In the letters patent for the erection of the colonies, granted before the first charter of the Virginia Companies was issued, no attempt was made to define the local boundaries of the countries to be occupied by the patentees, unless the authority given to Cabot in 1498 to take possession of Baccalaos, the general region of the modern Newfoundland, can be considered as an exception. The charters of Gilbert and Raleigh conferred merely the right to discover and plant remote and barbarous lands which were not under the dominion of a Christian prince or people.[1] There was no reference to America, notwithstanding the fact that it was clearly understood by the patentees that it was this part of the globe which was expected to be the scene of their explorations and the territory to be occupied by them. Although John Cabot was granted the right to erect a settlement in Baccalaos, yet as he took no steps to found it, so far as the records of his second voyage disclose, he cannot be looked upon as the father of English colonization in the Western Hemisphere; that enduring honor belongs to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, the heroic sailor whose name should be invested with a greater degree of fame than it enjoys. He received his letters patent in 1578, and the powers which they contained are interesting in the light of those conferred many years afterwards on the London Company. Upon him was bestowed an absolute title to the countries which he should occupy. He was authorized to expel from these countries all persons who had not obtained
- ↑ Letters Patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Hakluyt’s Voyages, Vol. III, pp. 174-176. Letters Patent to Sir Walter Raleigh, Ibid., pp. 297-300. In both charters, license was granted “to discover, find, search out and view such remote, heathen, and barbarous lands, countreys, and territories not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people.” The second patent to John Cabot, dated Feb. 3, 1498, will be found in Richard Biddle’s Memoir of Sebastian Cabot.
