ch hath Christned, and
giuen the name to your Virginia if need require, will deale after the
maner of honourable godmothers, which, seeing their gossips not fully able
to bring vp their children themselues, are wont to contribute to their
honest education, the rather if they find any towardlines or reasonable
hope of goodnesse in them. And if Elizabeth Queene of Castile and
Aragon,(114) after her husband Ferdinando and she had emptied their cofers
and exhausted their treasures in subduing the kingdome of Granada and
rooting the Mores, a wicked weed, out of Spaine, was neuerthelesse so
zealous of Gods honour, that (as Fernandus Columbus the son of Christopher
Columbus recordeth in the history of the deedes of his father) she layd
part of her owne iewels, which she had in great account, to gage, to
furnish his father foorth vpon his first voyage, before any foot of land
of all the West Indies was discouered; what may we expect of our most,
magnificent and gracious prince ELIZABETH of England, into whose lappe the
Lord hath most plentifully throwne his treasures, what may wee, I say,
hope of her forwardnesse and bounty in aduancing of this your most
honourable enterprise, being farre more certaine then that of Columbus, at
that time especially, and tending no lesse to the glorie of God then that
action of the Spanyardes? (M352) For as you may read in the very last
wordes of the relation of Newe Mexico extant nowe in English, the maine
land, where your last Colonie meane to seate themselues, is replenished
with many thousands of Indians, Which are of better wittes then those of
Mexico and Peru, as hath bene found by those that haue had some triall of
them: whereby it may bee gathered that they will easily embrace the
Gospell, forsaking their idolatrie, wherein at this present for the most
part they are wrapped and intangled. A wise Philosopher noting the sundry
desires of diuers men, writeth, that if an oxe bee put into a medowe hee
will seeke to fill his bellie with grasse, if a Storke bee cast in shee
will seeke for Snakes, if you turne in a Hound he will seeke to start a
Hare: So sundry men entering into these discoueries propose vnto
themselues seuerall endes. Some seeke authoritie and places of
commandement, others experience by seeing of the worlde, the most part
wordly and transitorie gaine, and that often times by dishonest and
vnlawfull meanes, the fewest number the glorie of God and, the sauing of
the soules of the