poore and blinded infidels. (M353) Yet because diuers
honest and well disposed persons were entred already into this your
businesse, and that I know you meane hereafter to send some such good
Churchmen thither, as may truely say with the Apostle to the Sauages, wee
seeke not yours but you: I conceiue (M354) great comfort of the successe
of this your action, hoping that the Lorde, whose power is wont to bee
perfected in weaknesse, will bless the feeble foundations of your
building. Only bee you of a valiant courage and faint not, as the Lord
sayd vnto Iosue, exhorting him to proceede on forward in the conquest of
the land of promise, and remember that priuate men haue happily wielded
and waded through as great enterprises as this, with lesser meanes then
those which God in his mercie hath bountifully bestowed vpon you, to the
singuler good, as I assure my selfe, of this our Common wealth wherein you
liue. Hereof we haue examples both domesticall and forreigne. (M355)
Remember I pray you, what you find in the beginning of the Chronicle of
the conquest of Ireland newly dedicated vnto your selfe. Read you not that
Richard Stranbow the decayed earle of Chepstow in Monmuthshire, being in
no great fauour of his soueraigne, passed ouer into that Island in the
yere 1171. and accompanied onely with certaine of his priuate friends had
in short space such prosperous successe, that he opened the way for king
Henry the second to the speedy subjection of all that warlike nation to
this crowne of England? The like conquest of Brasilia, and annexing the
same to the kingdome of Portugall was first begun by mean and priuate men,
as Don Antonio de Castillio, Ambassadour here for that realme and by
office keeper of all the records and monuments of their discoueries,
assured me in this citie in the yere 1581. (M356) Now if the greatnes of
the maine of Virginia, and the large extension thereof, especially to the
West, should make you thinke that the subduing of it were a matter of more
difficulty then the conquest of Ireland, first I answere, that as the late
experience of that skilfull pilote and Captaine M. Iohn Dauis to the
Northwest (toward which his discovery your selfe haue thrise contributed,
with the forwardest) hath shewed a great part to be maine sea, where
before was thought to be maine land, so for my part I am fully perswaded
by Ortelius late reformation of Culuacan and the gulfe of California, that
the land on the backe part of Vir