Humphrey Gilbert

Sir Humphrey Gilbert

Sir Humphrey Gilbert (around 1537 , † 1583 ) was an English adventurer, general and parliamentarian who served under Elizabeth I. He was a half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and founded the first English colony in North America .

Early life

Gilbert was the second son of Otho and Katherine Gilbert. Sir Henry Sidney (1529–1586) became his mentor . Gilbert received his education at Eton College and Oxford University . There he learned French and Spanish, studied the arts of war and navigation .

He took part in the siege of Le Havre during the First Huguenot War and was wounded there in 1563. From 1566 he served in Ireland under his mentor Henry Sidney, who was the Lord Deputy at the time, in the fight against Shane O'Neill . However, a year later he was sent to England with messages for Queen Elizabeth I. On this occasion he was able to present to the Queen his work A discourse of a discoverie for a new Passage to Cataia (published in 1576 in a revised version), which dealt with the exploration of a north-west passage from America to Asia.

Military career in Ireland

Gilbert returned to Ireland. After O'Neill was assassinated, he was appointed to the unpaid post of Governor of Ulster and a member of the Irish Parliament. He tried the Secretary of State Baron Burghley to his recall to England - " for the recovery of my eyes ." (Dt to rest my eyes ). However, his ambitions remained in Ireland, especially in the province of Munster . In April 1569, he proposed the establishment of a president and a council for the province and the intention was to settle massive English around the city of Baltimore (now in County Cork ). At the same time he was also involved in Sidney and Sir Thomas Smith's plans to relocate large numbers of Devonshire people to the province of Ulster.

Gilbert's actions in the south of Ireland played a crucial role in the outbreak of the Desmond Rebellions . A relative of Gilbert's, Sir Peter Carew (1514? –1575), made the provocative and far-fetched claim to have inherited some areas in the Butler Territory in south Leinster . The Earl of Ormonde, Thomas Butler , was absent at the time, and the conflict between his family and Carew's legal claim to their territories led to chaos.

Gilbert was more than ready to intervene on Carew's side. After Carew took Baronate Idrone (now County Carlow ), Gilbert and his troops moved west across the Meath Blackwater , united them with his relative's forces, and together they defeated Sir Edmund Butler, a younger brother of the Earl of Osmond. The conflict spilled over from Leinster to the province of Munster, where Desmond's Fitzgerald family sparked a rebellion. Gilbert was appointed Colonel by Sidney and charged with the pursuit of the rebel James FitzMaurice FitzGerald († 1579).

The Fitzgeralds were driven from Kilmallock , but returned and besieged Gilbert. Gilbert drove out their superior force with a sortie that killed his horse beneath him and his shield was pierced by a spear. He invaded the rebel area and managed to march uninterrupted through Kerry and Connello . He took 30 to 40 castles without help from an artillery. In the three weeks of his campaign he spared none of his enemies, including women and children, so that many of the castles were abandoned by their residents before his arrival.

In order to intimidate the supporters of the rebels, he ordered that the killed enemies be beheaded. The heads were arranged in rows left and right in the evening, and lined the path to his tent. The beheading of enemies was common in Gaelic Ireland at the time, and the adoption of this custom by an English army officer with the claim to fight for the rights of the oppressed, but without example.

At this point the Earl of Osmond returned from England and called his brothers back, which weakened the rebellion. One of the leaders of the rebellion surrendered and pleaded guilty to high treason, thereupon Gilbert was beaten on January 1, 1570 by Sidney in the middle of the conquered Fitzgerald Camp in Drogheda to the Knight Bachelor . Fitzmaurice, however, remained at large, and a month after Gilbert's return to England he retook Kilmallock.

MPs and adventurers

Gilbert returned to England in 1570. There he married Anne Aucher , who gave him six sons and a daughter. He was elected to Parliament for Plymouth. Together with Smith, he took part in an alchemical project to turn iron into copper and antimony into mercury.

In 1572 Gilbert turned his attention to the Netherlands. He led an army of 1,500 men, largely made up of men from Smith's abandoned plantation in Ulster, but the campaign failed. In the years 1572–78 Gilbert settled down and devoted himself to writing. In 1573 he proposed to Elizabeth I the establishment of an academy in London, a plan that was finally implemented by Sir Thomas Gresham with the establishment of Gresham College . Gilbert also helped establish the Society of the New Art with William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley , and Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester .

After that, Gilbert's luck turned. He lost a lot of his own money and part of his family's fortune by funding several failed naval expeditions. He supported Martin Frobisher's trip to Greenland , who brought back yellow stones from there that turned out to be worthless. He himself set out with seven ships from Plymouth for America in November 1578, the fleet was so battered by storms that it had to return to port after six months. Only one of the ships had made any significant distance across the Atlantic, the Falcon, under the command of Gilbert's half-brother Raleigh.

Return to Ireland

In 1579 Gilbert and Raleigh were summoned to Ireland by Lord Deputy William Drury to fight Gilbert's old enemy Fitzmaurice on land and at sea. Above all, a Spanish fleet should be intercepted, which brought help for the Munster rebels. Gilbert had three ships under his command, the Anne Ager (perhaps also Anne Aucher or Archer , named after his wife) with 250 tons, the Relief and the Squirrell with 10 tons. The Squirrell , a small frigate, had made the route to America and back in three months under a captured Portuguese captain.

Gilbert set sail in June 1579, after a period of bad weather, and promptly got lost in the fog and heavy rain around Land's End . This incident made the Queen doubt his qualities as a seafarer from now on. His fleet was drifted into the Bay of Biscay and the Spaniards took the opportunity to meet the rebels in the Irish port city of Dingle . In October he managed to enter the port of Cobh , where he had an argument with a resident, whom he struck on the head with his sword, and a scuffle with a merchant whom he tossed over the rail.

Newfoundland

Following the ousting of Ormond, it was widely believed that Gilbert would now be appointed President of Munster. But Gilbert's attention had already turned back to North America, where he was about to take land for the Crown.

As early as 1578 he had received a license from the Crown to explore with a validity of 6 years, which was now about to expire. In 1583 he managed to get large sums of money from Catholic investors. The donors were suppressed by law in England and did not want to go into exile in other hostile European countries, so they showed great interest in emigrating to America. Gilbert promised them an area of ​​9 million acres (36,000 km²) around the Norumbega River , which he would distribute among them, even if it would be under the rule of the Crown.

The Catholic funding failed, among other things, because the Catholics were to be forced to pay their penalty taxes before leaving: They had to pay this penalty tax because they refused to attend Anglican worship. Gilbert was nevertheless able to set sail with a small fleet of 5 ships in June 1583. One of the ships, the Black Raleigh , under the command of Raleigh himself, had to turn back halfway because it did not have enough food on board. Gilbert's crew consisted mostly of criminals and pirates, but despite many problems, they managed to reach Newfoundland.

On arrival in the port of St. John’s Gilbert’s fleet was blocked by local fishing boats on the orders of the English port commander. This was in response to a pirate attack on a Portuguese ship by one of Gilbert's commanders the year before. After that opposition was overcome, Gilbert showed his license from the Crown and took possession of Newfoundland in an official ceremony on August 5, 1583 on behalf of the Crown, including land within 200 iguanas to the north and south. Gilbert took command of the local fishing fleet and taxed it, but made no attempt at settlement. After a few weeks, his fleet left for home again.

On the return voyage, Gilbert insisted on sailing his favorite ship, the Squirrell . He ordered a controversial change of course for the fleet, disregarded the opinions of other high-ranking officers and caused one of the ships to run aground, probably on the west coast of Sable Island, losing several lives .

900 nautical miles off the coast the fleet got caught in a storm. Little Squirell struggled hard with the waves. They tried to convince Gilbert to switch to one of the larger ships, but he refused. Gilbert most of the time is to have a book read stopped on the aft deck of the ship, from the accompanying Golden Hind was heard to call him several times: "! We are as near to heaven by sea as by land" . At midnight the lights on the Squirell went out , and the Golden Hind's lookout reported that the general had been washed ashore. The Squirell sank with the entire crew.

Web links

• Humphrey Gilbert . In: Dictionary of Canadian Biography . 24 volumes, 1966–2018. University of Toronto Press, Toronto ( English , French ).
• The Modern History Sourcebook has the account of the Newfoundland voyage
• Letters patent to Gilbert
• Early Newfoundland Settlement Schemes

Individual evidence

1. ^ William Arthur Shaw: The Knights of England. Volume 2, Sherratt and Hughes, London 1906, p. 144.