The series has now ended but you can still enjoy a wealth of information on the site, from the interactive timeline to historical narratives and profiles.
There is an illusion that the empire was created by adventurers who sailed in search of freedom and profits. There is much to say for this view. However, just as 21st century investors are wary of sales brochures, so late 16th century Elizabethans were properly cautious. The people of those widely separated centuries had one thing in common: they wanted to believe the brochure. Often the reports that returned from new lands were accurate, but they were also embellished.
Investors were reading of lands they could only imagine. There were no inspection flights. So when, for example, Ralph Lane was sent to draw the New World, his was one of the few impressions those in London would use to make up their financial minds about financing voyages.
Ralph Lane wrote of "…the goodliest oil under the cope of heaven so abounding with sweet trees that bring sundry and rich and pleasant gums, grapes of such greatness, yet wild, as France, Spain nor Italy have no greater, so many sorts of Apothecary drugs, such several kinds of flax and one kind of silk, the same gathered of grass as common there as grass is here… If Virginia had but horses in some reasonable proportion I dare assure myself being inhabited with English no realm in Christendom were comparable to it…"
Even allowing for natural caution and no mention of gold, we can see why the forerunner of the classic time-share brochure attracted business. Some of what Lane said was true. It was what he left out that was to lead to disappointment. Here also is a reminder that just because a document is old and has survived, it does not mean it is an accurate report. Yet Virginia continued to attract and many of its settlers did find a new Eden. Some of them, the slaves especially, did not.
Lane was a Northampton baronet's son who became a member of Parliament in 1558, which is when we first read of him. Five years on he was at Elizabeth's court and almost inevitably was sent to Ireland in the war against the rebels of that island. Ralegh, also a veteran of the Irish wars, liked Lane and he was made governor designate of Ralegh's earlier attempt to settle Roanoke Island. The project was abandoned and Lane did not take part in the later expedition when White was made governor. In 1593 Lane was knighted during his service in Ireland once more. It was there that he died in 1603 of his wounds received almost a decade earlier.
These early references to Virginia did not mean the state we now know. Very loosely, it was a general geographical title to much of the land south of the St Lawrence and north of Spanish Florida.
Ralph Lane on Virginia
Ralph Lane was optimistic on the colony's prospects, 1588.
"Master Ralph Lane to Master Richard Hakluyt and another Gentleman of the Middle Temple: we have discovered the main to be the goodliest oil under the cope of heaven, so abounding with sweet trees that bring sundry and rich and pleasant gums, grapes of such greatness, yet wild, as France, Spain, nor Italy have no greater, so many sorts of Apothecary drugs, such several kinds of flax and one kind of silk, the same gathered of grass as common there as grass is here.. And now within these few days we have found here maize or Guinea wheat, whose ear yieldeth corn for bread four hundred on one ear and the cane maketh very good and perfect sugar. If Virginia had but horses in some reasonable proportion I dare assure myself that being inhabited with English no realm in Christendom were comparable to it...
"What commodities soever which Spain, France, and Italy, or the East parts do yield unto us in wines and all sorts in oils, in flax, in resins, pitch, frankincense, currants, sugars, and such like, these parts do abound with the growth of them all, but being Savages that possess the land they know no use of the same. I commit you to the tuition of the Almighty. From the new Fort in Virginia, this third of September, fifteen hundred and eighty five, your most assured friend, Ralph Lane."
