The Elizabethan founders of the British Empire have long been considered heroes of great personal genius and skill who civilised the natives and founded one of the greatest empires in the history of the world. In fact they were a bunch of murdering, thieving pirates whose sole ambition was to line their own pockets. They had neither loyalty nor faith; they were treacherous and violent in the extreme; and they enjoyed drunken victorious rampages.
