In 1617 a Welsh Colony of Men and Women Was Established at Aquafort on the East Coast of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland
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“Grandezza in Newfoundland”
Andrew Fitzmaurice, University of Sydney “Lost Colonies” Conference, March 26-27, 2004
(Please do not cite, quote, or circulate without written permission from the author)
In 1617 a Welsh colony of men and women was established at Aquafort on the east coast of the Avalon peninsula in Newfoundland. In 1618, Captain Richard Whitbourne was appointed governor of the struggling colony and moved it a short distance south to Renews. In 1619 these ‘Welsh fooles’, as one contemporary described them, packed up and went home. This colony was spectacularly unsuccessful, even by the standards of British colonisation. The colonists had done little to promote their survival and passed their time huddled in the huts built by the summer fisherman who visited Newfoundland from Europe. And yet, in the vision which had inspired this colony lay the future success of European colonisation. The Aquafort colony had been conceived and financed by the Welshman William Vaughan. Born in 1577, Vaughan was an Oxford-educated member of an old family of Welsh landowners. He had travelled in Europe and received the title of Doctor of Law in Vienna. He published prolifically on a variety of subjects, particularly moral philosophy. In 1616 the Newfoundland Company assigned Vaughan, now resettled in Wales, the southern third of the Avalon peninsula for the purpose of establishing a colony. Gillian Cell has declared ‘One can only speculate as to how and why this scholarly man became involved with the colonisation of Newfoundland’.1 For Vaughan, however, like so many of his contemporaries, it was precisely his scholarship that motivated and informed his colonising efforts. In almost all of his publications, Vaughan showed himself to be a devotee of the so-called ‘new humanism’ which was so deeply concerned with the question of interests. One of the most fundamental differences that separates modern from pre-modern Occidental cultures arises from the perception of interests, both self interests and the
1 Gillian T. Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered (London, 1982), p.20. 57
interests of the state, prince, or city. In classical, medieval and early-modern societies the pursuit of self-interest was almost universally frowned upon as equivalent to corruption. These were societies in which the community was placed before the individual, in which to be human, as Aristotle put it, was to be a political animal. Virtue was required from, and taught to, citizens and subjects so that they would put the common good before their own concerns. Even where the interests of the political community were in conflict with virtue or honour it was believed that the latter should prevail. There was, of course, a gap, as Machiavelli would point out, between beliefs in how people should behave and how they did behave. People have been, perhaps, equally self-interested at all times. Nevertheless, although ideology did not determine behaviour, it had a negative role in limiting and shaping what it was possible to legitimise and therefore what it was possible to do and, moreover, it had a positive role in motivating actions. Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, attitudes to interest underwent a profound transformation. Increasingly, it became possible to countenance the possibility of putting interests before virtue. In the sixteenth century, writers such as Justus Lipsius and Michel de Montaigne saw self-interest as necessary for survival against a background of the European wars of religion.2 And in the eighteenth century, writers such as Bernard Mandeville and Adam Smith began to celebrate the possibilities of the pursuit of self- interest against the background of the rise of commercial society.3 These developments had an equivalent in the realm of the principality and the state. Machiavelli, most famously, and then numerous sixteenth and seventeenth century writers explored the possibility of the prince and state pursuing their own interests to the exclusion of all else (which, as for individuals, meant not always acting virtuously). The aim which these writers gave to the state was the pursuit of grandezza, grandeur, or greatness, which had evolved out of the Renaissance humanist concern with glory. The instruments for pursuing this aim were called ragione de stato, raison d’état, or reason of state. Changing early modern European attitudes to interest found a parallel in the perception of colonisation. Indeed, colonisation had been central to the concern about
2 See Richard Tuck, Philosophy and government, 1572-1651 (Cambridge, 1993). 3 M.M. Goldsmith, ‘Liberty, luxury and the pursuit of happiness’, in Anthony Pagden, ed., The languages of political theory in early modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), 225-51; I. Hont and M. Ignatieff, eds., Wealth and virtue: The shaping of political economy in the Scottish Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1983). 58
interest in both the ancient and the Renaissance world. According to classical and humanist authorities, Rome’s colonies had created wealth which had diverted the citizens from pursuit of the common good.4 Robert Johnson, Vaughan’s contemporary and a leader of the Virginia Company, made precisely this observation on the causes of the decline of Rome in Nova Britannia, his tract promoting the Virginia colony: ‘The honour of our nation is now very great by his Majesties meanes and wee his subjects cannot enlarge and uphold it by gazing on, and talking what hath beene done, but by doing that good, which may bee commended hereafter, if we sitte still and let slip occasions, we shall gather rust, and doe unfeather our owne wings, committing the folly of the wise Romans herein, that in time of their glory, flowing with the Conquests and spoiles of the world, and having gotten the Goddesse Victoria to Rome, they clipt her wings, and set her up among their Gods, that shee might take her flight no more, as shee had formerly done from the Gretians and others, and so effeminating their valour with idleness and security, it brought confusion and ruine to their state’.5 English attitudes to colonisation in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries were dominated by such nervous sentiments. Clearly, profit and interest were not a part of the ontology of colonisation. And yet, by the eighteenth century colonisation had come to be intrinsically identified with commerce. My concern in this paper is to explore at what point interest, unfettered by classical anxieties, did become a motive for colonisation. William Vaughan’s colonial efforts are an important part of that story. Vaughan was a follower of the ‘new’ humanism of Lipsius and Montaigne. Against the background of the Reformation, these writers found that Ciceronian ideals of self denial and pursuit of the common good were lofty and forlorn. The histories of Tacitus were believed to be far more appropriate as a guide to political behaviour. By the
4 On this theme, see: David Armitage, The ideological origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000); Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An intellectual history of English colonisation, 1500-1625 (Cambridge, 2003). 5 Robert Johnson, Nova Britannia (London, 1609), sig.E2v. In his essay ‘Of histories’ Johnson also made the conventional humanist observation on the wealth of the empire as a cause of the decline of Rome: ‘comming to the height of felicitie, and flowing with the spoiles of the whol world, over-swaied with their owne grandeure, began to quaile in the last act, and after a safe escape from the maine sea of forraine incumberances, to suffer shipwracke in the haven’. He concluded ‘Their valour made them quiet, & quiet wealthy: but according to the revolution of al things with a swift & violent return their wealth effeminated their valor with idleness, idleness occasioned disorder, disorder made ruine’, Robert Johnson, Essaies (London, 1601), sigs D6r-v. See also Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America on the extent to which this theme was treated in early modern Engllish colonial literature. 59
early seventeenth century, Tacitus had become one of the most influential –if not the most influential - of the classical authors who formed the core of European education. Tacitus, rather than the republican Cicero, was believed better to prepare subjects for the life lived under the princes and in the courts of early modern Europe. This was a world in which virtue was perceived as treason, in which it was necessary to sweat when the prince sweats, laugh when he laughs, and in which survival, and therefore self-interest, rather than the common good, was the guide to behaviour. In his essay ‘Of histories’, Robert Johnson evaluated which of the diverse writers he preferred and concludes: ‘I prefer Tacitus as the best that any man can dwell upon: Hee sheweth the miseries of a torne and declining state, where it was a capital crime to bee virtuous, and nothing so unsafe as to bee securely innocent: where great mens gestures were particularly interpreted, their actions aggravated, and construed to proceed from an aspiring intent: and the Prince too suspitiously iealous touching points of concurancy, suppressed men of great desert, as competitors with them in that chiefest ground, the love of the people’.6 In the Golden grove, Vaughan’s work in moral philosophy (‘for all such, as would know how to governe themselves, their houses, or their countrey’7) published in 1600, he showed himself to be an early convert to this Tacitean humanism. The work repeatedly cites Tacitus and Lipsius. The chapter ‘Of tyrants’ employs Tacitus in its listing of six ways to know a tyrant.8 The work is infused with the cynicism of courtly culture and a concern about ‘the corrupt nature of this age’.9 Citing Lipsius, Vaughan observed: ‘Many affect the place of a monarch, not to any good end (they being not good themselves).10 The concern of new humanists with interests fed the early modern appetite for greatness. Greatness was not merely the principal aim of the early modern state, its pursuit was one of the principal means by which the modern state came to exist. In 1490, Europe’s political structure was dominated by a multitude of regional political entities, numbering just under five hundred.11 These included kingdoms, principalities, dynastic
6 Johnson, Essaies, sig. D3r. 7 William Vaughan, The golden grove (London, 1600), titlepage. 8 Vaughan, The golden grove, Bk.3, ch.9. 9 Vaughan, The golden grove, Bk.1, ch.21 ‘Of deceit’. 10 Vaughan, The golden grove, Bk3. ch.4. 11 Mark Greengrass, ed., Conquest and coalescence: The shaping of the state in early modern Europe (London, 1991), pp.1-3; Jack P. Greene, ‘Transatlantic colonization and the redefinition of empire in the 60
empires, city states, confederations, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Church, with its powerful temporal jurisdictions. In hand with the Reformation, the pursuit of greatness aided the processes by which these entities coalesced into modern states. For the modern European state to emerge, the supreme authority of each prince had to be established such that he or she was territorially competent, or, to use Max Weber’s definition of the state, such that the sovereign had a monopoly over law and coercion. Sixteenth and seventeenth century writers on greatness and reason of state provided much of the ideological armoury necessary for this dismantling of the medieval political world. The ideology of grandezza was inherently expansionist, it provided princes with the rationale to pursue the politics of amalgamation and incorporation through which principalities became mixed monarchies and mixed monarchies became composite monarchies forming, in turn, the basis of states. Thus grandezza became an inseparable part of statehood. The pursuit of grandezza was not limited to the state. This point is crucial to understanding the connection between European colonisation and the formation of the modern state. The ideology of greatness that was employed, for example, to mould England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland into one state was also used to motivate a larger, colonial, expansion. While many historians have argued that empire building and state formation were antagonistic processes, and others that they were parallel, it is clear that in ideological terms they were in fact inherently linked and in some aspects one and the same thing.12 In terms of the ideology of greatness, they were the creation of the same aim. A number of different understandings of grandezza emerged in early modern Europe, from which I would like to distinguish two dominant varieties. The first is Machiavelli’s account of grandezza which David Armitage has examined in detail. Machiavelli’s importance for these accounts arises from his analysis of liberty. The most effective way to achieve greatness, including empire, he argued, was to be a free people. And, he paradoxically concluded, one of the surest threats to liberty was the possession of
early modern era’, in Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy, eds., Negotiated empires. Centers and peripheries in the Americas, 1500 – 1820 (New York, 2002). 12 Elizabeth Mancke, ‘Empier and state’ in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic world, 1500-1800 (Basingstoke, 2002), pp.175-195. 61
empire. Accordingly, in Machiavellian thought, liberty and empire rest uncomfortably together. Virtue, a central value for Machiavelli despite his elevation of interest, was at the heart of this conflict. The exercise of virtue was necessary in order to gain freedom and in order to achieve grandezza. And virtue, according to Machiavelli and most classical sources, was always threatened by wealth and therefore by the spoils of empire. Thus Machiavellian anxiety about empire was in many ways continuous with the humanist concern about the causes of the downfall of the Roman empire. Thus commercial empires established by European states in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and above all, by England, were locked in an irresolvable tension with the powerful Machiavellian tradition of political thought which informed political life. Partly on the strength of this Machiavellian analysis, Armitage claims that while state formation and empire building were clearly interdependent, they were nevertheless in a relationship that was ‘imperfect, contiguous, and various’.13 It is certainly true that writers on empire from Richard Beacon and Francis Bacon through John Milton and James Harrington to the American revolutionaries were profoundly shaped by Machiavelli (and accordingly held ambivalent opinions on empire). Any account, however, of early modern grandezza that rests upon Machiavelli is incomplete. From late in the sixteenth century there emerged a tradition of writing on grandezza and empire, focused in particular on the writings of the Piedmontese Giovanni Botero and later Trajano Boccalini, which rivaled the Machiavellian tradition.14 Born in 1544 and trained as a Jesuit (but expelled from the order), Botero served as secretary to the Archbishops of Milan from 1582 to 1598 and from 1599 to 1610 as advisor to the Duke of Savoy. Between 1583 and 1598 he published a series of works concerned with grandezza of which the most important were Delle cause della grandezza della citta (1588), Ragion di stato (1589) and Relationi universali (first edition 1591). While in many ways derivative of Machiavelli, Botero’s writings on grandezza differed from his predecessor in some fundamental aspects. For Botero virtue was secondary, and liberty was of even less concern. According to Botero, greatness was based not on virtue but on
13 Armitage, The ideological origins of the British empire, p.59. 14 On Botero, see: Tuck, Philosophy and government, ch.3; Anthony Pagden, Lords of all the world (New Haven, 1995); Peter Burke, ‘Tacitism, scepticism and reason of state’, in J.H. Burns, ed., The Cambridge history of political thought 1450-1700 (Cambridge, 1991), 479-98. 62
wealth and profit and therefore upon industry, ‘art’, and commerce. These values are commonly associated with late seventeenth century and eighteenth century political economy but were in fact prevalent amongst Botero’s followers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. As an account of the basis of greatness it would be hard to imagine a more direct repudiation of Machiavelli, nor one less troubled by empire. Botero was unhesitating in his portrayal of colonisation as one of the principal means of achieving grandezza. Colonies were, he argued, ‘a great helpe to the encrease of the power’ and greatnes of Rome’.15 He took his analysis of the reasons and means of expansion further. For Botero, expansion and colonisation were not just a desirable means to grandezza but an imperative, a necessity for the survival of the state, and in that sense a ‘reason’ of state. If cities would not expand they would suffocate. Here was a theorist of empire who would present no conflict with the commercial realities of seventeenth and eighteenth century empires. And, accordingly, here was a theorist whose writing attracted many adherents – adherents, moreover, who were at the forefront of colonisation. This was a surer basis upon which the greatness of empire would be built on the greatness of the state (and upon which the state would be built upon empire). Botero was writing to promote Spanish universal monarchy – he was concerned with that particular case of grandezza – and it is perhaps for that reason that historians have ignored the English reception of Botero. Richard Tuck, in one of the best analyses of Botero’s importance, argues: ‘On the whole, political debate in Jacobean England did not include modern arguments drawn from Botero or Ammirato; there was no sense of the potential world empire of the English’.16 Yet it is precisely for this reason that Botero in fact had a very great impact in early modern England. Motivated by fear of Habsburg power, a number of English writers saw security in the imitation of the ideological underpinnings of that power. It would be no exaggeration to claim that for Jacobeans, Botero was an equally if not more important writer than Machiavelli on the question of grandezza and particularly on the question of colonies. The popularity of Botero was underlined both by the translations of his works and by imitation. The courtier Walter Ralegh was thus one of the first to see in the writings of Botero a means of emulating
15 Giovanni Botero, A treatise, concerning the causes of the magnificencie and greatnes of cities trans. Robert Peterson (London, 1606), p.33. 16 Tuck, Philosophy and government, p.116. 63
and, therefore, rivalling Spanish grandezza. His History of the world (published in 1614) and many of his other writings were deeply indebted to Botero, and he may also have translated Botero’s Delle cause della grandezza della citta.17 But Ralegh was not alone. Edwin Sandys, the leader of the Jacobean parliaments, published A relation of the state of religion in 1605.18 The work was profoundly indebted to Botero. It sought a united Europe, but one united on religious terms closer to the Church of England than to Rome. In this same period, Botero’s works were repeatedly printed in English translation. His Delle cause della grandezza della citta was translated by Robert Peterson and published as A treatise, concerning the causes of the magnificencie and greatnes of cities in 1606. Botero’s Relationi universali was translated by Robert Johnson and appeared in seven editions between 1601 and 1630. This work was also imitated, notably by Samuel Purchas in Purchas his pilgrimage (1613) in which Purchas made no attempt to hide his debt. Indeed, the Pilgrimage can to a large degree be read as gloss on Botero’s Relations. To the context for the reception of Botero must be added the translation of Trajano Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso by Thomas Scott, John Florio and William Vaughan. Boccalini, employed in Rome but a defender of Venice, wrote to a great degree in criticism of reason of state (and in criticism of Botero). He deplored the use of grandezza to advance Spanish claims to universal monarchy. Yet he advocated the pursuit of grandezza by middle powers such as Venice as the best defence against Spanish power. He opposed ‘any greatness which might be odius and dangerous to his [ie. the prince’s] competitor’ (Boccalini 1626, 25).19 The argument of the Ragguagli di Parnasso was accordingly similar in force to the lessons drawn from reading Botero in England. Vaughan’s translation of Boccalini thus attempted to achieve positively what the following of Botero had achieved to some degree negatively. These writers were responsible for the reception of a distinct ideology of grandezza in early modern England. It was an ideology which would endorse a particular kind of state formation, one based upon wealth and commerce, and which was therefore very different from Machiavellian grandezza.
17 Pierre Lefranc, Sir Walter Ralegh écrivain (Paris, 1968), pp.50,66 and 70. 18 Theodore K. Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman. Sir Edwin Sandys 1561-1625 (Princeton, 1998). 19 Trajano Boccalini, The new-found politicke trans. William Vaughan (London, 1626), p.25. 64
A remarkable fact links each of these men and, importantly, provides a material dimension to the ideological links between state formation and empire building. In addition to their common concern with Botero, each author, with one exception, was deeply involved in English attempts to colonise America. Ralegh held the patent to colonise America from 1584 and was still organising voyages under James I. Sandys was, with the merchant Sir Thomas Smith, one of the most powerful men in the Virginia Company. Robert Johnson was Sir Thomas Smith’s son in law, a leader of the Virginia, East India and Bermuda Companies and a vigorous promoter of their ambitions. Purchas was perhaps the most prominent promoter of Jacobean colonisation. Only Peterson was not involved, although it is striking that he added a second chapter on colonies (taken from Botero’s Ragione di stato) to his Causes of the magnificencie and greatnes of cities. And Vaughan, the translator of Boccalini, was the pre-eminent promoter and leader of Welsh colonisation in his time.20 Early modern monarchs and their agents wielded the ideology of greatness with relish.21 This was as true in England as it was on the continent. In 1623 James I granted George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, a charter for a colony to the north of Vaughan’s holding on the Avalon peninsula. This would be another of Newfoundland’s failed colonies. The charter described the aims of the colony in terms of the ambition for greatness: that is, the colony, James declared, would seek to ‘enlarge’ ‘our Empire and Dominion’.22 Four years later Charles I restated this ambition for Calvert’s colony writing Henry Cary, Lord Falkland, that he was ‘noe lesse inclined to favour and protect the plantations of our good and faithfull subjectes’ than his father ‘knoweing them to tend much to the honor of our Crowne [and] the enlargement of our dominion’.23 Calvert writing to Charles also echoed this sentiment declaring that he ‘shall indeavour, by gods assistance, to enlarge your Maiesties dominion’.24 One year later, as the colony imploded, Calvert wrote to Sir Frances Cottington that ‘In this part of the world crosses and miseryes is my portion’ and that ‘I am so overwhelmed with troubles and cares as I am forced to write but short and
20 Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered, pp.19-26. 21 See, for example, F.W. Church, Richelieu and reason of state (Princeton, 1972). 22 The charter of Avalon, in Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered, p.258. 23 ‘Charles I to Lord Deputy Falkland, 19 January 1627/8’, in Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered, p.276. 24 ‘Calvert to Charles I, 25 August 1628’, in Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered, p.281. 65
confusedly’.25 And yet the following day he still found the courage to write to Charles that he continued to pursue his greatness. He would ‘further the best I may the enlarging your Maiesties empire in this part of the world’.26 Moreover, Calvert saw colonies not just in terms of greater dominion but, like James I, in terms of empire. These ambitions are also found in William Vaughan’s Golden fleece. Clearly, Vaughan, like Calvert, did not let failure deter him from the pursuit of grandeur. The golden fleece was published in 1626 and provided a explanation of what Vaughan understood himself to have been doing in establishing the Welsh colony in Aquafort, while at the same time revealing that he maintained colonial ambitions. The aim of The golden fleece, a massive and impenetrable treatise of almost 400 pages, was to provide a cure for the ills believed to be troubling England. Vaughan expressed a new humanist concern with the state of trade and with ways to augment the wealth of the kingdoms. One of the principal antidotes, Vaughan argued, would be to establish colonies, particularly in Newfoundland. The book was published in the same year as Vaughan’s translation of Boccalini and the Italian’s influence is evident throughout. Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso was written as a series of reports from the court of Apollo where the all the princes, courtiers and philosophers of Europe had gathered along with the writers of ancient Rome and Greece to discuss the state of Europe. A condemnation of Spanish tyranny and Spanish pretensions to universal monarchy are the principal concerns of the work and the highest praise is reserved for those polities, such as the German cities, who are least expansionist and most inclined to keep peace with their neighbours. As Vaughan stated in his dedication of his translation of Boccalini to Charles, the work was concerned with ‘some Mysteries of Policie, which may rowze up the Spirits of the State of Venice, and other Neighbouring Provinces, to watch with Argus Eyes, lest the deceitfull shew of Indian Gold… might produce any sudden Innovation prejudiciall to the libertie of Christendome’.27 While condemning grandezza and reason of state, Boccalini nevertheless arrives at the conclusion that greatness must be achieved by the middle powers in order to achieve balance amongst the princes of Europe. Thus the work is permeated by Tacitism cynicism, and while Botero
25 ‘Calvert to Sir Francis Cottington, 18 August 1629’, in Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered, p.292. 26 ‘Calvert to Charles I, 19 August 1629’, in Cell, ed., Newfoundland discovered, p.296. 27 Trajano Boccalini, The new found politike trans. William Vaughan (London, 1626), q.2v. 66
(an apologist for Spain) and Machiavelli are condemned, Tacitus and Lipsius are heroes of the narrative. When Lipsius is criticised for following Tacitus too closely, he replies: ‘That hee deemed Tacitus to be the chiefe Standard bearer of all famous Historians, the Father of humane wisdome, the Oracle of perfect reason of State, the absolute Master of all politicians’.28 And when the Crier of Parnassus reads the ‘Proclamation concerning the Reformation of the World, which was done with such applause and joy to every man, that all Parnassus rebounded with their clamours and shouts’, Boccalini drily observes that ‘the wisest sort smelt out the drise [sic], and laughed in their sleeves to see the rascality and foolish Idiots to delight themselves with bables, as babies with nuts. Men of understanding know, that vices will abound, as long as men live in the world… and that humane Providence doth consist in this, to have wit sufficient for this one difficult resolution, to forsake the world as another hath found it, or to live as not to live’.29 Vaughan was inspired by his translation of Boccalini to write the Godlen Fleece, exploring the same questions of greatness and interest examined by the Italian, but as a direct examination of the state of Britain, its trade and its prospects for expansion. The treatise was divide into three parts, the first concerned with religion, the second with ‘the Vices and Decayes of the Kingdome’ and the third with ‘wayes to get wealth, and to restore Trading’.30 This third part focused on colonisation and was typical of what I have called the second variety of writing on grandezza in that it took the purpose of colonisation to be a ‘way to get wealth’ and showed no Machiavellian or conventional humanist concern about the corrupting influence of riches. Vaughan’s treatise explicitly takes the form of Boccalini’s Ragguagli di Parnasso, using the court of Apollo to introduce various authorities into a dialogue on the questions examined. According to Vaughan: ‘I have resolved to use the name of the great Apollo, not Heathenish, but Christian, after the example of Trajano Boccalini, who under that Title brought forth most plausible Raggualioes, and by mee now late communicated to our English Readers’.31 Following this form Vaughan introduced the numerous authorities of Tacitean and classical humanism (and many of Boccalini’s characters) `—including
28 Bocallini, The new found politike, p.16. 29 Bocallini, The new found politike p.234. 30 Vaughan, The golden fleece, titlepage. 31 William Vaughan, The golden fleece (London, 1626), p.13. 67
Tacitus, Lipsius, Sir Thomas Smith and the seven wise men of Greece— to be examined on the ways in which the wealth and greatness of England might be augmented. In one chapter Boccalini is the central character, complaining about the general state of decay and accusing the seven wise men of Greece of hypocrisy for having made facile proclamations on how to reform the world. In this chapter, as throughout the treatise, we find that Vaughan’s ideas are again deeply inflected by the cynicism of the new humanism and so by the conviction that interests are at the forefront of all moral considerations. Apollo is no virtuous Prince. It is not ‘his absolute will to root out the knowledge of Evill from the Christian World’.32 Accordingly, when Boccalini tells him that all the councils of the seven wise men on how to reform the commonwealth were virtuous and hypocritical ‘frivolities’ and that the real problems arose from corruption: ‘Apollo knowing this to be true, which Boccalini with his too lavish tongue had blabbed abroad, and ashamed that every common Citizen of Parnassus began now to smell out the drift of his statesmen, and could readily descant of those secrets, which in ancient times as a divine mysterie they concealed from vulgar minds, he retired himselfe much discontented’. Apollo’s consort ‘laboured to mitigate his grief; telling him that Sinne must raigne, as long as men beare sway in the World’.33 Vaughan created a text unique in the early modern literature on English colonisation by bringing into this dialogue the central figures of contemporary, Jacobean, and Elizabethan colonisation, including John Guy, John Mason, Richard Whitbourne, Ferdinando Gorges, Sir Frances Drake, and Martin Frobisher. It is not extraordinary that these figures should have been placed together with the humanist authorities. Both humanists such as Boccalini and colonial promoters such as Whitbourne were concerned with ways of augmenting the state through colonisation and with increasing wealth by the same means. This dialogue thus produced an explanation on how to achieve grandezza that we would expect from a devotee of Botero or Boccalini: namely, pursue colonies and augment trade. Specifically, Vaughan’s persona, Orpheus Junior, explained that the Golden Fleece, the solution to the problems raised in the dialogue, was ‘the Plantation
32 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.2, p.85. 33 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.2, p.85. 68
and Fishing in the Newfoundland’.34 By this means Charles I would ‘inrich himselfe and his subjects’.35 Virtue held little place as a motivation in this desire for greatness. Orpheus Junior concludes that ‘our Saviour makes use of our worldly desires to serve his divine intentions’. Indeed, he argues, ‘By which meditations of mine, I perceived, that nothing but gaine could move the carelesse minds of our Ilanders to seeke abroad for new habitations’.36 In a passage that reads almost like Bernard Mandeville’s celebration, one hundred years later, of private vices bringing public benefits, Vaughan continues: ‘Because the depraved nature of mankinde delighteth in appetite and some appearance of profit; therefore his sacred Majesty discovered that plentifull Fishing unto us, to allure us from our home-bred idlenesse, to this necessary place of Plantation’.37 Moreover, this plantation would take into account the criticisms of Spanish expansion made by Botero. According to Botero the Spaniards had pursued greatness based upon silver and gold rather than commerce. In Robert Johnson’s translation, Botero exclaims: ‘I cannot forbeare to tell of one marvailous thing and worthy of consideration; which is, that although his Majesty by reason of the abundance of treasure, and many other infinite riches brought from the Indies, should seeme to be farre richer than other Princes, and his state much more wealthy and abundant then the States of other, yet the world seeth, that the great Turke, not having any Mines of Golde, is in his state a great deale more wealthier, and more mighty, and so is Fraunce, which hath no such meanes to get Money.’38 Botero concluded in Della grandezza ‘At a word, such a wealth there is in Art and Industry, that neither the mynes of Silver, nor the mynes of gold in Nova Hispania nor in Peru, can be compared with it. And the custome of merchandize of Milan, bringes more mony to the king of Spaines cofers, than the Mines of Zagateca and of Salisco’.39 Industry was to be valued over gold as the true basis of wealth and so of greatness. Thus Vaughan argues of Newfoundland plantation: ‘It is not Gold, nor a Silver mine, which can feed either body or soule; but the one requires nourishment to be gotten by the sweat of the browes… Before the Spaniards inhabited the West Indies, and had found those rich
34 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3, p.1. 35 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3 36 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3, p.4-5. 37 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3, p.6. 38 Botero, Relations, p.151. 39 Botero, Greatnes of cities, p.51. 69
treasures in Peru: Sincerity reigned among the Nobles and Simplicity among the Commons. But now… the Spaniards have kindled and entertained wars in all parts of Christendome, and have studied to ruinate their neighbours’.40 It is upon this understanding of the true basis of greatness that Vaughan explained that had he resolved to establish colonies in Newfoundland: ‘In this resolution being confirmed, I transported two severall Colonies of men and women into those parts with full intent to follow after, and to lead the remnant of my life in this new Plantation’.41 The court of Apollo celebrated on hearing this news from Orpheus Junior because they understood that by this means ‘Great Britaines Monarchy might in a short time arrive to as great riches as the Spanish’.42 The links between state formation and British colonisation were profound, as historians are increasingly showing. Several historians have also noted that these processes were fraught. One reason for this is the Machiavellian ideology of grandezza which fed state formation and was clearly nervous of commerce and of foreign possessions. What the English reception of Botero and Boccalini’s understanding of grandezza shows, however, is that these anxieties were already being pushed aside in the early seventeenth century. In Vaughan’s contribution to the reception of this tradition of grandezza we see the development of an understanding of empire – including both the state and the colonies – that was not nervous of foreign possessions and that celebrated colonies and commerce as the basis of greatness. A second reason for the fraught relation between state formation and empire in Britain arose from tensions between countries within the multiple kingdom. David Armitage has argued that the British empire would reflect more the disaggregated nature of a multiple kingdom ‘than the integrated features of a composite monarchy’.43 This conclusion is based largely upon a focus on relations between Scotland and England, which were undoubtedly the dominant relations in the British multiple kingdom. Yet an alternative vision existed: namely, that of the Welsh. Wales had a longer and smoother history of integration with England than had Scotland, having been incorporated into the
40 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3, p.6. 41 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3, pp.6-7. 42 Vaughan, The golden fleece, Bk.3, p.10. 43 Armitage, The ideological origins of the British Empire, p.60. 70
Kingdom of England between 1536 and 1543.44 Welshmen had been very successful in gaining advancement in the Tudor and Stuart courts. Indeed, the integration of Wales was more characteristic of a successful composite monarchy than it was of a multiple kingdom. While Vaughan’s planned colony sought the benefits that he believed English colonies would bring, it was not inspired by the sense of exclusion which characterised Scottish colonial plans. Vaughan’s charter was granted by the Newfoundland Company, an English enterprise. Moreover, Vaughan’s plans were pan-British. He chose as his governor the Englishman Richard Whitbourne and he consulted closely with John Mason (who wrote verse commending Vaughan’s Golden Fleece) and William Alexander, the leaders of Scottish colonisation. The first fifteen pages of the Golden Fleece purports to relate a conversation between Sir William Alexander, William Elveston and Vaughan on the necessity of plantations which Vaughan claimed was the immediate cause for him sitting down to write the treatise. This Welsh experience of colonisation was harmonious with the ideology of grandezza. Grandezza was an instrument for breaking down the federative tendencies of multiple kingdoms and for creating territorially competent, even if negotiated, composite monarchies. It was appropriate that Vaughan should therefore have chosen to translate, to imitate and to adapt Boccalini to British circumstances. Moreover, even while pursuing a doomed colonial experiment, Vaughan was prescient in promoting an ideology of grandezza which threw off humanist anxieties about expansion and which embraced the commercial values which would motivate future British colonisation.
44 Peter Roberts, ‘The English Crown, the Principality of Wales and the Council in the Marches, 1534- 1641’, in Brendan Bradshaw and John Morrill, eds., The British problem, c.1534-1707 (London, 1996), pp.118-9.