“Have you not heard of Florida?” a balladeer asked Londoners in 1563. If indeed you had not, he offered:

London would seem to have been abuzz with the news of Thomas Stukeley's impending voyage to colonise Florida for England. Stukeley had gathered five ships in the Thames, including one contributed by Queen Elizabeth herself, and in June of 1563 made ready to launch England's first colonial venture to the New World.Footnote ² Songs such as “Have You Not Heard of Florida?” vividly convey the sense of an eager English public anticipating great things of Stukeley's American voyage.

Stukeley's expedition was intertwined with the French activity in Florida in 1562–1565, and historians of colonial America are well aware of Jean Ribault's Charlesfort and René Goulaine de Laudonnière's Fort Caroline. If anything, the current interest in transnational history has brought the scholarship on French colonialism closer to the mainstream of colonial American history.Footnote ³ Yet Stukeley's ambitions to colonise Florida have all but disappeared from the annals of the origins of English colonialism, and Elizabeth's interest in Florida has never been fully explored.Footnote ⁴

In one sense, the reason for the neglect of English Florida is obvious: Stukeley never launched his colonial venture. He chose instead to turn his purported colonial expedition into a pirate fleet and attack French ships in the English Channel. His reputation sank still lower when he subsequently turned traitor and tried to lead a Catholic invasion of Ireland. As a result, his proposed colony in Florida has either been ignored as unimportant, treated as an afterthought to the Franco-Spanish clash in Florida, or dismissed as a mere cover for privateering. When historians of early English colonialism have seen a connection between French Florida and the origins of English Virginia, Stukeley has played little role in that story.Footnote ⁵

This failure to take seriously Stukeley's Florida project leads to several misunderstandings. Because they generally ignore Stukeley's voyage of 1563, scholars have instead attempted to locate the first English colonial impulses in the 1580s. A major consequence of this difference in timing has been an overemphasis on the anti-Catholic and anti-Spanish attitudes of that era as the driving forces behind English overseas enterprise. Even those historians who seek to place English colonialism in a broader milieu, such as Renaissance humanism, nevertheless take for granted a nascent English identity defined in contrast to Catholicism and in opposition to Spanish domination of Europe and the Americas.Footnote ⁶ Yet issues of religious and national rivalry played out very differently in the 1580s, and even in the later 1560s, than they did in 1562 and 1563, when Stukeley operated in the context of a moderate policy towards Catholics and a longstanding alliance between England and Spain accompanied by a greater emphasis on a potentially threatening France. In particular, the diplomatic manoeuvring between England and France over the 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis played a pivotal and previously unappreciated role in inspiring Queen Elizabeth to consider launching a colonial venture. Since this was her first commitment to colonisation, it is important to understand this commitment in its proper context. Anti-Catholicism and anti-Spanish attitudes cannot fully explain Stukeley's expedition, and consequently they cannot fully explain England's early interest in colonisation; it would be a mistake to read those attitudes backward into the early 1560s, obscuring the diplomatic wrangling with France that occupied centre stage at that earlier time. Even though Stukeley's venture never came to fruition, it nonetheless demands explanation within its specific historical context and an examination of its influence on subsequent English colonial projects. Taking seriously Stukeley's proposed expedition to Florida, therefore, allows us to better understand what followed.

English Florida began its life as Spanish Florida, one of Spain's least auspicious attempts at conquest. As the colony of New Spain developed into a source of tremendous wealth for the Spanish Crown, the Bahama Channel took on a crucial importance in transporting gold and silver to Seville. However, it also allowed French corsairs to easily pick off treasure-laden galleons as they passed through. If the French gained a secure land base in Florida, they would become even more dangerous. Yet all Spanish attempts to colonise Florida in the early sixteenth century had ended in disaster. By 1561 Florida had become Spain's most expensive project in the Indies, with little to show for it, as the only Spaniards permanently living there were castaways and prisoners living in Indian villages.Footnote ⁷

Florida seemed doomed as a field for colonisation, but in the 1560s the French revived European interest. To understand how the English became involved, it is necessary to trace French intervention in Florida. The Spanish jealously guarded access to their American dominions, and English sailors generally complied with this claim, as they could often gain licence to trade in the Indies thanks to the English alliance with Spain that held intermittently until 1569. The French, however, challenged the legitimacy of the Spanish monopoly, and instead resisted through continual raids by corsairs. In this climate, the 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, a negotiated peace that brought a close to over a half-century of the destructive Habsburg-Valois Wars between Spain and France, avoided the issue of American territorial claims. This meant that any conflicts in the Caribbean and North America would not be conclusively resolved by the treaty, but neither would such conflicts jeopardise peace in Europe, a policy that became known as “no peace beyond the line,” referring to an imaginary meridian generally understood to pass through the Azores, west of which the treaty did not apply.Footnote ⁸

The French generously interpreted the treaty's vagueness to open up an opportunity for North American colonisation. Florida, in particular, was effectively uninhabited by Spaniards. From the French perspective, it therefore did not fall under exclusive Spanish jurisdiction. French admiral Gaspard de Coligny took the lead on the colonisation of Florida. He had first shown his interest in overseas colonisation in 1555, when he helped support the establishment of France Antarctique, a French colony in Brazil. The Portuguese eventually destroyed this colony in 1567, but even before its ultimate demise Coligny had continued to look for another, and safer, location for a French base. By the time Coligny cast his eye on Florida, in 1561, he had emerged as the leader of the Protestant faction in France, the Huguenots. Some historians have argued that Coligny intended Florida as a Huguenot refuge, while others counter that the project received support from the Queen Mother, the Catholic Catherine de’ Medici. The more recent consensus is that Coligny hoped to prevent his country from falling into full-blown civil war, and he believed that a Protestant colony in Florida might temporarily provoke just enough sabre rattling between France and Spain to unite French Protestants and Catholics in a patriotic fervour, all without actually pushing Spain to open war with France.Footnote ⁹ So despite the largely negative experience in France Antarctique, Coligny decided to once again press ahead with a colony in territory already claimed by another empire.

To lead this new colonial project, Coligny picked a highly qualified seaman from Dieppe named Jean Ribault. Ribault's biography is only sparsely known, but the evidence indicates that he was uniquely positioned to lead Coligny's colony. Born in 1515 to a family of seafarers, Ribault honed his skills in the 1530s among the group of intrepid Dieppois seafarers that one historian has called “a school of pilots and cartographers.”Footnote ¹⁰ The English actively recruited skilled foreign pilots, and Ribault found his way into English service by 1543.Footnote ¹¹ His fortunes waxed and waned during his time in England, but his naval reputation continually rose.Footnote ¹² The daring corsair with the signature red beard was considered “by all accounts a good navigator and expert pilot.”Footnote ¹³

This reputation earned him the privilege of working closely with the renowned navigator and cartographer Sebastian Cabot. From 1548 onwards, Cabot brought to England the previously secret knowledge and experience of the Spanish House of Trade, having served as its chief pilot since 1512, and he was rumoured to have collaborated with Ribault in 1551 on an expedition to Asia via the long hoped for Northwest Passage.Footnote ¹⁴ Though one eyewitness claimed to have seen actual preparations for the journey, there is no record of the voyage itself.Footnote ¹⁵ This may not have been Ribault's first experience with American navigation. His early training could have brought him into contact with the Dieppois shipowner Jean Ango, who had financed the exploratory voyages of Giovanni da Verrazzano.Footnote ¹⁶ Ango himself represented the vanguard of French interest in the Americas; his father had been involved in some of the earliest transports of American Indians to France in 1508, and one historian has called him “the New World kingpin.”Footnote ¹⁷ Ribault, with a firm connection to Cabot and possible ties to the Verrazzano and other expeditions, may have had as much familiarity with planning American colonial ventures as almost anyone in England or France by the 1550s.

In addition to his seafaring knowledge, Ribault possessed significant experience with secrecy and covert diplomacy. When he returned to French service in 1553, the English Privy Council fretted continually about his activities, as they considered him “one of the best men of the sea in all Christendom.”Footnote ¹⁸ Their fears were tempered, however, by his willingness to pass information to them about French naval activities. This was only consistent with his previous practice; during his years with the English, he had kept his French contacts well informed on English developments.Footnote ¹⁹ In sum, then, the man Coligny chose to lead his colony in Florida was an expert pilot and naval leader, with at least secondhand knowledge of North American navigation and how to plan a transatlantic voyage, and who possessed ample experience with covert diplomacy. Just as important, Ribault, like Coligny, had converted to Protestantism, possibly as a result of his sojourn in England among those of the reformed religion.Footnote ²⁰

Preparations for the Florida venture began in Normandy in 1561.Footnote ²¹ Ribault chose for his pilot Nicolas Barré, who had served as a pilot to Coligny's earlier Brazil colony in 1555, and for his second in command he named René Goulaine de Laudonnière, another sailor from Dieppe and associate of Coligny.Footnote ²² They were all Huguenots, as were almost all of the Frenchmen on the expedition, whether by design or simply because the reform movement was especially strong in the Norman ports from which the crew was recruited.Footnote ²³ The French ships departed Le Havre on 18 February and reached land at the mouth of the present-day St. Johns River, Florida, on the first of May. Ribault cruised the coastline, eventually sailing as far north as present-day Parris Island, South Carolina, where he suggested to the company that some might remain behind “to fortify and people the country,” adding that physical occupation, unlike Spanish treaty claims, “is the true and chief possession.”Footnote ²⁴ Around twenty-eight of the Frenchmen chose to remain in the colony, and Ribault and the others helped to construct the settlement they called Charlesfort. He promised to return with more colonists and supplies in six months, and then left for France on 11 June.Footnote ²⁵

Ribault arrived in Dieppe around 20 July 1562, presumably intending to return immediately to succour Charlesfort.Footnote ²⁶ Unfortunately, although he had departed France amid rising tensions between Catholics and Protestants, circumstances escalated dramatically during his absence, and civil war had erupted in March. The Huguenots began to seize towns, leading the Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, to turn to the Catholic forces to try to bring the country back under control. The Catholics augmented their forces with Spanish and German soldiers, while the Huguenots appealed to England's Queen Elizabeth to join the fight. The French internal conflict now ensnared Europe.Footnote ²⁷

England shared the Protestant religion with the Huguenots, but that was not enough to push them to intervene. In fact, English commitment to Protestantism was not so deep in 1562, and aid to the Huguenots was not without risk. England's religious policy had swung wildly during the reigns of Edward VI and Mary I, and the Crown had only returned to Protestantism in 1559 with the accession of Elizabeth, who was still careful to avoid overtly offending England's many Catholics. Additionally, the English had long maintained an alliance with the Spanish Catholics that Elizabeth was anxious to preserve. Her own position was so vulnerable that she would see little benefit from setting a precedent of ecumenically based foreign intervention. In the early 1560s, Elizabeth pursued a moderate policy with Catholics at home and avoided conflict abroad with one exception: France.Footnote ²⁸ A Catholic victory over the French Huguenots would leave the House of Guise dominant in France, and the Duke of Guise was uncle to Mary, Queen of Scots, a rival claimant to the English throne who challenged Elizabeth's legitimacy and counted many supporters in England. England and France had already fought what one historian has called a “surrogate war” in Scotland, and Guise domination of the eleven-year-old French king Charles IX could threaten a full-fledged invasion and the downfall of Elizabeth herself.Footnote ²⁹

It is possible that religious inspiration was sufficient for Elizabeth to aid the Huguenots, and that the political advantage of weakening the House of Guise merely tipped the balance in her decision. In any event, Elizabeth and her counsellors clearly sensed an opportunity in dividing the French and drove a hard bargain as the price of their aid. At the high point of the Hundred Years’ War in the fourteenth century, the English kings had won large parts of France, but their holdings had since dwindled, leaving only Calais by 1453. Elizabeth's father and older half sister had tried to restore their lost glory, but this led only to the humiliating loss of that last vestige of English continental glory, Calais, in 1558. (Jean Ribault had, in fact, played a key role in the French victory.) The 1559 Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, which had done so little to resolve French and Spanish claims over the Indies, did stipulate that France retained possession of Calais for only nine years, unless England violated the peace, in which case France would gain permanent title.Footnote ³⁰ But the French civil war aroused English impatience to cut this waiting period short. As early as April 1562, the English ambassador to France, Nicholas Throckmorton, wrote to Elizabeth that “the Queen's ma[jestie] may make her profit of these troubles,” as the Huguenots might be willing to give her possession of Calais, Dieppe, or Le Havre (called Newhaven by the English) in exchange for military assistance.Footnote ³¹ A month later, Throckmorton was writing even more specifically about seizing Le Havre to later swap for Calais, and this eventually emerged as the price of English intervention.Footnote ³² This English hunger for Calais was also what would draw them indirectly to Florida, in large part because Jean Ribault, leader of the French colony in Florida, would find himself at the centre of negotiations for Calais.

The eruption of war meant for Ribault that any thought of attending to Charlesfort had to be banished; all ships were concentrated on defending against or fleeing from the Catholics, and Dieppe was embroiled in the conflict. By the summer the Huguenots were reeling from Guise victories and were besieged in their strongholds, including Dieppe and Le Havre. Huguenots had overcome their traditional animosity towards England and reached out to their coreligionists in April and again in July, but Elizabeth still hesitated to commit herself. The captain of Dieppe, Charles Poussard, Sieur de Fors, began soliciting English aid himself just as Ribault returned from Florida in mid-July.Footnote ³³ Fors tried to go to England in person to plead directly, but he was unable to gain entry. He then contemplated sending the newly arrived Ribault, presumably because of the seaman's long service and extensive contacts in England.Footnote ³⁴ Ribault remained in Dieppe instead, where he played a key role in discussions with English representatives who arrived on 17 August to negotiate the terms of intervention.Footnote ³⁵ The English representative, Henry Killigrew, made it clear to the leadership of both Dieppe and Le Havre that English aid came with a price, and that “he would not set a man on land without assurance of [Le Havre].”Footnote ³⁶ This came as no surprise, as the Huguenots had been negotiating along these lines all summer, but Killigrew recognised that this would be a bitter pill to swallow, and he feared the French Protestants would renege on the arrangement.Footnote ³⁷ Accordingly, Ribault was appointed to greet the English navy when it arrived and assure them that the Huguenots had not lost their nerve at the prospect of admitting English soldiers to their city.Footnote ³⁸

A month later Elizabeth agreed to the Treaty of Hampton Court, in which she promised aid to the Huguenots in exchange for Le Havre.Footnote ³⁹ Any high hopes, however, were soon dashed. Ambrose Dudley, the Earl of Warwick, arrived in Le Havre on 29 October with the English forces, but the next morning he was greeted by a message from Ribault notifying him that the people of Dieppe had decided not to admit the English soldiers after all.Footnote ⁴⁰ The Queen Mother had managed to win back Dieppe and other Protestant strongholds with a promise of at least liberty of conscience, if not the open practice of their religion.Footnote ⁴¹ Just as Dudley arrived, she had issued a proclamation promising that “all such as have borne arms in this matter of religion if they will now come into the camp, and help the king to expel the Englishmen out of Newhaven and Dieppe, they shall have this pardon.”Footnote ⁴² Catherine was appealing for national identity to trump religious identity, and for at least some their Frenchness prevailed. Reunited by their mutual mistrust of the English, the royal forces rallied Catholics and Protestants together against the invading English army. Ribault himself delivered Dieppe's articles of surrender to the French royal army on 30 October.Footnote ⁴³ (In point of fact, Coligny's dream had come true, except that it was animosity towards the English, rather than the Spanish, that reunited the French people.) Other French Protestants, however, may have mistrusted Catherine de’ Medici or feared reprisals from the Catholics, for all was chaos in Dieppe as Huguenot refugees from other towns poured into boats headed for Rye, a port on the south coast of England. Ribault ferried many of them across, and then he too joined them, disembarking on 6 November and making his way to London.Footnote ⁴⁴

Ribault was disappointed and possibly embarrassed by this outcome. After all, it had been his duty to convince the English that this would not happen. Once the English had taken control of Le Havre, he thought it was foolish to antagonise Elizabeth when she had the ability to paralyse French coastal shipping. He drafted a statement for the French Crown advising them of the damages that a war with England would do to commerce and tax revenues along the French coast. He also specifically indicated that Le Havre was far more valuable than Calais, and that Elizabeth had a legitimate claim to Calais (presumably deriving from the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis). It would be wise, he felt, to make the exchange, leading to her “pacification & contentment,” and demonstrating to all the world that the French would not “persist in dissimulations.”Footnote ⁴⁵ He had particular experience related to Calais, having gained accolades for his role in helping the French under the Duke of Guise in taking Calais from the English in 1558.Footnote ⁴⁶ He clearly understood the relative merits of the two ports, and he deemed Le Havre far more important. But with his strategic views effectively rejected by the Huguenots’ decision to surrender to the Catholics, he reconsidered his options. He had previously made it known that he would rather return to the service of the English than stay on under the French Catholics, particularly the Duke of Guise. Now, in December, he asked Elizabeth to reimburse him for his damages so that his vessel would again be suitable for her service.Footnote ⁴⁷ She seems to have accepted his offer, as by January he once again served the English Crown.Footnote ⁴⁸ With him came both his knowledge and personal investment in French Florida, which now passed into English hands.

We cannot know how much the fate of Charlesfort weighed upon Ribault while he dealt with the consequences of civil war and the surrender of Dieppe. It certainly seemed to concern others in France, as rumours circulated concerning a relief expedition that was prevented from going to Florida by tensions within France and with the English.Footnote ⁴⁹ The Edict of Amboise in March 1563 brought a reprieve from the fighting in France, and Coligny now asked for Ribault's release from his English obligations, though it seems to have had no effect.Footnote ⁵⁰ Yet it is clear that Ribault now turned his attention back to Charlesfort as he composed a manuscript account of his earlier voyage. Though it took the form of a report to Coligny, the manuscript seems to have circulated only among the English, and no French manuscript is known to have existed.Footnote ⁵¹ Despite his many years in England, all of Ribault's surviving writings are in French, so he was almost certainly aided in dictating or translating this manuscript. Because we know that his actions in Florida were already accurately known by those well placed in English politics, it is also unclear whether he wrote the tract in a calculated move to raise interest at the court, or whether interested parties simply seized upon his report to Coligny to publicise the Florida colony. We can say, however, that by the time his manuscript was published in May as The Whole and True Discouerye of Terra Florida, Elizabeth was interested enough that preparations were already under way for an English expedition to Florida.Footnote ⁵²

Elizabeth chose Thomas Stukeley to command, rather than Ribault himself, despite the Frenchman's experience in leading sensitive English operations. Stukeley's career bore certain similarities to Ribault's own. Born around 1525 to minor gentry in Devon, he too rose to some prominence in the 1540s thanks to his daring in the same Habsburg-Valois Wars that had won renown for Ribault.Footnote ⁵³ Since both men served at Berwick castle on the Anglo-Scottish border in the mid-1540s, it is conceivable that they met at that early date.Footnote ⁵⁴ But also like Ribault, Stukeley's fortunes waxed and waned with those of his influential court patrons, and Stukeley spent time in exile on the continent. Curiously, each had been implicated in separate counterfeiting plots. More importantly, both earned reputations as dangerous pirates (or privateers, depending on the diplomatic relations of the moment), and both had acted as double agents for England and France in the 1550s.Footnote ⁵⁵ In sum, then, Stukeley bore at least some of the same qualifications as Ribault: a skilled and daring military leader, experienced in sensitive and covert diplomacy, and well connected at the English court.

But why add Stukeley to the expedition when he had no experience with the North Atlantic, no experience with colonisation, and questionable allegiances? Even after the fact, Elizabeth remained canny about her intentions.Footnote ⁵⁶ One possibility is that she never intended for him to go to Florida at all. Scholarship in this vein has dismissed the colonisation plan as “a cover” or “a ruse” to cover piracy against the French.Footnote ⁵⁷ The Spanish ambassador reported this rumour, though he himself did not entirely believe it.Footnote ⁵⁸ A key piece of evidence for the premeditated nature of Stukeley's so-called piracy is Elizabeth's notice, sent at the end of May to the Earl of Sussex in Ireland, indicating that Stukeley might arrive in possession of several French ships.Footnote ⁵⁹ This raises the consideration that the entire Florida scheme may have been simply a mask for a privateering venture with Elizabeth's covert approval, and Stukeley may have been selected solely for his experience as a corsair and his skill with covert action. The fact that Stukeley did indeed attack ships in the English Channel instead of going to Florida, coupled with his generally unscrupulous reputation, has contributed to a dismissive attitude towards the colonisation plan, when it has been acknowledged at all.Footnote ⁶⁰

There is, however, significant evidence indicating that the journey to Florida was at least perceived as a bona fide colonial venture. To begin with, the expedition included not only two ships financed by Stukeley, but one from the Queen, one from Ribault, another described as “chartered,” and another undescribed.Footnote ⁶¹ This indicates that Ribault intended to join the venture, which, if it were no more than a voyage of piracy, makes little sense. Though a sometime corsair himself, he would have needed to abandon all concern for his colonists at Charlesfort, which does not fit with his subsequent actions, and also act the pirate against French ships, which is utterly inconsistent with his character. Additionally, Stukeley's royal licence and passport indicated that he was headed to “the Contrey called Terra Florida.”Footnote ⁶² While this could have been part of an elaborate fraud, it meant that even the officials of the Admiralty Court were being deceived or in on the plot. Furthermore, Elizabeth herself also later told the Spanish ambassador that she had indeed intended to seize Florida from the French, professing that she hadn't thought the Spanish held any claim to it.Footnote ⁶³

Stukeley also made it clear to the Spanish ambassador, Alvaro de la Quadra, that he was expected to go to the French colony in Florida with Ribault. The circumstances under which he made this known, however, call into question his underlying motives and intentions. As he was preparing his ships throughout May 1563, he also tried to engage in secret negotiations with the Spanish ambassador. According to Quadra, Stukeley remained vague about precisely what he intended or was offering to do for Spain, but he claimed that he considered the voyage to Florida “knavish and bad business” and that he would “make of them a joke that was heard around the world.”Footnote ⁶⁴ The ambassador did not trust Stukeley, and nothing came of the negotiations.

Given Stukeley's history as a double agent and his subsequent defection to the Spanish in the 1570s, it is impossible to reach a definitive conclusion as to his true intentions, or indeed, those of Elizabeth, the Spanish ambassador, or even Ribault. Our knowledge that Stukeley ultimately did not go to Florida, and may have never intended to go, has made it easy to dismiss the colonisation plan as irrelevant and unimportant. Yet Stukeley's negotiations with the Spanish ambassador also demonstrate that he was at least expected to go to Florida. Consequently, whether or not Stukeley intended to go, those who financed his ships, provided his armaments and supplies, and especially those who volunteered for the journey, all committed and prepared themselves to launch an English colony in Florida. Because of this, any dismissal of Stukeley's voyage as fraudulent or unimportant neglects the fact that many of his contemporaries in London clearly believed that he was going to Florida.

Londoners had every reason to take Stukeley seriously. He conducted a spectacle on the Thames, with the Queen in attendance, accompanied by gongs, drums, and trumpets, and he also made sure to display the Queen's standard, proclaiming her approval of the voyage.Footnote ⁶⁵ Her acknowledgement must have carried some weight. She was quick to deny responsibility for her subjects’ American adventures under the flimsiest of pretexts, claiming not to know which lands the Spanish forbade to English traders, or that contrary winds must have driven her subjects into Spanish American ports (where they sold their cargoes of slaves).Footnote ⁶⁶ Yet she never repudiated Stukeley's intentions to colonise Florida. Even when the Spanish ambassador insisted that “it was a notorious thing” that Florida had been discovered and claimed by Spain, Elizabeth simply told him that “she asked for forgiveness from your Majesty for having tried to send to conquer it,” thereby explicitly acknowledging that a Florida colony was at least her avowed intention.Footnote ⁶⁷

The Stukeley venture was further publicised through several broadsheet ballads, a key vehicle for the spread of news in Elizabethan England.Footnote ⁶⁸ Robert Seall's ballad described little of the venture but praised Stukeley as one gifted with “a noble heart indeed. / And worthy great renown.”Footnote ⁶⁹ There is only brief mention of the French—this was Stukeley's show now, his “wished land to find,” not Ribault's.Footnote ⁷⁰ Another ballad asked, perhaps surprised, “Have you not heard of Florida?”Footnote ⁷¹ It too offered scant details on Stukeley's voyage, providing instead an impression of easy riches that soon enough would belong to England. In these popular representations, the French and Spanish were written out of the story so that Londoners could more easily envision themselves in possession of their own American colony. Here we can see the English engaging for the first time in the kind of colonialist discourse that would later become so prominent.

Ribault was clearly a significant part of the original English plan. His familiarity with the route and the location was obviously unparalleled in England; the expedition included his ship; and according to Stukeley, Elizabeth compensated Ribault for the journey in advance.Footnote ⁷² But something went wrong. The Edict of Amboise, signed on 19 March, had brought a temporary reprieve from the sectarian fighting in France, and Admiral Coligny had requested Ribault's return.Footnote ⁷³ Ribault's biographer, La Grassière, argues that the English would not release Ribault from their service, prompting Ribault to attempt to flee England.Footnote ⁷⁴ Yet a month after Coligny's request, Ribault still was widely expected to join the expedition to Florida, so this is unlikely to have transpired.Footnote ⁷⁵ It seems more likely that Ribault began to mistrust Stukeley and then plotted to abandon the venture. Whether he learned of Stukeley's negotiations with the Spanish ambassador, or perhaps worried that Stukeley intended to conquer rather than rescue Charlesfort, or whether he doubted that Stukeley intended to go at all, there was ample fodder for suspicion. What is certain is that in the middle of June, Ribault tried unsuccessfully to escape to France with three French hostages. They were all captured and thrown into the Tower of London.Footnote ⁷⁶

Historians have generally assumed that the other Frenchmen captured along with Ribault were members of the expedition. This confusion has resulted in part from the fact that after the escape attempt, Stukeley planned to bring three French pilots with him to Florida “in chains,” with the implication that these were the same three who tried to escape with Ribault.Footnote ⁷⁷ In fact, there were two different trios of Frenchmen locked up in London. The three hostages whom Ribault led in the escape attempt had stood as surety against the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis (along with a fourth hostage who did not attempt to escape). When Elizabeth and her councillors presented the French on 3 June with a laundry list of threats, pleas, and complaints, all intended to justify the restoration of Calais, they grumbled that these same hostages frequently left the city of London in violation of the agreement. Because of these and other various infractions, some major and many trivial, Elizabeth and her councillors concluded that they could justly hold or demand any possessions in France, especially Calais, in consideration of their “ancient right.”Footnote ⁷⁸ The heart of the negotiation was the exchange of Le Havre for Calais—the scheme, personally endorsed by Ribault, that had prompted the ill-fated English invasion force in 1562. The historical records identify Ribault as the ringleader of the escape attempt, with the implication that the scheme was instigated by the French ambassador. The consequences of the attempt stretched beyond the Florida expedition; the retention of the hostages proved to be the major sticking point in Anglo-French negotiations over the fate of Le Havre and Calais for the next several months.Footnote ⁷⁹ Historians have recognised the diplomatic significance of the other hostages but have not connected them with Ribault's imprisonment.Footnote ⁸⁰

The close connections between Ribault, the English interest in Florida, and the English attempt to regain Calais suggest that Elizabeth may have viewed the Stukeley expedition as yet another bargaining chip in her negotiations with France. The Queen and her councillors stated that their only interest in helping the Huguenots was the hope of gaining leverage for their territorial ambitions. If religious affiliation played an important role, they did not express it as such. The English also made it clear from the outset that Calais would be the price of any military aid to the Huguenots. Furthermore, when that plan collapsed, they showed a powerful commitment to identifying any pretext, large or small, that could be construed as a violation of the Treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis, with the specific goal of justifying the return of Calais. Perhaps they viewed Florida as one more item that could be easily taken and then sold back to the French, just as they had Le Havre. Stukeley's, and possibly Elizabeth's, interest in Florida seems to have flagged sometime between the summer and the fall of 1563, and perhaps not coincidentally, the French recaptured Le Havre, seriously undermining Elizabeth's bargaining power. It is also interesting that Ribault attempted to steal away with the three diplomatic hostages, leaving behind at least three other members of his crew. Perhaps he too had his eyes on the bigger diplomatic picture. He had certainly been intimately involved in the Calais negotiations from the start and had sacrificed the fate of Charlesfort in 1562 for what he perceived as more pressing matters. Whether or not the pursuit of Calais was Elizabeth's true ambition, and whether such a fear motivated Ribault's behaviour, the Florida venture must be seen as more than an isolated and aborted colonial project. It was closely tied to the great political problem of the day.

Unfortunately, Ribault's delays had disastrous consequences for the French colonists left at Charlesfort. Without supplies, their dependence on neighbouring Guale and other Indians led to tensions. A fire in their settlement exacerbated their plight, culminating in a mutiny and the execution of their captain. Under their new captain, Nicolas Barré, they determined to build their own ship and try to sail to France. Lacking any skilled shipwrights or navigators, however, their amateur craft sailed so slowly that they quickly exhausted their provisions and were driven to cannibalism.Footnote ⁸¹ They continued drifting until, in an incredible irony, they were found by Thomas Stukeley near the end of November 1563.Footnote ⁸² He had finally launched his expedition at the end of June, sans Ribault, but instead of going to Florida, he prowled the English Channel taking French, Spanish, and Portuguese ships, and it was here that he found the refugees from Charlesfort. Rumours of his imminent departure to Florida persisted, but so did French and Spanish condemnations of his piracy over the next year.Footnote ⁸³

The French, meanwhile, had tried to launch their own relief expedition in early 1563, before Ribault had convinced Elizabeth to involve herself, but the ongoing conflict with England kept them bottled up in their Norman ports.Footnote ⁸⁴ After Stukeley picked up the survivors of Charlesfort, he initially paraded them before the English court, and he does not seem to have treated them kindly.Footnote ⁸⁵ Nevertheless, some of them somehow made their way back to France, where they found preparations underway, no longer for a relief expedition, but instead, for another attempt to colonise Florida. This was led by Ribault's lieutenant from the 1562 voyage, René Goulaine de Laudonnière. Several of the veterans of Charlesfort joined Laudonnière and left again for Florida in April 1564, just a month after they had finally returned to France.Footnote ⁸⁶ Laudonnière constructed a new fort, Fort Caroline, at the mouth of the St. Johns River, the site of Ribault's first landing in Florida. They experienced similar problems to their predecessors at Charlesfort, and once again attempted to build their own ships to make their way home.Footnote ⁸⁷

Laudonnière and his colonists had reached the final stages of their preparations to depart when, on 3 August, the English privateer John Hawkins arrived at the French colony. He claimed to have come ashore in search of fresh water, but the idea that he stumbled upon Fort Caroline by coincidence is hardly credible. He had been on a slaving voyage in Africa since the previous October, yet he conveniently had with him Martin Atinas, a pilot from Dieppe and a veteran of Ribault's 1562 expedition. We also know that the English held prisoner another veteran pilot from that expedition, Nicolas Barré, from November 1564, possibly because of his association with Ribault.Footnote ⁸⁸ This strongly indicates an ongoing English commitment to maintaining information and access related to the French colony. A member of Hawkins’ crew also claimed that they had cruised the Florida coastline asking the Indians where they might find the French.Footnote ⁸⁹ Laudonnière recognised that the Frenchman Atinas had led Hawkins to Fort Caroline, and when Hawkins generously offered to carry the beleaguered colonists back to France, the French leader's suspicions were aroused because he “was afraid he would want to do something in Florida in the name of his mistress,” a decision that enraged the other Frenchmen who wanted only to go home.Footnote ⁹⁰ Hawkins’ visit has inspired some historians to speculate that he had been tasked with investigating Fort Caroline and removing the French or colonising it if the opportunity presented itself. James Williamson even claimed that John Hawkins and his brother William had wrested control of the Florida project from Stukeley.Footnote ⁹¹ This is speculative, but at the least, Hawkins’ visit to Fort Caroline does confirm an ongoing English interest in Florida even after Stukeley had abandoned it. The Spaniards certainly believed that the English still intended to colonise there in 1565, in part because of the testimony of a captured English sailor named Nicolas Jaspar.Footnote ⁹² Only the formal prohibition of English travel to the Indies after November 1566 put an end to the prospect of an English Florida. Unlike the French, the English wanted to preserve Spanish goodwill, and Elizabeth would see this prohibition enforced. John Hawkins was particularly singled out.Footnote ⁹³

Tragically for Laudonnière and his colonists, the Spaniards also kept a close eye on Fort Caroline. King Philip II selected Pedro Menéndez de Avilés, a captain-general of the combined fleets of the provinces of New Spain and Tierra Firme and a mariner with a decorated history of pursuing French corsairs, to destroy the colony.Footnote ⁹⁴ As Menéndez made his preparations, Jean Ribault was readying another reinforcement for Florida, having apparently been released by the English sometime since the previous summer.Footnote ⁹⁵ Ribault departed over a month before Menéndez, but the Spaniards made a quicker journey, arriving on 4 September 1565, just a week after Ribault. A brief naval skirmish ensued, followed by a hurricane that ran the French fleet aground. In the meantime, Menéndez led his men overland during the storm and defeated the sick and wounded Frenchmen left behind at the fort. As Ribault's fleet foundered over the next few weeks, local Indians helped Menéndez locate the surviving Frenchmen in several batches. Since they were nearly all Protestants, the Spanish leader executed many of these prisoners, perhaps two to three hundred Huguenots in total. Another 175 or so prisoners were kept alive, and perhaps as many as 220 sought refuge with the surrounding Timucuan Indians. Ribault himself was stabbed, and his notorious red beard was cut off as a trophy for King Philip.Footnote ⁹⁶

Given this disastrous ending to the French colony, it is not surprising that early Florida suffered an inglorious reputation in the mainstream history of American colonisation. The massacre in Florida became a key component in the growing “Black Legend” of Spanish Catholic cruelty and perfidy.Footnote ⁹⁷ What fame and recognition early Florida possessed seemed to derive from its very failure. Perhaps Nicolas le Challeux, a carpenter from Dieppe who managed to escape the slaughter of the Huguenot prisoners, put it most pithily:

Challeux's poem neatly confines Florida to the past, an unpleasant memory to be avoided if at all possible.

If French Florida earned only notoriety, English Florida barely rates a footnote in colonial history, due in no small part to Stukeley's thoroughly sullied personal reputation. In addition to his inglorious part in the Florida debacle, he involved himself in several subsequent plots against Elizabeth, earning himself the sobriquet of “Traitor Extraordinary” and adding a further blemish by association to the stillborn Florida expedition. Whether he appeared as the subject of a biography or the protagonist in a drama, his Florida scheme came to symbolise just one more item in his long record of deceit and treachery.Footnote ⁹⁹

Stukeley's abandonment of his Florida plans doomed the English interest in Florida to obscurity, and the fact that the colony never came to fruition certainly justifies the lack of scholarly interest. Stukeley's failure also tainted the endeavour for his contemporaries. In 1564 Alexander Lacye published “A Ballad Made by One Being Greatly Impoverished by the Voyage Prepared to Terra Florida, etc.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Though no copy of the song survives, the fact that Lacye believed he might find a market for this ballad indicates both a specific commitment on the part of at least some individuals to invest in the voyage, and a general interest in the Stukeley expedition, notwithstanding, or perhaps because of, its failure. We may legitimately question whether Stukeley or Elizabeth ever had any intention of going to Florida, but there is no doubt that some in the general public believed he would, and they were interested in the story.

Florida also did have an effect on subsequent English colonisation projects. The French experience loomed large in the minds of the English during their voyages to Roanoke and Jamestown, in particular for the chronicler Richard Hakluyt. He translated Laudonnière's narrative into English for Walter Ralegh because he believed that “no history hitherto set forth hath more affinity, resemblance, or conformity with yours of Virginia, than this of Florida.”Footnote ¹⁰¹ But even Stukeley's abortive voyage may have had its effects. Humphrey Gilbert, perhaps the most influential early proponent of English colonisation, was described as Stukeley's cousin (perhaps a figure of speech rather than a literal kin relation), and on one occasion he leapt to Stukeley's defence in an argument over his treasons.Footnote ¹⁰² Gilbert expressed his first interest in an overseas voyage—a search for the Northwest Passage—around 1565, just after Stukeley's Florida venture.Footnote ¹⁰³ He would not follow up on this idea for another nine years, but given the timing, it is quite possible that the idea was stimulated by Stukeley's plans. When he did propose his voyage of discovery in 1574, he cited Elizabeth's grant to Stukeley as evidence that “possession, planting of people and habitation, hath been already indeed lawful” within the territories claimed by the Spaniards.Footnote ¹⁰⁴

Gilbert tried to launch a colony in Newfoundland in 1583, but he perished in the attempt. His enthusiasm and his patent then passed to his stepbrother, Walter Ralegh, who used Gilbert's patent for his Roanoke colony of 1584–1587. When Queen Elizabeth forbade Ralegh from going to Virginia himself, he chose another “cousin,” Richard Grenville, to go in his stead. Grenville had previously demonstrated his own interest in colonisation; he had held custody of Stukeley's French pilots in 1564, and he too contracted plans for a colonial voyage and a search for the Northwest Passage. While his proposals likely dated from around 1574, his involvement with the French pilots strongly indicates that Stukeley's project influenced his thinking, and according to Carole Shammas, Grenville was also a friend and distant relative of Stukeley'sFootnote ¹⁰⁵ Gilbert and Ralegh are usually seen among the founding generation of English overseas colonisers, with their ventures taking place in the 1580s. Yet Gilbert and Grenville's interest in overseas colonisation clearly dated to the 1560s (and Ralegh's interest was descended from Gilbert's). Historian David Beers Quinn has suggested that Gilbert picked up his interest in colonisation from the French while in Le Havre, but it would seem equally or more likely to have come from Stukeley, with whom Gilbert and Grenville each had definitive ties specifically related to American colonisation.Footnote ¹⁰⁶

But perhaps the exact mechanism of transfer is less significant—Humphrey Gilbert failed to record precisely how he got the idea to start an American colony—than the consequences of considering how a colonial impulse looked different in the mid-1560s than it did even a few years later. Narratives of English colonial ideology usually emphasise conflict with Catholicism in general and Spain in particular. According to such narratives, the colonial impulse emerged from efforts to attack and emulate Spain's commercial base in the Americas, which in turn fuelled England's self-perception as a Protestant nation. If we restrict our lens to Gilbert's and Ralegh's projects of the 1580s, anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic sentiments loom large in the ideology behind colonisation, just as anti-Spanish piracy constitutes the commercial impetus, and it is reasonable to attribute to the English a “militant Protestant imperialism that drew on widespread anti-Catholicism.”Footnote ¹⁰⁷ But this does not adequately explain English attitudes and motivations in 1563. English rivalry focused more squarely on France, and Elizabeth did not begin to take on an aggressive anti-Catholic policy until the late 1560s.Footnote ¹⁰⁸ Even Gilbert's and Grenville's proposals from 1574 took pains to indicate that they intended to lawfully abide by the Spanish claims.Footnote ¹⁰⁹ Only later, mainly in the 1580s, years after the Stukeley venture, would the Spanish massacre of Huguenot Florida become an essential piece of propaganda in the creation of England's militant Protestantism and the Black Legend.Footnote ¹¹⁰ French Florida would then be read retrospectively to support what had become English policy. But English Florida fit awkwardly into this narrative. At the time of its inception it was not framed as an affront to Spain or a bastion of English Protestantism. At least publicly, Elizabeth sought to ameliorate any offence it may have caused to Philip II, and the publicity surrounding Stukeley's expedition avoided any mention of other European rivals.

How much more complicated and contingent those colonial origins then become when we realise that they originally emerged less from fledgling Protestant nationalism and more by happenstance from continental politics—especially the French Wars of Religion and the negotiations over Le Havre and Calais. We must reckon with the jumble of commercial motives, vague evangelical impulses, and personal ambitions that drove Stukeley's project no less than his successors. When Sir Thomas Smith tried to build a colony in Ulster in 1572–1573, he worried that he and his son would be seen as “deceivers of men and enterprisers of Stewelie's [sic] voyage of Terra Florida.”Footnote ¹¹¹ He remembered English Florida, and it cast a pall over his own project. All the more reason, then, to take Stukeley's Florida seriously as England's first overseas colonial venture. While less successful than subsequent expeditions—spectacularly unsuccessful, in fact—it was nonetheless taken seriously in its time.