The replica of the Roanoke-based Elizabeth under sail.
Copyright © David Childs 2012
First published in Great Britain in 2012 by
Seaforth Publishing
An imprint of Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street, Barnsley
S. Yorkshire S70 2AS
Email [email protected]
Published and distributed in the United States of America and Canada by
Naval Institute Press
291 Wood Road
Annapolis, Maryland 21402-5034
This edition is authorized for sale only in the United States of America, its territories and possessions and Canada.
First Naval Institute Press eBook edition published in 2015.
ISBN 978-1-61251-932-6 (eBook)
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
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To Jane
A Joy on the Journey
Contents
List of Maps
Preface
1 Five-Finger Exercise
2 Dreamers and Schemers
3 The Charters: Come Over and Help Yourselves
4 Planning and Site Selection
5 Ships and Sailing
6 Pilotage and Navigation
7 The Crossings
8 Fortress America
9 Reinforcement and Resupply
10 Extirpation, Evacuation, Eviction and Abandonment
11 The Amphibious Campaign
12 Piracy
13 Joint Command
14 Summary
Appendices
1 Chronology
2 Principal Charters of the Invasion Period
3 Significant English Voyages to the New World, 1497–1630
4 Investment and Returns of the Virginia and East India Company Voyages and from Piracy
5 Governors of Jamestown and Plymouth Plantation
6 Sites to Visit
References and Bibliography
Index
1 The primary routes of the English invasion of North America, 1497–1630
2 The division of Virginia under the First Charter, 1606
3 Roanoke and Jamestown
4 New England, 1620–30
5 Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and the St Lawrence
The title of this book is, I hope, challenging but not emotive. From the moment, in 1496, Henry VII conferred upon John Cabot the right to ‘conquer, occupy and possess’ all lands ‘unknown to Christians’, the English committed themselves, albeit slowly, to the conquest of America. The conquest was intended to be both permanent and absolute, involving the acquisition of ‘all the land, mineral rights and commodities whatsoever’ that might be developed or discovered, as long as it ‘was not actually possessed by any Christian Prince or People’. Not being Christian, those in prior possession would have no right of retention. Not that the faith of foreigners was that important to the English, who were at the same time carrying out a similar occupation of Catholic Ireland that also aimed to drive the natives from their land.
Before they could occupy, the English needed to invade. So, in the long century that stretched from 1497 to 1630, they concerned themselves, once ashore, with establishing secure beachheads along the lengthy American littoral. Thus the first permanent structure to be erected in Virginia in 1585 was a fort, while, as late as 1624, the Virginia Assembly ordered ‘that every dwelling house shall be pallisaded’, a degree of defence that was equally necessary in New England. Not until that secure hold was achieved could the invasion transform itself into a conquest, a process that began with the arrival of Winthrop’s Massachusetts Bay colonists in 1630, and continued with the mass immigration caused by Archbishop Laud’s policy of persecuting Puritans and their fellow-travellers.
A great number of studies have been made of the several arrivals of North America’s first European settlers. Most have examined these beginnings as independent events separated by the long latitudes that lay between each landing. Yet the encouragement for them came from the same country, even the same three cities (London, Bristol and Plymouth), while the right of occupation was awarded by just
