Sir Humphrey Gilbert: Soldier, Adventurer and Colonial Pioneer

Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s career joined overseas ambition to military service and political office. He helped advance English settlement in Ireland, argued for a north-west passage to Asia and, in 1583, claimed Newfoundland for the English Crown. His plans for American colonisation had limited immediate results, but his royal patent and example helped shape his half-brother Walter Raleigh’s later ventures. Gilbert’s reputation also carries a harsher history: his campaign in Ireland was marked by extreme violence against civilians.

A Devon childhood and service in Ireland

Gilbert was born around 1539 at Greenway, in Devon, the fifth son of Otho Gilbert and Catherine Champernowne. His half-brother Walter Raleigh was among a family of Devon men who became prominent under Elizabeth I. Gilbert attended Eton College and the University of Oxford, where he studied subjects including war and navigation, and later lived in London at the Inns of Chancery. His education and connections brought him into the orbit of the court: his mentor was Sir Henry Sidney, and his aunt Kat Ashley, Elizabeth I’s governess, helped introduce young relatives to it.

Gilbert’s early career was shaped by warfare and English expansion in Ireland. He was wounded at the siege of Le Havre in 1563 and served in Ireland from 1566. In 1569, during conflict involving the Geraldines of Desmond, he led forces against rebels in Munster. His methods were brutal. The contemporary account quoted by the historian Thomas Churchyard describes Gilbert ordering the heads of people killed during the day to be displayed along the path to his tent. Gilbert himself defended killing non-combatants on the grounds that they supported the fighting men. This was not an incidental episode in his career: the campaign shows the violence accompanying the English project of conquest and settlement in Ireland.

Gilbert was knighted in 1570 for his service. He returned to England that year, married Anne Aucher and had seven children. He sat in the English Parliament for Plymouth in 1571 and Queenborough in 1572. In the early 1570s, he also fought in the Spanish Netherlands in support of the Dutch Sea Beggars. His career thus ranged well beyond seafaring: soldier, parliamentarian and advocate for colonisation were all parts of the same political world.

Plans for passage and overseas settlement

Gilbert promoted the idea of a north-west passage through America to Cathay, or China. In 1566, he argued at court against the proposed north-east route, reasoning that fog and darkness made it dangerous. He believed a western passage was possible and that England should seek new territories rather than leave overseas expansion to Iberian powers. The idea helped advance interest in exploration, although the passage he advocated remained unproved.

He also pursued settlement in Ireland. From 1566 to 1572, he was involved in the English plantations there, including proposals for settlements in Ulster and Munster. These ventures were part of the Tudor conquest, not a neutral programme of exploration. In 1578, Gilbert received letters patent from Elizabeth I authorising an expedition to North America and granting him a six-year licence to explore and claim territory. The patent provided a legal basis for English claims in the eyes of the Crown; it did not mean that a lasting colony had already been established.

His first expedition under the patent left Plymouth in November 1578 with seven vessels, but storms scattered the fleet and forced it back. Gilbert’s next voyage, in 1579, was not the Newfoundland expedition: he was commissioned to take part in an attack on Irish rebels and to intercept Spanish support. That venture failed to achieve its aims, and a confrontation in Cork included Gilbert’s killing of a local merchant. His movement between Irish campaigns and Atlantic schemes reflects how closely the two projects were connected in Elizabethan policy and in the careers of men seeking royal favour and investment.

Newfoundland and the final voyage

In June 1583, Gilbert sailed west with five ships. One, the Bark Raleigh, turned back for lack of provisions. The fleet reached St John’s, Newfoundland, where Gilbert overcame opposition from the fishing fleet and, on 5 August, took possession of Newfoundland for the English Crown. The ceremony included cutting turf to symbolise possession of the soil under English common law. Gilbert also claimed the fishing stations and levied a tax on fishermen from several countries. The act asserted an English claim; it did not create a permanent settlement at St John’s.

The fleet left Newfoundland on 20 August, heading towards the mainland and the region Gilbert called Norumbega. He travelled in the small frigate Squirrel. The larger Delight ran aground on Sable Island and sank, with only sixteen of its crew surviving. With supplies lost, Gilbert and the remaining ships turned back towards England. Despite warnings from other mariners that the Squirrel was unsafe, he stayed aboard it. On 9 September 1583, near the Azores, the ship disappeared in heavy seas with all hands.

From the larger Golden Hind, its crew heard Gilbert cry, “We are as near to Heaven by sea as by land!” before the Squirrel was lost. The words have become inseparable from the story of his death, though the surviving account places them amid a perilous return voyage rather than a successful expedition. His death ended his own plans for colonisation, but not the royal interest in them.

Plans, consequences and contested legacy

Gilbert’s American claim was not immediately followed by a successful English colony. Its longer consequence lay partly in the precedent it provided. Elizabeth granted Raleigh a charter in 1584, based in part on Gilbert’s earlier patent, and Raleigh went on to organise the Roanoke expeditions. English colonisation in North America would develop later; Gilbert’s Newfoundland ceremony asserted a claim but did not itself secure lasting English occupation. The distinction matters: his place in the story rests on an early claim and the political framework around it, not on founding a durable settlement.

His career also complicates any celebration of exploration as an uncomplicated story of courage or national enterprise. Gilbert’s advocacy of Atlantic expansion belonged to the same world as the violent English campaigns in Ireland. The settlements he and other English officials pursued involved the forcible extension of English rule. His life offers evidence both of the ambition that drove Elizabethan overseas projects and of the human cost of those projects. Gilbert Sound near Greenland was later named after him, while his son Ralegh Gilbert became second in command of the unsuccessful Popham Colony in Maine.

Why Sir Humphrey Gilbert deserves a place in British Legacy

Gilbert deserves a place in British Legacy because his career helps explain how English colonial ambition took shape across the Atlantic and in Ireland. He was not simply a mariner who reached Newfoundland: he argued for exploration, secured a royal patent, organised voyages and formally claimed territory for the Crown. The 1583 ceremony at St John’s, including the symbolic cutting of turf, made the English claim visible and helped establish a precedent later used in the pursuit of colonisation. His patent also formed part of the basis for Raleigh’s 1584 charter and the Roanoke expeditions. These connections make Gilbert important to the history of England’s overseas expansion, even though his own voyages did not establish a lasting North American colony.

That legacy should be presented with its costs as well as its consequences. Gilbert’s service in Ireland was part of the Tudor conquest, and his campaign in Munster included the killing of non-combatants and the display of their heads as a means of terror. Recognising that violence does not diminish the historical significance of his role; it makes the account more accurate. His story connects royal authority, military force, competing claims to territory and the risks of Atlantic travel. For British Legacy, Gilbert is a figure through whom readers can see both the beginnings of English colonial claims and the coercion that accompanied their pursuit.

Sources

Humphrey Gilbert — revision 1369905735

Adapted in part from Humphrey Gilbert by Wikipedia contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0. Text has been edited and combined with the existing article; this adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.