The Founding of New England. James Truslow Adams

our shores, although their future struggles were as yet hardly foreshadowed. The fishing grounds, on the high seas and far from the routes of Spain’s gold-laden galleons, were open to all, though the English seem early to have established some sort of authority over the rough fishermen of the nations gathered there.⁸ The continent itself, however, was merely an unwelcome barrier, save the Spanish possessions in the south, with which, as yet, no other nation had thought of meddling. Nevertheless, a new era had opened, and commerce, which, from the dawn of history, had clung to the Mediterranean, now abandoned that enclosed sea for the open highways of the world’s oceans. The Oriental trade began to flow through new channels, and Spain, by the conquest of Mexico, in 1522, tapped unlimited sources of the precious metals. The enormous import business from the East, formerly concentrated in the hands of the great mercantile cities of Italy, passed to the Iberian powers,⁹ while men’s horizons were widened by the new discoveries, and old established methods, routes, and connections had received severe shocks. The example of Spain and Portugal was making other nations dream of gaining fabulous wealth by finding their way to the riches of the Orient, or gold in the wilds of America.

For the next four centuries, the civilization of Europe, which throughout the mediæval period had been hemmed within a narrow region by strong barbaric powers, was able to expand against almost negligible resistance, until, after having encircled the world, it is again faced in our own day by a “closed political system.”¹⁰ At the very moment when new forces were being let loose by the social ferment following the Renaissance and the Reformation, the new lands offered vents through which those forces might in part escape, without causing such explosions as wholly to wreck the social system. Their presence, or, to phrase it differently, the existence of a practically unlimited frontier, during the whole of our colonial period, was one of the great formative elements in our institutions, and the relations between the colonies and England.

      We are so accustomed to think of that country as the great trading nation and mistress of the seas, that it is hard to conceive of a time when she had not even faintly dreamed that her destiny was to be upon the water, when her trade was still mainly in the hands of foreigners, and she herself was merely a producer of raw materials for the manufacturers on the continent. Such, however, was the situation at the opening of the sixteenth century. Men, indeed, began to talk of the new discoveries, which were even introduced into the rude theatre of the time; but, in the main, they stuck to their last, and fished and grew wool like their fathers. As yet, there was not the vaguest thought of a colonial empire—only dreams of gold and spices, and the silent fishermen catching cod.

      The accession of Elizabeth opened the door to imperial ambition. Spain was, indeed, at the height of her power, where England’s day was yet to come. Elizabeth’s resources needed careful husbanding, and no open breach between the two countries could be allowed; but political interests were still European in the minds of statesmen, and peace, though many times in jeopardy, was not to be broken lightly for what English seamen might do “beyond the line.” America was a means to European ends for Spain, and, until the depredations of the English became so great as to threaten those ends, murder, robbery, and the looting of cities passed with no action beyond protests, which Elizabeth met and parried.

We must pass by the doings of Hawkins, Drake, and the other sea-dogs, the whole pack of whom were soon in full cry after the hated Spaniards in their slow-moving galleons, laden with the treasure upon which their European power was nourished. This latter fact was now recognized, and wild and, perhaps, unlawful as were these English seamen, we must remember that, unlike common pirates, their depredations were not alone for private ends, but were blows struck for their religion, their country, and their queen. Had it not been for them, the Armada might indeed have been invincible, and the civilization of North America have been Latin instead of Anglo-Saxon.¹¹

One of the outstanding characteristics of the later Tudor period was the remarkable development of individual initiative. Men were no longer content “ever like sheepe to haunte one trade,” but in every field of human endeavor were striking across new paths. It was, moreover, an age of glorious amateurs. As in the best days of Greece, the bars that bound the individual within narrow limits of professionalism were broken asunder. It was as if to the nation’s mature powers had suddenly been added the gift of youth. It was a cry of youth which Thorne uttered when he swept away all objections to the dangers of the Northwest Passage with his “there is no land unhabitable nor sea innavigable.” Elizabeth’s well-known methods, which perhaps temperament, necessity, and policy all had their share in fashioning, were admirably adapted to bring out, and to use to the utmost, these qualities in her subjects. Personal loyalty and individual initiative were largely fostered in place of taxation and governmental enterprise, and the patriotism of a united nation rose to new levels. “He is not worthy to live at all,” wrote Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in 1576, “that for feare, or danger of death, shunneth his countries service, and his owne honour.”¹²

This growing national feeling was strengthened by religious motives. The persecutions under Mary, and the tortures of the Inquisition, to which English sailors were so often subjected in the ports of Spain, both played their part in the drama now being enacted. Five thousand English volunteered for service against the Spaniard in the Netherlands, and the Queen’s hand was being forced by the national feeling that she herself had aroused. The conquest of Portugal by Spain, in 1580, nominally transferred to the latter all the colonial possessions of the entire world she did not already possess, leaving no room open for other nations, according to Spanish pretensions. The English government at last spoke, however, and in the same year, in answer to Spain’s demand for the return of Drake’s plunder, announced that Spain “by the law of nations could not hinder other princes from freely navigating those seas and transporting colonies to those parts where the Spaniards do not inhabit; that prescription without possession availed nothing.”¹³ The rights of other nations were definitely settled by the defeat of the Armada eight years later. Business was beginning to improve somewhat after its long decline. The Muscovy Company had been chartered in 1555, and trade was seeking those new outlets which Sebastian Cabot had been recalled from Spain to find; but England felt the effects of the vast injection of American bullion into the currency system of Europe later than the continental countries. After the recoinage of the debased money in 1559, however, the advance in prices, which had already begun, was very rapid, with effects upon the country gentry and other classes, which were to have a marked influence upon American colonization.

In the meantime, while Drake was hastening home from the Pacific in the Pelican, loaded to the gunwales with the spoils of Spanish treasure-ships, another voyage, the first, except those of fishermen, since the ill-fated escapade of a London lawyer in 1536, was being made to the shores of Newfoundland. The motive was the old continuing one of a passage to the Orient by the northwest, although little is known of its details. The Queen, however, granted to its leader, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a patent to colonize and rule such lands as he might choose from his new discoveries. This patent, which was issued in 1578, and marked a new epoch in England’s American policy, followed in many respects the charters of the trading companies granted by the Crown both previously and subsequently.¹⁴ It had, however, a wholly novel feature in the clause which permitted Gilbert to transport a colony to his new possessions. It is probable that this first attempt to plant an English community beyond the seas was largely based upon the experience being gained at this very time in the efforts to colonize Ireland. Sir Humphrey himself, with other west-country gentlemen, had undertaken to plant colonies on the Crown lands in Ulster, eleven years before, and various plans and essays had been made, though unsuccessfully.¹⁵ These colonizing schemes in Ireland were being considered and carried out during the whole period of the early efforts to plant colonies in America, and many individuals and city companies were interested in Irish and American lands at the same time. Both were almost equally wild and uncivilized, and both were rich and undeveloped.¹⁶ The Irish Plantation Society, formed in 1613, was a serious rival to the Virginia Company, and diverted both funds and colonists at a critical time for the American scheme.¹⁷

The beginnings of the continental American colonies, indeed, are too apt to be considered as isolated events. Their unique importance from the standpoint of American history has tended to obscure their