Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreamed one night, while working as a notary in the little town of Azua on the island of Hispaniola, that one day he would be dressed in fine clothes and be waited on by many exotic retainers who would sing his praises and address him with high-sounding titles. After the dream, he told his friends that one day he would dine to the sound of trumpets, or else die on the gallows.20 But for all his ambitions, he knew how to bide his time, and the years spent in Hispaniola, and then in Cuba, gave him a good understanding of the opportunities, and the dangers, that awaited those who wanted to make their fortunes in the New World. If he lacked military experience when he set out on the conquest of Mexico, he had developed the qualities of a leader, and had become a shrewd judge of men.
    Newport, too, was an adventurer, but of a very different kind.2' Born in 1561, the son of a Harwich shipmaster, he had the sea in his blood. In 1580, on his first recorded transatlantic voyage, he jumped ship in the Brazilian port of Bahia, but was back in England by 1584, when he made the first of his three marriages. By now he was a shipmaster who had served his apprenticeship, and was gaining the experience that would make him one of the outstanding English seamen of his age. The years that followed saw him engaged in trading and raiding, as England went to war with Spain. He took service with London merchants, and he sailed to Cadiz with Drake in 1587, remaining behind to engage in privateering activities off the Spanish coast. In 1590 he made his first independent voyage to the Caribbean as captain of the Little John, and lost his right arm in a sea-fight off the coast of Cuba when attempting to capture two treasure ships coming from Mexico. His third marriage, in 1595, to the daughter of a wealthy London goldsmith, made him a partner in major new commercial and privateering ventures, and provided him with a well-equipped man-of-war. Thereafter he made almost annual voyages to the West Indies, and by the time of the Anglo-Spanish peace settlement of 1604 he knew the Caribbean better than any other Englishman of his times. His long experience of Spanish American waters and his impressive seafaring skills therefore made him a natural choice in 1606 as the man to plant a colony for the Virginia Company on the North American mainland (fig. 3).
    Of the 105 `first planters', as the men who composed Newport's expedition were called, thirty-six were classed as gentlemen.22 There were also a number of craftsmen, including four carpenters, two bricklayers, a mason, a blacksmith, a tailor and a barber, and twelve labourers. The proportion of gentlemen was high, and would become still higher by the time the new colony had twice been reinforced from England, giving it six times as many gentlemen as in the population of the home country.23 It was also high in relation to the number in Cortes's band, which was five times as large. Of the so-called `first conquerors', who were present with Cortes at the founding of Vera Cruz, only sixteen were clearly regarded as hidalgos.24 But many more had pretensions to gentility, and Bernal Diaz del Castillo goes so far as to claim in his History of the Conquest of New Spain that ,all the rest of us were hidalgos, although some were not of such clear lineage as others, because it is well known that in this world not all men are born equal, either in nobility or virtue.'25 The Cortes expedition included some professional soldiers, and many other men who, during their years in the Indies, had participated in raiding parties to various of the Caribbean islands, or joined previous expeditions for reconnaissance, barter and settlement. It also included two clerics (Newport's expedition had on board `Master Robert Hunt Preacher'), and a number of notaries, as well as craftsmen and members of specialist trades. Effectively, Cortes's company was composed of a cross-section of the residents of Cuba, which was deprived of nearly a