by John Butman
In late April 1584, the three men set off with two small ships in search of a suitable location for settlement while Ralegh began planning for his own version of a fully-fledged colonial enterprise in America. He realized that if he was going to mount a successful expedition, he would need royal backing that went beyond the issuing of letters patent. Although he had Elizabeth’s ear, he needed to make a complete and convincing case to win her support. To help him prepare this, he turned, at Walsingham’s suggestion, to the man who was emerging as England’s foremost authority on America and its greatest cheerleader for colonization: Richard Hakluyt, the younger.
HAKLUYT, NOW AGED about thirty-two, had enjoyed great success with Divers Voyages, which was produced to promote Gilbert’s final, disastrous voyage. After its publication, Hakluyt was sent to Paris, on Walsingham’s recommendation. There, he served as chaplain and secretary to Sir Edward Stafford, newly appointed ambassador to France.
Even though Hakluyt had spent much of his life reading the works of great travelers, this was his first visit to a foreign country, and he got a taste of the hazards of long-distance travel. The journey from London to Paris took two weeks; the rough crossing of the English Channel alone left the party “sea-beaten” and “half dead.”11
Hakluyt was not simply an ambassadorial assistant. He was, in effect, an operative in Walsingham’s intelligence network, charged with gathering information about America. As Hakluyt himself put it, he was expected to make a “diligent inquiry of such things as may yield light unto our Western discovery.” In this endeavor, he was extremely energetic. He interviewed countless New World experts, writing often about them for Walsingham. He inspected the furs of “sables, beavers, otters” brought back to France from Canada, worth five thousand crowns. He made the acquaintance of André Thevet, France’s royal cosmographer, and talked with him further about the Canadian fur trade. He met with Pierre Pena, a French botanist and Henry III’s physician, probably discussing the trade in herbal remedies coming from the New World. He visited an instrument maker, André Mayer, in Rouen, where he also took the opportunity to meet the merchant-explorer Étienne Bellenger, who had recently returned from a voyage to the northeast coast of America. And with Dom Antonio, the exiled pretender to the Portuguese throne, Hakluyt examined a map of the world showing the Northwest Passage.12
Hakluyt passed the useful information back to Walsingham, who, it seems, was often playing a double game when it came to overseas ventures: he wanted to help the country, yes, but he also wanted to enrich himself and those close to him. He had used his influence to help his son-in-law, Philip Sidney, gain an estate of 3 million acres in Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s fiefdom. Also, he had pushed his stepson Carleill’s project. But when that enterprise foundered, he threw his support behind Ralegh’s venture, encouraging him to draw on Hakluyt’s expertise.
When summoned to London, Hakluyt did not hesitate. He wrote to Walsingham that he was ready to fly from France to England “with the wings of Pegasus.” By July 1584, after just nine months in Paris, Hakluyt was back in England, and for the next two months, he labored intensively on the report, burning the midnight oil.13 The result was the first great English treatise on colonization: A Particuler Discourse Concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Growe to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discoueries Lately Attempted, Written in the Yere 1584, by Richarde Hackluyt of Oxforde. Today, it is known as the Discourse of Western Planting.
In the first week of October, Hakluyt presented the treatise to Elizabeth. Although only a handful of copies were made—and it was never published in Hakluyt’s lifetime—it delivered on its promise to present the case for colonization in the New World.* In some ways, the rationale for overseas expansion—the problems facing England—had not changed since the dark days of 1549, when Sir Thomas Smith wrote his Discourse. English trade had become “beggarly” and even “dangerous,” Hakluyt wrote. In Spain, English merchants risked being seized and interrogated by the Inquisition. In the Mediterranean, pirates patrolled the North African, or Barbary, Coast. Doing business in Turkey, which controlled the western end of the Silk Road, was expensive. The Muscovy market, which had begun with so much hope, was now, after the death of Ivan in March 1584, full of uncertainty.14
Hakluyt’s proposed solution to England’s chronic problems was different than it had been in Smith’s day, when merchants had dreamed of Cathay. Now, Hakluyt argued, they should look to America. All the commodities of the Old World were available there—including fruits, wine grapes, flowers, fish, metals, furs, oil, sassafras, spices and drugs, and timber for furniture, weapons, and ships. And colonization would ease social problems. Planting colonies in America would require workers aplenty: shipbuilders, farmers, trappers, stoneworkers, fishermen, traders. Cottage industries—the knitting of woolen goods, for instance—could occupy women, children, the old, and the lame. Increased prosperity of one would benefit the commonwealth of all.
Not only would American colonization benefit England directly, it would reduce Spain’s dominance. In America, the English would be able to find good havens from which their ships could attack the Spanish treasure fleet. Given that the Indians of the region “do mortally hate the Spaniard,” they were sure to join the English in opposing the Iberian rulers. And the English would be able to get rich from mining and, as they surpassed Spain in wealth, make Philip a “laughing stock of the world.”
America was, therefore, the solution to many of England’s commercial, social, and political problems. But time was of the essence. Like Frobisher, Dee, and Gilbert before him, Hakluyt urged Elizabeth to make haste, lest England “come too late and a day after the fair.” Other nations had designs on America, and procrastination could mean England losing out to “enemies and doubtful friends.”
ON SEPTEMBER 15, just as Hakluyt was finishing up his Discourse on Western Planting, Amadas and Barlowe returned from their reconnaissance voyage. They brought home glowing reports of the land they had discovered in the New World and had claimed for England, since it was “not inhabited by any Christian Prince or Christian people.” Also, as Frobisher had done, they brought home living proof of their discovery: two Indians, Manteo and Wanchese, who could testify to the “singular great commodities” of the new land.15 But unlike the Inuits captured forcibly by Frobisher, the two native Americans seem to have been brought to England without coercion. They were presented at Elizabeth’s court, where onlookers gawped with a sense of wonder. One German aristocrat, on a tour of England, described the Indians as having a “countenance and stature like white Moors.” He marveled that, although “their usual habit was a mantle of rudely tanned skins of wild animals, no shirts, and a pelt before their privy parts,” they were “clad in brown taffeta” for the court visit.16
Barlowe presented Ralegh with a written account of the five-month expedition. After a two-month Atlantic crossing, the voyagers had sailed along the Florida coast until they came to the Outer Banks, a scattering of islands protected by natural sandbanks, and found a sheltered river entrance. They landed on Haterask, an island with “many goodly woods,” plenty of game, and “the highest, and reddest Cedars in the world.” Here, Barlowe reported, “the earth bringeth forth all things in abundance, as in the first creation, without toil or labour.” They claimed possession of the land in the name of Queen Elizabeth.17
A few days later, they had encountered some local people and, using sign language, asked them for the name of the country. “Wingandacoia,” was the word the English wrote down. Then, one of the Indians came aboard the flagship. The English “gave him a shirt, a hat, and some other things, and made him taste of our wine, and our meat, which he liked very well.” Soon enough, trading began, the English exchanging metal tools and utensils for the Indians’ deer skins and buffalo hides. With an undertone of disbelief, Barlowe reported that they traded “our tin dish for twenty skins, worth twenty Crownes, or twenty Nobles.”18 (A noble, the higher value coin, w
as worth about one-third of a pound.) In these dealings with the Indians, Barlowe wrote, “we found the people most gentle, loving, and faithful, void of all guile, and treason, and such as lived after the manner of the golden age.”19
After a while, Barlowe and a party of men had sailed north until they reached an island called Roanoke, just off the coast of what is now North Carolina. It looked promising as a location for a settlement, with its “fertile ground” and “goodly cedars” and other “sweet woods,” as well as grapes, flax, and other commodities.20 Not only this, but it was tucked far enough inland so as to be out of view of passing Spanish ships and yet close enough to the ocean to launch raids on the Spanish treasure fleets.
Reading this encouraging reconnaissance report, Ralegh was moved to act quickly in order to protect his claim, and so, as he had recently been elected as an MP for Devonshire, he decided to try to garner parliamentary support for his enterprise. In December 1584, a bill was read in the House of Commons to confirm Ralegh’s letters patent to colonize America. This—the first piece of legislation regarding America to appear in Parliament—was reviewed by a committee of MPs that included some of the most experienced advocates of overseas expansion in England: Francis Walsingham, Christopher Hatton, Philip Sidney, Richard Grenville, and Francis Drake. They approved it without altering a single word.21 In the end, however, the bill was not put before the House of Lords—because it was unlikely to win support there—and so Ralegh’s rights were not enshrined in an Act of Parliament. But the bill nevertheless served to mobilize the support of England’s ruling elite behind a colony in America.
AS RALEGH SOUGHT to win the support of Elizabeth and his fellow parliamentarians—we don’t know if she read Hakluyt’s elaborate Discourse—he set about organizing the practical business of a transatlantic voyage. For the Amadas and Barlowe reconnaissance voyage, he had come to rely on Thomas Harriot as a kind of project manager, whose responsibilities included not only tutoring the mariners but also maintaining the accounts, developing maps, and advising on shipping.
Now he asked Harriot to take on an altogether more complex task. If Ralegh’s venture was to succeed, it was imperative for his colonists to be able to communicate with the local people. So Harriot’s assignment was to learn Algonquian, the Indians’ native tongue and the language spoken by tribes inhabiting America’s eastern seaboard from modern-day South Carolina all the way to Massachusetts. At the same time, he was to instruct Manteo and Wanchese in English, so that the two men could eventually serve as interpreters.22
In this endeavor, Harriot meticulously studied the mechanics of Manteo’s and Wanchese’s speech—the sounds their vocal cords produced, the shapes their lips formed, the ways their tongues moved. He then devised an orthography—a “universal alphabet”—composed of thirty-six symbols representing sounds common to the English and Algonquian languages. These symbols formed a strange-looking cursive script that drew on cossic, or algebraic, numerals.23
While Harriot closeted himself with the Indians in the sumptuous surroundings of Durham House, Ralegh undertook to raise the substantial funds needed to supply the voyage and the plantation. He did so with the help of William Sanderson, a rich merchant and leading member of the Worshipful Company of Fishmongers who had recently married Ralegh’s niece.24 The MPs who had supported Ralegh’s bill, who were among the enthusiastic backers of overseas enterprise, seemed the likeliest investors. For them, it was not just about anti-Spanish patriotism—it was also about profit.
Walsingham, for example, held the position of Secretary of State, which brought him an annual income of one hundred pounds. To build out his fortune, he relied on other remunerative douceurs, activities, and investments. From 1574 to 1582, he was granted exclusive licenses to export more than 200,000 pieces of broadcloth, or kerseys. In effect, he controlled nearly half of England’s export trade in unfinished cloth of the finer quality. Also, he seems to have inherited a stake in the Muscovy Company held by his wife’s deceased first husband, Alexander Carleill, father of Christopher: by 1568, he was one of the company’s most eminent members, becoming an “assistant,” or director. And he profited handsomely from Drake’s voyage round the world.25
Not all of his business dealings were successful, however. As a director of the Spanish Company, he suffered, not least because of his own political machinations, putting the crown’s interests before his own. And his investments in Frobisher’s and Gilbert’s voyages turned sour. But Walsingham accepted the risks and rewards involved and invested in the Ralegh Colony. As George Peckham noted in his True Report, which he dedicated to Sir Francis: “Nothing ventured, nothing have.”26
AS THE DAY of departure approached for Ralegh’s fleet, the queen, too, upped her stake in the colonial venture. She had already invested in him indirectly—granting him monopoly rights over portions of England’s cloth and wine industries, the profits from which went to help fund his American enterprise. Now she lent him one of her royal ships, the Tiger, and ordered the Master of Ordnance of the Tower of London—Ambrose Dudley, Frobisher’s great champion—to release an allotment of gunpowder worth four hundred pounds, a valuable commodity often in short supply.
Elizabeth expressed her support in symbolic ways as well. She knighted Ralegh and granted him permission to bestow her name, or at least her epithet, the Virgin Queen, to his claimed territories: Virginia. Soon enough, Sir Walter was referring to himself as lord and governor of Virginia. This drew the scorn of many envious courtiers who derided Ralegh as a jumped-up paragon of the nouveaux riche. As one of them put it, Ralegh was “the hated man of the world, in Court, city and country.”27
So Elizabeth had given Ralegh a flagship, a knighthood, gunpowder, and a rich stream of revenues. But there was one thing she was not prepared to grant her favorite: permission to leave the country and lead the expedition. With his brother, Sir Humphrey, she had allowed herself to be persuaded to change her mind, letting the headstrong adventurer lead the ultimately fatal voyage to Newfoundland, against her better judgment. But with Ralegh, she was not ready to do this. She simply could not bear to be without her “Water” or to risk losing him, as she had lost Gilbert.
Ralegh acquiesced. What choice did he have? To act in his stead as commander, he turned to Sir Richard Grenville, a kinsman and keen colonialist, who had considerable experience in Ireland and extensive knowledge—albeit through books—of the New World. He had been one of the MPs who had so enthusiastically supported Ralegh’s attempt to get parliamentary ratification of his letters patent. Grenville’s family had deep roots in the military affairs of England. His grandfather, also Sir Richard, had been Marshal of Calais, responsible for the colony’s defense, in the 1530s and early 1540s. His father had been master of the Mary Rose, Henry VIII’s flagship and the Titanic of its day, which sank spectacularly before the king’s eyes as it departed Portsmouth to wage battle against French warships. In the early 1570s, Grenville collaborated with Humphrey Gilbert in one of his many unrealized schemes, a project to colonize the great southern continent—Terra Australis—beyond the Magellan Straits. So when Ralegh approached him about leading the Roanoke venture, Grenville pounced on the offer.28
On April 9, 1585, Grenville’s fleet, led by the flagship Tiger, weighed anchor at Plymouth. The four vessels carried six hundred men—three hundred soldiers and three hundred other passengers with a variety of skills deemed necessary to establish a colony in the strange and foreign land of Virginia. One of these was a gentleman artist named John White. It was Richard Hakluyt, the elder, who had suggested that “a skillful painter” be sent to America to produce a visual record of the new land. The Spanish were known to do this “in all their discoveries,” he said, in order to provide “descriptions of all beasts, birds, fishes, trees, towns” and other features of the New World.29 Ralegh selected White, a watercolorist who had gained recognition nearly a decade earlier for his depiction of scenes of the Frobisher voyages. These included a drawing of a violent skirmish between
Frobisher’s men and Inuit archers and a finely detailed sketch of a woman and her baby—the child riding on the mother’s back, peeking out from within the hood of her fur parka.30
Thomas Harriot was also among the passengers, with a commission to write a report on the commercial potential of the American settlement. He was accompanied by the two Indians he had tutored (and been tutored by), Manteo and Wanchese. Harriot had made good progress in mastering Algonquian. Much to Ralegh’s amusement, he had even learned that Wingandacoia was not the Indian name for the land they hoped to inhabit, it was actually a phrase meaning “What fine clothes you’re wearing!”31
It was a good omen, perhaps. The thing the native people noticed, above all, was the voyagers’ fine garments of cloth—the very commodity for which England’s merchants hoped America would prove a new market.
AFTER A STORMY but successful voyage across the Atlantic, Grenville suffered a serious setback as the fleet approached Roanoke. The Tiger, sailing through the shallow sandbanks, struck bottom. For two hours, Simão Fernandes, the pilot, fought desperately to save the ship. The mariners frantically off-loaded some of the vessel’s stores into the sea to lighten its load. As one colonist later reminisced in a letter to Walsingham, “we were all in extreme hazard of being cast away.”32 The action worked and they finally managed to beach the hulking vessel, but there was a price to pay: a significant proportion of their provisions was spoiled by the salt water. This meant there would not be sufficient food and other supplies to establish a colony with all the prospective settlers. As a result, most of them were sent back to England—just 107 men were left behind to establish a settlement. Grenville stayed for two months to help Ralph Lane, a soldier with extensive experience in Ireland, who had been appointed governor of the colony.
While lodgings were constructed, John White and Thomas Harriot got down to work, travelling with the colonial leaders on an exploratory mission to the mainland across Pamlico Sound. Not far inland, they came to the native village of Pomeiooc, and there White began painting. He employed a watercolor technique that was then in vogue among gentleman-artists, known as limning—“a kind of gentle painting,” as one contemporary called it. Generally, he began by sketching his subject on paper in black lead. Then, having mixed his colors in mussel shells, using rare pigments from apothecaries, he applied the paint with brushes made from the finest squirrel hair, starting with wide brushes for the background colors and graduating to finer brushes and deeper colors as he built up the scene. For added effect, he created a powder by grinding gold into a dust, thickening it with honey, and then applying it sparingly for highlights.33