Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (27 page)
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Authors: Giles Milton
BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
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For the first time in years, Ralegh found himself in straightened circumstances. The few privateering missions in which he invested never seemed to reap the dividends of previous years, and one expedition to the Caribbean cost him so much in victuals, customs, and the customary percentage for the lord admiral that Ralegh wrote contemptuously that “wee might have gotten more to have sent them a fishinge.” His American projects had swallowed much of his wealth—Hakluyt said that the 1587 colony alone cost more than £30,000—and his estates were providing him with only a trickle of income in these lean and difficult times.
The little money left at his disposal was now spent on his new home, Sherborne Castle. The castle was picturesque in a mildewed sort of way, but hardly the sort of place in which Sir Walter wished to live with his wife and family. He tore down much of the building and began work on a replacement property, an elegant manor with a profusion of chimneys and heraldic beasts that jutted like gargoyles from its hexagonal towers. The gardens were no less splendid; he took special delight in planting rare shrubs and flowers brought back from distant lands.
Ralegh had not forgotten White’s colonists, but his interest in their fate did not resurface until some sixteen months after his release from the Tower. He was shaken into action by some disturbing news. In April 1594, Ananias Dare, John White’s son-in-law, was proclaimed legally dead by virtue of an old rule that loss of contact for seven years implied death. His estate was placed into the hands of a relative, who was to hold it in trust until Ananias’s illegitimate
son turned eighteen. This news seriously alarmed Ralegh. His legal title to Virginia was dependent upon his having settled a permanent colony within seven years. Only by maintaining that the 1587 colonists were still alive could Ralegh retain his title.
son turned eighteen. This news seriously alarmed Ralegh. His legal title to Virginia was dependent upon his having settled a permanent colony within seven years. Only by maintaining that the 1587 colonists were still alive could Ralegh retain his title.
The Dare case was hotly debated in London and sparked off a flurry of rumours about the whereabouts of the lost colonists. The herbalist John Cerard—a member of the syndicate that bought the rights to trade with the colonists from Ralegh in 1589—hedged his bets, arguing they were certainly alive, “if neither untimely death by murdering, or pestilence, corrupt aire, bloodie flixes, or some other mortall sickness hath not destroied them.” George Abbot, future archbishop of Canterbury, used a confusing double negative to express his pessimistic view that “the possession of this Virginia is not discontinued, and the country at the present left to the olde inhabitants.”
When Ralegh did, at last, bestir himself, his prime concern was to line his coffers, and his colonial eye was drawn at first to the treasurerich land of Guiana in South America. Ralegh always had a streak of fantasy coursing though his veins, and his quest for the golden wealth of El Dorado was a manifestation of it. But gold was not his only goal; he also intended to call at Roanoke himself—his one and only attempt to go there in person—to land supplies “for the relief of those English which [he] had planted in Virginia.”
The mission failed in every respect: Ralegh neither found the legendary El Dorado nor did he dig up any nuggets of gold. When he headed for Roanoke, “extremity of weather forst me from the said coast.” Ralegh returned to England even poorer than before, and none the wiser as to the fate of his colonists.
On his return, his five-year period of disgrace was brought to an end when the queen recalled him to London to resume his position as Captain of her Guard. Ralegh was alarmed to see how time had withered her features; her face was thin and haggard, her teeth were brown, and she wore an extraordinary red wig that accentuated the sickly pallor of her skin. Although her wit was as sharp as ever, she
was a pale shadow of the coquette that he had once worshipped. But Ralegh, too, was no longer a youth. The hardships in Guiana had turned his hair a silver-grey, while action in the Azores had left his left leg shattered, and he now walked with a pronounced limp. But he had retained his silken charm; he soon “rid abroad with the queen, and had private conference with her.” Elizabeth delighted in his company and forgave Ralegh for his sins. He was at last back in favour with the queen.
was a pale shadow of the coquette that he had once worshipped. But Ralegh, too, was no longer a youth. The hardships in Guiana had turned his hair a silver-grey, while action in the Azores had left his left leg shattered, and he now walked with a pronounced limp. But he had retained his silken charm; he soon “rid abroad with the queen, and had private conference with her.” Elizabeth delighted in his company and forgave Ralegh for his sins. He was at last back in favour with the queen.
His reconciliation with Elizabeth coincided with a renewed interest in Roanoke. In about 1599 he sent the first of several expeditions to the Outer Banks to search for the lost colonists. Little is known of the first two voyages—except that they failed to reach Roanoke—while the third was said to have suffered from “extremitie of weather and losse of some principal ground tackle.” In 1602 Ralegh began preparations for a fourth expedition, commanded by Captains Samuel Mace and Bartholemew Gilbert. They were given one order, and it could not have been clearer: they were “to seeke out the people for Sir Walter Ralegh, left neere those parts in the yeere 1587.”
Mace had been in command of the previous expedition. Before setting sail, he had made contact with Harriot for advice on what supplies the colonists—who had been left to their own devices for fourteen years—might be needing. Harriot took an extremely optimistic view of the resourcefulness of the men and women left behind by White, believing that they would have been able to make clothes, nails, and pots and pans. Aware that the manufacture of tools would have caused them the greatest difficulty, he advised Mace to take five dozen hatchets, twenty mattocks, twenty iron shovels, 600 knives, and lead powder and shot. He also supplied him with a short list of Algonkian words so that the English search parties would be able to communicate with the Indians.
The fourth expedition set sail with high hopes of success, “but the wind blew so sore, and the sea was so high” that the ships were soon separated by Atlantic storms. Bartholemew Gilbert’s vessel was driven towards Chesapeake Bay, where the men dropped anchor and jumped ashore. It was a bad decision, for “the Indians set upon them and one or two of them fell downe wounded.” Only a few men made it back to England.
When Ralegh set sail for Guiana, he vowed to call at Roanoke “for the relief of those English which he had planted.”
The other vessel’s course was more mysterious. For months, Samuel Mace seems to have steered through storms and swirling sea mists, never entirely sure as to his position on the map. He arrived back in London at some point during the summer of 1603, and rushed straight to Durham House to inform Sir Walter Ralegh of the deeds and discoveries of his voyage.
A Miracle Among Savages
On the evening of March 26, 1603, a small group of men could be seen gathered at the window of Ralegh’s study in Durham House. They were sobbing into their lace ruffs, distraught at the extraordinary scene that was being played out on the river below. A melancholy procession of torch-lit barges was slowly progressing down the Thames, and the cargo of this cortege was the embalmed corpse of the Virgin Queen, the
weroanza
of Virginia. Elizabeth I was dead and a golden age had come to an end. By dawn the next day, her lead coffin was lying in state at Whitehall Palace, nestled on a bed of black velvet and adorned with outlandish bunches of ostrich plumes. It lent an exotic touch to an otherwise doleful scene. Even in death, Elizabeth was flamboyant.
weroanza
of Virginia. Elizabeth I was dead and a golden age had come to an end. By dawn the next day, her lead coffin was lying in state at Whitehall Palace, nestled on a bed of black velvet and adorned with outlandish bunches of ostrich plumes. It lent an exotic touch to an otherwise doleful scene. Even in death, Elizabeth was flamboyant.
The outburst of national grief that followed her passing was so infectious that some wondered if the nation would ever recover. Londoners wept openly whenever the queen’s name was mentioned, while the court, deprived of its glittering centrepiece, bewailed the loss of its celestial Astrea. Nature herself was afflicted with grief. According to William Camden, the fish in the Thames were so distraught at the sight of the death barge that they “wept out their eyes of pearle.”
It was more than a month before the queen was actually buried.
On April 28, the lead coffin was carried in procession to Westminster Abbey. The four horses were draped in black velvet and the funeral bier, which carried the coffin, was surmounted by a life-sized wax effigy of the queen dressed in her robes of state and clutching an orb and sceptre. Following behind were thousands of noblemen, courtiers, heralds, and officials—all weeping quietly. Many of these were young men, the offspring of the late queen’s long-dead favourites, but at the rear of the procession was an aged, limping, but still handsome courtier. Sir Walter Ralegh was leading the Gentleman Pensioners in their mourning, their gilded halberds pointing at the ground in token of their grief. All knew that this was the end of an era: “her hearse (as it was borne) seemed to be an island swimming in water, for round it there rained showers of tears.” So wrote one onlooker; another—John Stowe—later recalled “such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not seen or known in the memory of man.”
On April 28, the lead coffin was carried in procession to Westminster Abbey. The four horses were draped in black velvet and the funeral bier, which carried the coffin, was surmounted by a life-sized wax effigy of the queen dressed in her robes of state and clutching an orb and sceptre. Following behind were thousands of noblemen, courtiers, heralds, and officials—all weeping quietly. Many of these were young men, the offspring of the late queen’s long-dead favourites, but at the rear of the procession was an aged, limping, but still handsome courtier. Sir Walter Ralegh was leading the Gentleman Pensioners in their mourning, their gilded halberds pointing at the ground in token of their grief. All knew that this was the end of an era: “her hearse (as it was borne) seemed to be an island swimming in water, for round it there rained showers of tears.” So wrote one onlooker; another—John Stowe—later recalled “such a general sighing, groaning and weeping as the like hath not seen or known in the memory of man.”
Elizabeth’s successor was King James VI of Scotland, an uncharismatic monarch who could scarcely have compared less favourably with his illustrious predecessor. James had no truck with flamboyant dress and manners and cared little for the gilded pleasantries of polite society. He was so malcoordinated at table that it was said to be possible to identify every meal he had eaten for seven years by studying the scraps of dried food stuck to his clothes. He had a phobia of water, both as a drink and as a means of cleanliness, and although he occasionally “rubbed his fingers’ ends slightly with the wet end of a napkin,” he rarely washed. As a result, he itched insufferably and frequently scratched his sweaty skin. When he was nervous, he had the alarming habit of fiddling with his codpiece.
He delighted in coarse jests and bawdy innuendo, as had the late queen, yet he lacked the witty sophistication of Elizabeth. When the Elizabethan courtiers flocked to meet him and pressed too closely, he warned that if they came any nearer, “I will pull down my breeches and they shall also see my arse.” It was an unpleasant threat and the courtiers quickly retreated.
Ralegh led the Gentleman Pensioners at the queen’s funeral. All knew it was the end of an era, and “it rained showers of tears.”
Such a man was unlikely to find favour with Ralegh, and their first meeting was not a success. Sir Walter rode out to Northamptonshire to greet his new king, only to find himself dismissed with a curt jest: “Oh my soul, mon, I have heard rawly of thee.” Everything about Ralegh offended the king, right down to his wearing an earring—one of James’s pet hates. The king also abhorred tobacco and despised Sir Walter for introducing it to the court, arguing that England’s precious reserves of silver were being wasted in lining the pockets of Spain’s tobacco merchants, who had been quick to build to tobacco industry to supply the growing number of pipe enthusiasts.
Shortly after acceding to the throne, King James sat down to write
A Counterblaste to Tobacco
, in which he denounced smoking as the “toy” that was ruining the country, and argued—with extraordinary prescience—that it made “a kitchin of the inward parts of man, soiling and infecting them with an unctious and oily kinde of soote.” He accused Ralegh of introducing “this savage custome,” and at the same time took the opportunity to denounce him for having brought “savages” to England. “The poore wilde barbarous men died,” wrote the king, “but that vile, barbarous custome is yet alive, yea, in fresh vigor.” He added that “it seemes a miracle to me, how a custom springing from so vile a ground, and brought by a father so generally hated”—Ralegh—“should be welcomed on so slender a warrant.” Less than a year after his coronation, King James had imposed a massive new tax on the importation of tobacco, raising it from twopence per pound to “the somme of six shillings and eighte pence uppon everye pound waight thereof.”
A Counterblaste to Tobacco
, in which he denounced smoking as the “toy” that was ruining the country, and argued—with extraordinary prescience—that it made “a kitchin of the inward parts of man, soiling and infecting them with an unctious and oily kinde of soote.” He accused Ralegh of introducing “this savage custome,” and at the same time took the opportunity to denounce him for having brought “savages” to England. “The poore wilde barbarous men died,” wrote the king, “but that vile, barbarous custome is yet alive, yea, in fresh vigor.” He added that “it seemes a miracle to me, how a custom springing from so vile a ground, and brought by a father so generally hated”—Ralegh—“should be welcomed on so slender a warrant.” Less than a year after his coronation, King James had imposed a massive new tax on the importation of tobacco, raising it from twopence per pound to “the somme of six shillings and eighte pence uppon everye pound waight thereof.”
King James I cared little for courtly life. He rarely washed, itched insufferably, and fiddled with his codpiece when nervous
Ralegh’s first meeting with the king was an ominous beginning to a relationship that was already doomed. Unbeknown to Ralegh, King James’s mind had been poisoned by ambitious courtiers anxious to secure their own advancement by blackening his name. One of these was Lord Henry Howard, who wrote a string of secret letters to the king in which he described Ralegh as “the greatest Lucifer that hath lived in our age” and as one who “in pride exceedeth all men alive.” Such insults, taken seriously by the nervous Scottish monarch, quickly turned him against the darling of the Elizabethan court. When the secretary of state, Robert Cecil, learned of the king’s hatred, he dropped his old friend with unseemly haste. He then proceeded to fan the flames by blackening Ralegh’s name with Machiavellian adroitness, hinting that he was dangerous, treacherous, and an atheist.
Ralegh’s undoing came even more quickly than his spectacular rise. Two months after acceding to the throne, King James called in all royal monopolies. At one stroke, Ralegh lost the chief source of his income. A fortnight later he was deprived of his position as Captain of the Guard, and in June he was ordered by the king to vacate Durham House. This was a bitter blow. Ralegh had spent a fortune on turning this rotting mansion into a home and scientific laboratory, as well as the nerve centre of his New World enterprise. King James brushed aside Ralegh’s remonstrances with disdain and ordered him to leave within two weeks. There was to be no compensation.
His fall from grace was soon to take a far more sinister turn. In July 1603 he was quizzed about his involvement in an alleged treasonable
conspiracy against the king. After failing to convince his enemies on the Privy Council of his innocence, he was promptly confined to the Tower with a charge of treason hanging over his head. “All my good turns [are] forgotten,” he wrote in a letter to Bess, “all my services, hazards and expenses for my country—plantings, discoveries, fights, councils and whatsoever else—malice hath now covered over.” He was so anxious about his forthcoming trial, and so nervous about being found guilty of treason, that he reacted with indifference to the news of Samuel Mace’s return from Virginia.
conspiracy against the king. After failing to convince his enemies on the Privy Council of his innocence, he was promptly confined to the Tower with a charge of treason hanging over his head. “All my good turns [are] forgotten,” he wrote in a letter to Bess, “all my services, hazards and expenses for my country—plantings, discoveries, fights, councils and whatsoever else—malice hath now covered over.” He was so anxious about his forthcoming trial, and so nervous about being found guilty of treason, that he reacted with indifference to the news of Samuel Mace’s return from Virginia.
Samuel Mace could not have chosen a worse time to arrive back in London. Not only was his master in jail, but the city itself was “most grievously infected with a terrible plague” and the entire court had moved to the countryside. The affairs of state were in paralysis “by reason of the great infection … [and it] being very dangerous at such tymes to draw any multitude of people together.”
Mace could find no one interested in listening to his story. Thomas Harriot had gone into hiding, concerned that his association with Sir Walter would implicate him in the accusations of treason. The city chroniclers—who would normally have sought out a newly returned captain—had disappeared with the court.
It was an unfortunate end to an exciting adventure, and it meant that Mace’s voyage to Virginia was destined to become one of the great mysteries of the Roanoke story. There is no account of his landfall in America, nor is there a detailed record of the news he brought back about the lost colonists. Only a few snippets of information have survived, but they collectively suggest that Mace had unearthed some tantalising news about White’s settlers.
He also seems to have brought back some Indians from Virginia, for a group of them were lodged at Cecil House on the Strand, just a stone’s throw from Ralegh’s old home. The colonial enthusiast Sir Walter Cope was staying in the house at the time and arranged for the visitors to demonstrate their skills at handling a dugout canoe.
According to the Cecil House account book, the Indians were rewarded with the princely sum of five shillings. They were then guided ashore and entertained at Cecil House by one of Lord Cecil’s servants.
According to the Cecil House account book, the Indians were rewarded with the princely sum of five shillings. They were then guided ashore and entertained at Cecil House by one of Lord Cecil’s servants.
What happened next is unclear, for no one lodged in Cecil House saw fit to record the conversations that took place behind that grandiose facade. It is quite possible that Cope had acquired sufficient knowledge of Algonkian from Harriot to coax some information about the lost colonists from the Indians. Or Mace himself may have learned something from tribesmen on the shores of Chesapeake Bay. Although details are unlikely ever to come to light, one thing is certain: in the dying days of that plague-ridden summer of 1603, someone, somewhere, had turned up evidence to suggest that Ralegh’s colonists were still alive.
The seafarer George Waymouth was one of those who had learned news of their survival. In his 1604 treatise about America,
The Jewell of Artes,
he asserted that a small number of men and women had lived through their seventeen-year ordeal, although he conceded that Virginia was “but weakly planted with the English” and that these survivors were in extreme danger. “[They are] weakly defended from the invasions of the heathen,” he wrote, “amongst whom they dwell [and are] subject unto manifolde perills and dangers.” Waymouth presented his treatise to the king on two occasions, urging him to dispatch building materials so that the settlers might construct a fortified town. His treatise clearly assumed that King James also knew of the lost colonists, and served as a polite reminder to His Majesty that he had subjects on the far side of the Atlantic for whom he was responsible.
The Jewell of Artes,
he asserted that a small number of men and women had lived through their seventeen-year ordeal, although he conceded that Virginia was “but weakly planted with the English” and that these survivors were in extreme danger. “[They are] weakly defended from the invasions of the heathen,” he wrote, “amongst whom they dwell [and are] subject unto manifolde perills and dangers.” Waymouth presented his treatise to the king on two occasions, urging him to dispatch building materials so that the settlers might construct a fortified town. His treatise clearly assumed that King James also knew of the lost colonists, and served as a polite reminder to His Majesty that he had subjects on the far side of the Atlantic for whom he was responsible.
Waymouth was not the only man to have heard that the lost colonists were still alive. Rumour of their survival had begun circulating in taverns and stews and was soon so widespread that their ordeal was being referred to in London’s playhouses and written up in ballads and broadsheets. When
Eastward Hoe
was performed to a packed playhouse in 1605, the audience laughed cruelly at jokes
about White’s lost colonists. “A whole country of English is there, man,” says Captain Seagull, “bred of those that were left there in ‘79 [he means 1587]. They have married with the Indians, and make ’em bring forth as beautiful faces as any we have in England; and therefore the Indians are so in love with ’em that all the treasure they have, they lay at their feet.”
Eastward Hoe
was performed to a packed playhouse in 1605, the audience laughed cruelly at jokes
about White’s lost colonists. “A whole country of English is there, man,” says Captain Seagull, “bred of those that were left there in ‘79 [he means 1587]. They have married with the Indians, and make ’em bring forth as beautiful faces as any we have in England; and therefore the Indians are so in love with ’em that all the treasure they have, they lay at their feet.”
Languishing in prison awaiting trial, Ralegh was powerless to send a ship to Virginia. He had been stripped of his rights to America, and responsibility for the lost colonists—as well as for continued colonisation—had reverted to the king. But James was simply not interested in a land that was inhabited by “savages.” Although Captain Waymouth repeatedly tried to persuade him to renew England’s colonial projects, the king refused to listen. In his eyes, Virginia was “vile,” and too long a time spent in the company of “savages” would turn even the most civilised Englishman into a barbarian. “Shall we … abase ourselves so far as to imitate these beastly Indians, slaves to the Spaniards, refuse to the world, and as yet aliens from the holy covernant of God?” Using sarcasm to underscore his point, he suggested that enthusiasts for colonisation should stick feathers in their hair and walk around stark naked. King James was not the man to search for the lost colonists, nor did he have any intention of masterminding any new plan to colonise America. He had more important goals, one of which was to destroy Sir Walter Ralegh.
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