Querre-Muhau: Sir Philip Sidney and the
by Roger Kuin
We [Philippes de Mornay and
Charlotte Arbaleste, Seigneur et Dame du grand Plessis Marly] request Master
Jacques de St. Germain our son-in-law, and our daughter [Lady] of Fontenay his
wife, to take with them Ibora our adult Indian, to continue his instruction in
the true Christian religion, and to have him baptised when he is ready for it;
nevertheless they may pass him on to Monsieur de la Ravardiere if the latter
asks for him for the Indies voyage, and promises to have him instructed and
baptised as indicated above; and we request the same of Master Jacques des
Nouhes, also our son-in-law, husband of our daughter [Lady] of La Tabariere, as
regards Atoupa, brother of the said Ibora, and furthermore, since he is
younger, to have him learn whatever letters his mind may absorb; this because
these our sons-in-law live in regions not far from the sea, where they [Ibora
and Atoupa] may be useful.(1)
- Saumur (France), 6 February 1606
Where, in 1606, did du plessis get
two Indian brothers? When scholars try to answer an unfamiliar question, they
make landfall in a new world. As I was led to the Tupinamba of Brazil, I
remembered also Du Plessis's friend Philip Sidney, godfather of "our
daughter of Fontenay," who (it was often said) had had a certain gold-driven,
Spaniard-baiting interest in the Transatlantic new world. New worlds invite the
search for passages, and inspire a bold but tentative cartography. What follows
is an attempt to collect the available but scattered evidence, and thus to map
I. ATOUPA
While Philip attended
In February 1568, Philip, thirteen
years old, matriculated at
The new found worlde, or Antarctike,
wherin is contained wonderful strange things, as well of humaine creatures, as
Beastes, Fishes, Foules, and Serpents, Trees, Plants, Mines of Golde and
Silver; garnished with many learned authorities, travailed and written in the
French tong, by that excellent learned man, master Andrewe Thevet. And now
newly translated into Englishe, wherein is reformed the errours of the auncient
Cosmographers.
Here Philip might find not only
Gibraltar, the Canaries, Africa and Ethiopia, but especially - after a bold but
magnificently awkward bridge-passage mixing Madagascar, Indian asses,
"Neigers," the strange bird Pa, unicorns, and whales - a new key of
authenticity and confidence:
After that by devine providence,
with so many travailes common and ordinarie to so long a Navigation, we were
come to the maine land, not so soone as our hearts desired, which was the tenth
day of November, and in stead of taking our rest, it behooved us to discover
& seeke out proper places, to make or reare newe siedges [installations],
being no lesse astonied or amazed, than the Troyans were at their arrival into
Italie. (chapt. 24; [31.sup.v])
This introduced a long eyewitness
account of the first French colony at Guanabara (
Such tales - and Thevet, whatever
his faults (and they were many and increasingly obvious), was a born raconteur
- are poesy. Thevet the poet came to young readers such as Philip with a tale
and kept them for a moment from play.(5) The newfound worlde is "food for
the tenderest stomachs" and its author indeed the "right popular
philosopher" (ibid.). Like all good poets, he leads the young into more
serious matters. By chapter 65, they are taught "Howe the landes of the
King of Spain, and of Portingall are separated," and (chapter 66)
"the devision of the West Indies in three partes": from the Strait of
Magellan to the "river of Amazones"; from that river up to Florida;
and from Florida to "Canada" and "Newfoundland", where
there are once again whales and where the natives dress in the skins of
"sea Wolves."
The consequences of the Treaty of
Tordesillas were not, by 1568, an especially comforting thought for English
Protestants, and were to be even less so after the Papal bull Regnans in
Excelsis of 1570. But there was comfort in the thought that
How muche are they to be praised,
that for their Countrey sake refuse no imminent perill, leaving the Pleasaunt
bedde of Delicacie, and the seate or cradle of Sensualitie, their landes and
goodes, their Wives and children, which in dede, are dearest unto them, to
abandon themselves and their swetest lives to the favour of the boystrous seas,
to the hap of the unconstant windes, to the chayre of fortune, and finally to a
thousande imminent evills, onely to encrease the fame and good renowme of their
countrey . . . . But alas, the greater number of men are given to idelnesse or
sensualitie . . . . Among the number of a great many, and in the middest of
aboundance and pleasure, we meditate nothing else but only securitie, almost
abhorring to heare the name of travell or payne."(6)
Thevet's was the most important book
on the New World in England until Hakluyt's: eight years after this first
appearance in English, it was still carried in two editions - this and the
French original - in the meager ship's library of Martin Frobisher's Gabriel
for the American voyages.(7) For Philip, we can see it as the "food for
the tenderest stomachs" that which, first among written texts, was present
to whet his interest and stimulate his further appetite.
It was supported by numerous other
voices surrounding his youth. The newe India, from Munster's Cosmography, we
remember, had been dedicated to his Dudley grandfather the Duke of
Northumberland, who had been the chief sponsor of the earliest English
voyages.(8) Since then, the Dudleys had maintained an interest, especially
Philip's uncle Ambrose, the Earl of Warwick, and his wife Anne, the Earl of
Bedford's daughter: they invested in the Frobisher voyages together with the
Sidneys. Moreover, Edward Dyer, the man who gradually became one of Sidney's
two best friends, to whom he bequeathed his library, was an old friend of the
Sidney family,(9) and his brother Andrew was a mariner who was later appointed
Pilot on Frobisher's 1577 flagship the Aid.(10)
In August 1570 there arrived at
At Christchurch in Oxford, my
exercises of duty [perhaps a pun: the main undergraduate text was Cicero's
Offices] first performed, I fell to my intended course and by degrees read over
whatsoever printed or written discoveries and voyages I found extant, either in
the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portugal, French, or English languages, and
in my public lectures [Hakluyt stayed at Oxford for twelve years altogether]
was the first that produced and showed both the old imperfectly composed, and
the new lately reformed maps, globes, spheres, and other instruments of this
Art. (Op.cit., 59)
By November of this year, his
seventeenth birthday, then, Sidney had had every opportunity to learn the
grammar and accidence of exploration. The New World was a part of the landscape
of his spirit. The evidence suggests that there was, by this time, planted in
his mind the enduring structure of an other world, a parallel, an alternative,
which would gradually change its shape, its structure and its importance, but
which would not die until replaced at last by a deeper and more urgent
fulfilment.
Of course, we should not exaggerate.
Not only was the New World not, at this time, an overriding preoccupation for
Sidney, as it was for Hakluyt: Sidney was well aware that his own destiny lay
elsewhere. He was not only Sir Henry Sidney's son but the nephew and heir of
the Earls of Warwick and Leicester. The latter, as Philip wrote to him,
"made me a courtier," and the young man knew he was called to serve
his country at a higher level than his geographer-friend. He also knew that
such service was not easy, and could be miserable, unrewarded, destructive, and
ruinous: his parents' experiences in Ireland and the Queen's callous disregard
of their service had not been hidden from him. But it is in part because of
this that one of the shapes the New World would have for Sidney nearly to the
end was that of a place of greater safety, an experience and a service of
greater singleness, purity, and efficacy, far from the capricious reach of a
Machiavellian prince.
II. MARA-PE PEROUAGERRE-RERE? (IN
TUPI: "WHAT ARE YOUR ENEMIES' NAMES?"): THE TURNING-POINT(13)
The year 1572 changed Philip
Sidney's life for good. In May he crossed the Channel with the English envoys
for the Treaty of Blois's ratification, with a project for further travel, and
so headed straight into the reality of international politics. From then on,
his relation to the New World began a process of change and development. In
Paris, during this memorable summer, all the threads of his involvement with it
- past and future - were gathered together.. It is a crucial time, and it merits
close attention. If we pause to reflect on this very young (he was seventeen),
intellectual but fashionable courtier's successive encounters and experiences
there, we can see these as being of three kinds.
First there was the Court and its
festivities. During the month of June these were connected with the
ratification-ceremonies; when the English envoys had left and Philip stayed
behind, the Court moved into the preparation for the politically crucial
wedding planned for late August. The official allegresse barely concealed
underlying anxieties. Charles IX, twenty-two years old and already ill, was
close to the Huguenot Admiral de Coligny; Catherine de' Medici, frustrated and
irritable, was trying with the marriage plan to bring peace to the realm; while
Henri de Guise, darling of the Catholic extremists, energetically preyed on the
fears of the stupid. As the preparations gradually revealed to a wider audience
Catherine's attempt to heal religious strife, and Paris got ready to marry her
tres catholique daughter Marguerite to the Protestant heretic King of Navarre,
the tension between the two ideological camps grew, and descended to the
streets; some kind of catastrophe became inevitable.
Philip, during this time, was a
Royal guest and lodged at the Louvre. Charles appreciated his connections but
also liked him personally, and created him a French Baron; oddly enough, it may
well have been in the King's company that he began the second of his
encounters: that with the Huguenots. Charles saw his beloved "father"
Coligny frequently, and was known to lean toward the Protestant position.
Sidney's chief Huguenot meeting was
of course with Hubert Languet.(14) His adoption by the older bachelor as a
spiritual son marks, one might say, the philosophical turning-point of Sidney's
life. All his relations with Continental Protestantism for the next eight
years, until Languet's death in 1581, would be anchored by this friendship; and
after that date, by two men inextricably linked with Languet: William the
Silent and Du Plessis.
Languet had himself been a great
traveler in his earlier years. He had visited Spain and North Africa, had
studied at Padua, and had traveled in England, Sweden, Eastern Europe, and the
Netherlands. Much of this had been done on behalf of his spiritual father,
Philipp Melanchthon, who had done so much to win over the educated and civilized
to the Reformation. Languet, based mostly in Vienna where he was the Elector of
Saxony's diplomatic representative, taught Sidney the Melanchthonian strain of
Protestant humanism. Most of the French Huguenots, on the other hand, fighting
for their lives and faith, were cast in a harder, Calvinist mold. What is
crucial to the present argument is that in France it was precisely these men
who for most of the sixteenth century were the principal actors in regard to
the New World.
Coligny had inspired the mixed faith
Guanabara colony named after him, which Thevet had visited. The second
attempted colony, from 1560 to 1562, had been an entirely Protestant one in
"Terra Florida" (north-east Florida and southern South Carolina).
Roberval, the first man to try to colonize Canada, was also a Huguenot.
Languet was not himself particularly
involved in the Westward movement: he was a man of European politics, who
strongly felt that the Reformation's future was in Europe, and that its
energies should be chiefly directed there. His influence on Sidney in this
respect, accordingly, was twofold: he introduced him to many Huguenots who were
involved with the New World, yet his influence also ensured that for Sidney the
ultimate priority would always be the Protestant cause in Europe.
The man through whom Sidney met
Languet was the presiding genius of Philip's third group of encounters in this
Paris summer: the English. Francis Walsingham had been for two years the
resident ambassador, with a house on the Quai des Bernardins in the Faubourg
St. Germain. He believed, not separately, in the Protestant faith and in
statecraft. Visitors at his house did not always advertise their business:
Walsingham was also at this time creating England's first professional
espionage service, which he ran with discreet dedication until his death.(15)
The St. Bartholomew's Massacre that
followed the Royal wedding is not here my concern, except for two factors: its
effect of intensifying Sidney's experience, and the further English encounters
it provoked, which moreover it associated in his mind with the suffering of the
Huguenots. When the massacre began he was, as a Royal guest, certainly in or
very near the Louvre. During that bloody Sunday, 24 August, he was taken with
one or two other prominent Englishmen to Walsingham's by one of Catherine's
trusted "Italians": Louis de Gonzaga, Duke of Nevers. They did make a
detour through the Rue de Bethisy to be shown the elderly Coligny's stabbed,
defenestrated, and desecrated corpse before crossing the Seine by the Pont aux
Meuniers and the Pont St. Michel, and so had ample time to see the slaughter in
the streets.
This experience, I submit,
determines where Sidney's life was going at the time of his death, though it
took time to work out its full consequences. We should not forget that he was
seventeen years old. Spectacles such as this did not occur in England, though
Irish stories must have prepared him. But the sheer furia, the raging political
madness, against his co-religionists and his new friends; the frightful perfidy
against those whose safety had been guaranteed; and the obvious hand of
authority, including the very hand that had, not a fortnight before, made him a
Gentleman Ordinary of the Bedchamber and Baron de Sidenay; gradually deepened
and hardened politico-religious convictions which, while never fanatic toward
individuals, made him ever more implacable about nations.
He was delivered to the Quai des
Bernardins. Here, for between one and two weeks, a group of Englishmen (and a
few Protestant foreigners) took shelter. Security was officially guaranteed (by
Nevers, acting for Charles and Catherine) but not entirely trusted: Walsingham
himself did not go out until his official protest-mission to the Louvre on
Monday, 1 September. Timothy Bright, the medical man, long afterward remembered
the suburban sanctuary with gratitude:
Among all your honourable favours,
that especial protection from the bloody massacre of Paris, now sixteen years
past, yet (as ever it will be) fresh with me in memory, hath always since bound
me with all bonds of duty and service unto your Honour. The benefit as it was
common to many (for your Honour's house at that time was a very sanctuary, not
only for all of our nation, but even to many strangers then in peril and
virtuously disposed), so it was therefore the more memorable and far more
honourable, and bindeth me with straighter obligation of duty and thankfulness,
who thereby had cause to rejoice, not only for mine own safety, but for so many
of my countrymen, partly of acquaintance and partly of the noble houses of this
realm, who had all tasted of the rage of that furious tragedy, had not your
Honour shrouded them, and now are witnesses with me of that right noble act and
companions of like obligation."(16)
During this very frightening
fortnight, there is evidence that Sidney had three other important encounters
that, in the context of such a forced proximity and its necessarily long hours
spent in talk, could not fail to affect him.
Whether the son of "Lady
Lane," frantically recalled by his mother,(17) was related to Ralph Lane,
later governor of the Roanoke colony and friend of Sidney's, is not known; but
one Englishman who narrowly escaped the Massacre and cannot easily have done so
elsewhere than at Walsingham's, was Richard Eden.
Eden was just over fifty years old
at the time. He had been private secretary to Cecil, worked in the English
Treasury of the Prince of Spain, and had for ten years now been in the service
of Jean de Ferrieres, vidame of Chartres, a very prominent Huguenot whom he had
served in London, Paris, and Germany, and a good friend of Walsingham's. Eden
was also the most important early English geographer. He was the author of the
Munster translation that had been dedicated to Sidney's grandfather; two years
later he had published his expanded version of Peter Martyr's Decades,
dedicated to Sidney's godfather, Philip of Spain, and Mary Tudor; and in 1561
he had followed this with an influential Englishing of Martin Cortes' Arte de
Navigar.(18)
Another man of interest to Sidneians
who was passing through and later claimed, in a Latin poem, to have been caught
up in the "Gallicanos neces" was Richard Willes (or Wills). This
former Catholic from Dorset - who had been to Winchester, studied at New
College, Oxford, and at Louvain, proceeded M.A. at Mainz, taught Greek at
Trier, been incorporated at Perugia, become a Jesuit, undertaken a pilgrimage
to Rome in 1570, converted to the Reformation, obtained release from his vows
in the spring of 1572, and was now on his way back to England - was still only
in his mid-twenties.(19)
Willes had a double interest for
Sidney. He too was a geographer who was to carry on Eden's work after the
latter's death in 1576, publishing in 1577 the important History of Travayle
(printed by Richard Jugge, dedicated to Willes's patroness Bridget, Countess of
Bedford), and adding three articles from his hand - on China, Japan, and the
North-West Passage - to Hakluyt's Voyages.(20) But he was also a neo-Latin poet
who, the following year, in his Poematum liber (Tottel, 1573; STC 25671,
dedicated to Burghley) not only became the first Englishman to write shaped
poems (an egg, a Pan pipe, a sword, wings, an altar), but he also included a
Disputatio de re poetica which was a Defence of Poesy in the form of a forensic
oration.(21) Needless to say, this lends him a considerable interest as a
precursor of Sidney's Defence, usually thought to have been written around
1580.(22)
What makes the likelihood of contact
between Sidney, Willes, and Eden in the Faubourg St. Germain in
August-September 1572 particularly intriguing is that, while one of the
geographers may have given him the idea for the Defence's form, the other
almost certainly provided part of the book's content. In Eden's Decades, f.
125, there is the following passage about the Amerindians of Hispaniola:
They give them selves chieflye to
two thynges: As generally to lerne thoriginall and successe of thynges: And
particularlye to reherse the noble factes [deeds] of their graundefathers great
graundefathers and auncestours aswell in peace as in warre. These two thynges
they have of owlde tyme composed in certeyne meters and ballettes [ballads] in
their language. These hymnes or ballettes, they call Areitos. And as owre
mynstrelles are accustomed to synge to the harpe or lute, so doo they in lyke
maner synge these songes and daunce to the same, playinge on tymbrelles made of
shels of certeyn fysshes.
As early as 1924, Robert Cawley -
unaware that its translator and Sidney had been together in Paris - identified
this passage as the source for the mention of areytos in Sidney's Defence.(23)
It is clear that for Sidney's
relation and attitude to the New World, this summer in Paris was a turning
point. Plunged into the maelstrom of the French wars of religion, with the
constant background reality of Spain, the seventeen-year-old Sidney met and observed
the principals and other movers and shakers of the time. He had dined with the
King and Queen Mother of France, met the King of Navarre and the Duke of Guise,
and talked with the Admiral Coligny. With Walsingham as his mentor, he had
learned to interpret the behavior of political friends and enemies, and the
rising tension in the Louvre and in the streets. He had made, in Languet, the
older friend many young men need. And he had witnessed the ultimate in
betrayal, narrowly escaping the violence of the mob after seeing the naked
corpse of the venerable Coligny - whom he had met and admired - stabbed and
thrown into the gutter.
The Admiral, in retrospect, is
perhaps the pivotal figure. It is in Coligny that the militant Reformation was
first related to the New World. He who nearly converted the King of France,
whose young son and nephew remembered Sidney and wrote to him the following
year,(24) was also the instigator of the Brazilian Refuge and of the Florida
project.
In talking with Coligny and witnessing
his death, and in his subsequent meetings with Eden, Willes and the devious and
uncompromising Walsingham, Sidney could not help but feel that his New World
underwent a change. No longer was it the exotic haunt of a "Cocodril . . .
of the greatnesse of a good calfe" (Thevet, f.[50.sup.v]), of a green bird
with blue feathers on its head "which the wilde men doe name
Marganas" (f.[75.sup.v]), and of "auncient men [who] after their
sleepe in the night, doe no other thing but declare auncient stories to the
young men" (f.[82.sup.v]). It began to be a new New World, one where the
victims of cruel and unjust power could live according to their faith - or
might do so, were it not that this innocent world of wonders was also a
battlefield, where roamed an enemy more organized and more dangerous than the
Paris mob: the Spanish army.
III. IBORA: MATURITY
When Sidney came home after three
years on the Continent, his new sense of the world had been refined, nuanced,
and deepened. In Vienna, Padua, Hungary, and the Palatinate, he had been
received by the extraordinary network Languet had built up over the years, and
was hailed everywhere as the embodied promise of an awakening England. There is
no sign that he spent much time thinking about the New World as he explored the
Old. It was, rather, a time for discovering friendship, government, political
philosophy, Italian literature.
One significant encounter during
these years was with Philippe de Mornay du Plessis, Languet's elder spiritual
son, who had just married the personable young widow Charlotte Arbaleste and
was in the process of transferring his service from the Duke of Bouillon to
King Henry of Navarre. Soon he would be, as an enemy called him, "the Pope
of the Huguenots." A tireless, witty, ugly, charming, overwhelmingly
intelligent, and wholly upright man, he gradually became (I have argued
elsewhere) Sidney's role model as well as his deeply affectionate friend. Du
Plessis was foremost among those in France who were beginning to set the
Reformed faith in a global, geopolitical frame.
A. Frobisher
The next act of Sidney's New World
involvement, in which Du Plessis and his ideas played a major part, has an
apparently very homespun prelude in the three Northern voyages of Martin
Frobisher. Frobisher, who knew Sir Humphrey Gilbert (who knew Sir Henry
Sidney), approached the Sidneys and the Warwicks for pledges to finance his
voyages to discover a North-West passage to the Orient. With the management
assistance of Michael Lok, the new Cathay Company raised something over
[pounds]800, which Lok then doubled out of his own purse. Richard Willes wrote
and published a publicity tract, For M. Cap. Furbyshers passage by the
Northwest, dedicated to Sidney's aunt, Lady Warwick; and Frobisher's ships - or
"eggshells" as McFee calls them, referring to the Gabriel (25 tons),
the Michael (20 tons), and a pinnace - sailed in the spring of 1576. Philip had
pledged [pounds]25, as had his mother, his aunt and uncle Warwick, and Edward
Dyer.
Sidney himself spent the summer in
Ireland with his father; but upon Frobisher's return, he wrote to Languet about
the excitement that ran around London. His first letter is lost, but he
elaborated on it the following year, when Frobisher came back from his next
voyage (in which Sidney and the others had doubled their investment to
[pounds]50 and Andrew Dyer was Pilot of the flagship, the Queen's Aid). This
letter, as well as Languet's very thorough reply, have often been quoted but
the relevant passages have rarely been printed in full. Their importance for
the study of the mentalites involved is such that I may perhaps be forgiven the
extra space taken in doing so. Sidney writes:
Last year I wrote to you about one
Frobisher who, rivalling Magellan, has investigated the strait which, he thinks,
washes the Northern part of America. The story is amazing. As he had started
out too late last year, so that it was autumn when he sailed past Baccalaos
[Newfoundland] and an island he judged to be as great as the
"Friseland" found by Zeno of Venice(25), he landed at a certain
island in order to refit both his own ship and the others. And here, by total
chance, a certain youth from among his crew picked up a piece of rock which he
saw glitter, and showed it to Frobisher. The latter was busy with other things,
and [in any case] did not believe that there could be precious metals so far
North; so he attached little importance to it. But winter was approaching, and
he returned home. The youth hung on to the rock as a sign of his labours (for
he'd no other intimations about it), until he should get back to London. It was
only there, when one of his young friends remarked that it really did glitter
very brightly, that he performed an experiment, and found that it consisted of
exceedingly pure gold, mixed with no other metal. So much so that Frobisher
went back there the following summer, having been ordered to examine that
island and not to go farther if it lived up to expectations. This he has done,
and is now returned. He has brought back the three ships that were all he had
(and small ones at that), [fully] laden: it is said (for so far they have not
been unloaded) that they have carried two hundred tons of ore. This ore shows
sure signs that the island is so metal-rich as far to surpass the regions of Peru,
at least as they are now. There are also six other islands near this one which
look like having a similar yield. So now we are starting to think how these
exceedingly fruitful undertakings of ours may be protected from the rapacity of
other nations. The main ones to worry about would seem to be the Spaniards and
the Danes: the former because they claim all Western lands for themselves by
Papal right, the latter because being more Northerly they are closest to it,
and Iceland offers the passage best fitted for that voyage. Also they are said
to be skilled enough in navigation.
So I should like you, for our
friendship's sake, to give me your opinion on this, and at the same time to
give me an idea of a good way to work those mines. You promised to send me the
Gutenberg Laws: please do this as soon as possible. Perhaps they can shed some
light [on what we have to do]. For we know that we are scarcely more skilled in
that art than we are in wine-making.
You will remember to write in such a
way as to live up to your reputation, which here is enormous. For if you will
permit it, I will show your letter to the Queen. This business is indeed of
great importance, and it may perhaps at some point serve those who profess the
true religion. I have written you three times about that great matter of ours:
so you must, I imagine, be satisfied.(26)
Languet's reply needs to be given
extensive treatment also and to be looked at with care; for this exchange tells
us something, not only of the two men and the moods of 1577, but of different
attitudes toward the New World which are of great importance for understanding
the development of Sidney's subsequent position. Languet writes:
If what you write about your
countryman Frobisher is true, I have no doubt that his fame will eclipse not
only Magellan's but even that of Christopher Columbus himself. Who could have
hoped that that farthest North would in the end furnish us so abundantly with
such spurs to evil? Soon you [plur.] will comfortably despise voyages to India,
having fallen upon the most harmful and destructive thing Nature has [ever]
offered mankind: its desire and greed drive most men mad, to the point of
abandoning reason and hurling themselves foolhardily into danger. Many years
ago you converted your ploughlands into pasture: that did a bad turn to your
country, which you depopulated in the process. Your Princes acted foolishly
also in allowing you to do so: the state has no wealth so reliable as the
multitude and abundance of its men. I am very much afraid that England, seduced
by desire for gold, will throw itself entirely upon those islands recently
discovered by Frobisher; and how much English blood do you think will need to
be shed not to let them be taken away from you? Not a nation that lives near
our ocean but will contend with you for their possession. Once some citizens of
Carthage, sailing on the Atlantic sea, were driven by storms to places so
pleasant and fertile that when, back home again, they described them
marvellously in public, the senate spirited them away. They feared that the
people would be so enchanted by these places' reported delight and fertility
that they would leave their homeland and [try to] sail there. So they removed
those who described them: so that, if any did want to sail there, they would
have no guides.
So do you think [I mean to tell you]
that the good things God offers us out of His benevolence should be neglected,
and that we should blame their Maker? That is not what I mean at all: on the
contrary, I hugely praise Frobisher's greatness, his industry and even his good
fortune, and I think he deserves the highest honours. For doubtless the authors
of that difficult and dangerous voyage he has undertaken (whether himself alone
or others) were thinking of the riches the Spaniards and Portuguese have
amassed for themselves by their distant voyages? And so, as he has hit the
target he shot at, who would be such an unfair judge of his case as not to feel
that he merits great praise?
But I am thinking of you and your
rejoicing at this business, as if it was the best thing that could have
happened to your country; just as last spring especially I criticized in you a
certain desire to undertake such a voyage. And if back then that vain hope
Frobisher had conceived of finding a passage could [so] agitate your mind, what
will those mountains of gold, or rather whole islands of gold, do: float before
your eyes day and night? Beware, I beg you, or (as the Poet says) that sacred
hunger for gold will creep into your soul,(27) into which so far you have
admitted nothing but the love of virtue and the desire to deserve well of all
men.
You are wrong if you believe that
men get better as they get older: that hardly ever happens. Often they simply become
more careful, and learn to hide their soul's vices and depraved desires. So if
you know some old man in whom you think some integrity remains, bear in mind
that he was at his best as a youth. Therefore whenever some brand new emotion
agitates your soul, do not give in to it at once, even if the goal it drives
you to seems laudable; but before you allow it in, think carefully what it is
that is agitating you. Otherwise you incautiously begin something and finding
yourself having to turn back where you go wrong; or (which is much worse, and
happens often) you are too ashamed to admit you have erred, and so you go right
on where you were heading.
Why am I upsetting you this way? So
that, if those golden islands have possessed your mind too deeply, you may
exorcise them thence before they take you over completely; and so escape
unharmed to serve your country and your friends in better causes. For if it is
the desire to cover yourself with praise and glory that makes you restive about
the leisure you will soon be enjoying, meditate on those old Chandoses and
Talbots, the imitation of whom will load you with greater praise and glory than
the possession of all the wealth the Spaniards have brought over from the New
World. All Europe's peoples have learnt to distrust them; and by their
arrogance they have so alienated everyone that even they are beginning to feel
(and may soon feel even more) that perhaps they have badly calculated their own
best interests.
I wish you had written what the
latitude of those islands is: for from that one can work out whether the
neighbouring regions are suitable for agriculture, and for supplying sustenance
for men, and materials for building. Cows can be fed, and even other cattle, on
plants that grow beyond the Arctic Circle, which eventually even bear fruit.
Their cows give milk all summer long in far greater quantity than ours do, and
with a much higher fat-content. Beyond the 70th parallel one finds virtually no
trees suitable for building: they are so nipped by the cold that they cannot
grow to a great height. Some say, though, that they [higher trees] do grow in
valleys sheltered from the North wind.
If that hope of gold that is
tempting you has not led you astray [entirely], you will need to establish some
port where your ships may have anchorage: because if those lands do turn out to
be suitable for cultivation, it would be far wiser to build a town than forts
in which garrisons will have to be fed - which last will cost a great deal
without being much use to those whose labour you will need to work the
gold-seams. For them, a town would provide the things they need, which
merchants, spurred by hopes of profit, would transport there. The Portuguese
experienced the greatest difficulties in the Indies before they founded the Goa
colony: when that got going, everything was much easier for them than before,
for now they could buy with money things that would otherwise have had to
brought from Spain.
Even if those places lack other
resources to sustain life, at least the great abundance of fish will nourish
you; and anyone who might live there would be able to make a profit from the
fishery, as we see being done by the Icelanders and the Norwegians, who supply
huge quantities of frozen fish [lit. fish hardened by cold] to the Germans and
neighbouring peoples.
The Gutenberg Laws which you ask me
for I do not know if I can obtain, but I will write about it to some friends I
have in Bohemia. I hardly think, though, that they can be much use to you - the
whole technique of mining metals [lit. the craft of working metals] there is so
completely different from that which you will need to learn. For Gutenberg lies
in a highly agricultural region, and no Prince works the gold seams there at
his own expense: they are worked by private men, who pay ten per cent. to the
Prince.
I strongly advise you to read the
writings of Georgius Agricola [14941555] on the origins and causes of all that
lies underground, and on mining metals. He was a most eminent scientist, and
far outstripped those who had written on those subjects before. If his works
are not available there, I will send you them next spring: for at present they
are not available here.
Notice how mesmerised my thoughts
are by that gold of yours: such a heap of trifles I have been able to amass.
Let it show you that I do not lack the will to write to you even when I lack
matter . . .
- Frankfurt, 28 November 1577(28)
This exchange, read in its entirety
(and the Languet letter in particular has usually been misleadingly excerpted),
shows precisely where the modulation of Sidney's motive begins.(29)
Nevertheless, we should take both sides seriously. Sidney's was not a vulgar
and foolish gold fever, even at the height of the Frobisher excitement and his
own financial troubles; and such persons as Ambrose and Anne Dudley, Sir Henry
and Lady Mary Sidney, and Edward Dyer were not exactly frivolous either. Gold
would not only solve pressing personal problems; it would balance the perceived
advantages of Spain, and create a greater independence for individuals, for
their country, and for their religion.
Languet, who as always takes with a
classical serieux his role as mentor, comes down exceedingly hard on all desire
for gold; this much has been often noticed and repeated. What is much less
commonly remembered is that immediately following this long diatribe he begins
to give practical advice for exploiting the islands, recommending better texts
on mining than the one Sidney had asked for, and giving crisp counsels on the
preference for a trading city over expensive forts full of idle and hungry
soldiers. Notable in the long run is the fact that Languet is here moving his
protege's spirit from considerations of quick exploitation towards those of
colonisation. And it is this movement, which is not only characteristic of the
next stage of interest everywhere but especially of the Huguenot mentality,
that is now starting to recommend itself to Sidney, well ahead of most of his
countrymen.
B. New Cosmographies: The Huguenot
Connection
Clearly this movement, going far
beyond exploration and mapping and cataloguing a world of wonders, could not
long be content with the prattle, the fantasies, the embroideries, the outright
lies and the never-ending self-aggrandisement of the irrepressible Thevet. Frank
Lestringant has shown how, from the late 1570s on, those seriously concerned
with voyages, the New World, and colonization from a Protestant point of view
increasingly rejected and even execrated Thevet, who had, moreover, allied
himself with the Guise faction.
The Protestants who increasingly
despised him would soon find a couple of geographers of their own: Jean de Lery
and Urbain Chauveton. These two very different men - Lery an autodidact,
Chauveton a scholar - were Huguenot ministers and friends. Lery had been a
member, many years before, of the same Brazilian expedition as Thevet, and had
also written a book about it (the Histoire d'un voyage; see below, n. 14), but
which was not printed until 1578. His account, however, corresponds far better
to a more modern, less fabulous, more particular and more
"scientific" regard - it is not for nothing that Claude Levi-Strauss,
as late as 1955, called the Histoire d'un voyage the "ethnologist's
breviary."(30) Chauveton used the older method of translating and expanding
preexistent work, in his case the writings of Girolamo Benzoni, which he
published, with an extensive and influential commentary citing Lery, as the
Histoire nouvelle du Nouveau Monde in 1579. The difference between the two
authors is that while Lery - writing, with a certain nostalgia, about a voyage
nearly twenty-five years past - still shows the expeditionary mentalite,
Chauveton is already reacting to current events and thinking of colonization.
The spur for such thoughts, and also
their link with Sidney, is of course the 1572 Massacre. This decisive event
compels Protestant thought in France to turn toward an alternative, not only a
new but an other world "ici-bas," here below, that I mentioned
earlier with regard to Sidney. Henceforth "le Refuge" becomes a
concept to the more outward-looking of the Huguenots (as "le Desert"
is to be to the homespun ones a century later). It is never an easy solution:
the Coligny colony was riven by dissension between Catholics and Protestants
(whose respective clergymen actually came to blows on shipboard) and finished
off by the Portuguese; Jean Ribaut's Calvinist effort in Florida lasted less
than three years before Menendez de Avila's Spanish troops slaughtered nearly a
thousand Huguenots at Matanzas Inlet. But such massacres also fed both the
growing leyenda negra, the Black Legend, of Spain's implacable and ubiquitous
evil, and the determination and conviction of the Protestant thinkers.
Among these last was Philippe de
Mornay, Sieur du Plessis, who was in England with his wife and family from 1577
to the summer of 1578 and there deepened his friendship with Sidney, to the joy
of their common "father" Languet. Du Plessis, the chief religious and
political strategy adviser to Henry of Navarre, was meditating at this time his
major work, De la verite de la religion chrestienne, which eventually appeared
in French and Latin versions in 1581 (and which was to be Sidney's major
preoccupation as a writer until his departure for the Netherlands). Lestringant
has valuably reminded us that this massive and now underestimated work
contains, inter alia, "une geopolitique protestante," based on
Chauveton, which was to have a widespread influence - the more so because
France's crushing naval defeat by the Portuguese at Terceira in the Azores on
26 July 1582 put an end to all French colonial activity for a generation, and
focused Huguenot hopes upon England.
Mornay's "geopolitics" are
contained in Chapter VIII of the Verite: "When the world had his
beginning." Having discussed the origins of human arts and sciences,
Mornay continues: "the sayd inventions gathering together into one tyme,
doe leade us to some one certeine Countrie as to a Centre, where mankind hath
first sprong up, and afterward spred it selfe abroade as to the outermost
partes of all the Circle" (117). The world, in fact, "was not peopled
all at once, but . . . as folke overswarmed in a place, and chanced to hit upon
a man that was adventrus, they spred themselves further and further under his
guyding, into the Countries next unto them" (120). The point from which
this centrifugal movement begins is either "Mount Taurus where it is
called Caucasus" (Ararat), or "the playne of Sennaar, where Moyses
sayth that the Languages were confounded," or else "some place of Mesopotamia"
(ibid.). The movement then spreads out via Assyria, Persia, Greece, Rome,
France and Germany; "and Spayne which heretofore was counted the uttermost
part of the World, is now become the first discoverer of the newe World"
(ibid.). The extremities, of course, meet: "in very deed, like as Ireland,
a part of Scotland, Laplond, and Groneland, being the uttermost parts of our
side of the World, are as good as savage: so also be the uttermost inhabiters
of the Westindies, namely Canada, Baccalea [Newfoundland], Brasilie, and
Petagon, which are descended of the Eastindies" (120-21). He continues,
"In following the Coastes, men have found many Countries even yet
unpeopled. And also that even in the best peopled places of all their
Countries, they have not found the tenth part of so much people as the
Countries being manured were able to beare; whereas on the contrary part, in
our Countries the Nations doe pester one another" (121).
The whole chapter is filled with
what Lestringant rightly calls "this vision where the theological
demonstration of the unity of the human race directly supports a bold
geopolitical extrapolation"(HS 122). This theory, in the first place,
allows Du Plessis to do away with the origin of the races in the three sons of
Noah - which also removes the stigma from the "sons of Ham," just as
Lery had approached these same sons with a far greater sense of common humanity
than had Thevet. Second, in starting from one center, Du Plessis explains and
valorizes the Westward expansion of Europe:
Applying an elementary principle of
fluid mechanics, the author of the treatise Of the Trewnesse of the Christian
Religion discovers that the demographic currents on the globe's surface have
sprung from a single centre, that they have spread out in successive waves
through the ages, insinuating themselves via the isthmuses and the straits,
spreading out without regard for terrain into the continents; and especially
that they are still spreading out equally into the immense natural receptacle
sketched by the general and coherent configuration of the newly-emerged lands.
Henceforth the political action of nation-states must accompany and organise
this unfinished movement . . . The invitation to colonise is explicit, which
will privilege a necessary homeostasis, peopling the empty spaces with an
oekoumene broadened by Providence, and moreover by the same token unburdening
of their excess population the overcrowded countries of the older, because more
central, Europe (HS 123).
To recapitulate and support this
point, a brief summary of facts for this period is relevant. On 10 March 1578,
Sidney wrote to Languet (a propos of Du Plessis's anticipated empty-handed
return to France): "I must say, unless God opposes it with His power, I
seem to see the Cause being destroyed, and I am seriously considering something
in the Indies [aliquid jam Indicum mecum meditor]" (Feuillerat, iii, 121).
In May Frobisher set out on his third and final voyage, with fifteen ships and
two hundred miners, in which Sidney invested [pounds]67/10/-; during this trip,
the assayers pronounced the ore worthless.(31) On 1 June, Sidney stood
godfather to Du Plessis's second daughter Elisabeth in the French Church in
London's Threadneedle Street. Lery this year published his Histoire d'un voyage
en terre de Bresil. In November, Sir Humphrey Gilbert set out on his first
voyage, while in France Nicolas Pithou published his translation of Dionysius
Settle: La Navigation du Cap. M. Forbisher (Geneva: A. Chuppin), in which he
performs a little careful and characteristic navigation of his own, avoiding
defense of the Spanish conquista while exalting and encouraging the English
expeditions. This last was, ultimately, a Protestant defense, even of
gold-fever (an argument which, interestingly, Sidney in his letter to Languet
hinted at but which Languet did not take up): "for by a secret
inclination, He leads men to this reason, even though their first conception is
not such, but only to enrich themselves; using them without their knowledge, to
plant a seed of religion in the hearts of those poor barbarians."(32) In
1580 there was a second edition of Lery, and a part of his history of the
Coligny colony was embedded in Beza's Histoire ecclesiastique des Eglises
Reformees au Royaume de France, which helped to spread Lery's experiences and
mentalite more widely in the "Protestant International" in which Beza
was a leading figure. In September 1581 Languet died in Antwerp, attended by
Charlotte, Du Plessis's wife, and with as last request a mention in the
Verite's Preface.
From now on until his departure for
the Netherlands, and indeed until his death, Sidney's New World focus was no
longer on gold. Under the influence of Languet's memory and Du Plessis's
friendship, his thoughts were all of the geopolitical Protestant struggle: for
the faith and against Spain, the great enemy both in Europe and the Americas.
This focus is a double one: colonization and warfare.
To appreciate this movement fully,
we should first consider Sidney's literary direction from this time on. In 1579
he had written the letter to the Queen on her marriage project to Alencon, the
son of "the Jezebel of our age." The Astrophil and Stella and the Old
Arcadia were, as he later pointed out, the fruits of his leisure at Wilton,
whether enforced or not; but the Arcadia's unfinished revision was accompanied
by a whole body of new work, all of it left unfinished and some of it lost,
which marked a new direction.(33) The versification of the Psalms was meant for
Huguenot-style assemblies: "Psalm-singers" was the popular stereotype
of Protestants. The major work of this period was the translation of Du
Plessis's Verite as The Trewnesse of the Christian Religion. Finished by Arthur
Golding, this was published in 1587 by Thomas Cadman (STC 18149).(34) In view
of the Verite's importance with regard to the New World, Sidney's preoccupation
with it is a valuable clue to the direction of his thinking at that time.
The third work that occupied him
also links him to the French Huguenots. John Florio, in dedicating Book II of
his Montaigne to Sidney's daughter Elizabeth, Lady Rutland, and to Lady Rich in
1603, wrote that had seen Sidney's rendering of "the first septmane of
that arch-poet Du Bartas." This translation is now lost; but Du Bartas's
Seconde Sepmaine (of which the first eight poems were printed in 1584), dealing
with the world's history since the Creation, not only mentions "Mylor
Sydne" whose song, like the swan's, tames Thames's proud waves, which
carry it to the ocean, and the ocean throughout the world; but this second Week
also contains, as part of its second Day, a section on Les colonies which,
Lestringant claims with some plausibility (HS, 122), has its source in Chapter
VIII of the Verite: "Tout ainsi les macons de la superbe tour / S'en vont,
esparpillez, acaser a l'entour / De Mesopotamie; et peu a pen leur race, /
Frayant heureusement, fleuve apres fleuve passe, / Saisit terre apres terre, et
si le Tout-Puissant / Ne va de l'univers les jours accourcissant, / Il ne se
trouvera contree si sauvage / Que le tige d'Adam de ses branches
n'ombrage."(35)
On 28 February 1581, Thomas
Washington's translation of the great French geographer Nicolas de Nicolay's
Navigations, peregrinations and voyages, made into Turkie (4 [degrees] in 8's,
Thomas Dawson, STC 18574) was entered in the Stationers' Registers. It was
dedicated to Sir Henry and Philip Sidney both, and confirms their continuing
interest in militant Protestantism as well as navigation. For it was
"printed in English at J. Stell's cost and charges" by Thomas Dawson;
and Johannes Stell was a Dutchman who, together with Dawson, had two years
previously dedicated to Sidney the notorious and incendiary Beehive of the
Romishe Church by Marnix of Ste. Aldegonde.
The year 1582 marked another new
departure, when the lessons of France began to be applied in an English
framework. On 21 May, Thomas Woodcock entered Hakluyt's first book, the Divers
voyages, which he dedicated to Sidney. This not only introduced to an English
public Ramusio's version of Zeno the Venetian and Friseland, which we saw in
Sidney's letter to Languet, and the 1563 French text about Jean Ribaut's
Protestant colony in Florida, but also contained a set of fascinating notes on
colonization thought to have been prepared for Sir Humphrey Gilbert in
1578.(36) In the dedication Hakluyt reminds Sidney that he has always been
"so readie to pleasure me and all my name," and hopes that he will
"continue and increase [his] accustomed favour towarde those goodly and
honorable discoveries" (sig. [para]4, 11).
C. Colonization: The Gilbert Project
It was also in 1582 that the
colonization concept first became realized in Sidney's involvement with the
project of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.(37) To sum up usefully this very complex
story, of which not all the factors are known, we have to turn to the
Catholics. In 1581, under pressure from the arrival of undercover Jesuits and
the continued plotting of Mary, Queen of Scots, the government had enacted a
new recusancy law (23 Eliz. c. I), raising the fines for nonconformity to a
ruinous [pounds]20 a month. It was now that Walsingham, implacable enemy of
Catholics and increasingly close to Philip (who the following year became his
son-in-law), stepped in. Walsingham, who knew that the Sidneys, while
politically reliable, were tolerant, trusting, and good friends with many
Catholics, seems to have sought Philip's cooperation for a sort of
reverse-Huguenot colonization scheme. The principal Catholics were Sir Thomas
Gerrard and Sir George Peckham; the executive manager was Antony Brigham; and
the man in charge of the "navigation" and the proposed colony itself
was Sir Humphrey Gilbert.
On 7 July 1582, Sidney received a
grant of three million acres from Gilbert, out of the latter's
virtually-unlimited land grant from the Queen. These lands were part of North
America, and still to be discovered. Gerrard and Peckham received similar
grants.(38) There existed an elaborate set of rules for the eventual
administration of these territories, which were all intended as part of a vast
colonization scheme. Sidney's case, though, stands alone: while Gerrard and
Peckham received the authority over their lands in part "in consideracion
that the same Sir Thomas and Sir George have disbursed divers sommes of money
and adventured the same as principall adventurers with the said Sir Humfrey
towards his howe intended vyoge for discoverye and habytinge of certeyne parts
of America" (HG, 247), in Sidney's grant this financial clause was
omitted. Why?
Gilbert promised he "shall doe
his best endevor to procure and obteyne her Majesties leave and good lykinge
that all those who hath or shall adventure with the said Sir Humfrey and Sir
George or any of them . . . maye freely passe into those Countries theire to
remaine or retorn backe at his or theire or any of theire will and
pleasure" (HG, 254). In Sidney's contract, Philip also promised "that
he . . . shall doe his best endevor to procure and obteyne her Majesties leave
and good lykinge that all those whoe have or shall adventure with the said Sir
Humfrey, Sir Thomas Gerrard and Sir George Peckham knights the said Philipp or
any of them into the said Countrie . . . may freelye passe into those Countries
there to remayne' (HG, 264-65).
The point here is that while Gilbert
was the overall instigator and organizer, only he and Sidney were seen as able
to procure the Queen's permission and goodwill, in order that the other -
Catholic - participants could safely leave England or return, as they pleased.
This last point, implying as it did the non-confiscation of their property, was
not something to be taken for granted, and if Philip could mediate its
acceptance, such service merited reward. This detail renders more believable
(discounting, as always, some of the terminology) Spanish ambassador Mendoza's
dispatch of 11 July: "As I wrote to your majesty some days since, Ongi
Gilberto [Humphrey Gilbert] was fitting out several ships for a settlement in
Florida and as this was not only prejudicial to your Majesty but also to the
English Catholics as giving advantage to heretics, Walsingham put it secretly
to two spendthrift Catholic gentlemen who have some land that if they helped
Ongi Gilberto in his expedition, they would escape losing life and property, by
asking the Queen to allow them, in consideration for this service, to live in
those parts with freedom of conscience and enjoy the use of their property in
England - for which purpose they might rely on Phelippe Sideney."(39) Two
points need to be made about this. In the first place, Sidney did not
personally have with the Queen the kind of influence that would accomplish such
a scheme or even significantly smooth it. But as Walsingham, whose protege
Sidney had become by this time, was behind it, one assumes that Sidney's
mediation would have passed through him. The second point to make concerns the
Protestant party's backing for a partially Catholic colonization project. Here
we should remember that both Sir Henry and Sidney were humanly unprejudiced men
who were always personally friendly toward Catholics. Sidney had been asked, in
1581, to intervene with "Mr Secretarie" Walsingham for the Catholic
Lady Kytson on behalf of Sir Thomas Cornwallis, and had written her a
comforting letter on 28 March, telling her not to despair because there was
"a present intention of a general mitigation, to be used in respect of
recusants" (Feuillerat iii, 134-35). But what is more, such a project
would accord directly with the point Hakluyt made to Sidney in the Preface to
Divers voyages, viz. that colonies would productively make use of those
undesirable in the motherland (sig. [para]1, 5). It is this reasoning which was
doubtless Walsingham's; and it is intriguing to see that the otherwise not
overly-brilliant Mendoza immediately recognized it as in any case not
beneficial to the King of Spain.
By 1583 Sidney had joined with Sir
George Peckham. Walsingham had drafted a circular letter to potential
adventurers, saying, "I am of opinion you shall doe well to harken unto
suche offers as Sir Philipp Sidney and Sir George Peckham will make unto you
who have sufficient Aucthoritie by and under her Majesties lettres patentes to
performe theffect of your Desire."(40) In July of that year Philip drafted
a grant of 30,000 acres (or 10 percent) out of his own grant to Peckham, to
furnish a ship for the next expedition.(41) And Walsingham (who, wearing a
different hat, was also backing his step-son Christopher Carleill in a venture
with the Muscovy Company) invested [pounds]115 of his own money in the
expedition - a very considerable sum.
E. Planting and Warfare
In September of 1583 Philip married
Frances Walsingham, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert was lost at sea. These two events
mark a sort of turning-point: a final development, decisive in retrospect, in
Sidney's engagement with the New World as an aspect of the Cause, the carrying
on of the Protestant dream, the Westward drive into the straits and estuaries
and bays of the land that would make the Refuge possible. Sidney, ironically,
had come closest to participation in a colony through a scheme devised in part
for Catholics - a scheme unthinkable in Du Plessis's France where the Catholics
were the power structure, but a logical adaptation for a beleaguered Protestant
nation where Catholics were, or were feared to be, the Fifth Column. The scheme
was not quite over. Peckham carried on for about a year, but was then (in a
burst of typically contradictory official action) jailed for Catholic
activities. The man who seems to have been originally intended to lead
Peckham's first expedition after Gilbert's loss was Frobisher: Hakluyt, by now
in Paris as chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford (meeting Thevet and filching a
manuscript from him), wrote to Walsingham on 1 April 1584 that he understood
Frobisher would be leaving in May (HG, 93).
This is also, though, the time when
Elizabeth first began to realize that participation in a war against Spain was
probably inevitable, and that it would begin in the Netherlands. Sidney had for
some time belonged to the party that considered this was not only likely but
desirable, and indeed England's moral obligation.
Two factors mark the development of
Sidney's involvement at this time. He had received a preliminary posting to the
Ordnance, of which his uncle the Earl of Warwick was Master, and he would
eventually share the mastership. In doing so he was in effect moving toward
involvement in the European theatre of what he and his ilk considered a world
war. Second, he was more than ever disgusted by his Sovereign's compulsive
dithering. The Peckham continuation of the Gilbert project remained alive, and
Sidney was still considering it. "Her Majesty seemes affected to deal in
the Low Contrey matters," he wrote disconsolately from Court to Stafford
in Paris, "but I think nothing will come of it. We [himself and, possibly,
Greville] are haulf perswaded to enter into the journey of Sir Humphrey Gilbert
very eagerli; whereunto your Mr. Hackluit hath served for a very good
Trumpet" (21 July 1584).(42)
The New World was increasingly an
other world, an alternative world; which was now undergoing its final change of
shape and significance in Sidney's mind. In its first form it was a world of
wonders and a stage of discovery, next a scene for deeds and a potential
passage to Cathay, then a place for mining gold and thus a source of power, and
most recently a field for "planting" as part of the Westward destiny
of the human race in general and the True Faith in particular. Now,
increasingly, it became also the Western Theater in the world war against
Spain.
Fulke Greville, writing his Life of
Sidney a generation later from his own memories and presumably his notes
described this last conception:
Now though this justice of the
Almighty be many times slow, and therefore neglected here on Earth; yet - I say
- under the only conduct of this star, did Sir Philip intend to revive this
hazardous enterprize of planting upon the main of America: projected, nay
undertaken long before - as I shewed you - but ill executed in the absence of
Sir Philip; with a design to possess Nombre de Dios, or some other haven near
unto it, as [fortified] places, in respect of the little distance between the
two seas, esteemed the fittest rendezvous for supply or retreat of an army upon
all occasions. And besides resolved to circle in his [the Spaniard's] wealth
and freedome, with a joynt fore-running fleet in the South sea; to the end,
that if the fortune of conquest prospered with them, yet he should infallibly
pay the charge of both Navies, with infinite losses and disreputation to the
Spaniard.
And in this project Sir Philip
proceeded so far with the United Provinces, as they yeelded to assist and
second the ships of his sovereign, under his charge, with a Fleet of their own.
Which, besides a present addition of strength, he knew would lead others by
example.
Again, for supply of these armies,
he had - out of that naturall tribute, which all free spirits acknowledge to
superior worth - won thirty gentlemen of great bloud and state here in England,
every man to sell one hundred pounds land, to second and countenance this first
Fleet, with a stronger.
Now when these beginnings were by
his own credit and industrie thus well settled: then to give an excellent form
to a reall work, bee contrived this new intended Plantation, not like an asylum
for fugitives, a Bellum Piraticum for bandits; or any such base ramas of
people: but as an Emporium for the confluence of all nations that love or
profess any kind of virtue, or Commerce.(43)
This sentiment and these plans on
Sidney's part seem to have belonged to the period of 1584-85. As for the
joint-force plan with the Netherlands, or the backing of the thirty English
gentlemen, there is no evidence to support either of them - unless the Thirty
represented Greville's confused memory of the Peckham scheme; or - and this is
both more plausible and a genuinely fascinating possibility - both it and the
joint-force plan referred to an undercover extension of Sidney's final New
World adventure: the Drake expedition of 1585.
F. The Drake Expedition
This event was surrounded by many
uncertainties, a cloud of contradictions, a fair amount of prevarication, and a
few plain lies. It is important to review the evidence and to try to arrive at
a reasonable interpretation. There are two possible versions of what happened.
The first is as follows: Sidney, who was at last to be allowed to go to war in
the Netherlands where Elizabeth was sending aid in return for three towns held
as cautions by English garrisons, had asked for the command of Flushing
(Vlissingen), the most important town of the three. In August 1585 he had been
officially proposed for this command,(44) but a week later the Queen seemed
once again to be changing her mind, and (according to one source) ready to give
the position to another. Sidney then totally and monumentally lost his temper.
Drake was about to leave on his notorious West Indian guerrilla expedition,
where he would sack Nombre de Dios, Cartagena and a number of other places. As
Walsingham wrote despairingly to Davison on 13 September:
Sir Philip hath taken a very hard
resolution to accompany Sir Francis Drake in this voyage, moved thereto for
that he saw her Majesty disposed to commit the charge of Flushing unto some
other;(45) which he reputed would fall out greatly to his disgrace, to see
another preferred before him, both for birth and judgment inferior unto him.
In other words, Sidney, accompanied
by the usually more-than-cautious Greville, left Court abruptly and went to
Plymouth. The pretext for leaving the Court was a rumor that Don Antonio, the
Portuguese pretender and an ally, was about to land for a secret visit, and
that Sidney and Greville would go and "conduct him up." But John
Stanhope wrote to the Earl of Rutland on 12 September, one day before
Walsingham's letter to Davison:
Sir Philip Sidney's departing with
Sir Francis Drake was so fully advertised her Majesty as it pleased her to
command Mr. Vice-Chamberlain to write three letters, one to himself to command
his immediate return, the other to Sir Francis to forbid him the receiving of
him in his fleet, the third to the Mayor of Plymouth to write him to see this
performed accordingly; and that if they were already gone some bark should be
sent after with the letters. This messenger was one Hyts whom I think your
Lordship knows, one serving my Lady Drury, who was despatched accordingly, and
when he was within 4 miles of Plymouth he was surprised by four mariners and
his letters taken from him; the which being opened and read were sent him again.
Since when, one Prynne, who attendeth Don Antonio, is come from thence with
letters from his master and Sir Philip, and now it is said that Sir Philip
never meant to go, but stayeth there to see the ships set forth. Yet the bruit
runneth on stilts in London and amongst many courtiers that Sir Francis is gone
and Sir Philip too.(47)
Sidney left us no account of this
imbroglio, and neither did Drake. But the third participant has, and his
version is radically different. In the case of this so-memorable event it may
be useful to look afresh at Greville's memoir. In Chapter VII of the Life, the
latter states categorically that the plan we think of as Drake's "was an
expedition of [Sidney's] own projecting: wherein he fashioned the whole body,
to become head of it himself. I mean the last employment but one of Sir Francis
Drake to the West Indies. Which journey, as the scope of it was mixt both of
sea and land service; so it had accordingly distinct commanders, chosen by Sir
Philip out of the ablest governors of those martiall times. The project was
contrived between them in this manner: that both should equally be governours,
when they had left the shore of England; but while things were a preparing at
home, Sir Francis, was to beare the name, and by the credit of Sir Philip have
all particulars abundantly supplyed" (71). Greville candidly admits that
Sidney kept his role in the project secret because he would not have been
allowed to go. Drake, he says, joined in because Sidney's connections would "add
both weight and fashion to his ambition." The greatest secret, he claims,
was the "particular of this plot," i.e., the objective that the
Spaniards would not know which places to defend. Drake then left for Plymouth
with his ships, "vowed and resolved that when he staid for nothing but a
wind, the watchword should come post for Sir Philip. The time of the year made
haste away, and Sir Francis to follow it either made more haste than needed, or
at least seemed to make more than really he did. Notwithstanding, as I dare
aver that in his own element he was industrious; so dare I not condemn his
affections in this misprision of time. Howsoever a letter comes post for Sir
Philip, as if the whole Fleet stayed onely for him, and the wind" (73-74).
Thus, says Greville, Sidney decided on the Don Antonio pretext, left Court,
went to Plymouth, and "was feasted the first night by Sir Francis, with
greate deale of outward pomp and complement" (74). Yet Greville claimed
that he himself - Sidney's oldest friend and now his "Achates in this
journey" - mentioned that night in bed the "discountenance and
depression" he had seen in Drake's face, "as if our coming were both
beyond his expectation and desire" (ibid.). Sidney dismissed this; but
within the next few days he discovered that Greville was right. The ships were
far from ready, and Drake was stringing them along, while - Greville suspects -
secretly warning the Court. He then told the story of the ambushed messenger,
and continued with the "more imperial mandate" that offered Sidney
employment in the Low Countries under Leicester but ordered him to leave the
Fleet forthwith. Greville, ever admiring, claimed that Philip then left in a
gallant manner, dealing plainly with the whole army, thus saving "Sir
Francis Drake from the [public] blastings of Court" to maintain his
authority with the troops, while pointing out that his own going to the
Netherlands proved the Queen is now irrevocably engaged in both theaters of the
war (76-77).
The stories cannot both be true.
Stanhope's letter agrees broadly with Greville's account. Walsingham's letter
to Davison is that of a political man who has just seen his protege do
something almost unforgivably stupid. Yet Greville - for all his idealizing and
for all the time-lapse - knew Sidney better than anyone; and Greville was
there. Moreover, the credibility of his version is heightened by his recording
that he did not, at a crucial moment, agree with his venerated friend.
Let us suppose for a moment that
Greville was right, and that the previously-mentioned joint-force scheme with
the Dutch was in some way an inchoate part of this expedition. We then have two
largely incompatible men - Drake and Sidney(48) - planning a large New World
military project which (from Sidney's point of view) followed exactly Languet's
advice about protecting the Baffin Island mines. First seize a base, then make
it a self-sufficient colony, then use it as a center from which to conduct your
operations.
It was not a bad plan at all. In
Chapter X of the Life, Greville explained in detail Sidney's geopolitical
strategy against Spain. Flanders was actually the worst place to attack this
powerful and vicious enemy, as it was his main theater of war. Carry war, said
Philip, "into the bowels of Spain" and take Seville or Cadiz; or,
even better, "assail him by invasion or incursion - as occasion fell out -
in some part of that rich and desert West-Indian Mayne" (110). Plant a
colony there, and harry him; "either . . . stop his springs of gold"
and so starve his armies; or deny all security to his transport of it.
This was a war aim, but the plan for
the colony itself he describes in the passage I have quoted above. May we,
then, conclude that both the joint force project with the Dutch and the venture
of the thirty gentlemen formed part of a scheme so effectively kept secret that
even Walsingham, Sidney's father-in-law and head of England's by-now quite
effective intelligence service, had no inkling of it? Where the possibility has
even been mentioned, it has usually been dismissed.(49) What I want to suggest
here is that it merits a very serious second look.
First of all Greville was probably,
beside Drake, the only other man in on the full project. (The 1585 fleet,
remember, was to be only the beginning.) Second, it was the last great moment
he had shared with Philip before the latter went off to the Netherlands: this
makes it much less likely that his memory of it had faded. Third, Greville
would not have lent himself to a year-long journey out of another's sudden fit
of pique - even Philip's. And finally, it is entirely possible that Walsingham
was privy to the plan, and that his letter to Davison was in the nature of
disinformation - even, perhaps, intended to be read by the Queen.(50)
The question remains of Drake's
betrayal which, if we accept Greville's version, is certainly the worst anyone
ever perpetrated upon Sidney. Why, if he had accepted the project, did he now
scupper it in such a deviously efficient way? In the absence of Drake's own
memoirs, we can and must speculate, as intelligently as possible. Drake, let us
not forget, was a national hero, which Sidney was not yet but was soon to
become as well. Heroes, as Lord Kenneth Clark said, do not easily tolerate the
company of other heroes. Drake, moreover, was a self-made hero with, first and
foremost, a career to look after. He had been knighted at Deptford, and he was
to get almost the sole credit for defeating the Armada. At this mid-point
between the two, it is clear that he wanted to go and raid - not to plant colonies,
but to shoot, sink, pillage, burn, run, come home tired, sunburnt,
bloodstained, and rich, all the while basking in the Queen's favor. Drake was
the sort of man who would not have appealed to Languet at all, and perhaps not
even to Du Plessis. But he would, one suspects, have appealed a great deal to
Henri IV (who, in the crunch, let Du Plessis sink without a qualm), as he did
to Elizabeth. The latter seems as genuinely and strongly to have disliked
Sidney as much as everyone else had liked him.(51)
Drake, who was (up to a point)
perfectly on the Queen's wavelength, cannot have been unaware of this. The
business of secrecy, of concealing Sidney's involvement, must to him have
seemed self-defeating and increasingly detrimental, even dangerous, to his own
interests. To set out on a new voyage, with the Queen's Great Favorite's nephew
and heir not only illegally aboard but shortly to be revealed back home as his
long-time co-conspirator, was a major risk. True, he could not be intercepted,
and a few sacked Spanish cities and captured Spanish carracks might ransom all
ill deeds; but then again, they might not. Earnest moral nobles might easily
die out there; and then what would he say to the Bear and Ragged Staff on his
return? Drake had taken Sidney (who, we should remember, was Joint Master of
the Ordnance and thus could allot much useful material) for all he could get;
but as for joint command on the actual voyage, he had clearly, by September,
changed his mind.
The plan, though, as Greville
recounted it was the perfect summing-up of what we have seen to be Sidney's
lifelong but changing relation to the New World. It fully acknowledged war-time
conditions and their overriding importance. Spain, it said, must be resisted
and, if possible, defeated. However, this goal was set, first of all, in the
context of an extraordinarily nuanced analysis of the international
geopolitical situation in the 1580s (Chapters VIII-X), which anyone conversant
with Sidney's correspondence can recognize as congruent with his experience and
with the ideas prevalent in his Continental circle. And second, the
Spanish-directed war objective was throughout recognized as a limited one, set
in the context of a further goal. That goal was summed up in the "emporium
for the confluence of all nations that love or profess any kind of virtue or
commerce":
Wherein to incite those that tarried
at home to adventure, he propounded the hope of a sure and rich return. To
martiall men he opened the wide doore of sea and land, for fame and conquest.
To the nobly ambitious the fayre stage of America, to win honour in. To the
religious divines, besides a new apostolicall calling of the last heathen to
the Christian faith, a large field of reducing poor Christians, mis-led by the
idolatry of Rome, to their mother primitive Church. To the ingeniously
industrious, variety of natural richesses, for new mysteries and manufactures
to work upon. To the merchant, with a simple people, a fertile, and unexhausted
earth. To the fortune-bound, liberty. To the curious, a fruitfull womb of
innovation. Generally, the word gold was an attractive adamant, to make men
venture that which they have, in hope to grow rich by that which they have not.
What the expectation of this voyage
was, time past can best witness; but what the success should have been - till
it be revived by some such generous undertaker - lies hidden in God's secret
judgements, who did at once cut off this gentleman's life, and so much of our
hope. (118-19)
IV. QUERRE-MUHAU (IN TUPI: "ONE
WHO IS POWERFUL IN WAR, AND VALIANT IN HIS UNDERTAKINGS"): THE OLD WORLD
(52)
"From the ashes of this first
propounded voyage to America, that fatall Low Country action sprang up, in
which this worthy gentleman lost his life," wrote Greville (119). In any
case, the two were alternatives. In a sense, the European Theatre engagement
was Sidney being called home: home to the cockpit of Europe where the stakes
were ancient and absolute; home to the initial lessons of his dearest and
wisest friends - Melanchthon, whom he had never met, Melanchthon's pupil and
Sidney's mentor, Hubert Languet, and Philippe de Mornay du Plessis. Finally he
was called home to the unambiguous organizing, governing, surviving, and
fighting of a just war in known surroundings. Gone was Thevet; gone was Lery;
gone was the dream of a new, other, purer, victorious and peaceable kingdom. He
might have gone back to it: Ralph Lane, the governor of Roanoke, wrote to him
in that same year 1585, begging him to come and "attempt" San Juan
and Hispaniola, "only fit for yourself to be chief commander in."(53)
But for the moment there were the fortifications and garrisons of Flushing to
organize; there was Axel to take by storm; there was a new Prince of Orange,
far more military than his father, to work with; and there was, at last, the
work to do in God's cause. The Psalms, the Semaines, the Trewnesse, the New
Arcadia; all were broken off, with no sign of regret.
Ibora died two years after he was
mentioned in Du Plessis's will. The New World, in the end, made way for - even
became - "the old made explicit, understood." Yet together with
Sidney, its advocate, it would remain to influence a future generation: "a
symbol perfected in death."
Tyre coih apouau, ienderoua
gerre-ari. ("Let us lead these with us against our enemies.")
YORK UNIVERSITY
1 [Jean Daille] Testament,
codicille, dernieres actions, et mort heureuse de Philippes de Mornay, Sieur du
Plessis Marly, devant gouverneur de la ville & Chasteau de Saumur ([Saumur]
1624), 14 (my translation).
2 The books are: 1) Richard Eden, A
treatyse of the newe India (Edward Sutton, 1553; 8 [degrees], STC 18244), a
translation of Sebastian Munster's Cosmographia; 2) Eden's Decades of the newe
world or West India (William Powell, 1555; 8 [degrees], STC 645), from Pietro
Martire d'Anghiera's Decades; 3) Thomas Hacket's translation of Jean Ribaut's
1562 text, The whole and true discoverye of Terra Florida (30 May 1563, T.
Hall, f. T. Hacker, 8 [degrees], 23 pp. pamphlet, STC 20970); 4) N. Le Shalleux
[sic: N. Ie Challeux], A true and perfect description of the last voyage or
navigation, attempted by Capitaine John Rybaut, deputie and generali for the
French men, into Terra Florida, this yeare past, 1565 (tr. and pub. T. Hacket,
1566; 8 [degrees], STC 15347); 5) Andrew Thevet, The Newe Found Worlde, or
Antarcktike (H. Bynneman f. T. Hacket, 1568; 8 [degrees], STC 23950).
3 See Wallace: "To all of them
it must have seemed a blessed interval." His account of Sir Henry's (and
Lady Mary's) troubles in Ireland (72ff.) amply explains Philip's subsequent
touchiness in his father's defence.
4 On Thevet, see chiefly the
excellent work of Lestringant, 1990 (henceforth HS) and Lestringant, 1994.
5 See Sidney's Defence of Poesy in
van Dorsten and Duncan-Jones, 87 and 92.
6 Thevet, sigs. *ijv - *iij.
7 Frobisher paid 6/8 for them. Only
five books were taken: "a book of cosmographie in French"
([pounds]2/4/-), "an English Bible greate volume" ([pound]1), "a
cosmographicall glasse and castill [of] Knowledge" (10/-) and "a New
World of Andreas Thevett, Englishe and French" (6/8). W. McFee.
8 See McCann, 99-101.
9 On Dyer, see Sargent.
10 C