THE LIBRARY OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF
NORTH CAROLINA
AT CHAPEL HILL
THE COLLECTION OF NORTH CAROLINIANA
PRESENTED BY
North Caroliniana Society C906
N87s no. 14
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Digitized by the Internet Archive
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RALEIGH AND QUINN
The Explorer and His Boswell
Edited by
H. G. JONES
NORTH CAROLINIANA SOCIETY IMPRINTS NUMBER 14
This edition is limited to
five hundred signed copies
(plus 100 "A" copies for authors)
of which this is number
. 493
NORTH CAROLINIANA SOCIETY IMPRINTS H. G. Jones, General Editor
No. 1. An Evening at Monticello: An Essay in Reflection (1978) by Edwin M. Gill
No. 2. The Paul Green I Know (1978) by Elizabeth Lay Green
No. 3. The Albert Coates I Know (1979) by Gladys Hall Coates
No. 4. The Sam Ervin I Know (1980) by Jean Conyers Ervin
No. 5. Sam Ragan (1981) by Neil Morgan
No. 6. Thomas Wolfe of North Carolina (1982) edited by H. G. Jones
No. 7. Gertrude Sprague Carraway (1982) by Sam Ragan
No. 8. John Fries Blair (1983) by Margaret Blair McCuiston
No. 9. William Clyde Friday and Ida Howell Friday (1984) by Georgia Carroll Kyser and William Brantley Aycock
No. 10. William S. Powell, North Carolina Historian (1985) by David Stick and William C. Friday
No. 11. "Gallantry Unsurpassed" (1985) edited by Archie K. Davis
No. 12. Mary and Jim Semans, North Carolinians (1986) by W. Kenneth Goodson
No. 13. The High Water Mark (1986) edited by Archie K. Davis
No. 14. Raleigh and Quinn (1987) edited by H. G. Jones
RALEIGH AND QUINN
The Explorer and His Boswell
Papers Presented at the International Sir Walter Raleigh Conference,
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 27-28 March 1987,
together with
Papers Read at a Session Titled "The Life and Work of David Beers
Quinn" at a Meeting of the American Historical Association,
Chicago, 29 December 1986
Edited by
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H. G. JONES
Chapel Hill North Caroliniana Society, Inc.
AND THE
North Carolina Collection 1987
Copyright © 1987 by
North Caroliniana Society, Inc.
P. O. Box 121
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514-0127
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
:
Contents
Preface vii
I. Proceedings of the International Sir Walter Raleigh Conference Held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27-28 March 1987 1
Welcoming Remarks, by H. G. Jones, Samuel R. Williamson,
Kent R. Mullikin, and Lindsay C. Warren, Jr 3
Raleigh's World, by Helen Wallis 11
Raleigh's England, by Joan Thirsk 35
Who were the Roanoke Colonists?, by William S. Powell 51
Raleigh's Devon, by Joyce Youings 69
Raleigh's Ireland, by Nicholas Canny 87
American Colonization through Raleigh's Eyes,
by John W Shirley 103
Raleigh's Dream of Empire and Its Seventeenth-Century Career,
by Karen Ordahl Kupperman 123
"Fortune's Tennis Ball": Or, Bouncing About with the Bibliography of
Sir Walter, by Christopher M. Armitage 139
Ralegh and Drake, by Norman J. W. Thrower 147
Raleigh as a Man of Letters, by Jerry Leath Mills 165
II. Proceedings of a Banquet in Honor of David Beers Quinn Held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 27 March 1987 185
Preliminary Remarks and Presentations, by H. G. Jones,
Lindsay C. Warren, Jr., and William S. Powell 187
Tribute to David Beers Quinn, by Gillian T. Cell 193
Presentation of the North Caroliniana Society's Certificate of Appreciation to David Beers Quinn, by Archie K. Davis 199
North Carolina: My First Contacts, 1948-1959, by
David Beers Quinn 203
III. Papers Read at a Session titled The Life and Work of David Beers Quinn at a Meeting of the American Historical Association, Chicago,
29 December 1986 217
Presiding Remarks, by Douglas E. Leach 219
Bringing Credibility to a Commemoration: David Beers Quinn and the Quadricentennial of the Roanoke Colonies, by H. G. Jones 221
David Quinn as Historian's Historian, by Karen Ordahl
Kupperman 225
David Quinn as Historical Editor, by Thad W. Tate 229
Introduction of David Beers Quinn, by Lois Green Carr 233
Reflections, by David Beers Quinn 235
IV. The Publications of David Beers Quinn for the Years 1932-1987 253
V. Sir Walter's Surname, by H. G. Jones 267
Prefi
ace
Because virtually all of the edited proceedings are printed herein, little needs to be said prefatorily about the International Sir Walter Raleigh Conference (and its associ- ated banquet in honor of David Beers Quinn) held at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on 27-28 March 1987 or the special session titled "The Life and Work of David Beers Quinn" conducted at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association in Chicago on 29 December 1986.
Originally we intended to publish only the papers of the Raleigh Conference, held in connection with the four-hundredth anniversary of the Roanoke colonies, but in recent decades the name Raleigh has become almost inextricably associated with that of a professor at the University of Liverpool whose prodigious research and voluminous writings have peeled away much of the mystery surrounding the Elizabethan courtier and explorer. Consequently, without asking anyone else's opinion, we decided to include in this volume the papers relating to Walter Raleigh and David Quinn given on all three occasions. When our decision was revealed, all of the speakers happily agreed — except, of course, David Quinn, who was kept blissfully unaware of our machinations until it was too late for him to protest effectively. Having gone that far, we took another step by including an updated bibliography of Quinn's professional publications.
Bringing together papers and introductions written by more than two dozen persons with as many personalities, several disciplines, and three nationalities presents a challenge to any editor. Aware of the proclivity of reviewers to dismiss collected essays for their unevenness and disparity of content, style, and format, but wishing neither to pit one discipline against another nor to cause an international incident, in the editing process we allowed considerable latitude to our authors. That permissiveness even ex- tended to the spelling of names — such as those of the courtier (Raleigh, Ralegh) and his science advisor (Harriot, Hariot). We have also been uncharacteristically tolerant of variety in footnoting. Still, we believe that the papers en masse do have commonality in their content, style, and format to warrant inclusion between these covers, and the North Caroliniana Society is pleased to make them available to a wider audience.
Robert G. Anthony, Jr., of the North Carolina Collection assisted in the editing and proofing processes, Jenny Long retyped many of the manuscripts, and the staff of the University of North Carolina's Printing and Duplicating Department exhibited competence, patience, and good humor in our effort to meld the writings of twenty-five speakers into one book. Finally, the staff of the North Carolina Collection, in the midst of moving its rich holdings into spacious and luxuriously renovated facilities, only occasionally muttered about the curator's obvious preference for editing manuscripts over the more physical chore of moving books and artifacts.
H. G. Jones
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 1 September 1987
I
Proceedings
of the
International Sir Walter Raleigh Conference
Held at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
27-28 March 1987
Cosponsored by
America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
National Humanities Center
North Caroliniana Society
Most of the speakers at the International Sir Walter Raleigh Conference are pictured in two groups. Left to right, top photo: Kupperman, Canny, Powell, Mills, Wallis, Williamson, Thirsk, Quinn, Warren, Youings, and Thrower; lower photo: Canny, Thrower, Wallis, Youings, Armitage, Kupperman, and Mills. All photos by North Carolina Collection unless otherwise noted.
Welcoming Remarks
H. G. Jones
Curator, North Carolina Collection, and
Secretary-Treasurer, North Caroliniana Society
Less than twenty-four hours ago the university campus was treated to a concert by Walter Raleigh Babson and his banjo. Now, I mean no disrespect, and I probably reveal the degree to which my life is sheltered, but I am acquainted with neither Mr. Babson nor his music. His timely appearance, however, entirely coincidental with the opening of this conference, may in the eyes of some students provide a bit of credibility to our two-day study of the man whose name he bears. With or without credibility, we now officially open the International Sir Walter Raleigh Conference. In doing so, I call your attention to the schedule to which we shall rather strictly adhere, for with the exception of civility, perhaps the most precious measure of a society is the efficiency with which it makes use of time. Aside from that admonition, let me make these brief points:
First, during the next thirty-six hours we will hear much about history, but we also will be making history, for the Raleigh Conference is the very first activity in this hallowed Louis Round Wilson Library following its $6 million renovation to accommodate the North Carolina Collection and the other special collections. This is an exciting moment for those of us who have for three years rankled under the proof that the governmental bureaucracy is the embodiment of Murphey's law and who at times lost hope that the project would ever be completed. Well, it still is not quite completed, but the long awaited move back into our expanded quarters — the North Carolina Collection will occupy most of this main floor plus four other stack levels — is no more than five months off (we say as we cross our fingers). Sadly, we can show you little of the hollow building during the conference, and, in fact we will be restricted to this floor where only a portion of the new North Caroliniana Gallery, featuring the Sir Walter Raleigh Rooms and a portion of the Raleigh Collection, may be seen. You must come back in the fall to see the transformation of the building.
Second, please wear your badge throughout the conference, for the building is open only to registrants. Besides, those little colored dots on the badge determine to which of the meal functions you will be admitted. Five persons wear red-edged badges — mine plus four members of our staff who will be with us throughout the conference to help solve any problems that arise. They are R. Neil Fulghum, the keeper of the North Caroliniana Gallery; Alice R. Cotten and Robert G. Anthony, Jr., who are handling the registration desk; and Jerry W. Cotten, who will record the conference on tape and film.
Raleigh and Quinn
Welcomers to the Raleigh Conference were, left to right, top to bottom, H. G. Jones, Samuel R. Williamson, Kent R. Mullikin, and Lindsay C. Warren, Jr.
Welcoming Remarks
Third, I must thank several of our library officials for enabling us to pierce the armor of the bureaucracy for permission to hold this unorthodox use of the unfinished building: Joe A. Hewitt, the acting university librarian; Marcella Grendler, associate university librarian for special collections; Larry Alford, assistant university librarian for business and finance; and Michael G. Martin, university archivist and general factotum during the renovation process.
Finally, as the printed program indicates, the conference is sponsored by a private organization, two institutions, and a state agency. As secretary- treasurer of the North Caroliniana Society, I am standing in for our president, Archie K. Davis, who will join us later and speak at the banquet tonight. It has been our pleasure to handle arrangements. With us this morning are representatives of the other sponsors, and each of them will greet you in turn.
Samuel R. Williamson, the provost of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is author of The Politics of Grand Strategy and editor of Essays on World War I. As a professor of history with specialization in international affairs, it is appropriate that he welcome this international conference on behalf of the university. It was Provost Williamson who provided resources to bring three of our participants from England.
The prestige of our Research Triangle has been enormously enriched by the presence of the National Humanities Center, whose ties are close with the university for obvious reasons, but also because its assistant director, a member of its staff from the beginning, is one of "ours." To Kent R. Mullikin, I extend our apprecia- tion for his support of the conference and for the delightful reception and dinner given at the center last night for our speakers.
Lindsay C. Warren, Jr., will not only greet you but also preside over the remainder of the morning's program. And properly so, for it is America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee that provides the primary support for this entire conference. We are in the final year of a four-year series of commemorative activities that have, under his leadership, educated North Carolinians and other Americans in the significance of the subject that we consider today and tomorrow. Lindsay's father, the former congressman and comptroller general of the United States, as early as 1955 urged preparations for the quadricentennial of the Roanoke voyages, and it was appropriate that in 1980 the Warren name again became associated with the commemoration as chairman of AFHAC.
6 Raleigh and Quinn
Samuel R. Williamson
Provost and Professor of History
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
I am delighted on behalf of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to welcome you to Wilson Library in its renovated state and to this International Conference on Sir Walter Raleigh. All of us in the university family— faculty, students, staff— welcome you. As a historian, I hope you will permit me some additional remarks.
Historians and universities often think in terms of anniversaries, in terms of traditions, in terms of symbols. The four hundredth anniversary celebrations that have been going on in North Carolina are indicative of that. Thanks to the efforts of Lindsay Warren, John Neville, H. G. Jones, former Governor James B. Hunt, Jr., and Governor James G. Martin, and others, the people of North Carolina have been reminded— and broader audiences even than North Carolinians have been reminded — about the nature of America's link with its British past and of the value of history and of historical activity. We have been reminded of our English heritage, and we have created a lot of work for historians — and of course that's always a good thing. In addition, the university likes anniversaries, and we are beginning to think about how, only two hundred years after the Roanoke voyages of Sir Walter Raleigh, North Carolinians meeting in Fayette- ville decided to establish a state university. Now, as this university moves toward its bicentennial celebration, we are reminded again of the importance of anniversaries.
Universities and historians also are interested in traditions. Historians like to refine the past — indeed the past is never over, for each generation reinterprets the past and finds new things of interest about the past. I think this conference and the titles of the papers are perfectly indicative of the fact that what might seem to be a dead past is in fact a live past as we reinterpret and think anew about our history. Universities, in recognizing their traditions, are prone to put together international conferences because this is one of the things we believe the university is about. This is one of the traditions of academic life, bringing together scholars to exchange ideas, occasionally to antagonize and provoke each other, because a little lively controversy, a little dialectical tension, is very useful for generating new sets of perspectives. And so it is particularly fitting, we think, in this renovated library that this should be the very first event — an international conference linking us with the world community of scholars. Helping to put this conference together has been the staff of the North Carolina Collection, as H. G. has mentioned, and I particularly would like to pay homage to Mike Martin, the University Archivist, whose labors in connection with the building renovation have ranged from the mundane to the sublime.
Welcoming Remarks
Universities and historians are concerned with a third area of activity— symbols. Historians deal with symbols, and if you go into the Sir Walter Raleigh Rooms you will see a series of symbols — artifacts, parchments, paintings, sculpture. Uni- versities and historians like symbols, and in a sense the Louis Round Wilson Library is a symbol — a symbol of a vision of what we can do for the people of the state, a symbol of how we can relate anew to our fellow North Carolinians. And it is a fitting event that Sir Walter Raleigh, who sponsored new voyages of discovery, should be the topic of the first discussion in this renovated structure. We see this building as a new voyage as the University ventures forth to welcome the people of North Carolina to learn more about their heritage as they see our special collections and pay attention to what we have been able to assemble by the diligent efforts of a lot of people over a long period of time.
So this is a joyful moment for us as a university, and for me as a historian, for it is a grateful chance for us to think about four hundred years of history, to celebrate an anniversary, to think about traditions of intellectual life, and to celebrate the opening of a new symbol. I have to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh would be pleased, perhaps slightly amused, pearl earring and all, by these proceed- ings, and on behalf of the University of North Carolina, I welcome you to them.
8 Raleigh and Quinn
Kent R. Mullikin
Assistant Director, National Humanities Center
I should like to thank H. G. Jones and the others who have had a hand in planning an impressive international conference. A glance through the program suggests that Sir Walter Raleigh retains his power to dispatch adventurers— in this instance scholar adventurers — across the Atlantic. It is an honor for the National Humanities Center to be associated with this intellectual enterprise.
There is no doubt that the National Humanities Center and its company of scholars have found North Carolina a much more hospitable environment than did that small band of English settlers who disappeared from Roanoke Island four hundred years ago. I like to think, however, that Raleigh's colonists have something to do with the Center's location, for among the attractions of North Carolina to the founders of the Center were this state's rich history and, equally important, its deep appreciation of the value of history. I might add that the founders of the Center were fortunate to encounter a North Carolinian who embodies that enlightened appreciation of history— the current President of the North Caroliniana Society, Archie K. Davis, who has worked unstintingly in behalf of the Center. His love of North Carolina's past made him a historian in his own right and gave him a sympathetic understanding of scholarly inquiry.
The National Humanities Center has benefited in many instances from its connection with North Carolina, its universities, and its traditions of learning. One very special benefit was the presence at the Center several years ago of David and Alison Quinn; they came over from Liverpool, drawn by the quadricen- tennial of Raleigh's colony, to complete the book Set Fair for Roanoke, which was commissioned by America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee and published by the University of North Carolina Press. It is a great pleasure to see the Quinns here again, and it is also gratifying to recognize among our distinguished speakers two current Fellows of the Center, Joan Thirsk and Nicholas Canny, and former Fellow Karen Kupperman.
On behalf of the National Humanities Center, I am happy to welcome all of the participants to a conference that exemplifies the ideals of scholarship which have long characterized this state and which are a powerful reason the National Humanities Center likes calling North Carolina home.
Welcoming Remarks
Lindsay C. Warren, Jr.
Chairman, America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee
On Behalf of America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee, one of the sponsors of this conference, I extend to each of you a warm and cordial welcome. The conference has long been on the agenda of the committee as one of its sponsored programs during this the last year of the commemoration. I want to publicly thank Dr. H. G. Jones for his willingness to assume the responsibility for planning and organizing the conference. As usual, he has done an excellent job, particularly in attracting a distinguished panel of participants, four of whom have come from England and Ireland. I am confident we will enjoy an entertaining as well as educational experience during the next two days.
One of the key goals of America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee, during the commemoration of the Roanoke voyages, has been to raise the con- sciousness of the people of North Carolina, indeed of the nation, to the historical significance of the English beginning in this country. We have done this through a variety of programs, including commemorative events, the construction of the Elizabeth II and the Elizabeth II State Historic Site on Roanoke Island, archaeo- logical explorations, and through the publication of books, pamphlets, and folders written and edited by historians familier with the period. This conference is a continuation of that process, with emphasis on the life of Walter Raleigh, whose dreams, ingenuity, and determination made possible the Roanoke voyages. It is good that we pause and reflect upon the life of this interesting man, for he among all Elizabethans did the most to extend English influence to the New World. Although his efforts were frustrated, the dream kindled by his spirit was eventually realized through the permanent colony at Jamestown twenty years later; and from those beginnings, came our English heritage which permeates so many American institutions today. And so it is appropriate during this com- memorative year that we salute Walter Raleigh and examine at this conference the man, his times, and his influence on English colonization in the New World.
Raleigh's World
Helen Wallis*
Bishop George Carleton, surveying "the great and mercifull Deliverances of the Church and State" from the reign of Elizabeth to 1624, opened his chronicle with comments on the "weak estate of this Kingdome at Queens Elizabeths entrance": "All the great States about her, were enemies. Friends none." King Philip of Spain, refused in marriage, "grew first into dislike and discontent, after- wardes into hatred, and at last brake out into open warres. The French, King Henry the 2, with whom she sought peace, fell off also into open Warres . . . Spaine, France, and Scotland were enemies. . . . The treasure was exhausted; Calis was lost. Nothing seemed to be left to her, but a weake, and poor State, destitute of meanes and friends."1
Such was the outlook in 1558 when young Walter Raleigh was about five years old. The population of England was then 3.16 million as estimated, whereas the population of North Carolina is now 6 million. By 1600 the population of England and Wales was 4.3 million, with a density of 75 per square mile, as compared to 16-18 million for France (the highest in Europe), density 90; and Spain and Portugal, 11 million, density 50. It is believed that by the end of Elizabeth's reign the population of England may have been 35 percent higher than at the start.2 The increase in population in the earlier years of the reign explains the contemporary belief that England was over populated and therefore needed colonies. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Raleigh's elder half brother, commented, "England is pestered with people."
If the political situation abroad in 1558 was not encouraging, it must be said that Carleton's picture would have been even gloomier had he raised his eyes beyond the Narrow Seas. The patterns of exploration, discovery, and conquest had been established over more than half a century before, and England as yet had barely entered the race. Two great movements of expansion had commanded the interest and resources of the major European powers, Portugal and Spain.
The first project in execution was the search for the route eastward to the East Indies. By 1520 Portugal had gained control of the route round the Cape of Good Hope and had established a network of commercial and military bases. Intention and achievement went together. She had accomplished what she had set out to do. Her empire was the envy of the world. It is significant that one of the treasures in Raleigh's library was the manuscript Roteiro of the Red Sea, 1541, by Joao de Castro, fourth Viceroy of India. As Samuel Purchas recorded, Raleigh had purchased the manuscript for £60, and had had it translated into English.3 Although Raleigh's own activities were directed to the western hemi- sphere, his studies for the History of the World (London: 1614) were primarily
12
Raleigh and Quinn
Helen Wallis, retired map librarian of the British Library, opened the conference with a slide/lecture on "Raleigh's World."
concerned with old world strategies. He describes the navigation about Africa from east to west by the Phoenicians and the achievement many centuries later by Vasco da Gama in rounding the Cape of Good Hope from west to east in 1497. 4 England was interested in this, the most practicable route to the east, but was hesitant as yet to challenge the Portuguese monopoly.
The second grand aim was the exploration and exploitation of the American continent, following the discovery of its central parts by Columbus for Spain from 1492 to 1504, and of the south (Brazil) by Pedro Alvarez Cabral for Portugal in 1500. Like John Cabot's explorations in the north undertaken for England in 1497 and 1498, these were accidental discoveries made in the search for a western, or (in respect of Cabral) in pursuit of a more convenient southern, route to the Orient.
Contemporaries were disappointed at first with that "other world" of America. Only gradually did Europeans begin to see the continent as valuable in its own right. The discovery of the rich empires of Mexico and Peru accelerated the process. The commercial motive was paramount, whatever explorers conceived as their sense of mission. They sold their projects to the country most interested to back them. Sovereigns and merchants had to be satisfied that they would gain a good return for their money. John Smith, in A Map of Virginia (1612),
Raleigh's World 13
reported that Queen Isabella had pawned her jewels to support Columbus when all the wise men condemned him. (In fact, she proposed to raise the money on her crown jewels, and in the event this was not necessary.)5
The pattern of conquest and trade had followed upon the political determina- tions of Spain and Portugal. The division of the world according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494, gave Spain the western hemisphere and Portugal the eastern. Alberto Cantino's world map of 1502 marks the dividing line. A map of c.1610 (known in a late eighteenth century copy)6 shows the two empires then united under the sovereignty of Spain, since Philip II had claimed the Portuguese throne in 1580.
Although the Spanish and Portuguese governments enforced strict rules about keeping secret the maps and charts of their imperial domains, emigre map-makers plying their trade abroad could be employed to make maps for well-paying clients. Thus Queen Mary I of England commissioned from the Portuguese Diego Homem in 1558 a fine manuscript atlas of the world, probably intending it for her husband King Philip II of Spain as a New Year's gift.7 On the chart of Western Europe their joint arms are inscribed over England, of which Philip was titular king. The atlas was still unfinished when Mary died in November 1558, and when the manuscript came into Elizabeth's hands the queen seems petulantly to have scratched out Philip's arms. For the rest, the atlas displays in fine detail Spanish and Portuguese discoveries and settlements.
Nearly twenty years later in 1586 Raleigh was to commission Andre Homem, Diego's kinsman, to make a map for him, and Richard Hakluyt, referring to the map, described Andre as "the prince of the Cosmographers of this age."8 Similarities between Diego's chart of 1558 and Andre Homem's of 15599 (his only work known today) give an idea of what Andre's chart might have looked like, allowing for the addition of Antonio de Espejo's discoveries in New Mexico in 1583, in which Raleigh had a particular interest.10 The report of a silver mine aroused hopes of minerals in the hinterland of Virginia.
Queen Mary's atlas was one of many geographical and cartographic works in the royal palaces; others are recorded in the inventory of Henry VIII's possessions at the time of his death in 1547. The little study called "the new Librarye in Whitehall" contained, for example, "a black coffer covered with fustian of Naples full of plattes (maps)" and there was "a great globe of the description of the worlde."11 Then in 1549, or shortly after, the most important map of its generation was added to the collection, namely Sebastian Cabot's world map. Sebastian had returned to England in 1547 in his old age after 40 years in Spanish service, and had his world map — probably a revised version of his map of 1544 — engraved by Clement Adams in 1549.
Cabot's map was hanging in the 1560s in the Queen's privy gallery in Whitehall, as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Richard Hakluyt record.12 It provided authoritative evidence for Cabot's claimed discovery of the northwest passage round North
14 Raleigh and Quinn
America, c.1508 to 1509. The earlier discoveries of John Cabot, with his son Sebastian as companion, 1497 to 1498, were also documented.
The map remained on display for many years, publicly attesting England's right to northern North America by priority of discovery. Samuel Purchas in about 1618 reports the map as hanging in "His Majesties Gallerie at White Hall, neere the Privie Chamber." He describes it as "that Map (wherein is Cabotas Picture, the first and great Columbus for the Northerne Worlde)," and he names Cabot as "Discoverer for Henry the Seventh, of America," asserting that all the northern coasts of America were discovered by Sebastian Cabot and other Englishmen.13
Cabot may be seen as the "eminence grise," who influenced England's overseas activities in Raleigh's early days and for many years to come. His leading reputation in arctic matters and the geopolitics of the day combined to commend northern enterprise. There followed the beginnings of that long search to discover the northern passages to Asia which may be described as the triumph of hope over experience. These arctic exploits illustrate the powerful economic motives operating in the search for an exclusive route to the East. Raleigh's verses in the History of the World (1614), translated from the Latin, sum up the driving force of exploration:
Nor Southerne heate, nor Northerne snow That freezing to the ground doth grow, The subject Regions can fence, And keepe the greedie Merchant thence. The subtile Shipmen way will finde, Storme neuer so the Seas with Winde.14
The first voyages to the northwest were those of Martin Frobisher, 1576, 1577, and 1578. These were very much part of Raleigh's world. There was a family connection through Raleigh's elder half brother Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who in the 1560s was a leading advocate of the discovery of the northwest passage. Gilbert's Discourse of a Discouerie for a New Passage to Cataia, written in 1566 and published in London in 1576, sets out the likelihood and the advantages of the discovery. Its woodcut map, notable as the first world map published in England, was drawn on a cordiform projection as a miniature version of Abraham Ortelius's large world map of 1564. The map showed a convenient open route round the North American continent. The publication of the Discourse in 1576, ostensibly without Gilbert's permission, was intended as an encouragement for Frobisher's Company of Cathay, which was preparing its first expedition.
The enterprise turned into a treasure hunt, and when Frobisher's supposed mine of 1577 proved worthless, several fortunes were lost. The disappointing results had, however, a wider significance. Disillusioned over the northwest pas- sage, Gilbert turned his interests to colonization in North America. On 11 June 1578 he obtained a royal patent "to discover searche finde out and view such
Raleigh's World
15
World map by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, from A Discourse of a Discouerie for a New Passage to Cataia (London: 1576). By permission of the British Library.
remote heathen and barbarous landes . . . not actually possessed of any Christian prince." The expedition that sailed in November 1578 had Walter Raleigh as captain of the Falcon, and Raleigh's pilot was the navigator and privateer originally from the Azores, Simao Fernandez, the sinister figure who was to play such an important role for good or ill in the Roanoke enterprises. The expedition proved abortive, its ships returning from a brief Atlantic excursion. Gilbert resumed his plans, and despite the Queen's entreaties set out himself in 1583 on a colonizing voyage to northern North America. He took possession of Newfoundland for the Queen on 5 August 1583, but his ship the Squirrel foundered with all hands on the return voyage. "We are as neere to heaven by sea as by land" were his last recorded words.
Gilbert was a true pioneer in England's colonial expansion, and he prepared the way for Raleigh's project. Raleigh's patent for "the discovering and planting of new lands and Countries" was based on Gilbert's, which in this sense had reverted to the younger kinsman; but the new patent excluded Newfoundland, where Gilbert's own family may have claimed rights.15
16 Raleigh and Quinn
North American projects benefitted also from the interest of the redoubtable Dr. John Dee, lately geographical adviser to Frobisher, now establishing himself as the authority on England's title to northern North America. Gilbert's Discourse had gained Dee's attention, and Gilbert was brought into Dee's circle. On receiving his patent, Gilbert granted Dee the right to all discoveries north of 50° north latitude. After Gilbert's death, Dee followed this up in promoting an enterprise with Gilbert's younger brother Adrian and the navigator John Davis.
Dee was active also as a publicist. His General and rare memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of navigation (London: 1577) foretold the imperial and maritime destiny of England. It was the first volume of a four-volume work on the "British Empire," a term which Dee coined himself. The hieroglyphic frontispiece shows Elizabeth at the helm of the Christian ship of Europe, as mistress of the seas. In 1580 Dee argued the cause to the Queen in person, presenting her with a tract, "Her Majesty's Title Royal to many foreign countries, kingdoms and provinces." He illustrated his thesis with a map of northern regions, endorsed with a summary text of his argument: "Of a great parte of the Sea Coastes of Atlantis (otherwise called America,) next unto us . . . the Title Royall and Christian Supreme Government, is due, and appropriate unto Our Soveraigne Elizabeth . . . No other Prince or Potentate else in the whole world, being hable to allege thereto any Clayme. . . ."16
Colonizing projects were thus in the wind in the early 1580s. In 1583 Christo- pher Carleill, stepson of Sir Francis Walsingham, attempted to promote an English colony in Nova Scotia, Maine, or the St. Lawrence, addressing himself to the Muscovy Company for support in a pamphlet which he reissued in 1584. 17 Richard Hakluyt the younger meanwhile had provided a handbook for the English colonization of North America in his Divers voyages touching the discouerie of America (London: 1582), complete with two maps. That by Robert Thorne in 1527 ranks as the first known world map made by an Englishman. A legend off the northeast coast of America, added perhaps by Hakluyt himself, reads (in translation from the Latin), "This land was first discovered by the English." It is, I believe, the first documentation of England's claim on a printed map of wide circulation, as distinct from Cabot's map, which came into the hands of a more privileged few.
Hakluyt's second map, obtained from Michael Lok, the London merchant, was derived from a chart of Gerolamo Verrazzano, c.1527, presented to Henry VIII. It shows the "Mare de Verrazana 1524" as cutting into the American conti- nent in 40° north, a configuration mistakenly deduced from observations of the Carolina Outer Banks by Giovanni Verrazzano, with his brother Gerolamo.18 This encouraging belief that the Pacific lay close to the continent's eastern shores does not appear to be the reason for the site of Raleigh's first colony. There is no reference to the map or to the ideas behind it in the surviving accounts of the Roanoke Colony. The Verrazzanian concept was to hold sway, nevertheless, for many years.
Raleigh's World
17
Jfv wv tw -yw^ w*->
ji *W***^ (-u /fcyiffvt* /&+- U JhUfrtdL*
Hieroglyphic frontispiece showing Queen Elizabeth at the helm of the Christian ship of Europe. In John Dee, General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (London: 1577). By permission of the British Library.
18
Raleigh and Quinn
Map of North America by Michael Lok, 1582, from Richard Hakluyt's Divers voyages touching the discouerie of America (London: 1582). By permission of the British Library.
In the early 1580s American colonization was becoming a serious preoccupation in England. The citizens of London, however, were concerned with a more epoch-making event, the return of Francis Drake from his voyage round the world, 1577 to 1580, later celebrated as "the famous voyage of Sir Francis Drake." He had burst into the closed Spanish sphere of the South Seas, attacking Spanish ports on the western American coasts. He had taken possession of Nova Albion (California) in northwestern America in the name of Elizabeth. Sailing on westward he had confronted the Portuguese at the very heart of their empire, Ternate in the Moluccas. The Golden Hind had arrived home laden with gold and silver bullion. Edmond Howes in his continuation (1615) of the Annales (1580) of John Stow, wrote that the news of Drake's wealth "so far fetcht was marvelous strange, and of all men held impossible, and incredible, but both prouing true, it fortuned, that many misliked it . . . terming him the Master theefe of the unknown world."19
Raleigh's World
19
If admiration was mixed with unease in certain quarters, Drake had proved, nevertheless, that the Luso-Hispanic world, united in 1580 under Philip II of Spain, was an easy prey. The man in the street and foreigners alike applauded Drake's audacity: "His name (writes Howes) was a terrour to the French, Spaniard, Portugal and Indians. Many Princes of Italy, Germany, and others, as well enemies as friends in his life time desired his Picture. He was the second that ever went through the Straights of Magellan ... in briefe he was famous in Europe, and America, as Tamburlaine in Asia, and Affrica. In his imperfections hee was ambitious for honor, unconstant in amity, greatly affected to popularity."
Official circles were more circumspect in their reactions. Elizabeth's ministers imposed a rigorous secrecy on all detailed reports of the voyage, securing for themselves the fullest possible records. Early in October 1580 Drake had presented Elizabeth with "a diary of everything that happened during the three years he was away and a very large map." This is the earliest reference to the chart of Drake's voyage which Purchas recorded in 1618 as hanging in "His Majesties Gallerie at White Hall, neere the Privie Chamber," and next to Cabot's map. In the early 1580s Drake's map was not publicly displayed, but surreptitious copies were made. The earliest is that engraved by Nicola van Sype, published probably at Antwerp about 1583. A somewhat later version is the manuscript map now known as the Drake-Mellon map, evidently drawn after 1586 as it marks Drake's West Indian voyage, 1585 to 1586. The third and latest derivative was engraved and perhaps issued in London c.1590 by the Flemish emigre map- maker Jodocus Hondius, who on his return to the continent published it at Amsterdam, c.1595.20
LA.. HEfUXKE INI E.R.PRINSE FA.1CT PAR IX S1GNEVR DRA11CK DAVOIR CUtQyn TOVTELATERRE
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Map of Drake's circumnavigation, 1577-1580. Engraved by Nicola van Sype. (Antwerp? ca. 1583.) By permission of the British Library.
20 Raleigh and Quinn
The full significance of Drake's voyage therefore could not be appreciated at first. Only after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 was the ban on reports and publication removed. The psychological impact of the achievement, however, was immediate. Many years later, in 1725, Daniel Defoe referred to "that famous old Wives saying, viz. That Sir Francis Drake shot the Gulph; a Saying that was current in England for many Years, I believe near a Hundred after Sir Francis Drake was gone his Long Journey of all. . . ."21 The saying that Drake shot the gulf, that is, sailed through the Strait of Magellan into the South Sea, became one of the many Drake legends. It is recorded that when the curator at Oxford showed visitors Drake's portrait, with Drake holding a pistol in one hand, he used to say that this was "the very pistol with which Sir Francis shot the gulf." I have identified the picture as the full length portrait which the Bodleian acquired by gift in 1674 and which has recently been revealed as Frobisher's.22 Thus for many years Frobisher unwittingly masqueraded as Drake with a pistol in his hand shooting the gulf, a symbol of England's challenge to Spanish supremacy in the western world.
Drake was a kinsman of Raleigh's, and about fourteen years his senior. His mother had been the first of the three wives of Raleigh's father. They shared an inveterate hatred of Spain. John Aubrey in his Brief Lives (completed by 1696) wrote that Raleigh was "next to Sir Francis Drake, the great Scourge and hate of the Spaniard."23 Hopes of gaining wealth at the expense of Spain were to feature large in Raleigh's plans, explaining inconstancies of purpose in his colonizing pursuits. Drake was a powerful figure in Raleigh's expanding world. We do not know the full extent of their later collaboration in American initiatives, only the facts of Drake's direct participation in calling at Roanoke in June 1586 and in the event rescuing the colonists.
While Drake's exploit was being celebrated in London and arousing alarm and despondency in Spain, Raleigh was engaged in military service in Ireland from 1580 to 1581. On his recall to England hs embarked in 1582 on his meteoric career as the Queen's favourite at court, receiving many tokens of appreciation, notably the enjoyment of Durham House as his home (1583) and a grant of wines (1584). These favours were crowned on 25 March 1584 by the grant of letters patent for colonization in North America.
In promoting the colonizing venture Raleigh had the advantage of an influential circle of friends and associates. They included Dee, whom he had already consulted in matters of navigation. The map which Raleigh presumably used for planning the voyage of 1584 was a copy of a chart of the Atlantic and North America by Simao Fernandes, who had lent the original to Dee at his house at Mortlake on 20 November 1580. 24 Dee had probably consulted the original in designing his own map for presentation to the Queen in August 1580.25
Dee, however, was becoming increasingly interested in the occult, conjuring up through his medium, the notorious Edward Kelley, spirits who were required
Raleigh's World 21
to advise on various matters, including procedures for colonizing North America. We displayed in our British Library exhibition the magic mirror, a rare Aztec piece, which Dee and Kelley used for their spiritual seances:
Kelly did all his Feats upon The Devil's Looking-Glass, a stone, Where playing with him at Bo-peep, He solv'd all problems ne'er so deep.26
When Dee in 1583 took himself off to the continent with Kelley, Raleigh turned to other authorities.
Most notable was Richard Hakluyt. He had hoped to sail to America himself, but instead went to Paris in 1583 as chaplain to the resident ambassador. His "Discourse of Western Planting," as it is now known, was written between July and October 1584 at the request of Raleigh and Sir Thomas Walsingham to encourage the Queen's official support for the American venture. Hakluyt argued persuasively for large-scale imperial expansion, challenging the legality of Spain's claims. He completed the work shortly after the return of Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe from their reconnaissance expedition to America, and it was presented to the Queen on 3 October 1584. The only manuscript of the Discourse which survives is a fair copy, probably Sir Francis Walsingham's.27 As the colonizing enterprise proceeded Hakluyt also encouraged Raleigh by means of dedications to the books he was sponsoring and editing. In the dedication to Peter Martyr's De Orbe Novo (Paris: 1587), he exhorted Raleigh to emulate the "doughty deeds of Ferdinand Cortes, the Castilian, stout conqueror of New Spain."28 Hakluyt named Raleigh, with Sir John Hawkins and his cousin the elder Richard Hakluyt, as "my cheefest light" for western discoveries. He printed in The principall navigations (London: 1589) the narrative of "the beginnings, and proceedings of the two English Colonies planted in Virginia at the charges of Sir Walter Raleigh, whose entrance upon those newe inhabitations had bene happie, if it had ben as seruiously followed, as it was cheerefully undertaken," a shrewd comment on Raleigh's efforts as an entrepreneur.29
Fernandes, pilot of the reconnaissance expedition of 1584 and the two colonizing voyages of 1585-86 and 1587, belonged to a very different circle, the privateering fraternity. Since about 1577 he had been in the service of Walsingham, principal secretary of state from 1573, and was known as "Master Secretary Walsingham's man." To the Portuguese and Spaniards he was "a thorough-paced scoundrel," as the Spanish ambassador reported in 1578 to Philip II, writing about Gilbert's expedition and warning the king that Fernandes had given the English "much information about that coast, which he knows very well."30 This knowledge of American coasts made Fernandes's services invaluable to Raleigh. In 1584 he led the reconnaissance expedition of Amadas and Barlowe to Hatarask, an inlet in the Carolina Outer Banks, which he professed to know from a previous expedition in Spanish service. The harbour at Hatarask was named in his honour
22 Raleigh and Quinn
Port Ferdinando. His role, however, became increasingly controversial as the ven- tures proceeded. His view of the colony as a military outpost intended as a base for attacking galleons of the Spanish silver fleet was in keeping with his predilections as a privateer and his enmity for the Spaniards, which his masters shared.
The conflict of interests became more acute when Fernandes sailed with White in 1587 on the second colonizing venture. Despite the intended destination of Chesapeake Bay, he deposited the settlers at Roanoke. John White, the governor, wrote bitterly of "Fernandes and his wicked pretenses," words reminiscent of comments on Fernandes as "the head and origin of all evil" made by his companions on Edward Fenton's voyage of 1582. Yet he was to be praised, rightly no doubt (to give him his due). Pedro Diaz, pilot of the Spanish ship seized by Sir Richard Grenville, described him "as a great pilot and the person who induced them [the English] to settle there."
Privateering was almost a prerequisite for the success of the first colony owing to the lack of official support. Cautious and equivocal as always, the Queen limited her part in the venture to a gift of gunpowder, the loan of a royal ship, the Tyger, and the release of Ralph Lane from military duties in Ireland to serve as governor of the first colony, 1585-86. This meant that Raleigh depended for the most part on merchants in the city. Walsingham, named as an "adventurer," was the most powerful of his backers. As John Smith, governor of the later Virginia colony, was to remark, reliance on "privy men's purses" was no basis for a successful colony.
The conduct of Sir Richard Grenville, who was one of Raleigh's Devonshire cousins and served as "generall" of the 1585 expedition, illustrates the attractions of privateering. On his way home in 1585 to bring out a second expedition under Amias Preston and Bernard Drake, he took a Spanish prize to the value of between 40,000 and 50,000 ducats. The voyage was "made," the adventurers refunded, and profits shared between Raleigh and Grenville. In 1586 on his second Roanoke voyage, having found the colony abandoned, Grenville landed at the Azores, despoiled towns, and took captives. His name comes down in history as "Grenville of the Revenge," who died a hero's death at the Azores in 1591.
Another high ranking adventurer was the young Thomas Cavendish of Suffolk, who served as high marshall and was captain of the Elizabeth, which he had furnished himself. His duties were to act as legal authority, and disagreements between him and Grenville as general may have arisen from rivalry as to their respective roles. This was only one of the many dissentions which broke out on the outward voyage and were to beset the company during their stay at Roanoke. Grenville's chastisements of his officers and their attendants called forth from Lane accusations against Grenville of "intolerable pride and insatiable ambitions."
Raleigh's World 23
Raleigh himself was destined never to set foot on North American soil. As the Queen's favourite and (from 1587) captain of the guard it was his duty to stay at home. There is no direct evidence, indeed, that he would have planned to go. His role was more effective as the organizer at base. There he received from the Queen signal honours on the return of Amadas and Barlowe. On Twelfth Night in January 1585 she knighted him and allowed the new land of "Winganda- coa" to be named in her honour Virginia. Raleigh was appointed its "Lord and Governor." As David Quinn has pointed out, the name made this a landmark in American history, for it was applied to all the coastlines covered by Raleigh's patent.31 It set England's seal on a large territory of eastern North America.
Whatever the competence of the officers who carried out Raleigh's undertakings, the first colony suffered the disadvantage of an unsuitable site. It seems clear that under the guidance of Fernandes, Amadas and Barlowe in 1584 had been seeking the "Golfo de Sta Maria," which was in fact Chesapeake Bay; but the area of Pamlico Sound with its numerous islands behind the Carolina Outer Banks could well have been mistaken for the "Gulf."32 Military preoccupations would also justify a site strategically placed for attacking the galleons of the Spanish silver fleet. The reconnaissance party had chosen, in effect, one of the most dangerous stretches of North American coast. The sketch map (perhaps by Thomas Harriot), sent back probably with Lane's letter of 8 September 1585
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jketch map of the landing area in Raleigh's "Virginia," September 1585 (looking west). Public :cord Office, London, MPG 584. By permission of the keeper of the records.
24
Raleigh and Quinn
to Walsingham, illustrates the setting.33 John White's derivative map-view, engraved by Theodore de Bry, "The arrival of the Englishmen in Virginia," 1590, is decked with tell-tale shipwrecks.34 Precarious from the first, the colony was organized as a military outpost under strict discipline. As to the men, Lane commented (in a letter to Sir Philip Sydney of 12 August) on having "emungst sauvages, the chardege of wylde menn of myne owene nacione."
TliearriualoftheE
in Virginia
II
nghQiemen 1 1.
John White's map-view of the site of the Roanoke colony. In Theodor de Bry, America, part 1 (Frankfurt am Main: 1590), pi. II. By permission of the British Library.
The end came suddenly and unpredictably. While Grenville's return was still awaited, Drake called at Roanoke on 9 June 1586 with supplies and reinforcements collected in the course of the "famous West Indian Voyage" (1585-86). A storm blew up while Drake was negotiating on land, and the settlers opted for evacuation.
The venture of 1587 as a colony of settlement was totally different in conception from the first. Raleigh retained his rights as patentee, but no longer bore the costs. There were 114 participants, men, women and children, under the governor- ship of John White, the artist of the first voyage. His twelve assistants included
Raleigh's World
25
Baptista Boazio's map depicting the track of Drake's West Indian voyage of 1585-86, on which he rescued Lane's colonists. From Walter Bigges, A summarie and true dis- course of Sir Fraunces Drakes West Indian Voyage (London: 1589). By permission of the British Library.
"Simon Ferdinando of London, gentleman." The objective was to establish the "City of Raleigh in Virginia," incorporated on 1 January 1587, and the intended site was on Chesapeake Bay, as recommended by Hakluyt. Fernandes, however, diverted the purpose, and the settlers found themselves at Roanoke.
The final outcome, the story of the Lost Colony, is the first tragic episode of Anglo-American history. White was persuaded to go home for supplies, and his return was delayed by the imminent danger of invasion by Spain. In 1590 when he set foot once more on Roanoke Island, he found the colony deserted. The only clue to its fate was the single word "Croatoan" carved on a wooden post, without the pre-arranged distress signal.
Paradoxically, Virginia was to become famous in the year that White made his discovery of the colonists' disappearance. This was the achievement above all of White himself, and Thomas Harriot, who had joined Raleigh's household in 1583 as tutor in the navigational sciences. They had brought back from Roanoke in 1586 maps and surveys, some hundreds of drawings by White,35 and manuscripts comprising a full geographical report by Harriot. Together they provided a fine
26
Raleigh and Quinn
1 1 1 ;l i i
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John White's drawing of the village of Secoton (left) and Raleigh's "Virginia" (right). Watercolours. By permission of the British Museum, Department of Prints & Drawings, 1906-5-9-1(7) and 1906-5-9-1(3), respectively.
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record of the Carolina Algonquian's way of life, and of the resources of the country. Harriot wrote up his notes in summary form for A brief and true report of the newfound land of Virginia (London: 1588), which was intended to encourage the future development of Virginia.
White's graphic documentation, on the contrary, might never have been pub- lished but for the visit to London of Theodor de Bry, the great Flemish printer, He came to engrave Thomas Lant's drawings of Sir Philip Sidney's funeral in February 1586. He became acquainted with Jacques Le Moyne, artist in the Huguenot colony in Florida, 1564-65, of whom Raleigh and Lady Mary Sidney were patrons, and planned to publish Le Moyne's account and drawings. Probably through the good offices of Hakluyt he changed his plan and agreed to publish Virginia first. The reprint of, Harriot's text was illustrated by a complete set of drawings provided by White, with captions by Harriot (in the English edition, allegedly by Hakluyt). The result was the first volume of De Bry's America, published at Frankfurt in 1590 in a four-language edition. For the first time Europeans could see what life in North America was really like. Raleigh's Virginia became a chapter of world history.
Raleigh's World
27
The images created were so powerful that they became the stereotype of the Indian way of life. The villages of Secoton and Pomeioc in what is now North Carolina reappear on maps of America until as late as 1719, migrating west as far as Texas.36 William Strachey used De Bry's engravings to illustrate his manuscript account of the new Virginia colony, 1610-12. He also showed five pictures of Picts, the early inhabitants of Great Britain, and ventured some enlightened ethnographical comments:
AEcclesiae et Reipublicae
Wild as they ar, accept them, so were wee:
To make them civill, will our honnour be:
And if good worcks, be the effects of Myndes
Which like good Angells be, let our Designes
As wee ar Angli, make us Angells too:
No better worcke, can state, or church-man doe.
W St.37
Title page of Thomas Harriot's A briefe and true report, with Theodor de Bry's engraved portrait facing. In de Bry, America, part 1 (Frankfurt am Main: 1590). By permission of the British Library.
28 Raleigh and Quinn
Raleigh's Virginia had pointed the way to England's successful settlement of a colony in North America. "I shall yet live to see it an English nation," Raleigh had written prophetically in a letter to Sir Robert Cecil on 21 August 1602. From the Tower he received reports of the Jamestown settlement.
The first Virginia colony, whatever its fate, enabled England to establish her role as a New World power. Elizabeth was now Queen of Virginia, as depicted in the print of the Queen between two columns, perhaps by Crispin van de Passe, commissioned and published by John Woutneel, 1596. 38 "No richer crown in the World" was the motto of Nicholas Hilliard's gold medal, c.1590,39 countering Philip IPs posturing as Hercules,40 and as commanding the wealth of the Indies.41
When Emery Molyneux of Lambeth made the first English terrestrial globe for publication in 1592, he depicted the royal arms surmounting a dedication to the Queen encompassing the North American continent and designed as propaganda for England's imperial destiny in the continent.42 Evidence from the State Archives in Florence has confirmed this interpretation. Petruccio Ubal- dini, writing to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, reports Molyneux's presentation of the first terrestrial globe to the Queen at Greenwich in July 1591: "The Dedica- tion to the Queen has to be printed with the royal arms and its wording sug- gests that he gave her the globe to let her see at a glance how much of the seas she could control by means of her naval forces. This is a fact well worth knowing."43
Elizabeth made play of the symbolism of empire when at a second presentation she received the terrestrial globe with its celestial partner at William Sanderson's house at Newington-Butts. She commented "The whole earth, a present for a Prince, but with the Spanish King's leave"— an ironic reference to King Philip's claim to the whole world, and to his motto, "Non sufficit orbis."44 A silver medal of c.1585 depicts the motto.45 The globe was in fact the first geographical work to document the exact site of the Roanoke colony. De Bry's map, like White's, had not marked any degrees of latitude and longitude, presumably to protect the colony from possible discovery and attack by Spain.
Thus England's world expanded across the Atlantic. At the very same time Raleigh's world had contracted to the confines of the Tower where he conferred (in the years from 1603 to 1612) with Prince Henry, and with his fellow prisoner Henry Percy, the ninth Earl of Northumberland, and the Earl's attendants, who included Harriot. To recover his fortunes after his first disgrace of 1592 Raleigh had already been on one overseas adventure to Guiana in search of the lost Inca empire of El Dorado, 1595, and had despatched a second in 1596. A last glimpse of him before his trial and downfall in 1603 is as captain of the guard in Elizabeth's funeral procession. An indication of his moods and pursuits during those years in the Tower is revealed in the autograph commonplace book, written between 1604 and 1608, including historical and geographical notes for The History of the World, a list of the books in his library, and a Cynthia poem, one of three surviving autographed poems.46
Raleigh's World
29
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Ueigh's "Virginia" and surrounding region on Emery Molyneux's terrestrial globe, first pub- bed in 1592, revised by Jodocus Hondius in 1603. By permission of the Honourable Society of the Male Temple.
The final disastrous expedition to Guiana, 1617-18, culminating in his execution on 19 October 1618, is one of the dark episodes of English history. But just as Drake legends flourished, so did Raleigh's exceed the bounds of ordinary mortals. John Bricknell writes of the Indians in The Natural History of North Carolina (Dublin: 1737):
I hope it will not be unpleasing to the Reader to insert here a pleasant Story which still prevails amongst them; and is attended by the most substantial and credible Planters of this place, which is, "That the Ship that brought the first Colonists, does often appear to them (in Albemarle Sound, near Roanoke) under Sail, in a most gallant Posture," which they call Sir Walter Raliegh's Ship.
The author of A Short Account of the First Settlement of the Provinces of Virginia, (London: 1735), records Grenville's expedition of 1585, and Drake's rescue, and then proceeds to describe Sir Walter's visit in person: "Sir Walter got his ship ready first ... he set sail by himself," two weeks in advance of Grenville.
30
Raleigh and Quinn
The Sea of I hina and the Indies.
John Farrer's map of Virginia, showing the Pacific ten days' march away, with a por- trait of Drake as the discoverer of "Nova Albion." In Edward Bland, The Discovery of New Brittaine (London: 1651). By permission of the British Library.
The spirit of Sir Walter lives on in North Carolina, despite the remark of James A. Froude in 1895, "of Raleigh, there remains nothing in Virginia [i.e., North Carolina] save the name of the city which is called after him."47 More to the point is the comment of Richard Biddle (1831), followed by Alexander von Humboldt, that but for Cabot and Raleigh the English language might not be spoken by North Americans today. Raleigh paved the way for the establish- ment of Anglo-America in the New World.
Raleigh's World 31
Notes
*In introducing Helen Wallis, Lindsay C. Warren, Jr., said: "Our first speaker is no stranger to those of us who have been involved in the planning of events associated with the commemora- tion. Dr. Helen Wallis, who until recently served as the map librarian of the British Library in London, was intimately involved in one of our major projects, the historical exhibition entitled "Raleigh and Roanoke," which initially opened in London in April 1984 then moved to a four- month stand at our own North Carolina Museum of History in March 1985.
"Dr. Wallis was educated at Oxford University, where she received her master's degree and doctorate in philosophy. From 1951 to 1967, she was the assistant keeper in the Map Room of the British Museum. She became deputy keeper in charge of the Map Room in 1967 and served in that capacity until 1973 when the library departments of the British Museum were transferred to the then newly founded British Library. Following the transfer, she became the map librarian of the British Library, serving in that capacity until she retired in 1986. Her vitae says that since 15 November she has served as a "voluntary assistant" in the Map Library. I suspect that means that she is frequently called upon by her former colleagues who value her knowledge and years of experience at that institution. During Dr. Wallis's tenure with the British Library, she was involved in the organization of a number of exhibitions, including one in 1975 on "The American War of Independence," which was transferred to the Museum of Our National Heritage in Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1976. She was also responsible for the organization of an exhibition entitled "The Famous Voyage of Sir Francis Drake," which was later shown in Lexington and the Oakland Museum in California. We know her most fondly for the energy and leadership she exhibited with "Raleigh and Roanoke," which came to Raleigh in 1985. I think I am correct in saying that it was the most successful historical exhibition ever shown at the North Carolina Museum of History.
"Dr. Wallis has contributed to scholarship through her books and articles, many of which are related to Drake and Raleigh. She is a member of various scholarly organizations, currently serving as president of the International Map Collectors Society. In March 1985 she was awarded an honorary degree by our own Davidson College; and in 1986, she was singularly honored by an award of the "Order of the British Empire" (O.B.E.) as part of the Queen's Birthday Honors of that year. We are very pleased to have Dr. Wallis back in North Carolina, and I take pleasure in introducing her to this group which is gathered to hear her paper on 'Raleigh's World.' "
George Carleton, A Thankfull Remembrance of Gods Mercy (London: 1624), A. 4. 2-3.
2D.M. Palliser, The Age of Elizabeth. England under the Later Tudors 1547-1603 (London: 1983), pp. 36-7, 379.
3B.L. (British Library) Cotton MS. Tiberius D.IX. Samuel Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumas or Purchas His Pilgrimes (London: 1625), II.vii.1122. Purchas prints the translation. Further comments in Armando Cortesao and Avelino Teixeira da Mota, Portugaliae Monumenta Cartographica (Lisbon: 1960), 1.139-41.
4Walter Raleigh, The History of the World (London: 1614), 1.539.
5S.E. Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (Boston; 1942), 1.137.
6B.L. Add. M.S. 17647.A.
7B.L. Add. MS. 5415.A.ff.9v-10.
8Letter of Richard Hakluyt to Raleigh, Paris, December 30, 1586; the only surviving letter to Raleigh on the Roanoke voyages. Bodleian Library, Oxford, Clarendon MSS Addenda 307, ff.2v-3r. See Helen Wallis, Raleigh & Roanoke. The First English Colony in America, 1584-1590 (Raleigh: 1985), pp. 23, 45, nos. 4, 33.
9 Andre Homem's map is preserved in the Departement de Cartes et Plans, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris.
10Helen Wallis, Raleigh & Roanoke, pp. 23, 45.
UB.L. Harley M.S. 1419A.ff.l86-188v.
12D.B. Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (London: 1940),
32 Raleigh and Quinn
1.147; Richard Hakluyt, Principall navigations (London: 1589), 2.511.
13Samuel Purchas, Purchas His Pilgrimes, III.iii.461; Maclehose edition (Glasgow: 1906), XIII.3.
14Raleigh, The History of the World, 1.547.
15D.B. Quinn et al, New American World (New York: 1979), III.267.
16B.L. Cotton MS. Augustus I.I.I. See Wallis, Raleigh & Roanoke, p. 34.
17Christopher Carleill, A breef and sommarie discourse upon the extended Voyage to the hethermoste partes of America (London: 1583).
18Helen Wallis, "Some New Light on Early Maps of North America, 1490-1560," in C. Koeman (ed.), Land-und Seekarten im Mittelalter und in derfriihen Neuzeit, Wolfenbiitteler Forschun- gen, Bd7 (Munchen: 1980), pp. 101-2.
19Edmond Howes, The Annales, or Generall Chronicle of England begun first by maister Iohn Stowe and . . . continued and augmented . . . (London: 1615), p. 807.
20Helen Wallis, The Voyage of Sir Francis Drake mapped in silver and gold (Berkeley: 1979), pp. 19-21; and "The Cartography of Drake's Voyage," in Norman J.W. Thrower (ed.), Sir Francis Drake and the Famous Voyage, 1577-1580 (Berkeley: 1984), pp. 121-63.
21[Daniel Defoe], A New Voyage round the World (London: 1725), pp. 16-17.
22Helen Wallis, "English Enterprise in the Region of the Strait of Magellan," in John Parker (ed.), Merchants & Scholars (Minneapolis: 1965), pp. 196-97, 217.
2301iver Lawson Dick (ed.), Aubrey's Brief Lives (London: 1950), p. 260.
24B.L. Cotton Roll XIII.48.
25B.L. Cotton MS. Augustus I.i.l. See Wallis, Raleigh & Roanoke, p. 34.
26British Museum, Department of Medieval & Lat. Antiquities, 1966, 10-11, 1. See Wallis, Raleigh & Roanoke, pp. 29, 33.
27New York Public Library, Rare Books and Manuscripts Division; Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. See Wallis, Raleigh & Roanoke, p. 41.
28E.G.R. Taylor, The Original Writings & Correspondence of the Two Richard Hakluyts (London: 1935), 2.366-67. Translation from the Latin by F.C. Francis.
29Richard Hakluyt, The principall navigations voiages and discoveries of the English nation (London: 1589), sig.*4r.
30Cortesao and Teixeira da Mota, 2.130. Quinn, (1940), 1.187.
31D.B. Quinn, Set Fair for Roanoke (Chapel Hill and London: 1985), p. 51.
32William P. Cumming has traced the depiction of the coast on maps in a study now being printed by the University of North Carolina Press.
"Public Record Office, London, MPG.584.
34Theodor de Bry, America, part 1 (Frankfurt am Main: 1590), pi. II.
35White's drawings are preserved in one set now in the Department of Prints and Drawings of the British Museum, 1906-9-1. Another set copied from White's originals and discovered in Ireland by Sir Hans Sloane is also in the Department of Prints and Drawings, Sloane MS.5270 (P&D 199.a.3). Unable at first to secure this set, Sloane had them copied, and these are in the Department of Manuscripts of the British Library.
36Carte de la Nouvelle France, from Atlas Historique, by Henri Abraham Chatelain (Amsterdam: 1719).
37William Strachey, "The first Booke of the historie of Trauaile into Virginia Britannia," 1610-1612, B.L. Sloane MS. 1622,f.4v.
38B.M. Prints and Drawings, S 114-220. See A.M. Hind, Engraving in England in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries. Pt. 1. The Tudor Period (Cambridge: 1952), p. 285, pi. 144.
39B.M. Department of Coins & Medals, 1860-12-18-1.
40Reverse of struck silver medal, 1557. B.M. Department of Coins & Medals, George III, Flemish & Dutch 311.
41Reverse of silver medal of c.1560. B.M. Department of Coins and Medals, M.1994.
42The only known example of the first edition terrestrial globe, 1592, is at Petworth House.
Raleigh's World 33
A revised edition of 1603 with its celestial partner is at the London Inn of Court, the Middle Temple.
43Archivo di Stato, Florence, Fonde Mediceo, 828, c.477. Ubaldini also reports that Molyneux had sailed with Drake. I am indebed to Anna Maria Crino for this new source on the Molyneux Globes. See Helen Wallis with Anna Maria Crino, "New Researches on the Molyneux Globes," in Der Globusfreund, no. 35-37 (Vienna: 1987), pp. 11-20.
44Sir William Sanderson, An answer to a scurrilous pamphlet (London: 1656), sig. A3v.
45British Museum, Department of Coins and Medals, George III, Spanish Medals 2.
46B.L. Add. MS. 57555. Previously in the collection of Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart. Phillipps MS. 6339. See also Pierre Lefranc, Sir Walter Raleigh ecrivian, I'oeuvre et les idees (Paris: 1968); Sir Walter Oakeshott, The Queen and the Poet (London: 1970), pp. 17-20.
47James A. Froude, English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century (London: 1895), p. 156. See also H. G. Jones, "The Americanization of Raleigh," in Joyce Youings (ed.), Raleigh in Exeter: Privateer- ing and Colonisation in the Reign of Elizabeth I (Exeter: 1985), p. 73.
Raleigh's England
Joan Thirsk*
My first title for this paper was "The Adventurous Economy of Elizabethan England," and when it was neatened and shortened to match the titles of the other papers, I made no demur. Only later did I realize that it had been turned into a different and more difficult subject. I intended to consider the quite remarkable range and boldness of the new ventures that were launched in Elizabethan England. They set a background against which one can better understand Raleigh's overseas explorations. He was but one of a multitude of people engaged in audacious enterprises. While some sailed across the oceans, others experimented with all kinds of new industrial and agricultural possibilities at home. Bold initiatives were taken and many did not immediately turn out well. But the long-term hopes went along with a great flexibility, so that people seized opportunities that presented in one year, without brooding too much if they abruptly ceased in the next; they turned to something else. And some years later a failed project might well be taken up by others, and succeed. Most of us are out of tune with this world of short-term calculations, but it has to be placed in the background of sixteenth- century life and is, doubtless, inseparable from those other facts of life— short lives and sudden deaths.
The title that has now been given to my paper, "Raleigh's England," has set me thinking along different lines, obliging me to consider England as Raleigh perceived it. His personality is not easily fathomed: an ambitious, audacious, sometimes rough adventurer who was at the same time a reflective, introspective poet is not a very common combination. For me A. L. Rowse has come nearest to explaining the enigma,1 and I would not compete with him by offering an alternative view. But I also see Raleigh as a typical younger son of the gentry class, in some ways quite remarkably conformist with the rest. I therefore propose to discuss some features of England in the period 1560-1620, as the gentry perceived and exploited them, which may further illuminate the aspirations and career of one of its distinguished sons.
Raleigh shared the circumstances of his time with a multitude of other young men of gentle families born in the middle sixteenth century. As Sir Robert Naunton, James I's Secretary of State, put it when writing a thumbnail sketch of "Rawleigh," he was "well descended, and of good alliance, but poor in his beginnings."2 A. L. Rowse describes his ancestry more exactly, noticing that in Henry IPs reign a Raleigh was sheriff of Devon and that Sir William Raleigh was a judge of the King's Bench.3 But Walter was the fifth son of a third marriage; he had little prospect of inheriting land from his father.4
36
Raleigh and Quinn
Joan Thirsk, a specialist on Britain's consumer society, spoke on "Raleigh's England.''
Complaints of the plight of younger sons in England became noticeably strident in the course of the century or so after 1540. Some of these young men hung around the houses of their elder brothers, idle, discontented, and deeply resentful of their dependence on their brother's grace and favour. Devon gentlemen may not so readily have submitted to the tyranny of primogeniture as did gentry in some other counties, but the Raleigh family's circumstances could not offer much to a fifth son.5 A gentleman in a later generation who found his fortune in Virginia designated "learning" as the portion he purposefully allocated to his younger son.6 That is what Walter Raleigh also received.
With such an endowment multitudes of younger sons had to carve out a career by their own efforts. But in Raleigh's lifetime, each generation found itself obliged to become more and more ingenious or more and more aggressive, since the number of such young gentlemen, all aspiring to remain in the class into which they were born, was rising. All expected to set up a landed estate for themselves, sooner or later, and the consequences of this striving are dramatically portrayed in the increasing numbers of gentry residing in individual counties between 1550
Raleigh's England 37
and 1620. Michael Havinden of Exeter University (in an unpublished paper) has counted them in the county of Somerset, next door to Devon. In 1569, 150 gentry lived in the county; in 1623, 352. In other words, the numbers of resident gentry more than doubled in sixty years.
This fact has important implications for an agrarian historian, not all of which are relevant here. But it gives us some sense of the striving for place in Raleigh's lifetime and the effort involved. It explains the deep interest of the gentry in building houses, laying out gardens and orchards, beautifying the landscape and improving the cultivation of farm land. Many of them were creating gentlemen's dwellings and estates where none had been before. I shall return to this theme again in closer connection with Raleigh. At this point enough has been said to indicate the challenges that life presented to younger sons. To carve out a place in gentry society required determined effort in competition with many others, and not all succeeded. Far from ending their days as country gentlemen, some ended their lives as grocers or cheesemongers, many remained landless, many did not marry. Family trees frequently omit younger sons altogether.
Another perception of the sixteenth-century world that was borne in on young gentlemen's sons concerns the conventional stages of a moderately successful career. It could be a monotonous routine with an almost standard pattern; indeed that routine was, I suspect, a boring commonplace of the time, though we only dimly discern it. The familiar path is laid out for us in the life of George Throckmorton in a previous generation. He was the grandfather of Raleigh's wife. The early course of his career was exactly the one taken at the outset by Raleigh himself. George Throckmorton's father, like Raleigh's own father, achieved, in Rowse's words, "nothing much except a good match" (in this case, with a daughter of a lord mayor of London) "and a mass of children." "We find him," continues Rowse, "serving quietly, as we should expect, in the commission of the peace for Warwickshire."7 George, his eldest son, found his place at Henry VIII's Court as esquire of the body. So did Raleigh at Elizabeth's Court. (It was a piece of fortune for young gentlemen that Henry VIII increased the numbers of his bodyguard from 126 at the beginning of his reign to 200 by 1510. Later he even increased it to 600, but then the cost became alarming, and numbers were reduced.) George Throckmorton duly received, as Rowse puts it, "the rewards of attendance upon the king, in beneficial leases for long periods without fine, in stewardships, keeperships and such advantageous grants."8 His career was not without setbacks, since he opposed Henry's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, but he made amends and duly became a knight of the shire for Warwickshire, and later on sheriff of Warwickshire and Leicestershire.
Such a career satisfied many. But Raleigh plainly inherited the fiery qualities and a striving energy from his mother. (One wishes that more were known of Katharine Champernowne, remarkable mother of five sons of ability, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir John Gilbert, Adrian Gilbert, Sir Carew Raleigh, and Sir Walter
38 Raleigh and Quinn
Raleigh. Rowse recognizes the contribution from the mother to all this, but does not allow her a place in his index.9) For Walter Raleigh careers like that of George Throckmorton were object lessons. To do better than that, it was necessary to break away from the well-trodden path and arrest the attention of an influential patron, best of all the Queeen herself. In this, Raleigh succeeded. His proposals for Ireland, after he had served there, drew him before the Privy Council and attracted the Queen's notice. Sir Robert Naunton counts this as the critical moment in Raleigh's rise to favour. "From thence, he came to be known, and to have access to the queen and to the lords," he wrote.10 But I find the story of the cape thrown on the ground for the Queen to walk over equally credible as a deliberate act to draw attention, in a highly competitive world where Raleigh knew himself to be but one young man among hundreds of others. The story was recorded only by Thomas Fuller, writing later from hearsay. The biographer of Thomas Hariot, Muriel Rukeyser, tells us that it was the Spanish custom to use cloaks in this way. We should also note that while the cloak was made of new plush, we are not told of any expensive ornamentation. The place was "plashy," but the queen "trod gently" on it. We all know that mud when dry brushes off easily. I have heard the story dismissed as apocryphal. I would not be so sure.11 In advancing their fortunes, sixteenth-century gentlemen from Henry VIII's reign onward had one valuable asset of great significance, not possessed by earlier generations — this was their humanist education. It put them in touch with a multitude of fresh and original ideas which clearly inspired them to new and adventurous action. The newly printed books that were put before them included the great classical authors, books imported from the continent of Europe on every conceivable subject, English translations of foreign books, and by the 1560s works by English authors who took pride in writing in English rather than in Latin, so that they put no barriers between themselves and their readers. Young gentlemen were presented in these books with a whole spectrum of possible interests, ranging from the history of nations to astrology, to botany, to navigation. And since humanism called men to action in accordance with their intellectual convictions, gentlemen were urged to be doers as well as readers. Each individual would, of course, choose a different set of interests, but the books were very precise guides to action, and they were often followed to the letter. Historians have not yet squarely faced that fact, though they have long recognised the practical influence of books in limited areas, for example, in architectural design. I perceive it strongly at work in the practice of agriculture.12 I wait to see the gentry's literal imitation of bookish advice recognized over a much broader range of activities. It should not be so difficult for us to comprehend and accept that fact, for do we not all similarly turn to books for instruction in any new pursuit? It meant that well-read young gentlemen carried a fairly standard collection of modish ideas and interests in their mental baggage, ready to bring them into play as circumstances permitted and as their personal interests led them.
Raleigh's England 39
In Henry VIII's reign, and continuing through the first half of Elizabeth's, a humanist education also went hand in hand with a political doctrine that cleverly drew young gentlemen into the implementation of government policy. It is true that sometimes this caused them more financial loss than profit. But the gentry's initial efforts to carry out the government's desires often made a positive contribution by launching projects that subsequently were taken up by others with long-term success. Theirs was the responsibility for initiating in their own localities schemes that would serve the nation's needs. For example, when Henry VIII set up in the royal household a corps of gentlemen pensioners —young men whose duties were to ride on ceremonial and military occasions with the king, they were also exhorted to, and did, set up horse studs at home to breed better horses. When the best modes of feeding, housing, and training fine horses were being animatedly discussed, in Elizabeth's reign, influential personages at Court encouraged some of these aspiring young gentlemen pensioners to improve and use their language skills to translate foreign books on the subject into English. Thus Federico Grisone's Italian work on The Art of Riding was translated and adapted circa 1560. 13 Nor was horsemanship the only fashionable topic. One may speak of a "translation movement" starting in Henry VIII's reign and growing fast in the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign.14 Counting the classics alone, thirty-six books were translated in Henry VIII's reign, and thirty-nine in the first decade of Elizabeth's reign. The translators were young men, urged on by noblemen and influential politicians to serve their country in this way.15 Linguistic skills and a wide intellectual curiosity were taken for granted.
Thus young men were given the chance to serve the commonwealth in ways that made greater demands upon them than the strict duties of their office at court dictated or required. Barnaby Googe is one such example, a Gentleman Pensioner in Elizabeth's reign who served in Ireland, and while there translated a comprehensive book of husbandry that had only recently appeared (in Latin) from the pen of a German diplomat. It became a standard agricultural textbook in England for one hundred years. Googe, moreover, had already translated the work of an Italian poet and some Latin verse and later translated the proverbs of a Spaniard.16
Young gentlemen were offered many challenges that gave them the chance to show their talents and exercise them for constructive ends. There is, therefore, a wealth of meaning in Sir Robert Naunton's comment on Raleigh that he, being "the youngest brother, and the house diminished in its patrimony, he foresaw his own destiny that he was the first to roll through want and disability to subsist, before he came to a repose." Naunton continued, he was "the first that exposed himself into the land service of Ireland." Moreover, "he took pains," he was not "pulled up by chance," he "had the adjunct of some general learning, which, by diligence, he enforced to a great augmentation and perfection; for he was an indefatigable reader, whether by sea or land. . . ."17
40 Raleigh and Quinn
In short, here was an ambitious young gentleman who throve in the exhilarating atmosphere of the first two decades of Elizabeth's reign. The aspirations of educated humanists, both men and women, that had wrought such impressive effects in Henry VIII's reign, were still upheld, inspiring belief in one's ability to contribute to the commonweal. Raleigh was just in time— but only just— to catch that mood in the early stages of his career.
Other more mundane features in the background of these expansive decades between the 1560s and 1580s built up confidence in the future. Elizabeth's reform of the coinage in 1560-62 helped to stabilize prices after the soaring inflation of the 1540s.18 More reassuring still was the long period of plentiful grain supplies, beginning in 1558 and lasting until 1585. Shortages were so brief and local that by 1585 some complacency had crept in. It prompted William Cecil to condemn the wicked use of wheat to make starch for stiffening ruffs. For the past twenty- seven years, he said, Englishmen had enjoyed peace and plenty of grain, but they should not assume that shortages would never come again.19
Thus one may describe the first two decades of Elizabeth's reign as a new start in many different senses. It saw the effective beginnings of many audacious undertakings, apart from those exploring territorities overseas. Industrial enterprises were of lasting importance, encouraged by the use of that ingenious device, the grant of a patent of monopoly. This gave the recipients the sole right of manufacturing, mining, engineering, or otherwise using processes of which they were the first inventors. By the end of the century monopolies stood for everything that was unjust in the government's meddlings with the economy, but the original idea was innocent of corruption. It was a device borrowed from Continental countries who had been using it since the 1460s. By granting inventors the sole rights to use their own new processes, the Crown gave them hope of recover- ing their due reward for enterprise and investment. This European idea was first adopted in England in 1552, in a patent for making glass, and secondly in 1554 in a patent to search for and work metals in England.20 The 1560s saw the launching of a large number of highly original industrial ventures. In contrast with the two patents granted in the 1550s, twenty-two were issued in the 1560s.21
Through the grant of monopolies was started the making of hard white soap of Spanish type, of saltpetre, of ovens and furnaces that were economical of fuel, of sulphur, of oil, Spanish leather, white salt, drainage engines, and a whole miscellany of other goods. In all but four cases in the 1560s the patentees were foreigners; and some of the most influential men in government, William Cecil, above all, made strenuous efforts to welcome foreigners and introduce them into high places. Privy Councillors assisted large towns under their influence to recruit foreign craftsmen who might, and in several cases did, rescue their economies from decay. William Cecil, living just outside Stamford in Lincolnshire, brought foreigners with the required skills into that town.
Raleigh's England 41
This kind of individual endeavour in the 1560s was then carried forward under fresh momentum in the 1570s when religious refugees streamed into England, bringing their skills with them and setting up in business without waiting for any patent of monopoly. The patent system had set wheels in motion that were thereafter propelled by other sources of energy. Some twenty-three patents were granted between 1561 and 1570 but only twelve were issued between 1571 and 1580. 22 This did not mean that economic enterprise was fading; only that the methods by which it was launched were changing. It was an encouraging sign in some respects, for Englishmen in the 1570s were now in the majority as recipients of patents (seven Englishmen against four foreigners). In certain cases it meant that foreign inventors who needed financial backing had found English nobility and gentry willing to take financial shares.23
The financial arrangements of such enterprises, moreover, were being manipulated to spread the risks more widely. This may, indeed, contribute towards the answer to John Shirley's question concerning "Sir Walter Raleigh's Guiana Finances." How, he asked, could "a Devonshire sailor of a good family but no apparent wealth . . . equip, outfit, provision and man expedition after expedition ... ?" About £60,000 was needed for Raleigh's Guiana expedition alone.24 In enterprises involving the planting of new and potentially profitable agricultural crops, it was the practice to divide the shares that named large sums into much smaller units, thereby spreading the burden between many more kin and friends. Such practices do not emerge in the official accounts and are only accidentally brought to light, usually in the course of subsequent disputes. For example, when George Bedford held a one-third share in a madder-growing project in Kent in the 1620s, he did not expect to find all the money for that third from his own pocket. He expected to break down his share of the responsibility into many smaller shares to which his family and friends subscribed. A similar subdivision of one share into eight parts was contrived in a tobacco- growing project in Gloucestershire circa 1619, which at first appearance looked like a partnership of only three people.25
Financial manoeuvres with regard to patents of monopoly, and partnerships formed outside the patent system, enabled more and more gentry to contribute, though in a less active way than the foreign innovators, to the diversification of the economy. In the second half of Elizabeth's reign, however, this development led the gentry in entirely the wrong direction. Patents of monopoly were degraded into mere profit-seeking devices, requiring no effort from the monopolist beyond the collection of a rent. Raleigh's career mirrors the change of mood exactly, for what Professor David Quinn calls the spring and summer of his career from May 1583 to July 1592 were launched by the grants to him of two of those monopoly patents which brought the whole system into disrepute. "The impoverished gentleman," he writes, "became the wealthy and magnificent cour- tier,"26 because Raleigh received the monopoly right to issue licenses for the
42 Raleigh and Quinn
sale of wines, which brought him £700-800 p.a. at least. (A. L. Rowse says £1100 p.a., an income larger than that of some peers.) Then in March 1584 he secured the monopoly of licenses to export cloth free of statutory restrictions.27
The healthy economic vigour of the kingdom in Elizabeth's early years, to which the gentry had made a positive contribution, was now sapped as abuses crept in. At the same time, confidence was checked from another direction. A bad harvest in 1585 was followed by two more in 1586 and 1587. 28 The year 1586 also brought a crisis in the cloth trade with the Low Countries and an outburst of violence against foreigners.29 Thus, while Raleigh's economic circumstances were improving, for the nation as a whole economic trends in the 1580s were unhealthy and augured ill for the future. Foreigners, who had done much to diversify and strengthen England's industrial and agricultural base in the previous twenty years, were reviled and attacked, and Raleigh himself joined in the chorus. When he lost his influential place close to the Queen and transferred his energies into speeches in the House of Commons, he expressed a deep antipathy to foreigners. His words were incisive and left no room for another opinion. "Whereas it is presented that for strangers it is against charity, against honour, against profit to expel them; in my opinion it is no matter of charity to relieve them. ... I see no reason that so much respect should be given unto them."30 Such sentiments mingled only too readily with the jealousies and feudings at Court and the sense of disenchantment that hung over the last two decades of Elizabeth's reign. The depressing years of the 1590s were depressed further by yet another sequence of disastrous harvests and epidemics which historians now mark as a watershed throughout western Europe. Population growth slowed down for a century and a half, and another economic era with different problems opened out after 1600.31
The gentleman's portmanteau of intellectual interests and ideas, to which I referred earlier, contained more than enough variety to divert gentlemen as the mood of the age changed, and particularly if they tired of the courtly round. Among other challenges, the gentry had been invited to set themselves up in the country, and books had given them practical instructions and intellectual reasons for enjoying that life. Raleigh turned his thoughts in this direction in the 1580s. He lived in Durham House in the Strand in London but conceived the idea of returning to his childhood home at Hayes Farm in Devon and wrote to the owner asking him to sell the house to him.32 He was cheated of his hopes and had to wait until 1592 before he achieved his desire for a different and grander estate at Sherborne, Dorset, prised by the queen for him from a reluctant bishop of Salisbury. It proved to be the source to Raleigh of endless troubles, disagreements with the bishop, and with John Meere, the man whom he chose to manage the estate.33 But for us special interest lies in the way, as soon as he acquired Sherborne, he followed the accepted routine prescribed by the books and by the fashions of the day— laying out orchards and gardens, bringing water to the site, and ultimately building a new house.
Raleigh's England 43
Earlier than this, however, we have evidence of Raleigh's interest and vigour bestowed in the same direction when setting up his plantation in Ireland. This is Professor Canny's territory, and I do not wish to transgress the boundaries laid between us. But the intellectual baggage of the gentry is my theme, and it was full of stimulating notions about land and its potential, which individuals carried all over England and some of them to Ireland as well. In this baggage were stored first and foremost readings from the classical writers like Cato, Varro, and Columella, to which practical experience was added, teaching gentlemen a highly professional attitude towards farming as a rewarding, honourable occupation, and inspiring high optimism in man's capacity to improve barren or neglected soils. Many young gentry, of course, had not the means to set up an estate unless they chose neglected land which was cheap. Thus they moved into pastoral country, fenlands, marshlands, and woodlands, where their houses were likely to be in hamlets, rather than villages. But in course of time they would gentrify that countryside, which had not been so tamed before. We see the transformation most clearly in the Arden forest of Warwickshire between the mid-sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century; also in the Lincolnshire fenlands, where by the 1650s some truly model farms had been set up.34 Young men were helped by the fact that techniques for draining wet land were being improved, and many new crops were being introduced that were recommended for less fertile, or overcropped, arable. Sons of the gentry, therefore, became active rather than passive owners of land, while some went further still, chose farming as a career, specialized in some of its newest branches, such as hop-growing and fruit growing, and then wrote books that described their experience and encouraged their fellows to follow suit.35
Against this background of contemporary bookish knowledge and intellectual argument concerning the noble life of the countryman, the agrarian historian approaches the evidence of Raleigh's plantation in Ireland with certain expectations. Gentlemen were being urged to try new plants from Europe and overseas, especially on barren land. One or another crop, so the argument ran, might be just the one that would miraculously turn poor land to good account.36 Such were the hopes lying behind the gentry's many trials with new plants in the sixteenth century. They make it wholly credible that potatoes were tried on Raleigh's estate in Youghal. He may not personally have been the one most responsible, but portions of his land were being taken up by many gentlemen and esquires, with the same intellectual baggage. Thomas Hariot, gentleman, was one of his tenants. He was an indefatigable investigator in many branches of knowledge. It is difficult to imagine that he was not interested in trying new plants. Thomas Hill, gentleman, was also a tenant.37 Is that name of significance? A Thomas Hill of London was the author of the first book on gardening in 1563. 38 That Thomas Hill cannot have been the planter in Ireland since he died somewhere between 1572 and 1575. Thomas Hill is a comparatively
44 Raleigh and Quinn
common name, moreover. But it is worth considering the possibility that he had a son, Thomas Hill, who followed his father's interests and was the planter in Ireland. So often in this period sons had the same names as their fathers and followed the same careers, as did Walter Raleigh's son, Walter.
Thomas Hill's book on gardening was thoroughly practical, using an unusually wide range of classical authors critically and adding the observations of his experienced gardening friends, as well as his own. It was concerned first and foremost with the most useful aspects of gardening, the sowing of vegetables and herbs for food and medicine. A man with such enthusiasms would certainly have been interested in new lands to cultivate. For other reasons too an association of the Hill family with Thomas Hariot is not an absurd guesss, knowing as we do how like-minded gentlemen formed cliques and turned up in each other's company in many different situations. Thomas Hill, writer on gardening, was a citizen of London, with a lively interest in many other branches of learning. He was a considerable translator of foreign works, translating A Brief Epitotny of the Whole Art of Physiognomy gathered out of Aristotle and Others (London, 1550?) and an Italian work on measures against plague. He practised astrology (i.e., astronomy); he translated a book on comets (published after his death, 1590?) and another on the stars (1599). He wrote a book on vulgar arithmetic. With such interests, coinciding so remarkably with those of Thomas Hariot, one may conceive of some acquaintance between Hariot and the Hill family, though Hariot arrived in London (1580) too late to meet the writer and translator, Thomas Hill. But Hill wrote so eloquently and sensibly on the planting of vegetable gardens, one in 1563, another in 1568, and a new edition with an additional section on the grafting of trees in 1574, we need not summarily dismiss the notion of a son alongside Hariot in Ireland who would not have neglected potatoes if they had come his way.39
The keen interest of many Londoners in gardening encourages the suggestion that one or another of the tenants on Raleigh's plantation, if not Raleigh himself, made a contribution to the planting of the potato in Ireland.40 Professor Hawkes, the botanical authority on the potato, has described the conditions which were required for its success in Europe— notably twelve hours of daylight but not more, to enable it to develop tubers rather than stalk and leaf. These conditions from the very beginning were present in southwestern Ireland but not in England, for tubering could start in autumn when the days shorten to twelve hours while the temperature continues mild. In Ireland, potatoes could have given a reasonable yield from the outset.41 Trials by any one of the gentlemen tenants on Raleigh's estate would then explain why soldiers of Cromwell's army arriving in Ireland in the 1650s saw potatoes growing in the fields.42 Not until later, in the 1660s and 1670s, were they reintroduced into England, this time with more success. They appeared first in Lancashire, which had a regular trade with Ireland; and by that time potatoes in Ireland would have been selected and made suitable for the English climate.43
Raleigh's England 45
Finally, another of the fairly common items in a gentleman's mental baggage, which Raleigh certainly carried and in which he found great solace in his latter days, was an interest in the distilling of essences from herbs. These essences were distilled principally as medicines, though they were also prized as perfumes and cooking ingredients. Hieronymus von Braunschweig had published in German in 1519 a treatise on distillation, in order to help the poor to cure their own illnesses. This had been translated into English in 1527, and more books on distillation followed thereafter. Among the early devotees of this particular interest were the Percys, earls of Northumberland.44 Raleigh picked up the same enthusiasm, and when he was imprisoned in the Tower in 1604 distilling was one of his principal occupations. Indeed, he turned a former henhouse into a stillhouse. Then he was joined by Henry Percy, the ninth Earl, who was imprisoned for his alleged complicity in the Gunpowder Plot. He had inherited his family's consuming interest in the same subject — indeed, he was called the Wizard Earl — and produced the much-needed money to buy more equipment.45
It is anachronistic to turn these activities, as some historians have done, into a precocious interest in the science of chemistry. To contemporaries they were far more immediately important; the essences were the essential medicines that would save, and prolong, life. As Sir Thomas Smith, another enthusiastic distiller and Elizabeth's principal secretary between 1572 and 1576, expressed it, "I must needs make much of that [i.e., his stills] to the which, next God, I perceive I owe my life and health, as this winter."46 Raleigh acquired such a high reputation for his medicinal cordials that, despite the charges of treason against him, James I countenanced the use of his special distillation to save the life of the dying Prince Henry, his heir. Unfortunately, it did not work the miraculous cure that was hoped for. But the cordial continued into the later seventeenth century to find an honoured place among the medicines in great men's households.47
If Raleigh had escaped the scaffold, A. L. Rowse is unable to imagine him enjoying the contentment of the country life. I have no such difficulty. Gentlemen knew the intellectual arguments in its favour, and these gave them plenty to do on their land. Circumstances at James's Court powerfully strengthened the desire to retire from Court. In the very year of Raleigh's death they were reiterated yet again. The lively debate on the Court versus the country life had been initiated in 1548 when the Spanish humanist and companion of the Emperor Charles V, Antonio de Guevara, published a Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier and a Commendation of the Life of the Labouring Man. Antonio de Guevara was one of the most widely read, authors in sixteenth-century Europe (though he is now totally neglected). This essay was translated into English in 1574, reissued in 1575 and 1579. Something was evidently happening in the seventies to awaken a yearning for the peace and contentment of country life. It is not difficult to guess at the reason for a reissue of the same debate in 1618. This time Nicholas
46
Raleigh and Quinn
The Country-man.
The Courtier.
The debate between courtiers and country gentlemen, discussed by the sixteenth- century Spanish humorist Antonio de Guevara in Dispraise of the Life of a Courtier. . . , appeared again in 1618 under the name of Nicholas Breton in The Court and Country.
Breton claimed to be the author, giving his essay the title The Court and Country or a Brief Discourse Dialoguewise.48 But Nicholas Breton's point of view was already stowed away in our gentlemen's baggage of current notions on the world around them. Antonio de Guevara's essay had been widely read. He had also written of "we courtiers much cumbered with tediousness," and of the many men at court "loitering, superfluous, idle, vagrant, and evil-tongued." Raleigh had already turned such thoughts into the far more melodious, gleaming, but bitter lines:
Say to the court it glows
and shines like rotten wood.49 That viewpoint won increasing support from gentlemen towards the end of James I's reign, as onlookers expressed with candour their distaste at the sight of their king— "this monster in excess"— and his Court. The chaplain to the Venetian ambassador in 1618, describing a series of banquets, comedies, and masques which he attended in London after Christmas that year, finished his account thus: "Should your lordships writhe on reading or listening to this document, you may imagine the weariness I feel in relating it."50 Raleigh did not get the chance to retire to the country. But his brother-in-law, Arthur Throckmorton, wisely had long since done so and was kept fully occupied. We may learn more in the future about early seventeenth-century Court and country by identifying other gentry who followed the same path. In a later generation such men were responsible for some quite notable model farms.51
Raleigh's England 47
Notes
*Joan Thirsk was introduced by Lindsay C. Warren as follows: "Our next speaker also comes to us from England, although she has been in North Carolina for several months as a fellow at the National Humanities Center in the Research Triangle Park.
"Dr. Joan Thirsk was educated at the Camden School for Girls and Westfield College of the University of London, where she received her B.A. and doctoral degrees. She received her master's degree from Oxford. During World War II, she served as a subaltern in the Intelligence Corps. Until her retirement approximately three years ago, Dr. Thirsk was a reader in economic history at the University of Oxford and professorial fellow of St. Hilda's College at Oxford. She has specialized in English agricultural history, especially of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and is general editor and substantial contributor to The Agrarian History of England and Wales, published by the Cambridge University Press. She has written much on rural industries and on the consumer society of the period 1500-1700. She is a fellow of the British Academy and has an honorary degree from Leicester University, where she was the senior research fellow from 1962 to 1965. Dr. Thirsk is also a member of the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England and a foreign member of the American Philosophical Society. She now resides at Hadlow Castle, Tonbridge, Kent. Her vitae says that her recreations include gardening and sewing. I want to extend a special welcome to Dr. Thirsk at this time, and we look forward to hearing her paper on the subject of 'Raleigh's England.' "
JA.L. Rowse, Sir Walter Raleigh, his Family and Private Life (New York: 1962).
2Sir Robert Naunton, Fragmenta Regalia. Memoirs of Elizabeth, Her Court and Favourites (London: 1824), p. 103.
3Rowse, op. cit., p. 129.
4Norman Lloyd Williams, Sir Walter Raleigh (London: 1962), p. 1.
5For the pamphlet literature on younger sons, see Joan Thirsk, "Younger Sons in the Seventeenth Century," in idem, The Rural Economy of England. Collected Essays (London: 1984), pp. 335-57, especially pp. 338, 351.
6Louis B. Wright, "The 'Gentleman's Library' in Early Virginia: The Literary Interests of the First Carters," Huntington Library Quarterly, I (1937-8): 19.
7Rowse, op. cit., p. 2.
8Ibid., pp. 2-9. The King's bodyguard was first permanently established in Henry VII's reign. Col. Sir Reginald Hennell, The History of the King's Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard (London: 1904), pp. 12, 23-5, 60, 78.
9Rowse, op cit., p. 130.
10Naunton, op cit., p. 109.
"Williams, op. cit., p. 46; Muriel Rukeyser, The Traces of Thomas Hariot (New York: n.d. but 1971), p. 67. The author also says of the episode "it is true to his nature. ... It is in character for Ralegh." On Raleigh's "stage play world," see also Stephen J. Greenblatt, Sir Walter Raleigh. The Renaissance Man and His Roles (New Haven: 1973), p. 22.
12I developed this theme in my Neale lecture at University College London, in 1983, to be published in Alternative Agriculture. A Seventeenth-Century Perspective on Past and Present. Some illustrative examples of bookish advice in practice are given in Thirsk, "Plough and Pen," in T.H. Aston et alii, Social Relations and Ideas: Essays in Honour ofR.H. Hilton (Cambridge: 1983), pp. 303-306. For the care given to the reading of books on architectural design, see the evidence of Henry Percy's annotated text of Vitruvius, in G.R. Batho, "The Library of the 'Wizard' Earl: Henry Percy, ninth Earl of Northumberland (1564-1632)," The Library, 15 (1960): 255.
13Joan Thirsk, "Horses in Early Modern England: For Service, for Pleasure, for Power," in idem, The Rural Economy of England, op. cit., pp. 385-91.
14As does C. H. Conley in The First English Translators of the Classics (New York: 1927), pp. 18 ff.
48 Raleigh and Quinn
15Conley, op. cit., pp. 18, 23-31, 35-41.
^Dictionary of National Biography, sub nomine. A disappointingly incomplete account of Googe's career also appears in Richard C. Barnett, Place, Profit and Power. A Study of the Servants of William Cecil, Elizabethan Statesman, James Sprunt Studies in History and Political Science, 51 (1969): 65-7.
17Naunton, op. cit., pp. 104-05, 108-09. See also John Aubrey's account of Raleigh, studying most while at sea, always carrying a trunk of books on his voyages. Oldys and Birch, eds., The Works of Sir Walter Ralegh (Oxford: 2 vols., 1829), VIII, p. 739.
18CSPD 1547-80, pp. 159, 161, 193.
19Joan Thirsk, Economic Policy and Projects. The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: 1978), p. 88.
20Ibid., p. 52.
21In listing them Wyndham Hulme took pains to point out that this number could be incom- plete since it rests on the entries printed in the Calendars of the Patent Rolls. E. Wyndham Hulme, "The History of the Patent System under the Prerogative and at Common Law," Law Quarterly Review, 46 (1896): 145. For the negotiations with foreigners, see CSPD 1547-80, passim.
22Wyndham E. Hulme, "The History of the Patent System under the Prerogative and at Common Law. A Sequel," Law Quarterly Review, 61 (1900): 52.
23Ibid., p. 52.
24John W. Shirley, "Sir Walter Raleigh's Guiana Finances," Huntington Library Quarterly, 13 (1949): 55, 59.
25Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture, to be published.
26David B. Quinn, Raleigh and the British Empire (London: 1947), p. 37.
27Ibid., p. 37; Rowse, op cit., p. 140.
28Anxiety about grain shortages is mirrored in the State Papers in government-solicited reports on measures to restrain grain export and keep the markets furnished. They begin in May 1585 and continue until December 1588. CSPD 1581-90, passim.
29J.D. Gould, "The Crisis in the Export Trade, 1586-7," English Historical Review, 71 (1956): 212-22.
30Eleanor Grace Clark, Ralegh and Marlowe. A Study in Elizabethan Fustian (New York: 1941), p. 31.
31Peter Clark, ed., The European Crisis of the 1590s. Essays in Comparative History (London, 1985), pp. 4-5.
3201dys and Birch, eds., Works of Ralegh, op. cit., vol. VIII, pp. 744-5.
33Rowse, op. cit., pp. 148-9; J. B., "Sir Walter Raleigh at Sherborne," Gentleman's Magazine, 1853, part II, pp. 435 ff., and 1854, part I, pp. 19 ff.
34Joan Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales, V, 1640-1750 (Cambridge: 1986), Part II, p. 323; Victor Skipp, Crisis and Development. An Ecological Case Study of the Forest of Arden, 1570-1674 (Cambridge: 1978), passim; H. C. Darby, The Draining of the Fens (Cam- bridge: 1956), pp. 275, 279.
35See, for example, Reynolde Scot, A Perfect Platforme of a Hoppe-garden (London: 1576); Leonard Mascall, The Husbandrie, Ordering and Government of Poultrie (London: 1581?); idem., The First Book of Cattel (London: 1596). For a fuller list, see G. E. Fussell, The Old English Farming Books from Fitzherbert to Tull (London: 1947).
36Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture, to be published.
37PRO SP63/144.
^Dictionary of National Biography, sub nomine; Francis R. Johnson, "Thomas Hill: An Elizabethan Huxley," Huntington Library Quarterly, 4 (1944): 329-51.
39On Hill, see Johnson, op cit. On Hariot, see DNB, sub nomine; Muriel Rukeyser, op. cit; and John W. Shirley, Thomas Harriot: a Biography (Oxford: 1983), pp. 51, 67, 70. For one of Hill's gardening books, in a modern reprint, see Dydymus Mountain, The Gardener's Labyrinth (New York: 1982).
Raleigh's England 49
40In discussion at the Raleigh conference Professor David Quinn correctly pointed out that potato cultivation could have developed in the time of Robert Boyle, Earl of Cork, who bought Raleigh's estate from him; he was extremely interested in farming and gardening.
41J.G. Hawkes, "The History of the Potato, Part III" Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, 6-7 (1967): 290-91.
42W. Coles, Adam in Eden (London: 1657), p. 33.
43Joan Thirsk, ed., The Agrarian History of England and Wales (Cambridge: 1986), V, part I, p. 64; Hawkes, op. cit., p. 292.
^Joan Thirsk, "Forest, Field and Garden: Landscapes and Economies in Shakespeare's England," in John F. Andrews, ed., William Shakespeare: His World, His Work, His Influence (New York: 1985), vol. I, pp. 265-6.
45Williams, op. cit., pp. 212, 214-5; Rowse, op. cit., pp. 242-3.
46Mary Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith. A Tudor Intellectual in Office (London: 1964), p. 143.
47Rowse, op. cit., pp. 242-3.
48Rowse, op. cit., p. 262; Joan Thirsk, "Forest, Field, and Garden," op. cit., pp. 258-9.
4901dys and Birch, eds., Works of Ralegh, op. cit., vol. VIII, p. 725.
50Robert Ashton, ed., James I by his Contemporaries (London: 1969), pp. 232, 238-42.
51Many glimpses of this tension between the Court and the country life are seen in contemporary correspondence. See, for example, Ashton, op. cit., pp. 237 (Lord Thomas Howard to Sir John Harington, 1611: "God speed your ploughing at the court: I know you do it rarely at home"), 244 (Sir John Harington describing drunken frolics at Court when the King of Denmark visited James I, 1606: "I wish I was at home: O rus, quando te aspiciam?" Raleigh himself, when in the Tower, wrote "There is no course more comely, nor any resolution so well beseeming a wise man ... as to retire himself from court and company." Rowse, op. cit. , p. 262. See also Arthur Throckmorton's preoccupations in Northamptonshire, when he withdrew from Court. Rowse, op cit., pp. 218, 273, 190-1, 275, 281.
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists?
William S. Powell*
Walter Raleigh secured his charter from Queen Elizabeth in the spring of 1584, taking up where his half-brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, was unfortunately obliged to end his etforts at colonization in America. As it turned out, Raleigh was little if any more successful, yet over the next three years he was respon- sible for sending a reconnaissance expedition to America in 1584; something of a military expedition in 1585-86; and a colonizing expedition — consisting of men, women, and boys — in 1587. And finally, in 1590 a futile attempt was made to locate the settlers left in 1587.
We know who some of the leaders were of each of these groups making their way to Roanoke Island. Philip Amadas and Arthur Barlowe of the first are perhaps not as well known as some of the others, but more and more is being discovered about even these two young men who were still in their twen- ties. Of those involved with the second voyage, Ralph Lane, Thomas Harriot, Simon Fernandes, Sir Francis Drake, and Sir Richard Grenville among them, we know more. John White, governor of the 1587 colony, is still a shadowy figure, but his reputation has been growing of late, and we have the names of more than a hundred of his colonists.
Among the Roanoke Colonists during these three years were several other men who were not actually leaders but with whom we have more than a passing acquaintance. Among them are Thomas Buckner, mercer, at whose house in London Harriot died; Thomas Cavendish, who later sailed around the world; Joachim Ganz, native of Prague, a mineral expert, and the first American Jewish colonist; Edward Gorges, relative of both Gilbert and Raleigh, and member of a family prominent in both old and New England; Daniel Hochstetter, German mineral specialist; Abraham Kendall, veteran navigator, noted for his mathematical skill, and who afterwards was with Raleigh in South America; Martin Laurentson, a Dane who was in England to study maritime warfare and navigation; and George Raymond, who subsequently had a notable career at sea but was killed in 1625 by the last shot fired in the taking of the castle at Cadiz. These were all men in whom Raleigh (or his advisors) must have had confidence and who, indeed, proved themselves a little later.
Before trying to suggest who some of the ordinary people may have been, let me alert you to what I am about to do. The names of the people among the Roanoke Colonists have been something of a hobby with me that I have enjoyed for more than forty years. Having collected notes about them on both sides of the Atlantic, I have come to consider some of these people, who really are no more than names in lists, to be real people, and in the "next world"
52
Raleigh and Quinn
William S. Powell, professor emeritus at UNC-CH, spoke at the Saturday luncheon on "Who Were the Roanoke Colonists?"
I expect to recognize them! To say that I have some questions for them is an understatement.
My sources have been county and local histories, biographies, parish registers, lists of university alumni, reports of the Historical Manuscripts Commission, finding aids and documents at the London Guildhall, the Public Record Office, Somerset House (before the wills were moved), and at many county record offices, but one of the best tools has been the Burnett-Morris Index in the public library at Exeter. I have looked for needles in every haystack I encountered.
H. G. Jones instructed me not to be scholarly this afternoon even if I could. In a moment you will conclude that I took his advice. For one thing, I have usually omitted the customary weaseling (but often necessary) words such as "perhaps," "undoubtedly," and "quite likely." But you must understand that what I tell you this afternoon about the Roanoke Colonists applies not necessarily to a particular colonist but only to someone with the same name as a colonist —
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 53
living at the same time and of roughly the right age. Nevertheless, in the case of the 1587 colonists, what I shall say pertains only to people for whom I have found nothing to suggest that they survived beyond that date. Rarely am I confi- dent beyond doubt that what I have turned up actually applies to a Roanoke Colonist, much as I would like for it to.
There is good evidence, however, of five men who came to Roanoke whose names do not appear in the contemporary lists. One THOMAS BAYLY, according to the Historical Manuscripts Commission report on the papers of the Marquess of Bath, wrote a letter to the Earl of Shrewsbury about the return of Drake to Portsmouth which indicates that Bayly had been with Drake. An 1868 biography of Raleigh cites a Spanish deposition at Simancas by RICHARD BUTLER saying that he went to America with Captain Amadas. The sketch of Sir THOMAS GATES in the Dictionary of National Biography says that he was with Drake at Roanoke when the colonists were picked up. The inscription on the tomb of ROBERT MASTERS at Burghill, Herefordshire, records that he was in Virginia with Cavendish. And according to the list of graduates of Cambridge, Sir MARTIN STUTEVILLE was also in America with Drake.
There are several general statements that can be made which can be substantiated. (1) Around a dozen of the Roanoke Colonists had been at Oxford or Cambridge a year or two before they set out on Raleigh's second or third expedition. Such a voyage, they must have hoped, would offer excitement, a challenge, or an opportunity to get rich. (2) Fathers, or other relatives with the same family name, pledged generously towards the defense of the country against the Spanish Armada. I imagine that one reason they did this was in the hope of speeding relief to the Roanoke Colonists. (3) It seems quite apparent that there were many French Huguenots among the Roanoke venturers. (4) Many colonists bore typical West Country names, but there were some from Essex, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire. Others clearly originated in Ireland and in London. A number of Welsh and a few Scottish names also appear, while a few seem to be German or Dutch. (5) If I could definitely connect the Roanoke Colonist with the person about whom I have found some facts, I could tell you that there was a priest, a doctor, a lawyer, a basketmaker, some Thames watermen, and practitioners of other professions and occupations. (6) I would say that some of the 1587 colonists were wives, sisters, brothers, fathers, sons, or otherwise related to some of the 1585-86 colonists and suggest that we might thereby have a clue as to the surnames of a few of those abandoned by Lane or left by Drake. (7) Some of the earliest settlers at Jamestown bore the names of Roanoke Colonists, and while I realize that most of them were common English names (including three which appear in my own family), I would suggest that they came to America in hope of finding relatives left at Roanoke in 1587. (8) From Governor John White's journal we know that two of the women in his colony were pregnant and gave birth soon after their arrival. Another was the mother of a nursing
54 Raleigh and Quinn
child. (9) The crossing took just ten days short of three months. When I think of the conditions under which these people reached Roanoke, I feel a great deal of admiration for their courage and imagine them to have been people of great determination. I like to think that they might have felt rewarded if they could have known the ultimate result of their sacrifice in laying the foundation of English culture in America.
Fourteen of the Roanoke Colonists crossed the Atlantic more than once. John White came the maximum number of times — four. Simon Fernandes came three times, while Philip Amadas made the voyage twice. Two of the 1587 — or "Lost Colonists"— had been over previously. Six men who returned with White in 1590 had been among Ralph Lane's company.
But who might these brave, or perhaps foolhardy, people have been? As time permits I will share with you some hints from my random notes — and encourage you to take up the challenge, if you like, to match hints and facts.
JOHN ACTON had attended Balliol College, became a captain, and was eventually knighted. While he may well have been the colonist, don't forget that I really don't know.
JOHN ARUNDELL was colonel of horse when Raleigh was lieutenant general. Three other members of the same Roanoke colony, JOHN HARRIS, ROTTENBURY, and ROWSE also served in the same unit, so I am willing to conclude that this is a bit of "new" information about four of Ralph Lane's men. That four friends from the same military unit decided to go to Roanoke would not be surprising.
VALENTINE BEALE was with the Lane colony for a year. Surely this name was unusual enough that he can be identified as the father of baby Valentine Beale baptized at St. Matthew, Friday Street, on 19 February 1597.
JOHN BEDFORD is identified by David Quinn as master of the Moonlight on the 1590 expedition. Papers at Hatfield House show, among other things, that he was also master of the Roebuck in 1592.
WILLIAM BERDE of the "Lost Colony" was involved in some correspondence pertaining to coastal defense in 1586— just the year before going to Roanoke. His knowledge certainly would have been valuable at Fort Raleigh in America. One Christopher Marshall, who had been at Roanoke Island with Ralph Lane in 1585-86, was married to Elizabeth Byrde, so the possibility exists that Christopher persuaded his brother-in-law, William, to go to America.
RICHARD BERRYE, also of the "Lost Colony," was a muster captain in 1572, and identified in 1579 as being the son of James and his wife, Jeane, daughter and heir of Thomas Lane. This, of course, suggests some connection with Ralph Lane. He might have been a cousin.
JOHN BROCKE was a shoemaker and certainly would have been a useful member of the Ralph Lane expedition when shoes must have been worn out on treks along the Chesapeake Bay and down to Lake Mattamuskeet.
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 55
FRANCIS BROOKE is identified by Quinn as treasurer of the 1585 expedition. The 12th Report of the Historical Manuscripts Commission has several letters from one of this name from Portsmouth about shipping affairs, all of which tie together very nicely.
THOMAS BUTLER was one of the "Lost Colonists." Ten years previously one of this name had been in court in Essex because "a red petycote" had been stolen from his house.
ANTHONY CAGE. Harley manuscript 1483, fol. 17b, has a rough sketch of arms granted Anthony Cage of London. Several children of a man of this name were baptized at St. Matthew's, Friday Street. Remember that Valentine Beale's name also appears in the same register. This Anthony, I suggest, was a brother of John Cage. John came over in 1584 and Anthony in 1587. John may have convinced Anthony to join up.
JOHN CHANDLER of the Lane colony was the father of several children baptized at another church in Friday Street in the 1570s. It might be possible to make a case for Friday Street as a recruiting center for the Roanoke voyages.
JOHN CHAPMAN entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1568 and was rector of a church in Suffolk in 1577, but there was another man of the same name who was a grocer in 1566, while many John Chapmans show up in docu- ments in the Essex Record Office. Take your pick— priest, grocer, or litigant. He was one of the Lost Colonists and so was ALIS CHAPMAN, perhaps the wife of John. Or she may well have been the wife of the Chapman (for whom no Christian name is recorded) who may have been left in charge of the men who remained on Roanoke Island in 1586 when the Lane colony departed — or perhaps he was one of the unfortunate men out on reconnaissance at the time the fleet sailed, and Alis had come over seeking him. Or perhaps Alis Chapman was a widow seeking a lost son. The unnamed Chapman may have been Robert, as one Robert married Ales Pouker at St. Mary the Virgin, Aldmanbury, London, in 1579. It may merely have been a coincidence, but at the same church and in the same year, a William Millerd married Dorothy Booth, and William Millard was also one of Lane's colonists.
JOHN CLARKE is a name that occurs at about the right time in both Cam- bridge and Oxford lists, and he may well be one of them, as he was described as one of the "principall Gentlemen" of the 1585 voyage. One of this name contributed to the defense against the Armada, while another, conceivably the son of the colonist, was captured by the Spanish at Point Comfort, Va., in 1611.
WILLIAM CLEMENT and JAMES HYNDE, both "Lost Colonists," were imprisoned at Colchester Castle at the same time in 1582; apparently the two were guilty of stealing forty sheep.
ABRAHAM COCKE was captain of one of the ships on the 1590 crossing intended to relieve the colonists. It rather clearly was he who later achieved fame as a privateer. On one occasion in 1581, however, while only a seaman,
56 Raleigh and Quinn
he fell out with the captain over victuals and went ashore at Bahia, Brazil, where he married and settled down. In 1587 he was captured by an English ship as he was piloting a small Portuguese ship, but he afterwards commanded English ships sailing to Brazil.
MARMADUKE CONSTABLE is one of the few heretofore obscure colonists whom I think I have positively identified. He matriculated at Caius College, Cambridge, in 1581 at the age of 16, was the son of Marmaduke of Yorkshire, died in 1607, and is buried in York Minster.
CHRISTOPHER COOPER, a member of the Lost Colony of 1587, was one of the Assistants in the government and it was he who initially volunteered to return to England with the fleet that brought them over to expedite the shipment of supplies. He changed his mind the following day, however, and Governor White returned. It is possible that Cooper was White's brother-in-law or his nephew, as White was married in 1566 to Tomasyn Cooper.
ANANIAS DARE is best remembered as the father of Virginia Dare, the first English child born in America. He was a tiler and bricklayer and was the father of a "natural son," John Dare, in London. A member of the Dare family living in England now thinks he is a descendant of John Dare. In Australia, a pilot named Dare, who flies sightseers from Alice Springs to Ayers Rock, tells me that his father, a native of England, was aware of the role of the Dares in early American history, but he does not know whether this was based on family tradition or simply from his reading.
This year in London, Lebame Houston of Manteo was doing some research in the Guildhall where she consulted the register of St. Martin's Parish, Ludgate, and found that ELINOR WHITE (DARE) was baptized on 9 May 1568. She was, therefore, 19 years of age when Virginia, her daughter by Ananias Dare, was born.
ROGER DEANE was from Devon and married to Elizabeth Wood— and there were four Woods, including Agnes, among the colonists. He was described as a gentleman in 1573 when he purchased a part of Frithelstock Manor. He was still living in 1616 and recorded as a resident of Newton Petrock. Deane was with Lane's colony; THOMAS ELLIS, a warden of St. Petrock, Exeter, was a "Lost Colonist." The place-name suggests that they may have been ac- quainted and naturally raises a question about the role of Deane in the decision of Ellis to go to Roanoke. But a bit more about Ellis in a few minutes.
EDMOND ENGLISH was a "Lost Colonist," and someone named Edmund English had entered Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1565. The same? Maybe so.
SIMON FERNANDES, identified then simply as a mariner, was licensed by Raleigh in 1582 to keep a tavern and sell wine in Plymouth. We remember him now as the pilot of Raleigh's expeditions, and because he refused to follow his employer's directions to take the 1587 colony to the Chesapeake Bay.
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 57
THOMAS FOXE was with Ralph Lane at Roanoke in 1585-86. In 1559 he was described as being 12 years old and the son of Thomas Foxe, a clothworker. He was taken in by a Mr. Quarles "for his lewdness." One of this name was married in 1567 and died in 1603, but another one— or perhaps the same one— in 1594 was part owner of the cargo of a ship of Teignmouth.
JOHN GIBBES is an example of a "Lost Colonist" for whom a number of scattered facts fit. One of this name entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1564; the same or another married a widow in 1575; and a John, "Gentle- man," who may have been his father or a relative, contributed £25 towards the country's defense at the time of the Armada. According to a genealogy of the Gibbs family by Herbert C. Gibbs, this family as well as the Cheyne and Wotton families were all related. Another source reports that the Wooton family was related by marriage to the Courtney family. If these sources are correct and the Roanoke colonists were members of this branch of the family, it is likely that VINCENT CHEYNE and RISE COURTNEY of the Lane colony and this John Gibbes and LEWES WOTTON of the 1587 colony were all related.
RICHARD GILBERT of Lane's colony and WILLIAM GRENVILLE of 1584, because of the possibility of a relationship to both Raleigh and Sir Richard Grenville, should, in time, be identified. One secondary source suggests that William Grenville's experience with Amadas and Barlowe may have influenced Sir Richard in taking charge of Raleigh's large expedition of 1585. Another example of possible persuasion exists between JOHN and THOMAS HARRIS; John came first and Thomas then joined John White's 1587 colony. If this is the case, I can imagine that poor John was tormented by the thought that he had sent Thomas off to be swallowed up in the wilderness of America. This just might account for the fact that one William Harris contributed the handsome sum of £50 towards the defeat of the Armada.
HENRIE GREENE is one of only eight names known of members of the 1584 expedition. One was graduated from Corpus Christi, Cambridge, in 1577. There is a 1685 genealogy of the Greene family of Dorset with information on those who came to America, and in time it may be possible to figure out how the Roanoke Colonist fits in.
I have already suggested that two colonists may have spent time together in the same prison. ROWLAND GRIFFYN, probably Welsh judging by his name, returned from having spent nearly a year with the Lane colony. A man of this name in August 1594 was convicted of robbery and sent to the same prison as Clement and Hynde, but he escaped in September. But just to suggest how impossible it is to identify the Roanoke Colonists, a 16-year-old youth named Rowland Griffa/i, of County Caernarvon, entered Exeter College in December 1587 and was a student at Lincoln's Inn in 1594.
There probably was some connection between THOMAS HEWET of the Lost Colony and JACOB WHIDDON, captain of Raleigh's ship the Roebuck
58 Raleigh and Quinn
Since both Hewet and one Joan Whiddon are mentioned in the 1586 will of Joan Woulston there must have been some relationship.
GEORGE HOWE, the Lost Colonist who was killed by the Indians soon after his arrival, may have been the brother-in-law of Thomas Rottenbury of Lane's colony. Rottenbury's wife was Elizabeth Howe. And more about Howe next.
RICHARD HUMFREY was one of Lane's colonists. There are numerous clues as to his identity, but an unusual fact is that in 1589, Elizabeth, the daughter of one Richard Humfrey, ran in the way of workmen at a mill and was crushed by the millstone. There was a boy named Thomas Humfrey with the Lost Colo- nists but no adult of that name. I think a good guess would be that he came with his uncle, George Howe, to verify for himself the reports his father made of America, and after Howe's early death he surely was some comfort to his cousin, young George Howe, Jr.
JOHN JONES is clearly a common name, but it will help me make a point. This was the name of one of the 1587 colonists, and there were two others Joneses in the group — a man and a woman, GRIFFEN and JANE. Strange to say, in my research I have not been overwhelmed by John as a Christian name in the Jones family. There was one, however, of the right dates who was licensed to practice medicine and was patronized by the Earl of Pembroke and the Earl of Shrewsbury. However, another (at least I assume it was not the doctor!) was charged in 1581 with "violent and outrageous behaviour, breaking the peace, beating the constables and other officers, abusing the clergy, drinking, dicing, brawling, quarrelling, scoffing, loitering, swearing, &c." I would not be surprised if his neighbors urged him to try his luck in America. But I am left to contend with still another John Jones, one who was a gold and silversmith in Exeter between 1569 and 1584. There is some slight suggestion that Jane Pierce, of the 1587 colony, may have been related to the Joneses.
EDWARD KELLEY and THOMAS WISSE were both members of Ralph Lane's colony. The homes of the Kelley and the Wisse families in Devon were only about 2V2 miles apart, and so far as I can determine both are still standing. I have quite a few notes on people of these names and hope eventually to be able to sort them out.
RICHARD KEMME, a Lost Colonist, has a name that has turned up only once, even if in a slightly different form, so it may be he. On 13 May 1582 it was suggested to the Privy Council by a former mayor of Thetford that "Mr. Richard Kempe" be nominated for the office of Recorder, the chief legal officer of the city. Now Thetford is in Lincolnshire not far from the home of John Pory, a Jamestown official a few years hence. Pory's sister married a man name Ellis, and there was an Ellis man and a boy also with the Lost Colony. Pory, in 1622, was one of the earliest explorers from Virginia to visit and report on the northeastern part of North Carolina — looking, I wouldn't be surprised, for
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 59
his brother-in-law and nephew. Tempting bits of evidence (even more than I have just cited) suggest that a few other Lincolnshire folks were on Roanoke Island.
EDWARD KETTELL, is not a common name, since I have found only one reference to it. In the Essex Record Office there is a 1602 document in which a maimed soldier, then in the Low Country, seeks the aid of Edward Kyttlye in getting a pension. Since the pension was granted, we may conclude that Kettell was a man of some influence.
RALPH LANE is too well known to require more comment than to add a few facts. He was a cousin of Sir Christopher Hatton, lord chancellor to Queen Elizabeth. William Cecil, Baron Burghley, was responsible for bringing Lane to the attention of the Queen. Lane participated in Drake's Portuguese expedition of 1589 during which he was critical of Drake and described by one historian as "a captious critic, with a genius for grumbling at his superior officers." Although not a new fact, it is not widely known that Lane was knighted in 1593.
Captain WILLIAM LANE, who was with John White on his 1590 search for the Lost Colony, may have been the one of this name who married Jane Mattacott in Barnstaple, Devon, in 1579 and whose will and inventory, dated 1632, are in the Cornwall Record Office.
One MARGARET LAWRENCE, the name of a Lost Colonist, was chris- tened at St. Thomas the Apostle church, London, in January 1569.
JOHN LINSEY was with the Lane colony in 1585-86. A John Linsey entered Peter house College, Cambridge, in 1578 and was graduated in 1581 from Clare College; he was a schoolmaster in Cambridgeshire in 1582 and ordained to the priesthood in Norwich in 1584. In 1591 he was vicar of a parish in South Creake, Norfolk.
ROBERT LITTLE was one of the Lost Colonists of 1587. A document in the Essex Record Office contains the testimony of a man of the same name about a death resulting from an accident at a football game in 1567 in which he apparently participated.
WILLIAM LUCAS appears in the roster of 1587 colonists. A yeoman of this name of London in 1568 married Alice Bill. In the course of time Thomas Lucas of Middlesex contributed £25 towards the defeat of the Spanish Armada.
The name of THOMAS LUDDINGTON, although it has no title accompany- ing it, appears fifth in the list of Ralph Lane's colonists among the "Masters" and "Captains." There may well have been some connection between— or, indeed, he may have been the same person— with Thomas Lodington, fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, from 1582 to 1605. He became a noted preacher in the last decade of the sixteenth century and afterwards. This Thomas Lodington was from the County of Lincoln, entered St. Mary Hall, Oxford, at the age of 14 in 1579, was graduated in 1582, awarded a master's degree in 1585, a divinity degree in 1594, and licensed to preach in 1597. The question naturally arises,
60 Raleigh and Quinn
why the lapse of time between the master's and the divinity degree? A year in American might account for some it.
JANE MANNERING, a Lost Colonist, undoubtedly was a Mainwaring, a common family name, and Jane often appears in it as a given name. Jane, the colonist, may have been a cousin of HUMFREY NEWTON, another Lost Colonist, as his grandmother was Katherine Mainwaring.
CHRISTOPHER MARSHALL, one of the Lane colonists, bears a name common in Yorkshire as well as in London. A man of this name was married at St. Martin, Ludgate, London, to Elizabeth Byrde of Essex in 1572, and, as we have just seen, William Berde came over the following year. Or Colonist Marshall may be identified with a younger man of the same name, as a "Xpofer" Marshall and Margaret Robinson were married in 1597, in Rotherham, Yorkshire, where a Christopher Marshall was buried in 1632. It is of further interest that one Christopher Marshall of Berkshire contributed £25 towards the defeat of the Spanish Armada. Was he perhaps the Lane colonist who was concerned about the safety of his brother-in-law?
JAMES MASON, a Lane colonist, might have been the young man of the same name who entered St. John's College, Cambridge, in 1579, was graduated from Trinity in 1583, received the M. A. degree in 1586, and was licensed to teach grammar in 1583. He may be the one who died in 1638.
The name of ROBERT MASTERS does not appear among those recorded by Richard Hakluyt or known to and mentioned by John White. Nevertheless, he remembered his voyage the rest of his life and the facts were engraved on the brass plaque attached to his tomb:
Here lyeth the bodye of Robert Masters
Gent: Late Lord of this Mannour, who travelled with Thomas Candish Esqr: to Virginia and afterward aboute the globe of ye whole worlde & after his returne marryed Winefrid ye daughtr of Thorns: Cornwall of Buckland Gent. By whom he hath 2 sones & 7 daughters. He departed this life the .3. of Iune A°. 1619.
WALTER MILL, a Lane colonist, likely was a member of the Mill family whose home, Traymill, built about 1400, still stands on the River Exe between Thorverton and Bickleigh, north of Exeter. It is now a farmhouse. The Cornwall Record Office has the inventory of the estate of Walter Mill dated 1625 consisting mostly of cattle.
WILLIAM MILLARD, as we have already seen, was married to Dorothy Booth in the same church and in the same year as Robert and Alis Chapman, and there were Chapmans involved in both the Lane and the John White colonies. Millard was with Lane. One of this name, later knighted, was sheriff of Bedford- shire, while still another was a preacher in 1592 in Worcester.
HENRY MILLETT, who was with John White on the 1590 search for the Lost Colony, surely was the Henry Millett, whose son, Thomas, was baptized
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 61
in the Parish of St. Thomas the Apostle, London, in 1587. He may have hoped that his presence on Roanoke Island would help him find MICHAEL MYLLET who was perhaps his brother or father.
HUMFREY NEWTON of the Lost Colony may well have been the baby of this name christened at Wilmslow Parish, Cheshire, in 1569. The Newton family lived at Pownall Hall. He was the grandson of Katherine Mainwaring, and it was noted in a local history that he died without children and unmarried, facts which would make his identity as an 18-year-old Lost Colonist reasonable.
WILLIAM NICHOLES and JOHN NICHOLLS were both associated with John White's 1587 colony although John did not sail; he was one of the Assis- tants and probably one of those who remained in London to represent the colony there. Both men may have been related to Philip Amadas whose mother was Jane Nichols. In 1581 one William Nicholas petitioned Sir Francis Walsingham for letters to the King of Scotland for the restoration of a ship and cargo seized by one Lachlan McLane "of the Out-Isles of Scotland." Some of the crew had been slain "and cast to the dogs to be devoured." William in 1590 may have been the father of the minor, George, associated with "the trade of a clothier."
FRAUNCIS NORRIS of the Lane colony may have been a member of the noted Norris family some of whose members held high positions during this time. One Francis Norris became the first Earl of Berkshire while another, of Brentwood, was a musician and one of the "recognizances for alehouse-keeping" for Richard Sommers, suggesting a connection with Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh issued a license to the wife of George Sommers (discoverer of Bermuda) to keep a tavern, so there may have been some relationship between George and Richard Sommers and Norris, the colonist.
GABRIELL NORTH, who was at Roanoke in 1585-86, possibly was the father of Robert North (1585?— 1652?), grandson of Roger, second Lord North, and who sailed with Raleigh on his voyage to Guiana in 1617.
EDWARD NUGENT is described as an Irishman serving Ralph Lane. Later sources refer to him as a gentlemen and a man to whom extensive grants of land were made in County Cavan, Ulster.
HENRY and ROSE PAYNE, undoubtedly husband and wife, were members of White's 1587 colony. Henry Paynes who may have been this one appears in contemporary records in Suffolk and Devon.
Several possibilities exist to suggest the identity of Lost Colonist IANE [JANE] PIERCE, but none of them are positive. One Henry Piers, who died in 1623, had married Jane Jones, and this is a hint that Jane Pierce may have been a cousin or some other relationship to Lost Colonists Griffen, Jane, and John Jones, a cozy family group. An equally interesting puzzle might exist in the fact that a study of aliens in London notes that Jone Pierse was Portuguese, daughter of Balthasar Pierse, merchant. She was the sister of Fornando and Simon, which certainly suggests that they might have known the pilot, Simon Fernandes. But a further coincidence is that their landlord was one Frauncis White.
62 Raleigh and Quinn
MICHAEL POLISON was referred to as "Master" in the list of Lane colonists, suggesting that he was a cut above the average man, at least in rank. He may- have been the Mihill, son of Thomas Pullison of St. Antholin Parish christened in 1562, but more certainly he was the Alderman Pollison who in 1581 reported the number of aliens living in Vintry Ward of London.
STEVEN POMARIE, of Lane's colony, must have been a member of the extensive Pomeroy family of Devon and Cornwall. Records of administration for the estate of Stephen Pomery were registered in 1598, but at the time of the last search they could not be found.
A clue to the identify of Lane's RICHARD POORE may be found in County Tipperary where Richard Poore of Poores Town in 1592 was authorized a lease for as much of the Queen's land as was valued at about fifty pounds a year, or it may exist in Dublin where the will of Richard Poore, a husbandman of Ballyfermot, was recorded in 1616. To complicate the determination, however, it appears that a man of this name was married to Margarett Buttler in St. Andrew's Church, Plymouth, in 1592 and that one of the same name was buried at St. Martin's in the Field, London, in 1603.
Among Lane's colonists was HENRY POTKIN, and a list of aliens in London notes that Henry Potkyn of Southwarke was over the age of 12 but not a householder in 1549; in 1572 a man of the same name was married to Sicely Argentine at St. Peter's, Westcheap.
EDWARD and WENEFRID POWELL, Lost Colonists, were probably hus- band and wife. One Edward Powell was christened at St. Martin's in the Field, London, in 1569, and at the time of the threatened invasion by the Spanish Armada both Robert and Thomas Powell of Shropshire contributed £25 towards the defense of England.
It is known that Ananias Dare was a tiler and bricklayer and that John White was a painter; we may also now know the occupation of another Lost Colonist. ROGER PRATT in 1571 was described as being 38 years old, a native of Flanders who had lived in London for three years, who went to England for religious reasons but was member of no church, and that his occupation was that of a cooper.
GEORGE RAYMOND, captain of the Red Lion with Drake in 1585, was called a "gentleman captain and privateer promoter." He was with Drake at Cadiz in 1587, was captain of the Elizabeth Bonaventure in the Royal Navy at the time of the Spanish Armada attack, and went on an expedition to the West Indies in 1591; he was captain and owner or part owner of several other ships and engaged in a number of expeditions. In 1625 on the Cadiz voyage he was captain of the Great Sapphire. Just as the castle was about to yield, he embraced the master of his ship by way of congratulation for a good day's fighting when a bullet, the last shot fired by the enemy, killed both him and Sir John Bruce, the master.
Who Were the R.oanoke Colonists? 63
The parish register of Widecombe-in-the-Moor, Exeter, records the burial in 1596 of Heugh Rogers, perhaps the HUGH ROGERS who spent the year 1585-86 at Roanoke Island.
THOMAS ROTTENBURY, one of Lane's colonists, must have been a member of the Rattenbury family of Okehampton, Devon, as Thomas was a name appearing frequently among its members. Marriage and birth records as well as references to military service for them are numerous, and Sir Francis Drake's will in 1595 mentions Thomas Rattenburie as "my servant."
ANTHONY ROWSE, a Lane colonist, was a member of Parliament from East Looe, Cornwall, in 1584. A friend and finally an executor of the estate of Drake, Rowse once commanded a regiment under Raleigh. He was knighted at Whitehall in 1603 just prior to King James's coronation. He was married three times and had six children. He died in 1620 and is buried in the church of St. Dominick near his home, Halton, on the Tamar River below Cotehele.
HENRY RUFOOTE, a Lost Colonist, may have been the son, or surely a relative, of Christopher Ruffote of Devon, a tailor who was described in naturalization records as having been born in Brittany in 1524. The name of one John Ruffoote, who may have been Henry's brother, appears in documents in the Essex Record Office dated 1592 and 1593.
The names of JOHN SAMPSON, an adult and a boy, appear among the Lost Colonists as well as frequently in parish registers in the City of London at dates which make them candidates to be these people. Yet the John Sampson who contributed £25 towards the defense against the Armada was from the county of Durham.
The RICHARD SARE with Lane could have been the Richard Sayer who entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1576 and was ordained deacon in London in 1585 at the age of 24. It is possible that he did not survive long after returning home as one Richard Sara of Ludgvan, Cornwall, was dead in 1587 when his will was entered for probate— but this may have been a different person. Further, between 1591 and 1608 there are records in Essex of one or more persons of the same name who were fined for refusing to work on the roads and for stealing sheep.
In trying to identify THOMAS STEVENS, one of the Lost Colonists, there are two likely candidates to consider. One entered Magdalene College, Oxford, in 1575, was graduated in 1578, and became a lawyer in 1585. It would cer- tainly have been logical to have a lawyer in a permanent colony composed of men, women, and children. Another entered St. John's College, Oxford, in the same year, 1575, and was graduated in 1577. A Thomas Stevens (the father of one of these?) contributed £25 towards the country's defense against the Spanish Armada. It is quite likely that another colonist, RICHARD TOMKINS, was Stevens's brother-in-law, as a Richard Tompkyns was married to Margaret Stevens in St. Sepulchre's Church, London, in 1566. It may well have been Tomkins's
64 Raleigh and Quinn
father, also named Richard and entitled to bear heraldic arms, who contributed £25 towards defense against the Armada.
JOHN STUKELY, who came over with Lane, appears to have been the brother of Sir Richard Grenville's brother-in-law. It is certain that he was the father of Sir Lewis Stukely, vice-admiral of Devon and Raleigh's keeper while he was in the Tower. That the elder Stukely's interest in Roanoke and in the New World continued probably is reflected in two facts: He contributed £25 towards the defeat of the Armada, and in 1610 he was one of the incorporators of the New- foundland Company.
MARTYN SUTTON, a Lost Colonist, has eluded my best efforts to identify him, but I have an interesting assumption concerning him. I would guess that he was a young man, an only son, and likely to inherit some valuable property. Why do I think this? Thomas Sutton of Essex, a man entitled to bear heraldic arms, contributed the large sum of £100 to the nation's defense against the Armada while two other Sutton men each contributed £25. I can imagine a distressed father, a grandfather, and perhaps a childless uncle all deeply concerned about the future of the family.
NICHOLAS SWABBER, who stayed a year with Lane, must have been a member of the family of that name associated with St. Martin's in the Field, London, in the early seventeenth century. Of German extraction, they settled in Lambeth about 1584, and Nicholas perhaps had some special talent that would have been useful in a new colony. In the summer of 1622 the newsletter writer, John Pory, mentioned that one Swabber had made some false accusations against Sir Francis Wyatt, governor of Virginia. My curiosity makes me wonder whether Swabber had been one of those who spent the winter on the Chesapeake, and had the governor of Virginia made some claim that Swabber disputed?
The names of AUDRY TAPPAN and THOMAS TOPAN appear in the roster of 1587 colonists. Considering the vagaries of spelling in those days, to say nothing of the carelessness of typesetters, we may assume that they were husband and wife. There is a possibility that they were related to AGNES WOOD of the same colony. Although BENJAMIN and JOHN WOOD had been with Amadas and Barlowe in 1584, Agnes was the only Wood with the Lost Colony. In 1549 in St. Bride's Church, Fleet Street, London (where Elinor White and Ananias Dare were also married), Robert Woode was married to Johanna Toppam. Was Agnes Wood the cousin, or some other relative, of Thomas Topan or Audry Tappan?
The TAYLOR family appears to have had an unusually strong interest in Raleigh's ventures. JOHN and THOMAS were among Lane's colonists, and John returned in 1590 with John White to search for the Lost Colonists. Both John and Thomas Taylor appear frequently in records of the time— in Cambridge- shire, Devon, Essex, and Kent for John and in Devon, Cornwall, Lincolnshire, and Sussex for Thomas. Two men named John each contributed £25 towards the defeat of the Armada. CLEMENT and HUGH were Lost Colonists. Several
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 65
Clements, whose dates are roughly right for the latter two, appear in Kent. One Hugh (Hewe de Tailour) was described in 1571 as a native of Flanders who had lived in London for two years, was "a twister of silk," and who had one son. Hugh possibly was the father of Clement; perhaps it was anticipated that their knowledge of silk production would be useful in America. The boy WILLIAM WYTHERS may also have been at least acquainted with the Taylor family as a Robert Taylor in 1592 married the widow Elizabeth Wythers.
A Lane colonist, JOHN TWYT, may have been an apothecary as that was the occupation of a man of this name who was married in St. Alphage's Church, London, in 1580.
There has been a great deal of speculation about the name HAUNCE WALTERS which appears among the list of Lane's colonists and simply HANCE as a person accompanying White in 1590. The latter was described by White as a surgeon, and he was drowned at Port Ferdinando in 1590. Hance does appear as a surname in England. One William Hance entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1570, while he or another of the same name was questioned in 1583 concerning his ecclesiastical and civil obedience to the Queen. Hance Walters appears frequently in various records. He was described once as "of Brissels, the Kinge of Spaines subiecte," who lived in London after 1567, belonged to no church, and had his meals at a boarding house kept by a widow. A year later it was reported that he and his servant were going "to the Douche churche," that is, the Dutch Reformed Church. He was listed as a "merchaunt" in "Candlewykestreete Warde" in 1567, but in 1590 he was described as one of the "merchants of Antwerp" living in London. Initially it was said that he contrib- uted £100 towards the defeat of the Spanish Armada, but a later accounting noted that he had made a loan of £500, apparently in addition to the earlier amount. There also was a WILLIAM WALTERS with the Lane colony, but what his relationship might have been to Haunce is not revealed.
There is no evidence to connect Lost Colonist JOAN WARREN with a case reported in the Essex Record Office but the names. A single woman, Joan Warren of Wetherfield, was found not guilty on 4 July 1560 of stealing £5.13s.4d. "from a leathern pouch on his [Tho. Cranford] person." Richard Warren, of Myleande, Middlesex, armiger, gave £100 to the Armada defense fund.
Three unrelated facts may pertain to Lost Colonist WILLIAM WATERS as easily as to others of the same name: one was admitted to the Merchant Taylors School in 1565; one was christened at St. Mary Somerset Church, London, in 1561; and one was a mariner of Plymouth in 1579.
JOHN WHITE, the artist and the governor of the 1587 colony, was a member of the painter-stainers company. He has been studied and reported upon a number of times. It is partly from his journal that we know so much about the various Roanoke voyages, but Lebame Houston of Manteo has recently discovered in the parish register of St. Martin's, Ludgate, London, that White was married
66 Raleigh and Quinn
on 7 June 1566 to Tomasyn Cooper. Their son Thomas was born 27 April 1567 and buried 26 December 1568. Their daughter, Elinor, was born 9 May 1568. We do not know what relationship, if any, existed between John White and CUTHBERT WHITE of the Lost Colony and WILLIAM WHITE of the Lane colony. The latter, however, may have been Governor White's son as one of this name was described as a member of the painter-stainers company in 1597 when he received a license to marry Agnes Richardson in St. Sepulchre's Church, London. There are some surviving copies of John White drawings believed to have been made by a member of his family, so perhaps it was this William.
RICHARD WILDYE, Lost Colonist, illustrates the difficulty of identifying the Roanoke Colonists from no further evidence than a name. One Richard Wilde or Wylde was graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1576; another one entered Cambridge in 1561 and was a physician in 1583; another entered Cambridge in 1561 at the age of 18; one inherited Nettleworth manor in Notting- hamshire; another one was at Eton, 1556-61; one was married in January 1587; one contributed two sets of verses to Queen Elizabeth in 1560; and finally in 1580 one was "judged and punished as a vagabond"— and these were all contempo- rary Richard Wildes, any one of whom (or none of them) might have been the colonist.
It is quite likely that THOMAS WISSE, a member of the Lane Colony, and JOHN HARRIS of the same colony were cousins or uncle and nephew. Harris was provost marshal when Raleigh was lord lieutenant general of Cornwall. Wisse's mother's maiden name was Harris. Wisse inherited Sydenham, owned by the family since the time of Henry IV, and he built "the faire mansion house" that was occupied by the family until 1937, when its contents, accumulated by the family over three hundred years, were sold. The house is now a school.
DAVID WILLIAMS, a Lane colonist, entered Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1573, became a distinguished jurist, and was knighted in 1603. A portrait of him is preserved at the manor house, Nether Winchendon, Buckinghamshire.
BENJAMIN WOOD, an Amadas and Barlowe explorer, and ABRAHAM KENDALL, who was one of the settlers who came with Lane, were on a 1590 expedition to the Straits of Magellan.
The reader, having worked his way through this mass of facts and supposition, will conclude that it is still impossible to answer with any degree of certainty the question Who WERE the Roanoke Colonists? There are more clues on this point, however, than to the persistent query as to the fate of the Lost Colony. We know neither their origin nor their fate, but the events that occurred between 1584 and 1590, and their relationship to the subsequent permanent settlement of America are most important. It was these events that determined that the United States would be a nation patterned after an English model. Democratic self-government, religious liberty, the English language, and the heritage of Magna
Who Were the Roanoke Colonists? 67
Carta are ours in great measure because of the sacrifice of the men, women, and children who went to Roanoke. A lively tradition may have survived in the families of the 278 people who were at Roanoke Island between 1584 and 1590. Among them 235 different family names were represented. Between 1607 and 1625 at Jamestown, England's first permanent settlement in America, there were 74 families with the same surnames as those that had been at Roanoke Island.1 Although we cannot be certain of their identity, their names are a precious part of our heritage.
Notes
*In presenting Professor Powell, H. G. Jones, secretary-treasurer of the North Caroliniana Society and first chairman of America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee (1978-80), said: "To provide a lengthy introduction for William S. Powell in North Carolina would be the extreme of superfluity, for few names are so well known to our citizens who read and study their history. Furthermore, his name is in the forefront of those on the international scene who have been intrigued by the earliest English attempts to colonize North America. A native Tar Heel — a nickname that under all circumstances he insists must be spelled as two words — Bill Powell from childhood was fascinated by history. As a librarian, he contributed significantly in the growth of the North Carolina Collection, including its incomparable Sir Walter Raleigh Collection; as a professor, he has taught his state's history to more than six thousand students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; as a professional writer, his entries measure nearly an inch and a half in the card catalog; and as a journalist, he has disseminated the story of the past with such exactitude and flowing prose that he passes equally as a popular historian and a historian's historian.
"In addition to the usual works on specialized subjects, Bill Powell compiled the indispensable North Carolina Gazetteer and is now preparing the third volume of his massive Dictionary of North Carolina Biography. He also is working on two textbooks for North Carolina history courses, one for universities, one for public schools. The longtime historian of the Roanoke Island Historical Association, Professor Powell has had an abiding interest in the early English explorers and settlers, and today's paper on 'Who Were the Roanoke Settlers?' reflects thirty years of research on both sides of the Atlantic."
JThe names of the Jamestown colonists will be found in Annie Lash Jester (ed.), Adventurers of Purse and Person, Virginia, 1607-1625 ([Richmond? Order of First Families of Virginia], 1964).
Raleigh's Devon
Joyce Youings*
In October 1551 Walter Raleigh, Esquire, with his second son John, who had recently come of age, obtained from Richard Duke, Esquire, a lease of the capital messuage of the barton of Hayes in the parish of East Budleigh in east Devon. Walter had probably lived at Hayes for over twenty years, but he and John now had the security of a typical west country lease for a theoretical eighty years but terminable by the death of whichever of them lived the longer.1 For this they had probably paid a substantial entry fine. Walter had recently married for the third time, the new Mrs. Raleigh being Katherine, nee Champernowne, the widow, since 1547, of Otho Gilbert of Compton. It was at Hayes farm, probably in 1554, that Katherine gave birth to her and Walter's youngest son, Walter junior.
The kingdom of England, part only of an island off the mainland of Europe, which was first reasonably accurately mapped by Christopher Saxton in the 1570s, has at its southwest extremity a peninsula reaching out towards the Atlantic and comprising Cornwall, Devon, and parts of Somerset and Dorset. Devon alone, measuring some sixty-five miles from west to east and barely seventy-five miles from north to south, in North Carolina could almost be squeezed in between Raleigh and Greensboro. By English standards it was, and is, a large county, with a very distinctive physical geography. Its magistrates were organised into three "divisions," north, south, and east, but for such matters as the militia or taxation the all-important units were still the county's ancient "hundreds," thirty-two of them in all. The hundred of East Budleigh comprised the twenty parishes, including that of East Budleigh itself, east of the estuary of the river Exe and its tributary the river Clyst, some fifty thousand acres in all, with a population, calculated from the muster rolls of 1569, of about five thousand.2 This meant that there were about a thousand households, or about thirteen to the square mile, considerably more if the uninhabited heathland is excluded.
Hayes farm lay about a mile from the village of East Budleigh and is as isolated today as it was in 1551. A barton at that time was usually a large compact and enclosed rural estate. The Raleighs occupied the house but not all the land, Richard Duke's lease reserving to himself valuable meadows called "Hay Mede," "Clap Mede," and "Little Mede." The farmhouse was not the neat building you see today, which has been authoritatively dated to the end of the century, possibly as late as the year 1627 carved by the rear entry, but probably a long, low medieval house with shuttered, unglazed windows. There may still be parts of the earlier house hidden behind plaster, but there are no telltale early roof timbers. Nor is there any sign of the chapel dedicated to St. James, which is mentioned in a lease of 1525. 3 The firmly Protestant Raleighs would have had no use for a
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The county of Devon in 1575 by Christopher Saxton, from a copy of his Atlas in the library of the University of Exeter. Arrow at top points to the hamlet of Raley [Raleigh] in north Devon; the one at lower right points to Hayes Farm, where Walter Raleigh was born.
private chapel, and probably used it as a barn. The lease of 1551 mentions only "shippens," that is, stables or cowhouses. There were extensive common pasture rights on heathland stretching as far as the "towns," that is, villages, of Woodbury and Lympstone.
How much arable land appertained to Hayes is not on record. It would appear to have been a predominately pastoral and dairy holding, which would have suited Walter Raleigh senior with his many other preoccupations. But when at home
Raleigh's Devon
71
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72 Raleigh and Quinn
he and his boys, like some 90 percent of their fellow Devonians, will have known all the sights and smells of the farmyard. They were required by their landlord to keep Hay Wood fenced against "destruction and biting of beasts" following any treefelling by him. The great timber was his, and also the hawking, hunting, fishing, and fowling, but his tenants could help themselves to wood for fuel and carpentry. The rent was £12 a year, payable quarterly, with 4d. a year payable to the lord of Woodbury for the pasture, and one of the Raleighs had to act as tithing man for Hayes. They owed suit, probably no more than occasional attendance, at the hundred court of East Budleigh, an ancient tribunal which, if it met at all, probably confined itself to small debts. Such obligations on the part of tenants varied from place to place, but were attached to the land, not to the occupier.
The Hayes tenancy is interesting in that the Raleighs were undoubtedly gentlemen, undoubtedly armigerous, with a lineage far superior to that of their landlord. They themselves owned a modest but scattered estate in the parishes of Withycombe Raleigh and Colaton Raleigh, all of it, presumably, occupied by tenants.4 The Dukes had acquired Hayes in about 1500 by marriage with its heiress, and members of the family had been successful merchants and held civic office in Exeter. Richard Duke had done very well for himself in government service and had bought a great deal of former monastic property in Otterton, on the other side of the river. Gentlemen, of course, whether of ancient or recent lineage, were rarely soley rentiers: most occupied some of their land, supplying not only their own households but also the markets. Up in north Devon in the parish of Pilton, near Barnstaple, was seated one of the many branches of the Chichester family. When Sir John Chichester, one of the deputy-lieutenants of the county, lay dying in Exeter in 1586 of gaol fever caught from prisoners await- ing trial at the Assizes, he left to his wife Ann not only £500, a good deal of silver, no less than 16 feather beds, fully furnished, and all his butter, cheese, and wool, but also 12 kine (cows), 12 oxen with their gear, 450 sheep, and all his pigs, both those at his farm at Youlston in the neighboring parish of Shirwell and those at his barton of Raleigh.5 This last lay in a hamlet in Pilton parish which had been part of the estate the Chichesters had acquired in about 1400 by marriage with the heiress of the senior branch of the Raleigh family. Our Walter's immediate forbears had lived at Fardel in the parish of Cornwood near Plymouth.
Having moved as a young man from Fardel to East Budleigh, Walter Raleigh senior was to move again in comparative old age, this time to the city of Exeter. In 1555 he became a freeman, which cost him £4.6 His original intention may well have been to take advantage of the trading privileges enjoyed by freemen. At any rate by 1569 Walter was missing from the muster roll for East Budleigh, his place being taken by his eldest son George, while John had moved to Newton Abbot.7 Young Walter had probably already left home, in the company of his
Raleigh's Devon 73
Gilbert half brothers and his Champernowne cousin.
Quite a few Elizabethan gentlemen did move from the country into town, usually, it was said, in order to economise on servants, the country gentlemen being expected to keep a great many. In Exeter the Raleighs would not have lacked good company. The city, with its Rougemont Castle and its ancient cathedral, towered both physically and figuratively over the Exe valley. Some nine thousand people were crammed into the ninety-three acres within the walls. The Raleighs lived near the bishop's Palace Gate, not far from the fashionable High Street where most of the city's wealthier merchants had their houses, but actually in the parish of St. Mary Major, which sprawled down the hill over one of the poorest parts of the city, inhabited by cloth makers and unskilled labourers. They will have seen a good deal of both extremes of Exeter society. They will no doubt have made common cause with the minority of Exeter citizens who were mil- itantly Protestant, including the busy city chamberlain, John Hooker. The elder Raleighs died and were buried in Exeter in 1581 and 1594 respectively.
Only Plymouth approached Exeter in terms of population, but there was a handful of other essentially urban communities, notably the twin ports of Barnstaple and Bideford in north Devon, both with facilities for large ships, and Totnes and Dartmouth on the river Dart in the south. Far more numerous were the country towns, basically large villages with a variety of full-time craftsmen, a few shopkeepers, and, of course, weekly markets. In east Devon the largest were Tiverton, Cullompton, Ottery St. Mary, Honiton, and Axminster, with Bradninch and Colyton not far behind, each of them strategically placed, on a busy road, usually near a river crossing. Devon was notorious for its number of what were only technically boroughs: the population of each of these superficially urbanised villages barely reached one thousand, even including the residents of the large parishes of which, in terms of acreage, the country towns occupied only a very small core.
Besides these larger country towns there were throughout the country, except on Dartmoor, and Exmoor, dozens of villages where about thirty homesteads lay tightly clustered together— the word is "nucleated"— some strung out along the highway but mostly in a glorious jumble of interlocking tenements, gardens, orchards, closes, and alleyways, all under the shadow of a parish church. Although in many cases rebuilt in the fifteenth century, a time of generally low population, most parish churches could still comfortably accommodate the 150 or so inhabitants expected to attend regularly. No one in Raleigh's Devon needed to travel far to a church. There were seventeen in the city of Exeter, and elsewhere they ranged from the splendid church at Cullompton extended in the 1520s by the munificence of John Lane, a local clothier, to the little early medieval church in the middle of the fields at Upton Hellions in mid-Devon, or its neighbor at Shobrooke, all of them as sentinel then as they are today.
The parish of Upton Hellions represented a complete contrast to the country
74 Raleigh and Quinn
town or nucleated village. Here there was only a scatter of single farms or hamlets, the latter mere huddles of three or four farms. Such dispersion was to be found not only on the thinner soils of west Devon and on the fringes of Dartmoor but also here and there on the rich clays of the river valleys. Thousands of farm- houses are still there today, still as isolated as Hayes (or more so), usually tucked away in sheltered valley bottoms at the end of long lanes, their inhabitants still snug within cob walls and beneath roof timbers heaved into place well before Raleigh's day.
There were in Elizabethan Devon very few landed magnates and, even after the dispersal of the former monastic lands, none who really dominated any part of the county. The Courtenay family, earls of Devon since the thirteenth century, had come nearest to doing so, especially in the Exe valley below their castle at Tiverton, their principal residence. But they had ended on the executioner's block in 1538 and their political successors, the Russells, later earls of Bedford, though endowed by Henry VIII with an estate to match their status, were only occasional visitors. They were entirely rentiers and not aggressive landlords. The death of the second earl in 1585 leaving as his heir a fourteen-year-old grandson, effectively ended their political ascendancy, and indeed put into reverse their accumulation of land. Bedford's successor as Lord Lieutenant of Devon, the earl of Bath, possessed only a modest estate in the county. Unlike Russell in 1539, neither he, nor his opposite number in Cornwall, Sir Walter Raleigh, was provided by the Queen with any augmentation of his landed estate.
By contrast mere gentlemen were fairly thick on the ground, upwards of three hundred heads of households by the 1580s, the majority entitled to be called esquire Dozens of them lie in uncomfortable but lifelike effigies in parish churches all over Devon, as if awaiting to be visited as in their day they visited their many relations. Christopher and Christina Chudleigh not only visited her parents, William and Ann Stratchley, at Ermington in south Devon but, no doubt because she was their sole heiress, are commemorated there although they lived all of twenty-five miles away at the Chudleigh's ancient seat in the parish of Ashton. Indeed Christina also appears on her parents' fine brass memorial and the eldest Chudleigh boy was christened Stratchley. With a name like that he could hardly survive, and he died, aged ten, in 1572; only two years after his father. It was his younger brother, John, who inherited the substantial addition to the Chudleigh family property at William Stratchley's death in 1583, only to dispose of much of it to pay for his luckless privateering ventures. He was drowned in the Magellan Straits in 1589, but not before, aged only twenty, he had accompanied Sir Walter Raleigh to Westminster in 1585 as knight of the shire for Devon. Stratchleys, Chudleighs, and Raleighs: they could all present to the visiting heralds authentic ancestries stretching back many centuries.
About a dozen or so of the country's gentlemen at any one time were knights, not necessarily on account of their military experience and reputation but selected
Raleigh's Devon 75
as those thought best able to serve the Queen as civilian administrators. Indeed the knights were not always the wealthiest gentlemen as witness Walter Raleigh in 1585. Allowing for absentees, including the considerable number of Devonians who followed successful careers as lawyers in London, not all the 450 parishes had a gentleman resident. Nor was the territorial scatter at all even. In selecting them to be named as JPs the powers-that-be faced considerable difficulties. There was always more choice near Exeter than in the vicinity of Plymouth. Only the ownership of one or more manors conferred real prestige and while many knights and gentlemen were in the feudal sense landlords, others possessed only a scatter of small freeholdings from which to derive their cash income. The almost universal lack of identity between manor and parish in any case meant that few gentlemen had a monopoly of local lordship. Few had had the capital to invest substantially in the land market unlocked in the early part of the century by the dissolution of the monasteries, but there had been plenty of scope for careful timing of small sales and purchases in the interests of rationalisation.8 Marriage with an heiress, or its corollary, death without male heirs, was still the biggest factor in determining the pattern of landownership. But some of the Devon gentry were pretty successful in rearing at least one son generation after generation. In the Exe valley there is still a squire who can trace the ownership of his estate back over seven hundred years in the direct male line. His family had already survived for three centuries when Raleigh lived, but for all their lineage the Elizabethan Fursdons kept a very low profile. Not so the majority of gentlemen, even those of modest substance being at pains to advertise their status by building ostentatious gatehouses at the approaches to their unpretentious mansions, not to speak of grotesquesly ornate fireplaces in their newly ceiled halls.
But their prime concern was to conserve and if possible augment their ancestral estates, to ensure the continuity of their line. Primogeniture was the rule in Devon, but gentlemen were under some pressure to endow their younger sons. William Amadas of Plymouth (calling himself merely "gentleman" although his father, John Amadas, had bequeathed to his younger son a silver-gilt goblet bearing the family arms) died in 1561 possessed of a considerable amount of property in and around Plymouth and Tavistock. He left all the land he had purchased, including the former Carmelite or White Friary near the waterfront in Plymouth, to be equally divided among his four sons. His eldest, John, who alone inherited the ancestral land, was only eighteen and a half years old. The Amadases did not make old bones and when John died, aged thirty-nine, in 1581, but not before he had been mayor of Plymouth in 1574-75, he left everything to his widow Jane for her lifetime, though naming Philip, the eldest of his three sons, aged only sixteen, as his sole heir. How long Mrs. Amadas lived I have not yet been able to discover— she almost certainly married again into the Plymouth civic establishment— but Philip will not be unknown to North Carolinians as the ship's captain, still only nineteen, who came with Arthur Barlow to these shores in 1584.
76 Raleigh and Quinn
Although the earlier John Amadas, Philip's great-grandfather, who lived in Tavistock, referred to William Hawkins of Plymouth as his "cousin," it is clear that Amadases had been gentlemen when Hawkinses, and certainly Drakes, had been mere tradesmen and farmers. As one reads their wills something not only of their lifestyle but also of the changes which only a decade or two had wrought in their lives comes across the centuries. John of Tavistock, when he made his will in 1546, although, like all good Protestants, he committed his soul to God alone, made provision for an elaborate and conventional funeral, and for the distribution of an enormous number of doles to the poor of a circle of parishes in both Devon and Cornwall. One of his many bequests was that of his furred black camlet gown, his best tawney satin doublet, a feather bed with bolster, pillow, and a pair of sheets to his stepson William Trevesper, who also got a cow. John's own younger son, Robert, was to be kept at school until he had mastered his grammar and the Latin tongue and was then to proceed to such other "science" as should be thought by the executors meet for his living. When William (Robert's elder brother) made his will in 1553, though fortunately in view of his very definite commitment to Protestantism he did not die until 1561, he provided for the reading, in an audible voice, on the Sunday following his death, of the homily of the salvation of mankind by Christ alone. He nevertheless left money for a "competent dinner" for the Mayor and Council of Plymouth, to be followed a week later by a "drinking" for the common people. Nor were the poor of Plymouth forgotten, but he had clearly established himself as a town gentleman and there were no doubt others like him in the port. Young Philip came of no mean parentage in any sense of the term.9
As active farmers there was little to distinguish gentlemen from yeomen, except that the former, if they could afford to do so, employed bailiffs, and were addressed as "Master" rather than simply by their forenames. But yeomen were far more numerous than gentlemen, there being usually around a dozen of them in any large parish, "manuring," that is cultivating, upwards of fifty acres of arable land, besides keeping stock.10 They were the main suppliers of the urban markets — and hence the principal targets of popular and official displeasure when poor harvests sent the price of their grain rocketing. They nourished, it was said, no envy of the gentlemen, to whom they were often economically superior, having fewer expenses and, unless in a village without gentlemen, fewer public responsibilities. They were the greatest buyers of long leases.
The investigation of surviving Devon yeomen's farmhouses, both those in nucleated villages and those in hamlets or in complete isolation, has progressed a long way archaeologically in the last thirty years or so. But the identification of their owners or occupiers lags way behind.11 There is, for example, a house called Boycombe in the parish of Farway in east Devon, still today in its setting very much the farmhouse. Even its basic layout is like that of the typical farm, with a cross passage more than halfway down the slope. But its detailed fabric
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Sanders, Lettaford, in the parish of North Bovey, Devon, is pictured at top. Bottom photograph shows the shippen at the lower end of the building with its original cen- tral drain. Both photos by the author.
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Parts of the "barton" below the parish church of Shobrooke date from the sixteenth century. The large yard below the farmhouse is enclosed by "linhays," solid cob exter- nally and open fronted on the inside. At bottom is the town of Plymouth about 1540. British Library, Cotton MSS, Augustus I i, 35-9, from engraving in D. and S. Lysons, Topographical and Historical Account of Devonshire (London: 1822). Both photos furnished by the author.
Raleigh's Devon 79
has certain unmistakeable refinements, the external worked stone, the upper storeys, the upstairs fireplaces, and the neat and extraordinarily sanitary gardrobes. If it had been the residence of a gentleman we should almost certainly know his identity. Was it perhaps the unusually sophisticated house of a yeoman farmer? Compare this with another stone house, a traditional "long house" on the fringes of Dartmoor. Sanders, at Lettaford, a hamlet in North Bovey, also has a cross passage, and on the lower side there still survives intact the shippen for the stock. Across the passage is the family's accommodation, each side helping no doubt to keep the other warm. The upper storey was not added until the seventeenth century. Its survival is a miracle, but whether it was originally built in the early sixteenth century as a yeoman's house or, as it later became, that of a modest husbandman, we still have to find out.12
Building materials varied, of course, according to what was most readily available locally. In east Devon there was an ample supply of flint, and near Dartmoor plenty of granite, but on the clay soils elsewhere everything was of cob, that is, earth bound by straw, and, if available, hair, always, however, set on stone footings. Cob produces timeless walls, very difficult to date: hence the importance of roof timbers. Equally suitable for small homesteads or large mansions, it could also be used for really large buildings such as the great linhays or open-fronted barns arcaded around vast internal yards, which gave, and still give, so many large Devon farmhouses the outward look of fortresses.
By and large Elizabethan farming in Devon was on a small scale. Why this should be is difficult to explain except in terms of the natural inertia of Devonians. Even the plentiful supply of good pasture did not produce large-scale graziers. The Spencers of the Midlands or the Bacons of East Anglia had no counterparts in Devon. There was indeed little scope for agrarian aggression. Open fields, that is, strip patterns, with or without communal management, were not unknown, especially in those parishes with large nucleated settlement, but much land which had earlier been open fields had been peaceably enclosed long before 1500 and far more had been enclosed from the beginning. The correlation with scattered farms is, of course, very close. The enclosed fields of Devon were, and to a large extent still are, bounded by massive hedgebanks, many feet high and wide. Until the advent of Dutch elm disease, most were topped by great timber trees, and until modern machinery took its toll, by much sapling growth. Main roads and lanes were not only banked on either side, but being rarely level for any distance, soil and traffic combined to reduce them to the narrow hollow ways still very typical of Devon's more remote countryside.13
Farming practice in Elizabethan Devon was, however, by contemporary standards, advanced. Sand and seaweed were widely used for dressing the soil— and indeed the former carried long distances — and also a technique known as "De[vo]nshiring." This entailed paring off a thin layer of turf, leaving it to dry, burning it in heaps and finally spreading the ashes. John Hooker of Exeter, writing
80 Raleigh and Quinn
in about 1600, not only admired the ditches which the Devon farmers dug, both for drainage and irrigation, but he also described how the country people "dress, prune and trim" their apple trees "by opening the roots, by paring away the watery [weak] boughs and by grafting." He commended enclosure which, he said, promoted the growth of valuable timber and also enabled stock to be moved at appropriate intervals to "new springing grass."14
There was still much "waste," that is, land not yet "manured" but better than mere upland grazing, some of it in fact used for the growing of gorse for fuel. "Outfield" was occasionally made to yield a crop or two, and in most parishes there were still possibilities of adding permanent "intakes" to the "infield." On the large manor of Hartfield in northwest Devon in 1566 hardly more than half the land was cultivated as compared with the situation in 1842. On Dartmoor the occupiers of the "ancient tenements" were allowed by the Duchy of Cornwall, at each change of tenancy, to take an extra eight acres, but in 1600 it was reported that new tenants usually took possession of far more, calling it "forest measure"! In theory everyone in Devon, except the inhabitants of Barnstaple and Totnes, could for a modest payment put animals on Dartmoor, and we hear no complaints (as we do today) of overstocking.15
For all that, and allowing for the fact that large parts of Devon, especially Dartmoor, were uninhabitable, the county was, by national standards, heavily populated. A map showing the number of householders assessed for tax in the early sixteenth century shows that the valleys of the Exe and its tributaries, and also of the rivers Teign and Dart, and the great southern wedge known as the South Hams, were among the most densely populated parts of England, with over twenty households to the square mile.16 Since then, in Devon as throughout England, population had risen substantially and whether as a result there were more or only larger households, by the mid-1580s there may well have been some young men over whom loomed the possibility of being without regular employment, and young women waiting impatiently for marriage. The price of food, too, although erratic, was moving steadily upwards. In the 1590s wheat prices in Exeter averaged over thirty shillings per quarter compared with under twenty in the 1560s. By comparison wages had hardly moved, the maximum permissible for non-resident farm labourers from 6d. to 8d. a day without food and drink in 1564 to 7d. to 8d. in 1594. Even harvest rates had risen from lOd. to only 12d. Living-in bailiffs, however, had progressed from 40s. a year to 53s.4d.17 There are no quarter sessions records for Devon until the 1590s, but even then the magistrates seem to have been chiefly occupied in sorting out claims for relief from wounded soldiers and sailors. The only serious case of riot seems to have emanated from the household of the earl of Bath, the Lord Lieutenant. Earlier the county had sent as many as possible of its rogues and vagabonds to Ireland: now it was Brittany.
Unemployment, or what was equally serious, underemployment, was probably
Raleigh's Devon 81
never a major problem in Devon. Even for those with minimal land, there had always been ample opportunities for supplementing income by part-time or seasonal industrial occupations. In terms of numbers employed, the most important was the manufacture of woollen cloth, in particular spinning, which was almost entirely a rural occupation. There were weavers and fullers who were full-time, but they were usually to be found in the larger villages and country towns, and of course in Exeter. Most clothmakers, whether full- or part-time, were self-employed, buying and selling from week to week in the multiplicity of markets all over Devon. As in farming so in cloth-making there were few entrepreneurs, except for the merchant exporters. Devon specialised in kerseys, usually called "dozens" because they were half the standard length and breadth. Tools such as the teasel-frame and cloth shears appear on many early-sixteenth century bench ends, including those at East Budleigh, and there is a pair of shears to be seen, clasped by an angel, in the Lane aisle at Cullompton.
Next in importance numerically were the tinners, also largely part-time, but in their case seasonal workers. Tin was only to be found on Dartmoor and the working tinners would leave their valley farms and live in rough dug-outs near the mines and blowing houses. By the late sixteenth century the industry had passed its peak but the highly privileged tinners, gentlemen employers as well as labouring men, were not easily discouraged. Profits were modest, except for those of the tin merchants, but presumably sufficient to make the incredibly hard living conditions worthwhile.18 Raleigh claimed that, as Lord Warden of the Stannaries, he had increased the working tinners' livelihood. He also persuaded many of them to go to Ireland.
Devon's fourth "commodity," to use John Hooker's term, was the sea which lapped, and ofter battered, the county's long coastline, both north and south. A survey made in 1560 credits Devon, without Exeter, not only with more ships of 100 tons and over than anywhere else except London, but with 1,268 mariners — that is, men skilled in their handling. This does not sound many but even then it was over one sixth of the total in the whole of England. Another survey of 1583, this time excluding Plymouth and Dartmouth, puts the whole number at 2,016, plus 150 master mariners.19 Probably as many again were fishermen, using only rowing boats. The principal catch in coastal waters, especially west of Start Point, was pilchards, of which sufficient were brought into Plymouth in the 1590s to be worth taxing to pay for the town's defences. But the really spectacular maritime growth point, the one which probably went furthest to mop up Devon's surplus manpower, was the annual voyage to the Newfoundland Banks for cod. Here, both in terms of total catch and of number of ships and seamen involved, Dartmouth probably had the edge over Plymouth. Far more seamen were involved (and in the process learned to sail in deep waters out of sight of land) than were ever engaged in privateering. Most of the catch was brought over dried and sold directly to the largely Catholic continent of Europe.20
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This again was a seasonal occupation, which may explain why the seamen were principally resident, not in either Plymouth or Dartmouth but spread along the coastal parishes and in some cases some way inland. A survey made in 1570 locates the largest number, 123, in the parish of Stokenham which, although it has several miles of coastline had no haven suitable for anything but small fishing boats. Seamen from this area adjacent to the strip of sandbank and freshwater lagoon known as Slapton Ley will have felt very much at home on the Outer Banks, though no doubt awed by the latter's extent. To return to seamen and their homes, Plymouth, even with its neighbours, Stonehouse and Saltash, produced in 1570 only 122. Salcombe, with its splendid estuarine harbour, was home for 56 mariners but there were also 55 in Blackawton to the east, which had a very tenuous connection with the sea. The inclusion in the 1583 survey of 24 named ships' masters living in Kenton, and ten in Topsham, reminds us of the continuing importance of the Exe estuary. Lympstone, the reputed birthplace of Ralph Lane, had four masters and 22 others who were either mariners or fishermen. In north Devon the greatest comcentration of masters was not in Barnstaple or Bideford, each with six, but in Northam, the large parish at the meeting of the rivers Taw and Torridge, which contained the growing maritime community of Appledore.21
Two decades later Clovelly, for long only a cliff-top village to the west of Barnstaple Bay, would no doubt have produced more than the three mariners noted in 1583, and certainly more fishermen, for by then the local landlord, George Cary, at his own expense, some £2,000 according to his will, had built the quay and harbour which still serves its original commercial purpose as well as providing a promenade for summer visitors.22 Cary's fish cellars and his tenants' stout little stone cottages still cling to the steep hillside on either side of the cobbled street. Clovelly, he claimed, was no longer a place of no importance. He had married, incidentally, the widow of John Chudleigh.
Efforts to develop havens on the coast of east Devon, though strenuously pursued, were not so successful. Here the problem was to undo the late-medieval silting up of the narrow inlets. Sandbanks were a problem at Plymouth, too, before the building of the Breakwater, and also in Barnstaple Bay, where they still are, but in both cases they were passable at high tide. Energetic efforts were made by the men of the small inland town of Colyton in the 1570s to raise money, in their case to excavate the former upper estuary of the river Axe. They were sufficiently percipient not only to have noticed but to draw to the Queen's attention the fact that "sundry anchors and ships' timbers [are] daily found in the land, meadows and marshes thereabout." The Queen not only agreed to recommend all her clergy to mention Colyton's project to "wealthy persons in time of sickness" but sanctioned the compulsory purchase of stone and timber and the impressment of workmen, the latter hardly suggesting that there was much local unemployment. Within two years there are hints that some of the
Raleigh's Devon 83
money raised had disappeared before it reached Colyton, and the work itself was probably never started.23
But in Raleigh's very own country efforts to reopen the river Otter to shipping had a longer history. Richard Duke had already been attempting something in the 1540s, but presumably to no effect for a splendid map in the British Library must be part of a later attempt to interest Lord Burghley.24 This depicts the Devon and Dorset coast from Dartmouth to Portland with a great expanse of deep water inside the mouth of the Otter below the twin village of East Budleigh and Otterton which the promoters promised would be "very good for savegarde of shippes." Entry was to be between two projecting piers and the introduction of elaborate compass bearings was possibly intended to suggest that this was the centre of the universe. Whether Raleigh's support was ever sought or given is not recorded, but the dream of a new Otterton haven was never realised.
Some initiatives, however fruitless, do at least indicate a growing interest in developing the county's maritime potential. They need to be viewed against the background on the one hand of conventional coastal and overseas trade and, of course, on the other of privateering and even of piracy. In north Devon all four of them were deliberately and inextricably complementary. At Exeter the emphasis was on the longstanding legitimate and safe trade with France, while the men of Plymouth and Dartmouth, especially the former, were far more adventurous. Plymouth owed much to the Hawkins dynasty, which had, of course, an abiding interest in legitimate overseas trade, but when the trade of the Devon ports in the late sixteenth century has been fully investigated it may emerge that substantial fortunes were made by those who have not yet attracted the limelight. As for privateering, it is only too obvious from the Roanoke story what a large part was played by the insatiable appetite for prizes in the failure to sustain the colony. How are we to explain why Raleigh and some at least of his fellow Devonians, normally civilised and law-abiding at home, content with a modest income and what luxuries it would buy, regarded the oceans not as common land where all could work their own passage in peace and harmony, but as a sort of waste which all could plunder? Privateering, and indeed naked piracy, was for too long the expensive sport of gentlemen. Few made it pay. With the notable exception of Buckland Abbey, there is scant material evidence of their success in Devon's heritage today.
84 Raleigh and Quinn
Notes
* Introducing Joyce Youings, John D. Neville, executive director of America's Four Hundredth Anniversary, said: "This afternoon we continue our look at Sir Walter Raleigh through two papers about areas important to him. Our first paper, 'Raleigh's Devon,' is by a fellow Devonian, Joyce Youings, a native of Barnstaple on the northwestern coast of the county. There she attended Barnstaple Girls' Grammar School. She then earned her bachelor's and doctoral degrees from the University of London. For many years she has been professor of English social history at the University of Exeter; she has also been a visiting professor in New Zealand universities and at the University of Kansas. The author of Devon Monastic Lands (1955), Tuckers Hall Exeter (1968), The Dissolution of Monasteries (1971), and Sixteenth Century England (1984), Dr. Youings also wrote for America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee the booklet, Ralegh's Country: The South West of England in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (1986). A year earlier, she organized the Raleigh conference at her university and published the papers under the title Raleigh in Exeter 1985: Privateering and Colonisation in the Reign of Elizabeth I.
"Professor Youings is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and serves as, or has served as, president of the Devon History Society, president of the Devon and Exeter Institution, chair- man of the Council of the Devonshire Association, co-director of the Leverhulme Research Project on the maritime history of Devon, and since 1953 has been honorary general editor of the Devon and Cornwall Record Society."
1T.N. Brushfield, "Raleghana," Transactions of the Devonshire Association, 28 (1896): 274-76.
2AJ. Howard and T. L. Stoate, Devon Muster Roll for 1569 (Almondsbury, Bristol: 1977), pp. 3-13.
3Devon Record Office, Rolle MSS, 96/M/32/10.
4For details see Joyce Youings, Ralegh's Country: The South West of England in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth I (Raleigh: 1986) pp. 1-2.
5Public Record Office, Wills, PROB 11/69/19.
6M.M. Rowe and A. Jackson (editors), Exeter Freeman 1266-1967 (Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, Extra Series I, 1973), p. 81.
7Howard and Stoate, op. cit., pp. 9, 234.
8J.A. Youings, Devon Monastic Lands (Exeter: Devon and Cornwall Record Society, New Series I, 1954), pp. xx-xxix.
'Public Record Office, Chancery, Inquisitions Post Mortem, C 142/135/126; 201/79, and Wills, PROB 11/37/31 and 44/35. The discovery that John Amadas was mayor of Plymouth I owe to Peter Cornford.
10M. Campbell, The English Yeomen (New Haven: 1942), which draws a good deal on Devon evidence, was a pioneer work of its time, but a new book on the subject is badly needed.
nThe best work on the subject is M. W. Barley, The English Farmhouse and Cottage (London: 1961).
12N.W. Alcock, PC. Child, and J.M.W Laithwaite, "Sanders, Lettaford: a Devon Longhouse," Proceedings of the Devon Archaeological Society, 30 (1972): 227-33.
13Almost everything that can be said about the history of the Devon landscape derives from the pioneering work of W. G Hoskins, especially his Devon (London: 1954 and 1972).
14John Hooker, "Synopsis Chorographical of Devonshire," British Library, Harl. MS 5827, fo. 8.
15H.S.A. Fox, "Outfield Cultivation in Devon and Cornwall," in M. Havinden (editor), Hus- bandry and Marketing in the South West (Exeter: 1973), and M. Havinden and Freda Wilkinson, "Farming," in Crispin Gill (editor), Dartmoor (Newton Abbey: 1970), pp. 139-82.
16J. Sheaill, "The Distribution of Taxable Population and Wealth in England during the Early Sixteenth Century," Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 55 (1972): 119.
Raleigh's Devon 85
17W.G. Hoskins and H.P.R. Finberg, Devonshire Studies [a collection of essays], (London: 1952): 420-21.
18For a brief account with references, see Joyce Youings, Ralegh's Country, chapter IV.
19Public Record Office, SP 12/11/27; 156/45.
20H.A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries (Toronto: 1954).
21Public Record Office, SP 12/71/75; 156/45.
"Public Record Office, PROB 11/100/40.
23P.L. Hughes and J.F. Larkin, Tudor Royal Proclamations (New Haven and London: 1964-69), pp. 387-89.
24British Library, Royal MSS, 18 D III, fos. 9v.-10.
86
Raleigh and Quinn
John D. Neville (top), director of America's Four Hundredth Anniversary Committee, introduced Joyce Youings (bottom right) and Nicholas Canny. They spoke respectively on "Raleigh's Devon" and "Raleigh's Ireland."
Raleigh's Ireland
Nicholas Canny*
Walter Raleigh had dealings with Ireland at three separate junctures in his career. His first direct association with Ireland was as a soldier- adventurer during the years 1580-82; his second association, which spanned the years 1586-1602, was related to his attempt to establish himself as a proprietor in the plantation of Munster; and his third association occurred in 1617 when he was desperately attempting to finance his last Guiana expedition.
Insofar as Raleigh's engagement in 1580 with the interminable Elizabethan wars in Ireland evinces any surprise, it is because he had not become involved there at an earlier stage. Most English gentlemen adventurers of his generation who wished to make a career or reputation for themselves had found their way to Ireland before 1580, and Raleigh's close relatives Humphrey Gilbert, Richard Grenville, and Peter Carew had been prominently involved in Irish military affairs since the mid-15605.1 The fact that Raleigh had not joined his relatives when they first went to Ireland was probably explained by his youth (he was only eleven in 1565), and his absence from there provided him with the opportunity to become briefly involved with the French wars of religion and to further advance his education at Oriel College and the Middle Temple as well as in a privateering venture of 1578. 2 Such a varied training and experience was quite typical of those English captains who had preceded him to Ireland, and Raleigh might be said to have been rounding off his education as a soldier adventurer while at the same time he was becoming involved in a fresh theatre of activity which some hoped would provide the opportunity of fame and fortune for the venturesome.
This portrayal of Raleigh's motivation when he did go to Ireland in 1580 indicates that he, like so many other younger sons who had preceded him there,3 was grasping about for any employment that might eventually lead to his eleva- tion to a social position appropriate to his birth and education. Military employ- ment in itself was unlikely to lead to this elevation, but the successful conduct of a campaign could bring a captain to the attention of his superiors which, in turn, might lead to his being appointed to a permanent position on the civil or military establishment. This would have meant being put in charge of a permanent garrison in one of the outlying provinces or being placed in a quasi- civil position on one of the provincial councils that had recently been estab- lished in Ireland.4 Successful service in the provinces could then lead to advance- ment to a senior office in the Dublin administration, and it always placed one in a position to identify and advance claim to any property in the provinces to which Crown title might be established.5 It was necessary that one should
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be appropriately qualified before one was thus favored but it was even more important that one should enjoy the support of those who were in a position to dispense patronage. This was the case because there were always more qual- ified candidates than there were positions to be filled in the permanent establish- ment and the honors went invariably to those who were best connected. We can take it that Raleigh was seeking to establish just such a connection when he hung about the Court in the months before his departure for Ireland in July 1580, and the patron that he then found was Arthur Lord Grey de Wilton6 who had been appointed to serve as lord deputy of Ireland and who was assigned to deal with the rebellion that had recently broken out in Munster and that threatened the very security of the state in Dublin.
Lord Grey was as suitable a patron for Raleigh as he was a suitable client for the nobleman. They were both fervent Protestants who were enthusiastically in favor of resisting the threat of Catholicism whether it presented itself at sea or on land, whether on the Continent or in Ireland. Moreover, Grey had been selected for appointment in Ireland only after the position of governor there had been declined by Sir Henry Sidney and after he had taken advice from Sidney on what policies to pursue there.7 This meant that those clients of Sidney who already served in Ireland, including Raleigh's own kinsmen, would enjoy the favor of Lord Grey as they had enjoyed that of Sidney who had brought them to the country during his first period of government in Dublin.8 And most important of all, Grey was given the command of an army of 8,000 men, a force far in excess of that commanded by Sidney, and a force that was considered sufficient both to suppress the current revolt and to prepare the way for a compre- hensive scheme of colonization such as had been adumbrated by Sidney when, during the years 1569-71, Ireland had also been disturbed by revolt.9
It seemed therefore that Raleigh had been particularly fortunate in winning appointment as a captain under Lord Grey. The possibility that a comprehensive reform of Ireland would be undertaken by this force seemed even better in 1581 because by then a second revolt had erupted in Ireland this time under the leader- ship of James Eustace, Viscount Baltinglass.10 Lord Baltinglass was a landowner of Anglo-Norman descent who held his property within the English Pale, which was the most anglicized part of Ireland incorporating most of the four counties closest to the city of Dublin. Political and social grievance contributed to the dissatisfaction that led to revolt but the reason that was articulated by Baltinglass was that he could no longer owe allegiance to a monarch who had been excom- municated by the Pope. His call did not, as it happened, evoke much response within the Pale, and his action became dangerous only when he joined forces with some Gaelic chieftains of the mountainous region south of Dublin. None- theless, the revolt of Baltinglass, coinciding as it did with that of the earl of Desmond in Munster, presented the serving English officials and captains in Ireland with the opportunity to impress upon the Queen that only convinced
Raleigh's Ireland 89
Protestants born in England should be entrusted with positions of responsibility in Ireland.11 Then, it was argued, with reliable people in place it would be possible to proceed with a systematic course of action that would bring the Gaelic Irish from their erstwhile barbarism to an acceptance of civility, and that would bring all elements of the Irish population into conformity with the Protestant state religion.
Those who argued this case with the Queen were conscious that extensive confiscation of property was likely to result from the rebellions that had occurred, and they wanted to make sure that these lands would be assigned to some of themselves. There were none more conscious of the possibilities than Raleigh's kinsmen who were already stationed in Munster, and Raleigh quickly made his way to the Munster theatre of action so that he could join with them in the conduct of a war they hoped would lead to their own enrichment. Raleigh was no sooner there than he identified Thomas Butler, earl of Ormond, as the person most likely to frustrate these ambitions, and Raleigh comes to our atten- tion in the documents principally when he is engaged upon an assault against the person of Ormond.12
This earl was, like the earl of Desmond and Viscount Baltinglass, of Anglo- Norman descent and he held enormous estates in the northeastern part of Mun- ster as well as in south Leinster. Unlike the rebelling lords, however, Ormond was a Protestant, he was a cousin of Queen Elizabeth through the Boleyn family and he had spent most of his early years at Court before retiring to his family estates in 1569. Moreover he was an inveterate foe of the earl of Desmond, despite the fact that Desmond was married to his widowed mother, and he had been given responsibility by the Queen to bring Desmond and his adherents to justice. In accepting appointment as Lord General of the government forces in Munster, Ormond was determined that no quarter should be given to Desmond or his immediate relatives, but he did favor the offer of pardon to the less promi- nent confederates, and he hoped to win support from the quiescent landowners in Munster by suggesting that they would become the beneficiaries of the confisca- tion of the Desmond family estates.13
The adoption by the Queen of this advice would have put paid to whatever hopes the English captains and officials might have fostered of profiting from the war in Ireland. It was for this reason that a vendetta against Ormond had been organized before Raleigh's arrival in the province and why he, together with all other English captains and officials in Munster, stood firmly behind Lord Grey when he moved into the province with his fresh army to take over the military command from Ormond. The war that was now waged was a total war, aimed at bringing a quick conclusion to the revolt by the elimination of the Catholic expeditionary force of 600 men that had been sent from the Continent in support of the rebels and by the forced unconditional surrender of all native landowners who were known to be involved in the rebellion.14
90 Raleigh and Quinn
The first of these objectives was attained when the continental force was tracked down in its fortified position at Smerwick on the Atlantic coast of the south- west. Once a surrender had been forced the garrison was put to the sword, and Raleigh and his company were particularly energetic in that bloody enter- prise.15 Then he and his fellow captains, under the command of Lord Grey, devoted their attention to the local rebels, and each captain was assigned control over a particular area of the province while Grey himself returned to Dublin. The area assigned to Raleigh's control was the fertile area to the south and east of Cork city, and Raleigh, like his associates, was not only determined to over- throw those who were in actual rebellion but was also anxious to arrest those native landowners whom they suspected of being sympathetic towards the rebels. The particular target of Raleigh's attack was Lord David Barry of Barryscourt, whose castle and lands he coveted, and it was certainly Raleigh's ill-concealed animosity towards Barry which forced the latter into open rebellion.16 What occurred in this instance occurred elsewhere throughout the province so that the scope of the Munster rebellion was increasing rather than contracting as the winter of 1580-81 proceeded. This was as the English captains of the province would have wished it because they were fully confident of the support of Lord Grey in their endeavors, and they were convinced that only persistence with their scheme would lead to a lasting settlement of the province.
What these soldier-adventurers did not count on was the determination of Ormond to oppose their efforts and his continued influence with the Queen. It was Ormond who championed the cause of David Barry against the intrusions of Raleigh upon his property, and it was Ormond who now contended that it was Grey's unwillingness to accept any of the rebels to mercy which explained why the conflict in Munster was becoming too prolonged and expensive for the Crown to bear. Furthermore, he, as well as some of the supporters in the Pale, criticized the bloody methods that were being employed by Lord Grey and his subordinates and suggested that these reflected poorly upon the Queen's cherished reputation as a clement ruler.17
Such arguments made a deep impression upon the Queen, especially when they were combined with charges of dishonesty. These latter were advanced by some Old English officials in the Pale who contended that the land which had come into Crown possession following the overthrow of the Leinster rebel- lion had been disposed of by Grey to a small group of personal followers and at rents prejudicial to the Crown's interests.18 Queen Elizabeth harkened to these charges, and Grey was duly recalled in disgrace in August 1582, and Ormond was restored to command of the military enterprise.19
This turn of events proved devastating for those English captians and officials who had pinned their hopes on Lord Grey being able to proceed with a consis- tent policy. They had further reason to be alarmed when they saw much of the land in Munster which might have been declared forfeit to the Crown be-
Raleigh's Ireland 91
ing frittered away by Ormond who, they believed, proved excessively generous in granting pardon to the lesser rebels. Their hopes for a coherent plantation in Munster, which would advance the cause of civility while enriching themselves, were also set back by Ormond's insistence that the "English by blood" (by which he meant the Old English population of Ireland) should receive equal consideration with the "English by birth" when the land of the outstanding rebels came to be confiscated.20 This wish of Ormond was in fact not followed and Ormond himself was the only member of the Old English community to benefit directly from the confiscation of property in Munster. However, the death in rebellion of the earl of Desmond in the winter of 1583 did prove anti- climactic for those who had endured the travails of war on the Crown's behalf because the decision was then taken to have a committee in London, rather than in Dublin or Munster, deal with the disposition of the forfeited property.21 Such a committee could be counted on to favor those who were well connected at Court over those who had served in Ireland. The frustration of the latter group was put most effectively by Geoffrey Fenton, a consistent advocate of plantation, who had been so confident of a grant of some of Desmond's estates in North Kerry that he had brought "tenants and cattle out of England" to populate and stock the property. All to no avail, however, because the lands on which Fenton had set his sights were granted to the English courtier Denzil Holies, and Fenton's six or seven years of service "spent in the suppression of that rebellion" were completely disregarded.22
This outcome had apparently been anticipated by Walter Raleigh even before the forced resignation of Lord Grey, and Raleigh had abandoned Ireland in fury once his claims on Barry's land had been denied him because of Ormond's obstruction. His early departure from Ireland placed Raleigh in a position to offer advice at Court when the subject of Ireland came under discussion among those who had to adjudicate between the strategies favored respectively by Ormond and Lord Grey. The fact that Grey was dismissed in 1582 indicates that Raleigh's advice was ineffectual, but the occasion which he then had to attend at Court on official business also presented him with the opportunity to bring himself to the attention of the Queen and her closest advisers. The eagerness with which Raleigh seized on this opportunity is <