Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Elizabeth I, and the Anglo-Spanish Conflict

Abstract

During the spring and summer of 1585, several of Elizabethan England's most prominent naval leaders, including Sir Francis Drake, Sir Richard Grenville, and Sir Martin Frobisher, sailed to the Americas to challenge Spanish dominance there. They commanded over three thousand men aboard dozens of ships, and their depredations of Spain's American territory constituted the first belligerent actions of the Anglo-Spanish War. Though Sir Humphrey Gilbert was not among the crews of these noteworthy voyages, as he had vanished at sea in his attempt to reach the Americas two years earlier, he wrote two groundbreaking treatises in 1577 that significantly influenced these three successful expeditions. He helped devise the schemes that Elizabeth I and her government implemented to weaken Spain in the Americas, which not only destroyed some of Spain's greatest West Indian port cities and severely damaged its merchant fleet, but also gave England a foothold in the west and strengthened its position for the impending war. Scholars have long acknowledged that the ideas expounded by Gilbert in 1577 resembled the three expeditions that sailed from England in 1585. From Gillian Cell's research on Newfoundland in the late 1960s to James Horn's recent work on Roanoke, historians have noted, however briefly, that Gilbert's ideas did not die with him.! While several writers have recognized the relationship between Gilbert's writings and later expeditions, his precise impact on the three 1585 voyages and Elizabeth's part in their execution have yet to be fully articulated. 2 Though known more for his bravado and cruelty than his naval treatises, Gilbert displayed great foresight in his documents on Spain. By juxtaposing his two 1577 documents to the objectives and results of the later voyages, it becomes clear that the government based their attacks largely upon Gilbert's ideas. Analyses of the letters patent that Elizabeth granted to Gilbert and her role in the 1585 voyages also shed light upon her involvement in English privateering. Such comparisons make it clear that Elizabeth and her advisors retained worthwhile proposals like Gilbert's to utilize when they were required. Nearly a decade before war broke out, the English government