Episode 247 takes a look at Tudor and Elizabethan Exploration, surveying all the major players and their role in the exploration of these newly discovered lands (at least, newly discovered for the Europeans). Transcript below for easy reading.
Previous episodes on Tudor Elizabethan Exploration
The Lost Roanoke Colony
Sir Walter Raleigh
Hello, and welcome my friend to the Renaissance English History Podcast, a part of the Agora Podcast Network, and the original Tudor History Podcast coming up on 15 years this month. It was like, I think Labor Day weekend 2009 that I put out the very first episode of the Renaissance English History Podcast.
So it’s been a while. I am your host, Heather, and I am a storyteller who makes history accessible because I believe it’s a pathway to understanding who we are, our place in the universe, and being more deeply in touch with our own humanity. This is episode 247, I believe, and we are talking about exploration.
And if you are wondering, my voice sounds a little bit weird today. Yes, I’m not sick. I was just at a new kids on the block concert last night, and I did a lot of screaming. And I did a lot of singing along and feeling like I was 13. It’s actually the second time I’ve seen them this summer. I saw them about a month ago in San Diego and the new kids on the block for me, I was in right around seventh, eighth grade.
When, uh, when they first got popular and man, that was like my, my first teenage crush, Donnie Wahlberg. And here’s, here’s a fun fact about Heather. So I went to see them in, I think it was 1989 or 1990 at the York fair in York, Pennsylvania. And I, I was convinced, absolutely convinced that Donnie Wahlberg and I were going to get married.
So I wrote a love letter to Donnie, uh, telling him exactly, laying out very methodically all the reasons why we were perfect for each other. So I, I think I, I gave it to a security guard because, you know, clearly if you’re a security guard at the York Fair, you have access to the talent. Um, but I, I gave it to a security guard and I had folded, I don’t know if you guys remember, depending on what age you’re in.
But when I was about 13, it was really, um, it was like, it was a thing to like fold your notes. You would kind of fold, you’d make like a point, almost like a paper airplane point, and then fold it in half and then kind of fold it up in sections. Anyway, it was like a really super cool way of folding notes.
So, and I had also written it on, um, pink paper. And I sprayed it very heavily with my Debbie Gibson electric youth perfume. And so I gave it to the security guard. I was like, well, you give this to Donnie. And he just kind of looked at me because like, what else are you, I’m sure it was like the, probably the 58th, 13 year old girl who’d come up to him with a similar request that night.
Uh, and so he took my note and I stayed at home for a week waiting for Donnie Wahlberg to call me. Donnie never did call me, spoiler alert. But, you know, I, I live in hope that, uh, that at some point Donnie Wahlberg will recognize that 13 year old Heather, uh, would have been perfect, perfect for him. Uh, anyway, so that’s my, that’s why my voice sounds a bit rough.
I was, uh, I was hanging tough last night. So in this episode, we are going to talk about Tudor and Elizabethan explorers. You know, I’ve kind of touched on this from time to time, talking about like, we did an episode on the Roanoke Colony. Um, we did a lot with the Armada, we’ve talked about like, Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh and some of these other people, but we’ve never really kind of just like, laid out.
all of the Tudor and Elizabethan explorers. So we’re going to talk about that today. Really quick reminder, of course, TudorCon is less than two months away, so streaming tickets, if you are thinking about that, it’s September 20th to 22nd. The streaming ticket gets you all of the access to all the talks, you know, the live talk streaming.
You get to interact with the speakers and ask your questions because it’s all live. Just streaming live with the chat and the host. My husband hosts it. It’s very cute. Uh, he’s a sweetie. And then you also get the community where you can connect with everybody. You get extra digital goodie bag with books and artwork, all kinds of good stuff.
Um, you get recordings of everything. So if you can’t watch it live, you can go back later and it’s just 49. So you can go to englandcast. com slash TudorCon online to learn more about that. And of course, TudorCon and this podcast. are sponsored by Armor and Castings, which is a company that makes amazing historical accessories.
So if you have a Tudor costume that you’re wearing to a Renaissance fair, something like that, and you’re looking for beautiful accessories that would go perfectly with it, Check out tutor. armorandcastings. com. I am so very, very excited that they are on board as a sponsor and their stuff is just gorgeous.
So check it out. Tutor. armorandcastings. com. All right, let’s get into it. So, like I said, today we are diving into the world of Tudor and Elizabethan Explorers. The era of exploration was, of course, transformative for England. There were daring voyages, there was the pursuit of wealth, the expansion of the English realm.
These explorers not only brought back unimaginable riches, but laid the groundwork for England’s future as a global power. So we’re going to talk in this episode about the backstory, how England became a nation that went into exploration, and then we will talk about some of the famous journeys of people like Sir Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh and others.
In 1589, Richard Hakalite, who I have done episodes on, he was a clergyman and a geographer and possibly England’s first travel writer. published England’s first travel guide titled Principal Navigations, Voyages and Discoveries of the English Nation. This extensive work chronicled the experiences, voyages, and adventures of a group of explorers whose names are familiar to anyone who has even had a cursory reading of the quote unquote age of exploration, age of encounter.
More than just a collection of famous exploits, Principal navigations also included stories of lesser known individuals whose contributions might have been lost to history without this record. When Hakalite publishes his work, it has been less than a hundred years since England’s first significant voyage of discovery when John Cabot explored the coastal parts of North America in 1497.
So the period leading up to England’s active involvement in global exploration was marked by significant developments and milestones across Europe. While England was still catching up because they of course had been very busy having the Wars of the Roses and killing all of the nobility and spending their money and all of that on, on war, other European nations had already made substantial progress.
Portugal, for example, had been exploring and mapping the coast of Africa since the early 15th century, driven by Prince Henry the Navigator’s ambition to find new trade routes and expand Portuguese influence. By 1498, Vasco da Gama had successfully reached India by sailing around the Cape of Good Hope, establishing a vital link between Europe and the East.
Spain, too, was very heavily invested in exploration with Christopher Columbus’s voyages starting in 1492, which opened up the Americas to European powers. The Spanish and the Portuguese rivalry for dominance in the New League discovered, hard for me to say that word, discovered, because of course they weren’t discovered, but, you know, discovered by the Europeans, encountered, however you want to say it.
Uh, but these are territories that were new to Europeans. This was formalized by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which divided the world between them along a meridian of 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. This treaty explains why Brazil speaks Portuguese while the rest of South America is Spanish speaking because, of course, Brazil and everything to the east of that was Portuguese.
Everything to the west was Spanish. The technological advancements of the time were crucial in making these long distance voyages possible. Shipbuilding had evolved to produce lighter, yet larger vessels, which were capable of carrying more supplies and more cargo, making extended expeditions feasible.
Navigation had also improved with the widespread use of the compass and advances in cartography and astronomy, enabling sailors to venture farther from the coast and navigate open seas with greater confidence. While these developments were taking place in southern Europe, England under Henry VII began to recognize the potential of maritime exploration.
Inspired by the successes of the Portuguese and Spanish, Henry VII sought to establish England As a competitor in the race for new lands and trade routes, he sponsored John Cabot, who was an Italian navigator, to explore the North Atlantic. So Cabot’s 1497 voyage to Newfoundland under the commission of Henry VII marked the beginning of England’s exploration efforts.
Cabot was originally a citizen of Venice and had moved to England in search of support for his expedition. His successful journey to the coast of North America was the earliest known exploration of the region since the Norse visits to Vinland from the 11th century. Although Cabot’s subsequent voyages are less well documented, his initial expedition did lay the groundwork for future English exploration and expansion.
The desire for new trade routes and the riches of the East continued to drive exploration efforts. There had been some knowledge of travel before and exploration. In 1291, uh, the Muslim fleet guarding the Strait of Gibraltar was defeated by Genoa. And so the Italians did a bit of exploration, but then there was a disappearance of the Vivaldi brothers, who were explorers, Italian explorers.
They disappeared off the coast of Morocco. And this fueled both fear and fascination with oceanic voyages. Throughout the 14th century, there were explorers like the Moroccan scholar Ibn Battuta, and then that was when we have the legendary traveler Marco Polo, expanding knowledge of distant lands and trade routes.
despite the challenges posed by the Black Death and the rise of the Ottoman Empire. The Chinese also played a significant role in this period of exploration. Between 1405 and 1433, the Ming Dynasty sponsored a series of long range missions led by Admiral Zheng He. who commanded a vast fleet that traveled to Arabia, East Africa, India, and Thailand.
These voyages established diplomatic and trade relations, showcasing China’s naval capabilities and expanding the global exchange of goods and culture. By the mid 15th century, European exploration was further propelled by advances in navigational tools. Like the astrolabe and the quadrant, which allowed sailors to determine their position using the stars.
The Portuguese under Prince Henry the Navigator, like I said, began pushing further down the coast of Africa. They started challenging these myths about the sea monsters and the edge of the world. This period saw a flurry of exploratory activity with Spain and Portugal leading the charge and other European nations, including England.
eager to join the race. So England’s early forays into exploration, though initially limited, set the stage for more ambitious ventures. The fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the closure of overland routes to the east forced European nations to seek out alternative paths. This quest for new routes culminated in the Age of Discovery, the Age of Encounter, a period of unprecedented global exploration that would reshape the world.
So while Henry VII did, in fact, sponsor voyages of exploration with the Cabots, Henry VIII really didn’t do that much with it. He had been very focused on war with France, on building up his navy, which was very important, but not necessarily to go exploring. And of course he had that whole issue with religious reformations happening.
So England was a little bit preoccupied under Henry VIII and Edward might have if he had been able to grow up and become more interested in it. Mary didn’t. So then we have finally under Elizabeth, England is ready to start going out into the ocean. They have a navy now started by Henry VII and Henry VIII continued it.
Um, they’re starting to have the knowledge and they’re starting to be interested. So that is where we start to get these names that are just so familiar to us. Let’s start with Sir Francis Drake. One of the most celebrated figures of the Elizabethan era, born in Tavistock, Devon, around 1540, Drake’s seafaring career began at a very young age.
He was apprenticed to a ship captain and quickly gained a reputation as a skilled and daring navigator. By his early 20s, Drake was already involved in raiding Spanish ports in the Caribbean, gaining valuable experience that would serve him well in his later voyages. His circumnavigation of the globe was an audacious endeavor that spanned 1, 020 days.
He set sail with five ships and 164 men, and Drake’s primary objective with that was actually to disrupt Spanish operations in the New World and seize their treasure. He would return three years later, only 56 men survived. So that ratio is not great, but, you know, at least some people survived. And he was laden with unimaginable riches.
The main objective of his voyage was to intercept the gold and jewels that the Spanish were transporting from South America back to Spain. His efforts paid off handsomely. He captured 26 tons of silver, half a ton of gold, thousands of coins, jewelry, precious gems, primarily from Peru and Bolivia. His success was unparalleled and he became a legendary figure known for his cunning and his bravery.
After securing his treasure off the coast of Peru, Drake faced the challenge of evading the Spanish fleet that awaited his return along South America’s coast. To avoid capture, he actually sailed north, reaching as far as California. He might have even gotten as far as Alaska in an attempt to find the Northwest Passage.
Despite failing to locate the passage, he continued westward across the Pacific Ocean. He reached Japan, Indonesia, and the Spice Islands, There, he acquired six tons of cloves, which were as valuable as gold at the time. His journey took him past India and Madagascar, around the Cape of Good Hope, and finally back to England, and his return in September 1580 astonished the residents of Plymouth, who had given him up for dead.
The treasures that he brought back were worth an estimated 160, 000 Elizabethan pounds, equivalent to nearly half a billion pounds in today’s money. Drake’s share alone was enough to pay off the entire national debt. He was knighted aboard his ship, the Golden Hind, by Queen Elizabeth herself. His exploits earned him the nickname El Draco, or the Dragon, from the Spanish, who both feared and respected him.
His voyages not only enriched England, but also demonstrated the potential for English naval power. and open new opportunities for exploration and trade. His daring and success inspired other English sailors and helped to build the foundation for England’s future as a major maritime power. Next, let’s talk about Humphrey Gilbert.
He was actually half brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, another famous explorer we’ll talk about. But Humphrey Gilbert was another significant figure in Elizabethan exploration. Born around 1539, Gilbert was educated at Eton and Oxford before pursuing a career in the military, and eventually becoming involved in the exploration and colonization of the New World.
His most notable expedition took place in 1583 when he led a voyage to establish a colony in Newfoundland. Gilbert’s expedition to Newfoundland was driven by the desire to expand English influence and establish a base for further exploration and exploitation of the New World’s resources. In June 1583, he set sail with five ships, including his flagship, the HMS Squirrel.
After a perilous journey across the Atlantic, Gilbert and his fleet arrived in St. John’s Harbor in Newfoundland in August of 1583. There, he formally claimed the land for England, taking possession of the harbor and all the land within 200 leagues north and south of it. Despite the initial success, Gilbert’s expedition soon faced significant challenges.
The harsh condition, the lack of supplies, the difficulties in communication made it impossible to establish a permanent settlement. Gilbert decided to return to England, but the journey back proved disastrous. One of the ships, the Delight, ran aground and sank with the loss of most of the crew. The remaining ships somehow wound up by the Azores and encountered severe storms there.
Gilbert insisted on sailing aboard the HMS Squirrel, despite its small size and the dangerous conditions. During one of the storms, the crew of the Golden Hind, which was in the fleet then, of course that was Drake’s ship, but it was sailing in this fleet by that point, So the crew there observed Gilbert sitting in the stern of the squirrel, calmly reading a book.
He reportedly shouted to the crew of the Golden Hind, we are as near to heaven by sea as by land. Tragically, the HMS Squirrel was overwhelmed by the waves and sank, taking Gilbert and his crew with it. Humphrey Gilbert’s expedition was a failure in terms of establishing a permanent colony, but it did mark an important step in English exploration.
His claim of Newfoundland laid the groundwork for future presence of England in North America and demonstrated the challenges and the risks involved in such ventures. Gilbert’s determination and bravery left a lasting impression, inspiring future explorers to continue the quest. Now let’s talk about Sir Walter Raleigh, a prominent courtier and favorite of Queen Elizabeth I.
who played a crucial role in the English colonization of North America. He was born in 1552. Raleigh was a soldier, a poet, an explorer, who became one of the most influential figures of the time. His efforts to establish English colonies in the New World were driven by both personal ambition and the strategic interests of the English crown.
In 1584, Queen Elizabeth granted Raleigh a charter to colonize the region known as Virginia, named, of course, in honor of the Virgin Queen. Raleigh envisioned Virginia as a base for English privateers to raid Spanish ships and as a foothold for further expansion into the Americas. His first attempt to establish a colony was on Roanoke Island off the coast of present day North Carolina.
The initial expedition to Roanoke in 1585, led by Sir Richard Grenville, faced numerous difficulties, including some hostile encounters with the Indigenous people and a lack of supplies. The colonists eventually actually abandoned that settlement and returned to England. Undeterred, Raleigh organized a second expedition in 1587, this time led by John White, With the aim of establishing a permanent colony.
The 1587 exploration included over a hundred men, women, and children, making it one of the earliest attempts to establish a family based colony in New World. Among the colonists was the governor’s daughter who gave birth to Virginia Dare, the very first English child born in America. However, the colony soon faced challenges, including food shortages.
People couldn’t come and bring them supplies because of course the Spanish Armada was going on at that time, the war with Spain. So that held things up. Governor White returned to England to seek additional supplies and support for the struggling colony, but his return was delayed by the outbreak of the war.
And when White finally returned to Roanoke in 1590, he found the settlement abandoned with no trace of the colonists except the word Croaton carved into a tree. The fate of the Roanoke colonists is one of the enduring histories, mysteries in American and English history. I actually did a video on what happened to Roanoke and I did an episode on Roanoke years ago.
So I’ll find both of those and link to them in the show notes. Despite the failure of the Roanoke colony, Raleigh continued to promote and support exploration. In 1595, he led an exploration to South America in search of the legendary City of Gold, Eldorado. Although the expedition did not find the fabled city, it further demonstrated Raleigh’s restless ambition and his belief in the potential wealth and power that could be gained from exploration.
Raleigh’s contributions to English colonization efforts were significant. Even if his ventures did not always succeed, his persistent efforts laid the groundwork for future English settlements and, of course, demonstrated the importance of establishing a presence in the Americas. Let’s talk about the East India Company now.
The formation of the East India Company in 1600 marked a significant turning point in English exploration and trade. Established by a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth, the company was created to pursue trade with the English. with the East Indies, which included modern day India, Bangladesh, and Southeast Asia.
The East India Company played a crucial role in establishing England as a major global trading power. The early years of the East India Company were marked by competition with other European powers, particularly, of course, the Portuguese and the Dutch. Who had already established strong trading networks in the region.
The company’s initial voyages focused on establishing trading posts and securing valuable commodities, such as spices, silk, and cotton. Despite facing numerous challenges, including conflicts with local rulers and rival European traders, the East India company gradually expanded its influence. One of the company’s early successes was the establishment of a trading post.
at Surat in India in 1612. This foothold allowed the company to expand its operations and establish additional trading posts along the Indian coast. Over time, the East India Company’s influence grew and it played a significant role in the development of British India. The company’s impact extended beyond trade.
It became involved in local politics and governance, especially exercising significant control over large parts of India. The East India Company’s activities laid the foundation for the British Empire’s expansion in Asia and contributed to England’s emergence as a dominant global power. Of course, in 1603, Elizabeth died, and that marked the end of an era, but exploration and colonization efforts continued under her successor, James.
James issued charters to the Virginia Company of London and the Virginia Company of Plymouth in 1606 with the goal of establishing colonies. along the Atlantic coast of North America. The Virginia Company of London established the Jamestown Colony in 1607, marking the first permanent English settlement in North America.
The early years of Jamestown were fraught with difficulties, including conflicts with the Indigenous people, disease, and food shortages. However, under the leadership of John Smith and the introduction of tobacco cultivation by John Rolfe, the colony eventually stabilized and began to prosper. The Pilgrims were a group of separatists seeking religious freedom, and they established the Plymouth Colony in 1620.
Their journey on the Mayflower and the subsequent signings of the Mayflower Compact laid the foundation for self governance and the democratic principles of the New World. The Pilgrims experience, including their interactions with Native Americans, the harsh realities of survival, became a significant part of American colonial history.
The Puritans followed establishing Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1630. Their migration, known as the Great Migration, brought thousands of Puritans to New England, where they sought to create a city upon a hill and establish a society based on their religious principles. The Puritans influence extended throughout New England, and shaped the cultural and political landscape of the region.
As England’s colonies in North America grew, so did its influence and power. The exploration and colonization efforts that began during the Tudor and Elizabethan period laid the groundwork for the expansion of the British Empire. So we will stop it there for now, having talked about Drake, Raleigh, Humphrey Gilbert, East India Company.
and a little bit of the beyond. I will find the other episodes I’ve done on these related topics and put them in the links below. Thank you so much for listening. Remember TudorCon at Englandcast. com slash TudorCon online to grab your streaming ticket and check out Armor and Castings for wonderful Tudor accessories.
So I will leave it there. I’m going to go back to nursing my sore throat, rocking out to new kids on the block. If you are interested in this topic and want to go a little bit further in time, I’m reading right now The Wide Wide Sea, which is about the fateful final voyage of James Cook, which is of course, 200 years later, 150 years later than what we’re talking about here by the mid 17th century.
Course was in 1776 ish, but super interesting. And, uh, It’s been really interesting for me to see kind of how, by that point, after 200 years or so of exploration, uh, and, and colonization, how the different European powers had become entrenched in other places around the world. Um, I was just on the chapter where they had stopped in the Cape of Good Hope and, uh, the, the Dutch were firmly, were firmly there and had established a city and, uh, government and all of that kind of stuff.
So, you know, that’s a really interesting book if you want to dig into that a little bit. So that’s, uh, The Wide, Wide Sea, Imperial Ambition, First Contact, and the Fateful Final Voyage of Captain James Cook. It’s one of, it’s like a bestseller right now. It’s a New York Times bestseller. Um, but it’s really, really good.
It’s a bestseller for a reason. So, uh, I highly recommend that. So you can check that out. And I will end it here, I suppose. Thank you so much for listening. I will talk to you again very soon. Bye bye.
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Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast,  the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop. She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.