


RICHARD EBURNE 



A PLAINE PATH-WAY TO PLANTATIONS: That is,
A Discourse in generall, concerning the Plantation of
our English people in other Countries.



Wherein
Is declared, That the Attempts or Actions, in themselves are
very good and laudable, necessary also for our Country of
England. Doubts thereabout are answered: and some meanes
are shewed, by which the same may, in better sort than hitherto,
be prosecuted and effected.

Written
For the perswading and stirring up of the people of this Land,
chiefly the poorer and common sort to affect and effect these
Attempts better then yet they doe. With certaine motiues for a
present Plantation in New-found land above the rest.

Made in the manner of a Conference, and divided into three
Parts, for the more plainnesse, ease, and delight
to the Reader.
By
RICHARD EBURNE of Hengstridge in the Countie
of Somerset.



Printed by G.P. for Iohn Marriott. 1624.




Contents
Dedicatory epistle to Arthur, Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Robert, Lord 
Bishop of Bristol 
"To the courteous and Christian readers" 
"The Sum or Principal Contents of the Whole Book" 
The First Part 
Dedicatory epistle to Sir George Calvert 
The Second Part 
The Third Part 


************






To the Right Reverend Fathers in God and Honorable Lords, Arthur, Lord 
Bishop of Bath and Wells, and Robert, Lord Bishop of Bristol, Richard Eburne 
wisheth all health and happiness external, internal, and eternal 
ONSIDERING, Right Honorable, and not without grief of mind and sorrow of heart 
viewing, the great misery and encumbrance of this our goodly country, the 
country of England--which heretofore admirably flourished in plenty and 
prosperity--by reason of the excessive multitude of people which therein at this 
present do swarm and superabound, the many fair opportunities which God in His 
gracious providence often hath and at this instant doth offer unto it for a 
present, a speedy, and an infallible remedy thereof, and yet the notorious 
neglect and wayward unwillingness of the people of this land, our English 
nation, to regard and accept such offers and to seek and take their own good: I 
thought I might do a work worth the labor and in all likelihood grateful and 
useful to my country and countrymen to write something, and the rather for that 
none that I know hath yet travailed this way, that might stir and encourage 
them, specially the common and meaner sort of them, as whom chiefly and most of 
all it doth concern, to make better use of these fair, worthy, and necessary 
opportunities. 
The sum of the whole treatise 
Whereupon I have in a plain and familiar manner, as one that intended to submit 
himself to the capacity and understanding even of the meanest for whom specially 
this my labor I intended, first, declared and justified these kind of 
attempts--plantations--to tend notably to the glory of Almighty God, the 
enlargement of the King's Majesty's dominions, and the manifold and inestimable 
benefit of this whole land, the realm of England, and to be in their own nature 
lawful and just, ancient and usual; secondly, I have showed some particular 
means or inferior courses how and whereby both men and money, the two 
principal things that must plentifully be had for plantations, may easily and 
speedily be raised and procured in and out of our land for this purpose; and, 
thirdly, I have given and set down some particular instructions and observations 
touching these actions, not unworthy, haply, the notion and consideration of 
many such as yet are little acquainted with them, and added some special motives 
for a present plantation in Newfoundland before and above any other place of 
plantation yet attempted. Withal, in every of these passages I have answered all 
such either real--or rather regional--or personal objections as commonly are 
made against the enterprises themselves why they should not be regarded, or by 
persons that should employ themselves in the enterprises why they should not 
adventure therein. 
These plain, but I hope plausible and profitable, labors of mine I am bold, and 
humbly desire your Lordships both that I may be bold, to present to the open 
view and consideration of this land under the patronage and protection of your 
honorable names, the one of you being my much and worthily honored diocesan, the 
other my worthy and favorable patron, both special fautors of all good 
learning and furtherers of all goodly endeavors, and therefore such as I hope 
and presume will vouchsafe these labors of mine and these worthy, pious, and 
religious--if they be worthily, piously, and religiously handled--these notable 
attempts, and for our land at this present most necessary and expedient, your 
best furtherance and countenance, not doubting but that thereby both my 
endeavors shall the better be respected and received and the actions themselves 
the more advanced and followed; I shall be shielded from the malicious envy of 
the carping caviler, that takes more delight and can be content to bestow more 
labor and time in depraving what others have done than in setting forth and 
publishing, I say not any better but any like and as good of his own; and they 
(the actions) shall be shrouded from the canine unkindness of those lazy lurdans 
that will neither take the good of them themselves nor suffer by their good will 
any other to do it. 
One reason more particular hath moved me to tender to your Lordships these my 
labors, and that is for that the one of you is resident in that city as in his 
proper and episcopal see, the other in the next neighboring both city and 
country, which either by itself in general or by a certain number of the 
worshipful citizens thereof in particular hath already begun and at this present 
continueth a plantation in Newfoundland, which I therefore hope will be an 
occasion that may move your good Lordships both this way to do to the places of 
your own abode--which, truly, by reason of the number of people wherewith they 
are cloyed and overlaid, do as greatly need these helps as any cities or 
counties in England--much good and benefit. Which thing, I am persuaded, you may 
easily and greatly effect if you will be pleased but to show yourselves, in 
countenancing and assisting me and others that do and will employ ourselves in 
them, to approve and favor, to allow and like of these kind of labors and 
endeavors, and, namely, that wherein your own people and so near neighbors are 
already so far interessed and proceeded. 
The Lord Jesu, the high bishop of our souls, vouchsafe unto your Lordships, whom 
He hath called to principal pastors in this His Church of England, such 
plentiful store of His heavenly gifts, and so guide you by His holy spirit, 
that you may sincerely set forth His Gospel and seek His glory in this 
world, and in the world to come be crowned by Him with celestial and eternal 
glory.
Amen.
Your Honorable Lordships'
ever to command in the work of the Lord,
RICHARD EBURNE 






To the courteous and Christian readers, especially the common people of this 
realm of England 
THER men, divers, have labored severally in describing and commending, one this 
country, another that: as Captain Whitbourne, Newfoundland; Captain Smith, his 
New England; Master Harcourt, Guiana; and some others--more than one or 
two--Virginia. And every of these hath used sundry motives for the advancement 
of a plantation in the place by him most affected, all tending to this main end: 
to move our people of England to plant themselves abroad and free themselves of 
that penury and peril of want wherein they live at home. But none that I know 
hath handled the point in general, viz., to show the benefit and the good, the 
lawfulness and the ancient and frequent use, the facility and necessity--that 
is, indeed, if I may so speak, the doctrine--of plantations. That task, 
therefore, have I undertaken, which how I have performed I leave to others to 
judge, requesting this at your hands, benevolent and courteous readers, that you 
observe and consider, first, that I am the first that hath broken this ice and 
searched out this way, and that therefore it must needs be to me more rough and 
rude than if I had passed a smooth water and gone along in an usual and beaten 
path; secondly, that my whole purpose and intent is, principally and specially, 
to do some good this way for and with the meaner sort of our people, to whose 
capacity, therefore, it was fit and, more than fit, necessary that I should fit 
and frame my speech. That observed, I doubt not but you will not only bear with 
but also approve of my plainness as best befitting my purpose to work and my 
subject to work upon. The more learned and judicious sort I freely and 
ingenuously acknowledge myself more desirous to have my teachers and directors 
in this kind of learning than my readers and followers. 
If any think it a point beyond my compass for a divine by profession to deal 
with an argument of this nature, viz., to entreat of plantations, which are 
commonly taken to be a matter altogether of temporal and secular right, let him 
be pleased to know, first, that I am not alone nor the first in this attempt but 
have for my precedent the precedent examples of some far before me in learning 
and knowledge, as Master Hakluyt, who long since wrote a great volume of English 
voyages, Master Crashaw in England, and Master Whitaker in Virginia, who have 
both employed their pens and pains for that plantation. 
Secondly, that plantations are actions wherein we also of the clergy are as far 
interessed as any other. They are as free for us as for others, and if men will 
have any hope that they shall prosper in their hands, we must have a distinct 
part, a certain share, and clergylike portion in them, as well as men of other 
places and qualities have theirs. And therefore, to write and discourse of and 
for them it behooveth and becometh us of the clergy as well and as much as any 
other. 
Thirdly, that one proper and principal end of plantations is, or should be, the 
enlargement of Christ's church on earth and the publishing of His Gospel to the 
sons of men; and therefore in that respect it cannot but properly and directly 
belong unto them to whom Christ hath given commandment and authority above 
others to take care of His flock, to seek the furtherance of the Gospel, and to 
sound forth the glad tidings of salvation to all nations to be principal agents 
therein and special furtherers thereof. 
That my proofs and examples are most out of the Bible and sacred histories I 
have done it of purpose, not only because they are with me most familiar and of 
best authority, but because they should be so with all Christians, even the lay 
sort likewise. As I am not of the papists' opinion, that is, to care little for 
the Scripture[s], so I like not to be of the popish fashion, which is to fill 
the peoples' ears with sound of the names of fathers, Councils, and otherslike, 
which they nor are nor can be acquainted with, but to let them hear little and 
see less the Word of God, in which they easily might and certainly should be 
ripe and ready and well both seen and read. 
Besides, for this present argument, it is so frequent in the Scriptures that 
there is not any substantial point thereabout for or of the which, because the 
practice thereof was very much in those times, there is not some either 
precept or precedent to be found. 
If I have anywhere dissented from the common practice and showed some dislike of 
the ordinary proceedings in these projects, I desire but so far to be borne with 
and accepted as I bring good reason for it and declare or intimate some just and 
reasonable cause thereof. 
Though I have not presumed to set down any certain and regular platform of a 
good and right plantation, which haply to have done would have seemed in me too 
much either boldness or rashness, yet thus much I presume to affirm of that I 
have written: that if any will read and consider it well he may, without any 
great labor, collect and find out a true and good platform of such an action. 
I have so answered many and most of the common objections made against and about 
these attempts that out of and by the same an answer may likewise be shaped to 
any other objection that lightly can be made thereagainst. 
The whole I have so drawn unto certain heads and sorted again into several parts 
as I thought might best accord with the matter handled and be most likely to 
yield ease and delight to the reader. 
Wherein, that I have digested all into the form of a conference or dialogue, 
having so many examples for it and most of them from the best of all ages, I am 
so far from fearing lest thereby I should offend any that I presume rather that 
in that point and pains above the rest, howsoever I be a little the larger 
because of the interlocution, I shall be the better accepted, my meaning and 
drift the sooner perceived, and my labors and lines the oftener looked upon and 
perused. 
And now, that I may revert my speech to you, my countrymen and friends--you, I 
say, of the meaner sort--for whose sake chiefly, out of the abundance of my 
ardent love and fervent desire to do you good, I have put myself to all this 
pains, I have undertaken this work: be pleased, I pray you, to peruse, that is, 
to read and cause to be read to you over and over, this book which I have 
written to you and for you. The argument whereof I entreat therein is of 
plantations, which howsoever attempted by many worthy, great, and honorable 
personages, yet seem little to be accepted and respected of you for whom of all 
other they are most necessary and to whom properly they are intended. 
Look upon the misery and want wherein you do and, abiding in England, you 
cannot but live. Look upon the plenty and felicity wherein, going hence, you may 
live. Prefer not poverty before riches nor your perpetual evil and wretchedness 
before perpetual good and happiness. Now is a time wherein you may do you and 
yours good forever if you will. Now God doth offer you that opportunity, with 
choice of place, to rid yourselves from your present misery and distress, which 
if you neglect to take, and refuse, as hitherto you do, to make use of and 
embrace, will never, haply can never, be had again. 
Believe not the idle tales and vain speeches of such as, knowing not and caring 
not to do either themselves or other good, persuade and tempt you to abide at 
home, that is, to dwell, as many of you do, in famine and penury and to die in 
need and misery. Hearken unto me; read, hear, and consider what I say for your 
better information and to stir up and animate you to accept your good while you 
may and to establish your happiness while opportunity serveth. Never can or 
shall you do it with less labor and travail, with less charge and expense, with 
less peril and hurt, with less trouble and encumbrance, than now you may. My 
words and speeches are plain and familiar; my reasons and arguments are strong 
and evident; and my answers to the vain objections of the contrary-minded are 
sound and solid. Let truth take place within you, let reason move, and let 
evidence of the cause sway and settle you. 
Be not too much in love with that country wherein you were born, that country 
which, bearing you, yet cannot breed you, but seemeth and is indeed weary of 
you. She accounts you a burden to her and encumbrance of her. You keep her down, 
you hurt her and make her poor and bare; and, together with your own, you work 
and cause, by tarrying within her, her misery and decay, her ruin and undoing. 
Take and reckon that for your country where you may best live and thrive. Strain 
not no more to leave that country wherein you cannot prove and prosper than you 
do to leave your fathers' houses and the parish wherein you were born and bred 
up for fitter places and habitations. 
And if you will needs live in England, imagine all that to be England where 
Englishmen, where English people, you with them, and they with you, do dwell. 
(And it be the people that makes the land English, not the land the people.) 
So you may find England, and an happy England too, where now is, as I may say, 
no land, and the bounds of this land of England, by removing of yourselves and 
others the people of this land, to be speedily and wonderfully removed, 
enlarged, and extended into those parts of the world where once the name of 
England was not heard of and whereon the foot of an Englishman till of late had 
not trodden. 
Be not so vain-minded or weak-hearted as to think or believe that you shall do 
better in this England with little or nothing than in any other with 
something--here with an house and a backside, than otherwhere with forty or 
threescore, with one or two hundred acres of ground. It is the means and not the 
place that keeps and maintains men well or ill. And Englishmen above many others 
are worst able to live with a little. 
Know and consider that as it is the same sun that shineth there as well as here, 
so it is the same God--that God in whose name you are baptized, in whose church 
you have and do and shall live, whose servants you that remove are, shall, and 
may be as well as they that remove not--that God, I say, that ruleth and guideth 
all things there as well as here. And doubt ye not but that if you fear and 
serve Him there, if there you keep His commandments and walk in His ways as here 
you have been and there you shall still be taught and directed--for the Ark of 
God and the sons of Aaron and seed of Levi must and will go over with you--the 
hand of His all-guiding providence will be stretched out unto you and the eye of 
His all-saving mercy no less there than here will look upon you. For, "God is 
nigh unto all those that call upon Him, yea, all those that call upon Him 
faithfully" (Ps. 145:38), wheresoever it be. Read over and peruse often, good 
brethren, the 107th Psalm and the 139th. They will teach you most plainly, 
plentifully, and comfortably that by sea and land, far off and near, in one part 
of the world as well as in another, the Lord is at hand; for He is Lord of all, 
He seeth and beholdeth all the sons of men, and defendeth and provideth for all 
that be His. To whose fatherly tuition and merciful protection betaking and 
commending yourselves, fear not to follow Him whithersoever He calleth, and 
defer not to accept His bountiful riches and goodly gifts wheresoever He 
presenteth and offereth them unto you, no more than did Abraham and Sarah, 
Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob, and many other famous, godly, and holy patriarchs and 
persons when God commanded them to forsake their kindred and their fathers' 
house and go into that land which He should show them, whose sons and daughters 
you shall be made if you also walk in their steps, doing well and not being 
dismayed with any fear. But of these things I have spoken more at large in my 
book, to the reading whereof I will now remit and leave you. 
Your companion in one or other
plantation if the Lord will.
RICHARD EBURNE









THE FIRST PART
Wherein is declared:
What profit may come by reading such books as concern plantations (Page 2, See 
also part 3, p. 90
That plantations are actions very commendable and necessary 
That by them the church of Christ may notably be enlarged, partly by the 
addition of other countries to Christendom, and partly by the conversion of 
infinite heathen to the Christian faith

To whom the Gospel must be preached before the end can be

The papists have endeavored much this way

That by plantations the dominions and majesty fo the Kings of England may much 
be augmented

That the good of this land may notably be thereby procured, viz., in the
Easier supportation of the regal estate 

Ridding out of the land the overgreat and superfluous multitude thereof 


Abating the excessive high prices of all things to live by 

Enriching the poorer sort hence removed 

Amending the trade and traffic of merchants 

Rooting out idleness out of this land 

The fruits of idleness 
An objection answered of idlers 
Another of idlers removed hence 

That the practice of making plantations is a thing very lawful

And very usual and ancient 

Certain objections commonly made against plantations are answered, as: 
Of the distance of the place 

The wildness and desolateness of the country 

There, that tents may serve for housing for a time 

The badness and barrenness of the soils 

There, against the spoil of woods in those countries 

The countries are full of wild beasts 

There, what means may be used for profitable cattle to be had and 
transported thither 

The people there rude and barbarous 

The adventures very dangerous , 30, 31)

That small profit, no wealth, is there to be had ,33,33)

There, what great riches and livings, by all likelihood, are there to be 
had 
There, Normandy and Aquitaine lost in France, and when 

That it will be long time and much expense spent, before anything there to 
any purpose can be effected 






THE SUM OF THE SECOND PART
Wherein is showed: 
That the best course to be taken for plantations is by act of Parliament 


Two things being principally necessary to the working of plantations, viz., 
men and money, what inferior courses might be taken for the raising or 
procuring of both plentifully: that is, of money 
1. By voluntaries 
2. By personal adventurers 
3. By general collections 
4. By hospital money 
[5.] By moneys given to the use of the poor 
6. By moneys given to the use of the church 
7. By lottery 
8. By some ratable imposition 
9. By base moneys for those purposes and places to be stamped 
10. By gold and silver coins altered 
11. By frugal expenses 

An extravagant 

[12.] By godly parsimony of the richer sort at home 

Then, of men: 
By proclamation 

& 
By good order for removing 

By provision supplied 

By vagrants 

By prisoners 

Maimed soldiers 

Cottagers 

Inmates 

Soldiers and servants 

There, what sort of persons are fittest for a plantation 

Ministers of the Word 

There, how they may be provided for 

Schoolmasters and other scholars 

There, what means may be used for procuring such men to be got over 

A notable history of the conversion of certain Indians in the time of 
Athanasius 

By men of name and note to be governors 

And that in the state ecclesiastical as well as B temporal 

That his Majesty would entitle himself to that country in which any 
plantation shall be 

Certain objections answered, as: 
The greatness of the expenses 

The removing of so many at once 

The weakening and impoverishing of our land 

The waste of the revenues of the Crown 






THE SUM OF THE THIRD PART
Causes why plantations proceed no better in England, viz. 

The want of a general resolution thereto 

The want of some good course for it 

The great idleness of our people and lack of industry 



How many plantations there be now in hand 

Whether all of them can be finished 

Which of them seemeth to be best to be set forward 

How many ways to make a plantation 

There, planting by invasion disliked 

That plantation and invasion are somewhat like in some things, and how 

There, what celerity is needful in making a plantation 

Whether better to plant in an island or a continent 

Certain motives gathered out of Captain Whitbourne's book why Newfoundland 
may be thougth fittest for a present plantation 

Certain personal objections usually made by such as are unwilling to go in 
a plantation answered, as: Of agedness 

Unusual for old men 

There, whether old men and married, or young, single men be fitter for 
a plantation 

Hard traveling by sea 

Of them that have some good livings here 

That such men do not usually go 

That women, men's wives, are not willing 

To go into one or other plantation the author intendeth 







A
P L A I N E
PATH-WAY
TO PLANTATIONS:
That is,
A Discourse in generall concerning the
plantation of our English people
in other Countries 


The First Part 


 


L O N D O N
Printed by G.P. for Iohn Marriott 



The speakers be
Respire, a Farmer
Enrubie, a Merchant

RESPIRE.
[I] am very glad to see you in health, good Master Enrubie, and, hearing of your 
coming home, I am come to see you and to salute you. 
Enrubie. I thank you heartily for it, neighbor Respire, and am glad to see you 
and the rest of my good neighbors and friends here to be also in good health. I 
pray you, sit down by me in this arbor. 
Respire. That I would do willingly but that I doubt I shall be troublesome to 
you, for I see you are busy in reading some book, whatever it be. 
Enrubie. That shall be no trouble to me nor let to us. For it is but to recreate 
myself withal for want of better company and exercise. 
Respire. If it be for recreation, then I hope it is some matter of delight 
and special observation. 
Enrubie. Yes, indeed; it is a new and pretty discourse of some of our new 
plantations, namely, that in N[ewfoundland]. 
Respire. I marvel what good or pleasure you should find in such idle books, 
fables, I think, not worth the looking on. 
Enrubie. They are better than you yet understand, I see, and therefore be not 
you rash in condemning lest you be hasty also in repenting; for, ad paenitendum 
properat, cito qui iudicat: hasty men, as they say, never lack woe. 
Respire. Why? But do you indeed find any good in reading such books, which I 
know of many to be but little regarded? 
Enrubie. Yea, truly, and that I doubt not but you also shall acknowledge before 
you depart from hence, if you have the leisure to stay with me but a while. 
Respire. I have lost more time than this ere now, and therefore, for your good 
company's sake, I will, God willing, see the event, and any greater business to 
hasten me away at this time I have not; I pray you, therefore, tell me what good 
you get by these books. 
What profit may come by reading such books as concern plantations 
Enrubie. Besides the delight that comes by the novelty of the contents 
thereof--and you know that est natura hominum novitatis avida: we are by much 
nature like the Athenians spoken of in the 17 the Acts of the Apostles, desirous 
very much to hear news--I do reap thereby unto myself this threefold benefit. 
First, I do thereby after a sort, as blessed Moses from Mount Nebo (Deuteronomy 
34), view and behold with the eyes of my mind those goodly countries which there 
God doth offer to give unto us and to our seed. 
Secondly, thereby I am enabled with Joshua and Caleb (Numbers 14) to stop the 
mouths and confute the malice of them that in my hearing, like the ten 
unfaithful spies, shall go about to bring up an evil report upon those good 
lands, and stay the murmurings of such foolish and ignorant people as upon every 
idle hearsay or any lazy vagrant's letter are ready to believe the worst. 
And, withal, thirdly, I am the better prepared to inform them and others that 
are willing to know the truth and certainty thereof. 
Respire. I see there is good use to be made of such books if a man will. And 
therefore I shall from henceforth forbear to think of them as I have done, and I 
shall desire you to lend me that book of yours for a day or two that I may read 
it over also. 
Enrubie. I shall willingly lend you this and one after another two or three 
more that I have of the like argument. For I wish with all my heart that both 
you and all my friends were as well acquainted in them as I am. 
Respire. I thank you much for this courtesy. But seeing you make such use and 
reckoning of those books, it seems that you make more account of the actions 
themselves, that is, of plantations, whereof they do entreat, which yet I ever 
held, and so I know do many else that be men of good wit and understanding, to 
be but idle projects and vain attempts. 
Plantations themselves are actions very commendable, necessary, etc. 
Enrubie. Without any dislike or disparagement to any other men's wits or 
understandings be it spoken: for mine own part, I do profess I estimate and 
account the actions themselves to be very good and godly, honorable, 
commendable, and necessary, such as it were much to be wished might be, and much 
to be lamented they be not, in far better sort than hitherto any of them are, 
followed and furthered, as which tend highly, first, to the honor and glory of 
Almighty God; secondly, to the dignity and renown of the King's most excellent 
Majesty; and, thirdly, to the infinite good and benefit of this our 
commonwealth--three things than which none weightier or worthier can in any 
design or project be leveled or aimed at. 
Respire. You make me even amazed to hear of you that so great good may be 
effected or expected out of those courses which of many are so much contemned 
and dispraised. Wherefore, for my better satisfaction therein, I pray you, let 
me hear of you in particular somewhat how these notable effects might be 
produced, and, namely, first, the glory and honor of God. 

Firstly, by them the Church of Christ may notably be enlarged 
Enrubie. The glory of God cannot but be much furthered thereby, were it but only 
that the Gospel of Christ should thereby be professed and published in such 
places and countries by those alone that shall remove from hence to inhabit 
there, where before, since the beginning of the Gospel, for aught we know or is 
likely, it was never heard, at least professed, as it is now of late come to 
pass, God be praised, and we hope will be shortly in Newfoundland. 
Respire. Will be, say you? Methinks you should rather have reckoned that among 
the first because that for fifty or threescore years before ever the Summer 
Islands or Virginia were heard of our people did yearly go thither a-fishing, 
and so the name of Christ was there long since honored among them. 
Enrubie. But for all that, till there be Christians inhabiting there we cannot 
say properly that the Gospel of Christ is planted there or that it is any part 
of Christendom. It must therefore in that respect give place to the other before 
named, as which indeed were Christian before it. 
By the addition of other countries to Christendom
Respire. I cannot dislike that you say. And indeed any man may see that this 
must needs be a great advancement to the honor of God whenas the scepter of His 
son is extended so much farther than it was as if from hence to those remote and 
unknown regions. Christendom will then be so much the larger. And it seems to me 
it will be in a goodly order, seeing that, as I understand, from England to 
Newfoundland, and so to the Summer Islands, and thence to Virginia, all is in 
one tract--no Turkish, no heathen country, lying between. But proceed, I pray 
you. 
And by the conversion of infinite heathens to Christianity 
Enrubie. This is, as you see, greatly to the honor of God, but it will be much 
more if, when and where our people do plant themselves in such countries where 
already are an infinite number of other people, all savages, heathens, infidels, 
idolaters, etc., this in the plantation may principally and speedily be labored 
and intended: that by learning their languages and teaching them ours, by 
training up of their children, and by continual and familiar converse and 
commerce with them, they may be drawn and induced, persuaded and brought to 
relinquish and renounce their own heathenisms, idolatries, blasphemies, and 
devil worships. 
The papists have much endeavored this way 
And if, for that I take it cannot be denied, the papists have done much good 
that way by spreading the name of Christ, though but after their corrupt and 
superstitious manner, into so many unknown nations that lived before altogether 
in the service and captivity of the devil--for better it is that God be served a 
bad way than no way at all--how much more good must it needs be if the name of 
the true God in a true and sound manner might there be published and spread 
abroad? 
To which purpose, I would to God there were among us, us Protestants that 
profess and have a better religion than they the papists, one-half of that zeal 
and desire to further and disperse our good and sound religion as seems to be 
among them for furthering and dispersing theirs. Which not found--for our 
zeal is coldness and our forwardness backwardness in that behalf in respect of 
theirs--I need not say, "we may fear," but rather, "we may assure ourselves," 
that they shall rise against us in the day of judgment and condemn us. As they 
have deserved, so let them have the palm and praise in this point; for what 
other ends soever they proposed in their conquests and courses, questionless 
religion, the Christian faith, according to their knowledge, was not the least 
nor the last, since, certain it is, they never set foot in any country nor 
prevailed in any coast wherein they did not forthwith endeavor to root out 
paganism and plant Christianism, or leave behind them at least some monuments 
and signs thereof. 
And who can tell?--I speak this to provoke ours the more withal--who can tell, I 
say, whether God hath even therefore, as to Jehu that rooted out Baal, himself 
continuing to worship Jeroboam's calves (II Kings 10:30, 31), bestowed on them a 
great part of that success in wars, increase in wealth, and honor on earth, 
which had we stood forth in their stead and gone before them, as we should and 
might have done, He would more admirably, happily, and abundantly have conferred 
on us? For He that is so kind to His enemies, what would He have been to His 
friends? 
Respire. I easily perceive that this might redound not a little to the glory of 
God if the conversion of such people and nations might be accomplished. Lord, 
how many thousands and millions of souls might so be saved which now run 
headlong into hell! It were a glorious work, imitating notably that of the 
blessed apostles which converted the world so long ago from dead idols to serve 
the living God. And in so holy and religious a labor I am sorry to hear that we 
should not be as forward as papists but that to be verified twixt us and them 
also in this case which our Saviour said in another: "The children of this world 
are in their generation wiser than the children of light." But as I must needs 
confess that the work were a worthy piece of work if it might be wrought, and 
that happy were our land if the children thereof might be made of God agents 
therein, so methinks we had need to have some assurance of the will of God that 
it should be done. For, as you know better than I can tell you, if the time of 
their conversion be not come, or if God, as He hath wrapped them hitherto in 
unbelief, so He be not pleased nor determined to release them to call them to 
the knowledge of His truth and to manifest His son unto them at all, our 
labor then will be but in vain and our attempt not pleasing but displeasing in 
His sight. 
It is God's will to call them to the knowledge of His truth 
Enrubie. That God desireth and willeth His name, His truth and Gospel by us to 
be published in those heathen and barbarian lands, the inclination and readiness 
alone of those people and nations may sufficiently assure us, who, as it were 
prepared of God to receive the Gospel from our mouths if it might be but sounded 
unto them, do even of their own accord offer themselves to be taught, suffer 
their children to be baptized and instructed by us, and, as weary of and half 
seeing the grossness of their own abominations and the goodness of our 
observations, do make no great difficulty to prefer our religion before theirs 
and to confess that it is God that we and the devil that they do worship. 
And their conversion must be before the end of the world can be 
For my own part, I am persuaded that God will instantly have them, either by us, 
or by others if we will not, called to the knowledge of His truth and turned 
from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that so the words 
of our Saviour may be fully fulfilled, who (Matt. 24:14) hath foretold us that 
the Gospel, before the end shall come, must be preached throughout the whole 
world, and (Mark 13:10) be published among all nations, which howsoever most 
hold is long since accomplished in that it either now is or heretofore hath been 
preached to all or near all nations of this upper continent; yet I am now 
resolved--let it be my private error, if I do err--that they will not be 
fulfilled indeed, according to our Saviour's intent, until that unto them also 
that inhabit that other, the under continent, it be made manifest, which it 
seemeth unto me God doth now hasten to accomplish in that within our age alone a 
great part thereof hath had the same, though corruptly, though imperfectly, 
brought unto them. 
Respire. You do well to say that this is your own private opinion, for no man 
else, I think, is of that mind. 
Enrubie. Not many, it may be; but yet I assure you I am not alone. For there was 
but few years past a preacher in Dorsetshire of some note and name, that in a 
sermon of his entitled "The Magold [sic MW] and the Sun," now extant in print, 
page 40, upon these words of his text (Luke 1:79), "To give light to them that 
sit in darkness," etc., saith thus: "This light rising first from the Jews, as 
from His East or Orient, is carried over all the world and hath given light to 
us English that sat in darkness. Of His first rising read Luke 24:47 
beginning, saith our Saviour there, from Jerusalem. Hence sprung this blessed 
light first, and thence, besides His dispersion into other parts of the world, 
was carried over all Greece, Italy, Germany, France, and rose to us also, and is 
now making day to the Indians and Antipodes. For the world shall not end till He 
have finished His course, I mean, till, as the Evangelist (Matt. 24:14) saith, 
the Gospel be preached in all the world and be a testimony to all nations, and 
then shall the end come." Thus he. Dr. Keckermann likewise, that famous 
professor of arts and learning, divine and human, in his Manuduction to 
Theology, of late translated into English by my worthy friend Master T. Vickars, 
bachelor in divinity, page 94, writes of this matter in this manner: "And 
doubtless towards the end of the world the true religion shall be in America, as 
God is now preparing way for it by the English and Low-Country merchants, that 
that of Christ may be fulfilled (Matt. 24:14). This Gospel of the Kingdom shall 
be preached through the whole world for a witness unto all nations, and then 
shall the end come. For God in all His works is wont to effect a thing 
successively, and therefore first He sends to those nations some light of His 
essence and truth by the papists, and afterward will make these things shine 
more clearly unto them by the true and faithful ministers of the Gospel." Thus 
far he. 
So that in their opinion as well as mine this is a work that must be done before 
the end can be. Wherefore, since it is a work, and a most holy and necessary 
work, which must be done before the day, the great day of the Lord, can come, I 
see not how we can without sin, having anything to do in those parts, withdraw 
our shoulder from this burden or withhold our hand from this plow. And so much 
the more will the sin be by how much it is far more easy for us this to hold and 
undergo than it was for those that did undertake the like task for us--I mean, 
the conversion of our ancestors and predecessors in this land, a people as rude 
and untractable at the least that way as these now, inasmuch as they were to 
preach and not to subdue; but we may plant as well as preach, and may subdue as 
well as teach, whereby the teachers shall need to fear no loss of goods or life, 
no prison nor sword, no famine or other persecuting distress for the Gospel's 
sake. Whose steps, if our nation, if our countrymen in their intended 
plantations among those infidels would in any measure follow, how many souls 
might they save alive? How many sinners might they convert from going astray? 
How much might they ampliate the kingdom of Christ in earth, advance the name, 
glory, and worship of our, the only true and everlasting, God, and prepare for 
themselves an abundant, or rather a superabundant, heap of glory in heaven, 
according to that which is written (Dan. 12:3), "They that be wise shall shine 
as the firmament; and they that turn many unto righteousness shall shine as the 
stars for ever and ever"? 
Respire. That these courses tend to the glory of God I plainly see and 
acknowledge. But how may they be to the renown and benefit of the King's most 
excellent Majesty? 
Secondly, by them the majesty and renown of the Kings of England may be much 
augmented 
Enrubie. These could not but much augment and increase the majesty and renown of 
our dread sovereign if thereby his dominion be extended, as it were, into 
another world, into those remote parts of the earth, and his kingdoms be 
increased into many mo [sic MW] in number by the addition and access of so many, 
so spacious, so goodly, so rich, and some so populous countries and provinces as 
are by these beginnings offered unto his hands. 
We see the evidence and certainty of this assumption as clear as the sunshine at 
high noon in the person of the King of Spain, whose predecessors and progenitors 
accepting that which others did refuse, and making better use of such 
opportunities than any else have done, he is thereby become lord not only of 
territories almost innumerable but also of treasures and riches in them 
inestimable. 
Whose right thereto and to the rest of that continent, be it what it may be, 
cannot, I suppose, in any equity or reason be any sufficient bar to any 
Christian prince why he should not yet, by any lawful and good means, seize into 
his hands and hold as in his own right whatsoever countries and islands are not 
before actually inhabited or possessed by him the Spaniard or some other 
Christian prince or state. Of which sort, since yet there are many, it were much 
to be wished that his Majesty might in time, while opportunities serve, take 
notice and possession of some of them, whereunto these courses of plantation, 
being rightly prosecuted, are a singular if not the only means. 
Respire. All this is most apparent; but may the like be said for your third 
point, the good of this land likewise? 
Thirdly, by them the good of this land may notably be procured
Enrubie. Yes, verily. Whosoever shall but lightly consider the estate thereof as 
now it stands shall plainly see and will be enforced to confess that the 
prosecuting, and that in an ample measure, of those worthy attempts is an 
enterprise for our land and common good most expedient and necessary. For: 
Firstly, in the easier supportation of the regal state 
First of all, whereas toward the supportation of their regal estate for many and 
urgent necessities the kings of this land are oft occasioned to demand and take 
of their subjects great sums of money by subsidies and otherlike ways, which to 
many of the subjects, specially the clergy--who for the most part to such 
payments, as things now stand, pay eight or ten times as much proportionably as 
other subjects do--is somewhat hard and heavy to endure; this burden would be 
more easily borne and could not but become much the lighter if by the accession 
of more kingdoms to their crown, store of treasures being brought into their 
coffers, the same were borne by divers other lands and subjects as well as of 
this and the rest yet under their subjection. 
Secondly, in ridding out of the land the great and superfluous multitude thereof 

Secondly, whereas our land at this present, by means of our long-continued both 
peace and health freed from any notable either war or pestilence--the two great 
devourers of mankind to both which in former ages it was much subject--even 
swarmeth with multitude and plenty of people, it is time, and high time, that, 
like stalls that are overfull of bees or orchards overgrown with young sets, no 
small number of them should be transplanted into some other soil and removed 
hence into new hives and homes. 
Truly, it is a thing almost incredible to relate and intolerable to behold what 
a number in every town and city, yea, in every parish and village, do abound, 
which for want of commodious and ordinary places to dwell in do build up 
cottages by the highwayside and thrust their heads into every corner, to the 
grievous overcharging of the places of their abode for the present and to the 
very ruin of the whole land within a while if it be not looked unto, which if 
they were transported into other regions might both richly increase their own 
estates and notably ease and disburden ours. 
Respire. These be motives of some weight and likelihood; but let me hear more to 
these, if you have them. 
Thirdly, in abating the excessive high prices of all things to live by 
Enrubie. Next, thirdly, whereas at this present the prices of all things are 
grown to such an unreasonable height that the common, that is, the meaner sort 
of people, are even undone and do live, in respect of that they did for thirty 
or forty years past, in great neediness and extremity, that there is neither 
hope nor possibility of amending this evil but in the diminution of the number 
of people in the land. Which if men will not, by departing hence, elsewhere 
effect, we must expect that God, they having first eaten out one another, by war 
or pestilence [will] do it for them. 
I know that much help in this case might be had if our magistrates and great 
ones did take some good course cum effectu for the increase of tillage. But 
neither thereof is there any great hope, nor therein a sufficient help, since it 
is out of all doubt that unless it be in an extraordinary fruitful year--and of 
them nowadays God for our sins sends but a few--our land is not able to yield 
corn and other fruit enough for the feeding of so many as now do lie and live 
upon it. And when it, which was wont to help feed other countries, must, as of 
late we have to our cost both seen and felt, be fain to have help and food from 
others, how can our state be for the commons but woeful and ill? Likewise, if 
some good course might be taken for restraint of excessive fines and rents, 
whereby landlords nowadays grind the faces of the poor and draw into their own 
hands all the sweet and fat of the land so that their poor tenants are able 
neither to keep house and maintain themselves nor, as anciently such houses did, 
to relieve others, then could not the prices of all things but much abate and 
come down. Yet this were but an imperfect cure. The true and sure remedy is the 
diminution of the people, which reduced to such a competent number as the land 
itself can well maintain would easily cause not only the excessive height of 
fines and rents but also the prices of all things else to fall of themselves and 
stay at so reasonable a rate that one might, which now they cannot, live by 
another in very good sort. 
Fourthly, in enriching the poorer sort hence removed 
Consider also the great riches, wealth, and good estate which such who here 
live, and cannot but live, parce & duriter, poor and hardly, might by 
transportation within a while rise unto; whileas they may have otherwhere for 
their bad cottages good houses, for their little gardens great grounds, and for 
their small backsides large fields, pastures, meadows, woods, and otherlike 
plenty to live upon. 
Fifthly, in amending the trade and traffic of merchants 
The benefit that might that way accrue unto merchants and all kind of 
adventurers by sea is infinite. For traffic and merchandise cannot but by means 
thereof wonderfully be bettered and increased. And withal, which is not the 
least point in observation, most commodious and delightful must merchandising 
and traffic needs be while it shall be exercised for the most part between one 
and the same people, though distant in region yet united in religion, in nation, 
in language and dominion. Which surely is a thing likely to prove so material 
and beneficial as may turn the greater part of our merchants' voyages that way 
and free them from many of those dangerous passages which now they are fain to 
make by the Straits and Narrow Seas; may find them out their rich and 
much-desired commodities, and greater store and at a better hand than now they 
have them otherwhere, and vent them many a thing which now do seldom or not at 
all pass their hands. 
But of all other I need speak little of the merchants' good, as who can and, I 
am persuaded, do, so well know it of themselves and thereupon affect the 
enterprise so much, that if other men's desires and endeavors were correspondent 
it would take both speedy and condign effect. 
Sixthly, in rooting out idleness out of this land 
The last benefit to our land, but not the least, is the curing of that evil 
disease of this land, which, if it be not looked unto and cured the sooner, will 
be the destruction of this land, I mean, idleness, the mother of many mischiefs, 
which is to be cured and may be rooted out of the land by this means, yea, by 
this only and by none other, viz., by plantation. 
Respire. Idleness is a naughty vice indeed, but commonly it doth hurt none but 
them in whom it is, and yet except that fault many that be idle be honest men 
and have in them divers good qualities; and therefore methinks you speak too 
hardly of it to call it "the mother of mischiefs." There be worse vices a great 
many in the land, as this drunkenness and unthrifty spending of their goods 
which are everywhere so common. 
Enrubie. I perceive by you it is a very bad cause that cannot get a proctor. 
That which I have spoken against idleness is but little to that I could speak 
and which writers both human and divine have spoken of it, to whom I will 
refer you lest we protract this our conference over long. But for the vices you 
speak of, if they be, as you say, worse than idleness, yet--as sometimes of a 
bad mother there may come worse daughters--I assure you, they and many more, as 
filching and stealing, robbery and cozenage, adultery and incest, fornication 
and all kind of wantonness and uncleanness, beggary and roguery, profaneness and 
idolatry, and a number more that upon the sudden I cannot call to mind and with 
which this land of ours is defiled and filled, be none other, for the most part, 
than the fruits and offspring, the brood and increase of idleness, which alone 
taken away and weeded out these all would fall away and vanish with her. For, 
Sublata causa, tollitur effectus,saith the philosopher: the cause of anything 
taken away, the effect is also taken away with it and must cease. 
Respire. A happy work indeed were the doing thereof. But do you think, or is 
there any probability, that this might be done by so speedy and easy a means as 
plantation? 
Enrubie. Questionless. The best and the only cure thereof by the hand of man is 
this way and none other. The diminution of the people of the land unto a due and 
competent number will do it. This is apparent by experience. For look we back to 
the state of our land for forty, fifty, or sixty years ago, before it did thus 
exceed in multitude, and we shall see that few or none of these vices did then 
abound--nothing in comparison of that they do now--as which have since sprung up 
out of idleness, that since that time, together with the multitude and increase 
of the people, is risen and increased. 
Respire. Indeed, I remember well when I was a young man there were no such 
swaggering youths, potting companions, and idle gamesters as be now in the 
country; little fornication, bastardy, quarreling and stabbing, and otherlike 
wicked facts, in respect of those that be now, howsoever it be that the world is 
so much altered. But that these evils may be amended by plantations yet I see 
not. 
Enrubie. I will make you see it and confess it too. You have yourself a great 
many of children. If you should keep them all at home and have not wherewith to 
set them to work, nothing to employ them in--for all the work you have to do 
ordinarily is not enough for above two or three of them--must they not needs 
fall to idleness? What will most of them prove but idlers and loiterers? Now, to 
prevent and avoid this what other remedy have you but either to get work for 
them into your own house from other men, if you can have it, or else perforce to 
place them forth of your own house into other men's, one to this trade or 
occupation, another to that, where they may be set awork and kept from idleness? 

Respire. This is true. But what is this to our purpose? 
Enrubie. Very much. For the cases are very like. Thereby you may plainly 
perceive that, as the only way to rid idleness out of your house, having no work 
for them at home, is to place abroad your children into other houses, as it were 
into colonies, where they may be set awork; so the only way to rid idleness out 
of a whole parish, town, county, or country, the same being not able to set 
those that are idle therein awork--and it is a thing so evident, that for the 
idle people of our land, what by the great number of them, which is almost 
infinite, and what by the present damp and decay of all trades and employments, 
the land is not any way able to set them awork, that it needs no proof--is to 
place abroad the inhabitants thereof which therein be not nor can be set awork 
into other parishes, towns, counties, and countries. 
Respire. If this course should be taken, it would touch very near a great many 
of the best livers in the country, who both themselves and their children be as 
idle as any can be and yet would be loath, having so good means here to live by, 
to be removed into plantations abroad. 
Enrubie. These might be brought from idleness and yet abide at home too. For, if 
the superfluous multitude of our land were removed, those which you speak of 
would for their own need fall to work and leave idleness, because, that 
multitude removed, they should have none to do their work for them as now they 
have while they go to playing, potting, and otherlike vain and idle courses. 
The magistrates of our land have of late made many good statutes and provisions 
for the beating down of drunkenness, for setting the poor and idle people to 
work, and otherlike; but how little effect hath followed? Drunkenness increaseth 
daily and laughs the laws to scorn. Poverty more and more ariseth, and idle 
people still do multiply. Other sins and disorders are sometimes punished, but 
yet they still remain and, as it were in despite of laws, they spread more and 
more abroad. The reason is, if a man may be bold to give the reason of it, they 
strike at the boughs but not at the roots. If there were the like good orders 
taken for the rooting out and beating down of idleness itself in our land, which 
can be done no other way but by plantations, both idleness itself and all the 
rest of the evils before named, and otherlike that arise out of it, would vanish 
away as smoke before the wind and melt as wax against the fire. 


Alehouses 
Then these blind and filthy alehouses, which are none other than the devil's 
dens wherein lurk his beastly slaves day and night, which all the justices in 
the country cannot now keep down, would sink of themselves to the ground. 
Tobacco shops 
Then these tobacco shops that now stink all the land over would shortly cease to 
fume out their infernal smokes and come to a lower rate and reckoning by an 
hundredfold. 
Idle trades 
Then the many idle trades which of late are risen up in the land under color to 
keep people from idleness and to set the poor on work, such, I say, as the 
former ages knew not and our present age needs not, as which serve to nothing 
but to the increase of pride and vanity in the world, would quickly grow out of 
request. 
Prisons and violent deaths 
Then the prisons and sheriffs' wards would not be one-half so full of 
malefactors and bankrupts as now they are. And last of all, but not the least, 
for who can reckon up all the benefits that this one remedy would bring unto our 
land? Then should not one-half so many people of our land be cut off by 
shameful, violent, and untimely deaths as now there are. 
Respire. Your speeches are very probable. But by this means, so many idle people 
of our land, as you intimate, being removed, the plantations will then be 
pestered with them there as much and as bad as we are here and so those good 
works be discredited and haply overthrown thereby. It is but the removing of 
evil from one place to another. 
Enrubie. Howsoever, such a removal made, our land, which is the point in 
question, shall be cleared and cured. But of that extreme hurt to the 
plantations that you forecast there is no fear. For, whereas there are in 
our land at this present many idle persons, some are such as gladly would work 
if they could get it. They are idle not for any delight they have in idleness 
but because they can get no body nor means to set them on work. Some are such, 
indeed, as may work and will not. They have wherewithal to keep themselves from 
idleness, that is, work enough of their own to do, but, delighting in idleness 
and counting it a disgrace to men of their means to work and labor in their 
vocation, they will have and hire others to do their work, to be their servants 
and laborers, which they needed not and which other men of like quality and 
ability that are thrifty and good commonwealth men indeed do not nor will do; 
and they themselves the while live idly, spend their time vainly, lie at the 
alehouse or tavern, bibbing and bousing beastly, sit at cards or tables loosely, 
haunt idle and lewd company shamefully, and give themselves to no good practice 
or exercise commendably, but run on from ill to worse, to the shame and 
discredit of themselves and their friends, and many times to the utter undoing 
and overthrow of them and theirs miserably. A third sort there are, as it were a 
mixed kind of people, neither altogether idle nor yet well and sufficiently set 
awork. Of these, some work at a low and small rate, many times glad to serve for 
anything rather than to beg, steal, or starve; and some of them set up idle and 
pelting trades, as it were shifts to live by, for lack of better employment, 
that so they may have one way or other somewhat to live upon. 
Of all these, if the first and third sort were removed into plantations, where 
they might have either good livings of their own to live upon or good employment 
by others to labor upon, it is no doubt but that the most part of them would be 
glad of the exchange and prove laborious and industrious people, to their own 
good and the good, not the hurt, of the country into which they shall be 
removed. And then, for the second or middle sort, it is not much to be doubted 
but that, the occasions of their idleness taken away, as I said but now, they 
also will leave to be idle, fall to do their own work as they should, learn to 
thrive and become profitable to themselves and this our country wherein they 
remain, and be at length as much ashamed to be idle and vain henceforth as 
heretofore they were to work and labor. 
If any continue their former lewd and disordered courses, being but a few, so 
many of their wonted companions being severed and gone from them, there is hope 
that a little severity of the laws--which easily reclaimeth a few when on a 
multitude sometimes it can do little good--will and may bring them also to a 
better course. 
And thus I hope you see that it is not impossible the idleness that is in our 
land to be notably cured and expelled, and that this may be done either only or 
at least no way so soundly, readily, and speedily as by plantations. And 
therefore, the state of our land considered, if there were no other benefit that 
might arise of plantations, yet this alone, viz., the rooting out and destroying 
of idleness out of the land, which else viperlike will in time root out and 
destroy the land itself wherein it is bred, were cause all-sufficient and reason 
enough why such attempts should be undertaken and by all possible means 
furthered and hastened. 
Respire. I cannot but like well of all that hitherto you have said touching the 
goodness and necessity of these actions. But yet methinks there may be a 
question whether they be lawful or not. For methinks it should neither be lawful 
for any people to forsake the country wherein God hath placed them and in which 
they and their progenitors for many generations have remained, nor to invade and 
enter upon a strange country of which they have no warrant nor assurance that 
God is pleased they should adventure upon it. 
Plantations be lawful 
Enrubie. If any will make question of the lawfulness of such actions, Nature 
itself, which hath taught the bees when their hive is overfull to part company 
and by swarming to seek a new habitation elsewhere, doth evidently inform us 
that it is as lawful for men to remove from one country to another as out of the 
house wherein they are born or the parish wherein they are bred unto another. If 
human reason satisfy not--for some will make doubts in cases most clear--there 
is divine warrant for it that may. For it was God's express commandment to Adam 
(Gen. 1:28) that he should fill the earth and subdue it. By virtue of which 
charter he and his have ever since had the privilege to spread themselves 
from place to place and to have, hold, occupy, and enjoy any region or country 
whatsoever which they should find either not preoccupied by some other or 
lawfully they could of others get or obtain. 
Upon which clause, we Englishmen have as good ground and warrant to enter upon 
Newfoundland, or any other country hitherto not inhabited or possessed by any 
nation else, heathen or Christian, and any other that we can lawfully--I say, 
lawfully--get of those that do inhabit them, as to hold our own native the 
English soil. 
Respire. But this, though I see it to be lawful, seems yet to be a very strange 
course, the like whereof in former ages hath not been used. 
Plantations no new nor strange course but both usual and ancient
Enrubie. That this course hath been in former times both usual and ancient, and 
not, as you seem to imagine, new and strange, though I might prove by conjecture 
only--for how else had it been possible so many, so divers, so distant, and so 
great countries to be peopled but by removing from one country to another?--Or 
refer you to human histories, which are full of such narrations, and of them, 
above all, to the Roman state, which from their very first years, ab urbe 
condita, after that Rome itself was builded, fell apace to that practice and had 
ever in hand one or other colony. One of good antiquity and therefore not 
partial, and of great observation and therefore regardable, doth tell us 
expressly that as other things common by nature, so lands, so countries--for 
they also are a part of his omnia--have become private from time to time aut 
veteri occupatione, aut victoria, aut lege: either by ancient usurpation, men 
finding them void and vacant, or by victory in war, or by legal condition or 
composition in peace. But what need I care what such say or say not whenas Holy 
Writ itself tells us very plainly (Gen. 10:5) that whereas after Noah's flood 
there were no more alive on earth of all the posterity of Adam but Noah and his 
sons and their wives--eight persons in all--"Of them only were the isles of the 
Gentiles divided in their lands, every man after his tongue and after their 
families in their nations"? And again, verse 32, "Out of these were the nations 
divided in the earth," that is, these, as they increased, dispersed themselves 
and inhabited and replenished first one country and then another, as we see at 
this day. And this upon warrant of that grant which Adam had being renewed 
and confirmed unto Noah and his sons (Gen. 9:1), Replete terram: "Replenish ye 
the earth or fill it up again." Lastly, let such but look back and think how at 
first we, the inhabitants of this land, came hither. Were all indigenae, or 
rather terrigenae? Did they at first spring up here out of the earth? Are we of 
the race and offspring of Noah or his sons, and therefore per conseq. 
undeniable, as all our histories do accord, have come from otherwhere? Why then 
should that seem so insolent to us and in our time which have been so usual at 
all times and in all ages? 
Respire. You have, methinks, well justified this course in general. Now if you 
can as well clear it in some particulars, I shall haply at length be of your 
mind also for the main. 
Certain objections answered 
Enrubie. Object your particulars and I doubt not whatsoever they be but I shall 
be able reasonably to satisfy you in them. 
First objection 
Respire. The places, the countries to be planted and inhabited by us, are very 
far off from hence. 
Answer 
Enrubie. To that I say, first, if nearer places cannot be had, better a good 
place though far off than none at all. 
Secondly, others, as the Spaniards, have and do remove and plant further off by 
a great deal. 
Thirdly, Abraham, Jacob, and other good men have been content in less need, save 
that God so commanded, to depart far from the places of their birth, as we may 
see (Gen. 12:4; Acts 7:3; and otherwhere). 
Fourthly, when God calls and, as with us now, necessity doth so require, good 
men should be indifferent to dwell in one country as well as in another, 
accounting, as one said well, ubi bene, ibi patria: wheresoever a man is or may 
be best at ease, that is, or should be, to him as his country. A very heathen 
man could say: 
Omne solum forti patria est, ut piscibus aequor: Ut volucri, vacuo quicquid in 
orbe patet, 
that is: 
Unto a valiant-minded man, each country good is his: As is wide world unto the 
birds, and broad sea to the fish. 
And another, being asked Cuius esset urbis? answered Orbis, as who would say the 
world at large were his seat or city. 
Fifthly, Sisterland, or as it is yet commonly called, Newfoundland, which 
for the present seemeth to be the fittest of all other intended plantations, is 
not very far off. It is not with a good wind above fourteen or fifteen days' 
sail, as easy a voyage in manner, the seas and passage considered, as into our 
next neighbor country Ireland, whither of late years many have out of England, 
to their and our good, removed. 
Sixthly, our merchants, in hope of present but uncertain gain, do yearly and 
usually travel into farther countries a great deal; and why then should any for 
his assured, certain, and perpetual good think it intolerable or unreasonable to 
make one such a journey in his life? 
Second objection 
Respire. The countries themselves are wild and rude--no towns, no houses, no 
buildings there. 
Answer 
Enrubie. Men must not look still, in such a case, to come to a land inhabited 
and to find ready to their hands, as in Israel in Canaan, great and goodly 
cities which they builded not; houses full of all manner of store which they 
filled not; wells digged which they digged not; vineyards and orchards which 
they planted not, as Moses speaketh (Deut. 6:10). It must content them that God 
prepareth them a place, a land, wherein they may build them cities, towns, and 
houses to dwell in; where they may sow land and plant them vineyards and 
orchards too, to yield them fruits of increase, as the Psalmist writeth (Ps. 
107:39). 
Secondly, think they it is nobody's lot but theirs? And do they imagine that in 
any country wheresoever, where now there are castles and towers, houses and 
habitations of all sorts settled, there was not a time when none of these were 
standing but that the ground was as bare and naked thereof, as wild and void of 
coverture, as any of our plantations are? For, according to our English proverb, 
Rome itself was not built in one day. 
Thirdly, they that shall at first come there may account it a benefit to find 
the places unbuilt, in that they may thereby choose them seats and divide the 
country at their own will; that they may enter large territories and take to 
themselves ample possessions at pleasure for them and theirs for many 
generations; that they may be freed from these extreme fines and overracked 
rents which make their old neighbors and native friends behind to groan and 
may well make them weary of the land itself, for who can bear them? 
Fourthly, and if they can be content here to build up houses upon the 
highwayside, though there be not the fourth part of an acre of ground lying unto 
it, or think themselves bountifully dealt with if any gentleman would give to 
any of them three or four acres of ground for their own time at a reasonable 
rent--and yet few be the landlords that be so liberal--so as they would build a 
house on it, why should they not rather go where they may have an hundred, five 
hundred, or a thousand acres of ground to them and theirs forever at the like 
rate? 
Respire. But what and how shall men do the while for houses and dwellings till 
they can build, etc.? 
Tents may serve for a time 
Enrubie. They may and must for a time dwell in tents and pavilions, as soldiers 
do now in the field, tradesmen in a fair, and as in ancient times men of good 
and great account, from time to time, from place to place, many years together 
have done, as appeareth (Heb. 11:9), the particulars whereof you may read at 
leisure (Gen. 12:8 and 15:5 and 18:1 and 24:67 and 31:33). So dwelled all Israel 
in the wilderness full forty years, as you may find (Lev. 23:42 and Num. 14:33, 
34). Yea, was not God Himself content to dwell in a tent in the midst of Israel 
till the days of David and reign of Solomon, who found that favor in His eyes 
that he might build Him an house? As it is written (II Sam. 7:63 and Acts 7:45). 
The like did the family of the Rechabites, as appeareth at large (Jeremiah 35), 
for the space of three hundred years together, whenas all Israel besides dwelt 
in houses and in walled towns and cities, and saving for the commandment of 
Jonadab, the son of Rechab, their father, so might they have done. So that it is 
neither unnatural, unusual, nor unpossible to take pains this way for a time, 
and that a long time if need be. 
Respire. Your examples I must needs yield are all good because they be so 
authentical. But yet I see not that the use of tents can be anything 
serviceable, for that being made, as commonly they are, but of raw cloth or 
canvas, besides that they are very cold, they are not able to keep off any rain 
or wet an hour to an end. 
Enrubie. Well and artificially made, they are more serviceable than you take 
them to be. Read but Exodus 7 and 14, and to confer it with Sam. 7:2, and 
you shall find that they may be made very durable, and that to the well-making 
of tents there may go a covering or two of skins or other stuff so dressed and 
fitted as nor wet nor cold can easily pierce them. 
Respire. I see it well; I pray you, continue. 
Enrubie. Besides these, men may, having once gotten place certain for their 
abode, soon erect some cabins and small houses which may for a time, some years 
if need be, serve for habitation, and afterward when they can build better may 
be converted to inferior uses, as for corn, cattle, etc. Men must be contented 
at first with low and plain buildings. England hath been inhabited two or three 
thousand years at least, and yet what poor, what homely houses be there many 
till this very day, and within your remembrance and mine many more there were? 
If the living be good, though the house be but bad, it is no great matter, good 
husbands will say. 
Third objection 
Respire. The countries themselves are scarce habitable and good, and the soil 
thereof but barren and bad. 
Answer 
Enrubie. Experience itself, the surest teacher, showeth altogether the contrary. 
For if any credit be to be given to those that have set us forth their own 
knowledge and trial thereof, by the constant testimony of them all, not one of 
those countries intended or attempted to be planted by us but is found to be 
exceeding good and fruitful. In every country to be inhabited three things are 
specially to be respected: the temperature of the climate, the goodness of the 
air, and the fatness of the soil. All and every of these in those regions--a 
thing seldom found in many of this upper continent--in comparison of many of our 
northern parts are in the superlative degree, viz.: the soil most fat and 
fertile, the air most sweet and healthy, and the temper most mild and dainty. If 
those that lie near or under the equinoctial seem at first to be somewhat of the 
hottest, yet, since they are inhabited with naturals of many sorts, and our men 
by their abiding there some years together have found that they can inhabit 
them, there is no doubt but that that excess of heat whereby as Spain England 
they exceed these our northern climates will by use and time become very 
tolerable and kindly to men of our constitution as well as of others. 
The healthiness of any country by plantation and inhabitation must needs be 
much increased. For, the ridding of grounds, casting of ditches and 
watercourses, and making of fires, together with the destroying of wild and 
filthy beasts, all which and otherlike do necessarily accompany any good 
plantation, further much to the cleansing of the air, clearing of fogs, and so 
ridding of much corruption and unhealthiness from the place. 
Add to these the two much-desired commodities in all good habitations, I mean, 
wood and water--the former whereof so fast decays with us that very want of it 
only within few years is like to prove exceeding hurtful to our land and can be 
no way repaired but by transplanting the people--and it is out of all question 
that neither England nor Ireland nor any country else in this part of 
Christendom can at this present compare with those, much less exceed them. All 
which considered, what need any doubt but that the sun, as the old proverb is, 
doth shine there as merrily as here? And that a little good husbandry will make 
the dwelling there as commodious, as healthful, as gainful, and every way as 
good, as any otherwhere. 
Respire. Your words do sound somewhat pleasing. But yet I have heard some say 
somewhat otherwise, as namely, those countries are very barren and unfruitful. 
Enrubie. I believe you; for I have heard say too, "Evil will will never say 
well." Many idle wretches when they come into such places, because they cannot 
have the plenty without pains, nor find those golden mountains they dreamed of 
at home, though many things be notable and very good yet will cavil at and blame 
everything. 
Suppose it be somewhat as they say, that is, the ground not so fruitful as some 
places here in England; yet doth it follow therefore it is not worth the having? 
If I be not deceived, there be few countries in Europe that can compare with 
England for richness of the soil and fatness of the earth; yet we all know they 
are not therefore forsaken. Again, in England itself all places are not alike 
good. As there be some of excellent mold, so there be barren, heath, and hungry 
soils a great many; yet we see people are glad to inhabit them. Be it then that 
some of those parts be no better than our worser grounds--our heaths, Mendip 
Hills, Wiltshire Downs, Salisbury Plains, and otherlike--yet I hope they are 
better than none. A great deal of such ground together, I think, may be as good 
as a little good ground. If any man will thus consider of such complaints and 
murmurs, he shall see no great cause to regard them. These, therefore, thus 
satisfied, if you have anything else to say, say on. 
Respire. Some say also that those countries are so overgrown with wood, trees, 
bushes, and suchlike that there is no room for building, no ground for pasture 
and tillage, or at least not without excessive labor and charge or intolerable 
and pitiful spoil of the woods and timber to no use. 
Enrubie. It cannot be but that those countries, having either not at all or but 
little as yet been inhabited, must needs be much overgrown with woods and no 
small part thereof to be a very forest and wilderness; yet certain it is that 
there are, a thing very admirable and almost beyond expectation--there are, I 
say--in them to be found many goodly parts of those countries that are very 
clear of woods, fair and goodly open champion ground, large meadows and pastures 
many hundred, sometimes thousands of acres together. So that besides the 
woodlands there is abundantly room and ground enough to build and inhabit upon 
for more people, I believe, than will hastily be gotten over to dwell there, and 
more ground open and clear already rid for pasture and tillage than yet there 
will be people and cattle enough had thither to such uses the same to convert 
and employ. 
The spoil of woods in those countries not sufferable 
And therefore there needs not either that complaint which they make of the 
excessive store and encumberment of woods, nor, which is worse, of that present 
and hasty spoil and burning up of woods on the sudden for making of room that 
some do talk of and would have to be made, and, as it is reported, have already 
made by burning up thousands of acres together. This, truly, in my opinion, is a 
thing very wicked and such as cannot but be displeasing to Almighty God, who 
abhorreth all willful waste and spoil of His good creatures. "Gather up that 
which is left," saith our Saviour, (John 6:12) "that nothing be lost," and a 
thing that in common civility and humane policy should not be suffered to be 
done, or, being done, not pass unpunished. 
We may know by our own present want of wood here in England what a precious 
commodity wood is, and be warned by our own harms to make much of it if we have 
plenty thereof and no further nor faster to cut it down than present use and 
good occasions from time to time shall require. We should not be so blind as not 
to foresee that if the countries come once to be inhabited there will be so many 
and so great occasions of cutting down wood and timber trees as will quickly 
cause infinite store thereof necessarily to be employed and so the grounds from 
time to time speedily enough to be made clear and rid for other uses. 
For, first, the very building of houses, to which add the necessary making of 
fences about houses and grounds, will use an infinite deal of wood and timber. 
Secondly, the store that will daily and yearly be spent in necessary uses for 
fire, which at the first specially, till houses be warm and dry and the air 
corrected, will and must be more than ordinary, cannot but, if once any number 
of inhabitants go over, be exceeding great. 
Thirdly, the building and making of ships and shipping will require and consume 
very much there. And such order may be taken that by the woods there great 
spare, a thing very needful, may be made in England of our woods here for that 
use. 
Fourthly, to these places may be transplanted the making of glass and iron, as 
well for England as for the same countries--two things that, as it is well 
known, do devour, yet upon necessary uses, wonderful store of wood continually. 
Fifthly, the trades of potters for earthen vessels and of coopers for treen 
vessels--both very necessary, specially at the first--will and must still from 
time to time spend up much wood and timber. 
Sixthly, and little behind them in expense of wood, will be that very necessary 
trade of making of salt, considering how great use there is and will be thereof 
there for the fishing voyages, besides all other uses thereof both there and 
elsewhere. 
Seventhly, no small quantity thereof likewise may be cut up and transported into 
England for our buildings for coopers', joiners', and trunkmakers' trades here, 
which now at a dearer hand we buy and fetch out of other countries. 
Eighthly, besides, the woods standing are of themselves, and by industry more 
may be made, a great fortification for the inhabitants against man and beast 
till the countries be and can be better enpeopled and fortified. 
These and otherlike necessary and great uses of wood considered, which 
either must or may be made thereof, little reason or cause is there why, as if 
it could like the waters in the rivers never be spent while the world stands, 
there should any sudden and needless spoil by fire or any other wasteful havoc 
be made thereof; and severely deserve they to be punished that shall make it, 
and sharply the rest to be restrained, that none like hereafter be made. 
Fourth objection 
Respire. These countries are full of wild beasts, bears, etc. 
Answer 
Enrubie. Firstly, some of them, as the Summer Islands, have no such at all. No 
harmful thing in them. 
Secondly, none of them, especially Newfoundland, as far as I hear, have any, or 
at least any store of, noisome creatures--as of serpents, crocodiles, etc.--as 
have many parts of this continent which yet long hath been and still be 
inhabited. 
Thirdly, it is well there are some beasts there, wild at least, if not tame. 
That is an argument undeniable that tame beasts may there be bred and live. 
Fourthly, better wild than none at all. For of some of them some good use may be 
made for the present, viz., for labor, for food, and for apparel, till better 
provision can be made. To which purpose such infinite store and variety of 
beasts, birds, fishes, fruits, and otherlike commodities as in them all are 
already found and do abound ought rather to provoke people to go thither, 
assured they cannot, if they will be anything industrious, want necessaries ad 
victum & amictum, for back and belly, where such plenty is; and to praise God 
that hath, as for Adam in Paradise before He placed him there (Genesis 1), so 
for them before He bring them thither, provided so well, rather than the want of 
some better or other should move them like the Israelites against God (Exodus 
16) to murmur and repine, or, which is worse, wholly to refuse and forgo the 
places. 
Fifthly, have not other countries, think you, or at least have had, the like? Is 
England, is Ireland, is France altogether free? Was Canaan, even that blessed 
land, without them, yea, good store of them? I take it no, and that, not at the 
first only, as one may gather (Deut. 7:22), but also many ages after, there were 
lions (Judg. 14:5 and I Kings 13:24); bears (II Kings 2:24); foxes (Judg. 15:4); 
hornets (Deut. 7:20); serpents (Isa. 30:6); etc. 
Respire. Among other means in these plantations requisite the having thither of 
tame cattle--as horses, kine, and sheep--seemeth hard to be compassed and yet 
most needful, and that with the very first to be provided, considering those 
countries, howsoever they abound in other, are altogether destitute and 
unprovided of these. And it will be objected that, besides the difficulty of 
transportation, our country is not able of them to make any spare. 
What means for profitable cattle to be had and transported 
Enrubie. But if I be not deceived, it were easy to take such a course as might 
at will furnish that want and yet leave us far better stored than now we are, 
and that is: 
Firstly, for horses: if all transportation of them into France and other vicine 
parts beyond sea were restrained, that so all such as were wont to pass out of 
the land that way might now go this. 
Secondly, for kine and sheep: our land is well stored of them, or rather 
pestered with them, that if of the one sort some hundreds and of the other some 
thousands yearly were thither sent our land should have thereby no loss nor 
lack, since it is a rule infallible in husbandry, howsoever it seem to some a 
paradox in sense: the more kine the dearer white; the more sheep the dearer 
cloth. And therefore we must never look to have those two commodities, white and 
cloth, at any reasonable hand till the number of those two kind of cattle be, 
and that in a good measure too, diminished in our land. It is also a maxim 
undeniable: the more cows the fewer plows and the more milkings the fewer 
weanlings. And therefore till those cattle (kine) be diminished, and that in a 
good number, we must not look to have corn and flesh plenty, bread and beef 
cheap, in England again. But alas! Narratur fabula surdo; for whose hands be 
deeper in this sin than theirs that should redress it? 
Thirdly, if a strict course might be taken--and for a public good why should not 
our wanton appetites be a little dieted?--that in England, from the third of 
February till the first of May, or haply but from Septuagesima Sunday till the 
first Sunday after Easter, the chief time for breed, no calves whatsoever should 
be killed but all to be weaned and kept for store, within a year or two, 
without all doubt, we should have beef better cheap in our market a great deal 
than now it is or for many years past it hath been, and yet many hundreds, haply 
thousands, of fair yearlings to be had for those our new countries which now 
have none. 
Where, if any good course be taken and well observed for preservation of every 
kind, I doubt not but they would faster there increase and fill the countries 
than the inhabitants should be able to make room for them by destroying and 
killing up those wild and untamed beasts which now do so there abound. 
Fourthly, it were good too our fish days all the year long were better kept. For 
it is certain, the more fish is spent the more flesh is spared, and as both 
flesh and fish will be thereby the better cheap, so beeves, young bullocks, will 
be the more saved for the help and use of those which to store their plantations 
shall want them. 
Fifthly, besides, Wales, and here of late, God be thanked, Ireland, seem, by the 
great droves which yearly they send over, so well stored, that thence alone, 
though England helped not, provision enough might be had for that sort that 
easily there can be transportation had for. 
Lastly, as they that write of these discoveries do relate, there be also some 
countries nearer to some of our plantations than either England or Ireland from 
which, if men will seek for them, all sorts of tame and profitable cattle that 
we can or do want may at a very reasonable hand be had. 
If it seem hard and strange to any to make transportation of cattle, and that in 
the countries themselves are none naturally to be had, let them be pleased to 
understand that to be no new thing and that where now they are most plentiful 
time hath been none, not one, was to be found; but that such cattle, as well as 
men--for all came out of Noah's Ark (Gen. 8:17)--were brought and conveyed from 
place to place. And if they will but a little inquire of elder men and times, 
they may learn it is but as it were the other day since some countries near unto 
us had no sheep, other no kine, other few horses; and that at this very instant 
France is willing to have from us our horses, we from Wales their burs, and from 
Ireland their cows; all which do pass from one country to another by 
transportation. And therefore men must be contented, as themselves to dwell 
where before they have not done, so to get thither cattle where before they have 
not been. 
Fifth objection 
Respire. The people of those countries are rude and barbarous. 
Answer 
Enrubie. They that like to dwell alone may. There are countries found, and more 
to be found, I doubt not, not yet inhabited and actually possessed by any 
people, nation, or state whatsoever. 
Secondly, they with whom we have to do are not so rude as some imagine, I 
believe. Most, if not all of them, specially they of Guiana, do show themselves, 
their breeding considered, exceeding tractable; very loving and kind to our 
nation above any other; industrious and ingenious to learn of us and practice 
with us most arts and sciences; and, which is most to be admired and cherished, 
very ready to leave their old and blind idolatries and to learn of us the right 
service and worship of the true God. And what more can be expected from them in 
so small time and means? Or what surer probability or hope would we have that we 
shall or may easily and within short time win them to our own will and frame 
them as we list? Verily, I suppose, if all things be considered well and rightly 
compared, we have nearer home worse neighbors a great deal. 
Thirdly, the Spaniard hath reasonably civilized, and better might if he had not 
so much tyrannized, people far more savage and bestial than any of these. 
Fourthly, we ought to consider that time was the old Britons, the ancient 
inhabitants of this land, were as rude and barbarous as some of these of foreign 
parts with whom we have to do. And therefore, considering qua sumus origine 
nati, for we are also their offspring, we ought not to despise even such poor 
and barbarous people but pity them and hope that as we are become now, by God's 
unspeakable mercy to usward, to a far better condition, so in time may they. 
Sixth objection 
Respire. The adventures are very dangerous and liable to losses of life and 
goods, to troubles manifold, so that they may well be called adventurers that 
will hazard themselves in them. 
Answer 
Enrubie. Good words, I pray you. 
Firstly, many forecast perils where they need not, and so many times are more 
afraid than hurt. As Solomon observed long ago (Prov. 22:13), "The slothful 
saith, `A lion is without, I shall be slain in the streets.'" 
Secondly, our life and state is not without perils at home; and I tell you, if 
these adventures, as you call them, be not better followed than yet they are, 
they will, and cannot but, more and more increase. 
Thirdly, no action of such a weight and worth as these are can be without some 
perils, hurts, and losses, which yet must be adventured and endured in hope of a 
greater good and ampler recompense another way. 
Fourthly, he is not worthy to receive such benefits as these adventures may 
yield him that for fear of every inconvenience and danger is ready to fall off 
and disclaim them. Neque mel, neque apes,> saith the old proverb: no bees, for 
fear of stinging, no honey. 
Fifthly, of perils and misadventures some are merely casual and not to be 
avoided; some are altogether needless and might have been prevented. The former 
of these must be borne with as a part of that common calamity whereunto the life 
of man is subject and of those crosses and afflictions wherewith God doth either 
try His children, as gold in the fire, or afflict and punish them and others. 
For these no man ought to be troubled and dismayed in these courses more than 
for the like in any other, nor dislike them one jot the worse. 
We find when God would bring His own people, the children of Israel, into that 
good land, the land of Canaan, which so oft and so solemnly He had promised to 
them and to their fathers, He did it not without letting them pass and feel some 
perils by the way: as the stopping at the Red Sea, the pursuit of Pharaoh, one 
while the want of flesh, another while of water in the wilderness, the terror of 
fiery serpents, and the assault of many and mighty enemies, with otherlike. We 
find also that He was much displeased with, and sharply sometimes did punish, 
those of them that murmured because of those things and would have returned back 
into Egypt, regarding not to proceed and accept that land, that good land, which 
the Lord their God had given to them and their seed. And may not this teach 
us that we must not look to have the hand of God's providence extended unto us 
without some dangers and encumbrances, and that the Lord is not pleased with 
those that for fear of every mishap and trouble will be discouraged themselves 
or will dishearten and discourage others from such attempts? 
Christ likewise, the son of God, sending abroad His apostles to preach the 
Gospel, is so far from securing them of all troubles and dangers in their 
endeavors thereabout that He foretells them He doth send them forth as lambs 
among wolves that they should be hated, persecuted, and put to death for His 
sake, etc. But were the apostles by this dismayed? Did they therefore refuse to 
undertake their charge and proceed in the work of the Lord? We know the 
contrary. Notable to this purpose is the protestation of the apostle St. Paul 
(II Cor. 6:4 and 11:23). 
Respire. I pray you, recite the very words; for I desire to hear what so great 
an apostle hath said to such a purpose. 
Enrubie. With a good will. Speaking there both of himself and for the rest of 
his fellow apostles and laborers in the Gospel, thus he saith: 

In all things we approve ourselves as the ministers of God: in much patience, 
in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in prisons, in 
tumults, in labors. By watchings, by fastings, by purity, by knowledge, by 
long suffering. 

and a little after: 

By honor and dishonor, by evil report and good report, as deceivers and yet 
true, as unknown and yet known, as chastened and yet not killed, as sorrowing 
and yet always rejoicing, as poor and yet making many rich, as having nothing 
and yet possessing all things. 

And in the same epistle, chap. 11:23, opposing and contesting against false 
apostles of those times that sought to debase and disgrace him, thus he writeth 
of his own particulars: 

In labors more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prison more plenteously, 
in death oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one; I was 
thrice beaten with rods; I was once stoned; I suffered thrice shipwreck. Night 
and day have I been in the deep sea. In journeying I was often in perils of 
waters, in perils of robbers, in perils of mine own nation, in perils among 
the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in 
perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren. In weariness and 
painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in 
cold and nakedness. Besides the things which are outward, I am cumbered daily 
and have the care of all the churches. Who is weak and I am not weak? Who is 
offended and I burn not? 

You have heard abundantly of the sufferings; hear also the invincible constancy 
and magnanimity of this admirable champion of the Lord, expressed with his own 
mouth (Acts 20:22): 

And now behold, I go bound in the spirit unto Jerusalem and know not what 
things shall come unto me there, save that the Holy Ghost witnesseth in every 
city, saying that bonds and afflictions abide me. But I pass not for it at 
all, neither is my life dear unto me so that I may fulfil my course with joy 
and the ministration which I have received of the Lord Jesus, viz., to testify 
the Gospel of the grace of God. 

And chap. 21:13, 

I am ready not to be bound only but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of 
the Lord Jesus. 

Having such lights and leaders for our example, shall we grudge and utterly 
refuse to suffer anything, to hazard any troubles, and to bear any crosses at 
all--and it is not possible we should meet with such a measure and heap thereof 
as they did by many degrees--for the Gospel's sake and, besides all other good 
that may come thereof, that we may help to enlarge the kingdom of God and His 
Christ on earth? And thus much of the first sort of evil accidents and mishaps. 
The other sort, which I called needless or willful, by which I mean such as men 
willfully, through their own fault, do cast themselves or others into by their 
evil managing of any such business, by rashness, disorder, oversight, or the 
like, ought not to be imputed to the actions themselves, as which do not 
necessarily draw any such after them, but to the authors and actors of the same. 
As, if men meet with dangers at sea by setting forth at unseasonable times, in 
the winter, in foul weather, or otherlike; if they be surprised by an enemy at 
sea or land, they going without sufficient forces both of men and munition for 
such an enterprise; if they be distressed with want of victuals and other 
provisions when they set forth slenderly, poorly, and ill provided, with 
otherlike. 
Sixthly, these actions--our plantations, I mean--properly and in their own 
nature are liable to as few hazards and mishaps as any such lightly can be. 
For, first, our passage to any of the places intended is very easy, open, and 
clear; sea room at will and, if we take time and season convenient, as navigable 
and pleasant as need to be desired. Few pirates on those coasts, and fewer it is 
probable there would be if some good course were taken for their repulse and 
dissipation. 
Secondly, our access and entry is free and facile for the most part. No man once 
offereth to forbid or hinder our landing there. 
Thirdly, the people of those countries, if any, be ready either for love and 
hope of good from us kindly to receive and entertain us, or for fear and 
weakness of their own accord to fly from us and betake themselves to more remote 
and inland parts of those regions, or to submit themselves tractably to live 
under us. 
Fourthly, the countries themselves free for the most part of any noisome or very 
dangerous either beast or serpent; not infected nor infested as some of this 
continent, which yet are and long have been well inhabited, with the most 
dreadful of these sorts that the world doth yield. 
Fifthly, we need not make way for ourselves into any one of them at all with 
fire and sword, as either our progenitors the Saxons and Normans did into this 
land, or our later forefathers the English into both France and Ireland. So 
that, everything considered, we cannot well wish or expect in these days to find 
out, to have and gain, any country or place for plantation with less troubles, 
fewer losses, and smaller dangers, if things be well handled, than these we may. 
Nor is it likely if we neglect and overslip the so fair and many opportunities 
now offered us that ever we shall have and find the like again. 
Seventh objection 
Respire. The profit is small and little the good that is like to arise of so 
great labors, dangers, and expenses. For, whatsoever you and some others talk of 
great riches there and that way to be had, we hear of none that prove rich and 
wealthy there. 
Answer 
Enrubie. It may be so, and there are many reasons for it. 
For, first, it is not long that any have been in any of these plantations; and 
there must be a time for everything. They that will have corn from the 
ground must tarry the ripening of it. It is not one year's work or two to get a 
good state in lands, and to get some store of wealth about a man in the same 
likewise. They that go over to such a business have many things to do first 
before they can have time to gather wealth about them, as: to build, to rid 
their grounds, to make fences, to destroy wild and hurtful beasts, to get over 
good and profitable cattle, to plant and sow their grounds, and the like, all 
which be matters of great labor, time, and expense. We see in daily practice 
with us, a man that is a purchaser till he hath recovered his fine and stocked 
his living cannot be aforehand and get wealth about him; nor can they there till 
they have done those and otherlike things which are to them, as it were, their 
fine and income. It is well if seven, or ten, or twenty years hence, haply in 
the next generation, men can attain unto riches. It is enough for the fathers to 
take in the grounds and settle the lands and livings for them and theirs against 
the time to come, though for the present and for their own time they hardly 
stand up and meet with some difficulties. 
Secondly, men there can, making nothing of their grounds yet farther than any 
can themselves, employ them to pasture or tillage. It is not there as in 
England, where if a man have little stock or employment of his own for his 
grounds, yet he may let them out at a reasonable rent; but there more than a man 
can stock and till himself lies still and will yield him nothing at all. Make it 
your own case. If you had the best living in this parish in fee simple and had 
little to put upon it, nor could get any to rent it at your hands, could you 
grow rich in haste? This is their case. 
Respire. Your speech is very reasonable, I must confess; but go on, I pray you. 
Enrubie. Thirdly, all in manner that have gone over hitherto into any of these 
parts are poor men, men of small means and therefore with little or nothing; it 
is not possible they should in a little time attain to any store of something, 
and the less possible for that the benefit of their labors redounds for the most 
part not to themselves but, as in regard of their great adventures and expenses 
reason is it should, to the benefit of rich men here that have sent them 
thither. 
Fourthly, divers of them that have gone over have been bankrupts and 
spendthrifts, idlers and loiterers, who, as they thrived not in England--for how 
should they thrive that run thriftless and heedless courses?--so will they not 
commonly in any land. Caelum non animum mutant, qui trans mare currunt, as saith 
the poet. Weeds will be weeds wherever they grow. 
[Fifthly,] when men of fashion and means do go over that are able to set up 
themselves and others, and that will be industrious to take the benefit of the 
time and place, then I doubt not but it will soon appear what good may be done 
in those places, and that men may, if they will, easily and quickly prove rich 
and wealthy there. Then, and not till then, if riches arise not, let men blame 
the places from whence it was expected they should arise. 
Sixthly, the manner of proceeding in these attempts may also be a great cause 
why men attain to riches there more slowly than they might and should if they 
were otherwise managed. 
As, first, if the plantation begin with a small number, far too little for such 
a business. For then neither can they be able to extend themselves far into the 
countries in a long time, and so not to find out the goodness, sweetness, and 
benefit thereof, nor to set up all kind of necessary trades and faculties among 
themselves whereby they may be able to assist and set one another awork. 
Second, if they that remove hence go sparely and ill provided of cattle, corn, 
and other necessaries for plantation and habitation which those countries afford 
not, impossible it is for them to make that profit and get that increase by 
their lands and livings there which they might if they were well and thoroughly 
provided of such things at the first. 
Seventhly, this is the only way which men in ancient time did find out and 
observe to get riches and wealth withal, to increase and amend their estate by, 
whenas by multitudes of people their country was, as ours now is, so overlaid 
that they could not thrive and prosper therein. Neither were they ever lightly 
deceived, but the event and computation did answer their intent and expectation. 
And no doubt if the like courses be now attempted they may and will, if they be 
well carried, produce the like--or rather, better and speedier--effects to us 
than to them. For we have many helps for peace and war, for shipping and 
navigation, for defense and fortification, for traffic and negotiation, for 
building and habitation, for religious and civil conversation, for skill in many 
needful arts and occupations, which they had not, to further us withal. 
Eighthly, of all other means to get wealth and riches by, husbandry, which of 
all courses of life is that which in those places must chiefly and most of all 
be followed and employed, hath anciently and worthily ever been accounted the 
chiefest, best, and surest. Wherein, though it be somewhat more chargeable, 
cumbersome, and, for a time, uncomfortable, to enter into a void and desolate 
country, overgrown with woods, thickets, and otherlike, yet who knows not what 
great odds and advantage to the getting of riches and wealth there is, first, 
between the breaking up of such grounds as were never yet employed but, having 
lien waste, untouched and untilled from the beginning, have all their sweetness 
and fatness in them, and the tillage and usage of poor and hungry soils that 
from time to time have been turned up and worn out to the uttermost; and then 
betwixt the having of great and goodly lands--for there one man may easily have 
as much as ten or twenty have here--and of small and simple tenements? 
Ninthly, when Brutus came first into this land, who would have imagined it would 
have proved so goodly, so plentiful, so fruitful, so rich, so excellent and 
happy a land as we, God be praised for it, do find and all the world about us 
doth know it is? And who but sailing along the coasts of any of those new 
countries, or but going ashore here and there, not above a mile or two, haply, 
within the land, can imagine or conceive, much less know and understand, what 
wealth and riches, what goodly fields and pastures, hills and valleys, mines and 
metals, woods and waters, what hidden treasures and sundry commodities are to be 
found and had therein? 
Tenthly, the name of a kingdom is very great; and what should not, or 
heretofore, what would not, men do to gain a kingdom? By these means opportunity 
is offered unto our land--to our English nation--to get and gain, to possess and 
take, to have and enjoy, together with plantation and habitation for thousands 
and hundred thousands thereof, more than one or two kingdoms, great and goodly 
provinces, that by God's blessing and providence towards us may in time be 
united to the crown, the imperial crown of this land. Which by consequence--for 
what infinite store of riches and wealth, how many places of preferment and 
honor for hundreds and thousands of particular and inferior persons is there 
contained and comprehended within a kingdom!--must needs bring with every of 
them severally riches and wealth of great, and in manner infinite, value and 
estimation. 
Normandy and Aquitaine in France lost, and when 
The English lost in France in the time of Henry the Sixth two several parts of 
that spacious country that had been English near about three hundred years 
before--that is, Normandy and Aquitaine, in the former whereof, saith an English 
history, as minding to express the greatness of the loss by the particulars, 
there were then an hundred strong towns and fortresses, one archbishopric and 
six bishoprics, besides some other towns, destroyed in the wars, and in the 
latter four archbishoprics, fifteen earldoms, two hundred sixty and two 
baronies, and above a thousand captainships and bailiwicks. 
Suppose we now the same had fallen out in our times--and I hope I may without 
offense make use of former and foreign things--would we not, or should we not, 
think you, account it an inestimable loss and damage to the crown and country of 
England, worthy to be redeemed with hundred thousands of our money and goods and 
to be recovered, if it were possible, with thousands of the lives of our men and 
no small effusion of Christian blood? If now contrariwise we may in our days not 
lose but get, not hazard but assuredly have and gain--and that sine sanguine & 
sudore, even without blood or blows, and without any waste or spoil of our 
treasure and state--I will not say the same that we had lost but instead thereof 
some other regions and countries, territories and places for habitation, as 
great and likely in time to prove as good as they, might not this be justly 
accounted a gain and good, an enlargement and increase to our nation and kingdom 
inestimable and exceeding great? 
If the name of a kingdom shall be thought too high and excellent, too great and 
glorious for countries so vast and waste, so remote and obscure as those of our 
plantations yet are, let them be vouchsafed the name but of dukedoms, as 
those I last mentioned, or lordships, as Ireland for a long time was, or by 
whatsoever other titles, parts, or members of a kingdom he shall be pleased to 
style and nominate them. Quem penes arbitrium est, & ius & norma loquendi, as 
one saith, for so we have the thing it is no great matter for the name; yet, if 
there may be had, as the probabilities, possibilities, and opportunities already 
had and made us do plainly declare there may, in one place a country as great at 
the least as that of Normandy, in another place as that of Aquitaine, in a third 
twice as much as they both; that is, such a one wherein there may be in time 
erected, constituted, and made--speaking somewhat, though not altogether, 
according to the former proportions--forty earldoms or counties, four 
archbishoprics, six and thirty bishoprics, three or four hundred baronies, five 
or six hundred towns and fortresses, one or two thousand captainships and 
bailiwicks, ten or twelve thousand parishes, and four or five hundred thousand 
families, shall it notwithstanding be thought that there is no wealth or riches, 
no place of preferment, no hope of dignity or good there to be had? 
Eighth objection 
Respire. If there be such possibilities, yet before the countries themselves can 
be reduced to such a state and such divisions settled therein as you speak of, 
great store of treasure and wealth must be spent and many years of time be 
overpast. 
Answer 
Enrubie. Firstly, for expense: not so much haply as one lingering war, the event 
whereof is most uncertain, must and will consume. 
Secondly, the countries themselves will yield means and money enough, if they be 
well handled, to defray or repay whatsoever shall be needful for the effecting 
of all these with advantage. 
Thirdly, the hazard and loss of life and limb is this way wonderfully saved and 
avoided. 
Fourthly, and for time: sooner, haply, this may be thus effected, at least in 
some tolerable measure, than a country lost can be recovered and quieted; as we 
may observe by the children of Israel, who setting upon the land of Canaan, and 
that with a mighty army, not so few as an hundred thousand men of war, and with 
more than ordinary, even admirable, success, the Lord being ever with them, 
yet were scarcely settled therein all the days of Joshua; and near home too in 
our neighbor country the Netherlands, which being revolted from the Spaniard 
long ago he hath not been able in all our time to reduce to his obedience again. 

Fifthly, and you know, a country being gotten by the sword may be lost again by 
the same--for non minor est virtus, quam quaerere parta tueri: there is more ado 
to keep than to get such a thing--of the which there is little or no fear in the 
attempts that we talk of. 
Sixthly, in a word, both the expectation and the expense for reduction of those 
countries to such effects will and may be speedily and abundantly recompensed in 
the facility, liberty, and security of the getting, settling, and keeping of 
them. 
Wherefore, rumpantur ilia Codro; let froward [sic MW] Envy herself swell till 
she burst again, and detracting Malice or timorous Ignorance speak the worst 
they can; yet all that will not be blind may see, and whosoever will understand 
the truth may know, that there are riches and preferment, much for the present, 
more for the times to come, to be had if men will but take them, and to be 
gotten and gained if they be but labored and searched for, in the places and 
precincts of our present intended plantations. 
The sum of this first part 
And now, I think, good neighbor Respire, I have for the satisfaction of you, or 
of any not perversely minded, sufficiently justified these projects and attempts 
of plantations for the general to be in themselves honorable, needful, gainful, 
and lawful, and for the particular to be neither so dangerous or difficult, nor 
so strange or incommodious as at the first show they may seem to be. 
Respire. You have indeed, in mine opinion, spoken exceeding well to those 
purposes. Your latter words bring to my mind that worthy saying of Solomon 
(Eccles. 11:4), if my memory fail me not. The words, I am sure, be these: "He 
that observeth the winds shall not sow, and he that regardeth the clouds shall 
not reap," and your whole discourse makes me fear to urge you with any more 
objections concerning these matters, as which I see by your ready, plain, and 
plentiful answer to these already moved be to little purpose and will vanish 
when they come to be sifted as smoke before the wind. And if you can yield me 
the like satisfaction in some other points that I conceive very necessary to 
be considered about these actions, I shall like of them a great deal better than 
ever I had thought I should and be as ready to praise and commend them as I have 
been to dispraise and blame them. But therewith I will not trouble you at this 
present but defer it to another meeting, which, God willing, shall be shortly. 
For I shall not be in quiet till I have heard the uttermost that you either can 
say or I am desirous to hear touching these matters. 
Enrubie. I am glad, truly, that our little conference hath so much prevailed 
with you. And I shall be ready, and because I find you so tractable and 
reasonable the readier, to give you the best satisfaction I can in anything else 
whensoever you shall be pleased to that end to come hither again. 
THE END OF THE FIRST PART 





 

To the Right Honorable and very worthy Sir George Calvert, Knight, Principal 
Secretary to the King's most excellent Majesty, peace and prosperity temporal 
and eternal 
RIGHT HONORABLE,
 [T]he fame of your Honor's most excellent and praiseworthy endeavors in 
attempting, following, and applying of a plantation of some of our English 
nation in that remote and yet obscure and desolate country--the country commonly 
called Newfoundland--hath encouraged and emboldened me, a stranger to your Honor 
but a well-willer to all such worthy works, to present unto your Honor and to 
publish under your Honor's name some part of my plain and impolished labors, 
which for the furtherance and hasting on of those most worthy and, at this 
present for our country of England, most necessary attempts of plantations in 
far and foreign parts, but specially and namely in Newfoundland above the rest, 
I have adventured to offer to the common view, in hope and desire somewhat 
thereby to move and stir up our people, chiefly the poorer and meaner 
sort--which for want of plantation abroad are ready by want and penury to pine 
and perish at home--in better sort to affect and addict themselves to the same. 
Which work of mine, though rude and mean, if your Honor shall in consideration 
of the matter and substance thereof vouchsafe to accept and think not unworthy 
of passage abroad, as it shall notably protect my labors from the envious minds 
of the malicious and the carping tongues of the captious, so shall it stir up 
myself with all hearty affection to rest devoted to your Honor's service and 
these employments and to pour out my devoutest prayers to the Highest, the Lord 
of all, for your Honor's all and ever health and happiness. 
Your Honor's humbly to command,
RICHARD EBURNE 






A
P L A I N E
PATH-WAY
TO PLANTATIONS:
That is,
A Discourse in generall concerning the
plantation of our English people
in other Countries 


The Second Part 


 


L O N D O N
Printed by G.P. for Iohn Marriott 




The speakers be
Respire, a Farmer
Enrubie, a Merchant
RESPIRE. God bless you, good sir. According to your courteous offer I am come 
again in hope to be further satisfied by you touching the conference we lately 
had in hand. 
Enrubie. You are very welcome. Let me hear, therefore, what it is that you 
desire to be further satisfied in. 
Respire. The enterprises themselves--plantations, I mean--you have well showed 
me to be in themselves very commendable and good and for our land and nation at 
this present exceeding necessary; yet, as I suppose, there cannot or there will 
not sufficient and convenient means be had for the expedition and performance 
thereof as is requisite, as may appear by the ill success, the giving over, or 
slow proceeding of such actions heretofore from time to time, to the notable 
hindrance of the Gospel, the great dishonor and reproach of our nation, and the 
extreme loss and disadvantage of the undertakers and adventurers; and then 
to what end is it to take in hand impossibilities? 
The best course to be taken for plantations is by act of Parliament 
Enrubie. You say well, and therefore for speedy and due remedy in this behalf, 
especially and above all other things, as wherein alone the true and perfect 
cure of those evils doth consist, it were to be wished that by act of Parliament 
some good courses might speedily be taken throughout the land by which it might 
effectually be accomplished. For plantations, indeed, are properly a matter of 
public and general, and not, as the practice is with us, of private and 
particular action. 
If it seem to any a matter too mean and unworthy a Parliamentary consideration, 
for my part I protest I can in no wise be of their opinion, unless I may plainly 
be taught and informed that it is no part of a father's care to place abroad his 
children as they grow up but to keep them still under his own roof till they eat 
him out of house and home, or of an householder's providence to foresee that his 
meinie exceed not his means, or of the shepherd's duty when his flock is 
increased to provide them larger pastures, or of the gardener's charge when his 
plants and sets are overthick and do encumber the ground to remove and disperse 
them into other plots where having more room they may bigger grow and better 
prosper. 
Respire. Till that may be obtained--which all men know cannot possibly be on a 
sudden, and those attempts being now begun do necessarily require speedy and 
much supply and continual furtherance, lest else, besides all other evils, that 
befall on us which is written in the Gospel (Luke 14:29), viz., having laid such 
foundations and being not able to perform them, all that behold them mock us, 
saying, "These men, these Englishmen, began plantations here and there and now 
are not able to make an end of any one of them"--what courses might there be 
taken for the speedy effecting of them in some tolerable measure and commendable 
manner? 
Enrubie. Till some good course that way, a thing in mine opinion much to be 
desired, may be obtained and provided, if I might be bold to speak my mind--and 
toward a common good why should it not be free and without offense for any man 
as a well-willer to so good a work to speak, since as it hath been well and of 
old observed, Aliquando est olitor opportuna locutus: a mean man may 
sometime speak to the purpose?--I could be willing to acquaint you or any other 
with what inferior courses I have conceived might the mean while be taken and 
followed for the bringing of the same to some tolerable estate and reasonable 
good effect. 
Respire. I pray you, let me hear them; for I hope no man will dislike with any 
man to put to his helping hand to do any good in this great work which so much 
concerneth all, specially whenas you intend not to urge or bind any man to your 
words but leave it free to all men to accept or reject as it pleaseth them. 
What inferior courses might be taken to further these attempts Enrubie. Trusting 
then of favorable acceptation, I will speak what I think. Two things there be 
above all other most material and necessary for such a business to be provided, 
that is, men and money--people to go to the plantation and provision to set them 
forth. Both which, howsoever to some they may be thought impossible to be had, I 
am persuaded if good courses for them might be used, though not without some 
difficulty--and what high and worthy enterprise is there that ever hath without 
some difficulty been achieved?--may sufficiently be obtained. 
Money to be had. First, by voluntaries 
For money, well known it is that many honorable and other worthy persons have 
this way employed much and no doubt intend to proceed accordingly. 
Secondly, by personal adventurers 
It cannot be but that some of those that adventure in person intending there to 
inhabit do and will go, some of them sufficiently and many of them somewhat, 
provided that way. Few will go with an empty purse. 
Thirdly, by general collections 
For procuring what farther shall be needful, it seemeth unto me it were very 
requisite and a thing not very hard to be obtained by some or other that some 
letters patent under the Great Seal of England or otherlike course might be set 
forth for some general and yearly collection or contribution to that purpose, 
and the briefs--books, rather--for it to be directed either to the Lord Bishops 
of every diocese or to the sheriff of every shire, by them to be dispersed into 
every parish. For, likely it is that many well-disposed able men would give to 
this great and worthy work more liberally than to others many of far less 
importance--and yet good sums of money have thus been oft collected--specially 
if men may perceive by the removing and departure of any it redounds indeed, 
as is pretended, to the common good. 
Fourthly, by hospital money 
Probable also it is that the justices of every shire, upon good intimation of 
the cause unto them, would be pleased to bestow some part of that money which 
quarterly at their sessions is received by the name of hospital money toward the 
setting forth of some maimed soldiers or some other poor of the said country 
yearly into some or other of those plantations. 
Fifthly, by moneys given to the use of the poor 
Neither is it improbable that the churchwardens and overseers for the poor, that 
have, as in sundry parishes within this land they have, several portions and 
sums of money by well-disposed people in their last wills or otherwise given and 
bequeathed for and toward the relief of the poor in their parish committed to 
their charge and custody, may be persuaded and drawn or otherwise caused to 
confer and lay out the said portions or sums of money or the greatest part 
thereof in this sort to the setting forth of some of the poor of their parish, 
children or other, that else must within the same continually be relieved and 
maintained. 
Respire. That were very unreasonable, and evil too, I think; for what conscience 
were this to falsify the trust reposed in them and to defraud their poor of 
their relief? 
Enrubie. No evil, no wrong, no defrauding at all, howsoever you upon the sudden 
do so take it; but rather this were a ready way to employ it indeed to their use 
to whom by the donors it was properly intended, whereas now for the most part 
you shall find if you observe it well such moneys and the profit thereof arising 
are converted to the ease of the rich and not to the relief of the poor. And at 
the best hand you can reckon it, if the poor be thereby anything relieved, it is 
but ad diem, for the very present; but being laid out in that manner which I 
mean and mention, the poor and their posterity too, yea, and the whole parish 
from whence it is taken, shall thereby be relieved, bettered, and benefited 
forever. 
But not to make a long answer to so short and shallow an objection: whatsoever 
any shall pretend against that I say, so long as I have the example of that most 
holy and famous doctor of the church, St. Ambrose, on my side, who for redeeming 
of Christian captives brake the very vessels of gold and silver that were in 
his church and, making money thereof, employed it to that use, saying, "The 
sacraments need not gold which were purchased for us without gold," and Aurum 
ecclesia habet, non ut servet, sed ut eroget, "The church hath gold not to keep 
it but to lay it out to good and pious uses," I shall not fear to answer the 
same. I will infer if St. Ambrose did well to employ bona ecclesiae, even the 
treasures of the church, upon redemption of the poor, they cannot be proved to 
do ill that shall employ bona pauperum, the goods of the poor--their own 
money--upon the poor and to their own uses. 
Respire. I see now I did mistake and not you; and I hope you will bear with my 
ignorance and rashness. 
Enrubie. Your words offended not me anything at all, for by your opposition no 
hurt hath risen to the cause. Truth is never better cleared than when it is 
somewhat oppugned and contradicted. 
Sixthly, by moneys given to the use of the church. 
Respire. It seemeth so in this very case; for by your former speeches and 
example methinks I do now see that it were no fault but a good and pious fact if 
such moneys also as do belong to churches, as here and there somewhat to that 
use remaining is yet to be found, were likewise employed to this use we speak 
of, as which in good probability would be more acceptable to God to be bestowed 
in such a necessity as this is upon the temples of the Holy Ghost than upon 
churches made of lime and stone which without these moneys are and may be 
sufficiently repaired and adorned. 
Enrubie. Your collection is good and religious. That must needs be true piety 
which is coupled with pity, for God will have mercy rather than sacrifice. But 
let us go on. 
Respire. I hearken when you will speak of the lottery which you know was set up 
in London and in many places abroad in the country many times for Virginia, as 
it was said. 
Seventhly, by the lottery 
Enrubie. I dislike not the lottery neither, so as it were well used and people 
had the wit not to run out by it to their undoing. But I know it hath lost the 
love of the country, both for that it robbed the country of her money 
wonderfully--for out of our shire only when it was here but a few years ago it 
is thought to have carried away many hundred pounds, so that money was never 
plenty here since--and for that we never heard of any good that was done with 
it. If they that had the employment of it had made known unto every county, 
though severally, what had been gotten out of it by the lottery that year, and 
offered to employ it on so many of the poor of the said county, if they could be 
gotten to go, as it might conveniently suffice unto, it would have yielded the 
county good content for the present and have gained a better welcome to itself 
another time. But the matter being used as it was, if any yet do like of it they 
may adventure it again if they list, who if they would give voluntarily but the 
fifth part of that some of them lost desperately that way--for I know some 
myself that by their own reports lost ten, twenty, yea, thirty pound a 
man--might be counted good benefactors. 
Respire. Of the lottery enough; but besides if you have any more to say I pray 
you proceed with it. 
Eighthly, by some ratable imposition 
Enrubie. If the former courses suffice not, I see not but that some ratable 
imposition might be procured to be laid upon the abler sort, as in time of war 
for setting forth of soldiers, to be employed upon such as shall be transported 
from those parts, the parish, tithing, or hundred where it is raised. And I am 
verily persuaded there is not a parish in the land that would not willingly be 
at any reasonable charge for the setting forth of any such poor body as should 
either voluntarily offer himself or by authority be taken up to go in that 
action from time to time. In truth, I have heard men of good sense and substance 
say they would be very willing to bestow out of their parish twenty nobles or 
ten pounds a year towards the appareling and setting forth of some of their 
poorer sort, so as they might be assured they should not after a year or two, as 
from the Irish some have done, come home again and encumber them worse than 
before. 
Ninthly, by base moneys for those purposes and places to be stamped 
Besides, if it might be thought fit and obtained that for those plantations some 
store of base moneys, as of brass, copper, or little better, might be 
stamped--all English coins and plate of gold and silver being there and thence 
prohibited unless and until the countries themselves do or shall hereafter yield 
metal for them--I conjecture, how probably let others judge, the use thereof 
would prove exceeding beneficial to this purpose. Respire. That were a strange 
course indeed, and is it possible any good this way might be wrought? 
The use and benefits of such money 
Enrubie. Very much, I think. For thereby, first, the wealth of all such as pass 
over--any reasonable proportion in the exchange both for value and valor thereof 
being held--should instantly among themselves be much increased, a thing so 
material as nothing more, for without infinite store of money can be no good 
plantation anywhere. 
Secondly, such as pass over should be occasioned to lade away with them store of 
our English commodities for building, for household, etc., which haply they 
would not have done if they might carry with them their English moneys, and once 
having such things there they will do them more pleasure and good than till they 
come there they could presuppose. 
Thirdly, such as are there should be the more occasioned to use all industrious 
means to get up the commodities of those countries, to barter and truck withal 
for such things as shall merchant-wise be brought to them from hence, knowing 
well that their money will not much be regarded nor received of our men. 
Fourthly, it would make them delight the more in tillage and breed of cattle; 
because silver and gold coins, the very begetters of hoarding covetousness, 
wanting, their chiefest riches must needs consist in corn and cattle. 
Fifthly, they being rich within themselves--for such money while it holds value 
is as good where it is current as any other--should yet be poor to others-ward 
among whom it is not current, which would make them the less desired of and the 
less to fear any such as seek for spoil and prey. 
Sixthly, by this means we should oft receive from them good store of foreign 
coins received by them for fish and other commodities sold to such as come to 
trade there. 
Seventhly, moreover, hereby the great hurt that some imagine is to be feared by 
those plantations in carrying away of our gold and silver would easily, and that 
both to our and their great advantage, be avoided. 
Respire. And in truth, many do complain of the carriage away of our money out of 
our land, and I perceive by you that it is likely a great deal of it goes this 
way. 
Enrubie. It must needs be so if the works go forward in any sort; and then note, 
whatsoever is gone over sea that way never returns again. We receive back but 
either nothing at all or else but some commodities of those countries, as fish, 
timber, salt, etc. And therefore this is a thing in mine opinion that must 
timely and carefully be looked unto, or else the coin and treasure of our land 
will by these plantations, if once they go well and roundly forward, within a 
while be extremely spent and exhausted. For, say for a trial or example there 
should go twenty thousand, and each of them to carry but ten pounds a man--a 
small reckoning and poor stock to begin withal--yet that comes to in the whole 
to two hundred thousand pounds. Now by this, guess of the rest. 
Respire. This is very plain; yet men will hardly hear of this base money because 
of the strangeness and novelty of the matter. 
Enrubie. If any think this matter strange, let him but inquire and he shall be 
informed at full that at the first in all lands such coin was either only or 
most common; that it is not yet much above one age ago in England itself it was 
in use; that in our time Ireland had it; and that this day, if travelers tell 
true, Spain itself, for all her Indian silver mines and golden mountains, upon 
good policy is not without it. And if it were as strange and new a course as it 
is old and common, yet if necessity so require, better it is, I think, to be 
used than some other more usual and less profitable. But leaving that to 
judgment and consideration of the wise and judicious, I profess that for my own 
part I do rest resolved: there can no good plantation be made by us anywhere 
without the use and great store of such base moneys. 
Tenthly, by gold and silver coins 
Yet I say further: if the continuance of gold and silver coins shall be thought 
more necessary for these employments than I conceive them to be, that such a 
course may be taken, the like whereof hath often been practiced in sundry 
kingdoms and dominions upon less occasion than this, that both our present 
coins may remain safe within our land and yet many thousands of pounds in gold 
and silver may be conferred on those that shall dwell and inhabit in those new 
plantations, without any pound or penny charge almost to those that shall the 
same on them for their enriching and encouragement there confer and bestow. 
Respire. I do not well understand you in this; by better thinking on your words 
it may be I shall; but for your base moneys, I preconceive one very great 
inconvenience of it whensoever it shall be called in. The fall of money, as 
experience hath proved in England many times heretofore, will be a great 
prejudice and impoverishment unto all them on whom it doth alight. 
An objection of the fall of base moneys answered 
Enrubie. Firstly, that need not to be feared, unless the countries themselves 
happen to yield better metals, for many generations yet to come. 
Secondly, that loss will be recompensed by the use thereof an hundredfold before 
any such do fall or can come. 
Thirdly, and it may, whensoever it doth come, so equally be divided by times 
that it may so easily be borne that the posterities may have little cause 
thereby to complain that they bear some part of the burden of their progenitors. 
Commoditas quaeque sua fert incommoda secum, no commodity but hath his 
discommodity with it, which must be borne with for a greater good. 
Respire. I cannot dislike that you say. Proceed, I pray you. 
Eleventhly, by frugal expenses in diet, etc. 
Enrubie. If either order might be taken or people be persuaded that they which 
go over might leave behind them that, I will not say superfluity and excess 
which both the place and plenty wherein we live, God be thanked, do and haply 
may afford us, but that variety, costliness, stateliness, delicacy, bravery, and 
abundance in apparel, diet, building, and all other provisions which here many 
do use, it cannot easily be estimated how much it might avail to the speedy 
furtherance and cheap setting forth of these worthy works. Frugality and 
parsimony like that of ancient times will better befit the infancy and uprisings 
of any commonwealth which ever have been and necessarily must be, or else they 
will never frame well, rude and plain. It was never better with Rome 
itself--whose best men, saith one of their best authors, in privatis rebus, 
suisque sumptibus minimo contenti, tenuissimo cultu vivebant, etc., in private 
estates and matters of their own charges contented with very little, did live 
with very slender provision--than when her consuls and dictators were taken from 
the plow and her senators served at the table in earthen plate, and never 
merrier in England than when farmers would wear none other than their own 
homemade cloth, when gentlemen delighted to have plenty rather than dainty at 
their tables, and the best housekeepers held them rather to their own country 
yield than to foreign and far-fetched provision. 
An extravagant 
Some be of the mind that though all other means failed, if they alone that roist 
and riot out their goods and wealth in pride and vanity, in drunkenness and 
gluttony, and otherlike disordered courses--and many there be, woe be to them 
therefore, as witnesseth the Holy Ghost (Isa. 5:11 and 22 and chap. 22:13; Ezek. 
16:40; Luke 16:19, and many places mo)--that indeed do so lavish and waste that 
they have by such intemperate and devilish courses as if they were nati 
consumere fruges, had no other thoughts but how to havoc and spoil and made that 
the very end of their life here to see the end of all before they go hence--if 
these, I say, could be either persuaded or compelled to bestow that, or but half 
that--so luxurious is our land become--which so prodigally and profanely they 
profuse and spend, upon this pious, good, and necessary use, that that alone 
would abundantly suffice to supply all the wants of this work and to bring it to 
a speedy and an excellent end. But since there is little hope that they which 
will not see their own shame and foresee their and theirs undoing and overthrow 
should have any mind or care of others (of the common good), I will not 
vouchsafe the observation thereof any number in my account but leave it as an 
extravagant to themselves and others, not denying yet but that sometimes quo 
minime credas gurgite piscis erit: where is least hope there may be some help. 
Twelfthly, by the godly parsimony of the richer sort at home 
But if the richer and better sort of our people, men of good place and fashion 
whom God hath blessed with plenty and abundance of worldly wealth and great 
store of riches, could be pleased and induced, out of their gratuity to God 
and love to their country and poorer brethren therein, to pare off a little of 
their superfluities and delicacies, which from their tables and their apparel, 
etc., might well be spared, and bestow and employ it upon such good uses as 
these, the helping and setting forth of the poorer sort, the ridding and 
clearing of this their own country which they see overlaid with multitude, and 
the planting and inhabiting of other countries, I suppose without any damage and 
want to themselves they might do a work acceptable to God, beneficial to many, 
and to these works of plantations much available and helpful. I have read of the 
Lacedaemons, a people among the heathen of special note for their virtuous and 
good conditions, that understanding some of their neighbors in a time of famine 
to be in great want, pitying their distress, and having no other ways wherewith 
to relieve them, they did by a general consent save one meal apiece and sent 
that to their needy neighbors, who found themselves thereby wonderfully 
refreshed. I would not wish that any should pinch his body and eat a bit the 
less, or wear a garment the worse for this matter; it would abundantly suffice 
and rise to a great account if those that are able and do abound would spare, I 
say not one meal in a week, nor two in a month, but an it were but the value of 
one week's expenses in a whole year, which without any feeling or sign at all, 
as it were, might easily be deducted from the whole and their bellies nothing 
the less fed and filled nor their bodies anything the worse clothed and covered. 
St. Paul in his time found the Macedonians so ready to well-doing that in their 
poverty, yea, their extreme poverty, their rich liberality abounded even to 
strangers; and I hope it is not out of hope that our rich English people in our 
time may be induced and moved out of their superfluity and great abundance to 
confer somewhat this way on their near neighbors and native countrymen. 
Some of these, or rather all these, courses put in practice--for, singula si 
valeant, iuncta necesse iuneent [sic]--it cannot be there should want in common 
purse money and means (for what can want where money wants not?) for the speedy 
and ready expedition and accomplishment of these worthy exploits. 
Respire. Your conceits for raising of money seem to me to be exceeding good and 
sufficient; but I think you cannot as easily conceive like means for getting of 
people to go to these plantations. 
To procure people to go, what means might be used. Firstly, by proclamation 
Enrubie. For getting of people to be transported, the intended project I see is 
that none be constrained thereunto but only such admitted as of themselves be 
willing and do offer themselves unto it. Which holding, it seemeth to me it were 
good that either by some proclamation or escript in print, notice of the 
intended plantation, together with some declaration of the benefits, 
commodities, and privileges which they of every quality that will go over to 
inhabit there, specially the three first years, shall receive and enjoy, were 
given throughout the land, as well in every parish church as in every market 
town, to try who will be willing. For now many hear not of it at all; many, 
because it is but a rumor, believe not the report thereof; and in a manner all, 
because they have no certain intelligence either of the present state of the 
country to be planted or of the benefit there to be had and of the manner of 
proceeding therein, regard it not. This way, present trial would be made who 
would give in their names to that end, and if the inland do not, yet the 
seacoast towns like enough would somewhat hearken unto it. 
Secondly, thereto it would also further much, I suppose, if therewithal some 
good order might be settled in every city and haven town within the land whither 
they that dwell near thereto might repair for conditions and agreements about 
their habitation otherwhere and transportation thither. When men must seek for 
very notice of these matters a hundred miles or more, it makes them weary to 
think of it. All the helps that can be had for easy, safe, certain, and 
commodious notice and removing will be all little enough and exceeding requisite 
and behooveful. 
Thirdly, likewise, if order could be taken that the removing of those that 
depart hence might be principally made in some parts of the land one year and in 
some another, that so all that upon good notice thereof had and taken be set 
there hence to be removed might be removed all together at once, or at twice 
at the most, this, probable it is, would cause many to be more willing than 
otherwise they will be to depart hence, while they shall see some good store and 
company of their kinsfolks, friends, neighbors, and acquaintance to go away 
together with them. For, going into a strange place, men cannot but, as it were, 
naturally desire both to go and to be there with such as they know before and 
are formerly acquainted with, rather than with mere strangers, and be fearful to 
commit both themselves and all that they have wholly to those that they never 
saw before. 
Fourthly, by provision supplied 
Fourthly, this could not but be a good motive and encouragement to many, but a 
far greater this: if special order shall also be taken that those that shall 
depart hence be supplied most carefully and sufficiently with all kind of 
provisions fit and necessary for the life of man which those parts and countries 
yield not--as food and apparel, corn to sow and plant, cattle great and small 
for breed and other uses, iron, edge tools, armor, etc.--that so having all such 
necessaries duly and ordinarily brought unto them they may have everything in 
their markets to be bought and sold somewhat like as they were used to have them 
here in England. 
And this must be continued not for once or twice only nor at an harbor or two 
but in every part of the plantations and from time to time till the plantations 
shall be able of themselves to stand up and continue without them. If people may 
perceive such order to be settled and like to be carefully observed, as it will 
well comfort the friends of the departed that remain here behind, so it will 
both comfort and encourage those that shall depart hence, seeing themselves well 
to be provided for and not left, being once removed, to all adventures and 
uncertainties. 
This matter is of that moment that it is the first thing and the greatest that 
troubles the mind of any when speech is made to them of departing hence into any 
new country, of dwelling in a foreign land: what they shall do there; how they 
shall live when they come thither. And it takes that deep impression in the 
heart of many that unless they may foresee a clear and evident resolution 
thereof there is no more possibility to persuade them to remove than to run 
themselves into the fire or cast themselves headlong into the sea. This doubt, 
therefore, being once well cleared and people made to see that they shall not 
need to fear this way, people will be three times more willing to go than yet 
they are. 
It is not all one for men to go into any of the present plantations as it hath 
been to go into Ireland, whither if any could go provided of money in any 
measure he needed nothing else. For there he was sure to have anything he needed 
for his money at a better and cheaper rate than in England. But in these places 
he must have all things either carried along with him or brought thither after 
him, and that at a dearer price and higher reckoning than in England. 
People of our breed cannot live as the savages and natives there do, that is, 
more like beasts than men. Whatsoever, therefore, those countries yield not and 
people in these have been used to have must most carefully be provided them, 
lest left destitute that way they seem as cast out into wild and forsaken 
wildernesses and exposed to famine and other miseries too grievous to them to 
bear. 
Respire. I have heard that our men have in some of our plantations felt much 
extremity this way. 
Enrubie. If any such disastrous accident have befallen any, I wish the notice 
thereof buried in the gulf of oblivion; and for my part I neither will revive 
the memory of any such nor by my good will hear it recited by any, because I 
know it will inflict such a wound in these actions as will not be healed again 
by the plaster of five times as many good events. 
Respire. I think so too; for except a man be of a very dull apprehension he will 
quickly thence conclude that men were better to abide and live in poverty, yea, 
in beggary, at home than to perish and die by penury and misery abroad. And 
indeed, no man can say but that better it were that men were not removed at all 
than not seconded and supplied at all. Bona bene. Good actions be then good when 
they be handled and acted in a good sort. But hoping that future times may bring 
forth fairer events, and former perils -- if any have been, for more may be told 
than is true -- produce greater carefulness and diligence, for your courses 
mentioned, though I like them well, yet I cannot believe they will be sufficient 
to work your intended effect. 
Fifthly, by vagrant persons 
Enrubie. If these courses suffice not, as I believe also that they will not--for 
so are men, Englishmen especially, and of them most of all the inland sort, 
wedded to their native soil like a snail to his shell or, as the fable is, a 
mouse to his chest, that they will rather even starve at home than seek store 
abroad--methinks it might be good that strict order were taken to take up all 
such vagrant persons as now contrary to the statute wander about the country 
loitering, begging, etc., of which sort many are strong and able persons, such 
as could and would work and labor well if they were well ordered and employed; 
and that such, I mean the strong and able ones, were set forth at the common 
charge of the place either where they are apprehended or ought to be relieved. 
Sixthly, prisoners 
Sixthly, to these might be added such as are imprisoned and convicted for any 
small offenses not deserving death, as for picking and filching, sheepstealing, 
etc., and some too of an higher degree if the magistrate shall see it good. Of 
these many commit such crimes for very need and pure hunger--for what will not 
necessity, which knows no law, and hunger, which breaks stone walls, enforce men 
unto?--who no doubt, being first chastised and then well governed and of better 
means provided, may prove honest and good men and women afterward. Let no man 
despair, no not of such, remembering and considering well what the apostle saith 
of and to the Corinthians (I Cor. 6:9, 10, and 11, and Titus 3:3, 4, and Gal. 
6:1) and what is written of those that followed David before he came to the 
crown (I Sam. 22:2), which, for brevity's sake, to recite and apply I purposely 
forbear. These of both sorts might be kept in some houses of correction next 
adjoining till they can conveniently be shipped away. This course well observed 
and continued two or three years would so purge the land of evil weeds as Galen 
never better purged his diseased patients nor Hercules the Augean stables. 
Respire. I hearkened when you would reckon up maimed and aged soldiers, of 
whom the Romans in their colonies, as I have heard, made great reckoning. 
Seventhly, maimed soldiers 
It may be; but the state of our plantations and their colonies be very 
different. They provided in theirs liberal maintenance for such as could not 
labor, but we provide room in ours for them only that can labor. Maimed soldiers 
are oftentimes not serviceable and therefore will be a burden to the whole where 
they come. If any of them be fit for labor and able to do themselves and the 
undertakers good, I doubt not but that they which are to provide for them 
allowance at home will be as willing and ready to provide it for them otherwhere 
also, if they may perceive it to be more beneficial for all parties. And in this 
time of our long-continued peace, God be thanked, the number of them is not 
increased but decreased to a small account. When occasion doth so require and 
opportunity serve, there is no doubt but that way they also may be provided for 
and help to make up the number. 
Respire. Proceed, I pray you, with the rest. 
Eighthly, cottagers 
Enrubie. There is yet a better course and a readier than any of the former, and 
that is: whereas there be infinite store of houses erected in corners and waste 
plots under hedges and by the highways' sides, contrary to the statute of 31 
Eliz. 7, if due order might be taken that by a certain day in every year--for 
all, as evacuation in dangerous aposthumes, cannot be done at once--a certain 
number, as a third or fourth part of them, designed for the purpose by time, by 
lot, or otherlike means, might be quite taken down and utterly razed forever, 
the inhabitants enjoined by that day to provide for themselves otherwhere such 
houses as by law ought to stand, or else to depart the land to some or other of 
the places to be inhabited, assured there to be provided for in a far better 
sort. 
Ninthly, inmates 
To these ought to be added another sort no less cumbersome to the land, viz., 
inmates, I mean such as, being in no possibility of the reversion of the house 
wherein they dwell or of any other legal tenement, do, contrary to the statute, 
likewise thrust into houses with and under the right tenants. Of both which 
sorts together the land doth so superabound that in many parishes--I speak but 
what I know--they are half or more than half so many as the right tenants and 
legal inhabitants are. The riddance of them would be an inestimable clearing of 
the country of many an untoward generation and a notable disburdening of many a 
parish of intolerable and annual expenses. 
Respire. These above any other I could wish were rid out of the country; ay, and 
such other poor husbandmen do live much the worse for them. And our land, I am 
persuaded, can never thrive so long as these drones do encumber it. 
Enrubie. Indeed they are a superfluous multitude and fittest of all other to be 
rid away, as who, not only in regard of their personal estates, have for the 
most part little here to trust unto, but also are for their bodies and breeding 
best able--a thing very necessary in these intendments--to endure any hardness 
or labor by sea or by land, within doors or without, whom therefore it were no 
reason either foolish pity of the governors on the one side or covetous favor of 
greedy landlords on the other side should any longer here retain, to their own 
and the whole country's great hurt and encumbrance. 
The states of our land in making of that statute do show sufficiently that they 
both found then and foresaw that much hurt did and would accrue unto this our 
land by this superfluous crew, who, if they had as prudently taken order for 
their placing elsewhere from time to time as they grew up as they did 
providently enact the not placing of them here, long ere this we should have had 
some or other New England filed with thousands of them, made as rich and happy 
by transplantation as now they are poor and needy subjects to our King by their 
commoration; and we should not, as now we are, be pestered with their abode 
among us. 
To forbid them to build here and not to appoint them place to build and plant in 
elsewhere, unless they could have forbidden them to be bred and to breed and 
increase anywhere, was to as little purpose as for a physician to show his 
patient the disease but to prescribe or give him for his disease no remedy. 
Tenthly, soldiers in garrisons. And servants 
If all these courses sufficed not--and yet I am persuaded verily the former 
yield might quickly be of young and old a hundred thousand at the least--I see 
not any sufficient let or just cause why beyond all these both, soldierlike, a 
good great press might not be made of some thousands yearly of persons fit to be 
removed, which being once transplanted thither, as soldiers into garrison, might 
so be severed as might seat them for habitation and set them, being not 
loiterers and thriftless fellows but men of employment, handicrafts, laborers, 
etc., while wars let not, to service and employment for the common and their own 
private good; and also, servantlike, a good number of poor men's children--both 
boys and maids, but maids especially of nine or ten years old and upward--be 
taken up, which according to the statute of 43 Eliz. 2 and 1 James 25 might be 
placed as servants and apprentices with such as go over to inhabit there. 
Respire. If there should be so great a number and such kind of persons as you 
intimate, it cannot be but that many idlers and unprofitable persons will go 
among them likewise, which, likely it is, will do more harm than good. Would you 
then have no respect to be had to some rather than other to go? 
Enrubie. It is true that as it is here at home so it will be abroad. In a 
multitude there will ever be some that are but unprofitable, yet would I have 
none to be left out, so as they be serviceable and not maimed and utterly 
unable, that can be had; because there is some hope that necessity, occasion, 
and opportunity may make many of them to leave loitering there that here haply 
have nothing else to do; and for that their very presence and number cannot but 
be some comfort and strength to the plantation. 
But withal, and above all, special regard ought to be had to draw thither, as I 
have before once or twice insinuated, men of special and present employment, 
that is, men of such trades, faculties, sciences, handicrafts, occupations, and 
employments as are most necessary for a present and uprising commonwealth, such 
as without whom there can be no commodious or good dwelling or living at all 
for men--men of our breed and manner of living--anywhere. For man's life, you 
know, is such as cannot stand in any good sort without the help and supply of 
many, very many, other men besides himself. 
Respire. What sort of persons are those whom you take to be so necessary that 
without them there can be no good plantation or cohabitation for men--men of our 
breed--anywhere? 
Divers sorts of men necessary for a plantation 
Enrubie. They are these and the like: armorers, bakers, barbers, booksellers, 
butchers, bowmakers, brewers, bricklayers, carpenters, chandlers, clothiers, 
coopers, cutlers, dyers, drapers, feltmakers, fishers, fletchers, fowlers, 
fullers, gardeners, glassmakers, glaziers, glovers, grocers, hatters, horners, 
husbandmen, innkeepers, joiners, laborers, lime burners, linen weavers, masons, 
mariners, merchants, millers, millwrights, nailers, net makers, parchment 
makers, pewterers, physicians, pothecaries, point makers, printers, ropers, 
saddlers, sailors, salt makers, sawyers, sieviers, shearmen, shipwrights, 
shoemakers, smiths, soapmakers, soldiers, surgeons, tailors, tanners, thatches, 
tilers, turners, vintners, upholsterers, wheelwrights, wherrymen, woolen 
weavers, etc. Of all these sorts of persons there must go some. Some of other 
sorts, as in a commonwealth furnished there are many, may be expedient likewise; 
but these are all so necessary that it is hard to say which of them all can be 
spared and need not presently to be had. 
Respire. But most of these sorts of people are so well set awork here in 
England, and so necessary for our commonwealth, that few or none of them will be 
induced to go hence and seek their fortunes otherwhere. 
Enrubie. Nay, rather they are so ill set awork here that many of them have as 
much need as any other to seek work, employment, and dwelling otherwhere. For 
there be so many of all trades, sciences, and occupations that one cannot live 
for another. They that be workmen do often loiter for lack of work many days and 
weeks together, and when they can have work are fain to do it better cheap than 
they can afford and were wont to do. So it is with shopkeepers: they hardly 
can find any place where to set up shop, all places being already full and 
overfull. Little utterance of their ware can they make and are often enforced to 
take money so much underhand that they can hardly get or save thereby. 
Secondly, if their own distress and present evil state will not prevail 
sufficiently with men of these qualities to move them to go, considering that 
such must be had and of some sorts of them great store--for without them no 
plantation at all can anywhere be made--such courses may and must be taken, 
partly by the bettering of their estates there, with promise and assurance of 
some good portions of lands, houses, and benefits if they will go, and partly by 
impairing of their estates here with less work and worse utterance if they will 
not go, as may make them either willing or at least content to go. 
Respire. You have spoken much concerning people to be had for a plantation, that 
for this matter I think you have no more to say. 
Eleventhly, ministers of the Word 
Enrubie. Yes, very much. For all these hitherto mentioned, though they be a 
multitude indeed and enough to make a very large plantation out of hand, yet 
without others conjoined with them will they be for the most part but a rude and 
silly multitude. You have forgotten, it seemeth, and so had I too almost--and no 
marvel, for I find them of others but little remembered--one sort of people most 
needful of all others to be had, I mean, ministers of the Word of God, for whom, 
if care be not taken that they may be had and, being had, that they may 
forthwith and condignly be provided for--which is after the example of God 
Himself, who in dividing the land of Canaan laid out the lot of Levi with the 
first, and that a fair and goodly one too, as you read (Numbers 18 and 35)--in 
vain may we look for any notable blessing from God upon the attempts. 
How they may be provided for 
If they be altogether omitted and neglected, or shifted off for the present with 
fair words, or led on a little with beggarly stipends--a profane kind of 
pay--and not made partakers, and that in ample sort, with their people of such 
means as they do live upon, viz., trade, turf, and tithes, farewell good 
ministry there forever. Their portions once seized and settled in the hands of 
laymen, as too much experience shows here at home, will never in good and due 
manner and measure be gotten out again. Wherefore, as it is necessary and 
fit that the countries be presently distincted into parishes, so withal, and 
more than so, necessary and fit it is that the minister's part be allotted and 
laid out with it--a thing at first, before proper and private rights be settled, 
as easy, I hope, to be had as to be asked for, which how much the better it is 
effected, so much the better and the more, be we well assured, shall the work, 
the main work, prosper and please God. 
Respire. But do you think it not lawful to provide for the ministers of the word 
otherwise than by tithes, which many will hardly yield, now in the time of the 
Gospel, to be due to them by God's law? 
Enrubie. Whether tithes be due de iure divino, I leave to divines. But taking 
that only which all be agreed upon, that is, that the minister must have a very 
competent, liberal, and certain maintenance, which cannot be less than the 
tenth: for allotting thereof, whether they shall like better to follow the 
example of our own progenitors, the ancient inhabitants of this land, who, 
imitating God Himself in His practice before touched, as we may see with our 
eyes everywhere, though a great part thereof be now taken from the church by 
impropriations and abridged to the church by customs, prescriptions, and 
otherlike, did not account the church to be sufficiently provided for unless 
besides tithes and oblations it were endowed with some fair portion of good and 
convenient ground called the glebe, or instead of both--both tithes and 
glebe--to allot and allow the church a full tenth of ground only, I mean, the 
tenth part of every man's tenure: as he that hath a thousand acres of ground to 
allow an hundred of them to the church and so to pay no tithe at all, as which 
would be more troublesome to the minister to gather and more grudging and 
laborsome to the parishioner to lay out, as we find by daily experience here in 
England, I see no great cause why any should refuse or dislike it. For either 
way the minister may have a very sufficient, stable, and certain maintenance. 
Respire. This latter way ministers of churches shall be too much encumbered with 
husbandry and distracted from their studies. 
Enrubie. They may easily avoid that if of the whole they reserve out for 
their own table a reasonable quantity only--as their glebe here in England--and 
divide the rest into tenements which they may let to other men that may yield 
them rents and fines--as do tenants here in England to their landlords--after 
which sort also there be in England some lands belonging to benefices with 
cures. 
Respire. I have made you digress a little too much, haply, by my so many 
questions. I pray you, therefore, now return to that you were saying. 
Twelfthly, other scholars for teaching of youth 
Enrubie. Besides these ministers of churches, whether it shall not be requisite 
that as great a number almost of other scholars for the teaching of children and 
training up of youth, as well in the languages as in all other good literature, 
be likewise procured and sent forth--for, as it is not fit, so indeed it is not 
always possible the ministers alone should undergo this charge also--I leave it 
at large to every man's consideration. 
Respire. That such men, viz., ministers and schoolmasters, should be had, it 
must needs be granted to be most requisite and necessary; but I believe it will 
not be very easy to procure them. For scholars nowadays are most of them of a 
tender breed and such as will hardly brook the seas; and England is provided of 
many good means of maintenance for them and therefore they will be loath to seek 
after less and worse otherwhere. 
Means that may be used for procuring such men to go 
Enrubie. To furnish the ministry and schools, the universities of our land, 
solicited thereunto, cannot do less than send forth either of them yearly some 
few, an it be but two or three apiece. And there are few dioceses in the land 
besides which, having in them divers sufficient and able men in those functions 
not yet in any measure competently provided for, may not also do the like. And 
fit and necessary it is that for the encouragement of men at the first to these 
employments there should somewhat more than ordinary shares, as I may say--that 
is, somewhat more than what will hold but while their breath holds--be proposed 
and offered to men of that rank. For in them also the old saying haply will be 
found true, Ducimur omnes praemio. 
Secondly, if neither desire to further Christ's kingdom nor to seek their own 
preferment can prevail with any so far as sua sponte to give themselves to 
so good a work, I see not why the church itself or the bishop himself should not 
be thought to have authority and power enough to thrust forth laborers into this 
harvest and to lay this charge upon such as shall be fit for it, enjoining them 
to go in the name of God, as was done (Acts 8:14 and 13:2 and 15:22, and Gal. 
2:9). 
Thirdly, such course and care may also be had at the first in division of 
parishes that all parishes being made of a competent largeness--and not, as here 
in England too too many are, so little that they yield the minister neither 
one-quarter of a comfortable and goodly congregation or auditory, nor one-half 
of a competent and honest maintenance--both the fewer ministers may suffice and 
they that be may have competent and commendable allowance to live upon for them 
and their families. 
Fourthly, also, it must be considered that if scholars, that is, graduates and 
men of note for learning, cannot be had, it may suffice sometimes that such be 
invited to the ministry as are of mean knowledge, so as they have good utterance 
and be of sound and honest life and conversation. 
Respire. I did little think that you would have thought any such fit for that 
place. 
Enrubie. Why not? In England itself we are fain sometimes to receive such into 
the ministry, and I believe so it will be as long as England is England; much 
more may it be borne with in the infancy of a church; where neither schools nor 
other means for learned and able men are yet planted better such than none. 
I have read in an ancient ecclesiastical history that on a time there were two 
laymen that made a voyage unto the Indians, and remaining there a good while 
they did in the best manner they could inform and persuade many of them to the 
Christian faith and found the people very tractable. At length, returning home, 
one of them, whose name was Frumentius, coming to Alexandria, his city, goeth 
unto the bishop of the place, which at that time was Athanasius, that renowned 
clerk surnamed for his great learning and sincerity in faith oculus mundi, the 
eye of the world, and acquaints him with the matter, praying him withal that he 
would send a bishop and other teachers thither that might go forward with that 
work of the Lord, of which he said there was great hope. Athanasius, having 
called together for that purpose the clergy of his city, considering a little of 
the matter, stands up and saith, "And where shall we find such men so fit for 
this employment as yourself, Frumentius, are, in whom is the spirit of our God?" 
And thereupon presently, all the rest approving it, he made him a minister and a 
bishop and sent him back with others forthwith to furnish what he had begun, and 
the Lord made the work to prosper in his hand, confirming the word with many 
signs and wonders following, saith the history. 
By this story you may see that holy men of God, even in the primitive church, 
did not stand much upon it to admit mean men and not professed scholars only 
into the ministry where they saw other gifts correspondent; and withal that 
bishops used in those times, and had power and authority, to send forth men into 
foreign countries to preach and plant the Gospel. And of these kind of men let 
this suffice. 
Thirteenthly, men of name and note to be governors, etc. 
But then farther, besides these last mentioned, and above all these hitherto 
spoken of, I add, there must be by some means or other drawn and induced to go 
as governors and leaders of the rest some store of men of name and note--men by 
whose power and authority, greatness and gravity, purse and presence the 
multitude afore mentioned may be encouraged, ordered, and guided. Common sense 
and reason can sufficiently inform every man that no body can consist without a 
head, nor army without a general, no company without a conductor, and no society 
without a ruler. And Nature herself, teaching the Amazonian bees not to swarm 
without their lady and the cranes not to fly without their leader, may easily 
teach us that we shall transgress the very order of Nature and neglect that 
instinct which is engraffed in all if we shall make such a removal without the 
conduct of such men as for their place and power, birth and breed, may be fit to 
order and rule, to support and settle the rest. And if men of this rank would 
once roundly set their foot to this way and their hand to this work, as Moses 
did with the elders of Israel towards the land of Canaan, Aeneas and the noble 
Trojans into Italy, and Brutus and his allies for this land, it were not to 
be doubted but their example and industry would more prevail in one year or 
two to draw multitudes with and after them than all the projects hitherto, 
without such attempted, have procured. 
Respire. If men of place and authority in the temporal state--for of them only 
you seem to speak--be so necessary unto such a work as you seem to imply, 
methinks it should be as necessary likewise that there should go some that may 
carry like authority and place in the estate ecclesiastical. 
Fourteenthly, and that in the ecclesiastical estate as well as in the temporal 
Enrubie. I am of the same mind also. It cannot be but requisite and necessary 
that, as well for the governing of ministers themselves already made as also for 
the ordering or making of more where need is, for the institution of them to 
churches, for the division of parishes, the endowing, erecting, and consecrating 
of churches, and otherlike episcopal and ecclesiastical duties and employments, 
which must be followed and exercised instantly if we mean to make a Christian 
and religious plantation indeed, there should go some one or more, according to 
the greatness of the plantation, to be bishop there, and some others besides 
that shall exercise under him or them ecclesiastical authority and jurisdiction, 
lest faction and confusion, like tares among the wheat, grow faster there than 
religion, order, and peace of the church. 
Respire. Now I suppose you have said enough for this matter--more it is, I am 
sure, than ever I heard in all my life--and so much as makes me think certainly 
that if in such a sort as you have implied and with such persons a plantation 
were set forth, then it would prosper indeed. 
Enrubie. You think I have said all in all that can be said; but I tell you there 
is one thing yet unsaid which in mine opinion is more material than any one 
thing whatsoever hitherto mentioned--that, indeed, which must and would give 
life to all the rest, and without which the whole attempt wheresoever it be 
seems to me to be like a building on the sand, which you know will in the end 
have a fall, and the fall thereof will be very great (Matt. 7:27). 
Respire. I long to hear what that should be, for I can conceive nothing to 
be so much yet wanting to this work. I pray you, hold my thoughts in suspense no 
longer. 
The fifteenth and chiefest of all is that his Majesty would entitle himself king 
of that country in which the present plantation shall be 
Enrubie. This it is: that his Majesty would be pleased to entitle himself king 
and supreme governor of that country wherein the plantation shall proceed, as at 
this present of Newfoundland, that so they that plant and dwell there may know 
directly and expressly under whose dominions they dwell and so rest thereby 
assured of his regal protection and defense upon all occasions as well as if 
they remained in England. This, this obtained, would encourage and embolden many 
that now doubt and fear to go willingly and to adventure goods and life therein 
resolutely. This would make them joyful and jovial to proceed who now are 
doubtful and fearful, as those that cannot tell in whose land and within those 
kingdom it is that they shall dwell there and that would be loath to dwell but 
within his Majesty's dominions. 
Respire. That is known sufficiently by his Majesty's letters patents granted to 
sundry honorable personages and other that send thither. 
Enrubie. It is known to them that have the patents but it is not known to all 
them that should go under the patentees. It is also well known by common fame 
and rumor but it is not so well known as if by proclamation it were published in 
every town and city; not so well as if in every church he were prayed for by the 
name of king of that country as well as of England, France, and Ireland. 
Respire. This must be a matter of great moment, out of doubt. It puts me in mind 
of somewhat that I read a great while ago in our English chronicles in the time 
of King Edward the Third, viz., how that when he made claim to the crown of 
France, to which he was the next lawful heir and successor, yet all his certain 
right and just claim notwithstanding, some of his allies and confederates beyond 
sea, being but voluntaries, refused to assist him in arms unless he would first 
and until he did take on him the style and title of King of France. 
Enrubie. By that you may perceive there is something in this particular more 
than many do conceive. And now, touching these two main points before 
mentioned, viz., the procuring of men and money to such a business as we entreat 
of, let this suffice. 
Respire. And well it may; for unless it be, as you said before, by act of 
Parliament, which alone is able to settle an absolute course for these excellent 
designs, this is as much, I think, as by most inferior courses can well be 
effected; but yet for my further satisfaction, let me, I pray you, be bold to 
move unto you a doubt or two more that come to my mind. 
Certain objections answered 
Enrubie. Do you so. I shall do the best I can to put you out of your doubts. 
First objection 
Respire. The course you intimate is a matter of great expense. 
Answer 
Enrubie. It is indeed; but thereof say I, first, many a particular will bear and 
discharge his own, othersome a great deal of his own, part. 
Secondly, a great part of the expenses will soon be repaid again: some in the 
commodities thence returned; some in the easement and disburdening of their 
wonted charge and encumbrance here at home. 
Thirdly, people cannot live anywhere without expense. 
Fourthly, be it a matter of some good quantity that must arise out of the common 
purse, is not our whole land able to bear it? Suppose there should go ten or 
twenty thousands yearly for a time unto our plantations, what were that, with 
the help of particulars, to England's purse? If in time of war it were able 
without any grievance, almost any feeling, to maintain six or seven, yea, ten or 
twelve thousand soldiers in the field the whole year, from year to year, for a 
time, as easily might it be able, or else I am much deceived, to transport, and 
that with very competent provision yearly, twice as many thousand persons at the 
least into those plantations. 
Second objection 
Respire. The removing of so many may seem superfluous. 
Answer 
Enrubie. I will not say but I may be deceived; but surely, in my conceit it were 
necessary that there should go rather more than fewer than I have said. My 
reasons are: 
First, the multitude that aboundeth in our land is so exceeding great that 
without great riddance the benefit thereof at home will be little seen and less 
felt; for more will yearly arise than are removed. To draw out a proportion 
somewhat fit in this case: there are in England only at this present eight 
thousand parishes at the least, as I conjecture, and certain it is, as all the 
church registers in England, I think, will justify, there are more born every 
year than buried. Say but two in a parish one with another and that is with the 
least, I am sure, yet that amounts to sixteen thousand in one year. The increase 
being such, what decrease there had need be made to bring the whole to abide 
somewhat equal may soon be perceived. Farther, let men look back to the 
beginning of the late Queen's reign or thereabout and see in what state the land 
stood then for people and he shall perceive that even then it did begin to 
exceed; so that unless it may again be reduced to that mediocrity at least, and 
there stand, it can be in no tolerable estate. This cannot be effected but by 
such a number at least removed as I have intimated. 
Respire. Indeed, within my remembrance, that is, within these forty or fifty 
years, our parish is increased in such a sort that there be now almost twice as 
many houses in it as once there were, and these newly increased but cottages, 
most of them set up in waste places of the highways, the inhabitants whereof are 
nothing but a burden unto us and do very much trouble and annoy us that be the 
ancient tenants and true householders; and I perceive that the removing of one 
or two of them were to little purpose. The greatest part of them, or rather all, 
if it were possible, must be rid away or else we shall be little the near for 
it. And so it had need be, in your understanding, the whole land over. 
Enrubie. You conceive me aright. 
Secondly, farther, the plantations now in hand are divers; these all cannot be 
settled in any form, nor brought to any good estate, without the like numbers 
transported whereby they may be enabled in every of them, first, to occupate or 
take in forthwith such a large continent of ground as may be fit for settling 
the bounds of their plantation there; secondly, that they may be able to begin 
their cities, towns, and parishes in such reasonable spaciousness as may become 
so worthy an attempt, which cannot be unless their number be such that they may 
have to begin withal for every city they build a thousand, for every market 
town an hundred, and for every country parish twenty or thirty households at the 
least. Which begun with such convenient distance and sufficient ampleness of 
ground annexed may admit in time a double or treble increase. 
And, thirdly, to have and set up among themselves all manner of sciences, 
trades, handicrafts, and employments necessary and convenient for the 
cohabitation and life of man. 
Third objection 
Respire. This would require a greater number than yet you have spoken of: I 
think, so great out of all question as in all England is not to be had. 
How great a number in England may be spared for plantations 
Enrubie. I am not of your mind. Few men do well consider what a number for such 
a purpose in all England is to be had if there were once good courses taken for 
the having of them. For my own part, truly, I am fully persuaded that there are 
few towns and parishes in England but have in them of all sorts one and other 
that might to such a purpose be spared enough to make and plant in such a sort, 
as I have said before, as great a town and parish in some new plantation as that 
within England in which at this present they do dwell and abide, a number, I 
suppose, sufficient presently to furnish at large more than all any one 
plantation that is now in hand. 
Thirdly, the attempts, at the beginning specially, cannot but be liable to some 
dangers of the enemy. If, then, their number be but small, and they go forth, as 
hitherto, by scores or hundreds, alas! What strength can they be of, either to 
subdue the borderers or resist the invaders? The adversary may wait a time at 
his best leisure when they are grown a little worth the rifling to displant them 
of their seats, and as to the French in Terra Florida the Spaniard did to 
dispatch them of their lives. Whereas, if they go out by thousands, or ten 
thousands, as all good plantations should and ever have done, first, they shall 
be able to withstand and, if need be, to subdue the naturals adjacent; and then, 
within a few years, partly of themselves and partly by the assistance of their 
confederates, which the stronger they see ours to be the firmer no doubt will 
they be unto them, they will by God's blessing and aid be so well fortified by 
land and provided by sea that they shall as little need to fear any foreign 
forces there as we, God be praised, do here, and haply grow no less famous 
for martial and civil policy both in that continent than our nation is in this. 
Fourthly, now it is a fit time, and we are well at leisure for such a purpose, 
to attend such an employment; whereas, if any trouble, if any wars by sea or by 
land, should arise us here--and do we think, or are we sure, these halcyon days 
will ever hold?--we should have neither time nor means to spare to prosecute any 
such business abroad. As, therefore, a man that will build a great house must 
follow it closely while the summer lasteth and the weather is fair lest the 
winter come on which will both hurt and hinder his work; so it is good for us in 
this fair time of peace and summerlike weather of leisure and liberty to follow 
these businesses with speed lest in time we say, "Had we thought this." We know 
post est occasio calva. This is a point of that worth and weight that it alone, 
methinks, should be enough to stir up all England to take heed that she do not 
sit still (Judg. 18:9) and let it slip out of her hands, for saith the poet: 

Nec quae praeteriit, cursu revocabitur unda: Nec quae praeteriit, hora redire 
potest, 

that is: 

Nor can the tide that's ebbed and gone,
int's proper course revoked be:
Nor can the time when once it's past,
return again, we plainly see.

Fifthly, if this work should be intercepted by any unexpected accident before it 
be brought to some perfection--that is, that the present plantation may, if need 
be, for a time subsist of itself--in what a misery should they be, poor 
wretches, that have adventured the first attempt! And, which God forbid, who can 
tell, if we dally and delay and make not greater speed thither and thereabout 
than yet we do, whether some other nation of better spirit and worthier 
resolution may not, to our great shame and confusion, step in before us and stop 
the gate against us? 
Sixthly, besides, the setting forth by great numbers is no small 
encouragement unto them that do go forth for the present and a notable 
inducement to others as unto a hopeful business to second them from time to time 
hereafter; whereas, on the contrary, as experience plainly proves, this going 
forth by handfuls discomforts them that be sent away, emboldens the adversary, 
discredits the action, and--but who can reckon up all the evils 
thereof?--discourageth everyone that heareth thereof to adventure either his 
person or his purse in it, as doubting lest the attempt come at length, as 
otherlike heretofore have done, to just nothing, and that they which are thither 
gone are, as banished and condemned persons, but cast away. 
These causes and reasons considered, I rest confident that it is necessary there 
should into these plantations be removed yearly for a time ten or twelve 
thousands at the least. 
Whom these satisfy not I might send to the beehives, where they may observe that 
the smallest swarms do seldom prosper but the greatest never lightly fail; or to 
the locusts of the earth, in whom Solomon (Prov. 30:37) noteth this for a point 
of their excellent wisdom that they go forth by heaps or great troops. But not 
resting thereon, though these natural experiments are not to be despised, I will 
remit them to one of the greatest politicians that ever was among men, I mean, 
Moses, a man full of the spirit of God and all wisdom, who, conducting the 
children of Israel to the landward of promise, a land formerly inhabited, a land 
already builded and planted, a land reasonably well cleared of woods and wild 
beasts, yet tells them--whose number was not small, as this one instance may 
declare, viz., that when they came out of Egypt there were of them men, besides 
children and strangers, six hundred thousand, and this withal that when they 
passed into the land, forty years after, under the hand of Joshua, out of two 
tribes and an half that dwelt on this side Jordan there went forty thousand men 
of war to assist the rest--that therefore the Lord would not destroy their 
enemies all at once but by little and little, lest the wild beasts of the field 
should increase upon them (Deut. 7:22). Whence they may gather that if so 
great a multitude were in Moses' opinion with the least to inhabit an empty land 
of no greater continent and spaciousness than that was, and it were but for fear 
of the increase of the wild beasts against them and therefore good policy, and 
for a time it were better some of the men of that land, the former inhabitants, 
were suffered to remain among them till themselves were more increased, then may 
not so small a number as we commonly send into our plantations suffice thereto, 
and that some greater number than any yet I have intimated, rather than a less, 
all things considered, were rather more requisite and necessary. 
Fourth objection 
Respire. This, the removing of so great a number, will be a great weakening and 
impoverishing to our land. 
Answer 
Enrubie. No, none at all. For, first, the strength of a land consisteth not so 
much in the number of people as in the aptness and ableness of them unto 
service. Now, whoso will not be blind cannot but see that this multitude, whose 
removal should chiefly be intended, is neither apt for want of education, being 
of the ruder sort, nor able for want of means, being for the most part of the 
poorer sort, to strengthen us. There may be more doubt of them rather lest in 
time of peace they raise tumults and fall to uproars for their bellies' sake, 
and in time of war lest they join with the enemy and take parts against us for 
our pillage and livings' sake, than hope that in peace they will enrich and 
benefit, or in trouble assist and strengthen our commonwealth and country. 
Secondly, if number only be respected, it will no whit be impaired but rather 
bettered, not diminished but augmented, in that so great a multitude of us being 
planted otherwhere shall become, as it were, another England, ready and able 
upon all occasions to join with this. Indeed, if such a number and multitude as 
is needful to be removed should either die in our land or be translated out of 
our land into some other prince's dominion, the want of them might haply be some 
loss and lack unto our land; yet when for forty of [sic MW] fifty years ago it 
was not so overcloyed and pestered with multitude as now it is, it was not 
found, God be thanked, to want strength, but abiding still subjects to the 
same king and members of the same dominion, being made by the benefit of 
plantation more available to the one and serviceable to the other than before, 
so far is it off that the absence and want of them shall weaken, that out of all 
doubt it shall notably strengthen our land. 
Thirdly, as for the impoverishing of the land this way, there is thereof nor 
probability nor possibility, seeing the greatest number of them, whose 
transplantation is most necessary, are they that above all other do for the 
present by their abiding here impoverish and beggar it. For on them is bestowed 
yearly the greatest part of all that money, the sum whereof is almost 
inestimable, which is by overseers and churchwardens in every several parish of 
the land collected and distributed. And whereas of this sort of people, this 
superfluous number, there are increased amongst us, out of all doubt, here in 
England alone within these fifty years, not so few as an hundred thousand (I say 
not persons but) families, I presume if view thereof were made it would appear 
that among them all there would hardly be found one thousand of subsidy men, as 
you may perceive by the state of our own parish and others near adjoining, 
wherein if there be now any more subsidy men than were in the Queen's time, they 
are such only as are of the ancient inhabitants and tenants, and not one, or 
scarce one, of the late and new increase. 
Fourthly, if there do remove hence any of the better and richer sort that shall 
and may carry some store of wealth with them, as there must if ever there be any 
good plantation indeed anywhere, yet the number of them both will and need be 
but few in respect of the rest; and whatsoever the land is damnified by that 
they carry with them, it will soon be recompensed: partly by their absence; 
partly in the estates of those which shall be, by having their livings and some 
other of their means, enriched and bettered by their removal; and lastly by the 
commodities and benefits which from and by such cannot to this land but redound 
again out of the plantations. 
Respire. But the revenues of the crown must needs be by this means extremely 
spent and diminished. 
Enrubie. That the revenues of the crown of England should thereby be exhausted 
or impaired seemeth in mine eye so improbable that, altogether contrariwise, it 
seemeth and must needs be the readiest way and surest course that can be 
exceedingly to augment the same both at home and abroad. 
At home in that they which remain behind shall, the land being thus disburdened 
and cleared, the better reap to themselves the benefit of the land and so grow 
and increase in wealth that they may be enabled to pay to his Majesty with the 
more ease and alacrity and in more quantities his dues and impositions; whereas 
now, what by the charge they be at for relieving many of these that now encumber 
their parish on the one side--a charge not so small in many parishes yearly as 
their part of one whole subsidy to the King--and what by the extreme fines and 
rents whereto their livings, and the high prices whereto all things to live by, 
through the excessive multitude of people in our land, are racked and raised on 
the other side, even they that have reasonable good livings and means are so 
kept down and, as it were, eaten out from time to time, that they are worse able 
now than either they or their predecessors for thirty or forty years past either 
to keep house or pay impositions and duties required. 
Abroad, whileas probable it is that by the good of plantation they which go away 
from hence very poor may within a little while become very rich, they that here 
were but needy and of mean estate may there arise to be, as we term, men of 
substance and good ability, subsidy men themselves, and so yield profit and pay 
to the King's coffers in such store and plenty that, by God's blessing attending 
on men's endeavors, the income thereto from such only--that I speak nothing now 
of what may in great probability arise by those great hopes of pearl, metal 
mines, etc.--may within a little time equal if not surmount the present revenues 
which now all England yield, whereby, by the help of God--for of the event, if 
the fault be not in ourselves, there is no doubt--his Majesty shall have less 
cause than hitherto to be either chargeable or beholding to his subjects at 
home and yet be as rich in treasure and as well stored in money and means for 
wealth as any monarch in Christendom. 
Respire. I have heard some men better learned than myself say that the truth is 
never better cleared and manifested than when, by adversaries of the truth 
seeking to darken it, it is oppugned and contradicted, which I see verified in 
our conference. For the longer we talk the more I find mine error and ignorance; 
and the more I object against you the better appears the soundness of your 
opinion about the things we have talked of. 
Enrubie. Whether you spake as you did of ignorance or for trial to prove what I 
could or would say in these cases, it is not greatly material. I have spoken 
nothing, I hope, but what is fit and probable in the cause, and the same in such 
sort as may suffice to satisfy you or any other that will with verity and 
probability be satisfied in these points; and therefore I trust that you will 
take all that I have spoken in good part as proceeding from a mind that would 
willingly gratify all but offend none. 
The sum of the Second Part 
Respire. You have in truth satisfied me to the full concerning those things of 
which I desired a resolution and did somewhat doubt with myself that it was not 
to be had. For now I perceive that to make a good plantation store of people to 
inhabit and store of provision to enable them to inhabit it are necessary. I 
perceive also that our land is able to afford both--both people and 
provision--plentifully, if good courses might be taken for procuring them. 
Wherefore, as I cannot but acknowledge myself much beholding unto you for that 
you have brought me out of error into the truth, as out of darkness into light; 
so I cannot but profess that I now wish with all my heart that I might live to 
hear and know these or some of these worthy, commendable, and necessary projects 
brought to some good effect, and will from henceforth be as ready to encourage 
and persuade others thereunto as I have been heretofore to discourage and 
dissuade them therefrom. 
Enrubie. If you be so well minded, whereof I am very glad, then you have done 
contradicting, and I shall not need to bethink myself of any further answers. 

Respire. I have done objecting and opposing, for I perceive it is to no end; but 
if there do come anything into my mind concerning these projects wherein I shall 
need some better information than I can gather to myself, I will make bold to 
come unto you once more, but that shall be not as an opposite and gainsayer but 
as a scholar that desireth to learn that so I may have mine own mind and 
understanding so well informed and prepared that I may be able to confer with 
and, if need be, to inform others. 
Enrubie. Come and welcome, whensoever you see it good. 
THE END OF THE SECOND PART 






TO THE RIGHT REVEREND FATHER IN GOD, GEORGE, BY THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD,

LORD Bishop of Chichester,
and to the right worshipful Lady,
the LADY ANNE NEVILL his wife,
Richard Eburne wisheth in Christ Jesus
our Lord, all joy and
felicity of body and soul

[I]t is not (Right Honourable and Worshipful) for want of patrons to my work, 
(for such I praise God I need not want, the work itself wanting not favourable 
acceptation with many of no mean estate and place) that I publish under your 
names some part thereof: but for want of better occasion and fitter opportunity 
to express the sincere thankfulness of my heart and mind unto you both; to whom 
I acknowledge myself so far indebted, as doth cause me often to remember, and 
will not suffer me to forget you in my heartiest prayers, and the catalogue 
of my benefactors. To your honour, (right Reverend Father in God) for the great 
good I have received from the fruit of your learned labours, specially that of 
tithes De jure Divino, in regard whereof I do oft acknowledge you to be my 
Master and Teacher, and to you both, for your special and manifold favours to 
the fruit of my body, my eldest son, whom it hath pleased you both long to 
entertain in your service, and even in his rashest years to vouchsafe him, and 
honourably to confer upon him, such preferments as may, by God's blessing, be to 
him, as a beginning, so an occasion of better, and put him and me in hope, that 
you are yet farther willing and ready, if God grant opportunity thereunto, to do 
for him greater things. Accept therefore, I heartily and humbly beseech you 
both, as a token of my thankful mind, this little parcel and participation, with 
others, of these my plain and public labours. The argument whereof, if in 
particular, and directly it suit not with your actions and courses; yet tending, 
as it doth, to the general and common good of this whole native country of yours 
to which I know you wish all good and prosperity, I assure myself it will not be 
distasteful, but grateful to your Honourable minds and affectations. 
This favour, if you shall be pleased to add unto the former, you shall yet 
farther oblige me to pray to him that is Father of all, and from whom cometh 
every good and perfect gift, for his everlasting favours and manifold graces to 
you and yours. 






A
P L A I N E
PATH-WAY
TO PLANTATIONS:
That is,
A Discourse in generall concerning the
plantation of our English people
in other Countries 


The Third Part 


 


L O N D O N
Printed by G.P. for Iohn Marriott 




 
The Third Part
The speakers be
Respire, a Farmer
Enrubie, a Merchant

RESPIRE.
nce again, Master Enrubie, I am come to trouble you a little. For by often 
thinking and, as it were, meditating upon these new and notable businesses of 
plantation, which I hope will, and wish may, take good effect, some things are 
come into my mind that need a better wit and understanding than mine to open 
them to me. I pray you therefore a little to instruct me therein. 
Enrubie. With a very good will. I will do what I may. Ask me what you will. 
Respire. The great and goodly works that we have talked of I see to be exceeding 
good and necessary for our people and means enough to be had for setting them 
forward. What therefore may be the reason they go on no better? 
Causes why our plantations proceed no better. 
First, want of a general resolution 
Enrubie. There may divers reasons or causes thereof be conceived, the main or 
principal whereof, in my conceit, is this: there wanteth among us a general 
and settled resolution to proceed with them. 
Respire. What might work such a resolution? 
Enrubie. A like knowledge and persuasion of the necessity, ability, and 
opportunity that our whole nation hath thereunto. 
Respire. I pray you, speak somewhat of each of these severally. 
Enrubie. I have reasonably well done it already, if you call to mind what hath 
passed between us in conference. For in our first day's labor I showed you 
manifoldly that a plantation is for our land, at this present time, very 
needful. And indeed, it is so needful and necessary that unless God take away 
the present necessity thereof by war or pestilence, or both, if it be not this 
way remedied this land cannot but shortly come for want thereof to very great 
misery and evil. 
And at our next meeting I showed you that there are both people enow and means 
for provision enough to perform such a business, and that in a large and ample 
both manner and measure, if good courses be taken for it accordingly, which can 
be best done by some act of Parliament, if the estates of the land might be 
pleased to take this matter into their consideration as a matter that highly and 
nearly concerneth the common good at this instant. Matters of ten times less 
moment are ordinarily vouchsafed the help and authority of that most high and 
honorable court, and therefore great hope we may conceive that in due time, 
which is even now, this also shall. 
For opportunity, I take it it hath passed between us in our whole conference as 
a matter granted that there is opportunity thereto offered us abundantly 
because--as it is most certainly known and out of all controversy--there are 
sundry places and countries where plantations may be made and our people may 
inhabit if they will. 
Respire. What take you for a second cause? 
Secondly, the want of some good course for it 
Enrubie. The want of some good order and course for such a purpose, such, I 
mean, as may be settled generally all the land over by regal and legal authority 
and not by private agreements and directions only, which, if I be not much 
deceived, will never effect such a work while the world standeth. 
The ancient Romans, well understanding this, never therefore attempted the 
plantation of any one colony or city alone, or of any of those lands they had 
gotten in war, but that first there was lex lata, a special law or public 
decree, much like an act of Parliament with us, made for it, the titles whereof 
were De coloniis deducendis, De agris dividendis, and otherlike. 
Respire. The King's Majesty permitteth any that will to go. 
Enrubie. (1) First, that is more than we do know, whatsoever folk do say; (2) 
experience doth show there must be used to the thorough effecting of any such 
attempt a coactive as well as a permissive power. It is not an easy matter, 
scarce to be hoped for in these days and in our land, to make, if need should 
be, any great army for the field, much less to get voluntaries enough for a 
plantation, considering that it is easier to get careless young men and single 
men to go out of their country unto a warfare than to get settled householders 
and whole families, men, women, and children, to go into a strange country to a 
plantation and habitation. 
Respire. What may be a third cause? 
Thirdly, want of industry in our people 
Enrubie. The want of industry and inclination to labor and take any pains in our 
people, who at this present are so overgrown, as I may say, with that 
pestiferous weed idleness, and so given to immoderate ease and quietness, that 
it is not possible almost to move them to hear of any plantation, which they 
conceive cannot be effected, as indeed it cannot, without much labor and 
painstaking, without industrious endeavors and much diligence. It is reported by 
authors of good credit of Hannibal--that hammer, as I may well term him, of the 
Romans--that his army and soldiers were more hurt and disabled to martial 
affairs by his suffering of them to lie and live in Capua, a city of Italy, but 
one-half year in idleness and luxury, than the whole host of the Romans had done 
in some whole years before. We must not greatly marvel if our so long continued 
rest and peace from wars and warlike employments, our unspeakable idleness and 
dissolute life, have so corrupted and in manner effeminated our people generally 
and for the most part that they cannot endure the hearing, much less the doing, 
of any laborious attempts of anything that shall be troublous or any whit 
dangerous unto them. 
Respire. What remedy may there be for this perilous disease? 
Enrubie. None, or at least none better, I think, than a plantation, as I showed 
you the first day at large. 
Respire. Have you any other cause to allege for our backwardness this way? 
Fourthly, the immoderate love of their own country 
Enrubie. Yes, the immoderate love of our own country. Every man, almost, is so, 
as I may say, besotted therewith that it is almost impossible upon any advantage 
to get them out of it. 
Respire. And blame them not. You know, I am sure, the old saying Fumus patriae 
igne alieno luculentior: "The smoke of man's own country is clearer in his eyes 
than the fire of another." And you have read how the children of Israel, having 
dwelt in the land of Egypt some two or three hundred years, whereby it was to 
them their native country, that albeit they were therein most cruelly oppressed 
by the Egyptians, yet when Moses came to deliver them they were not easily drawn 
to go out of it and that to a good land, a land that flowed with milk and honey; 
and how once or twice, being well on the way, they were ready to make head to 
have returned. And therefore no great marvel if our English people be so loath 
to go out of a good land, so good a land as England is, a land to which scarce 
any in Christendom is comparable, and to go into they know not what wild and 
desolate countries. 
Enrubie. That you say were somewhat to the purpose if it were purposed that they 
should remove which do enjoy and eat the good and fat of the land. But seeing 
they are either chiefly or only intended to be removed hence that have nothing 
here but need and misery; they that have not a foot of ground to rest upon nor a 
house to put their head in; they which by the extreme dearth and want of 
necessaries for man's life are ready to pine and perish; they have little reason 
to be so in love with that country that is so much out of love with them that 
she seems rather a stepdame than a mother unto them, and to refuse and forsake 
that country which will be to them a kind and loving mother indeed; that country 
that is ready to receive them with both her arms; that country where they may, 
if they will, have abundance of that which here they want; that country 
which will vouchsafe them such livings and means to live by as they are sure in 
England they shall never attain unto: as if they had never heard that ubicunque 
bene, ibi patria, wheresoever a man is or may be best at ease, it is best to 
account that for his country, and that it is but mere vanity for men to prefer 
the soil of any region before themselves. 
In a word, all that you say or can say for this point is as far out of the way 
as if you would say because children have been born and bred up in their 
father's house therefore what need soever they have, and how bad maintenance and 
keeping soever they have there, yet they ought not, nor have they any reason, to 
go out of that their father's house and to pass into other elsewhere, tanquam in 
colonias, as into new colonies or habitations, there to be provided for and to 
live in far better sort. 
Respire. I see mine oversight and that all this hath formerly been touched but 
that either ignorant corruption or partial affection so blinded and overruled me 
that I could not so well perceive it as now by this your repetition and 
recollection thereof I do. 
Enrubie. Of this matter, then, let this suffice. And if you have anything else 
to inquire of, proceed unto it, if you please. 
Respire. I have heard both you and others say there be divers plantations now 
either already in hand or to be taken in hand if we will; and I pray you tell me 
by name what and how many they be. 
How many plantations now in hand 
Enrubie. They are these, as near as I can remember: Newfoundland, Summer 
Islands, Virginia, Guiana, New England, and as I hear of late, New Scotland too. 

Respire. What, so many? Then there cannot want opportunity of plantation for our 
people, if we be not wanting to it. And God forbid that so great an opportunity, 
or rather so many and all so fair opportunities--for that also you have already 
showed--should be overslipped and neglected. It may be feared if they should God 
would not be pleased therewith. For what can He do more for us than to make us 
so many and so fair offers for our good from time to time, as one that loveth 
our nation, if we will see it, and is willing, by spreading of it into sundry 
parts of the world, to make it famous and great upon earth? 
Enrubie. You say very well. Happy, therefore, shall we be if we make use of it. 
Respire. But now, I pray you, tell me what manner of countries those are. 
Enrubie. I have already done that also, if you remember well our first day's 
labor, by showing what good is in them to be had, and by answering your 
objections pretended against them as if they were not worth the accepting. 
Respire. I remember that well. But my desire is that you would relate unto me 
the state of those countries particularly, one by one. 
Enrubie. That were an endless and a needless labor--endless, for that it would 
require more than one or two days' time thereto; and needless for that it is 
already done better than I can do it again in several books or descriptions of 
those countries set forth by other men such as have either found out the 
countries themselves or desire to farther our plantations therein, unto the 
which let it suffice that I remit you as by which you may be satisfied for this 
point at full and that at your best leisure. 
Respire. That is a matter of cost, to buy such books. 
Enrubie. A little money will do it. I do not think but that you spend more a 
great deal in any one year in idle and unnecessary expenses which you may spare 
to lay out on these good uses. The books are delightful of themselves, as all 
historical treatises commonly are, and so will be a good recreation when you 
have been wearied other ways. Also they will often put you in mind of these 
things, whereas my relation will be but once; and when you have read them over 
and over they will serve for your children and others to exercise them to the 
reading of English as well as any other books--the sacred histories and books 
divine, that season the soul as well as the understanding with piety and 
godliness, always and only excepted. 
Respire. The countries being so many, is it intended that there shall be 
plantations in them all by the English? 
Enrubie. What is intended I cannot tell. But this I can tell, somewhat to that 
purpose is or hath been attempted in them all. 
Respire. But it is not possible they should all be finished, is it? 
Enrubie. Whether it be possible, God knows, but surely in mine opinion it is 
somewhat unlikely. It is not good to have many works, great works, in hand at 
once. It were better, haply, that some of them were quite given over, or at 
least deferred till some were either finished or brought to some perfection. Vis 
unita, the old saying is, fortior: forces united must needs be the stronger and 
dispersed the weaker. 
A time may come for the filling up and full storing of them all. For if God 
vouchsafe to continue our health and peace in this land, as now of long time He 
hath done, there is no question to be made of it but that were all presently 
removed that our land is able to spare, which doubtless are many score 
thousands, yet within few years it will look again for a new removing place for 
those which out of its yearly increase will be sprung up. And therefore it were 
not amiss but a thing to be wished and endeavored that, though the full 
finishing of some one or two plantations be chiefly for the present followed and 
intended, yet upon a provident, or if I may so speak, a prevident consideration 
of our occasions and wants for time to come, some both possession and plantation 
might be continued in all those countries which by God's special favor to usward 
do at this present rest and remain as it were offered to and into our hands. 
Respire. And which of all these seemeth to be most likely to be the best to be 
set forward before the rest? 
Which of them seemeth best to be set forward 
Enrubie. Divers men, no doubt, will think diversely, as either their affection 
carries or their reason persuades them. Disliking therefore of, and detracting 
from no man's but leaving every man to his own, as I desire they will me to 
mine, this is mine opinion: that if the plantation proceed by hundreds, Guiana 
is the best; if by thousands, Newfoundland is best. 
Respire. I conceive not the reason of this difference, which yet I persuade 
myself you do make upon good reason. 
Enrubie. Any that understands either the state of those countries or the true 
nature of a plantation would easily understand me. 
Respire. Help me to understand it also. 
Enrubie. It is this. If we seek for riches, for good merchandise and goodly 
commodities to be brought hither, the richest country and the wealthiest for the 
present, that also whence with fewest hands it may be returned, is the best: 
such is Guiana. If we seek for room for our overswarming multitudes of 
people of many sorts to be placed in, the most desolate and emptiest country, 
voidest of inhabitants and nearest and easiest for transportation is the best: 
such is Newfoundland. And again, if we plant by composition, Guiana is fittest; 
if by preoccupation--for a fitter English word on the sudden I find 
not--Newfoundland is best. 
Respire. I pray you, explain yourself again a little better, for what you mean 
by planting by composition and preoccupation I understand not. 
How many ways there be to make plantations 
Enrubie. Then are you little acquainted with these courses. The meaning is this: 
we plant by composition when, seeking to gain a country already somewhat peopled 
and reasonably inhabited, as is Guiana, we do upon fair conditions, as by 
proffering them defense against their enemies, supply of their wants, namely, 
apparel, armor, edge tools, and the like, allure and win them to enter league 
with us, to agree that we shall dwell among them and have lands and other 
commodities of them to our content. We plant by preoccupation when, finding a 
country quite void of people, as no doubt in America yet there are many--as was 
the Bermudas, now called Summer Islands, for [a] few years past, and as is at 
this present, for the most part, Newfoundland--we seize upon it, take it, 
possess it, and as by the laws of God and nations lawfully we may, hold it as 
our own and so fill and replenish it with our people. In the first manner, a few 
people may suffice, but to the latter many, very many, are necessary. 
Respire. This is very plain. But why speak you nothing of planting by invasion, 
which some men think to be, as it hath proved to them that have used it, the 
richest, the readiest, and the speediest course of the three? 
Plantation by invasion disliked 
Enrubie. First, because we need it not. There are countries enow besides, and 
such are all those now in hand, in which we may safely plant either by ourselves 
or with others without any invasion or war at all. 
Secondly, if we needed it or any would go that way to work, yet our people 
generally will not endure it. We see they can hardly, nay, they cannot be gotten 
to go and plant themselves where they may do it with all ease and freedom 
that can be, and therefore there is no probability they will once move a foot to 
go and seek out a country by the sword. We read (Exod. 13:17) that God, when He 
brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, would not carry them into the land 
of Canaan by the way of the Philistines' countries though it were the nearer way 
a great deal, lest the people should repent them when they see war and turn back 
into Egypt; but God made the people to go about by the way of the wilderness of 
the Red Sea, teaching us therein how fearful people naturally are of war, as 
willing rather to forgo even an exceeding good land as Canaan was rather than to 
go into it by the sword, and that God Himself dislikes not such a fear. 
Thirdly, that were a double charge. For so our people must go, first, they that 
are men only, as an army of soldiers to subdue the inhabitants and take the 
country, and then after to go men, women, and children to inhabit and keep it if 
they can. For many times in such cases the event of war proves uncertain, 
whereas going where needs no invasion they may make their full remove, young and 
old at first, and rest secure of settling there. 
Fourthly, and for mine own part, I do not like it. I nor am nor can be persuaded 
that it may be lawful for one nation to fight against and destroy another in 
that sort, and upon no better title than the desire of their lands and goods to 
bereave each other of their rights and lives. 
Respire. Indeed, the Scripture saith, "All the whole heavens are the Lord's, the 
earth hath He given to the children of men" (Ps. 115:16), by which words I 
gather that whatsoever country any people do possess and inhabit it is God's 
gift unto them; God hath allotted and bestowed that on them for their portion. 
Which being so, it seems to me to stand with reason and religion both that every 
people whatsoever they be should be permitted quietly and peaceably to hold and 
enjoy their own country, and that it ought not of any by violence to be taken 
from them. We must do to all men, Jew or Gentile, faithful or unfaithful, as we 
would be done unto; and therefore I cannot but like well of your opinion in that 
point. 
Enrubie. Examples there are, I grant, many in sundry histories to the 
contrary, but you know the old rule, Vivitur legibus, non exemplis: we must live 
by laws and not by examples. And therefore till we find better proof than 
practice and further warrant than "Thus and thus others have done before us," I 
hold it not safe to do the like. 
Respire. I see that invasion is neither the best nor so much as a good course 
for plantation. And therefore I marvel how they either are deceived or do 
understand themselves that say, as I have heard some that seem to be of good 
understanding this way, "Invasion and plantation are cousin-germans and so like 
one the other that a man may take a pattern for the one from the other." 
Enrubie. They that say so, and I am one of them, have very fair probability of 
that they say, as I suppose. 
Respire. I am glad then that I made mention thereof, since you are of that mind 
also, for now I hope I shall be made to conceive how that may be. I pray you, 
therefore, declare it unto me. 
Wherein invasion and plantation are somewhat like. Firstly, discovery 
Enrubie.I will, but briefly lest I make you as weary to hear as you seem willing 
to learn. Thus it is: 
There be five things wherein these two actions do very much accord and which the 
one must use as well as the other or else they cannot prosper. The first of them 
is discovery. The party invading, or they that will invade another nation or 
country, must first of all make a perfect discovery thereof, that knowing the 
situation of the place, the largeness or quantity, the state and quality 
thereof, the alliance it hath with other people, near or far off, weak or 
strong, and otherlike, accordingly they may prepare for the attempt. The same 
must they do that will plant in another country. They must know certainly the 
situation of it, the largeness and quantity thereof, the nature and quality of 
the soil, the state of the climate, the temperature of the air, the easiness or 
difficulty of access and entrance unto it, the most convenient places for 
erecting cities, towns, and fortifications there. Also whether it be inhabited 
already or not and how much and in what sort. What kind of people they be, 
likewise what borderers and allies unto it, what fruits and commodities there or 
likely there to be had, what dangers or inconveniences there to be feared, with 
otherlike. For according as they have notice of these particulars they may and 
must proceed. 
Secondly, number of people 
The second is people to make the attempt withal. They that will invade others 
must be sure to raise an army so great and good as in all probability may be 
able either for number or valor or both to match and overmatch the party 
invaded. And they that will plant otherwhere must raise such a multitude as in 
all probability may be able for number and industry in some measure to take up 
and inhabit the country they go to. To go down as Jacob did into Egypt with 
seventy souls and within a few scores of years to multiply and increase unto six 
or seven hundred thousands and above, and to give an onset and prevail, as 
Gideon did, with three hundred half-armed men upon two or three hundred 
thousands of well-appointed soldiers is a matter of admiration, showing us what 
God can do, not of imitation what we may or must do. 
What number of people may suffice to begin a plantation withal Respire.What 
number of people, or how many thousands, may there suffice or be necessary for 
us to begin a plantation withal? 
Roman colonies 
Enrubie. That cannot regularly and certainly be determined. For as to invade a 
country withal the army must be more or less according to the state and strength 
of the country or party invaded; so to plant a country withal the multitude 
removing must be great or small according to the greatness or smallness of the 
plantation and the facility or difficulty of planting by reason of either open 
enemies or suspected friends, with otherlike circumstances and occurrents. This 
is as much as can be said: that without a number somewhat great no good 
plantation can be made at all. And though for mine own part I will speak of no 
certain number, yet this much I will tell you, that I find that the ancient 
Romans, who were a people of great policy and planted many colonies, when they 
sent forth any number of people an it were but for one colony--that is, but one 
city--alone, did never send forth a less number than three thousand, more 
oftentimes. And they were so precise upon the point, as they that knew well 
without a number somewhat great their colonies could not possibly stand and 
prosper, that though they planted divers colonies in one year, as sometimes they 
did, yet they failed not of that number, that is, to send forth to every several 
place three thousand apiece at the least. By which practice of theirs I leave it 
to you and others to judge what is likely they in their policy could have 
thought to have been a sufficient number to send forth to plant a whole country 
withal, wherein they were to settle and employ divers cities, towns, and 
villages at once, and do rest the more confirmed that I am not in error when I 
do intimate or move that into our plantations, being so spacious and ample as 
they are, our people should go forth by thousands and not by hundreds. 
Respire. What is the third thing wherein these actions be somewhat like? 
Thirdly, provision 
Enrubie. The third resemblance is provision for the people. They that will 
invade others must provide and take such order for provision for their own side 
that they want not necessaries for victuals, for armor, and otherlike, which in 
all men's opinion are the strength and sinews of war, lest they be enforced to 
give over the attempt with loss and infamy, or be pressed with famine and 
endangered with sickness and mutinies, which commonly attend the same. And they 
that will plant otherwhere must be sure of provision both of victuals for 
themselves and necessaries for building and other uses till they be settled and 
have of their own there. 
Respire. This is it, as some think, that mars all. For, as it is thought, there 
is no possibility to have provision for such a multitude or great number of 
people as must or need to be removed. And indeed, how can it be possible that, 
ten or twenty thousand removing in one year, they can have along with them a 
year's or--which is the least that may be--but half a year's provision, which 
may sustain them till the country itself can succor them? 
Enrubie. You and they too are very much mistaken. For, as to an army of thirty 
or forty thousand soldiers, provision must be had for them all the time they are 
abroad, but it is not of necessity that they must carry it all with them at the 
first setting forth; it is sufficient if order be taken how it may be brought 
unto them by sea or by land from time to time, weekly or monthly as shall be fit 
and can best be performed; and even so it is for a multitude removing into a 
plantation. And this I hope you will grant is possible enough to be obtained and 
done, and this the sooner if you understand withal that into any of the 
countries to be planted our ships may easily make two, three, or four 
voyages in a year. 
Respire. I see that, as the proverb saith, there be more ways to the wood than 
one. Proceed, I pray you, to your fourth affinity. 
Fourthly, celerity 
Enrubie. That is celerity. In making an invasion there is nothing more requisite 
for many causes than that it be done, when it is once intended it shall be done, 
with all speediness and celerity, a point wherein the ancient Roman captains 
commonly excelled and overreached all other, and their Julius Caesar them all, 
and a thing which oftentimes stood them more in stead than any other project or 
course they could devise. And surely, in making of a plantation I think it to be 
none of the least points to be observed, for many, questionless, are the 
commodities thereof. Nothing is more dangerous than a lingering war and nothing 
more discommodious than a slow plantation. 
Respire. What celerity think you needful to be used in that case? 
What celerity needful in a plantation 
Enrubie. Such that the whole plantation might in some reasonable measure be 
finished in two, three, or four years at the most. 
Respire. That seems a thing altogether unpossible. 
Enrubie. Why so? Is it not possible, for example's sake, think you, that if we 
should make a plantation in Newfoundland there might be sent thither the first 
year so many as might inhabit it all along one side thereof and ten or twelve 
miles into the land; the like on the other side the second year; and the third 
year ten or twelve miles farther on both sides? The rest remaining void in the 
midst may either be filled up in the fourth year, or--if it be not much, and who 
hath yet related the breadth of that country from sea to sea?--remain for the 
spreading of the first number as they do propagate and increase. All which to do 
will not require so great store of people as some haply may imagine, considering 
that the parishes there cannot at first be half so thick and need not be one 
quarter so full as they be here. 
Respire. I do not see but that it is possible enough such a thing might be. For 
we have both people enow and means enough to set them forth withal for such a 
speedy plantation. 
Enrubie. Such celerity used would make a better plantation anywhere in 
three or four years than is likely to be made by any course that I can hear of 
yet used in three- or fourscore years; (2) it would be marvelous comfortable and 
profitable to the people removed; (3) it would secure the plantation from all 
enemies that shall either envy it or endanger it; (4) and it would set us at 
liberty for another plantation otherwhere, which, so well and roundly finished 
in one place, would be a notable pattern and encouragement to any to participate 
in some other. 
Respire. Now proceed, if it please you, to your last resemblance. 
Fifthly, policy 
Enrubie. The fifth is policy, which in both these cases must much be used. There 
must be policy for the getting and policy for the keeping of that which is 
gotten. For getting victory against those they did invade, good martial 
commanders, whose desire and endeavor hath ever been to perform more concilio 
quam vi, by policy and good advice than by power and force, have used in former 
times a threefold policy--honor, preferment, and reward: (1) honor: he that 
first climbed the walls had his crown; (2) preferment: he that showed most valor 
was ever advanced to higher place and office in the camp and army; and 
sometimes, to encourage them all, (3) for their reward they gave them the spoil 
of the enemy. The whole booty was theirs if they could win the town. The like 
must be used in a plantation, that the better sort, men of dexterity, industry, 
and understanding, be preferred to places of preeminence and authority, and that 
all that will adventure to inhabit the plantation be vouchsafed, by a liberal 
distribution of the lands and commodities of the country planted unto them, 
riches and means for them and theirs abundantly and gallantly to live upon. Such 
liberality and advancement will encourage men to go and will quickly make a good 
plantation, which covetousness and neglect of persons will never do. 
Secondly, for keeping of that they have gotten, martial men do use a twofold 
policy, viz., to strengthen themselves and to weaken the enemy: (1) they 
strengthen themselves by making fortifications and settling garrisons, if need 
be, to keep the city or country gotten; (2) they weaken the enemy by taking from 
them their armor, that they shall not be able to resist though they would, and 
by taking of them their children and others for hostages, that they may not 
dare to resist though they could. And they that will make a good plantation 
must, as occasion shall require, use the very like. 
And whereas the people of those parts are all, or for the most part, destitute 
of armor and unskillful in feats of arms, by all means it is expedient so to 
keep and continue them. For, seeing they do for the most part in number of 
persons and strength of body already exceed us, if we suffer them to have armor 
and inure them to use it, probable it is that within a little time they will in 
valor too excel us and so beat us with our own weapons. These be the things 
wherein betwixt invasion and plantation there is so much affinity. To which I 
might add two more: equity and authority, without the former whereof an invasion 
is not bellum but latrocinium, not a warfare but a robbery, and plantation not a 
lawful possession but a cruel oppression; and without the latter whereof neither 
can an army be levied for invasion nor will a multitude of people be gotten to 
set forth for a plantation. But I pass by these, both because of the one I spake 
but little before upon another occasion, and of the other needs no question, 
seeing it is out of question that all the places and countries intended for 
plantations by us are such as in all equity we may, by the law of God and 
nations, enter upon. 
Respire. Your speech hath satisfied me very well; but if you would be pleased 
for your later point of policy to add some particulars how it might well be 
practiced, you should give me much more content. For it is a thing that I desire 
much to hear. 
Enrubie. That would I do also, were it not that I doubt lest howsoever you may 
accept it, yet some other hearing hereof would say unto me, as Apelles to the 
shoemaker, Ne sutor ultra crepidam, no man should intermeddle but with that 
which belongs to his own profession, or, which is worse, that I have cut large 
thongs out of other folks' leather. Wherefore, for that point, let me desire you 
rather to hearken as I do to hear the words or voice of him or them that shall 
say, "Thus and thus it shall be. This and that they shall have that will 
adventure," and having said it, have power what they have spoken in words to 
perform and make good in deeds, than to press me to say what may or might 
be done that am not able to say or assure any man that ever any such thing shall 
be done. Farther, this would require a more large discourse by far than the 
brevity which I promised and intended will admit. 
Whether [it] is better to plant in an island or in a continent Respire. Let that 
matter go then; and now tell me, I pray you, whether it were better that a 
plantation be made in an island or in a country at large that is no island? 
Enrubie. That I cannot certainly tell you. For in several respects either of 
them may be better one than the other, as: in respect of certainty, celerity, 
facility, and security it is better to plant in an island, so it be somewhat 
large, than in a large continent. But in other respects, as for opportunity to 
enlarge the bounds of the plantation for variety of commodities, which a large 
continent may rather yield than a lesser island; for vicinity unto other 
countries; and for league and amity with neighbor nations and otherlike, it may 
be better, caeteris paribus, other things being suitable, to plant in a spacious 
continent than in an island. 
Respire. You said but now of such countries as are devoid of inhabitants you 
thought Newfoundland the best for a present plantation; what moves you to be of 
that mind? For I hear that some do dislike it very much. 
Motives for a present plantation in Newfoundland 
Enrubie. I can give you no reason for it out of my own experience, for, as you 
know, I was never there. For that point, therefore, I had rather refer you to 
Captain Richard Whitbourne-- I mean to his book of the discovery of that country 
which he hath lately set forth, whereby you may for that matter be satisfied at 
large. 
Respire. But in the meantime, till I can get that book and be at leisure to 
peruse it, you shall do me a pleasure if you will in brief relate unto me what 
you have observed out of it to that purpose. 
Enrubie. That I will do willingly. The sum is this: first, it is the nearest 
place that now is to be planted, not above fourteen or fifteen days' sail with a 
good wind; whereas Virginia and some of the rest are twice as far at the least 
and more dangerous for passage. 
Secondly, it is the safest place for plantation, as which is out of the road, as 
I may say, both of the Spaniard to his countries and plantations, and also of 
pirates at sea, who are most for the Straits. And, if need should be, whither 
soonest, viz., within a few days' warning, they there may have succor from 
England and England again from it. 
Thirdly, it is the cheapest and readiest for passage and transportation both of 
men and means of all sorts to plant with, both because our ships do yearly and 
usually, two or three hundred sail of them, go thither on fishing voyages--and 
that most of them but half loaden and some with no lading at all--and by 
plantation no doubt more may and will. 
Fourthly, it may soonest be finished and so we freed again for some other 
plantation, because it is but an island of no great content, not so big as 
England but near about the greatness of Ireland. 
Fifthly, the country itself is healthy and temperate, very agreeable to the 
constitution of our English bodies, as which is very near in the same 
temperature for heat and cold that England is, rather warmer than colder, as 
which lieth above four degrees nearer the south than England, and is encumbered 
with no noisome beasts or vermin whatsoever. 
Sixthly, the soil of the country is very fat, rich, and good, fit for pasture 
and tillage, equal to most of our grounds in England. 
Seventhly, the whole country is rich, viz.: the seacoast with fish beyond 
measure, as where our nation and some others have fished these fourscore years, 
and where there is never like to be an end or want of that commodity; the land 
stored with beasts, birds of the field, fish of the rivers, waterfowl, wood, 
grass, and fruits of the earth, etc. 
Eighthly, the country for the most part is utterly void of all inhabitants, 
savages or other, so that there is no fear of enemies in it nor or corruption of 
language or blood from it. Little armor will suffice there for offense or 
defense. 
Ninthly, it lieth very near unto some parts of America, as near as doth England 
to France, and therefore may be a good means for our possessing of some other 
and nearer parts thereof than any we do yet, and for conversion of the people 
thereof to the Christian faith hereafter, and for our present and continual 
having of such commodities as those parts may and do afford. 
Tenthly, it is not far also, viz., not a day's sail from an island called 
the Bank, an excellent place for fishing all the year, and not above four or 
five days' sail from the islands of Flores and Azores, which are very rich and 
well stored with wheat, beeves, sheep, goats, hogs, hens, and many other good 
commodities for a plantation which from those parts may be had easier, sooner, 
and cheaper than from England. 
Eleventhly, it is a country very strong by nature, as which is stored with many 
goodly harbors so well made and fenced by God's handiwork with rocks and cliffs 
that a little fortification will make the whole, being but an island and that 
not great, invincible by sea. 
Twelfthly, it may be a means to increase the shipping of our land, which is as 
it were the wall thereof, wonderfully, and withal our seamen and soldiers for 
services by sea, and so to gain us in time the freedom, sovereignty, and safety 
of the seas beyond all other nations whatsoever. 
Thirteenthly, it is likely to yield us many rich and necessary commodities for 
our land, which now our merchants do fetch as far or farther off at a dearer 
rate or with more danger a great deal than there or thence they shall. 
Fourteenthly, being first and forthwith planted by us, it may be a means of the 
furtherance of the rest of our plantations intended, which from thence may have 
many supplies, and which may serve for a resting place for the refreshing of 
those that go to or from them, this being as it were in the midway and highway 
to them all. 
Fifteenthly, it is very necessary for our land, because if it should through our 
negligence and backwardness be intercepted by any other nation it would be as 
ill a neighbor to England as being accepted by us it may be a good. And namely, 
it would hazard the destruction and overthrow of all the rest of our 
plantations, which can hardly stand without this, and the loss forever of our 
fishing voyages there, which these fourscore years we have frequented and 
enjoyed, which loss alone would be even the undoing of many of our seacoast 
towns in England that do now live much by them. 
Sixteenthly, last of all, divers honorable and worshipful persons have 
already begun several plantations in that country and so laid the foundation of 
so famous and notable an attempt as all after ages shall have cause, I doubt it 
not, to commend their valor and honor their memory. With whom, if others, or, 
which were much to be wished, if our whole land would join, the work could not, 
by the blessing of God upon so blessed an action, but luckily and speedily 
prosper. 
Respire. Who, I pray you, are those worthy persons that have made the first 
adventure of planting there? 
The names of such as already have begun a plantation in Newfoundland 
Enrubie. They are these: first, the Right Honorable Henry Lord Cary, Viscount 
Falkland, and now Lord Deputy of Ireland, hath begun a great and fair plantation 
there some few years since and is well pleased to entertain any such as will 
adventure with him, either in purse or in person, upon very fit and reasonable 
conditions. 
Secondly, the Right Honorable Sir George Calvert, Knight, and Principal 
Secretary to the King's most excellent Majesty, hath also a very large and 
goodly plantation there, which though it be as yet but in the infancy, viz., of 
not above five or six years' undertaking, yet doth it already well flourish in a 
place well fortified and secured, wherein are some hundred people or thereabout 
inhabiting and employed in building of houses, ridding or clearing of grounds 
for pasture, arable, and otherlike uses, and in making of salt for the 
preserving of fish and divers other services. And his Honor is likewise well 
pleased to entertain any that will either adventure with him or serve under him 
upon very fit and fair conditions. 
Thirdly, Master John Slaney of London, merchant, and some others with him have 
maintained a colony of his Majesty's subjects for divers years past. 
Fourthly, divers worshipful citizens of the city of Bristol have undertaken to 
plant a large circuit of that country and have had people there inhabiting these 
five or six years with good and hopeful success. 
Fifthly, Master William Vaughan of Tarracod in the county of Camarthen, doctor 
of the civil law, hath also done the like and hath within these two or three 
years last sent thither divers men and women that do inhabit there and 
prosper well. 
Sixthly, some other worthy persons there are that be adventurers in the said 
plantation, whose names yet I know not. 
By all which you may understand that there is already a fair beginning of this 
worthy work and that they which henceforth shall go thither shall not be the 
first that shall adventure to dwell there. Which considered may be a good motive 
to others to follow them and to join themselves unto them, assured by the 
manifold experiments of those many and worthy persons as have already adventured 
their fortunes and means there, and that in several and far distant parts of 
that land, that the country is very habitable and good for a present and speedy 
plantation. 
Respire. These be good motives indeed for the advancement and hasting of this 
plantation. And I like them so well that if I were but twenty years younger than 
I am I think I should be like enough to see it myself, and that now I cannot, 
yet I shall be willing, if I once see the same well set forward, what I may to 
animate and persuade others--my children, kinsfolk, friends, allies, and 
neighbors--thereunto, as unto a place and action that is likely to prove greatly 
to the good of them and theirs forever that will engage themselves therein. 
Enrubie. So doing, and but so doing, you shall do well. For, assure yourself, 
you shall thereby much further the honor and glory of God, benefit your native 
country and people, do good service to our renowned king and sovereign, and 
highly gratify all those that have undertaken so honorable and excellent, so 
necessary and difficult an enterprise. But now, answer me one question, as I 
have done many to you. 
Respire. I will if I can; what is it? 
Excuses and delays for not going into a plantation answered 
Enrubie. What lets you, notwithstanding your age, but that you may go also 
yourself and see it and inhabit it too, if you please, as well as if you were 
twenty years younger than you are? 
Respire. Being so far stricken in years as I am, I am not very willing to travel 
into other countries but am content, and desirous too, to end my life at home 
and let them that be young, strong, and lusty go, for they are fit for it. 
First, agedness 
Enrubie. You are not so old and broken with age that you may say as Father 
Barzillai did to David (II Sam. 19:35) when he offered him more than an ordinary 
favor. "I am," said he, "this day fourscore year old. I cannot discern between 
good and evil; nor hath thy servant any taste in that he doth eat and drink. I 
cannot hear anymore the voice of singing men and women; and I shall be but a 
burden to him that would pleasure me." If you be come to this state, you shall 
by my consent have a placard of ease to abide at home or bill of dotage to 
trouble you no farther. 
Respire. Truly, I cannot so say. I am reasonable strong and healthy yet. I could 
rather say almost as old Caleb did to Captain Joshua (Josh. 14:6), as strong as 
I was for twenty years ago, so strong well near am I yet, I thank God, and am as 
apt and able for travel and employment. My senses are good and my eyesight 
serves me almost as well as ever it did. 
Enrubie. Then are you as fit to go in such a business as ever you were, and 
fitter too in some respect by your age. Your age hath taught you experience and 
discretion how to behave yourself and help to manage such a work better than 
younger men that have had no time to gather observation in the world. Your age 
will cause that for your gray hairs and gravity you shall be respected, 
reverenced, and obeyed far more than young men, who, being for the most part 
unskillful, will get contempt. And lastly, your personal example will five times 
more prevail to persuade others to go than any verbal arguments that you can 
make. But say once you will go yourself, and which of your children will not be 
ready to run with you? But as long as you abide behind you shall not easily get 
any one of them to go by himself. The like shall you find in other your kindred 
and acquaintance. 
Second, not usual for old men 
Respire. But it is not an usual thing for old men to go in such employments. 
Enrubie. Therefore they prosper much the worse. They send out a few young and 
single men that have little or no experience in the world and so are readier 
indeed and likelier to overthrow than to uphold a plantation. But thus it should 
not be, nor hath it been in former times. Look but into the beehives when 
they swarm and you shall find, as one saith well, that the swarm is as old as 
the stock--that is, that there are in it as well old bees as young. And if you 
will have better proof, call to mind the sacred histories of blessed Father 
Abraham's life, what age he was of when he left his country, his kindred, and 
his father's house and went to dwell in the land of Canaan, and you shall find, 
I warrant you, that he was threescore and ten year old at least; that is elder a 
good deal than you are yet. And was not Moses fourscore year old and his brother 
Aaron fourscore and three when they led the children of Israel out of Egypt, and 
Joshua eighty year old when he conducted them into the land of Canaan? And we 
may be sure that in that great multitude of six hundred thousand at the least 
that removed there were a number of aged people both men and women. So that you 
may see it is no strange thing for those that are well stricken in years to go 
and seek new countries. 
Respire. Old men be fit to go, but young men methinks be fitter, because they 
have none but themselves to care for. 
Third, young men and single men not so fit as elder and married men 
Enrubie. Therefore are they the less fit for a plantation and old men fitter 
than they, not only because of their better experience in the world, their 
gravity and authority, as I said before, but also because they have families and 
so children under them, which will help to fill the plantation apace. But young 
men and single men, besides the want of experience in them, they can do little 
good to the plantation but in their own single persons at most. Being unmarried, 
if they continue so, they will hurt and hinder the plantation thereby, which 
will be no less hindered by the unmarried there than our land is hindered by the 
poor married here. If they will marry they shall not easily find with whom, 
unless it be with the natives of those countries, which haply will be nor 
handsome nor wholesome for them; certainly profitable and convenient, they 
having had no such breeding as our women, it cannot be. And when they are 
married, long it will be before any fruit of their marriage can be up to yield 
any force or enlargement to the plantation; whereas if such as be already 
married go over, they, having children, some more, some less, of different ages 
and growth, they also will be able and ready in a little while, some one 
year and some another, to enlarge and fill up the plantation by addition of new 
families, as it were little new colonies, everywhere. Further, whereas young and 
single men when they come there upon any little dislike will be apt and ready to 
return and forsake the place, and so coming home again to discredit the action, 
married men and housekeepers must and will abide; and if haply upon any occasion 
the man himself come over into England now and then, yet he leaves behind him 
such a pledge and hostage--I mean, his wife, children, and family--for his 
return, as may well assure the country that he will not fail, because that now 
is absolutely his home and proper habitation. Lastly, if any enemy shall assault 
them, who is likely to stick close to him, the married that fights pro aris & 
socis, as they say, for God and his country, for his wife and children, with 
whom and for whom he must and will live and die, or the single man who fights or 
rather shifts for himself and therefore will soon either yield or run away as he 
shall perceive to be most for his ease and safety? In good policy, therefore, I 
suppose it were good and fit that such--that is, married folks and such as have 
families--above others should be procured and invited to go, yea, and with some 
augmentation and reward in lands or other benefits above single persons be 
induced, encouraged, and, as it were, hired thereunto. 
Respire. I doubt, because I was never at sea before in all my life, that I shall 
not be able to endure the seas. 
Fourth, hard travel by sea 
Enrubie. Firstly, the voyage or journey is not long, not above fourteen days' 
sail with a good wind, or if any cross wind come, not above twenty, or one and 
twenty days' commonly. 
Secondly, what hardness or difficulty is there of traveling by sea more than at 
land? It is rather the easier and pleasanter of the two, unless God send any 
great tempest, which is not very usual all the summer season; it is of the two 
the more pleasant and easy. For there you may sit in your chair or lie in your 
bed at will and pass along as delicately as, or more delicately than, do our 
gentlemen that ride in their coach, and be at your way's end before you be 
either aware or weary. 
Thirdly, why should you not endure the seas as well as do princes, noble 
and gentle men and women both, that be of a more tender and delicate breeding 
and constitution of body than you by far, who yet, as no doubt you have often 
heard, do yearly and ordinarily pass the seas to countries far and near. 
Respire. I have no need to go. The intendment is for the poorer sort of the land 
that have nothing to trust to, and for my part, I thank God, I have a living 
that is able reasonably well to help me and mine. 
Fifth, of them that have livings here 
Enrubie. The less need you have to go the more is our country here beholding 
unto you if you will go, and the more shall the country there be beholding to 
you if you come thither. For the coming in of one or two that have some good 
means of their own to bring with them is better for it than of five or six that 
come with little or nothing. (2) The intendment is for any that will go 
whosoever. The poorer sort, because they are likeliest to be gotten, though they 
be chiefly, yet they are not only intended. (3) And the living that you have 
here, how long will it hold? 
Respire. As long as my life doth hold, but no longer, I grant. But if God give 
me time to live awhile, I hope I shall be able to do somewhat for my children 
too and see them all reasonably well provided to live when I am gone. 
Enrubie. But by your own saying, if you should die within a little while, and 
what charter have you of your life more than other men? You must needs leave 
them ill provided for and most of them either to the mercy of the world, which 
is little, or to the courtesy of their friends, which haply will be less. And 
what need this, when by your removing you may provide for them yourself and see 
them in that good state that they need not be beholding to any others but rather 
able to help others? 
(4) Farther, the best provision you can possibly provide them here, if you might 
live yet these twenty years, can be but for their own time; but removing as you 
may it is very probable, having that means which you have now, you may be able 
to settle both yourself and every one of them, though they be half a dozen 
or half a score of them, in as good a living or better as your farm that you now 
dwell upon, for you and yours and for them and theirs in perpetuum, forever. 
(5) Consider also: (1) that it is so hard a matter to place abroad a child well 
here that the placing of but one of your children may bring you so far 
behindhand that you may not be able to do anything for any other of them in 
seven years after; there they may all be provided for in some measure presently. 
(2) How grievous and reproachful a thing it would be to your children if, having 
lived well in your time, they should come to live in a poor, needy, and beggarly 
fashion. To arise from a poor estate to a richer is commendable and delectable; 
but to fall from a good estate to a worse of all grievous things it is one of 
the most grievous and miserable. (3) Whether it be not an evil thing and 
unadvised to put that upon uncertainties which a man needs not but may be 
assured of and put out of all doubt. 
Respire. What certainty can I have of my life there more than here? 
Enrubie. None at all. But of good estate and provision for you and yours 
exceeding much more. For whereas though by the course of nature and present 
state of your body you may haply live yet these ten or twenty years, yet that is 
exceeding doubtful and uncertain. For of one that lives to that age there be an 
hundred that do not; but that you may live yet ten, or twelve, or twenty months 
to an end there is great probability by the help of God; and within that time 
you may have gotten and settled a good estate in a plantation to you and yours. 
For if you live in the plantation but one month more, if you but once remove 
hence and be but on shipboard for the plantation though you die before you come 
there--for I suppose such order will be taken if ever there be good order taken 
for a plantation--you and yours shall enjoy and be assured of the benefit 
thereof as well as if you had lived therein seven years. (4) Last of all, 
consider you well that the apostle and Nature too, for he speaketh according to 
the law of Nature, saith, "Fathers must lay up," that is, provide the best they 
can, "for their children" against the time to come; and again, "He that 
doth not provide for his own" (meaning, no doubt, if he may do it and have good 
and fit opportunity thereto, as you now have), "and specially for them of his 
own house, he denieth the faith and is worse than an infidel." 
Respire. You press me exceeding hard upon this point and do enforce me in manner 
to consider, which I will do, God willing, more deeply upon it. 
Enrubie. It was necessary to press you hard upon it, for this is a starting hole 
out of the which I knew well enough you would not easily be beaten. 
Respire. You run away upon these points, I see, as fast as lusty horses do with 
an empty cart; but I have somewhat yet behind that will lade you better and find 
you more to do, or else I am much deceived. 
Enrubie. What is that? Let us have it, for God's sake. 
Sixth, it is not usual for men that have livings here to go 
Respire. It is not a thing usual for such to go as have good livings here of 
their own, as I have, but for the poorer sort only that have none at all, and 
therefore what reason have I to break the custom? 
Enrubie. Is this the point you thought would plunge me or set me a stand? This 
something is as much as nothing. 
The manner in ancient times how to raise people for a plantation 
Firstly, nowadays, indeed, and with us, it is not very usual. But in ancient 
times, when plantations were better followed than now they are, it was very 
usual, as you may see in the persons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who were all 
men of great state, and in the men of Joseph (Josh. 17:14), and in the men of 
Judah (Judges 1 almost throughout); and as I could show by the practice of many 
nations who used when they intended a plantation to consider what number it were 
expedient for them to remove, and that was usually one-half, a third or fourth 
part of the whole, both great and small, and then to cast lots and as the lot 
fell so they went away, were they rich or poor, whether they had livings or not. 

Secondly, if the custom be otherwise now, that custom may and must be broken, 
because it is not good, all good laws and policy intending always this: that 
customs which are good and laudable only should be kept and continued. The 
other that are not such, as diseases, though of long continuance, out of the 
body should be expelled. Now certain it is, such a custom, that is, that none 
but the poorer sort should go over and none of the better sort that have any 
lands or livings here, would prove very hurtful and pestiferous to the 
plantation. For who shall be governors and rulers in the country, as I said the 
last day--and all men know some there must be? What! Poor, needy, and ignorant 
fellows, that have neither learning nor understanding to such a service? Doth 
not very reason show that there must go some of better breeding and experience, 
gentlemen at the least? And if of them there cannot, as it is likely there will 
not, enow be invited thither for such employments, what supply can there be 
unless sundry others of a next degree unto gentlemen--that is, yeomen and 
yeomenlike men, that have in them some good knowledge and courage--be there to 
be found, who may in defect of better men be advanced to places of preferment 
and government there and haply prove not altogether unworthy thereof? 
Further, what shall the poorer sort do there by themselves without some, and 
that some store, of others better stored in money and means than they, that may 
employ the poore

Thirdly, and even in our times it is not so unusual a thing as you seem to 
understand it to be; for you may soon learn, if you will but a little inquire, 
that in our time also divers men that had reasonable good means and livings here 
have removed into Ireland and planted themselves there to their great good and 
preferment. And thus you see that the cloak you have made you of usage and 
custom will do you as little service to cover your backwardness as Adam's and 
his wife's aprons made of fig leaves to hide their nakedness. 
Seventh, women are unwilling to go 
Respire. If that be but bad, I have a better. My wife will not hear to go 
anywhither beyond sea, and therefore for her sake, though I were willing myself, 
I must be content to abide at home and end my days in England. 
Enrubie. This, indeed, is somewhat; I hearkened for it long since. I know 
it is a point that pincheth many and makes them more unwilling than else they 
would be. Women be unwilling, and their wives will not endure to hear of it. Yet 
this knot is not so hard-twisted but that it may be untwined, I hope. Or if it 
be a Gordian knot, yet the sword of Alexander can hew it in pieces. To this, 
therefore, I say thus: 
Firstly, women also have understanding and many of them do unfeignedly fear God. 
And, therefore, being well put in mind of their duty, which is to forsake father 
and friends and to cleave unto their husbands, and that so inseparably that 
nothing part them but death, it is not unlikely but that at length they will 
yield and not utterly refuse that which they cannot lawfully refuse, how hard 
soever at first it seem to them to be, and how loath soever they are to do it if 
they might lawfully leave it undone. 
Secondly, they also do naturally and tenderly love their children and posterity 
and wish and desire their good. Probable it is, therefore, that when they shall 
thoroughly understand that such a travail may, nay, will certainly be, a means 
to provide good estates for them and theirs forever, such as by no possibility 
nor probability are here to be had, they will be persuaded at length to 
adventure as the hen to save her chickens and the pelican to feed her young, if 
need should be, their life and blood. 
Examples of women. Sarah; Rebecca; Rachel; Leah; Queen Eleanor 
Thirdly, when the examples of worthy matrons--women of far greater esteem and 
estate than they--that have done the like: as of the lady Sarah in accompanying 
Abraham from place to place till her dying day, and that sometime with the peril 
of her life and her chastity; of Mistress Rebecca in forsaking her father's 
house and all her friends to go out of Mesopotamia into the land of Canaan to be 
wife to a man that she had not seen--to Isaac, the son and heir of Abraham 
before named; and of Rachel and Leah, the daughters of Laban, that were ready to 
go from their father's with Jacob, their husband, they knew not whither; and 
others many that in sacred histories are mentioned, it is likely they will 
not think themselves too good to do the like nor be afraid to imitate them in 
this fashion. 
To these worthy precedents I could add out of human histories not a few worthy 
imitation and commendation in this case, as namely, Queen Eleanor, wife to King 
Edward the First, King of England, who, her husband going a long and very 
dangerous voyage of warfare, viz., into the Holy Land, would by no means be 
persuaded to tarry at home but would needs accompany him, saying, "Nothing must 
part them asunder whom God hath joined together," and, "The way to heaven is as 
near in the Holy Land as in England." And that worthy Spartan dame, the wife of 
Panteus, a nobleman in Greece, who being retained by her parents and other 
friends by force that she should not go with her husband into Egypt, within a 
while after secretly stole away by night and got shipping to carry her to her 
husband, with whom she continued there cheerfully and contentedly till his dying 
day. 
And it cannot be but that when they shall see some and hear of more of their own 
neighbors and country folks, English women as they are, that do and will go the 
same voyages, their example and present practice will be such a special motive 
even to those that be very unwilling either to accompany or follow them, assured 
they shall do no worse than they do, as there will not need many more arguments 
thereto. 
Fourthly, there be also divers and sundry causes in consideration whereof--as 
St. Paul (I Cor. 7:6) in one case allows--by consent of both parties some of 
them may be borne with for a time and permitted to remain behind, that at the 
second or third return of their husbands, all impediments that at first hindered 
being removed, they may go over with them also without any farther delay. 
Fifthly, if any be utterly so obstinate and froward [sic MW] or self-willed that 
no reason, no persuasion, no example seen or heard of, no respect of duty 
will prevail with them, there is farther remedy to be had, that is, that on them 
be inflicted paena desertricis: such punishment as is fit for those that utterly 
and willfully forsake their husbands. 
Respire. What penalty or punishment is that? 
Enrubie. That I leave to those that have authority as to inflict it so to 
appoint it as they shall see instant and necessary occasion to require. A new 
kind of sin may have a new kind of punishment, as oft ex malis moribus, bonae 
leges: of evil manners have risen up good laws. 
Respire. You have pressed me so far, and by your speeches prevailed with me so 
much, that I have nothing more to say for myself why I should not go, unless I 
should say that to you which some have said to me of late, but I am loath to do 
it lest you should be offended. 
Enrubie. What is that? Let me have it, I pray you, in any wise, for it shall not 
offend me, I warrant you. 
Respire. Seeing you so earnestly and effectually move me to go, why do not you 
yourself go also? You that so fain would have others to go should also go 
yourself. 
Enrubie. You shall have my answer thereunto very willingly, that so you may the 
better be able to answer those that go about that way to stop your mouth and 
make stay or delay for themselves. 
Respire. That is the end for which I purposely and principally move the 
question. 
The author himself doth purpose, God willing, to go into one or other plantation 

Enrubie. My answer is this: first, though it be not of necessity that everyone 
must go himself that persuadeth or moveth others thereunto--for plantation is no 
matter of our faith and salvation--there may be as great reasons and just 
occasions why he should not go as why they--others whom he persuadeth--should 
go; yet because no man shall take any exception at all against me or my 
persuasions that way, I say I do purpose, God willing, to go. And I shall think 
myself happy if I may be one of those that may lay the first stones of such a 
building and spend and end my days in being one instrument among the many 
thousands of our English nation that shall betake and bestow themselves in such 
a manner to the enlargement of God's church, of the King's dominions, and of our 
own English habitations. 
But I say withal, secondly: I cannot go as yet because I have not my means and 
estate so settled and provided as it is fit for one that will go well. 
Thirdly, if I go it shall be partly in hope by God's merciful providence toward 
me and mine to better mine estate and to do good, as to others, so specially to 
those that are mine own or do otherwise depend upon me. And therefore I have no 
reason to go till I see some good likelihood of probability and assurance that 
it may and will be done. 
Fourthly, I will not go, by my good will, till I find some good course taken for 
a good plantation in that place or country where my desire and purpose is, above 
any I hear of yet, to plant myself. When some such course shall be taken and 
followed effectually, I will not, God willing, be one of the last that shall 
make use of it. 
Fifthly, I suppose I ought not either to tempt God by going without good and 
necessary means nor seek my own destruction by running before I am sent in good 
order. And therefore, expecting a convenient and appointed time, it is enough 
that I do for the present prepare myself to be ready prepared against that time, 
and having my mind and affection settled that way, do hearken, as the good 
soldier for the sound of the trumpet to the battle, for the publishing of that 
decree that may rouse up all England to such an attempt and expedition. 
And many will accompany him 
Respire. I like your answer so well that besides other good uses which I shall 
make of it the while, by God's help, whensoever you shall go--for I see you will 
not go but upon good ground -- you shall have me ready on reasonable warning to 
bear you company. And I do not think but that you shall have many more of our 
neighbors and acquaintance that will do the like. 
Enrubie. The more the merrier, by the grace of God. And I pray God of His love 
and goodness to our nation, and for the furtherance and increase of His Gospel, 
to vouchsafe to these actions and to all that shall go in them a happy and 
speedy proceeding, and to us in particular, if it be His will that we shall be 
partakers in the same, a joyful and good success therein. 
Respire. Amen. 


THE END OF THE THIRD AND LAST PART. ANNO DOMINI 1624. 





