SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO 1660 17 
motive was strong in Raleigh, and in the end Spanish 
influence was too strong for him. In Guiana he 
hoped to create an empire for England and England’s 
queen at the expense of Spain, and in his © Discovery 
of Guiana,” written after his return from the Orinoco 
in 1595, he promised Queen Elizabeth that after small 
initial expense the enterprise would be amply remun- 
erative, © for after the first or second year I doubt not 
but to see in London a contractation house of more 
receipt for Guiana than thete is now in Seville for the 
West Indies.’ It is difficult to decide what place 
should be given to Raleigh among pioneers of the 
Empire. It stands to his credit that he was the one 
Elizabethan who really made solid attempts to plant 
an English colony on the North American coast, for 
there was little solidity in Gilbert’s venture to New- 
foundland, and it was at his instance that Hakluyt wrote 
his ‘ Discourse concerning Western Planting.” Yet 
he was duped by the baseless vision of an El Dorado, 
and, gifted as he was, possibly because he was so gifted, 
he hardly seems to have been the man to coalesce with 
others on equal terms in carrying through colonisa- 
tion on prosaic and business-like lines. Furthermore, 
there was something to seek in his moral character 
and in his dealings, as there was in a still more gifted 
man, Francis Bacon.? 
All the three men who have just been mentioned, 
Raleigh, Hakluyt and Bacon, were scholarly men. 
Hakluyt died before the others, leaving England under 
1 The Discovery of Guiana, by Walter Raleigh (1595). See Hakluyt’s 
Voyages, # sup., vol. x, p. 430. 
* See Dr. Holland Rose’s estimate of Raleigh in The Cambridge 
History of the British Empire, vol. i, chap. iv, pp. 108-9.