fleet for the invasion of England and for its complete subjugation. Elizabeth and her statesmen made every effort for defense, and when the great fleet of Philip-the Invincible Armada-sailed into the English Channel it met the full strength of the English navy. The English felt they were fighting for their honor and for their firesides, and they went at the Spanish in a life-and-death struggle. Drake and Hawkins were present and joined in the battle. Catholics and Protestants alike rallied to the defense of England. The battle ended in a tremendous victory for Drake and his companions. Many of the Spanish ships were sunk, and many that escaped were soon destroyed by a terrible storm. The naval strength of Spain was completely shattered. This battle was one of the decisive struggles of history and the greatest event in the life of the English nation. The defeat of the Armada led rapidly to the downfall of Spain. and gave England a place among the foremost nations of the world. ENGLAND'S FIRST EFFORTS AT COLONIZATION Gilbert At the time that Drake and his sea-dogs were plundering the West Indies and South America and sinking the ships of Spain wherever they could find them, other Englishmen, ignoring the claims of Spain and defying her power, were going out to America and taking actual possession of the land. In 1578, Sir Sir HumHumphrey Gilbert, "first of the English nation that carried phrey people to erect an habitation and government in those northerly countries of America," received from Queen Elizabeth a patent for establishing a colony in North America. The first effort of Gilbert under his patent was a failure, but in 1583 he succeeded in landing a body of settlers on the coast of Newfoundland. He took possession of the island in the name of the queen and thus "signified unto all men that from that time forward they should take the same land as a territory appertaining and belonging to the Queen of England." Gilbert on his return voyage passed to a watery grave, but he had won for himself imperishable fame, for his colony was the corner-stone of the British power in the western world. Sir The Roanoke The work begun by Gilbert was carried forward by his halfbrother, Sir Walter Raleigh, the greatest of names connected with the early history of English colonization. In 1585 Raleigh sent out about one hundred men under Ralph Lane to plant a colony on the coast of what is now North Carolina. At the suggestion of Elizabeth the colony was called Virginia. Lane made a settlement at Roanoke Island, but he and his men did not know how to live amid the primitive conditions of a barbarous land. Misfortune overtook the settlement, and when Drake, in 1586, stopped at the island on one of his homeward voyages the settlers persuaded him to carry them one and all home with him to England. So Raleigh's first attempt at colonization failed. But he was not discouraged. In 1587 he fitted out a second colony of one hundred and fifty persons, among whom were seventeen women. This colony was placed under the control of John White, who was an artist as well as an adventurer. White planted his colony at Roanoke on the site of the settlement abandoned by Lane. He remained with his settlers for a time and then returned to England for more colonists and fresh supplies of food. He left behind him a daughter, Eleanor Dare, and a new-born grandchild, Virginia Dare, the first child born of English parents on American soil. When White reached England he found Raleigh and Lane and other powerful friends of the Virginia movement busy in defending the country against the designs of Philip. So the colony in Virginia was left for a while to take care of itself. White returned to Roanoke in 1591, but the island was deserted; not a trace of the colony could be found. Raleigh sent out ships again and again to find his lost colonists, but the search was vain. There was a tradition that part of the colonists were slain by the Indians and that those who escaped were adopted into the neighboring tribes, but the tradition is hardly more than conjecture. Raleigh could now go no further with his plans for colonization. Enemies began to pursue him, and at last he was sent (in 1618) to the scaffold on a false charge of treason. His efforts toward colonization failed because his countrymen did not yet know how to found a colony, how to live in a wilderness. But they were to learn this art in good time. British colonies were to be planted not only in America, but in all parts of the world. EXERCISES AND REFERENCES 1. The English seamen: Channing, I, 115-142. 2. Drake's voyage around the world: Hart, I, 81-88. 3. Slavery in the West Indies: Bourne, 271-280. 4. Prepare a character sketch of Queen Elizabeth: Green, 369-379. 5. The Armada: Green, 405-420. 6. Tell in the class two anecdotes relating to Sir Walter Raleigh. Give an account of the introduction of tobacco and potatoes into Great Britain from America. What in your opinion was the fate of the lost colony at Roanoke? Trace the route followed by Drake in his voyage around the world. Give reasons why the defeat of the Armada was of vital consequence to England. 7. Prepare a summary of this chapter after the manner of the summaries proposed for Chapters I and II. 8. Maps and dates. Herodotus, the "father of history," tells us that the two eyes of history are geography and chronology. There is a great deal of truth in this; we cannot read history with a clear understanding unless we know where an event happened and when it happened. A good collection of historical maps with suggestive notes is D. R. Fox's Harper's Atlas of American History. Another good book of this kind is W. R. Shepherd's Historical Atlas. Of great value also in this connection is Ellen Semple's American History and Its Geographical Conditions. As for the dates of history the students ought to prepare their own chronological table. Such a table, of course, would contain only the most important dates, thus: 1492. America discovered by Christopher Columbus. 1497. North America reached by John Cabot. 1588. The Armada destroyed by the English. 9. Hints for special reading: W. H. Woodward's The Expansion of the British Empire; E. J. Payne, Voyages of Elizabethan Seamen; J. A. Doyle, English Colonies in America, Vol. I, 1-101; George Bancroft, History of the United States, Vol. I, 60-83. England in the Seventeenth Century A Constitutional Battle IV THE ROCK FROM WHICH WE WERE HEWN In spite of Raleigh's failures England went ahead with her plans and soon succeeded in planting permanent colonies on the American continent. In these English colonies were laid the foundations of American nationality. The New World, regarded as a whole, is the child of Europe, but the United States in a peculiar sense is the child of England. Since this is so, we shall do well at this point if we turn our attention to the England of the early seventeenth century and learn of the rock from which we were hewn. POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS When England began to plant colonies in America there was no British Empire; even the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland did not exist. Scotland was a distinct nation, and Ireland was a detached foreign dependency which in the eyes of Englishmen was itself a place where colonies might be planted with as much propriety as in America. In the English Parliament only England and Wales were represented. So the England of the early colonial period meant England proper, a little nation with a population of hardly five million. The central English Government consisted of an hereditary king and a representative Parliament, but throughout the early colonial period there was a state of turmoil and confusion in political affairs. When the first of the Stuarts, James I, came to the throne in 1603 he assumed the rôle of a despot. Proclaiming the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, he declared that he was free from all control by law and was responsible to nothing except his own royal will. "As it is atheism," he said, "to dispute what God can do, so it is presumption and a high contempt in a subject to dispute what a King can do, or say that a King cannot do this or that." This arrogance was more than Englishmen could bear. The haughty ruler quickly found himself engaged in a contest with his Parliament, which took the ground that law flowed not from the will of a monarch but from the wills of the duly constituted lawmakers of the realm. James, being as obstinate as he was audacious, held firmly to his doctrine of Divine Right, with the result that there was precipitated a great constitutional battle, the king on one side and the Parliament on the other. The struggle continued through the entire reign of James (1603-24) and, becoming more bitter during the reign of his son, ended at last in civil war. So, at the time the first colony in America was planted and for many years after, the central fact of the political situation in England was this battle between a representative Parliament and a king who was trying to fasten a despotism on the nation. English The Parliament, however, was far from being representative The in the modern sense. The House of Lords was composed of Parliahereditary peers and of bishops of the established church. In ment the House of Commons the membership consisted chiefly of landholders chosen from the rural districts and of merchants elected from the boroughs. But the franchise was so severely restricted that only an insignificant number of voters could take part in the parliamentary elections. Local ments The local governments were the county, the borough and the The parish. Of these the county government was the most impor-overtant, for it ministered to the needs of rural England, which comprised by far the greater part of the population. At the head of county affairs were the justices of the peace, who not only presided over the county court but acted as a legislative and also as an administrative body for the county. The borough government, which served the people of urban communities, consisted of a mayor and a board of aldermen chosen by taxpayers. The parish was a minor civil division organized to serve the needs of a small rural community. It had a constable, a collector of taxes and an overseer of the poor. In the choice of these officers the people had a voice. In the parish, and in it alone, there was a semblance at least of democracy. INTELLECTUAL AND SPIRITUAL LIFE Democracy for the nation at large would have been little else than a pretense, for the masses were steeped in ignorance. A Education |