by James Horn
The religious conflict of the Reformation had been particularly intense and disruptive in London. The city witnessed the reformers’ early salvos in the 1530s in the long struggle to establish a Christian commonwealth and bring the faithful into the light. Puritan congregations thrived throughout London, in St. Martin’s in the Fields, Smithfield, Cripplegate, St. Matthew Friday Street, St. Michael Cornhill, Aldgate, Holborn, Southwark, and parishes to the east of the City walls, such as Stepney.
John White might have remembered from his boyhood days the widespread destruction of popish statues and images of saints in parish churches that occurred shortly after the accession of Edward VI (Elizabeth’s younger brother). Altars had been removed by zealous Protestants, who associated them with the Catholic Mass and idolatry. About the time White was married, the altar had been pulled down in his church at St. Martin Ludgate, and in some of the colonists’ churches walls were whitewashed so that the Ten Commandments could be written on them.10
During the 1570s and early 1580s the Church of England’s efforts to enforce orthodoxy gained momentum. In London the clergy were commanded to wear their clerical robes and confirm their commitment to Church doctrine. Those who refused were removed from their parishes or arrested. In St. Clement Danes, the radical preacher Robert Johnson was thrown into prison in 1574 for his “puritan practices,” where he died a few months later of jail fever. Meetings of clerics and lay people to discuss the scriptures were suppressed, and prominent Puritan sympathizers, including a number of leading Presbyterians, were imprisoned or forced into exile. Elizabeth’s appointment of John Whitgift, a strict disciplinarian, as Archbishop of Canterbury in 1583 provided further proof that the queen and her bishops were determined to stamp out Puritanism in London and elsewhere.11
By the time White’s colonists left England, religious radicals were coming to realize that there was to be no thoroughgoing reformation of the Anglican Church. London would not be another Geneva (where the reformed religion flourished), and efforts to thoroughly purge the Church of England of popish practices had largely failed. The opportunity to worship according to their own beliefs in America may have been a major incentive for some settlers to join White’s venture.
Ralegh may have encouraged the recruitment of Puritans. He was known by contemporaries to be well disposed toward Puritanism and aligned himself with those at court, such as Leicester and Walsingham, who favored further church reform. Ralegh’s father had been a zealous Protestant, and he himself had fought for the Huguenot cause in France. He had taken the Huguenot artist Jacques Le Moyne into his service and possibly looked to the Huguenot settlement at Fort Caroline as a model for his own colony. Strong religious convictions among the settlers might help to bind the expedition together.
Ralegh was strongly attracted by the prospect of planting the seed of the Anglican Church in North America, which in time would flower into a redoubtable Protestant bulwark and secure the northern continent against the Spanish and spread of Catholicism. The Huguenots had been driven out of Florida in the 1560s, but he would establish the Protestant faith in Virginia. His vision of the Church incorporated both settlers and Indian peoples. What could be more pleasing to God, the pious lawyer John Hooker pointed out in a dedication to Ralegh, than to bring the knowledge of the gospel “to a lost people [the Indians]”? Who would perform the godly work of saving the souls of millions of Indians, Richard Hakluyt the younger asked, to bring “them from darkness to light, from falsehood to truth, from dumb idols to the living God, from the deep pit of hell to the highest heaven”? His appeal had been directed at Elizabeth, but by the spring of 1587 he was convinced that Ralegh was God’s instrument. The conversion of Indians to Christianity was integral to Sir Walter’s plans for an English America in which colonists and local peoples would live together in Christian fellowship.12
THE LATE WINTER and early spring of 1587 were exceptionally busy as the settlers prepared for the voyage. They gathered their personal possessions, sorted out arrangements with family and friends to look after the children and take care of their affairs while they were away, and spent time with loved ones. Meanwhile, White was fully occupied in bartering with local victuallers and overseeing the outfitting of the three ships provided by Ralegh, moored just below London Bridge: the flagship Lion (120 tons), on which White, Fernandes, and probably about fifty settlers would sail; an unnamed flyboat (100 tons) commanded by Edward Spicer, which would carry about forty-five or fifty passengers as well as the colony’s bulk cargo; and a pinnace (30 tons) under the command of Captain Edward Stafford, who had been with Lane’s colony, which had room for about twenty settlers. In total, the three ships would transport approximately 150 passengers and crew.
Throughout much of February and March, mariners loaded stores, provisions, and equipment. Tools and hardware were needed to build the settlement and for planting crops; glass beads and copper would be used as trade goods; cloth, blankets, and ticking for clothes and bedding; books, devotional works, cards, and toys for recreation and tending to spiritual needs; medical supplies, cooking pots, and kettles for domestic use; and firearms, pikes, and armor in case the Spanish discovered them or they encountered hostile Indian peoples.13
White’s preparations were interrupted on February 19 by the sound of church bells ringing out across the city. Londoners lit bonfires, drank to the health of Elizabeth, and celebrated the news of the death of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. Mary had fled from Scotland nearly twenty years earlier after factions of the Scottish nobility had forced her to abdicate the throne in 1567 in favor of her infant son, James VI. The nobles had been determined to rid themselves of their Catholic queen and to raise the young King James as a Protestant. Mary had gone to England in the hope that her cousin, Elizabeth, would help her to regain her throne. But Elizabeth had chosen not to become embroiled in Scotland’s internal affairs and kept Mary under house arrest. The arrangement was not to the liking of Elizabeth’s ministers, who understood that Mary’s presence in England was a serious threat to the queen’s security. She would be a rallying point for Catholics in England and for foreign agents who conspired to kill or depose Elizabeth. Mary was the legitimate heir, who would succeed to the English throne if Elizabeth died, which would mean that once again England would be ruled by a Catholic monarch.
The Scottish queen had been suspected of involvement in two earlier Catholic plots, of 1571 and 1583, but Elizabeth had refused to bring her to trial. Then in 1586 a conspiracy to assassinate Elizabeth, led by a Catholic gentleman, Anthony Babbington, had been uncovered. Walsingham had thwarted the plot, and Babbington and his co-conspirators suffered the grisly death of traitors on a scaffold erected at St. Giles in the Fields, where they had met to plot Elizabeth’s death. Mounting evidence had connected the exiled Scottish queen to the conspiracy, and when her complicity was proven beyond doubt, Elizabeth had little choice but to reluctantly consent to her councilors’ demand for Mary’s execution.
To Londoners who celebrated news of the Scottish queen’s execution, Mary’s death seemingly extinguished the likelihood of a return to Catholicism and religious upheaval. The serpent that had been poised to strike at the bosom of the realm had itself been cut off. Little wonder that people danced in the streets as if, a contemporary remarked, “they believed a new era had begun in which all men would live in peace.”14
Yet while her subjects rejoiced, Elizabeth wept in the solitude of her private quarters at Greenwich. She was troubled by the possible consequences of Mary’s execution. In consenting to the death of a fellow queen she had diminished herself. Monarchs were anointed by God, she believed, and to interfere with divine will was to court disaster.
Elizabeth’s mind was also occupied with political considerations. Would news of Mary’s execution stir up trouble in Scotland, where her son, James VI, ruled, potentially bringing down the fury of the Scots upon the English borderlands? Would there be diplomatic repercussions in France, where Mary’s brother-in-law, Henry I
II, was king? And most worrying of all, how would Philip II react? A popular prophecy that circulated in 1586 warned that if harm befell Mary, England would be invaded by the Spanish, Elizabeth would be deposed, and an army of peasants with “clubs and clouted shoes” would rise to overthrow those who had oppressed them—a mélange of calamities that had haunted the Tudor state since the unsettled times of the mid-sixteenth century.15
In one sense at least, the prophecy appeared likely to come true. In mid-March news of Mary’s death reached Philip at the great government complex and monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, in the form of a letter from the Spanish ambassador in Paris. Don Bernardino de Mendoza was an astute observer of the political scene and erstwhile ambassador to Elizabeth’s court (he had been expelled in January 1584 in response to allegations that he was involved in a plot to bring down the queen). Mary’s execution offered Mendoza a perfect opportunity to persuade the king that now was the time to let the sword fall. “I pray that your Majesty will hasten the Enterprise of England to the earliest possible date,” he wrote to Philip, “for it would seem to be God’s obvious design to bestow upon Your Majesty the crowns of these two kingdoms [England and Scotland].”
Mendoza’s urging was well received. Perhaps Philip did indeed believe that the horrible crime committed against Mary was an unmistakable sign from God prompting him to act, but Mary’s death also removed the possibility of her becoming queen of England and possibly entering into a treaty with France. A cardinal principle of Habsburg statecraft ever since his father, Charles V’s, time had been the prevention of an Anglo-French alliance that would prove a powerful counterweight to Spanish interests in Europe. Now that Mary had gone to a martyr’s grave and there was no risk of French intervention, Philip decided to take on the mantle of Catholic king of the English and Scots himself and set in motion plans for the invasion.
The “enterprise of England” was to be put into effect. Philip shed his usual plodding caution and embraced plans for a combined land-sea attack with an alacrity that must have stunned his ministers. A massive armada would sail from Spain early the following year, immobilize the English navy, and take up station off the coast of Kent to provide protection for the Duke of Parma’s army as it crossed the channel from Flanders. Parma’s superb army of battle-hardened veterans would then march on London and take control of the capital. As the king’s commanders set in motion arrangements for the invasion, neither Ralegh nor White could possibly have foreseen the impact of Philip’s decision on their efforts to establish a colony in America.16
BY THE END of March 1587 White and Ralegh had completed their plans for the voyage. It was agreed that the fleet would follow the route to America usually taken by English mariners. Fernandes would lead the ships to the Canaries, cross the Atlantic to the West Indies, and then move on to the North American coast. White was to go first to Roanoke Island, where he would make contact with the small garrison left earlier by Grenville. The garrison would continue to maintain an English presence in the area and provide a base for a larger settlement should Ralegh decide to expand activities there. White was to inquire about the condition of the country and Indian peoples, and may have had in mind learning whether the men had picked up any further news of mines in the interior. He would have been eager also to let the men know where he intended to locate his settlement to the north.
During his stay on Roanoke White was to return the two Indians, Towaye and Manteo, to their own peoples. Then the colonists were to move on to the Chesapeake Bay, find a site for the main colony, and begin building their settlement. At that point, Fernandes and Spicer would go back to England to inform Ralegh of the colony’s safe arrival, leaving the pinnace behind for the settlers’ use. White probably anticipated that once Ralegh heard the colony had been established, he would fit out another expedition to reinforce the colony as soon as possible.
The expedition was ready to sail in early April. Some of those who had agreed to join White could not bring themselves to go once confronted with the reality of leaving England, possibly forever. As many as two dozen settlers may have backed out at the last moment. For those who remained, the day of departure was a scene of tearful farewells to children and final instructions to friends and kin before they boarded their ships to catch the ebb tide that would carry them downriver past Gravesend and beyond to the North Sea.
One can imagine White and the colonists, as the crews worked busily casting off, taking their last look at London and waving to loved ones gathered in small knots along the dockside. Then the tide took hold of the ships, swinging them out into the river and setting all on course for the most momentous journey of their lives.
WITH FAIR WINDS it would have taken only a couple of days to make the journey south and west to Cowes, on the Isle of Wight, where White intended to meet Sir George Carey, commander of Carisbrooke Castle. But the weather was not fair, and the first leg of the voyage along the coast took a week or so longer than usual. After first putting in at Portsmouth, the fleet anchored in the Solent on April 26, where they remained for eight days, a welcome relief to the colonists, who had been tossed around like corks in a bucket in the dark, cramped, and stinking ships’ holds. White used the time to call on Carey, who was organizing a privateering expedition to the West Indies. He carried letters from Ralegh that likely requested Carey’s three ships call in at Roanoke and possibly the Chesapeake Bay after cruising the Caribbean. They may have agreed that Carey’s ships would carry additional provisions or acquire them in the West Indies, and perhaps also bring a few settlers to the colony. White would have handed over detailed instructions about how to reach the bay and a map showing the projected location of the settlement.
White’s fleet arrived at Plymouth in early May to take on water and last minute supplies. Then, with all his preparations completed, White noted briefly in his journal on May 8, “we weighed anchor at Plymouth, and departed thence for Virginia.” Those ten plain words hardly captured the significance of the moment—the departure of a fleet that would lay the foundations of an English America—but fortunately for posterity, Richard Hakluyt penned a more lyrical panegyric to Ralegh, which proclaimed the heroic proportions of the venture and promise of the New World:Reveal to us the courts of China and the unknown straits which still lie hid: throw back the portals which have been closed since the world’s beginning at the dawn of time. There yet remain for you new lands, ample realms, unknown peoples; they wait yet, I say, to be discovered and subdued, quickly and easily, under the happy auspices of your arms and enterprise, and the scepter of our most serene Elizabeth, Empress—as even the Spaniard himself admits—of the Ocean.
Ralegh’s colony would be the beachhead from which the English would ultimately find a way through the continent to the Pacific and beyond to Cathay, redeem a barbarous people from idolatry and convert them to the Protestant church, bring riches to their country, and confirm the queen’s rightful position as sovereign of the seas.17
The crossing proved long and arduous. A major setback occurred a little more than a week after leaving Plymouth. The flyboat was separated from the Lion and pinnace during the night, possibly in bad weather, a misfortune uncannily similar to the one that had occurred at the start of the voyage White had made with Grenville two years earlier. Confronted with the problem of how they would establish the colony without the four dozen settlers, the stores, and the equipment left behind on the flyboat, White pushed on in the hope that Captain Spicer would avoid capture by hostile ships and eventually rejoin them at one of the agreed upon rendezvous points in the West Indies and Virginia.
From the Bay of Portugal, where they had lost sight of the flyboat, they continued on a southerly course for another thousand miles until they reached the Canary Islands off the west coast of Africa, where they perhaps called in briefly to refresh their water casks and give the colonists a chance to stretch their legs ashore.
The Canaries were the last landfall the colonists would enjoy for several weeks. The next
stage was more than 3,000 miles across the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean, the two ships dropping from 25 degrees to 15 degrees north latitude, pushed along by the northeast trades and equatorial current. Experienced mariners such as Fernandes knew the winds and currents intimately, but no amount of experience could determine whether the crossing would be rough or smooth or how long a voyage would take. Seafarers understood the unpredictability of the weather and oceans and that their fate was governed by forces beyond their control. All they could do was commit themselves to the care of the Almighty and hope for fair winds and good fortune.18
At first the exhilaration of being underway may have outweighed some of the discomforts experienced by the colonists. In the early weeks of the voyage, the shared experience of adjusting to life at sea and crowded shipboard conditions would have encouraged the settlers to get to know each other. In fact, they could hardly avoid one another; there was little privacy in their living quarters below deck. Colonists from London and elsewhere may have met only occasionally during preparations but now had plenty of time to exchange stories and talk about their hopes for the future.
The excitement would soon have faded, however, as the Lion, followed by the pinnace, headed into the Atlantic and day after day passed in dull succession. Families occupied themselves looking after their children. The older boys—William Withers, who was thirteen, and Thomas Ellis, who was ten—probably spent days larking about on deck when the weather was fine and exploring below when it was not, but the younger ones would have been kept close to their parents for safety. A ship was a dangerous place for small children; little Ambrose Viccars was only three or four years old when his family left London.