The template that had been successful thus far in Virginia was used in Bermuda. Each major tenant in the Company was given land on the understanding that he could afford to pay for indentured labour, get those workers to the islands and support them. So began in 1615 the history of the oldest surviving British colony.
The Spanish did not like this. They had discovered the islands and believed they had some territorial rights over that part of the ocean. They most certainly did not like the way that these Somers Islands were used as a jumping off point to harass Spanish shipping. However, by this time, 1615–20, the Spanish were no longer a threat to anyone unless provoked. A pattern was emerging of colonial interests. The Spanish had enough to look after with their American commitments south of St Augustine in Florida. The more interesting competition, part of which would eventually involve open warfare and animosities of culture and language that would survive into the twenty-first century, was being created much further north. The protagonists were the French, the English and, to a lesser extent, the Dutch.
The Dutch and the English were sending expeditions along the American coastline to the colder climes north of Virginia. The French had already gained strong footholds in this region. When the English routed the French colony around Port Royale on the Acadian peninsula and captured Jesuit missionaries in 1613, the Franco–English battle for the control of large swathes of North American territory, including what was to become Canada, had finally started. One of the most memorable leaders of that North American exploration had been Henry Hudson (1550–1611). Hudson was a sailor and a good navigator. At the age of fifty-seven he put to sea with just eleven crew in a small vessel called, appropriately, the Hopewell. He was supported by the Muscovy Company and tasked with finding not a north-westerly but north-easterly sea passage across the polar region to China. He got as far as Spitzbergen. The following year, 1608, he was blocked by ice off Novaya Zemlya. It was the year after that, 1609, that Hudson was working for the Dutch East India Company. This time he sailed in a north-westerly direction and reached the Davis Strait. Sailing on a southerly course, he then came across the estuary and then back into the mouth of a huge river. This was what is now called the Hudson River which he navigated and charted as far as the present Albany in New York State, some 150 miles from the mouth. In the spring of 1610 he sailed in the Discovery, rounded the southern tip of Greenland and crossed the Davis Strait which separates Greenland from Baffin Island, and then navigated through the narrows between Resolution Island and Button Island (the pincers which form the entrance to Hudson Strait). In June he entered the great inland sea named after him, Hudson Bay.
That winter, the Discovery was trapped in the ice. By the spring there was considerable desperation, with some of the crew accusing Hudson of keeping too much of the food for himself, his twelve-year-old son and a couple of officers. As the ice melted, Hudson, his son and his seven officers were put overboard in an open boat. They were never seen again. Henry Hudson’s name lived on in the seaways he charted and in one of the great North American trading companies, the Hudson’s Bay Company, which was still trading in one form or another four centuries on.
Hudson was employed by the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch, as well as the French and British, were very much in evidence as fishermen off the Newfoundland Banks. They were also expanding their fur trade. Dutch colonialism was as instinctive as any nation’s and we might remember that the celebrated base of Dutch exploration forty years on was the colony of New Netherlands and its capital New Amsterdam; later, New York State and New York City. This concentration for fur, fish and navigable rivers in the north-east did not distract the British from wider interests. The fact, for example, that tobacco was to be grown in Virginia, was largely due to the success the English had with growing tobacco in Guiana (later Guyana). In other words, there was never a moment when the British confined themselves to one region and once they controlled the sea lanes, following the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the British economic curiosity literally knew few bounds.
The British had tried to settle Guiana on a number of occasions, never really successfully. Sir Walter Ralegh was an enthusiast and passed on his ideas to Robert Harcourt. It was Harcourt who with a small force planted Guyana between the Amazon and Orinoco rivers in King James’s name in 1609–10, although the expedition was sponsored by Henry, Prince of Wales (1594–1612). The Dutch were already there and Harcourt appears to have attempted to follow their example of setting up small trading posts to do business with South American Indians. But he was never properly funded, in spite of his patron, and, although he used the Virginia colony as an example for administration and had the backing of the King, he could not interest enough investors.
Ralegh could not lead the expedition because he was still in the Tower. That Harcourt had the royal patronage of Prince Henry was almost certainly to do with Henry’s total admiration for Ralegh. Henry was almost obsessed with Ralegh’s stories of glorious Elizabethan conquests. After all, Ralegh was the last person who was directly associated with the Tudor heroes, including Drake and Sir Philip Sidney. He had been a close friend of the poet, Edmund Spenser. He had been to the mysterious corners of the new colonies. Intriguingly, it has never been certain that King James knew of his son’s virtual infatuation, or if he was aware that Harcourt had been inspired by his friend Ralegh; if the King had known the Ralegh–Harcourt connection, it seems less than likely that he would have signed a warrant for the expedition in his name. No expedition, or so it seemed, could escape Ralegh’s shadow. When Harcourt landed on the bank of the Waipoco River in May 1609, the local chief claimed Ralegh as a friend. Harcourt had to spend considerable time avoiding telling Ralegh’s Central American friends that the great man was in prison for treason. There were even rumours that a second expedition was to be sent, with Ralegh in command. King James was not amused.
In spite of using Virginia as an example for so many ventures, a lot of the exploration seems to have been piecemeal. It is true there was enormous competition between the five European states of exploration, Great Britain (as James I liked to call his kingdom), Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands and the longest lasting of Britain’s competitors, France. It was as if the new adventurers were uncertain of what it was they were trying to do. The need to colonize was first and foremost based upon the commercial opportunities. There was also the instinct to stake out territorial claims for strategic purposes and before other countries did so. Thirdly, each country understood perfectly that it was not self-sufficient and therefore national economies needed the resources a colony might bring and, as important, the markets they would provide.
The adventurers, opportunists and active investors had seized opportunities rather than becoming involved in long-term low-equity projects, but there were some obvious examples where settlement and sustained trade in the colonies might be profitable: for example, whaling, and there was also walrus hunting in the Davis Strait. Fishermen also proved to be natural long-term colonizers. It seemed usual enough that the fishermen off the Newfoundland Banks would want to keep the grounds and the small landing harbours for themselves. Their form of colonialism had nothing to do with a greater vision of imperial Britain. Instead it was a reflection of the colonial purpose of economic expansion. The people who owned the boats, and therefore the fishermen, quite liked the idea of colonizing the shores and keeping foreign fishermen away from the grounds, literally colonizing the fishing banks. On the other hand, it made some seafaring sense for the boats to sail from England on an annual or seasonal basis. This was partly due to the weather, shoal migration and spawning. On deeper examination, here was an illustration of the limitations of industry. To set up exclusive rights and to maintain some colonial rule over them in the Newfoundland ports would stretch the resources of the fishing managers and their funds. If they put too much effort into establishing themselves in Newfoundland then they could end up having less control over the management of the returning catches and the supply services
and distribution in English ports. They could be edged out of the English harbours and end up as not much more than distant traders. This debate began at the beginning of the seventeenth century as the fishing industry expanded, along with the earliest perceptions of what an empire might do economically for its investors, not for Britain. That debate was still under way in the second half of the nineteenth century.
James I’s administrators saw the Newfoundland fishing industry as a vital economic asset. More than that, the admirals saw in the 9,000 or so British fishermen a perfect recruiting ground for the navy. These fishermen were expected to supply more than 60 per cent of the ships’ companies in the Royal Navy. So we have the focus of the so-called government of Britain emphasizing the economic as well as the strategic value of Newfoundland as a money-making exercise, as well as a proving ground for the navy. Even though the war with Spain was over, officially at least, by 1604 there was no doubt that the navy still needed men and Britain, which had adjusted to James I’s perception that he ruled at God’s command, now was getting towards the idea that it was also God’s will that the British should rule the waves. This was to be a recurring theme into the twentieth century, not that Britain did rule the waves, but that it was divine judgement that they should. Thus, the expansion of the Empire so much relied on what naval doctrine later came to call the protection of the sea lanes.
To achieve the objective of this, in 1610 it was decided to build on the original claim of territory by Humphrey Gilbert in the sixteenth century with a new charter, sponsored by Sir Francis Bacon.36 It was entitled ‘The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London and Bristol for the Colony or Plantation of Newfoundland’.
Bacon was one of the most exciting and excitable characters of the early seventeenth-century reign of James I. He was a scholar, scientist, essayist, administrator and almost anything else that would curry favour and advance his ambitions. If this makes his character a difficult one to admire then so be it. However, his breadth of examination, thinking and achievement was enormous. He understood the distinctions of patronage and the advantages to be gained from them. Not surprisingly, he expressed delight in almost any opinion of the King. He played to James’s gallery and championed Church reform (a cause dear to James’s heart), the bringing together of the interests of the monarch and Parliament (another cause dear to James’s heart) and, most shrewdly, the Union of Scotland and England (the cause most dear to James’s heart).
In the first year of his reign, 1603, James included Bacon in the list of 300 knights bachelor he dubbed and made him commissioner for the Union of England and Scotland. Bacon had a reputation among some of being a flatterer, especially within earshot of the monarch. Yet his brilliance might have been the only medal he needed. (Bacon’s academic writings, particularly the Advancement of Learning, and his various theses on common law and usages should not be overlooked when trying to understand how England worked during the reign of James I.) His interest in the colonies went further than constitutional and legal lengths. His scientific curiosity led him to identify one of the problems for settlers and traders: how was meat to be kept other than salting? This experiment was his undoing. Bacon believed it would be possible to refrigerate meat. His rigorous belief that theoretical science was valueless without practical experiment led him in 1626 to take a hen and stuff it with snow to see what would happen if the flesh temperature was lowered. He kept on doing it. Unfortunately he discovered one of the by-products of refrigeration. During this experiment with fowls and buckets of snow, Bacon caught a cold and died.
This, then, was a man of enormous imagination and political significance in the governance of England and it was he who became the main sponsor and champion in government circles of the plantation and colony of Newfoundland. What made the Newfoundland Company so different was that although it used the experiences in Virginia as a colonial example for laws, commercial and social order, it unusually allowed one group carte blanche. The fishermen were free to go about their business as they would. In the rest of the world, the four nation peoples of the British Isles were also at sea, spreading a global business that would prove far more profitable than the banks fisheries.
The England to which James I came, in 1603, was a land of about four million people. The combined population of Scotland, Ireland and Wales was probably about half that. The birthrate might have been greater but for crude contraception, simple celibacy and a trend towards later marriages and therefore fewer child-bearing years. But in spite of this social change, the population survival rate in the first half of the seventeenth century was greater than the previous 100 years. The impact of disease and starvation lessened, and the increased population demanded growth in agricultural production, but that never really kept up with consumption, with the result that food prices rose at almost double the rate of wages. More people now bought their food than grew it, and therefore more of their income went on basic needs than before. The result was a decline in living standards. There was also greater pressure on government to look after its people. Yet government was not always able, or competent, to do so. Such new ideas meant raising funds. And it wasn’t a good time for that.
James I’s confrontation with Parliament was postponed until the winter of 1604 because of a plague. But when James I’s first Parliament met it went on until the end of 1610, more than six years. After that, it didn’t meet again for three years. James often reminded his Parliament that it had been established after kings and that he didn’t depend on its members for his authority. However, Parliament provided James’s only way to gain the funds he needed. This in turn gave its members the chance to tackle him on greater subjects, and that is what annoyed him, especially as he wasn’t as good as Elizabeth had been at using his ministers to manipulate the political system.
At the heart of Parliament’s role were the two functions: law-making and sorting grievances. The two could go together and, to give an idea of the influence of Parliament, more than half the laws came not from the King’s ministers, but from the members. Still, the King’s main interests were the ways in which he could get money out of Parliament.
In that first gathering there were 467 Members in the House of Commons. Many of them were inexperienced and had no understanding of what they were trying to do, other than to do it as noisily as possible. The King described one session as a gathering without any control that ‘voted without order, nothing being heard but cries, shouts, and confusion’. And, for good measure, he noted that the real problem was the gaggle of lawyers who tried to dominate everything. He wanted rid of them. It was a popular view. Just a few years before James came to the throne, Shakespeare wrote: ‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.’
But James I had greater problems than the problem of lawyers. One of the legacies of the Elizabethan reign was the Roman Catholic conundrum. When James became King there were, or so it is thought, about 40,000 Catholics in England. He told his closest adviser, Robert Cecil, that he would ‘never allow in my conscience that the blood of any man shall be shed for diversity of opinions of religion’. Which is not quite what he meant.
James I accepted that some people were Catholics, and that as long as they didn’t grow in numbers and cause trouble, they should remain so. But their priests, especially the Jesuits, he called ‘firebrands of sedition’ and, in February 1604, he ordered them out of England. He had a similar attitude towards the Puritans. The general people were fine; it was the zealots among them whom he refused to tolerate.
This, on the face of it, was a more relaxed attitude to the different religious persuasions in England, and Catholics started to be more public about their beliefs. The Archbishop of York, Matthew Hutton, had no doubts of the dangers of this when he told Cecil that the Catholics (Papists he called them), ‘have grown mightily in number, courage, and influence. ’Tis high time to look unto them.’ Cecil took note and spoke to the King, and a year later James claimed that he disliked Catholics so mu
ch that he’d rather be childless than risk his son becoming one. The differences might have been left at that, and the Catholics would have been safe, had it not been for a group of the very zealots James feared.
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, a failed attempt to assassinate the King at the State Opening of Parliament, confirmed everything the Catholics’ harshest critics had believed about them. By the next year, Parliament, apparently having settled the matter of gouty members, banned Catholics from living anywhere near London, from holding public or official office, and allowed James to take over two-thirds of the lands owned by Catholics. Most important of all, Catholics were to swear an oath of allegiance to the crown.
There was one part of this oath that had been drafted by James himself. The Powder Traitors, as they were called, had to publicly swear that neither the Pope, nor his agents, had any right to try to depose the King or invade his territories. But what happened if the Pope, in his supreme position, gave Catholics absolution from this declaration? James, or his advisers, had thought of that and added an almost impossible provision, impossible if you happened to be a Catholic. James believed, or said he believed, that as the earth hadn’t a single monarch, then even though he was willing to accept that the Pope was the Prince of Bishops, Princeps Episcoporum, he was no more than that. Rome was not the holder of the only truth.
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