FOOTNOTES:
[139] Froude, vol. x. p. 259, et seq.
[140] Don Guerau to Philip, MSS. Samancas.
[141] It will be found in detail in the Cottonian MSS. at the British Museum. The English fleet was commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham, Drake, Hawkins, and Frobisher.
[142] See also Macpherson, ii. pp. 185, 186. The tables in the College Hall of Westminster School are made of Spanish chestnut, said to have been taken from some of the ships of the Armada.
[143] This was the second voyage round the world, but the first made by English ships. A chair is preserved in the Bodleian Library at Oxford made of the wood of the Pelican.
[144] In ‘Maritime and Inland Discovery,’ vol. ii. p. 156, the date of Drake’s return is given as Sept. 26, 1580; and this is also the date given in the ‘World Encompassed,’ p. 162.
[145] There must have been strong reasons indeed to have induced Elizabeth to have conferred such honours upon Francis Drake. On the 26th May, 1572, long before war had been declared between England and Spain, he had set out with his brothers John and Joseph on an expedition of pure piracy in two small vessels, manned by seventy-three seamen almost as daring as himself. Starting from the Gulf of Florida, he landed near St. Martha, where he built a fort and commenced an attack on the house of the Spanish governor, which he had ascertained contained a very large amount of bar-silver. Defeated in his designs to plunder it, he set out with eighteen Englishmen, part of his crew, and thirty runaway slaves, whom he had entered into his service, for Vera Cruz, which he plundered. Thence he proceeded again toward Nombre de Dios, capturing on the road a caravan of mules laden with silver, appropriating as much of it as he and his gang of marauders could carry away, and returned to England with his ill-gotten spoils in August 1573.
[146] Raleigh’s first personal expedition was in 1595; but he had already assisted in equipping no less than seven, the earliest in 1585 (‘Maritime and Inland Discovery,’ ii. pp. 205-209).
[147] Macpherson, ii. p. 189. Sir Francis Drake commanded the naval and Sir John Norris the military forces on this occasion.
[148] The first voyage of Cavendish is worthy of more note than it has received. Starting in July, 1586, he circumnavigated the globe, passing through the Straits of Magellan westwards, in eight months less than Drake. He was the first English navigator to discern the value of the position of St. Helena, to describe with accuracy the Philippine Islands, and to bring home a map and description of China. He is believed to have been only twenty-two years of age when he took the command in his first most adventurous voyage. In a third voyage he was shipwrecked in 1591 or 2 on the coast of Brazil, and died there.
[149] Pattern-pieces for the silver intended for circulation in the East Indies, bearing the name of Queen Elizabeth and the date 1601, exist in various collections. No coins, however, were actually struck from the dies of the patterns.
[150] See further details in Macpherson, ii. pp. 216-218. The money actually sent out he states to have been Spanish.
[151] Anderson’s ‘Annals of Commerce,’ vol. ii. p. 208, quoting from Guicciardini. The Dutch sent fourteen ships to India in 1602. Macpherson, ii. p. 227.
[152] It is likely that the great value of their new trade with the Brazils led the Portuguese to care less for the rich but more distant and dangerous trade with the far East.
[153] See Meadows Taylor’s ‘Man. of India Hist.,’ pp. 289-322; ‘Mar. and Inl. Discov.,’ vol. ii. pp. 195-198.
[154] The tomb of Adams is still in existence, is fenced round, and treated with the greatest respect by the Japanese people.
[155] Accounts differ in the names of the four vessels.
[156] See further details on all these matters in ‘Calendar of State Papers, East India, 1617-1621,’ in the ‘Polls series,’ Lond. 8, 1872.
[157] The text of this treaty is given by Macpherson, ii. pp. 293-295.
[158] The English Greenland fisheries seem to have paid best between 1598 to 1612.—Macpherson, ii. p. 265.
[159] However great our objections to every form of monopoly, it may well be questioned whether the merchant shipping of England could at this period have made any advance against the Dutch, Spaniards, Portuguese, Venetians, and others in their commercial intercourse with the East unless some inducement had been offered to great corporations to take the first and most hazardous risks of competing with established rivals. Indeed, most persons in England at this time felt, and not without valid reasons, that it would be impossible for individual capitalists to cope successfully with the powerful maritime associations which had in a great measure absorbed the most lucrative branches of commerce throughout the world. For these reasons the East India Company had been established, and for precisely similar reasons the English Government had been induced in 1606 to grant a charter to a company formed for trading to the Levant, though in this instance each individual traded on his own account subject to general regulations framed for the guidance of the whole of the members of the association.
[160] ‘Select observations of the incomparable Sir Walter Raleigh relating to trade, as it was presented to King James.’—Published, London, 1696. See also Macpherson, vol. ii. pp. 233-239.
[161] Made up thus:—a hundred last of barrels, 72l.; salt, 88l.; men’s wages for four months, 91l.; and their provisions during that time, consisting of bread, 21l.; beer, 42l.; bacon and butter, 18l.; and peas, 3l.
[162] See miscellaneous and interesting details relative to English trade for the year 1615, with Sir Dudley Diggs’ ‘Defence of Trade,’ etc., in Macpherson, vol. ii. pp. 279-282.
[163] Captain Gosnold had been employed in several of the previous voyages. He appears to have traded direct with the Indians, in lat. 42°, in peltry, sassafras, and cedar-wood. He was also the first to sow English corn in the Island of Martha’s Vineyard (so named by him). In the following year (1603) two ships from Bristol and one from London traded successfully to the same parts (Macpherson, ii. pp. 229-246, etc.). The most remarkable of all these expeditions was that of Captain John Smith, who sailed from London in 1607, and is deservedly considered the real founder of the colony of Virginia (see ‘True Travels, Adventures, etc., of Captain John Smith,’ Lond. 1627). Captain Smith is the hero of a famous old ballad, called ‘The Honor of a London ’Prentice; being an account of his matchless manhood and boyhood.’
[164] Mr. Lucas has recently brought together and edited, with some excellent notes, the most important of the ‘Charters of the Old English Colonies in America,’ Lond. 8, 1850. Among these will be found three charters, one to Virginia, to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island respectively, Massachusetts’ second charter, and that to New Hampshire and Maine. With these are also the “proprietary” charters to Maryland, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, and Delaware; and also those of New York, New Jersey, and Georgia. The careful study of these documents shows clearly on what liberal terms our ancestors commenced colonising, when we bear in mind that, according to the theory of those times, colonies were assumed to be the property of the Crown.
[165] The first settlement of the Puritans was at New Plymouth, in 1621; the second and more important expedition secured Massachusetts, in 1627 and 1628, under the Plymouth Company (Macpherson, ii. p. 307).
[166] It is certain that the Barbary corsairs had come to the “chops” of the Channel and captured English merchantmen with impunity, though this rare occurrence was used by Charles and his advisers merely as a pretext for their questionable demands (Macpherson, ii. pp. 284 and 302). The earliest treaty between England and Algiers for the mutual protection of shipping is dated April 10, 1682 (Hertslet, ‘Treaties,’ etc., vol. ii. p. 58).
[167] ‘Mare Clausum, 12mo. 1636.’
[168] The rajah of Bijnagar built, in 1646, for the English the original Fort St. George, at Madras, to mount twelve guns (Meadows Taylor, p. 389).
[169] Macpherson gives some interesting details of the respective values of the Indian and Turkey trades, from a curious pamphlet published by Mr. Munn, in 1621, and entitled, ‘A Treatise, wherein it is demonstrated that the East India trade is the most national of all trades’ (ii. pp. 297-300).
[170] Letter of advice to the King on the breach with the new Company, Feb. 25, 1615, vol. v., p. 259.
[171] In the [Appendix No. 6], will be found a list of the vessels then employed in the trade between England and Turkey.
[172] Roberts’ ‘Map of Commerce,’ p. 270, ed. 1700, original edition being 1638.
[173] The cargoes from England of the vessels of the Muscovy Company chiefly consisted of the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Coventry, dyed and dressed; kerseys of Hampshire and York; lead, tar, and a great quantity of Indian spices, indigo and calicoes; their return cargoes consisting of raw silks from Persia, Damascus and Tripoli; galls of Mosul and Tocat; camlets, grograins, and mohairs of Angola; cotton and cotton yarns of Cyprus and Smyrna, and sometimes the gums of India and drugs of Egypt and Arabia, with the currants and dried fruits of Zante, Cephalonia, and the Morea. The recital of cotton among these imports indicates that already the English had commenced the important business of weaving calicoes; and indeed, in a work published in 1641, Manchester is pointed out as the place where the raw material was made up, and when manufactured into “fustians, dimities and vermilions,” became an article of export for her merchantmen, a branch of business which has since reached an extent altogether unexampled in the history of commerce and navigation.
[174] Mons. Huet, in his celebrated ‘History of the Dutch Trade,’ claims for the Dutch the honour of having enjoyed their trade and navigation for a thousand years.