Humphrey Gilbert

Legacy

Gilbert was father to Ralegh Gilbert, who was to become second in command of Popham Colony. One of his later relatives was the architect C. P. H. Gilbert.

Gilbert was part of a remarkable generation of Devonshire men, who combined the roles of adventurer, writer, soldier and mariner - often in ways as equally loathsome as admirable. AL Rowse wrote of him:

Gilbert was certainly an interesting psychological case, with the symptoms of disturbed personality that often go with men of mark, not at all the simple Elizabethan seaman of Froude's Victorian view. He was passionate and impulsive, a nature liable to violence and cruelty - as came out in his savage repression of rebels in Ireland - but also intellectual and visionary, a questing and original mind, with the personal magnetism that went with it. People were apt to be both attracted and repelled by him, to follow his leadership and yet be mistrustful of him.

He was outstanding for his initiative and originality, if not for his successes, but it is in his efforts at colonization that he had most influence. Ireland ended up as a brutal disaster (although Ulster and Munster were in time colonized), but the American adventure did eventually flourish. The formality of his annexation of Newfoundland eventually achieved reality in 1610; but perhaps of more significance was the reissue to Raleigh in 1584 of Gilbert's patent, on the back of which he undertook the Roanoke expeditions, the first sustained attempt by the English crown to establish colonies in North America.