Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America

Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America Read Free

Book: Big Chief Elizabeth: The Adventures and Fate of the First English Colonists in America Read Free
Author: Giles Milton
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lust for food affected their reason.
     
    Richard Hore’s 1536 expedition to America hoped to return to England with “savages” in tow. But the Indians escaped in their dugout canoes, leaving Hore with debts and disappointments
    “[With] the famine increasing, and the reliefe of herbes being to little purpose to satisfie their insatiable hunger … [a] fellowe killed his mate while he stooped to take up a roote for his reliefe.” He
hauled the body into the forest and, “cutting out pieces of his bodie whom he had murthered, broyled the same on the coles and greedily devoured them.” It soon transpired that he was not the only one to turn in desperation to cannibalism. A head count revealed that several men had gone missing, and Hore began to grow suspicious. He had at first assumed that they had been “devoured with wilde beastes” or “destroyed with savages,” but he soon learned that there was a far more sinister explanation. “It fortuned that one of the company, driven with hunger to seeke abroade for reliefe, found out in the fieldes the savour of broyled flesh.” The man went to investigate the smell and spotted one of his shipmates grilling juicy gobbets of what looked like human flesh over a fire. A heated conversation ensued, and tempers flared into “cruell speaches” until the culprit confessed. “If thou wouldest needes know,” he said, “the broyled meate that I had was a piece of such a man’s buttocke.”
    When this news reached Richard Hore, he sank to his knees in horror. He immediately summoned the men and launched into “a notable oration,” telling them “how much these dealings offended the Almightie; and vouched the Scriptures from first to last.” He added that “it had bene better to have perished in body and to have lived everlastingly … [than] bee condemned everlastingly both body and soule to the unquenchable fire of hell.” As he ended his speech he “besought all the company to prey that it might please God to looke upon their miserable present state and for his owne mercie to relieve the same.”
    Their prayers for food went unanswered and, as the famine grew ever more desperate, even their Christian resolve failed them. “They agreed amongst themselves rather then all should perish, to cast lots who should be killed.” But no sooner had the first unfortunate victim been selected than they spied a French ship on the horizon—a stray fishing vessel—which was “well furnished with vittaile.” It did not take the men long to decide on a course of action. “Such was the policie [trickery] of the English, that they became master of the
same and, changing ships [abandoning the damaged Trinity ] … they set sayle to come into England.”
    These proud Tudor gentlemen, who had set out with such high hopes of adventure, were utterly broken by their experiences. They were so heartily sick of the sea that they put into the first port they came to—St. Ives—and elected to travel overland to London, resting at “a certaine castle belonging to Sir John Luttrell.” All of the men were dejected, and one of their number, Thomas Buts, “was so changed in the voyage with hunger and miserie, that Sir William his father and my Lady his mother knew him not to be their sonne untill they found a secret marke, which was a wart upon one of his knees.”
    The men fully expected to be punished for their cannibalism, but to their surprise their plight was met not with shame and stigma but with sympathy. King Henry was untroubled by their desperate recourse to cannibalism and declared himself “so moved with pitie that he punished not his subjects.” When the French authorities complained about the English theft of their ship, he “of his owne purse, made full and royall recompence.”
    The voyage that had set sail with such confidence and expectation had failed in every respect. Hore had hoped to return home with a primitive “savage” in tow—a seminaked chieftain decked

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