by John Butman
Continuing on, Frobisher endured another eventful expedition, and after five months, returned to England with news of successes and setbacks. He did not manage to navigate through the Northwest Passage to the Pacific Ocean. Nor did he establish a settlement—the plan had been abandoned, largely because part of the prefabricated wooden house the expedition had taken along had been lost when one of the barks carrying the structure sank after a collision with an iceberg.
Yet the new land was now scattered with English names—evidence that Elizabeth’s people were starting to summon the self-belief to imagine an empire. A map, drawn by James Beare, master of one of Frobisher’s ships, shows the scale of England’s burgeoning territory. In addition to West England, it includes, among many landmarks, Cape Walsingham, Hatton’s Headland, Lok’s Land, and Winter’s Furnace, where much of the mining took place. There is even a Charing Cross, a familiar London landmark, and a fond reminder of home. Of course, Frobisher’s Strait is marked, and it leads west, with Beare noting “the way trending to Cathai.”
With this, the investors could live in hope. But, when Frobisher docked, there was the more immediate concern of the ore—1,296 tons of it. Frobisher sent the ore to the now-completed Dartford smelting works, and the process of extracting gold was begun.73 But what might have been a triumphant return gradually degenerated into a three-year squabble that resulted in bankruptcy and disillusionment. By the end of October 1578, the Commissioners requested that Lok provide a full account, in writing, of the “doings and proceedings in this voyage,” as well as the current state of the operations at Dartford. Lok calculated that an additional six thousand pounds would be needed to meet expenses, pay the miners and sailors, and cover the cost of handling the ore. In December, with permission from the queen to collect the necessary funds, he set about trying to raise more capital from the investors. But collecting money after the completion of a venture turned out to be more difficult than doing so in advance, especially when news of the assays conducted at Dartford proved disappointing. Soon enough, Lok and Frobisher were blaming each other. Lok sought funds to cover his personal outlay. Frobisher accused him of duplicity.
Lok came to realize that he had made a terrible mistake by signing an agreement on behalf of the entire company. As it turned out, the Cathay Company was never given formal legal status. “There is no such corporation or company in law,” noted William Cecil, as things started to unravel.74 It meant that Lok was left having to take responsibility for the costs of the entire venture, and when some investors refused to pay, he was stuck with the entire obligation. He was soon suspended as treasurer of the company and found himself in serious financial difficulty. In a “humble petition” to the Privy Council’s commission for the disbursement of funds to him, he warranted that he and his wife and fifteen children had been “left in a state to beg their bread henceforth except God turn the stones at Dartford into his bread again.”75 Eventually, he was sent to debtors’ prison, returning several times for nonpayment of obligations. Meanwhile, Frobisher railed against the Dartford assayers, certain that his ore was the genuine article.76
As the Cathay Company disintegrated, the Spanish, continuing to keep track of Frobisher’s activities, came to the conclusion that there was nothing much to worry about. In February 1579, Mendoza sent a letter, along with more ore samples, to Philip: “They are of but little value, as the Englishmen and assayers themselves confess, and no matter what heat is employed they cannot smelt them satisfactorily, owing to their great crudity, which is a certain sign they are not rich.” The whole business, he continued, “is not thought much of now as the sailors have not been paid, and the merchants who took shares in it have failed, so that people are undeceived.”77
Although Frobisher had come closer than anyone to discovering the Northwest Passage to Cathay, the queen and the other investors gave up on the project after further assays produced no precious metals of any significance. William Williams conducted the last assay in May 1581. It proved once and for all that the ore did not contain sufficient precious metal to make it profitable. The rock was not completely worthless, however. It was taken from Dartford and repurposed in a variety of ways—from the repairing of roads to the construction of the wall of the queen’s manor house not far from the smelting works.78
9
ILANDISH EMPIRE
AT THE BEGINNING of November 1577, a few weeks after the return of Frobisher’s second voyage, John Dee prepared to receive an old friend at his home in the riverside village of Mortlake, ten miles up the Thames from the Tower of London. Just turned fifty, Dee had become something of a celebrity, revered across Europe as a mathematician, cosmographer, cartographer, and astrologer. He often welcomed visitors to his country residence, a fine assemblage of buildings that included a main house, gardens, a courtyard, and several outbuildings containing alchemical laboratories from which often emanated noxious fumes.1 On one occasion, Elizabeth herself had called on Dee, to examine a mirror that he claimed could produce optical illusions.2 The highlight of any visit was a tour of Dee’s wondrous library, which outshone the collections at Oxford and Cambridge as the largest in England, containing more than three thousand volumes in some twenty-one languages on Dee’s favored subjects of alchemy, astrology, history, geography, optics, and more.3
Dee’s visitor that November was Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who had a matter of great urgency on his mind: Spain. Sir Humphrey had just finished writing a treatise entitled A Discourse How Her Majesty May Annoy the King of Spain.4 This was not about mildly irritating Spain. This was about war. Back then, the word “annoy” equated to “injure,” “hurt,” and “harm.”5 As such, Gilbert advocated a set of bold actions that he believed Elizabeth should take in order to slice into Spain’s wealth and gain a presence for England in Spain’s lucrative corner of the New World.
Although there is no definitive evidence that Dee and Gilbert discussed Sir Humphrey’s treatise at Mortlake, Dee was generally sympathetic to Gilbert’s views. Nearly ten years earlier, when Gilbert had sought the rights to conduct a voyage in search of the Northwest Passage, it was Dee who had written a promotional tract (now lost) called Atlanticall Discourses—“ Atlanticall” referring to “Atlantis,” the word Dee preferred to “America.” When Gilbert was subsequently forced to abandon that initiative, Dee had praised his thwarted efforts. He characterized Gilbert as “the Courragious Capitaine” who had been “in a great readiness, with good hope, and great causes of persuasion” and would have made the venture of discovery, if he had not been “called and employed otherwise.”6 And, just two months before Gilbert’s visit, Dee had produced another tract exploring the same topic as Gilbert’s—how to deal with Spain and build England’s influence in the world—called General and Rare Memorials Pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation. Dee dictated this rambling screed to an amanuensis in a manic six-day explosion of ideas.
Gilbert had developed his increasingly anti-Spanish attitude over a period of several years. In 1572, he led a voluntary force in a military action to support Dutch rebels against Spanish forces in the Low Countries. That same year, 13,000 Protestants had been slain in a three-week orgy of violence that followed the assassination of Huguenot leaders on St. Bartholomew’s Day in Paris—a murderous day of bloodletting, after which the French word “massacre” entered the English language.7 In the wake of this attack, Gilbert had written to Cecil urging Elizabeth to consider “taking revenge” against “the Papists,” as loyalists of the Pope and the Catholic Church were often called. If she did not, he warned, it would surely mean “the tragical destruction of all the Protestants in Europe.”8 In 1574, Gilbert and his kinsman, Richard Grenville, petitioned Elizabeth to support a voyage of discovery into waters south of the equator, deep into Spanish-claimed territory.9 But since Elizabeth had recently signed the Treaty of Bristol, which was intended to mend relations between the two countries, neither she nor Cecil wanted to risk provoking Philip at that time. The proposal was vetoed.
> The crown’s lack of enthusiasm for Gilbert’s schemes may also have stemmed from reservations about his character. Sir Thomas Smith, who had known him since his Eton days, wrote to Cecil that, when it came to “handy work,” Gilbert was “one of the best that I have seen,” but otherwise he was “brimful of fickleness” and “overflowing with vanity.” Elsewhere, Smith characterized Gilbert as having a nature “as good as any gentleman in England as soon as he is out of his storms.”10 As Gilbert had demonstrated with his brutal actions in Ireland in 1569, his moody storms could escalate into catastrophic tempests.
Snubbed by the Privy Council, Gilbert threw his support behind Lok and Frobisher, allowing his Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia to be published and investing in the Company of Cathay. But he remained alive to other possibilities, and by the end of 1577, things had changed: Spain had unleashed its army on the Protestant Dutch. The previous November, Spanish soldiers had looted and plundered Antwerp, where England did most of its cloth trade. Around eight thousand Protestant civilians defending their city were slaughtered without mercy. The three days of violence were remembered as the “Spanish Fury.”11
With Spain now beset by conflict across its global empire, Gilbert’s treatise on how to annoy the king of Spain reflected a widening view at court that Elizabeth should no longer struggle to maintain amicable relations with Philip. Instead, she should adopt an aggressive policy toward Spain and her possessions.12 The principal advocates of this hawkish view were Robert Dudley, Francis Walsingham, and Sir Christopher Hatton, captain of the queen’s bodyguard and an increasingly influential figure at court.
These men harbored a deep antipathy toward Spain and all it stood for. Walsingham, in particular, had long practiced an uncompromising form of Protestantism. In the 1550s, during the reign of Mary and Philip, he went to live abroad rather than be subject to the Catholic monarchs. By contrast, William Cecil, while also a committed Protestant, had stayed in England during Mary’s reign.
John Dee advocated a less abrasive approach than the one proposed by Humphrey Gilbert. But he was no less assertive. In The Perfect Art of Navigation, which he dedicated to Christopher Hatton, Dee argued that it was time for England to establish what he called a “Petty Navy Royal.” This fleet of new ships would be deployed in the English Channel with the express purpose of preventing an invasion by foreign countries. Also, it would protect English merchant ships from pirates and privateers, and thereby safeguard the country’s economic wealth.
Dee believed the fleet could “bring this Victorious British Monarchy” to a state of “marvellous Security” and ensure that the crown and the commonwealth could “wonderfully increase and flourish.” He further suggested that it could be deployed beyond English waters and “toward New Foreign Discoveries,” which would enhance “the Honorable Renown of the Ilandish Empire.”13
It was Dee who first framed the argument for a British empire that stretched far beyond the islands of the British archipelago. In the 1540s, advisers to Henry VIII and then Edward VI developed the idea of an empire that embraced England and Scotland.14 Sir Thomas Smith, in fact, was commissioned to develop civil law arguments for uniting these two separate kingdoms.15 But Dee went further. As he conferred with Gilbert, he was in the process of writing the series of reports that he would deliver to Elizabeth about her title to the Atlantic territories of Greenland, Estotiland, and Friseland.16
Like Gilbert, Dee could see the opportunity for England. Also, he felt Gilbert’s urgency to act. He often ascribed portentous political meaning to astrological and cosmographical phenomena. In 1572, when a supernova appeared, Dee foresaw a rise in the influence of female leaders in European states. Furthermore, he believed that an apocalypse was nigh and would most likely occur with the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in 1583. In his estimation, the New World would play an important role in the New Age that would then dawn, and Elizabeth would become the last empress, reigning over “the most Peaceable, most Rich, most Puissant, and most Flourishing Monarchy” in Christendom—but only if Philip II of Spain were subdued.17
IN KEEPING WITH his “handy” character, Sir Humphrey was far more practical than Dee in his proposals to Elizabeth. To make itself “strong and rich,” he wrote, a country needed to make its enemies “weak and poor.”18 For England, that meant taking action against Spain in America—along the full length of the Atlantic coast, from the international fishing grounds off the coast of Newfoundland to the Spanish-controlled islands of the West Indies.
Gilbert wanted to begin annoying Philip by sending English “ships of war” to Newfoundland, where England could assert its sovereignty because of John Cabot’s claim of 1497. But it was not only right that Gilbert thought was on England’s side—it was might, too. While Spain’s fishing fleet was large—with one hundred ships, it had twice as many as England—the English ships carried more weaponry. As a result, they were, as Anthony Parkhurst, a widely traveled merchant and one of Gilbert’s advisers, noted, “lords of the harbors.”19 So much so that the ships of other nations often looked to the English for protection “against rovers or other violent intruders.”20
Gilbert’s plan was straightforward, even brazen. The English would seize all the best ships in the Newfoundland harbors, burn the rest, and impound any valuable freight. This action would have multiple benefits for England. At a stroke, it would decrease Spain’s shipping capacity and increase England’s. Also, it would reduce Spain’s fishing catch, and since Newfoundland codfish was one of their principal and richest commodities, “everywhere vendible,” Philip’s revenue from customs and duties would be trimmed. And, with less cod available for sale in Spain, people would have less to eat and might starve.21
Gilbert offered to lead the Newfoundland enterprise, but his Irish experience taught him not to make the mistake of asking Elizabeth for a financial contribution. Instead, he suggested that, after he had successfully gained control of the fishing grounds in Newfoundland, the way would be cleared for Elizabeth to establish a colony in the area. She could deploy six thousand men in this venture and defray the costs with the revenue gained through tariffs and taxes on foreign fishing vessels.
Once all this had been accomplished, Gilbert proposed that he would then sail to the West Indies to make an even bolder, more direct strike on Spain’s sources of wealth—attacking and taking possession of the island of Hispaniola. This, Gilbert argued, would not be difficult to accomplish, because there were “but few people” there. By establishing a base on the island, the English would be able to intercept the Spanish treasure fleet. Also, it would be a fine place for a settlement, because the island boasted a “great abundance of cattle,” plenty of fish, and a surplus of juca root, useful for the making of bread. Gilbert believed Hispaniola offered commercial opportunities, too, such as mining and sugar harvesting.
Gilbert seems to have anticipated Elizabeth’s concerns about such a venture, because he offered a less aggressive alternative. He could take the uninhabited island of Bermuda, some five hundred miles north of Hispaniola, which Spain had claimed in the early 1500s but had never settled. Named after Juan de Bermúdez, the Spanish navigator who discovered it, but sometimes known as the Isle of the Devils—because unpredictable winds, uncharted shallows, shoals, and strong currents caused frequent wrecks—Bermuda was also within striking distance of Spain’s treasure fleet.
Either way, Gilbert argued that any English action in the West Indies would be disruptive for Spain. Even a small loss there would be “more grievous” to Philip “than any loss that can happen to him else where” because of Spain’s reliance on the constant flow of silver from the New World into the royal coffers. Also, the action would be highly cost-effective for England. The queen, Gilbert calculated, could do more damage to Philip with an expenditure of £20,000 in the West Indies than she could with £100,000 spent on any other means of annoyance.
Gilbert, who perhaps had learned from previous rejections, was careful to acknowledge th
e risks involved in his schemes. He admitted that aggressive action could cause Philip to retaliate and, in doing so, jeopardize the regular, routine, and profitable business that English merchants conducted with their Spanish traders. If his armed assault resulted in such a loss of trade, Gilbert acknowledged, “then your Majesty might be hindered in shipping, and customs, to the great decay of the common weale.”
Knowing this, Gilbert presented a method to avoid such a commercial disaster. All Elizabeth had to do, he suggested, was grant him a general license “to discover and inhabit some strange place,” without being specific about where. With such a “cloak,” the English ships could go to sea, attack, and conquer—but not appear to be doing so explicitly at the queen’s behest. If the Spanish took offense, Elizabeth could disavow everything. She could even make a show of arresting Gilbert and his crew and imprisoning them somewhere on the English coast as if she were “in displeasure.” There, they would languish until the whole thing had blown over. Conveniently, Gilbert’s uncle, Arthur Champernowne, vice-admiral of Devon, and the man charged with coastal defense in the West Country, had many such secluded havens to secret the ships, if this scenario were to develop.
Gilbert urged Elizabeth to act quickly. “[Consider] that delay doth often times prevents the performance of good things,” he wrote, “for the wings of man’s life are plumed with the feathers of death.”