Before New England: The Popham Colony
Richard L. Pflederer visits the site of the first short-lived English colony in Maine set up in competition with Jamestown in Virginia, and considers a remarkable map of it drawn by one of the colonists.
In late September, 1608, a courier arrived at the gates of the Spanish royal residence at Madrid after a journey of several days by road from the coast. He was carrying a dispatch to Philip III from Don Pedro de Zuñiga, Spanish ambassador in London. It contained diplomatic intelligence that he believed would be crucial to Spanish efforts to protect their holdings in North America from encroachment by troublesome British competitors. Twenty years had passed since the unsuccessful attempt by Philip III’s father, Philip II, to topple the Protestant Queen of England in the abortive naval invasion known in Spain as the ‘Great Enterprise’. Now Elizabeth I was dead, and the crowns of Scotland and England had been united under James VI and I.
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