BY JOHN FISKE IN TWO VOLUMES VOLUME I BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY The Riverside Press Cambridge COPYRIGHT 1897 BY JOHN FISKE ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To MY OLD FRIEND AND COMRADE JOHN KNOWLES PAINE COMPOSER OF ST. PETER, OEDIPUS TYRANNUS, THE "SPRING" AND C MINOR SYMPHONIES, AND OTHER NOBLE WORKS I dedicate this book PREFACE. In the series of books on American history, upon which I have for many years been engaged, the present volumes come between "The Discovery of America" and "The

THE SEA KINGS. When one thinks of the resounding chorus of gratulations with which the four hundredth anniversary of the Discovery of America was lately heralded to a listening world, it is curious and instructive to notice the sort of comment which that great event called forth upon the occasion of its third centenary, while the independence of the United States was as yet a novel and ill-appreciated fact. In America very little fuss was made. Railroads were as yet unknown, and the era of world

A DISCOURSE OF WESTERN PLANTING. In all the history of human knowledge there is no more fascinating chapter than that which deals with the gradual expansion of men's geographical ideas consequent upon the great voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is not a tale so written that he who runs may read it, but its events have rather to be slowly deciphered from hundreds of quaint old maps, whereon islands and continents, mountains and rivers, are delineated with very slight resemblanc

THE LAND OF THE POWHATANS. While Captain Christopher Newport, with the ships of the London Company, is still in mid-ocean, and the seal of the king's casket containing the names of Virginia's first rulers is still unbroken, we may pause for a moment in our narrative, to bestow a few words upon the early career of the personage that is next to come upon the scene,—a man whose various and wild adventures have invested the homeliest of English names with a romantic interest that can never die. The

THE STARVING TIME. The men of bygone days were quite as fond as ourselves of playing with names, and the name of Christopher, or "Christ-bearer," was a favourite subject for such pastime. The old Syrian saint and martyr was said to have forded a river carrying Christ on his back in the form of a child; and so when in the year 1500 Columbus's famous pilot, Juan de La Cosa, made his map of the new discoveries, and came to a place where he did not know how to draw his coast-line, he filled the spac

BEGINNINGS OF A COMMONWEALTH. Of late years there has been some discussion as to which of the flowers or plants indigenous to the New World might most properly be selected as a national emblem for the United States of America, and many persons have expressed a preference for that most beautiful of cereals, Indian corn. Certainly it would be difficult to overrate the historic importance of this plant. Of the part which it played in aboriginal America I have elsewhere treated. [80] To the first En

A SEMINARY OF SEDITION. Few episodes in English history are more curious than the founding of Virginia. In the course of the mightiest conflict the world had witnessed between the powers of despotism and the powers of freedom, considerations chiefly strategical led England to make the ocean her battle-ground, and out of these circumstances grew the idea of establishing military posts at sundry important strategic points on the North American coast, to aid the operations of the navy. In a few far

THE KINGDOM OF VIRGINIA. From the busy streets of London, from the strife in Parliament and the Privy Council, we must turn once more to the American wilderness and observe what progress had been made in Virginia during the seventeen years of its government by a great joint-stock company. But for a correct appreciation of the situation we must qualify and limit this period of seventeen years. The terrible experience of the first three years left the colony at the point of death, and it was not u

THE MARYLAND PALATINATE. On the southwestern coast of Ireland, not far from Cape Clear, the steamship on its way from New York to Liverpool passes within sight of a small promontory crowned by an ancient village bearing the Gaelic name of Baltimore, which signifies "large townlands." [122] The events which transferred this Irish name to the banks of the Patapsco River make an interesting chapter of history. George Calvert, son of a wealthy Yorkshire farmer of Flemish descent, was born about 1580

LEAH AND RACHEL. We have already had occasion to observe that, while from the outset Lord Baltimore's enterprise found many enemies in England, it was at the same time regarded with no friendly feelings in Virginia. We have seen the Virginians sending to London their secretary of state, William Claiborne, to obstruct and thwart the Calverts in their attempt to obtain a grant of territory in America. For Claiborne there were interests of his own involved, besides those of the colony which he repr

“These things that follow in this ensuing relation are certified by divers letters from Virginia, by men of worth and credit there, written to a friend in England, that for his own and others’ satisfaction was desirous to know these particulars and the present estate of that country. And let no man doubt of the truth of it. There be many in England, land and seamen, that can bear witness of it. And if this plantation be not worth encouragement, let every true Englishman judge.” Such is the begin

Arms .— Argent, two bars and in chief three mullets Gules. John Washington, of Whitfield, Lancashire, time of Henry VI. | | Robert Washington, of Warton, Lancashire, 2d son. | | John Washington, of Warton, m. Margaret Kitson, sister of Sir Thomas Kitson, alderman of London. | | Lawrence Washington, of Gray’s Inn, mayor of Northampton, obtained grant of Sulgrave Manor, 1539, d. 1584; m. Anne Pargiter, of Gretworth. | +--------------------+--------------------------------+ | | Robert Washington, L

The rapid development of maritime commerce in the seventeenth century soon furnished a new occasion for human folly and greed to assert themselves in acts of legislation. Crude mediæval methods of robbery began to give place to the ingenious modern methods in which men’s pockets are picked under the specious guise of public policy. Your mediæval baron would allow no ship or boat to pass his Rhenish castle without paying what he saw fit to extort for the privilege, and at the end of his evil care

Between the breaking out of Bacon’s rebellion in the summer of 1676 and the Declaration of Independence, the interval was exactly a hundred years. It was for Virginia a century of political education. It prepared her for the great work to come, and it brought her into sympathy more or less effective with other colonies that were struggling with similar political questions, especially with Massachusetts. It was in that same year, 1676, that Charles II. sent Edward Randolph to Boston, to enforce t

The accession of William and Mary, which wrought so little change in Virginia, furnished the occasion for a revolution in the palatinate of Maryland. To trace the causes of this revolution, we must return to 1658, the year which witnessed the death of Oliver Cromwell and saw Lord Baltimore’s government firmly set upon its feet through the favour of that mighty potentate. The compromises which were then adopted put an end to the conflict between Virginia and Maryland, and from that time forth the

A learned son of Old Virginia, who is fond of wrapping up a bookful of meaning in a single pithy sentence, has declared that “a true history of tobacco would be the history of English and American liberty.” This remark occurs near the beginning of Mr. Moncure Conway’s dainty volume printed for the Grolier Club, entitled “Barons of the Potomack and the Rappahannock.” When construed liberally, as all such sweeping statements need to be, it contains a kernel of truth. It was tobacco that planted an

“St. Augustine, a Spanish garrison, being planted to the southward of us about a hundred leagues, makes Carolina a frontier to all the English settlements on the Main.” These memorable words, from the report of the governor and council at Charleston to the lords proprietors of Carolina in London, in the year 1708, have a deeper historic significance than was realized by the men who wrote them. In a twofold sense Carolina was a frontier country. It was not only the border region where English and

At no other time in the world’s history has the business of piracy thriven so greatly as in the seventeenth century and the first part of the eighteenth. Its golden age may be said to have extended from about 1650 to about 1720. In ancient times the seafaring was too limited in its area to admit of such wholesale operations as went on after the broad Atlantic had become a highway between the Old World and the New. No doubt those Cretan and Cilician pirates who were suppressed by the great Pompey

It is time for our narrative to return to Virginia, where in June, 1710, just a hundred years after the coming of Lord Delaware, there arrived upon the scene one of the best and ablest of all the colonial governors. Alexander Spotswood was a member of the old and honourable Scottish family which took its name from the barony of Spottiswoode, in Berwick. His great-great-grandfather had been archbishop of St. Andrews and chancellor of Scotland. His great-grandfather, Sir Robert Spottiswoode, as se

THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA With some Account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. With a Steel Portrait of Mr. Fiske, many maps, facsimiles, etc. 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. The book brings together a great deal of information hitherto accessible only in special treatises, and elucidates with care and judgment some of the most perplexing problems in the history of discovery.— The Speaker (London). OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS 2 vols. crown 8vo, gilt top, $4.00. Illustrated Editi

Old Tales and Superstitions interpreted by Comparative Mythology, Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. THE UNSEEN WORLD And Other Essays. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST Miscellaneous A CENTURY OF SCIENCE And Other Essays. Crown 8vo, $2.00. Among our thoughtful essayists there are none more brilliant than Mr. John Fiske. His pure style suits his clear thought.— The Nation (New York). CIVIL GOVERNMENT IN THE UNITED STATES Considered with some Reference to its Origins. With Questi