CHAPTER III

FOUNDING OF VIRGINIA

(1602-1608)


Though a prisoner in the Tower of London who could not share in the
actual work, Sir Walter Raleigh lived to see his prediction regarding
Virginia realized in 1607. He had personally given substance to the
English claim to North America based upon the remote discovery of John
Cabot, and his friends, after he had withdrawn from the field of
action, were the mainstay of English colonization in the Western
continent.

Bartholomew Gosnold and Bartholomew Gilbert, son of Sir Humphrey, with
Raleigh's consent and under the patronage of Henry Wriothesley, the
brilliant and accomplished earl of Southampton, renewed the attempt at
colonization. With a small colony of thirty-two men they set sail from
Falmouth March 26, 1602, took an unusual direct course across the
Atlantic, and seven weeks later saw land at Cape Elizabeth, on the
coast of Maine. They then sailed southward and visited a headland
which they named Cape Cod, a small island now "No Man's Land," which
they called Martha's Vineyard (a name since transferred to the larger
island farther north), and the group called the Elizabeth Islands. The
colonists were delighted with the appearance of the country, but
becoming apprehensive of the Indians returned to England after a short
stay.[1]