directions, and in 1586 Thomas
Cavendish, of Ipswich, sailed to South America and made a rich plunder
at Spanish expense. He returned home by the Cape of Good Hope, and was
thus the second Englishman to circumnavigate the globe.[22]

In the mean time, another actor, hardly less adventurous but of a far
grander purpose, had stepped upon the stage of this tremendous
historic drama. Sir Humphrey Gilbert was born in Devonshire, schooled
at Eton, and educated at Oxford. Between 1563 and 1576 he served in
the wars of France, Ireland, and the Netherlands, and was therefore
thoroughly steeped in the military training of the age.[23] The first
evidence of Gilbert's great purpose was the charter by Parliament, in
the autumn of 1566, of a corporation for the discovery of new trades.
Gilbert was a member, and in 1567 he presented an unsuccessful
petition to the queen for the use of two ships for the discovery of a
northwest passage to China and the establishment of a traffic with
that country.[24]

Before long Gilbert wrote a pamphlet, entitled "A Discourse to Prove a
Passage by the Northwest to Cathaia and the East Indies," which was
shown by Gascoigne, a friend of Gilbert, to the celebrated mariner
Martin Frobisher, and stimulated him to his glorious voyages to the
northeast coast of North America.[25] Before Frobisher's departure on
his first voyage Queen Elizabeth sent for him and commended him for
his enterprise, and when he sailed, July 1, 1576, she waved her hand
to him from her palace window.[26] He explored Frobisher's Strait and
took possession of the land called Meta Incognita in the name of the
queen. He brought back with him a black stone, which a gold-finder in
London pronounced rich in gold, and the vain hope of a gold-mine
inspired two other voyages (1577, 1578). On his third voyage Frobisher
entered the strait known as Hudson Strait, but the ore with which he
loaded his ships proved of little value. John Davis, like Frobisher,
made three voyages in three successive years (1585, 1586, 1587), and
the chief result of his labors was the discovery of the great strait
which bears his name.[27]

Meanwhile, the idea of building up another English nation across the
seas had taken a firm hold on Gilbert, and among those who communed
with him were his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, his brothers Adrian
and John Gilbert, besides Richard Hakluyt, Sir Philip Sydney, Sir
Richard Grenville, Sir George Peckham, and Secretary of