To Humphrey Gilbert belongs the credit for so reviving the Northwest Passage theory as to turn the thoughts of English merchants and statesmen to adventure and to colonization in America; while Martin Frobisher was the first English navigator fairly to begin the Northwest explorations.

Gilbert, born in 1539, in the county of Devon, was the son of a country gentleman, half-brother of Walter Raleigh, on the mother’s side, an Eton schoolboy and an Oxford man, bred to the law, but taking instead to adventure. When a soldier in Ireland, in 1566–1567, a captain under Sir Henry Sidney against the Irish rebellion, his mind was busied with speculation on cosmography; and in the latter year, being sent home with despatches by Sidney, he took occasion to present to Queen Elizabeth, whose favour he enjoyed, a petition for privileges “concerning the discoverings of a passage by the North to go to Cathaie.” This, it is said, was an alternative to the earlier memorial of Anthony Jenkinson and himself for royal patronage to a new expedition of discovery by the Northeast. Both petitions lay unanswered, and he returned to soldiering. 144In 1570 he was knighted for his services in Ireland, the previous year having been given the government of Münster. In 1571, back in England, he was a member of Parliament for Plymouth. The next year he was fighting in the Netherlands, the first colonel in command of English forces there. Returned again to England, he temporarily retired to country-life at Limehouse, employing his leisure in further geographical investigations and in writing a learned Discourse of a Discovery for a New Passage to Cathaia, partly, it is assumed, in support of his petition still before the queen. One day in the winter of 1574 he showed the manuscript of the Discourse to his friend George Gascoigne, one of the pioneer Elizabethan poets, who afterward edited and published it. Meanwhile it led to the granting of a license by the Fellowship of English Merchants, in 1575, to Martin Frobisher with “divers gentlemen,” out of which grew Frobisher’s Northwest voyage.

MARTIN FROBISHER.

Martin Frobisher was of Welsh origin, but of English birth, born in Yorkshire in about 1535. He was now a thoroughly seasoned mariner, having followed the sea from his nineteenth year, going out for a decade in yearly voyages of merchant ships sent to Africa or the Levant by Sir John and Thomas Lock; and afterward employed in the queen’s service, in 1571 off Ireland. He had before this time become “thoroughly furnished of the knowledge of the sphere and all other skilles appertaining to the arte of navigation,” as the historian of his voyages, George Best, assures us, and 145as early as 1560 he had conceived a project for discovery of the short route by the Northwest to “Cathay” and the Indies, and had begun looking about for support for it. During the next fifteen years he schemed to this end, conferring with his “private friends of these secrets,” importuning members of the Fellowship of English Merchants to back him, soliciting men of estate and title, and even the court. But he met little encouragement till his public service in Ireland had brought him under the favourable notice of the queen and the attention of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. At length toward the close of 1574 the queen, moved apparently by Sir Humphrey’s Discourse, still in manuscript, addressed a letter to the Fellowship of English Merchants calling upon them either to despatch an expedition to the Northwest or transfer their privileges in that direction to other adventurers: and sent this pregnant message by the hand of Frobisher. The result was the issue, February, 1575, of their license for his first voyage.

Gilbert’s Discourse is given by Hakluyt presumably as published by Gascoigne, in 1576, but with his own caption: “A Discourse written by Sir Humfrey Gilbert Knight, to prove a passage by the Northwest to Cathaia and the East Indies.” It is an essay in ten chapters displaying not a little erudition and mastery of his subject. The chapter-heads show its trend: “1. To prove by authoritie a passage to be on the North side of America to go to Cathaia, China, and to the East India. 2. To prove by reason a passage to be on the North side of America to go to Cathaia, Moluc? &c. 3. To prove 146by experience of sundry mens travailes [travels] the opening of this Northwest passage, whereby good hope remaineth of the rest. 4. To prove by circumstance that the Northwest passage has been sailed throughout. 5. To proove that such Indians as have bene driven upon the coastes of Germanie came not thither by the Southeast, and Southwest, nor from any part of Afrike or America. 6. To proove that the Indians aforenamed came not from the Northeast; and that there is no thorow [through] passage navigable that way. 7. To prove that these Indians came by the Northwest which induceth a certaintie of this passage by experience. 8. What several reasons were alleaged before the Queens Majestie, and certaine ............