Humphrey Gilbert

Sir Humphrey Gilbert (c. 1539 – 9 September 1583) was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament, and soldier from Devon, who served the crown during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England. One of the pioneers of English colonization, he claimed what is thought to be the first English property in North America. He was a half-brother (through his mother) of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Sir Humphrey Gilbert, c. 1583

Early life

Gilbert was the second son of Otho and Katherine Champernowne Gilbert of Compton and Greenway Estate, Devonshire. His brothers Sir John Gilbert and Adrian Gilbert, and half brothers Carew Raleigh and Sir Walter Raleigh were also prominent during the reigns of Elizabeth I or James I. Katherine was a niece of Kat Ashley, Elizabeth's governess, who introduced the young men at court. His uncle, Sir Arthur Champernowne, involved Gilbert in efforts to establish Irish plantations between 1566-1572. (Ronald, p. 248-249)

Sir Henry Sidney became his mentor, and he was educated at Eton and Oxford University, where he learned to speak French and Spanish and studied the arts of war and navigation. He went on to reside at the Inns of Chancery in London c.1560-1561.

Quid non? ("Why not?") and Mutare vel timere sperno ("I scorn to change or to fear"), indicates how he chose to live his life. He was present at the siege of Newhaven in Havre-de-grâce (le Havre), Normandy, where he was wounded in June of 1563. By July of 1566 he was serving in Ireland under the command of Sidney (then Lord Deputy) against Shane O'Neill, but was sent to England later in the year with dispatches for the Queen. (See Plantations of Ireland and Tudor conquest of Ireland). At that point he took the opportunity of presenting the Queen with his A discourse of a discoverie for a new Passage to Cataia (published in revised form in 1576), treating of the exploration of a Northwest Passage by America to Asia. Within the year he had set down an account of his strange and turbulent visions, in which he received the homage of Solomon and Job, with their promise to grant him access to secret mystical knowledge.

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Military career in Ireland

Sir Humphrey Gilbert Stamp

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Gilbert returned to Ireland and, after the assassination of O'Neill in 1569, he was appointed to the profitless office of governor of Ulster and served as a member of the Irish parliament. At about this time he petitioned the Queen's principal secretary, Lord Burghley, for a recall to England - "for the recovery of my eyes" - but his ambitions still rested in Ireland, and particularly in the southern province of Munster. In April 1569 he proposed the establishment of a presidency and council for the province, and pursued the notion of an extensive settlement around Baltimore (in modern County Cork), which was approved by the Dublin council. At the same time he was involved with Sidney and the secretary of state, Sir Thomas Smith, in planning a large settlement of the northern province of Ulster by Devonshire gentlemen.

Gilbert's actions in the south of Ireland played a significant part in the outbreak of the first of the Desmond Rebellions. A kinsman of his, Sir Peter Carew (another Devonshire man), was pursuing a provocative, and somewhat far-fetched, claim to the inheritance of certain lands within the Butler territories in south Leinster. The Earl of Ormond - a bosom companion of the Queen's from her troubled youth and head of that family - was absent in England, and the clash of his family's influence with the lawful authority of Carew's claim created havoc.

Gilbert was eager to participate and, after Carew's seizure of the barony of Idrone (in modern County Carlow), he pushed westward with his forces across the river Blackwater in the summer of 1569 and joined up with his kinsman to defeat Sir Edmund Butler, a younger brother of the Earl's. Violence spread in a confusion from Leinster and across the province of Munster, when the Geraldines of Desmond went into rebellion. Gilbert was then created colonel by Lord Deputy Sidney and charged with the pursuit of the rebel James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald (whom Gilbert considered, "a silly wood-kerne").

The Geraldines were driven out of Kilmallock, but returned to lay siege to Gilbert, who drove off their superior force in a sally, during which his horse was shot from under him and his buckler transfixed with a spear. After that initial success, he showed courage in striking out into rebel territory, and managed to march unopposed through Kerry and Connello, taking 30-40 castles without the aid of artillery.

During the three weeks of this campaign, all enemies were treated without quarter and put to the sword - including women and children - which explains, perhaps, the swiftness with which so many castles had been abandoned before Gilbert's aggression. He is also said to have sent Captain Apsley into Kerry to inspire terror.

Gilbert's attitude to the Irish may be captured in one quote from him, dated 13 November 1569: "These people are headstrong and if they feel the curb loosed but one link they will with bit in the teeth in one month run further out of the career of good order than they will be brought back in three months." In order to cow local supporters of the rebels, he chose to put on gruesome spectacles: after a day's killing he would order the decapitation of the scattered corpses so that the heads could be brought to his camp in the evening, where they were arranged in two parallel rows, making a pathway to the flaps of his tent, along which the supplicants would tread in the presence of their late fathers, brothers and sons.

The practice of decapitating slain enemies was common in Gaelic Ireland at this time; but its adoption by an English military commander marching under the banner of justice for the oppressed was remarkable (cp. John Perrot's use of the practice at Kilmallock a few years later).

In time, Ormond returned from England and called in his brothers, which caused the Geraldine resistance to weaken. In December 1569, after one of the chief rebels had come in to the government and confessed his treason, Gilbert received his knighthood at the hands of Sidney in the ruined Fitzmaurice camp, reputedly amid heaps of slain gallowglass warriors. Fitzmaurice stayed out in rebellion (only coming in to submit in 1573), and one month after Gilbert's return to England he retook Kilmallock with 120 foot, defeating the garrison and sacking the town for three days, leaving it "the abode of wolves".

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Plaque in St. john's, Newfoundland, commemorating Gilbert's founding of the British Empire

In 1570 Gilbert returned to England, where he married Anne Aucher, who was to bear him six sons and one daughter. However, it has been conjectured - following Smith's observation that the only way to soothe Gilbert's temper was to send a boy to him - that he was an "intermittent homosexual", or perhaps a pederast.

Gilbert was elected to parliament as a member for Plymouth, and controversially argued for the crown prerogative in the matter of royal licences for purveyance. In business affairs, he involved himself in an alchemical project with Smith, whereby iron was to be transmuted into copper and antimony, and lead into mercury.

By 1572 Gilbert had turned his attention to the Netherlands, where he fought an unsuccessful campaign in support of the Dutch Sea beggars at the head of a force of 1500 men, many of whom had deserted from Smith's aborted plantation in the Ards of Ulster. In the period 1572-1578 Gilbert settled down and devoted himself to writing. In 1573 he presented Elizabeth I with a proposal for an academy in London, which was eventually put into effect by Sir Thomas Gresham upon the establishment of Gresham College. Gilbert also helped to set up the Society of the New Art with Lord Burghley and Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, both of whom maintained an alchemical laboratory in Limehouse.

Thereafter, Gilbert's life was spent in a series of failed ship expeditions, the financing of which exhausted his own fortune and a great part of his family's. He backed Martin Frobisher's trip to Greenland, which yielded a cargo of a mysterious yellow rock, subsequently found to be worthless. In pursuit of one of his own projects, he sailed from Plymouth for America in November 1578 with 7 vessels in his fleet, which was scattered by storms and forced back to port some 6 months later; the only vessel to have penetrated the Atlantic to any great distance was the Falcon under Raleigh's command. i like cheese

Return to Ireland

In the summer of 1579, Gilbert and Raleigh were commissioned by the lord deputy of Ireland, William Drury, to attack his old foe, the rebel James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald, by sea and land and to intercept a fleet expected to arrive from Spain with aid for the Munster rebels. At this time Gilbert had three vessels under his command: the Anne Ager (or perhaps, Anne Archer or Aucher - named after his wife) of 250 tons, the Relief, and the Squirrell of 10 tons. The latter vessel, a small frigate, was notable for having completed the voyage to America and back inside three months under the command of a captured Portuguese pilot.

In pursuit of his Irish commission, Gilbert set sail in June 1579 after a spell of bad weather, and promptly got lost in fog and heavy rains off Land's End, an incident that caused the Queen thereafter to doubt his seafaring abilities. His fleet was then driven into the Bay of Biscay, and the Spanish soon sailed into Dingle harbour, where they made their rendez-vous with the rebels. In October he managed to put into the port of Cobh in Munster, where he delivered a terrible beating to a local gentleman, smashing him about the head with a sword. He then fell into a row with a local merchant, whom he slew on the dockside.

Newfoundland

It was assumed that Gilbert would be appointed president of Munster after the dismissal of Ormond as lord lieutenant of the province in the spring of 1581. At this time Gilbert was member of parliament for Queenborough, Kent, but his attention was again drawn to North America, where he hoped to seize territory on behalf of the crown.

The six year exploration licence Gilbert had secured by letters patent from the crown in 1578 was on the point of expiring, when he succeeded in 1583 in raising significant sums from English Catholic investors. The investors were constrained by penal laws against recusants in their own country, and loathe to go into exile in hostile parts of Europe; thus, the prospect of an American adventure appealed to them, especially when Gilbert was proposing to seize some 9 million acres (36,000 km²) around the river Norumbega, to be parcelled out under his authority (although to be held ultimately of the crown).

The Catholic investment didn't work out - partly because of the privy council's insistence that the investors pay their recusancy fines before departing, partly because of efforts by catholic clergy and Spanish agents to dissuade their interference in America - but Gilbert did manage to set sail with a small fleet of 5 vessels in June of 1583. One of the vessels - the Bark Raleigh, owned and commanded by Raleigh himself - had to turn back owing to lack of victuals. Gilbert's crews were made up of misfits, criminals and pirates, but in spite of the many problems caused by their lawlessness, the fleet did manage to reach Newfoundland.

On arriving at the port of St. John's, Gilbert found himself temporarily blockaded by the fishing fleet under the organisation of the port admiral (an Englishman) on account of piracy committed against a Portuguese vessel in 1582 by one of Gilbert's commanders. Once this resistance was overcome, Gilbert waved his letters patent about and, in a formal ceremony, took possession of Newfoundland (including the lands 200 leagues to the north and south) for the English crown on August 5, 1583. This involved the cutting of turf to symbolize the transfer of possession of the soil, according to the common law of England. He claimed authority over the fish stations at St. John's and proceeded to levy a tax on the fisherman from several countries who worked this popular area near the Grand Banks.

Within weeks his fleet departed, having made no attempt to form a settlement, due to lack of supplies. During the return voyage, Gilbert insisted on sailing in his hardy old favourite, the Squirrel. He soon ordered a controversial change of course for the fleet, and owing to his obstinacy and disregard of the views of superior mariners one of the vessels ran aground with some loss of life (probably on the western shoals of Sable Island). Later in the voyage a sea monster was sighted, said to have resembled a lion with glaring eyes.

After discussions with Hayes and Cox, Gilbert had decided on August 31 to return. The wind was in their favor as they sped back to Cape Race in two days and were soon clear of land. Gilbert had injured his foot on the frigate Squirrel and, on September 2, came aboard the Golden Hind to have his foot bandaged and to discuss means of keeping the two little ships together on the voyage. Gilbert refused to leave the Squirrel, while the vessels continued on the Atlantic crossing. After a strong storm, they had a spell of clear weather and made fair progress: Gilbert came aboard the Golden Hind again, visited with Hayes, and insisted once more on returning back to the frigate Squirrel, even though Hayes insisted she was over-gunned and unsafe for sailing. Nearly 900 miles away from Cape Race, they encountered high waves of heavy seas, "breaking short and high Pyramid wise," said Hayes.

On September 9, the frigate Squirrel was nearly overwhelmed but recovered. Despite the persuasions of others, who wished him to take to one of the larger vessels, Gilbert stayed put and was observed sitting in the stern of his little frigate, reading a book. When the Golden Hind came within hailing distance, the crew heard him cry out repeatedly, "We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land!" as he lifted his palm to the skies to illustrate his point. At midnight the frigate's lights were extinguished, and the watch on the Golden Hind cried out that, "the Generall was cast away". The Squirrel had gone down with all hands.

It is thought Gilbert's reading material was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More, which contains the following passage: "He that hathe no grave is covered with the skye: and, the way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distaunce."

Legacy

Gilbert was father to Ralegh Gilbert, who was to become second in command of Popham Colony.

Gilbert was part of a remarkable generation of Devonshire men, who combined the roles of adventurer, writer, soldier and mariner - often in ways as equally loathsome as admirable. He was outstanding for his initiative and originality, if not for his successes, but it is in his efforts at colonization that he had most influence. Ireland may have proved a brutal disaster (although Ulster and Munster were in time colonized), but the American adventure did eventually flourish. The formality of his annexation of Newfoundland eventually achieved reality in 1610; but perhaps of more significance was the reissue to Raleigh in 1584 of Gilbert's patent, on the back of which he undertook the Roanoke expeditions, the first sustained attempt by the English crown to establish colonies in North America.

Gilbert Sound near Greenland was named after him by John Davys.

Afterlife in Science Fiction

Since no one actually saw Gilbert and his ship go down, there remained (at least in theory) room for various fanciful theories - both in his own time and later - as to his ultimate fate. Such theories figure in at least two modern science fiction books, being at the core of one of them.

• In Fire in the Abyss by Stuart Gordon (1983), Humphrey Gilbert is the main character. It turns out that he did not drown but was plucked through time to the Twentieth Century by a secret project of the United States Navy. (The cover shows him on the deck of a modern submarine - wearing Elizabethan finery far more gaudy than he was likely to have worn on board a ship far in the Atlantic, and facing the submarine's crew with his drawn sword).

Together with some hundred other "Temporally Displaced Persons" Gilbert is incarcerated in a secret installation until the authorities decide what to do with them. Rather than wait, Gilbert stages a prison break together with a varied crew, including a Norse giant, a dancer from ancient North America and many others.

The book, written in the first person, is Gilbert's diary written after he had managed at last to return to England, four hundred years later than intended. It recounts numerous adventures, such as falling in love with an Ancient Egyptian priestess, a fellow escapee, and being attacked by Irish nationalists who seek revenge for his cruelty to their ancestors. Gilbert makes many sardonic remarks on the life and institutions of the modern world in general and present-day Britain in particular, but also enjoys disabusing moderns who tend to romanticize the Elizabethan Age.

• In Philip José Farmer's The Gate of Time (1966), Gilbert was not displaced forward in time but sidewise, into an alternate timeline. Not finding the other ships, he navigates the "Squirrel" to where he expects to find the city of Bristol in England. Instead, he finds a city named Ent where the people speak a language only very distantly resembling English. The country is Blodland, a kind of England which had known neither a Roman Empire nor a Norman Conquest, but did experience very prolonged and bloody Viking incursions (hence the name Blodland = Bloodland).

Gilbert and his crew are placed in a lunatic asylum, where some of the sailors become truly insane. But the adaptable Gilbert learns the local language, gets released and finds conditions not too dissimilar from those he knows. He becomes a sailor and then the captain of a ship, and makes a lot of money from slave trading in this world's Africa.

Cautious not to talk further of his origins, in his old age Gilbert does write a 5,000-page manuscript entitled "An Unpublished Romance, or Through The Ivory Gates of the Sea". In it he tells his personal history and all that he remembers of his Earth's history and geography, as well as writing a comparative English-Blodlandish grammar.

Neglected by many generations of his descendants, the manuscript is found four hundred years later by a Lord Humphrey Gilbert of this world's equivalent of the Twentieth Century - who shows it to the main protagonist of Farmer's book, a WWII combat pilot that also ended up in this alternate world.

Bibliography

• Ronald, Susan. The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire. Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 2007. ISBN 0-06-082066-7.

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• The Modern History Sourcebook has the account of the Newfoundland voyage
• Letters patent to Gilbert
• Early Newfoundland Settlement Schemes