Imagining “An Other England” in the North Atlantic, 1577-1625

Abstract

This thesis explores the place of Newfoundland and the North Atlantic within early English colonization. Between 1577 and 1625, colonial promotion shifted from advocating primarily commercial to moral justifications in the North Atlantic. Late-sixteenth century colonial plans therefore need to be examined in their own temporal context rather than in relation to what the Northern colonies became. Merchants Edward Hayes and Anthony Parkhurst sought to secure the lucrative Newfoundland fish trade against the disruptions of war and piracy by exploiting antenational loyalties. However, when the first English colonies were planted in the seventeenth-century by chartered companies, French competition was more problematic than the security of the fish trade. Symptomatic of a larger shift in interest from Newfoundland to the southerly North Atlantic of Virginia and the Caribbean, the Jacobean clergy created colonial plans based around idealized godly settlements, ignoring trade.