36 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



Gilbert's 



plans em- 

 bodied //It'S 

 mixed 

 ideals, 

 1574, 

 1577, 



Elizabeth a state of war between Spain and England, and 

 war was waged without having been declared. Most of the 

 English warriors were from the south-west of England. 

 Sir John Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake and his cousin Sir 

 Barnard Drake, Sir Walter Ralegh who said 'To break 

 peace where there is no peace it cannot be V and acted on 

 what he said and Ralegh's half-brother Sir Humphrey 

 Gilbert, were Devonshire men ; Sir Richard Grenville and 

 probably Christopher Carleill who was son-in-law of the 

 most anti-Spanish minister of the time, Sir Francis Walsing- 

 ham, and had himself fought against Spain in the Low 

 Countries were Cornishmen. By a strange irony of fate the 

 English fishermen, who fished in perfect peace, year by year, 

 side by side with the Spaniards in Newfoundland as though 

 war were impossible, also came from the south-west of 

 England. 



In 1574 Gilbert, Carleill, and Grenville joined with Peck- 

 ham in a petition for a patent to colonize ' the northern parts 

 of America' and 1,000 was raised in Bristol for the 

 purpose. The matter dropped, but was revived in 1577, 

 when Gilbert forwarded to Lord Burleigh a plan to annoy 

 the King of Spain by granting him a patent to discover and 

 inhabit strange lands. The patent was to be ' a mere cloak 

 for the rain ', shrouded in which he was to sail first to New- 

 foundland and seize the Spanish, and perhaps the Portuguese 

 merchant-ships and sailors while a-fishing, and afterwards to 

 a West Indian island and seize gold and silver. Then at 

 last England would be safe, and perhaps succeed to the 

 Spanish and Portuguese monopoly of the ocean. ' Leagues 

 and fair words ' were mere ' mermaids songs, sweet poisons 

 or macquesites ', and must be set at naught ; or the Queen 

 should punish and profit by her subjects who set them at 

 naught. It was ' more than time to pare their nails by the 

 stumps that are most ready pressed to pluck the Crown ' 



1 William Stebbing, Life of Ralegh, 1891, p. 327. 



