Raleigh's Page (19 page)
Authors: Alan Armstrong
A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE
Raleigh’s Page
is a fiction. Walter Raleigh (
Ralegh
is how it was spelled in his time) had pages, and Thomas Harriot had a secretary, but Andrew is an invention, as are Tremayne, Pena, and Sky. The larger historical events are roughly accurate (except I have Doctor Dee fleeing to Bohemia a year after he actually left). The major figures are pretty much as documents of the time presented them.
The 1585 expedition was sent to explore and gather facts about Virginia, not to settle. The push to settle came much later, although a first group of families went out in 1587. Preparations to fight the Spanish Armada in 1588 disrupted the crucial resupply shipments, and the colony failed. No survivor was ever found. Not until 1607 did the reconstituted Virginia Company attempt another colony, that time at Jamestown.
A note on sources: the best are what the participants themselves wrote about their experiences. For Andrew’s story we have three. The first is Raleigh’s appeal to the Queen for permission to go, which he composed with Richard Hakluyt:
A Discourse on Western Planting
. It was written as a state paper for the Queen and seen by few others. It remained pretty much unknown until it was found in Boston in 1877. An excellent modern edition is
Discourse of Western Planting,
edited by David B. and Alison M. Quinn (London: Hakluyt Society, 1993), which includes photographs of the original so you can see the copyists’ work.
The next important contemporary source is Captain Ralph Lane’s letter to Sir Walter describing the expedition: “Account of the particularities of the imployments of the English men left in Virginia by Richard Grenvill under the charge of Master Ralph Lane Generall of the same, from the 17 of August 1585, until the 18 of June 1586, at which time they departed the Countrey; sent and directed to Sir Walter Ralegh.” Lane’s letter can be found in
The First Colonists,
edited by A. L. Rowse (London: Folio Society, 1986).
Then there’s Thomas Harriot’s advertisement for Virginia, which I have his imagined secretary, Andrew, help him compose:
A Briefe and True Report of the new found land of Virginia
(London, 1588).
The First Colonists
has this too.
Richard Hakluyt, principal author of
A Discourse on Western Planting,
also compiled a collection of exploration narratives that gives vivid pictures of the English explorers’ hopes and difficulties:
The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffics, and Discoveries of the English Nation, Made by Sea or over Land to the Remote and farthest Distant Quarters of the Earth at Any Time within the Compass of These 1500 Years
(London, 1589). A good selection is
The Portable Hakluyt’s Voyages,
edited by Irwin R. Blacker (New York: Viking Press, 1965).
What about contemporary images? A painter named John White accompanied the 1585 expedition and made a number of pictures. Although many were lost in the frenzy to leave that saw Mr. Harriot’s trunk dumped overboard, some survived. While a few are reproduced in
The First Colonists,
the best source is
America, 1585: The Complete Drawings of John White,
compiled by Paul Hulton (London: British Museum Publications, 1984).
You’ll find excellent, compact biographical sketches of the principal participants in the English
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography,
or the
DNB
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)—some of the best history writing I know.
For general background, see J. H. Elliott,
Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492–1830
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006). In addition, I relied on the
DNB;
A. L. Rowse,
The Elizabethans and America
(London: Macmillan, 1959);
Life in Shakespeare’s England,
edited by John Dover Wilson (Cambridge: University Press, 1911); Liza Picard,
Elizabeth’s London: Everyday Life in Elizabethan London
(London: Weidenfield & Nicholson, 2003); and Giles Milton,
Big Chief Elizabeth: How England’s Adventurers Gambled and Won the New World
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2000).
For information about the Indians, I used Thomas Harriot’s
Briefe and True Report;
John Lawson,
The History of Carolina
(London: 1706); Mark Catesby, “Of the Aborigines of America,” in his
Natural History of Carolina
(London: 1771, Vol. I); Helen C. Rountree,
The Powhatan Indians of Virginia
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989); Karen Ordahl Kupperman,
Indians and English
(Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); and Roger Owen, James J. F. Deetz, and Anthony D. Fisher,
The North American Indians
(New York: Macmillan, 1967).
For Sir Walter Raleigh: the
DNB;
[John]
Aubrey’s Brief Lives,
edited by Oliver Lawson Dick (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1957); J. H. Adamson and H. F. Folland,
The Shepherd of the Ocean
(Boston: Gambit, 1969); Martin A. Hume,
Sir Walter Raleigh: The British Dominion of the West
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926); Margaret Irwin,
That Great Lucifer
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1960); David B. Quinn,
Raleigh and the British Empire
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1947); and George Garrett,
Death of the Fox
(New York: Doubleday, 1971)—an inspired book.
For Queen Elizabeth: J. E. Neale,
Queen Elizabeth
(New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1934), and her own
The Sayings of Queen Elizabeth,
edited by Frederick Chamberlin (London: The Bodley Head, 1923). Quotations attributed to the Queen are hers; the context is mine.
For Thomas Harriot: the
DNB
and Muriel Rukeyser,
The Traces of Thomas Harriot
(New York: Random House, 1971).
For Doctor Dee, I relied on the
DNB.
He is one of the most interesting and appealing figures of his time (1527–1608), half medieval, half modern in outlook—half magician, half scientist as he attempted to make gold from lesser metals, experimented with numbers, codes, and chemicals, and spoke with his “angels” and lesser spirits through a globe of smoky crystal and a black mirror of coal he kept in a leather case (it can be seen at the British Museum). Queen Elizabeth consulted him about her toothaches and had him perform an astrological calculation to select her coronation day. She came more than once to his home at Mortlake to learn some of his secrets. He was suspected of treason and heresy, and many in his time took him to be a conjuror—an agent of the devil—a reputation he got early on when he arranged a trick that sent an actor flying up from the stage (probably on ropes the audience couldn’t see). “They call me a companion of the hellhounds, and a caller, and a conjuror of wicked and damned spirits,” he lamented late in life, protesting that all his marvelous feats were naturally contrived. His lectures were so popular, folks crowded outside at the windows to hear. He charmed Andrew; he charms me.
Specific notes:
Chapter 1,
the scholar Richard Eden (1521?–1576): I have Andrew’s teacher, Tremayne, telling his students about Eden; translations of Spanish accounts of the New World were published in 1577 as
The History of Travel in the East and West Indies
. Eden was one of the early instigators of English colonization.
Chapter 3,
enclosure men: for a good description, I went to James Shapiro’s
1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare
(London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 271–73. “Shakespeare’s ‘As You Like It’ made clear to contemporary audiences the plight of enclosure men. Elizabethans knew what it meant when old Adam staggered onstage at the beginning of Act II, scene vi, exhausted and starving in the Forest of Arden, and told Orlando, ‘I can go no further. Oh, I die for food! Here lie I down and measure out my grave’…. The early acts of the play circle back time and again to the problems caused by vagrancy and hunger, including Orlando’s angry words when Adam first suggests that they turn itinerant: ‘What, wouldst thou have me go and beg my food? Or with a base and boist’rous sword enforce a thievish living on the common road? This I must do or know not what to do.’”
Chapter 4,
Durham House: From
Aubrey’s Brief Lives:
“Durham House was a noble palace; after he [Raleigh] came to his greatness he lived there or in some apartment of it. I well remember his study, which was a little turret that looked into and over the Thames, and had the prospect which is pleasant perhaps as any in the World, and which not only refreshes the eie-sight but cheeres the spirits, and (to speake my mind) I beleeve enlarges an ingeniose man’s thoughts” (op. cit., 254).
Concerning Raleigh’s interest in medicine, Aubrey again: “Sir Walter Raleigh was a great Chymist, and amongst some MSS. receipts I have seen some secrets from him. He studyed most in his Sea-Voyages, where he carried always a Trunke of Bookes along with him, and had nothing to divert him. He made an excellent Cordiall, good in Feavers, etc. Mr. Robert Boyle haz the recipe, and makes it and does great Cures by it…. He was no Slug; without doubt he had a wonderful waking spirit, and a great judgement to guide it” (ibid).
The book of Spanish medicinal plants Raleigh had Andrew digest was fully titled, in its first English translation,
Joyfull Newes out of the Newe-Found Worlde.
It was compiled in Seville by a distinguished Spanish physician named Nicholas Monardes (1493–1588). For years, travelers returning from what we now call Central and South America brought Monardes bark, roots, seeds, flowers, leaves, and whole plants together with reports of their curative powers. His
Joyfull Newes
promised “present remedie for all diseases….” His chief remedy was tobacco, and his essay on it makes curious reading today. Raleigh’s copy was a translation made by John Frampton and published in 1577.
Chapter 25:
The Star Singers figure in Dutch engravings of that period. Their chant is a poem by Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Chapter 30:
The medicine root was probably ginseng. See Alan W. Armstrong, ed.,
“Forget Not Mee & My Garden…”: Selected Letters, 1725–1768, of Peter Collinson, F.R.S.
(Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 2002), 70.
Chapter 31:
Captain Lane’s “wassador” was unrefined copper. Most was dark red but some was pale, almost yellow. It was prized for jewelry and gifts to the Indian gods.
Chapter 32:
The grass they peeled strands of silk from was probably what we know as yucca.
Chapter 33:
The priests may have put dried jimsonweed blossoms on Mr. Harriot and added its seeds and leaves to the fire. The smoke would have been mildly hallucinogenic.
When Captain Lane led the late-winter expedition in search of wassador, he would have followed a course roughly like that shown on the map on Backmatter. They would have rowed north up Roanoke Sound, aiming west when they came to the much larger Albemarle Sound, paddling about forty miles—nearly its entire length—against stiff, late-winter winds and stinging snow before they turned north into the Chowan River, leading up to Chief Menatonon’s headquarters.
Special thanks to Frances S. Pollard, director of library services, Virginia Historical Society; to Karin Wulf, book review editor of
William and Mary Quarterly
and associate professor of history and American Studies at the College of William and Mary; and to the librarians at the Neilson Library, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts. Thanks also to Kristen Depken, to copy editor Jenny Golub, and to Joe Rayo at the Hayden Planetarium for celestial advice. Martha Armstrong, A. L. Hart, and Kate Klimo brought Andrew to life.
This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2007 by Alan Armstrong. Illustrations copyright © 2007 by Tim Jessell. All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Jacket art copyright 2007 by Tim Jessell
Jacket design by Jan Gerardi
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Armstrong, Alan W.
Raleigh’s page / by Alan Armstrong; illustrated by Tim Jessell.—1st ed.
p. cm.
SUMMARY
: In the late 16th century, eleven-year-old Andrew leaves school in England and must prove himself as a page to Sir Walter Raleigh before embarking for Virginia, where he helps to establish relations with the Indians.
1. Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?–1618—Juvenile fiction. [1. Raleigh, Walter, Sir, 1552?–1618—Fiction. 2. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 3. Indians of North America—Fiction. 4. Virginia—History—16th century—Fiction. 5. Great Britain—History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction.] I. Jessell, Tim, ill. II. Title.
PZ7.A73352Ral 2007 [Fic]—dc22 2006008434
eISBN: 978-0-375-89078-9
v3.0
