[piers2210]

Worth noting that the British Empire's early financing in the 16th century was done through piracy...they knew that the Spanish has found vast quantities of gold in Peru and Mexico, whereas the english had been unsuccessful in visits to places like Canada, Guiana, Gambia, Virginia....so the answer was simply to rob the spanish, which is how Drake had operated in the 1570's in the Carribean and Panama..in the end Queen Elizabeth 1 sanctioned the raids on the spanish, led by Raleigh, and between 1585 and 1604, between 100 and 200 vessels a year, privately manned, set off to harass spanish vessels and reaped vast wealth from this enterprise..and thus began the empire that spanned the globe...