England Enters the Arena
Rivalry, Religion, and the Theory of Empire
Spain did not expand alone. By the mid–sixteenth century, England watched — resentful, calculating, doctrinally defiant. In 1558, Elizabeth I assumed the English throne. Her reign inaugurated what later generations would call a “Golden Age” of exploration. It was an age of expansion in trade, of mercantilist ambition, and of literary achievement — Shakespeare and Marlowe flourished under her rule. English mercantilism — a state-assisted manufacturing and trading system — sought to create and maintain markets. Those markets would provide consumers and laborers, stimulate economic expansion, and increase English wealth.
But English ambition matured in the shadow of Spain. In 1572 and 1573, Sir Francis Drake returned from pirating ventures in the Spanish Caribbean. His ship — the Golden Hinde — carried not only plunder but proof that Spain’s empire was vulnerable. In 1576, England again attempted to find a Northwest Passage. In 1577, Sir Humphrey Gilbert drafted war-like treatises advocating expansion. The following year, Queen Elizabeth reviewed them and granted Gilbert letters patent to discover and settle “unchristianised territories” in North America.
That same year, Gilbert departed England to “explore” North America with battle-ready ships navigated by former pirates. The venture faltered — debilitating battles with Spanish ships and disagreements among captains forced his return. Elizabeth halted his activities until he pledged assurances of good behavior.
In 1579, Drake claimed California for England at Point Reyes Station. Nearly four decades before Jamestown, Drake navigated the Pacific Coast of California. Attempting to return to England, he careened his ship and established a temporary encampment while repairs were made. There, he interacted with the Coast Miwok Indians — one of the earliest instances of European contact with native peoples on the West Coast.
Sixteen years later, a storm grounded and sank a Manila Galleon, the San Agustin, in Drake’s Bay. Its captain, Sebastián Rodríguez Cermeño, and his men watched helplessly from shore.
In 1582, Sir George Peckham entered into agreements with Sir Thomas Gerrard as settlers and future tenants for property yet unclaimed in North America. Peckham, an English Catholic knighted in 1570, had desired to discover new lands since 1574. He had received an assignment under Gilbert’s patent in 1580, but was imprisoned for debts to the Queen in December 1580. His family connections to Queen Mary’s service may have aided his release.
In 1583, having lost his contractual interests in Newfoundland after Gilbert’s death, Peckham published A True Reporte of The Newfound Landes in London. Though he had never been to Newfoundland, he relied heavily on David Ingram and Spanish testimony to justify colonization — invoking trade, religion, and social welfare as intertwined motives.
That same year, Bartolomé de Las Casas’s writings were translated into English under the title The Spanish Cruelties. English readers were disgusted by Catholic actions in the New World. Anti-Catholic suspicion intensified.
In 1584, Richard Hakluyt wrote Discourse on Western Planting. The Black Legend — shaped by religious differences and political rivalry — portrayed Spain’s conquests in France, Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands as barbaric. English writers argued that Spanish cruelty obstructed Christian expansion and that benevolent conquest by non-Spanish monarchies offered the surest salvation for pagan masses.
Religious justification and economic motive converged.
Yet suspicion surrounded Peckham himself. In 1584, he was arrested as a suspect in a Catholic attempt to upset Elizabeth’s reign, permanently stifling his opportunity to colonize North America. He would die before June 21, 1608, with his heir being his son George.
English ambition persisted.
In 1585, Richard Grenville landed seven ships in Virginia before any permanent settlement. Native peoples were initially hospitable. When one allegedly stole a silver cup, Grenville sacked and burned the entire village. That same year, Sir Walter Raleigh organized an expedition to settle Roanoke Island, off the coast of present-day North Carolina. When settlers were sent two years later, they disappeared. Only one word was left carved into a tree: Croatoan.
From Roanoke, Grenville abducted a Native man, named him Raleigh after his cousin, and brought him to Europe. He converted to Christianity and was baptized on March 27, 1588. He died of influenza while residing in Grenville’s house on April 2, 1589.
By the century’s end, England possessed no permanent New World beachhead. Yet the architecture of English colonization was forming.
In 1603, French colonization developed through private trading companies. Traders established Port Royal in Acadia — Nova Scotia — and launched expeditions along the Atlantic coast as far south as Cape Cod. The fur trade dictated the future pattern of French colonization. Founded in 1608 under Samuel de Champlain, Quebec provided the foothold for New France. French fur traders valued cooperation with Indians more than establishing dense French settlements. Few Frenchmen migrated permanently. After France criminalized Protestantism in 1685, persecuted Huguenots sought emigration, but non-Catholics were forbidden in New France.
English colonization would take a different shape.
In 1607, three ships — the Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery — sailed forty miles up the James River in present-day Virginia, named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. The river itself was named in honor of King James I. They chose an uninhabited peninsula upriver, out of sight of Spanish patrols. It offered easy defense against ground assault and proximity to Indian villages and trade networks.
But Indians had ignored the peninsula for two reasons: terrible soil and brackish tidal water that produced debilitating disease. Despite the disaster of location, the English built Jamestown — the first permanent English colony in what would become the United States.
England had entered the arena. Not as Spain had — with swift conquest and imperial plunder — but with theory, rivalry, religious grievance, private capital, piracy, failure, propaganda, and persistence. Jamestown would test whether that persistence could survive reality.
Bibliography | Notes
Foner, Eric, and John A. Garraty, eds. The Reader’s Companion to American History. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 1991.
Locke, Joseph L., and Ben Wright, eds. The American Yawp: A Massively Collaborative Open U.S. History Textbook. Vol. 1, To 1877. January 2019.
Roark, James L., Michael P. Johnson, Patricia Cline Cohen, Sarah Stage, and Susan M. Hartmann. The American Promise, Value Edition, Volume 1: To 1877. Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2014.
Schweikart, Larry, and Michael Allen. A Patriot’s History of the United States: From Columbus’s Great Discovery to the War on Terror. New York: Sentinel, 2004.
Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper & Row, 1980.
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Drake, Francis. Voyages to the Spanish Caribbean, 1572–1573.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey. Letters Patent, 1578.
Peckham, Sir George. A True Reporte of The Newfound Landes. London, 1583.
Las Casas, Bartolomé de. The Spanish Cruelties. English translation, 1583.
Hakluyt, Richard. Discourse on Western Planting. 1584.
Virginia Company voyages, 1607.
Champlain, Samuel de. Founding of Quebec, 1608.