Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America (26 page)

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Authors: Giles Milton

BOOK: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America
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The men realised how wise they had been not to come ashore the previous night, for “in all this way we saw in the sand the print of the savages feet.” This was alarming, but White did not despair. He immediately set the men to work, searching the shoreline around the natural harbour for any sign that might have been left behind by the lost colonists. He instructed them to pay particular attention when they came to examine the forest, for the settlers had assured him that they would carve their destination onto the trunk of a lofty tree.
The woodland search took time; the undergrowth was dense and tangled, yet it was not long before one of the men raised an excited cry. “As we entred up the sandy banke,” wrote White, “upon a tree, in the very browe thereof, were curiously carved these faire Romane letters CRO.” He fell to his knees and gave thanks, for these three letters convinced him that the colonists were still alive. Although the rest of his men were perplexed by this mysterious word, White assured them that he was now able “to signifie the place where I
should find the planters seated”—Croatoan Island. Yet there was something peculiar about the way the letters had been carved. Although there was no cross cut alongside—the warning of danger—they appeared to have been hastily hacked into the tree and left half-finished, perhaps under pressure of an ambush. White ordered the men to look for more signs, but with no success, and they soon left the harbour and headed instead for the main settlement.
 
“We sounded with a trumpet a call,” wrote John White, “and afterwardes many familiar tunes of songes … but we had no answere.”
The breathless tone of White’s journal reveals that he was in a state of nervous excitement. But his return to the village where he had said his farewell to Eleanor, his daughter, and Virginia, his granddaughter, also filled him with apprehension. He already knew that he would not find his family in the settlement, but was aware that the state of the dwellings and storehouses would hold many clues as to when and where they had moved.
As the men approached the village, they realised that it had been abandoned for some time, for the communal buildings had collapsed and “the houses [were] taken downe.” White’s own house was a ruin, while that of his daughter and son-in-law was a wreckage of broken timber. Yet the place was still “very strongly enclosed with a high palisado of great trees, with cortynes and flankers very fort-like.”
After a cursory glance at the dwellings, White’s eye was drawn to “one of the chiefe trees or postes at the right side of the entrance, [which] had the barke taken off and, five foote from the ground, in fayre capitall letters, was graven CROATOAN without any crosse or signe of distresse.” Here at last was the message that White had so hoped to find. It was clearly engraved into the tree, and showed no signs of having been carved in a hurry. The lost colonists had not fled in panic: they were safe after all.
He remained deeply puzzled as to why they would have chosen to move to Croatoan. Although it was Manteo’s homeland, it was a tiny island with poor defences and very little fertile ground. White had expected them to move nearer to Chesapeake Bay, if they moved at all, and the more his men searched the derelict village the deeper the mystery became. “We entred the palisado [the stockade] where we found many barres or iron, two pigges of lead, foure yron fowlers, iron sacker-shotte, and such like heavie things, throwen here and there, almost overgrowen with grasse and weedes.” Many of the heavier guns were remnants of Ralph Lane’s colony and would have been difficult to transport in anything other than a large pinnace, but it was strange that the colonists had left bars of iron and pigs of lead, since these were necessary to make shot for their muskets.
“Wee went along by the water side towards the poynt of the creeke to see if we could find any of their botes or pinnisse,” writes White, “but we could perceive no signe of them.” Some of the mariners had remained in the village to conduct a more thorough search. They soon located a number of items, and ran to the shore to notify White. “[They] tolde us that they had found where
divers chests had bene hidden, and long sithence digged up againe and broken up, and much of the goods in them spoyled and scattered about, but nothing left of such things as the savages knew any use of, undefaced.” The lost colonists had been true to their word in looking after White’s possessions, for they had buried all of his trunks in a vain attempt to prevent them from being looted.
“Captaine Cocke and I went to the place which was in the ende of an olde trench,” he writes, “wheere wee found five chests that had been carefully hidden of [by] the planters.” These had clearly been dug up by the Indians, smashed open, and stripped of everything of value. “Three were my owne,” wrote White, “and about the place many of my things spoyled and broken, and my bookes torne from the covers, the frames of some of my pictures and mappes rotten and spoyled with rayne, and my armour almost eaten through with rust.” He did not blame the colonists for the loss of his possessions, for he knew they had been looted by the Indians. “This could bee no other but the deede of the savages,” he wrote, “[who] watched the departure of our men to Croatoan, and assoone as they were departed, digged up every place where they suspected any thing to be buried.” His only consolation was that his daughter and granddaughter were in safe hands, for Croatoan was “the place where Manteo was borne, and the savages of the iland our friends.”
There was no time for further exploration as it was getting late and the weather was fast deteriorating. Cocke ordered the men to row back to the
Hopewell,
“for the weather beganne to overcast, and very likely that a foule and stormie night would ensue.” It was a long, hard journey back to the ship, and the men arrived in the nick of time, for “the winde and seas were so greatly risen that wee doubted our cables and anchors would scarcely holde untill morning.”
The men passed an uncomfortable night, but the wind dropped slightly in the morning, “and it was agreed by the captaine and myselfe … to wey anchor and goe for the place at Croatoan.” No sooner had they set out on their journey than the wind rose once
again and the
Hopewell
began to be driven toward the shore. The ship’s crew began a desperate battle with the sea. “If it had not chanced that wee had fallen into a chanell of deeper water,” writes White, “we could never have got cleare of the poynt.”
Captain Cocke was growing increasingly alarmed at the dangers of the coastline, especially since he had lost three of his anchors and only had one left. As the weather “grew to be fouler and fouler,” he called White into his cabin and announced that he considered it too dangerous to remain any longer in these waters. He proposed that they head for the Caribbean, and return to Croatoan to search for the lost colonists the following spring. White reluctantly agreed with Cocke, but the party was soon to find that even this unsatisfactory plan was thwarted by the wind. The little
Hopewell
was blown thousands of miles across the Atlantic, unable to halt her eastward voyage until she took refuge at the Azores. Captain Cocke was by now so disheartened that he decided to abandon any attempt at sailing back to Virginia. Tired of ill luck at sea, he “framed our due course for England.”
It was a weary and dejected White who stepped ashore at Plymouth. He knew that he would never again cross the Atlantic, for his patience and stamina were at an end. All he had were memories, hopes, and dreams of what might have been. In a letter to Richard Hakluyt, he wrote a weary valediction that signalled the end of his ties with America. With a heavy heart, he handed over responsibility for the colonists “to the merciful help of the Almighty, whom I most humbly beseech to helpe and comfort them.”
Governor White had done all he could.
One Bess for Another
John White was broken by his experiences in Virginia. His attempt to govern a colony had proved a catastrophe, and the bitterest aspect of the failure was that it was due to his own inadequacies as leader. He had disappointed Ralegh, but he had also disappointed himself.
There was almost too much to mourn. He had lost all his personal possessions and, worse still, he had lost his family. Weary, dejected, and physically debilitated by hardship, he moved himself to a quiet farmstead in Ireland and devoted long hours to thinking about “the evils and unfortunate events.” He retained a flicker of hope that somewhere in the vast forests of America his daughter and granddaughter were still alive, but he was pessimistic about ever seeing them again. He concluded that his governorship had ended “unfortunately,” adding that it was “as luckelesse to many, as sinister to myselfe.”
It was the end of a dream that had begun with high hopes. Three and a half years earlier, he had set sail with great optimism, his gleaming new coat of arms signifying his status as governor of Virginia. His enthusiasm had encouraged men, women, and children to sign up for his colony, and its success seemed at last to be within reach. Now it was time to count the costs—not just of his own failed
colony, but of everything that had gone wrong since the initial triumph of 1584. Scores of English lives had been lost—hundreds, if the 1587 colonists were dead—and most had met with gruesome or unpleasant ends. If it was not typhoid or the flux, contracted in the sickly waters of the Caribbean, then it was the arrow and club of a hostile Indian.
The setbacks had been the result of human failings, miscalculations, and sheer incompetence. The grounding of the
Tiger
in 1585 had ruined the chances of Ralph Lane’s colony; the settlers’ brutal treatment of the Indians had been an act of incalculable folly. Only when it was too late did the English realise that their colony was doomed to fail without the active support of the native tribesmen.
John White was not alone in abandoning any plans of returning to America. One by one, all the leading lights were dropping out of the picture—unwilling or unable to sacrifice themselves in this most adventurous of projects. Ralph Lane, like White, had settled in Ireland, where he was appointed “muster-master of the garrisons.” He fought with considerable bravery against the rebels, and was rewarded with a knighthood in 1593. Energetic to the last, he nevertheless expressed no desire to return to Virginia. He died in Ireland in 1603, by which time he was well into his sixties.
Simon Fernandez ended his connections with Ralegh soon after the 1587 fiasco, perhaps because he was held responsible for what had happened. He never again sailed across the Atlantic, although he did help in the fight against the Spanish Armada and served in at least one further action against Spain. He is last heard of in 1590 when he accompanied an English war fleet to the Azores. He probably died on this expedition, since he disappears from the records.
Sir Richard Grenville’s exit from the Roanoke story was altogether more spectacular. Throughout his life he had been fired by an uncontrollable energy. Had he kept his mind focussed on America, there is little doubt that he could have overseen the successful establishment of a colony. But his hatred of Spain drew him south
rather than west, and in the spring of 1591 he set off as second-incommand of a fleet in search of King Philip’s treasure ship. When his superior, Lord Howard, sighted fifty-three enemy vessels, he took fright and ordered his ships to flee. Grenville was disgusted at such cowardice and “utterly refused to turne from the enimie, alledging that he would rather chose to dye then to dishonour himselfe.”
The fight that followed was the crowning moment of an extraordinary career; it would quickly enter the annals of British history, largely because of Sir Walter’s gripping account of the battle. Grenville had never been one to doubt his own abilities, but to pitch one vessel against fifty-three suggested a deluded degree of self-confidence. Yet the loyalty of his crew is proof enough of his inspirational leadership, for the soldiers fought for hour after hour, until “all the powder of the
Revenge
, to the last barrell, was now spent, all her pikes broken, fortie of her best men slaine, and the most part of the rest hurt.” So horrendous was the destruction that the ship was awash with human parts, “being marvellous unsaverie, filled with bloud and bodies of deade and wounded men like a slaughter house.” The ship itself was a wreck. “[It] had sixe foote water in hold; three shot under water … and was besides so crusht and brused as she could never be removed out of the place.” Sir Richard continued to rally his men until his body was so riddled with shot that he was scarcely able to speak. In his hour of death, his demonic nature asserted itself in truly horrific fashion. He vowed to blow his ship to smithereens, sacrificing his men to prevent the Spanish from capturing them. This proved too much for his crew, which refused to carry out his orders. Grenville died in agony, screaming that they were “traitors and dogs.”
Only two of the original adventurers retained any interest in America: Thomas Harriot and Sir Walter Ralegh himself. But it was to be some years before their gazes would again be focussed on the western horizon, for both were deeply involved in other projects. Harriot had resumed his love affair with algebra; Ralegh had rediscovered his interest in women.
He had fallen in love with one of the queen’s maids of honour—an act of considerable folly that was never likely to find favour with Her Majesty. When, two years previously, his rival at court, the Earl of Essex, had secretly married without the queen’s permission, Elizabeth had been so infuriated that she banished Essex from the court. And when her maid eloped with another favourite, the queen gave her such a thrashing that she broke the poor girl’s finger.
It is not hard to see why Ralegh was so attracted to Bess Throckmorton. She was quick-thinking, passionate, and independent of mind—qualities born of her troubled upbringing. Her father, Queen Elizabeth’s first ambassador to Paris, had died when she was six and the money left for her care was quickly lost through poor investment. When her mother also died, young Bess was left with some bed hangings, an armful of clothes, and very few prospects. It was her courtier brother, Arthur, who saved the day by using his charm to secure Bess a position as one of the queen’s maids of the Privy Chamber. In November 1584, she joined the inner circle of vestals who served and worshipped the queen.
Bess was very different from the other “witches” of the Chamber, and Sir Walter quickly found himself delighted by her frank honesty. He was now thirty-six years old and growing weary of his sterile relationship with the untouchable virgin. His new Bess was sensual and bright-eyed, with a physical attractiveness quite different from the queen’s chaste beauty. Ralegh revelled in the voluptuous pleasures of her body:
…
a violet breath and lips of jelly
Her hair not black nor over-bright,
And of the softest down her belly.
His love for her soon developed into a passion, and he wrote fiery poems about “sweet embraces, such delights, as will shorten tedious nights.” Their trysts were snatched in the brief moments when they could escape the queen, and they covered their tracks with skill. It
was many months before Elizabeth’s curtain-twitching gossipers learned the best piece of scandal in years: that Bess was pregnant and the couple were secretly married.
Different people reacted in different ways. Arthur, Walter’s brother-in-law, was so worried about being ruined by the affair that he rushed to the nearest tailor and bought the queen a waistcoat for £9 and two beautiful ruffs, hoping that such costly gifts would assuage her wrath. Ralegh’s instinct was to flee the country, and he was about to step aboard a flotilla of privateers when he was forbidden from doing so by his still-unknowing queen. Bess herself tried to pretend nothing untoward had happened; when her downy belly grew so large that it became hard to conceal her pregnancy, she mumbled excuses to the queen about having to absent herself from the court. In February 1592, Arthur noted in his diary that “my sister came hither to lie here.”
The baby was born at the end of March and given the name Damerei in honour of Ralegh’s distant Plantagenet forebears. Three weeks later, Bess returned to the court and resumed her position as maid of the Privy Chamber, acting as if nothing had happened. No one spoke of the matter—although word soon spread—and the court held its breath and awaited the queen’s response.
When she learned the news, Elizabeth’s reaction was strange. There was no public outburst and no wild emotion. For more than three months after Bess’s return, she said nothing. When Walter at last approached her over a private matter, she might have expected him to offer his sincere apologies. Quite the contrary: he boldly asked for her signature on the lease of Sherborne Castle. The queen obliged, giving him the West Country estate he so craved, perhaps in the hope that her generosity might lead him to beg for forgiveness.
She was playing a game of cat and mouse, signalling that her inward fury would be assuaged by an abject apology. But Ralegh refused to respond. Too proud, too arrogant, too used to manipulating the queen, he was unable to admit his failing. “Sir Walter
Ralegh … hath been too inward with one of Her Majesty’s maids,” chuckled one courtier. “All think the Tower will be his dwelling.” They were right. In the first week of August 1592, Walter and Bess were locked up—and Elizabeth went on a royal tour. It was anyone’s guess how long they would be imprisoned.
Bess was distraught and immediately put quill to parchment, writing to the queen with her characteristically eccentric spelling. “I am dayly put in hope of my delivery,” she wrote. “I assure you trewly I never desiared nor never wolde desiar my lebbarti without the good likeking ne advising of Sir W R.”
Ralegh’s letters were more mawkish. “My heart was never broken till this day,” he wrote, “that I hear the queen goes away so far off … and am now left behind her, in a dark prison all alone.” This was not strictly true, for his beloved Bess was imprisoned with him, along with a small army of servants, but Ralegh never fought shy of hyperbole. He wrote ever more extravagant letters about his jailer-queen: “[I] was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks, like a nymph; sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess, sometime singing like an angel, sometime playing like Orpheus.”
It was neither Bess’s pleas nor Ralegh’s flattery that won them their release. It was the arrival in Dartmouth of the richest prize ship ever captured during Queen Elizabeth’s reign. The cavernous holds of the
Madre de Dios
were packed with 540 tons of sweet-smelling nutmeg, mace, and cloves, as well as pearls, amber, and musk. Within hours, hundreds of hawkers and profiteers had pitched up at the port to haggle over booty smuggled ashore by sailors. The queen was livid, for she claimed a large percentage as her own, and dispatched Robert Cecil to stop the plunder. But her hunchbacked courtier was unable to control the unruly mariners; he wrote despairingly that “fowler ways, desperater ways, nor more obstinate people did I never meet with.” He estimated that the queen had
already lost £20,000, a figure that was increasing daily. So huge was the scale of the disaster the she was urged to send someone who could wield authority over these truculent thieves. Sir John Hawkins declared there was only one man up to the task. He called for “the especial man,” Sir Walter Ralegh, to be released immediately from the Tower after spending just five weeks behind bars.
The queen obliged with scarcely a murmur, commanding her prisoner to recover her booty. Ralegh seized the moment and vowed to have his revenge on all the merchants who were robbing the queen of her spoils. “If I meet any of them coming up,” he railed, “if it be upon the wildest heath in all the way, I mean to strip them as naked as ever they were born. For it is infinite [amounts of booty] that Her Majesty has been robbed, and that of the most rare things.” He neglected to mention that he, like the queen, had invested a huge sum in the privateering expedition and had a pressing concern to recover his own share of the loot.
Cecil was astonished at the effect of Ralegh’s presence on the corrupt seadogs. His own arrival had singularly failed to make any impression, but Ralegh commanded total respect in the West Country. “I assure you,” wrote an envious Cecil, “all the mariners come to him with such shouts and joy as I never saw a man more troubled to quiet them in my life.”
Working with ruthless efficiency to track down the queen’s treasure, Ralegh did sterling work, recovering a large part of the spoils. But he was all too aware of the cloud that continued to hang over him, causing Cecil to remark that “his heart is broken … whensoever he is saluted with congratulations for his liberty, he doth answer; ‘No, I am still the Queen of England’s poor captive.’”
If he hoped to be rewarded for his efforts, he was in for a rude shock. When the queen came to divide the spoils, she stripped Ralegh of his share and plunged him into debt. His investments in the venture had been huge; now he was left with a net loss. She was a great deal more generous with herself: she had ventured two ships and just £1,800; her payback for this small investment was a staggering
£80,000. “If God hath sent it for my ransom,” wrote Walter, “I hope Her Majesty, of her abundant goodness, will accept it.”
The queen was indeed better disposed towards Ralegh. After briefly remanding him to the Tower, she released both him and Bess in time for Christmas 1592. He was still in disgrace and would remain so for five years, but he was at least a free man.

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