failure. Much money, too, was sure to be lost in experimenting with unfit industries under untried conditions as in the futile attempts to produce silk and make glass in Virginia.

Policy of the crown

The English crown founded no colonies, nor did it give money toward founding any. It did give charters to those men who were willing to risk their fortunes in the attempt. These charters were grants of territory and of authority over future settlers. Thus the English colonies (with a few accidental exceptions, which will be noticed) were at first proprietary. The proprietor might be an individual or an English corporation. In either case, the proprietor owned the land and ruled the settlers. The first colonial charter was 1578, to Sir Humphrey Gilbert. attempts at a colony.

Gilbert's charter, 1578

granted by Elizabeth, in Gilbert made two brave The second, in the spring of 1583, entered St. John's Harbor on the Newfoundland coast. Gilbert's claims were recognized readily by the captains of the "thirty-six ships of all nations" present there for the fisheries; but desertion and disaster weakened the colonists, and in August the survivors sailed for England. Gilbert had sunk his fortune, and he himself perished on the return voyage. Song and story dwell fondly on the Christian knight's last words, shouted cheerily through the storm-wrack from his sinking little ship to comfort friends on the larger consort, "The way to heaven is as near by sea as by land."

Gilbert's enterprise was taken up at once by his half brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, the most gallant figure of that

Raleigh's attempts

daring age. In 1584 Raleigh received a charter copied from Gilbert's, and in the next three years he sent three expeditions to Roanoke Island on the Carolina coast, each time in considerable fleets. His first explorers declared the new land "the most plentiful, sweet, fruitful, and wholesome of all the world," and the natives were affirmed to be "such as live after the manner of the golden age." But supplies and reinforcements were delayed by the struggle with the Spanish Armada; and when the

MOTIVES OF THE ENGLISH PROMOTERS

17

next supply ships did arrive, the colonists had vanished without trace.

Raleigh had spent a vast fortune (a million dollars in our values); and, though he sent ships from time to time to search for the lost colonists, he could make no further attempt at settlement. Still, despite their failures, Gilbert and Raleigh are the fathers of American colonization. The tremendous and unforeseen difficulties of the enterprise overmatched even the indomitable will of these Elizabethan heroes; but their efforts had aroused their countrymen and made success certain in the near future. With pathetic courage, when in prison and near his death, Raleigh wrote, “I shall yet see it [America] an English nation."

For twenty-five years, attempts at colonization had failed, largely because the life-and-death struggle with Spain in Europe drained England's energies. Worse was James I to come. James I (1603) sought Spanish friend- and Spain ship; and then indeed Englishmen began to feel their chance for empire slipping through their fingers. 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 made when Henry VII refused to adopt the enterprise of Columbus; and they insisted vehemently that England The London should not now abandon Virginia "this one Company, enterprise left unto these days." Raleigh had 1606 A.D. 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.

The members of this Company hoped for commercial gain. No doubt some of its members cared only for this. But the great leaders cared more, like Raleigh and Gilbert, to build up the power of England, and some of them had it much at heart to Christianize the savages. This mis

Motives of

sionary 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

the promoters in England

The firft,conteining the perfonall trauels of the English vnto Indxa „Syria,Araba,the river Euphrates, Babylon, Balfara, the Persian Gulfe, Ormaz, Chaul, Gea, india, and many Ilauds adioyning to the South parts of his toge ther with the like vnto Espr, the clucicft ports and places of Africa with. in and without the Streight of Gibraltar, and about the famous Promontorie of Buona Esperanza.

The fecond,comprehending the worthy difcoueries of the English towards the North and Northeast by Sea, as of Lapland, Scrii finis, Carelis, the Baie of S.Nicholas, the Itles of Colgatene, Fargate, and News Zembla toward the great riuer ob, with the mightie Empire of Rafia, the Cape Sea, Georgia, Armenn, Media, Perfia, Boghar in Bactria,& divers kingdoms of Tartaria, The third and laft, including the English valiant attempts in fearching almost all the corners of the vafte and new world of America, from 73.degrees of Northerly latitude Southward,to Mria Incognita, Newfoundland, the maine of Virginia, the point of Florida, the Baie of Mexico, all the Inland of Neas Hifpania, the coast of Terra forma, Brafill, the river of Plate,to the Streight of Magellan and through it, and from it in the South Sea to Chili, Peru, Xalifs, the Gulfe of California, Nowa Albion vpon the backfide of Canada, further then ever any Christian hitherto hath pierced, Whercanto is added the lait melt renowned English Nanigation,

TITLE PAGE OF HAKLUYT's Voyages. Richard
Hakluyt was a clergyman of the English

66

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, “I myself have bene demaunded of them 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 much moral support and many gifts of money from outsiders. For years, even this

church whom Raleigh had interested deeply great Company had to

in colonization. His earlier book has been quoted on page 14.

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

MOTIVES OF THE COLONISTS

19

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. It was these high enthusiasms, far more than it was greed, that, a few years later, brought hundreds of the noblest of Englishmen to the rescue of the enterprise.

Motives of

So far we have looked only at the motives of Englishmen who stayed at home and there helped the coloto promote American colonization. Now for the nists: the motives of the colonists.

yeomen

True, the island had

In 1600 England needed room. 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, 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.

other gentry

Captains and capitalists came from the English gentry class. Until the peace with Spain in 1604, many highspirited youths had been fighting Spain in the The Netherlands, for Dutch independence; and others younger had made the "gentlemen-adventurers" who, sons and under leaders like Drake, had paralyzed the farflung domains of New Spain with fear. To these men, and to many "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; and the heads of some good families found themselves unable to keep pace

with old associates. Some of these 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 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.

It must be remembered also that among the settlers there were always a few rare men animated wholly by patriotic devotion or by religious zeal or by a lofty spirit The idealists of adventure. Even the first Jamestown expedition (not a fair sample, either) included, among its 104 souls, Bartholomew Gosnold, a knightly survivor of the spacious Elizabethan days; and doughty John Smith, a robust hero, "even though his imagination did sometimes transcend the narrow limits of fact"; and the gentle and lovable churchman, Robert Hunt; to say nothing of worthies such as Percy and Newport. The modern community which, for each twenty souls, can show one built on a mold like these is not unhappy. The next three years, too, saw in Virginia many another gallant gentleman, like Thomas Gates, John Rolfe, and Francis West.

Expectations of wealth

At a later period, we shall see, Puritanism and desire for religious freedom became added motives for English colonization. But for the early settlers the chief loadstone, no doubt, was some wild dream of wealth exaggerated such as is pictured in Marston's Eastward Hoe (1605; the name a survival of the idea that Columbus had found the East). At a tavern meeting the mate, Sea Gull, is enticing some young blades to embark for a proposed Virginia voyage:

And

Marston's

44

Eastward Hoe!"

Sea Gull. Come boyes, Virginia longs till we share the rest of her

Scape Thrift. But is there such treasure there, Captaine ... ? Sea Gull. I tell thee, golde is more plentifull there then copper