The ships were by this time more than three hundred leagues onward of their way home. They had brought the Azores south of them: but were then keeping much to the North to get into “the height and elevation” of England. This attained they met with very bad weather and terrible seas breaking short and high, “Pyramid wise.”
Then came the final catastrophe.
"Munday the ninth of September, in the afternoone, the Frigat was neere cast away, oppressed by waves, yet at that time recovered: and giving forth signes of joy, the Generall sitting abaft with a booke in his hand, cried out to us in the Hind (so oft as we did approach within hearing), We are as neere to heaven by sea as by land. Reiterating the same speech, well beseeming a souldier, resolute in Jesus Christ, as I can testifie he was.
“The same Monday night, about twelve of the clocke, or not long after, the Frigat being ahead of us in the Golden Hinde, suddenly her lights were out, whereof as it were in a moment, we lost the sight, and withall our watch cryed, the Generall was cast away, which was too true. For in that moment the Frigat was devoured and swallowed up of the Sea.”
All that night the “Golden Hinde” kept up a constant lookout hoping to sight her again. But not a fragment of her could be seen or a single survivor.
Then the “Hind” continued on the course alone, still maintaining the lookout. At[At] length, after “great torment of weather and perill of drowning,” she came safely to a home port, with her doleful tale of disaster, arriving at Falmouth on the twenty-second of September—a Sunday.
XIX
FOOTPRINTS OF COLONIZATION
Upon the lamentable death of Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and the consequent failure of his scheme of colonization, Walter Raleigh immediately took up the cause energetically, with a view of attempting a settlement on the continent in the milder southern clime; and within nineteen months, or about a year and a half, after the return home of the forlorn remnant of Sir Humphrey’s expedition, Raleigh’s first company of American colonists sailed out of Plymouth bound for the salubrious country then comprised in “Virginia.”
Raleigh’s patent, obtained from Queen Elizabeth in March, 1584, in the securing of which, as we have seen, Hakluyt’s writings were so influential, constituted him a lord proprietary with almost unlimited jurisdiction over a vast region indefinitely defined. Its provisions were similar to those of Gilbert’s patent but more ample. It licensed him, his heirs and assigns, to “discover, search, find out, and view such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands, countries, and territories not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people,” as to him, his heirs and assigns, should seem good; and to hold, occupy, and enjoy such lands and regions with all “prerogatives, commodities, jurisdictions, royalties, priviledges, franchises, and pre-eminences thereto or thereabouts both by sea and land, whatsoever” the queen by her letters-patent might grant, and as she or “any of our noble projectors” had heretofore granted to “any person or persons, bodies politique or corporate”: the proviso, as in Gilbert’s patent, being made that a fifth part of all the “oare of golde and silver” that should be obtained be reserved for the queen. Powers to make laws for the government of a colony were conferred, these ordinances to be, as near as conveniently might be, agreeable to the English form of statutes, and not against the faith professed by the Church of England. They were to be in force over all who should from time to time “advantage themselves in the said journeis or voyages,” or that should at any time inhabit “any such lands, countries or territories aforesaid,” or that should abide within two hundred leagues of the place or places that Raleigh’s companies should inhabit within six years from the date of the patent. Raleigh might make grants from his territory at his pleasure.
Hakluyt gives the text of the patent in the Principal Navigations under this title: “The letters patents granted by the Queenes Majestie to M. Walter Ralegh, now Knight, for the discovering and planting of new lands and Countries, to continue the space of 6 yeeres and no more.”