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INTRODUCTION
As has been explained in the Introduction to Smith's "Letter to Bacon," the
earliest possible date for that appeal would be after July 12, 1618, when
Bacon was raised to the peerage. The latest likely date for the first edition of
New Englands Trials is December 11, 1620, when it was entered for publication
in the Stationers' Register. The trivial changes Smith made to convert
the "Letter to Bacon" into the first edition of New Englands Trials would
hardly have kept Smith busy for two years, despite its considerably expanded
peroration. Consequently, although the editor has already offered
some suggestions elsewhere,
attempt to close the gap.
In the spring of 1618, Sir Walter Ralegh returned from his suicidal
Guiana expedition, begun in 1617, and by August 10 he was again in the
Tower, accused, as he was in 1603, of high treason. Such was the Spanish
ambassador's pressure on the king of England that it was now merely a
matter of whether Ralegh would be executed in London or in Spain. On
October 29, he was beheaded in London. This has bearing on John Smith
in that the separatist group now called the Pilgrims, who had thought of
emigrating from Holland to Guiana, then began to look toward North
America, but somewhere beyond the direct control of the governor in Jamestown
or the Council for Virginia in London. By that time the Virginia Company's
administration was under attack, and on April 28, 1619, Sir Edwin
Sandys, a staunch Puritan, was chosen to succeed Sir Thomas Smythe as
treasurer. Six weeks later, the council granted a patent to the Pilgrims. For
one reason or another, it was never used.
Meanwhile, Sir Ferdinando Gorges was organizing still another expedition
to New England, but as yet no colony. On December 1, 1619, he
appeared in person at a meeting of the Council for Virginia to protest against
a fishing expedition off Cape Cod launched from Jamestown, which was an
infringement of the dormant, if not defunct, rights of the North Virginia
Company. Early in 1620, then, determined to maintain the rights of the
West Country entrepreneurs, whom he represented, Gorges petitioned the
king for a new patent to replace that of 1606, in the name of the "Council for
the Second Colony and Others," or the "Council for New England," as it
came to be called. (Parenthetically, it would surely have amused Smith, if
he heard it, that the governor in Jamestown authorized a party to fish off
not Gorges's, but Smith's!) Finally, on November 3, 1620, the charter for
New England was properly sealed. By then, New Englands Trials was in press.
Conceivably Smith had been busy during those two years watching which
way the wind was blowing. Perhaps in 1620 the new administration of the
Virginia Company would look upon him with more favor; perhaps Gorges's
activities would end in a colonial settlement after all. Then, suddenly, Smith
apparently decided to get his ideas into print anyway. New England was
certainly the watchword late in 1620.
It is time now to explain the meaning of "trials." In Smith's title,
"trials" surely meant anything but "tribulations," yet not quite "proofs,"
as suggested by Emerson.
"experiments, essays," or, as the OED explains, actions adopted in order
to ascertain the result of something, investigations by means of experience,
the exercise of trial and error.
Smith was always ready to make such trials himself, and at almost any
risk; yet he was always willing to, and often did, use the record of other explorers
and trailblazers to support his own ideas and plans. His onetime
backer Sir Ferdinando Gorges was, oddly, both more skeptical and more
patiently persistent in trying than was Smith. Gorges wanted real tests with
experimental winter camps before he would seriously consider the establishment
of a colony of any size. Smith, with his Jamestown years behind him,
was certain that no further testing (or proving) was necessary.
Gorges and Smith needed financial backing, and so in the long run both of
them had to convince merchants or other entrepreneurs that colonization
would be profitable, or at least self-sustaining.
In the midst of this, while Gorges was testing, and before Smith's New
Englands Trials was entered for publication, the Pilgrims from Leiden simply
sailed over to Cape Cod Bay and founded the first permanent colony in New
England. Religious scruples moved men regardless of Gorges's need for
security (a safe place in winter) or Smith's need for lucre. Amusingly, when
Smith heard about the Pilgrims he did not like the religion that moved them,
even though they put into practice precisely what he preached.
Of Smith's book proper, as opposed to the rough, handwritten draft that
had been sent to Sir Francis Bacon, there is little to say. The printed work
shows that Smith had at least extended his use of data from other sources,
such as Robert Hitchcock; John Dee,
Empire"; John Keymor, the obscure economist; and Tobias Gentleman,
had also polished his text with a bit more eloquence. But all in all, he had
whipped it into shape so quickly that it amounted to little more than a
printed edition of the "Letter to Bacon." It was not until the second edition
(1622) that a substantially improved work appeared.
Summary
If a summary be needed for so short a work, it can be pointed out that the
first eleven pages, to the bottom of sig. C2r, are little more than a restatement
of the subject matter of Smith's "Letter to Bacon." The remaining four and
a half pages include a few additional ideas borrowed from John Dee and a
repetition of Smith's by now familiar propaganda for settlement overseas.
As has already been mentioned, the second edition (1622) is a trifle better
organized and covers the subject more thoroughly. The 1620 work is interesting
as a hurried printing of a hurried appeal, with such little polishing as
Smith found time to apply.
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