SIXTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLISH MAP OF THE NEW WORLD.

But splendid memories of the great Elizabethan days still stirred men's hearts; and, as a protest against James' dastard policy in Europe, the fever for colonization awoke again in the heart of the nation. Men said a terrible mistake had been

§ 23]

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made when Henry VII refused to adopt the enterprise of Columbus; and they insisted vehemently that England should not now abandon Virginia - "this one enterprise left unto these days." Raleigh had found part of his money by forming a partnership with some London merchants. In 1606, some of these same merchants organized a large stock company to build a colony, and secured from King James a grant known as the Charter of 1606, or the First Virginia Charter.

23. This company was of course a commercial enterprise. No doubt some of its members cared only for financial gain. Even its great leaders cared for this end; but, like Raleigh and Gilbert (§ 17), they cared more to build up the power of England.

They wished also to Christianize the savages. This purpose faded soon for actual colonists, but it long continued powerful in England. The great clergymen who guided the Church of England (then recently cut off from Rome) could not rest content with "this little English paddock" while Rome was winning new continents to herself by her devoted missionaries; nor could these good churchmen help squirming under the taunt of the Romanists "shewinge that they are the true Catholicke churche because they have bene the onelie converters of many millions of infidells." "Yea," confesses the chagrined Hakluyt (note, page 15), "I myself have bene demaunded of them

TITLE PAGE OF HAKLUYT'S VOYAGES.

how many infidells have bene by us converted." Such Englishmen cared for the London Company mainly in its aspect as a foreign missionary society- the first in the Protestant world; and this missionary character brought the Company many gifts of money from outsiders (Source Book, No. 26 c).

For many years, even this great Company had to struggle with discouragement and distress. But its pamphlets, urging people to buy stock, did not place emphasis on any hope of large dividends — as we expect a prospectus of a commercial company to do- but rather on the meanness and “avarice ” of the man who would "save" his money instead of using it to extend English freedom and the kingdom of God (Source Book, Nos. 5-7). It was these high enthusiasms, far more than it was greed, that brought hundreds of the noblest of Englishmen to the rescue of the enterprise.

24. So far we have looked only at the motives of Englishmen who stayed at home and there helped to promote American colonization. Now let us look at the motives of the colonists.

In 1600, England needed room. True, the island had still only a tenth as many people as to-day; but, as industry was carried on in that day, its four millions were more crowded than its forty millions are now. For the small farmers, especially, life. had become very hard (Modern World, § 415); and these yeomen furnished most of the manual labor in the early colonies.

Few of this class could pay the cost of transporting themselves and their families to America; and so commonly they were glad to bind themselves by written "indentures" to become "servants" to some wealthy proprietor. That is, these indentured servants mortgaged their labor for four years, or seven years, in return for transportation and subsistence, and perhaps for a tract of wild land at the end of their term of service.

Captains and capitalists came from the English gentry class. Until the peace with Spain in 1604, many high-spirited youth had been fighting Spain in the Netherlands, for Dutch independence; and others had made the "gentlemen-adventurers" who, under leaders like Drake, had paralyzed the far-flung domains of New Spain with fear. To these men, and to many

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"younger sons" of gentry families for whom there was now no career at home, America beckoned alluringly as the land of opportunity and adventure. The period, too, was one of rapid rise in the cost of living;1 and the heads of some good families found themselves unable to keep pace with old associates. Some of these men preferred leadership in the New World to taking in sail at home.

None of these "gentlemen" were used to steady work, and they were restive under discipline; so sometimes they drew

QUEEN ELIZABETH KNIGHTING DRAKE, on board the Golden Hind on his return from raiding Spanish America in his voyage round the globe (1581). From a drawing by Sir John Gilbert.

down abuse from strict commanders like the worthy Captain John Smith. But they were of that "restless, pushing material of which the world's best pathfinders have ever been made"; and when they had learned the needs of frontier life, their pluck and endurance made them splendid colonists.2

1 Channing, United States, I, 143-144.

2 Source Book, No. 17.

No doubt, the chief loadstone for most early settlers of all classes was some wild dream of wealth (Source Book, Nos. 8-9). In the first colonies, too, the expectations of sudden riches were more extravagant than in later attempts, and led for a time to disastrous neglect of the right sort of work. Still the motive was a proper one. It calls for no sneer. The same desire to better one's condition, in a later century, lured the descendants of the first settlers to people the continent from the Appalachians to the Golden Gate.

Moreover, the motive was not mere greed. The youth was moved by a vision of romance and adventure. He was drawn partly by the glitter of gold, but quite as much by the mystery of new lands bosomed in the beauty of unknown seas. Best of all, these motives of gain and of noble adventure were infused with a high patriotism. Englishmen knew that in building their own fortunes on that distant frontier, just as truly as when they had trod the deck of Drake's ship, they were widening the power of the little home island, which they rightly believed to be the world's best hope.

FOR LIBRARY WORK, see suggestions at the close of chapter v. The references in the text to the Source Book give work enough where that volume is accessible.