Thus, collision between the two nations was unavoidable, and their rivalry enlisted all the forces of religion and interest.  Under such influences thousands of young Englishmen crossed the channel to fight with William of Orange against the Spaniards or with the Huguenots against the Guises, the allies of Spain.  The same motives led to the dazzling exploits of Hawkins, Drake, and Cavendish, and sent to the sea scores of English privateers; and it was the same motives which stimulated Gilbert in 1576, eighty-four years after the Spaniards had taken possession, in his grand design of planting a colony in America.  The purpose of Gilbert was to cut into Spanish colonial power, as was explained by Richard Hakluyt in his Discourse on Western Planting, written in 1584:  “If you touche him [the king of Spain] in the Indies, you touche the apple of his eye; for take away his treasure, which is neruus belli, and which he hath almoste oute of his West Indies, his olde bandes of souldiers will soone be dissolved, his purposes defeated, his power and strengthe diminished, his pride abated, and his tyranie utterly suppressed."[5]

Still, while English colonization at first sprang out of rivalry with Spain and was late in beginning, England’s claims in America were hardly later than Spain’s.  Christopher Columbus at first hoped, in his search for the East Indies, to sail under the auspices of Henry vii.  Only five years later, in 1497, John Cabot, under an English charter, reached the continent of North America in seeking a shorter route by the northwest; and in 1498, with his son Sebastian Cabot, he repeated his visit.  But nothing important resulted from these voyages, and after long neglect their memory was revived by Hakluyt,[6] only to support a claim for England to priority in discovery.

Indeed, England was not yet prepared for the work of colonization.  Her commerce was still in its infancy, and did not compare with that of either Italy, Spain, or Portugal.  Neither Columbus nor the Cabots were Englishmen, and the advantages of commerce were so little understood in England about this period that the taking of interest for the use of money was prohibited.[7] A voyage to some mart “within two days’ distance” was counted a matter of great moment by merchant adventurers.[8]

During the next half-century, only two noteworthy attempts were made by the English to accomplish the purposes of the Cabots:  De Prado visited Newfoundland in 1527 and Hore in 1535,[9] but neither of the voyages was productive of any important result.  Notwithstanding, England’s commerce made some advancement during this period.  A substantial connection between England and America was England’s fisheries on the banks of Newfoundland; though used by other European states, over fifty English ships spent two months in every year in those distant waters, and gained, in the pursuit, valuable maritime experience.  Probably, however, the development of trade in a different quarter had a more direct connection with American colonization, for about 1530 William Hawkins visited the coast of Guinea and engaged in the slave-trade with Brazil.[10]