Lady Dorothy Stafford deserves at least a passing mention by historian who tell the story of the settlement of America. This lady, long since forgotten, was Queen Elizabeth's right-hand woman. The title "Mistress of the Robes" has been used to place her, but it is quite inadequate as a description of her function at Court, for which actually no term exists. She might, however, have been described as a foster-aunt.
Queen Elizabeth could not have had more than the dimmest of recollections of her mother, if any at all, for the unfortunate Anne Boleyn was beheaded when the princess was two years and eight months old. Anne's sister, Mary maried to Sir William Stafford, took her place, even if not officially, until her death when Elizabeth was ten. Sir William remained her uncle, and when he took to himself another wife, his cousin Lady Dorothy Stafford, Lady Dorothy became as it were a substitute for Princess Elizabeth's aunt.
Few details are known of the true relationship between Sir William and Lady Stafford and the young princess except that Lady Stafford was called upon to take her place at Court when Elizabeth ascended the throne, a place such as an aunt might have been accorded. And in that relationship of foster-aunt she remained until the Queen's death. Sir William had died in exile during Mary's reign -- they had both fled to Geneva -- and Lady Stafford did not marry again. She remained a widow throughout the long period of her attendance on the Queen, who she survived by one year. In 1604 she died and was buried in St. Margaret's Westminister, with a memorial tablet showing a painted representation of Lady Dorothy with her six children. Of these, one son (of whom we are to hear more) became the English Ambassador to Paris, and a daughter was the first wife of Sir John Scott, who after her death married a sister of Sir Thomas Smythe who was, of course, first cousin of Bartholomew Gosnold's wife. Sir John Scott was named one of the King's Council of the Virginia Company of London in March, 1607, while Bartholomew Gosnold was on his way to Virginia, financed by that same Company.
A few trenchant, if perhaps apocryphal, remarks have been found which give glimpses of the more difficult side of Lady Stafford's life. Once when negotiations were under way concerning a proposed marriage of Queen Elizabeth to the brother of the King of France, the latter sent a message saying that if her demands were to exacting, France might join with Spain and put Mary Stuart on the throne. The story has it that "This thoroughly alarmed the queen, who kept Lady Stafford awake all night with her lamentations, and was in high fever in the morning" -- although "indignation" might seem to have been more in keeping with Elizabeth's character. Then it is said that when Elizabeth's willingness to fulfil the marriage agreement was questioned, she broke into strong language, as was her habit, and called curses down upon her own head if she did not instantly marry the French Duke after his brother granted her demands. Calling Cecil as witness to her words, she renewed her vows, swearing "her wonted oath", and Cecil "whispered to Lady Stafford as he left the chamber, that if the Queen did not fulfil her words this time, God would surely send her to Hell for such blasphemy."
At a somewhat later period, a gentleman happened to remark in a letter, "The Queen has of late used the fair Mrs. Bridges with words and blows of anger; and she, with Mrs. Russell, were put out of the Coffer Chanber. They lay three nights at my Lady Stafford's, but are now returned again to their wonted waiting (on the Queen)." (Mrs. Bridges had offended the Queen by accepting the attentions of the Early of Essex.).
In a happier mood, the Queen appointed Lady Stafford's son Edward as ambassador to France, knighting him forthwith. Sir Edward had married Lady Douglas Sheffield, a charming widow wronged by the Queen's beloved, the Earl of Leicester. There was a wedding, cried the lady; there wans't retorted the earl. So Edward Stafford married her, putting her safely beyond the earl's reach, which doubtless pleased Elizabeth, ever driven into frantic rages when one of her favorite courtiers was found to have a paramour.
Sir Edward Stafford took to Paris with him the Reverend Richard Hakluyt to serve as his chaplain and "secretary." This clergyman, second to no one in furthering the colonization of the North American continent, had already acquired a certain amount of fame in England, although only about thirty-one at the time of his appointment. He had won notice for his intense study of geography and cosmography at Oxford and was the editor of the Divers Voyages, published about a year before the embassy left for Paris in the fall of 1583. In providing this position for Hakluyt, Sir Edward Stafford, certainly unaware of all that was to come of it, set forward the setlement ofAmerica, for every encouragement given to Hakluyt's studies helped to push England's search for the world's wealth westward across the Atlantic. "We are half persuaded"' wrote the chivalrous courtier and poet, Sir Philip Sidney, to Sir Edward on July 21, 1584, "to enter into the journey of Sir Humphrey Gilbert very eagerly; whereunto your Mr. Hakluyt has served for a very good trumpet."
For several critical years, Hakluyt was at this vantage point in Paris, a listening post for the study of French maritime activities and for the investigation of the strength and purposes of the Spanish in the New World. Needless to say, Hakluyt made good use of his opportunities. Beginning with the fond -- and ambitious -- mother using her position at Court to get an appointment for her son and the son's choice of Hakluyt for the chief secretary-ship there gradually came a broadening of Hakluyt,s knowledge which led to the writing of his greatest work.
Soon after -- two years or so after Hakluyt's final return to England -- the young university student Bartholomew Gosnold was drawn, there is good reason to believe, into Hakluyt's orbit, through another chain of circumstances set in motion by the same Lady Dorothy Stafford. While the evidence for an early associationof young Gosnold with the geographer is entirely circumstantial, it seems when gathered together quite convincing, particularly as on sound documentary evidence we know that Gosnold and Hakluyt were associated in obtaining from King James the charter for the incorporation of the first Virginia Company in 1606. If it be true that Gosnold's activities in the field of colonization were inspired and guided by Richard Hakluyt, then Gosnold emerges from the obscurity of a lone and enexplained adventurer and takes his rightful place in history as a disciple of England's master mind in the island kingdom's transition to world empire.
Hakluyt's close association with the ladies of Sir Edward's family is well documented. Lady Douglass Stafford, the ambassador's wife, had been born a Howard, a younger sister of Charles Howard, Lord Howard of Effingham, Lord High Admirl. Master Richard Hakluyt was more than a little mindful of this relationship, making reference in his dedication of a book of that period to "our famous here, Charles Howard, second Nepture of the ocean, and brother-in-law of Edward Stafford, our most prudent Ambassador to his most Christian Majesty." In a later dedication to Howard himself, Hakluyt found occasion to say, "The bounden duty which I owe to your most dear sister, the Lady Sheffield, my singular good lady and honorable mistress, admonished me to be mindful of the renowned family of the Howards." These connections are to be remembered in considering what sucess Sir Walter Ralegh might have had in his proposal of 1602 that the Lord High Admiral confiscate Bartholomew Gosnold's cargo if the elder Lady Stafford and Richard Hakluyt had not been friends of the Gosnolds as well as of the Howards.
In 1584 there occurred animportant event in which Lady Dorothy Stafford surely participated. That summer Richard Hakluyt was recalled from his post at the side of her son, the ambassador in Paris, to confer with Sir Walter Ralegh. Out of this meeting came the Discourse of Western Planting, written , as Hakluyt says in the preface, "at the request and direction of the Right Worshipful Mr. Walter Ralegh now Knight", and delivered to the Queen herself.
The greate part of the Discourse is a detailed study of Spain's conquest and occupation of tropical America, together with a running discussion of how best to break this power of Spain in the western atlantic -- Spain's West India. The general nature of Hakluyt's proposals may be seen in this sentence from the fifth chapter. "The planting of two or three strong forts upon some good havens between Florida and Cape Breton [Nova Scotia] would be a matter in short space of greater damage as well to his fleet as to his Western Indes, for we should not only oftentimes endanger his fleet in the return thereof [therefrom], but also in few years put him in hazard in losing some part of Nova Hispania." Hakluyt also conceived that these vantage points would enable the English to prey upon the vessels of the Spanish fishing fleet, that went yearly up the coast to the fishing grounds near Newfoundland.
This must all have been very pleasing to Ralegh, for belligerency toward Spain as inherent in Ralegh's colonizing activities, as well as in his covetous desire for the wealth to be gained from them. In his twelfth chapter, however, Richard Hakluyt began to advocate an approach to American coast which was quite different from that followed by Ralegh in sending out the Grenville and later expeditions. Ralegh's idea was to send his freets in force south of the Tropic of Cancer, enduring the burning heat of the Caribbean that the fleet on its way to the American coast -- which came to be called the Virginia coast -- might pause amongst the Spanish-owned islands to despoil them, and to do battle with any Spanish ships which might be encountered. This made the voyage to Virginia one that consumed at least three or four months, requiring the ships to replenish their supplies of wood and water on the way.
Hakluyt in the Discourse of Western Planting, beginning in Chapter 12, proposed quite a different approach: "In this voyage we may see by the globe that we are not to pass the burnt zone [the tropics] or to pass through the frozen seas, but in a temperate climate . . . and it requireth not, as long voyages do, the taking in the fresh water by the way in divers places, by reason it may be sailed in five or six weeks." By this Hakluyt meant of course that colonizing expeditions ought to sail directly across the north Atlantic to that part of the cost between Florida and Cape Breton where they intended to start a settlement. This route would not be an invitation to conflict by the fleets transporting men and supplies to America, but rather an avoidance of it. It may perhaps be thought of as hakluyt's diplomatic policy, as contrasted with Ralegh's desire to engage the Spaniards in combat wherever and whenever possible.
In his twentieth chapter, Hakluyt returned to the theme, saying: "The passage cutteth not near the trade of any prince nor near any of their countries or territories, and is safe passage, and not easy to be annoyed by prince or potentate whatsoever." And in this last chapter he returned to speak of Norumbega as the place he had in mind for the planting of colonies: the land north of the 40th parallel "which is called by its inhabitants Norumbega."
The Discourse was not printed during Hakluyt's lifetime for obvious reasons. Among other things, it contained too frank a revelation of what England's purposes ought to be. There was also the minor point that Ralegh may not have been pleased by its strong insistence on direct crossing. In fact, Hakluyt chose in the next years, 1586-1587, to flatter Ralegh in the dedications of three works published in that period. Yet the published Discourse is immensely valuable as a revelation of the great geographer's mind and aims in the "planting" America.
If it is right to assume that Bartholomew Gosnold was under Hakluyt's influence when he made his decision to sail directly across the ocean to the regions describer by Verrazzano, then this document holds the answer to the question why Gosnold made choice of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's destination as his own.
What had happened behind the scenes is not specifically known, but it must be added that during his audience with the Queen, possibly after and because of his presentation of the Discourse, Elizabeth granted "to Richard Hakluyt . . . that canonry or prebend within the cathedral church of the Holy Trinity, Bristol, which shall the first become vacant, with all its appertaining emoluments, to hold for life. . . ." The date was October 5, 1584. Sometime between then and the end of 1586 Richard Hakluyt was admitted and he became the recipient of a goodly income for the rest of his days, with no duties requiring his residence in Bristol.
In 1575 Queen Elizabeth had presented to "Lady Dorothy Stafford, a widow", the manor and park of Wetheringsett. This was one of the many manors which had fallen into the hands of Henry VIII, the Queen's father, who had leased it for a long period of years. Queen Elizabeth in her day "took the Manor away from the See of Ely for a pension." None deserved this grant more than the long-suffering Lady Dorothy. Before relinquishing her rights to the advowson, Queen Elizabeth in 1575 appointed to the benefice, as rector of Wetheringsett, one Richard Huggard.
In the course of the years, grown old and cantankerous, the Rev. Mr. Huggard became troublesome to his neighbors and to Lady Stafford's tenants. Twice in 1587 and 1588, within three years before he died, he was haled before the courts of the neighboring Manor of Brockford and fined, once for pasturing on the common where he had no right, and again for extending a dike onto the land of a freeholder.
In 1587 he had complained to a church court that Lady Dorothy Stafford's tenants had not been paying their tithes. Lady Stafford engaged the services of Anthony Gosnold, Bartholomew's faather, to protect her tenants' interests. The attorney, following the custom of the time, had the property demised to himself, so that he might appear before the Court Christian" for review in the court appointed to protect property rights.
The squabble is a amusing one as it is reported in the court's proceedings. The original Bill of complaint is missing, but the abstract of Huggard's defence it appears that he denied having received tithes amounting to six shillings eight pence (half a "mark", in legal parlance) yearly. In fact, during the twelve years of his incumbency, he had received no money whatsoever. He admitted that he had in some yhears been given a buck and a doe from the park in part payment of the tithe, but in some years there was a buck only or a doe only, an d in years of scarcity neither. He did not think that he should be impeached in the Chancery Court for having taken the matter to the Court Christian, the ecclesiastical court, as was the right. He knew of no document relieving the Lodge and Park of all tithes, except six shillings eight pence, and in any case he had received no money at all. He denied particularly that he was covetous or contentious, as he said was untruly and slanderously surmised in the bill of complaint.
In his rejoinder Anthony Gosnold maintained that from time out of mind there had been paid to the rector six shillings eight pence and no more, upon request, in a single payment as tithes for all the premises. He maintained that certain deeds, instruments and writings containing an agreement made between the parson and the tenants of the premises, came into the custody of the defendant, but were missing. He averred also that he could prove that no deer were given to the rector in place of tithes.
The records do not say how the case is decided, but in 1590 Mr. Huggard died, and was buried, according to the parish register, in the churchyard at Wetheringsett. Probably few tears were shed. Lady Dorothy Stafford immediately appointed the Rev. Richard Hakluyt to the rectorship.
It is a foregone conclusion that Anthony Gosnold, whose home was about ten miles from Wetheringsett, would be called upon to explain the troubles with Huggard to the new rector and to assist in the location or replacement of the missing documents, that htere might be no misunderstanding about the tithes in the future. It is to be assumed further, with only slight possibility of error, that the chance which brought Anthony Gosnold into the affairs of the church at Wetheringsett, also brought his son Bartholomew into contact with the great master of geography while Bartholomew was still a student in the Universityh. In fact it is impossible to read the source material of Bartholomew Gosnold's activities without meeting Richard Hakluyt at every step of the way.
The probability of an early acquaintanceship between Hakluyt and Bartholomew Gosnold is increased if one considers three persons to be found in the court of Queen Elizabeth several years before the end of her reign. There is Lady Dorothy Stafford, who had become a friend and patroness of Richard Hakluyt, and who had employed Anthony Gosnold in legal matters at Wetheringsett. There is John Gosnold, Anthony's nephew and Bartholomew's cousin, who became a Gentleman Usher to the Queen and thus came in cntact with Lady Stafford. And there is John's wife, Winifred, a daughter of Lady Stafford's own cousin. (Lady Stafford, like Winifred, was a descendant of Sir Richard Pole and his wife, the Lady Margaret, Countess of Salisbury.)
Even if Bartholomew was not taken to Wetheringsett by his father on a visit to Hakluyt in 1590 or soon after, as is probable, then before the end of the decade this court groupmust hav ebrought together the geographer and the young man who was to be a leader in two notable voyages. An assumption that this did not happen is in this case less tenable than the inference that Gosnold was under the influence of Hakluyt for some years before Gosnold's voyage to Norumbega in 1602.
In the quiet study of the rectory at Wetheringsett, within easy riding distance of Bartholomew's home, during the ten years after his appointment in 1590, Hakluyt concluded his vast work of 1,600,000 words in three volumes, entitled The principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or over-land, to the remote and farthest distant quarters of the Earth, at any time within the compasse of these 1500. yeeres: Devided into three severall Volumes, according to the positions of the Regions, whereunto they were directed. The three volumes appeared in 1598, 1599, and 1600.
This was the undigested raw material of geography -- the chaos out of which a new science was to be created -- a compendium of ancient documents and works of Hakluyt's won day, painstakingly copied, many of them in their original tongues as well as in translation.
The Rev. Richard Hakluyt as a youth had been shown by his older cousin, another Richard Hakluyt, a lawyer and an authority on England's overseas trade, that there was no higher objective in the ministry of the Lord than to study the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep, as they were seen by those who go down to the sea in ships and occupy the great waters. The reverend geographer's work therefore was done in a deeply religious mood. He inflamed his countrymen with a desire to extend the frontiers of England to the shores of America, vying belatedly with Spain. Indeed, in 1606 Hakluyt himself all but sailed with the fleet bound for Virginia, of which Bartholomew Gosnold was Vice-Admiral. He was no longer young, however. The call of the sea was by then too faint.
