164 NINTH ANNUAL REPORT OF 



nationality. It was not the spirit of that age to ask for such large 

 power of local government as by a later generation was quietly assumed 

 and exercised. The ancient Saxon element of local self-government 

 could not well have been transplanted here, while the strong rule of the 

 Tudor was centralizing so much about the throne ; and therefore, (I 

 speak of it as an inference in the logic of history,) the whole sixteenth 

 century passed away and the land was still the natives' ; for when the 

 year 1600 came, there was not an English family, no English man or 

 woman, on this continent, unless perchance there was wandering some- 

 where some survivor of Raleigh's lost colony. 



It would be vain now to speculate upon the influence which might 

 have been exercised on the destinies of our country if that which was 

 the perishable colonization of the 16lh century had bern permanent. 

 But a knowledge of what was attempted, and of the manner of it, 

 serves to show that it would have been different in character, and 

 therefore in its influences from the later colonization. 



When, in 1578, Sir Humphrey Gilbert obtained from Queen Eliza- 

 beth letters patent, authorizing him to discover and colonize remote 

 and heathen lands — the first grant of the kind ever made by an English 

 sovereign — there was conferred upon him almost a monopoly of the 

 right of" colonization, with privileges and authorities for the government 

 of his designed colonies of almost indefinite extent, and with a prohibi- 

 tion upon all persons attempting to settle within two hundred leagues 

 of any place which Sir Humphrey Gilbert or his associates should oc- 

 cupy during the space of six years. While we may deplore the ad- 

 verse fortunes of this brave voyager — his bafHed enterprises and the 

 pious heroism of his dark perishing in the mid-Atlantic — it is not to be 

 lamented that a scheme of colonization so vice-regal in its character; 

 should not have been accomplished. The same comment may be 

 made on the grant to Sir Walter Raleigh — which was of prerogatives 

 and jurisdiction no less ample — to end, after repeated efforts and the 

 well known expeditions which he sent out to the new world, in disap- 

 pointment and a name ; for all that has proved perpetual from those 

 enterprises is the word ^^ Virginia''^ — a title given, for a considerable 

 time, to an almost indefinite region of America. 



Let me here take occasion to state that some recent investigations of 

 the State records m England, and particularl}^ a hitherto unnoticed en- 

 try on the close-roll of the 24th of Elizabeth, have established the fact 

 that another illustrious public man of those times — Sir Philip Sidney — 

 had turned his earnest and active mind to American discovery, and 

 probably contemplated a voyage in his own person to the western 

 hemisphere. That he did so as early as 1582 — which was earUer 

 than the voj^ages equipped by Raleigh — is a fact, the evidence of which 

 has but very lately been discovered, and was published, tor the first 

 time, only in the month of February, 1850. It appears that Sidney ob- 

 tained from Sir Humphrey Gilbert, under the Queen's patent to him, a 

 right to discover and take possession of three millions of acres in Ame- 

 rica. The grant was large enough to be almost indefinite, and is 

 another instance to illustrate the policy of colonization which prevailed 

 in that generation. 



Although Sidney's meditated enterprise was relinquished, it is 



