250 THE EXPANSION OF ENGLAND 



much of her wealth and power. He l)ecaine insj^ired In' the desire 

 that England should have a foothold here, and that she should suj)- 

 ]»lant Spain in the New World ; and at last, after the failure of all the 

 colonies which lie sent out, one following another, to occu])y new 

 ground here — at the last, toward the close of life, the great })rophet 

 and believer said, "America will yet become an English nation."' All 

 honor to the prophet I 



"When we study the expansion of England we should remember 

 that that work in its beginning was a chapter in the history of 

 America. 



THE FIRST EXPANSIONISTS — HAWKINS, DRAKE, AND FROBISHER 



It was not until ]o84 that Kaleigh established his first colony at 

 Roanoke, and just before that the activities of that adventurous set of 

 men began who conferred so much glory on the age of Elizabeth. A 

 score of years before, when Elizabeth became Queen, the fortunes of 

 England were never at so low an ebb. For five centuries Itefore that 

 England had claimed portions of France, and her kings and queens 

 had been crowned kings and queens of France as well as of England. 

 It was at that very time that England lost her last hold upon tiie con- 

 tinent, and the England w hich Elizabeth came to rule was the smallest 

 England in history' for centuries, yet it was the period that began with 

 her reign which was the most glorious in the history of England. 



In a certain sense, the exjiansion of England — at any late, of English 

 thought of the world — had its beginnings with Alfred the Great. 

 Alfred loved geography, and his mind went out from the little island 

 which he ruled to thegreat world outside. The few wi-itings of Alfred 

 are most interesting ; his books adorn the libraries still, and the most 

 interesting chapters of them all are on geograjiby. He was the first 

 influential Englishman who had what we may call a geogiaphic im- 

 agination ; but he did little for the expansion of England. It was 

 the Elizabethan age that began that work, and it began in ways that 

 seem a little queer to us with our somewhat different notions of 

 political morality. 



Sir John Hawkins was one of the first English adventurers who 

 sailed the sea to some purpose for Elizabeth. It is a familiar story 

 liow he sailed out from Plymouth with ships named '• John the Bap- 

 tist " and other pious names to carry slaves from the east coast of 

 Africa to the \\'est Indies and compel the Spaniards to buy them 

 of him at the cannon's mouth, for there was a law in Spain that her 



