a heroic attempt to found a colony in Newfoundland; but Gilbert lost his life by shipwreck, and his mantle fell on the shoulders of a much abler man than himself, one who must be considered the father of English colonization on the soil of the United States - Walter Raleigh.

Gilbert's

Charter, 1578.

Sir Walter
Raleigh.

Raleigh was one of the best representative Englishmen of his age. He was a student of books and a leader of men. A pupil of Coligny, a friend of Spenser, he was a statesman and a scholar, a courtier and a soldier, and in each he was one of the leading men of his times." Raleigh was granted a charter similar to that of Gilbert. He sent two exploring ships to the coast of North America, and they brought back glowing accounts of the beauty of the land and the gentleness of the natives. They had landed at Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. It was at this time that the eastern coast of North America received the name Virginia in honor of the Virgin Queen.3 Raleigh's first colony was sent out in 1585 under Ralph Lane with one hundred and eight men, who settled on Roanoke Island; but after a year of hardships they were picked up and carried to England by Sir Francis Drake, who happened to touch at that point in one of his great voyages. They brought back with them tobacco and the potato, and first introduced the use of these in England. Raleigh was disappointed at the failure of his colony and he determined to try again. In 1587 he sent a colony of one hundred and fifty, seventeen

1587.

of whom were women, under John White, and soon after August 15, they landed at Roanoke, Virginia Dare was born. She was a grandchild of Governor White, and was the first English child

1 Fiske's "Old Virginia," p. 39.

2 Doyle's "English Colonies in America," Vol. I, p. 56.

It is said that Elizabeth herself suggested the name Virginia.

born on the soil of the United States. The governor soon found it necessary to make a voyage to England, intending to return to his colony. But the war with Spain interfered, and three years passed

The lost colony.

before an English vessel reached Roanoke. When at last help came, the colony had utterly disappeared and its fate was never known.1 Raleigh was still undismayed. He exclaimed to a friend as late as 1602, the year of his fifth expedition, which also failed, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation." But the great man's fortunes now took a downward turn. His royal patron died, and in her place came the bustling little egotist, James I. Raleigh fell into disfavor; he was cast into prison, where he remained for twelve years, meantime writing his "History of the World." Then, after a brief season of liberty, he was again imprisoned on the false charge of treason and was soon after beheaded. No more dastardly deed was ever committed by a British sovereign than the murder of Raleigh.

Notwithstanding the fact that none of the colonies planted by Raleigh was permanent, he must be awarded the honor of securing the possession of North America to the English race, of making known the advantages of its soil and climate, and creating the spirit of colonization among his country men. It was Raleigh above all men who prepared the way for successful and permanent English colonization on the soil of the United States.

VIRGINIA

At the beginning of the seventeenth century all the eastern portion of North America, which afterward became the thirteen original states, was known as Virginia. Great interest in American colonization was awakened in England by Richard Hakluyt, a noted geographer, who published several little books on English voyages and America. Several voyages were made before any permanent settlement was established. These voyages, undertaken by individuals, had not been successful financially or otherwise. From this

1 Years afterward the people of Virginia found children among the Indians with light hair and eyes, and it was believed that they were descendants of members of White's colony who were probably adopted by Indian tribes.

2 Winsor, Vol. III, p. 334.

3 Hakluyt's works have recently been published in 16 volumes.

In 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold, one of Raleigh's captains, sailed to Cape Cod and Buzzards Bay, intending to found a colony, but failed to do so. In 1603 Martin Pring made a voyage to New England; a son of Humphrey Gilbert sailed to Chesapeake Bay and was killed by the Indians. In 1605 Captain Weymouth made a voyage to the Kennebec River and returned with five Indians.

2

COLONIZATION-VIRGINIA

61

cause others were deterred from risking their fortunes in similar enterprises. But the success of various commercial companies which had multiplied in the last half century for the purpose of trading with distant countries, especially of the East India Company, chartered in 1600, naturally suggested similar enterprises for the western world.' And further, the corporation as a form of local subordinate government had long been familiar to the English merchant, as Osgood says, and readily "lent itself to plans of colonial extension." Accordingly, in 1606, two companies were formed, Virginia was divided into two parts and a part granted to each, the London Company and the Plymouth Company. They obtained a royal charter enabling each to found a colony, granting the right to coin money, raise revenue, and to make laws, but reserving much power to the king. Each was given a block of land a hundred miles square, and the settlements were to be at least one hundred miles apart. The London Company had permission to plant a colony anywhere on the coast between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees north latitude, and to what they did we now direct our attention.*

3

The London

Company.

Great haste was now made by the London Company in preparing for colonization in America, and on the 19th of December, 1606, three small ships bearing one hundred and five. colonists and commanded by Christopher Newport, a famous sea captain, set out upon the wintry sea for the New World. The largest of the vessels, the Susan Constant, was of one hundred tons burden and the smallest of but twenty tons. The voyage was long and dreary, and it consumed the remainder of the winter. On reaching the American shore the weary voyagers were greeted by the singing of birds and the fragrance of flowers. Entering Chesapeake Bay they named the two projecting points at its sides Cape Henry and Cape Charles, after the two

1 Doyle, Vol. I, p. 108.

2 To the English motives for colonization, as given on a preceding page, another was now added rivalry with the French. The French king had, in 1603, made an extensive grant in America to De Monts, and colonists had gone out in 1604. The French grant was from forty degrees to sixty degrees north latitude; the English from thirty-four to forty-five degrees. These claims greatly overlapped, and thus were sown the seeds of future strife between the two nations.

3 So called because the men composing the former were London merchants, the latter, Plymouth merchants. The two companies were really but subdivisions of one great company.

4 See Poore's "Charters and Constitutions," Part II, p. 1888 sq. The Plymouth Company made an effort to found a colony the same year on the coast of Maine, but it was not successful.

young sons of the king. They chose out one of the great rivers flowing into the bay, left upon it the name of King James, ascended it for about thirty miles, and founded a town which also they called after the name of their king. Thus was founded the first of the permanent settlements which were to multiply and expand, and in three hundred years to grow into the greatest nation of the earth. Let us take a glance at the colonists. It would be difficult to imagine a set of men less fitted to build a colony and found a nation than were those who settled at Jamestown in 1607. Among them were but twelve laborers, a few carpenters, a blacksmith, a mason, a barber, and a tailor, while more than fifty were "gentlemen," that is, men without an occupation, idle, shiftless men who had joined the enterprise without realizing that years of labor were essential to success. But there were a few men of worth in the company. There were Wingfield, who became the first president of the governing council, Gosnold, the famous mariner and pupil of Raleigh, and John Smith, the hero of many strange adventures. They soon erected a few tents and small cabins; some, however, found a dwelling place by burrowing into the ground. For a church they nailed a board between two trees, stretched a canvas over it, and beneath this the Rev. Robert Hunt held services according to the rites of the Church of England.

Character

of the colonists.

Captain Newport, after spending some weeks exploring the James River, returned with his ships to England, promising to come. again as soon as practicable. The colony was soon in a pitiable condition. Arriving too late to plant spring crops, and finding little cleared land fit for cultivation, the men were soon reduced to short rations. The allowance to each man for a day was a pint of wormeaten barley or wheat, made into pottage. Governor Wingfield lacked the ability to rule the men, and there were constant quarrels among them. To their other misfortunes was added a continual fear of Indian attacks; and owing to their exposure in the swamps and their lack of proper food, they were attacked by fevers. They died sometimes three or four in a night, and before the end of September half of the little colony, including Gosnold, had found a grave in the wilderness.

The entire colony would no doubt have perished before the return of Newport but for the courage and vigor of one man, the most notable and conspicuous character in the early colonial history

1 Henry, the elder and heir to the throne, died in his boyhood, and his brother became King Charles I of England.