Sir Humphrey Gilbert Was an Adventurer, Writer, Soldier, Mariner

Sir Humphrey Gilbert was an adventurer, writer, soldier, mariner, and member of Parliament for Plymouth and Queenborough, who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. What was the Anglo-Norman influence on the unsuccessful attempts to establish English colonies in the New World. Two English adventurers, Gilbert and Raleigh, possessing the privateer spirit, had the same mother. That lady, CATHERINE CHAMPERNOWNE, had ancestors from Cambernon in Normandy. To document these beginnings is important because they proved the difficulty of planting colonies through individual enterprise. The various motives for colonization: the spirit of adventure, the desire to enjoy a new life, and the intent to harm commerce from the colonies of Spain, were influences that guided Gilbert and Raleigh in their endeavors to plant colonies in Newfoundland and North Carolina. Sir Humphrey Gilbert of Devonshire, schooled at Eton and educated at Oxford, wrote a pamphlet in 1566, entitled, A Discourse to Prove Passage by the Northwest to Cathaia and the East Indies. The celebrated mariner, Martin Frobisher, was inspired by Gilbert's dissertation to make sail as explorer to the northeast coast of North America in 1576 and claimed the land called Meta Incognita in the name of the Queen. The petition to the crown by Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a member of Parliament, was honored in 1578. He was invested with all title to the soil within 200 leagues of any settlement. The crown required only the allegiance of the settlers and one-fifth of all gold and silver to be found. Another stipulation, the protection of the nation was withheld from any license granted by Gilbert “to rob or spoil by sea or by land.” His first voyage of seven ships was a misadventure. The fleet returned by way of Ireland battered and dispirited after a ship was lost in a fight with the Spanish. Gilbert's second and fateful expedition in 1583 consisted of five ships and met with desertion of a ship after two days of sailing for lack of victuals. He reached the harbor of St. John's in Newfoundland on August the third, where he took possession of the country in the name of Queen Elizabeth. He caused the Arms of England to be engraved on lead and fixed on a pillar of wood at the shore side, a notice of sovereignty to more than thirty fishing vessels of all nations in port. The fleet, decimated by desertion and sickness, discontinued exploration after the ship Delight with most of their provisions was lost in a storm off Sable Island. Only two ships were left, the Squirrel, a little frigate of ten tons, and the Golden Hind. They set sail for England, clearing Cape Race after two days. Sir Humphrey refused to abandon his ship, the Squirrel, in the boisterous seas near the Azores. The last sighting from the Hind, who approached within hailing distance, was the gallant admiral on deck, “himself sitting with a book in his hand,” calling out words of cheer and consolation, “We are as near heaven by sea as by land.” When night came on September 10, 1583, only the lights in the rigging of the Squirrel told that the noble Gilbert still survived. At midnight the lights went out suddenly and from the watchers on the Hind, the cry arose, “The General was cast away.” Alas, only the Golden Hind returned to England captained by her owner, Edward Hayes. And in Master Hayes' own words, he described the fate of Sir Humphrey: “But such is the infinite bounty of God, who from every evil deriveth good. For besides that fruit may grow in time of our travelling into those north-west lands, the crosses, turmoils, and afflictions, both in the preparation and execution of this voyage, did correct the intemperate humours which before we noted to be in this gentleman, and made unsavoury and less delightful his other manifold virtues. Then as he was refined, and made nearer drawing unto the image of God so it pleased the Divine will to resume him unto Himself, whither both his and every other high and noble mind have always aspired.” Sir Richard Grenville, born 15 June 1542, was lord of the manor Bideford in the county of Devon, England. After exploring South America, Sir Francis Drake had proclaimed the northwest Pacific coast of America as Nova Albion, thus Queen Elizabeth I claimed territory from sea to sea. The result of a royal patent for exploration, the colony of Virginia was named in Elizabeth's honor. On August 17, 1585, the first colonists were landed on Roanoke Island of the new colony. Eight days later, the fleet commander appointed by Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville, after a confrontation with the native Indians, weighed anchor for England. On the way back, Grenville met the Spanish ship, Santa Maria de Vincente, “richly loaden,” and captured her, “boording her with a boate made with boards of chests, which fell asunder and sunke at the ships side, as soone as euer he and his men were out of it.” October 18, 1585, he arrived with his prize at Plymouth, in England, where he was received with great honor and rejoicing. America should in reflection connect the beginnings of this country with an adventurer like Grenville, even though he was described at times, of “intolerable pride and insatiable ambition.” He was one of the English admirals who defeated the Spanish Armada. Nothing in naval warfare is more memorable than his death, which was romanticized by Alfred Lord Tennyson in these lines: ”I have fought for Queen and Faith like a valiant man and true; I have only done my duty as a man is bound to do. With a joyful spirit, I, Sir Richard Grenville die!” And he fell upon their decks, and he died. And they stared at the dead that had been so valiant and true, And had holden the power and glory of Spain so cheap That he dared her with one little ship and his English few; Was he devil or man? He was devil for aught they knew, But they sank his body with honor down into the deep. And they mann’d the Revenge with a swarthier alien crew, And away she sail’d with her loss and long’d for her own; When a wind from the lands they had ruin’d awoke from sleep, And the water began to heave and the weather to moan, And or ever that evening ended a great gale blew, And a wave like the wave that is raised by an earthquake grew, Till it smote on their hulls and their sails and their masts and their flags, And the whole sea plunged and fell on the shot-shatter’d navy of Spain, And the little Revenge herself went down by the island crags To be lost evermore in the main. Sir Walter Raleigh was an English landed gentleman, writer, poet, soldier, politician, courtier, and explorer. The mantle of Sir Humphrey Gilbert fell upon the shoulders of his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, whose energy and versatility made him, perhaps, the foremost Englishman of his age. When the Golden Hind returned from her ill-fated voyage in 1583, Walter Raleigh was thirty-one years of age and possessed a person at once attractive and commanding. He was tall and well proportioned, had a high forehead and a face described as “long and bold.” By service in France, the Netherlands, and Ireland he had shown himself a soldier of the same fearless stamp as his half- brother Sir Humphrey, and he was looked upon as a seaman of splendid powers for organization. Poet and scholar, he was a patron of Edmund Spenser, the famous author of the Faerie Queen; of Richard Hakluyt, the naval historian; of Le Moyne and John White, the painters; and of Thomas Hariot, the great mathematician. Exhibiting ease in the art of gallantry, Raleigh won his way into the Queen's favor and dared the extremity of his political fortunes by writing on a pane of glass that the Queen would see, “Fain [gladly] would I climb, but fear I to fall.” And she replied with an encouraging, “If thy heart fail thee, climb not at all.” The Queen's esteem for Raleigh developed into magnificent gifts of riches and honor, as he received various monopolies, many forfeited estates, and appointments as lord warden of the stannaries [tin-mining], lieutenant of the county of Cornwall, and captain of the queen's guard. The fame of Raleigh was cloaked in the oral tradition of a certain mud puddle crossing that testifies to the excesses of Elizabethan dress or attire and the pomp or circumstance evident in the everyday life of the royal court. Sir Walter Raleigh produced and distributed to the court and gentry, A Discourse Concerning Western Planting Written in the Year 1584, authored by his assistant, the historian, Richard Hakluyt. He received from the Queen in that year a patent similar to Gilbert's which led to the subsequent exploration by Barlowe and Amidas of the Pamlico Sound area of the North Carolina outer banks, called by the natives, Wingandacoa. Captain Barlowe wrote a report to his sponsor describing Wokokon Island, thereby taking possession in the right of the Queen and Sir Walter Raleigh. Obtaining a confirmation from Parliament in 1585, Raleigh acquired a national sanction which Gilbert did not possess. Sir Walter displayed great energy in making ready a fleet carrying settlers to the new land, officially named after the Virgin Queen. A cousin of Walter Raleigh, Sir Richard Grenville, commanded the fleet which left Plymouth on April 9, 1585, with Thomas Cavendish and Captain Ralph Lane on board.

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