40 HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF NEWFOUNDLAND 



replied, ' I will not forsake my little company going home- 

 ward, with whom I have passed so many storms and perils.' 

 The storm grew worse and worse, but above the storm Sir 

 Humphrey's voice was heard ever and anon crying out aloud 

 with accents of joy, ' We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.' 

 Night fell, and the lights of the Squirrel suddenly went out. 

 Thai is all. Of Sir Humphrey we feel inclined to say as his 

 s-lep-brother said of himself, ' What matter how the head lie 



and hen- if the heart be right ? ' A halo of real heroism illumines this 

 foolish founder of the greatest colonial empire in the world, 

 and where a hero leads, even though it be to ruin, others are 

 apt to follow with enthusiasm, for tragedies such as these 

 attract by their dignity more than they deter. 



/>'. Drake's The story of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's great colonial effort 



cxpecition j ^ sequels, one in Newfoundland, and one in the 



to j\ew- 



fojmdland southern settlement, which he had always contemplated. 



^destructive Spain was more and more menacing. In 1580 she had 

 side of the absorbed Portugal, so that the Treaty of Tordesillas was 

 PkniisS*. more like'}' to instigate than to restrain a Spanish attack on 

 Newfoundland ; and in the same year Spanish ships seized an 

 English fishing-ship returning to Newhaven from Newfound- 

 land. 1 In 1584 the Spanish ambassador was dismissed from 

 London. In 1585 the King of Spain seized English ships 

 and sailors in Spain under pretext of a ' general arrest ', and 

 the sailors were imprisoned and underwent ' unsufferable ' 

 treatment. Immediately Sir Francis Walsingham revived 

 Sir Humphrey Gilbert's project of 1577, so far as it related 

 to Newfoundland, although he knew that it meant war, 2 and 

 Sir Walter Ralegh, the then Vice-Admiral of the western 

 counties, was directed to send ships from his vice-admiralty 

 ' for the intercepting of such of the King of Spain's subjects 

 as should repair to the fishing at Newfoundland'. Ralegh 

 set the press-gang to work and supplied a vessel of his own, 



1 Calendar State Papers, Carew MSS., Oct. 18, 1580. 



2 State Papers. Elizabeth, Domestic Series, vol. clxxvii, No. 58. 



