men eager for war called her timid. But they called her Gloriana to her face. At last, England was involved in a war of religion.Experience had shown that the cost of planting settlements in a wilderness 3,000 miles from England was more than any individual purse could bear. As early as 1584, Richard Hakluyt, England’s foremost authority on the Americas, made a convincing case for royal aid. In his Discourse on Western Planting, he stressed the military advantages of building “ two or three strong fortes” along the Atlantic coast of North America. Ships operating from such bases would make life uncomfortable for “King Phillipe” by intercepting his treasure fleets.Colonies in America would also enrich the mother country by expanding the market of English woolens, bringing in valuable tax revenues, and by providing employment for the swarms of “lustie youths that be turned to no provitable use” at home. From the great American forests would come the timber and naval stores needed to build a bigger navy and merchant marine.Queen Elizabeth read Hakluyt’s essay, but she was too cautious and too devious to act boldly on his suggestions. Only after her death in 1603 did full-scale efforts to found English colonies in America begin, and even then the organizing force came from the merchant capitalists, not from the Crown. Elizabeth herself perferred guile to force. She was a past mistress to public relations, alternately charming and terrifying her friends and her enemies, her ministers, courtiers and subjects.England was a nation dazzled by Queen Elizabeth I, her splendid court and costumes and cowed by the stamp of an indignant royal foot. And she has been Good Queen Bess ever since - England’s greatest and best-loved ruler . . . Queen Elizabeth I....
