The CHAP. VII. for Moscow, and there obtained from the Czar, Ivan Vassilowich IV., letters for King Edward, and valuable trading privileges for the newly-formed company. This was the origin of the English Russia Company, which was incorporated the formed. next year by a charter from Queen Mary, and was encouraged in its traffic by the Czar, who showed many symptoms of regarding with generous eyes, the civilisation which he dimly saw rising beyond his western frontier. Foreign physicians were seen at his court, and he had several dealings with Mary and Elizabeth.* 4. Jenkinson's travels through Asiatic Russia. The Russian company continued to push their voyages eastward, and in 1558, sent out Anthony Jenkinson as their agent. After reaching Russia, this extraordinary man, who employed thirty-six years of his life in journeys and voyages so extensive, that it is difficult to understand how he could accomplish them in an age when languages and geography were so little known, set out on a voyage down the Volga to Astrachan, from whence he crossed the Caspian Sea to Persia, and made his way to the city of Bokhara. Here he found not only Russian, Persian, and Indian merchants, but traders from Cathay, from which country the journey occupied nine months. After his return to England, in 1560, he made no fewer than six subsequent journeys to Bokhara by the same route; he obtained from the Sophi of Persia, for the Russian Company, entire freedom of trade and protection for their goods and persons in that country; and, in 1571, again went out to Russia as ambassador from Elizabeth, in which character he obtained the restoration of the Company's privileges, which the Czar had suspended, and reinstated its affairs, which had fallen into disorder. The existence of a traveller like this, so enterprising, so persevering, and, necessarily, so intelligent-the extent and judicious selection of his objects and means-would of themselves be sufficient to show the nature and force of the impulse which was at that period communicated to the English mind.† The 5. Encouragement given to the navy by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth. By the progress which England had thus made in navigation and commerce, it was prepared for advancing further; and, on the accession of Elizabeth, a period commenced, extremely auspicious to this spirit which was rising in the nation. long peace of more than twenty years which ensued; the Queen's economy, which exempted her subjects from the burden of taxes oppressive to trade; and the popularity of her administration, * Hakluyt, I., 226. + Mackintosh, III., 178. 1485-1603 were all favourable to commercial enterprise, and called it forth into vigorous exertion. Her discerning eye soon perceived, that the security of her kingdom depended on its naval force, and she, therefore, began her reign with adding to the number and strength of the royal navy. She filled her arsenals with naval stores; she built several ships of great force, and encouraged the people to build their own ships, instead of purchasing them from foreigners. By these efforts, she improved the skill of the English artificers, increased the number of sailors, and turned the attention of the public to the navy, as the most important national object. The royal navy, properly so called, took its rise in the reign of Henry VIII. At first he possessed only one ship of war of his own, the Great Harry, to which a second was added by the capture of Andrew Barton's ship, the Lion. In the next year (1512) he built the Regent, of 1,000 tons, which was blown up, with all its crew, in a naval action off Brest. To replace it, he built a still larger vessel, called the Henry Grace de Dieu. But he did not satisfy himself with merely building ships; he laid the necessary foundations for the permanent maintenance of a naval force, by the institution of the first navy office, with commissioners Navy Office, for its superintendence. He also established by royal and Trinity charter (4 Henry VIII.), the "Corporation of the Trinity instituted. House of Deptford," for examining, licensing, and regulating pilots, and for ordering and directing the erection of beacons and lighthouses, and the placing of buoys, &c. He afterwards added subordinate establishments at Hull and Newcastle. The navy yards and store-houses at Woolwich and Deptford also owe their origin to Henry. About 1525 he erected the first pier at Dover; and in 1531, an act was passed for the amending and maintenance of the havens and ports of Plymouth, Dartmouth, Tinmouth, Falmouth, and Fowey.* Elizabeth, therefore, only carried out her father's policy, when she devoted her attention to naval matters. To protect the navy-yards, she built Upnor Castle, on the Medway; she also encouraged the casting of guns, and introduced the manufacture of gunpowder; and she augmented the pay of both sailors and soldiers. The greatest number of ships belonging to the crown in her reign was 40; but more than a hundred merchantmen were also hired and kept in constant service as men of war. On extraordinary occasions,-e.g., when the Spanish Armada came,-merchant ships were pressed into the public service. The average crew of a man of war was about 300 men; the tonnage of the largest vessels ranged between * Pictorial Hist., II., 780-781 CHAP. VII. 500 and 1,000 tons; but the greater number averaged not more than 150 tons each, while many were not more than 20 or 30 tons burden. 6. Attempts of Frobisher and Davis to discover a north-west passage. The first voyage of discovery attempted during Elizabeth's reign was made by Martin Frobisher in 1576, under the patronage of Dudley, Earl of Warwick (the elder brother of the Earl of Leicester), and a body of London merchants. His expedition consisted of only two barks, of twenty-five tons each, and a pinnace of ten tons. The Queen watched his vessels sail down the river past Greenwich Palace, and waved her hand to bid them farewell (June 8th). On the 28th of July, they came within sight of Greenland; and, on the 11th of August, entered the straits leading into Hudson's Bay, which still bear the navigator's name. After taking possession of the adjacent coasts in the Queen's name, he resolved to return, because sickness had broken out among his crew, and several had died. He arrived at Harwich on the 2nd of October, and next year again set out with the Aid, a royal ship of 200 tons, and two barks (May 31st), for the purpose of discovering gold, with which it was thought the country he had discovered abounded. This voyage led to no result; and next year, Frobisher set out a third time, with fifteen ships, but no better success attended him than before. Frobisher suffered much discredit in consequence of these failures; but he himself was not discouraged, and he was still convinced that the north-west passage was practicable, an opinion in which he was all the more confirmed by the treatise of Sir Humphrey Gilbert on the subject. The scheme, however, was next taken up by John Davis, who made three voyages in 1585 and the two following years, under the patronage of Burleigh, Walsingham, and other gentlemen of note and authority. He passed through the straits bearing his name, leading into Baffin's Bay; and discovered a part of Greenland, which he called the Land of Desolation.* If these attempts to make that discovery which was left to our own day, failed in their specific object, they were yet crowned with these advantages:-Nautical experience was acquired; seamen were trained to those habits of courageous calmness in peril, and perseverance after disappointment, so important to a seafaring life; and the field of the whale-fishery, which began about the end of Elizabeth's reign, was explored. 7. Freebooting expeditions against the Spanish Main. But the most remarkable of the maritime enterprises of the age were * Southey's Lives, V., 13-23, 1485-1603 the British those expeditions which, however splendid as naval exploits, were piratical in their character, and often stained with dark Pirates in atrocities. The number of pirates who then swarmed seas. in the British seas may be, in some degree, estimated from the facility with which Bothwell collected them at Shetland—a station to which they flocked on account of its remoteness from legal authority. Between 1570 and 1575, twenty-two cases of piracy were tried before Elizabeth's privy council; and, in the next five years, this number was doubled. In subsequent years they decreased, owing to the naval expeditions against the Spanish Main, which were of exactly the same nature, but more dignified by the grandeur of the object. Such were the expeditions of Hawkins, Drake, and Cavendish, which have before been described; and that of John Oxenham, of Plymouth, John who landed in 1575 on the north side of the Isthmus of and Panama, crossed to the opposite shore, and there built a Barker. pinnace, in which he began a series of buccaneering expeditions against the Spaniards, who took him in the end, and executed him as a pirate in the Peruvian capital. Another freebooter was Andrew Barker, of Bristol, who traded with the Canaries; and, in revenge for the unlawful seizure of one of his cargoes by the Inquisition, fitted out two barks, and became the terror of the Spanish Main. But he also came to an unfortunate end, and the survivors among his followers returned to England with little booty. Oxenham, Andrew animated All those who went upon these piratical voyages against the Spaniards believed that they were engaged in an honest cause; and, certainly, there were circumstances which made the expeditions plausible in the eyes of the nation. During great part of Elizabeth's reign, Spain and England, though formally at peace, were in a state of manifest enmity and private war. No English subject, while trading with those parts of the Spanish dominions with which the trade was authorised by treaty, was safe, unless he was a Roman Catholic. The Inquisition looked upon all Feelings heretics who came within its reach as amenable to its laws, no matter which what their country; they were rebellious subjects of the Universal English sailors Roman Catholic Church, and, as such, to be seized and punished. against English property was confiscated, and Englishmen were imprisoned and Spain. tortured to death. On this ground, therefore, the first adventurers did not consider themselves to be pirates; and furthermore, they were excited by a strong feeling of indignation against the Spaniards, for the cruelties they had perpetrated against the Indians. Tales of the Inquisition chambers were related in every seaport tavern, and there was not a ship that set out from Plymouth, in which every lion-heart did not burn with fierce hatred against the Spaniard and the papist, and which was not ready for hot or cold deaths, fire or steel, the stake or the torture, so the dollars could be won, and the Spaniards stripped. In all these voyages, too, the religious sentiment was as manifest as the patriotic. Before a voyage, the sailors prayed; after a victory, they fell upon their knees; shipwrecked men offered thanks to God for their deliverance. God was never forgotten; His Omnipotence was never CHAP. VII. unacknowledged; and every sailor who returned had stories to tell of new countries and strange people. They had been tortured by the Spaniards; had been stripped by the Caribs; travelled naked through Indian forests, full of snakes; forded rivers black with alligators; had spit on the Spanish idols; had been branded, manacled, whipped, and goaded with spears; and had been delivered from prison by Spanish ladies of dazzling beauty, or had escaped by murdering the friars who guarded them.* Whoever has any love for these wondrous tales of English daring, in every sea and land, during the golden age of Elizabeth, should read the three folios of that excellent scholar and brave spirit, Richard Hakluyt, prebendary of Westminster, rector of Wetheringset, in Suffolk, and sometime student of Christ Church, Oxford. He devoted himself to the study of navigation and naval science, and was the first who introduced maps, globes, and other similar instruments, into the common schools of the university. He made it the great business of his life to collect all the accounts of voyages ever made by Englishmen, in which he was greatly encouraged by Walsingham and Raleigh; and it is from these wonderful records alone, that we can fully learn to appreciate the ardour of commercial enterprise that animated the voyages of Elizabeth's reign. He was born at Eyton, in Herefordshire, 1553; died in 1616; and was buried in Westminster Abbey. 8. Raleigh and Keymis's voyages to Guiana. Another of these freebooting expeditions was made by Sir Walter Raleigh, in the year 1595. His object was no less than the discovery and conquest of the fabulous empire of Guiana, and its capital city, the far-famed El Dorado, or the golden city of Manoa, in the search for which, the Spaniards lost more men than in the conquest of Mexico and Peru. Meaning to enter by the Orinoco, he sent Captain Whiddon, the year before, to obtain information at the island of Trinidad; but, when Raleigh arrived there, the Spanish governor had imprisoned Whiddon, and eight of his men. To revenge this injury, he surprised and massacred the guard, reduced to ashes the town of St. Joseph, and carried away the governor, Bereo, by whose guidance he fearlessly sailed to the mouth of the Orinoco; advanced more than four hundred miles up the river, giving out to the natives that he was their friend and protector, and that he had come in search of the Spaniards, the common enemy of both. Four weeks were spent in the survey of the country, and in communications with the inhabitants, who, to Raleigh's honour, were treated with kindness; which, contrasted with the savage conduct of the Spaniards, raised so friendly a feeling towards him, that for years his return was eagerly expected, and at length hailed with delight, when he made that unfortunate expedition in the reign of James which led to his death. The waters suddenly rising, and the boats being unable any longer to stem the rapidity of the torrent, the adventurers abandoned themselves to the stream, and were carried back, *Shakspere's England, by Walter Thornbury, II., 211. Read Kingsley's Westward Ho! "a romance written in the purest spirit of history," and burning with all the fiery patriotism and religious zeal of the Elizabethan age. |