hard put to it to be driven to make shining messengers of Master Wolfall, who went with Frobisher's third voyage as chaplain to the hundred of the English chaplains. company that were to gather ore for a year on Cumberland's Island; and of Master Francis Fletcher, Drake's chaplain, whom, for his faint heart and double dealing, Drake solemnly excommunicated, causing a posy to be bound about his arm- Francis Fletcher, the falsest knave that liveth.' On these two pillars of the cause, Thwackum and Square, Square, English evangelical effort was fain to rest for the time; but it is to be hoped, says Hakluyt, that volunteers will soon be forthcoming. For those of the clergy which by reason of idleness here at home are now always coining of new opinions, having by this voyage to set themselves on work reducing the savages to the chief principles of our faith, will become less contentious, and be contented with the truth in religion already established by authority.' In a later part of the same Discourse Hakluyt throws a curious side-light on this question of religion. It is imperative, he says, that England should seek some new outlet for her trade, and some region where she may establish a monopoly: -'the rather to avoid the wilful perjury of such of our English nation as trade to Spain and other of King Philip's dominions.' Before being admitted to The religion of trade at any Spanish port, the English are required to make oath, on the sign of the Cross, that they adhere to the faith of the Catholic Church of Rome, and they and their companies must attend mass Sundays and Holy days. This they do; and thus 'the covetous merchant wilfully sendeth headlong

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the trader.

The Protestant

Buccaneer.

to hell from day to day the poor subjects of this realm. The merchant in England cometh here devoutly to the communion, and sendeth his son into Spain to hear Mass. These things are kept secret by the merchants; and such as depend upon the trade of merchandise are loth to utter the same.'

were

There was no English counterpart, then, or counter-
blast, to the devoted work of Las Casas and the Spanish
missionaries. But year by year, as English trade to
the South increased, there was a growing hostility to
Spain, and a growing disinclination to accept her mastery
of the New World. The merchant might feign sub-
mission; the buccaneers and sea-dogs avenged his
disgrace by challenging and harrying the power they
And these men, though
soon to overthrow.
there was little of saintliness in their character, had a
religion, and fought and suffered for it.
It was a
religion not wholly unlike that of the later Orange-
man, a Protestant compound, made up of fervid
patriotism, a varied assortment of hates, a rough code
of morals, and an unshaken trust in the providence of
God. To the heathen they brought not peace but a
sword. To the Pope, whom they named with the
Turk and the Devil, they wished destruction. For
Queen and Country they would go anywhere and
attempt anything. Their mission was quite unlike his
'that bringeth the message from the mountain'; they
coveted the things of the Gentiles, and their purpose
and methods are set forth, in imperial language, by
Michael Drayton :-

'A thousand Kingdoms will we seek from far,
As many Nations waste with civil war;

Where the dishevelled ghastly sea-nymph sings,
Our well-rigged ships shall stretch their swelling wings,
And drag their anchors through the sandy foam,
About the world in every clime to roam;

And those unchristened countries call our own

Where scarce the name of England hath been known.'

The North East and North West voyages failed in their primary purpose; and the men of peace gave place, in the end, to the men of war. But before the Queen and her Ministers recognised the necessity of an armed conflict with Spain, all pacific devices for the readjustment of the balance had been examined and patiently put to the test. One more series of these remains to be chronicled. The idea of colonisation, of Colonisation. appropriating some part of America as yet unsettled by the Spaniards, and there establishing a prosperous English community, whose imports and exports might benefit the mother country, received its first effective impulse from Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Already in 1555 Richard Eden had outlined this idea, in the preface to his translation of Peter Martyr's Decades. From Florida northward to Newfoundland, says Eden, Eden's suggestion. there are lands not yet known but only by the seacoasts, neither inhabited by Christian men.' His suggestion that England should take possession of these was not likely to bear fruit while Mary reigned and Philip governed. In his notable Discourse of 1576 Gilbert pointed not obscurely in the same direction. There are divers very rich countries,' he says, 'both civil and others, . . . where there is to be found great abundance of gold, silver, precious stones, cloth of gold, silks, all manner of spices, grocery wares, and other kinds of merchandise of an inestimable price, which