Sir Humphrey Gilbert and American Colonization

Of the attempted colonizing ventures to North America before the successful settlement of Jamestown in 1607, that of Sir Walter Raleigh’s Roanoke colony is probably the best known. The Roanoke settlers included John White, whose American drawings are justly famous, and Thomas Hariot, whose account of‘Virginia’, first published in 1588, was issued in four languages in 1590 and included some of White’s sketches. With such notable publicity, and because of the flamboyant character of Raleigh, more attention has been given to the Roanoke colony than to the earlier venture of Sir Humphrey Gilbert.

This is unfortunate since Gilbert was an interesting figure and his project, more than Raleigh’s, anticipated later colonial developments. He was the first to explore the potential of the proprietary colony that came to fruition in the seventeenth century—in Maryland, the Calvert’s palatinate, in Pennsylvania, William Penn’s great Quaker commonwealth, and in New York and the Jerseys. Gilbert also hit on the idea of interesting disaffected religious groups in emigration for the sake of freedom of conscience, and obtained Roman Catholic backing.