general regret, and for many years afterwards his services were referred to in terms of high praise. In 1582, his illustrious half-brother, Ralegh, then serving as a Captain in Munster, where Gilbert had commanded thirteen years before, wrote thus of his services :"Would God the service of Sir Humphrey Gilbert might be rightly looked into, who with the third part of the garrison now in Ireland ended a rebellion not much inferior to this in two months! Or would God his own behaviour were such in peace as it did not make his good services forgotten, and hold him from the preferment he is worthy of! I take God to witness, I speak it not for affection but to discharge my duty to Her Majesty; for I never heard or read of any man more feared than he is among the Irish nation! And I do assuredly know that the best about the Earl of Desmond, aye, and all the unbridled traitors of those parts, would come in here and yeild themselves to the Queen's mercy were it but known that he were to come among them. The end shall prove this to be true." Ralegh intended to pay a high tribute to the prowess of his elder brother, but from a twentieth-century standpoint it is questionable praise. It was a terrible reputation that he left behind him in Ireland.

One of Humphrey Gilbert's "little bills," which he so long endeavoured to collect, is preserved at the Record Office, and is quite interesting. His pay, if he could have collected it, appears to have been good. As Colonel he received 20 shillings per diem, as PettitCaptain 8 shillings, and as Captain of Kernes 4 shillings, in all 32 shillings sterling per day. His total expenses for 100 "harquebusiers on horseback" and 200 kernes, for about nine months, appear to have been £3315 78. sterling, against which he received on account £600.

In 1572, Gilbert again endeavoured to obtain a grant of the south-east coast of Ireland. He drew up a memorandum for Sir John Parrott, describing the

"yncyvyll" condition of Ireland and the advantages that would accrue to England were it made “cyvyll." He lays great stress upon the danger of allowing the French and Spaniards to get a footing there. Already large numbers of Spanish vessels resorted there fishing and trading. Were the coast granted to him as requested, all these irregular proceedings would be stopped, and the Spaniards made to contribute handsomely to Her Majesty's Customs. For his share, like the Newfoundland clergyman described by Sidney Smith, he was "to pocket every tenth fish." Other privileges asked for were, the sole right to trade with the Irish and to work mines, to be admiral of those seas, to receive from Elizabeth a ship of 100 tons to be employed in this service, to have power to apprehend pirates, and to have the grant of all such lands as he should win from the "wild Irish." Poor creatures ! they were spared this last spoliation.

CHAPTER IV

THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE, AND FIRST THOUGHTS

OF COLONIZATION

IN studying the lives of great men we are perhaps inclined to be too analytical, too prone to seek for the influences which directed them upon the careers that made them famous. Very often a mere accident marks the turning-point in their lives, and determines their after existence, but in the generality of cases their careers seem to be marked out for them from the beginning, in fact to be almost "hereditarious," to quote one of the earliest "furtherers" of English exploration, and no subtle deductions are necessary to account for their actions. Gilbert undoubtedly belongs to the latter class. His boyhood was spent in an atmosphere of adventure by sea, and all his family connections, Champernouns, Carews, Grenvilles, Raleghs, and Gilberts, had “their business in great waters."

In no part of England was the remarkable uplift and expansion of Elizabeth's reign more noticeable than in the West Country. It was there that the genius of the race found its birth, there that the nation discovered that its destiny lay upon the ocean. From there old William Hawkins, the father of trans-Atlantic trade, made his first West Indian voyages, from there sprang out the bold little ships that laid Spain's Armada low, and placed England first among European nations.

In Gilbert's case, therefore, it would have been more remarkable if he had not adopted the career of explorer and colonizer, and one is only surprised that from the first he did not make the sea the profession of his life. But the interest which his aunt, Mrs. Ashley, could

exercise for him at Court no doubt occasioned his being sent there as offering the best opening, and influenced him to adopt the profession of arms as his chief pursuit. One can easily imagine how the "travellers' tales" of Dartmouth and Plymouth revolved in his mind during his youthful days at Eton and Oxford, and intensified his yearnings for his loved Greenaway; how later the glamour of the sea laid hold of him and would not be denied, and in the midst of the fighting at Newhaven and the brutalities of the Irish rebellion, his mind ever turned to the realms of fable and adventure across the Western ocean.

At Newhaven, or, as it was called by the French, Havre de Grace, he was in the thick of gossip about the New World. Havre had long been the centre of the Huguenot faction, and from there had departed the ill-fated expedition of Villegagnon and his devoted band of enthusiasts, who, driven to desperation by persecutions in the Old World, determined to make a home in the New, where they could worship in peace according to their belief. Again, a few months before the English occupation, Jean Ribault had sailed from Havre with another band of Huguenots intending to found a colony in Florida. We are not concerned with the sad histories of these colonies,-histories which we can be sure formed a constant topic of conversation among the Huguenot townspeople and their English sympathizers. The survivors of the Florida colony landed in England in 1565. One of them, an artist named Le Moyne, settled at Blackfriars and was known to Sidney, Ralegh and doubtless to Gilbert also.

Gilbert would also have met at Havre Richard Eden, whose translation of Peter Martyr's Decades, 1555, was the first publication in England to give any detailed

1 The principal harbour in Conception Bay, Newfoundland, is called Harbour Grace, being undoubtedly named after Havre de Grace, indicating that fishermen from that town were the first to frequent it regularly.- Havre was built by Francis I about 1520–30.

account of the New World. Eden was secretary to the Vidame de Chartres, and continued in his service for ten years.

A curious document of a later date gives "sundry reports of the country Humphrey Gilbert goeth forth to discover," principally from that prince of romancers, David Ingram, but it also contains a synopsis of the experiences of other travellers and the opinions of geographers. Among those quoted is Andrew Thevett, with whom it is said Gilbert conferred in person. Where and when he met Thevett is unknown, but it is not unlikely that he encountered him also during the siege of Newhaven, and drew knowledge, if not inspiration, from that renowned geographer.

But it is unnecessary to go abroad to seek for associations which might have influenced Humphrey Gilbert to devote himself to maritime discovery; the very air at home was full of it. With Sebastian Cabot's return to England in 1547, there had been an outburst of enthusiasm for mercantile expansion. He was able to tell, not always truthfully it must be admitted, not only of the first great success of English mariners fifty years before, but also of the rapidly growing colonies of Spain.

ments.

The career of Sebastian Cabot has been the subject of much heated debate among historians. Between the excessive admiration of the one school and the unqualified condemnation of the other, it is not easy to arrive at a proper appreciation of his character and achieveThe indisputable facts are that he was trusted by both Spain and England with the highest offices in their marine, with Venice, the while, intriguing for his services. When he went to England in 1547, continual representations were made from Spain that he should be returned. We cannot believe that they were all deceived as to his ability and attainments. But withal he was a boaster and a liar, if contemporary chronicles reported him correctly; as a leader of men he was a failure, and he was a traitor, or a would-be traitor, to