[Footnote 18: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 400.]

[Footnote 19: Cases of rescue and adoption are numerous. See the case of Conture, in Parkman, Jesuits, 223; Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, I., 113.]

[Footnote 20: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 436.]

[Footnote 21: Percy, Discourse, in Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), lvii.-lxx.]

[Footnote 22: Percy, Discourse, in Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), lxx.]

[Footnote 23: Breife Declaration, in Virginia State Senate Document, 1874.]

[Footnote 24: Percy, Discourse, in Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), lxxiii.]

[Footnote 25: Wingfield, Discourse, in Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), lxxiv.-xci.]

[Footnote 26: Wingfield, Discourse, in Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), lxxxvi.]

[Footnote 27: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 175.]

[Footnote 28: Wingfield, Discourse, in Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), lxxxvii.]

[Footnote 29: Breife Declaration.]

[Footnote 30: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 104.]

[Footnote 31: Breife Declaration.]

[Footnote 32: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 109-120.]



CHAPTER IV

GLOOM IN VIRGINIA

(1608-1617)

When Newport arrived with the "Second Supply," September 29, 1608, he brought little relief. His seventy passengers, added to the number that survived the summer, raised the population at Jamestown to about one hundred and twenty. Among the new-comers were Richard Waldo, Peter Wynne (both added to the council), Francis West, a brother of Lord Delaware; eight Poles and Germans, sent over to begin the making of pitch and soap ashes; a gentlewoman, Mrs. Forrest, and her maid, Anne Burras, who were the first of their sex to settle at Jamestown. About two months later there was a marriage in the church at Jamestown between John Laydon and Anne Burras,[1] and a year later was born Virginia Laydon, the first white child in the colony.[2]

The instructions brought by Newport expressed the dissatisfaction of the council with the paltry returns made to the company for their outlay, and required President Smith to aid Newport to do three things[3]—viz., crown Powhatan; discover a gold-mine and a passage to the South Sea; and find Raleigh's lost colony. Smith tells us that he was wholly opposed to all these projects, but submitted as best he might.

The coronation of Powhatan was a formality borrowed from Sir Walter Raleigh's peerage for Manteo, and duly took place at Werowocomoco. Powhatan was presented with a basin, ewer, bed, bed-cover, and a scarlet cloak, but showed great unwillingness to kneel to receive the crown. At last three of the party, by bearing hard upon his shoulders, got him to stoop a little, and while he was in that position they clapped it upon his head. Powhatan innocently turned the whole proceeding into ridicule by taking his old shoes and cloak of raccoon skin and giving them to Newport.

To seek gold-mines and the South Sea, Newport, taking all the strong and healthy men at the fort, visited the country of the Monacans beyond the falls of the James. In this march they discovered the vein of gold that runs through the present counties of Louisa, Goochland, Fluvanna, and Buckingham; but as the ore was not easily extracted from the quartz they returned to Jamestown tired and disheartened. The search for Raleigh's lost colony was undertaken with much less expense—several small parties were sent southward but learned nothing important.

In December, 1608, Newport returned to England, taking with him a cargo of pitch, tar, iron ore, and other articles provided at great labor by the overworked colonists. Smith availed himself of the opportunity to send by Newport an account of his summer explorations, a map of Chesapeake Bay and tributary rivers, and a letter in answer to the complaints signified to him in the instructions of the home council. Smith's reply was querulous and insubordinate, and spiteful enough against Ratcliffe, Archer, and Newport, but contained many sound truths. He ridiculed the policy of the company, and told them that "it were better to give L500 a ton for pitch, tar, and the like in the settled countries of Russia, Sweden, and Denmark than send for them hither till more necessary things be provided"; "for," said he, "in overtaxing our weake and unskillful bodies, to satisfie this desire of present profit, we can scarce ever recover ourselves from one supply to another." Ratcliffe returned to England with Newport, after whose departure Smith was assisted for a short time by a council consisting of Matthew Scrivener, Richard Waldo, and Peter Wynne. The two former were drowned during January, 1609, and the last died not long after. Smith was left sole ruler, and, contrary to the intention of the king, he made no attempt to fill the council.[4]

The "Second Supply" had brought provisions, which lasted only two months,[5] and most of Smith's time during the winter 1608-1609 was occupied in trading for corn with the Indians on York River. In the spring much useful work was done by the colonists under Smith's directions. They dug a well for water, which till then had been obtained from the river, erected some twenty cabins, shingled the church, cleared and planted forty acres of land with Indian-corn, built a house for the Poles to make glass in, and erected two block-houses.

Smith started to build a fort "for a retreat" on Gray's Creek, opposite to Jamestown (the place is still called "Smith's Fort"), but a remarkable circumstance, not at all creditable to Smith's vigilance or circumspection, stopped the work and put the colonists at their wits' end to escape starvation. On an examination of the casks in which their corn was stored it was found that the rats had devoured most of the contents, and that the remainder was too rotten to eat.[6]

To avoid starvation, President Smith, like Lane at Roanoke Island, in May, 1609, dispersed the whole colony in three parties, sending one to live with the savages, another to Point Comfort to try for fish, and another, the largest party, twenty miles down the river to the oyster-banks, where at the end of nine weeks the oyster diet caused their skins "to peale off from head to foote as if they had been flead."[7]

While the colony was in this desperate condition there arrived from England, July 14, 1609, a small bark, commanded by Samuel Argall, with a supply of bread and wine, enough to last the colonists one month. He had been sent out by the London Company to try for sturgeon in James River and to find a shorter route to Virginia. He brought news that the old charter had been repealed, that a new one abolishing the council in Virginia had been granted, and that Lord Delaware was coming, at the head of a large supply of men and provisions, as sole and absolute governor of Virginia.[8]

The calamities in the history of the colony as thus far outlined have been attributed to the great preponderance of "gentlemen" among these early immigrants; but afterwards when the company sent over mechanics and laborers the story of misfortune was not much changed. The preceding narrative shows that other causes, purposely underestimated at the time, had far more to do with the matter. Imported diseases and a climate singularly fatal to the new-comers, the faction-breeding charter, the communism of labor, Indian attack, and the unreasonable desire of the company for immediate profit afford explanations more than sufficient. Despite the presence of some unworthy characters, these "gentlemen" were largely composed of the "restless, pushing material of which the pathfinders of the world have ever been made."

The ships returning from the "Second Supply" reached England in January, 1609, and the account that they brought of the dissensions at Jamestown convinced the officers of the London Company that the government in Virginia needed correction. It was deemed expedient to admit stockholders into some share of the government, and something like a "boom" was started. Broadsides were issued by the managers, pamphlets praising the country were published, and sermons were delivered by eminent preachers like Rev. William Simonds and Rev. Daniel Price. Zuniga, the Spanish minister, was greatly disturbed, and urgently advised his master, Philip III., to give orders to have "these insolent people in Virginia quickly annihilated." But King Philip was afraid of England, and contented himself with instructing Zuniga to keep on the watch; and thus the preparations of the London Company went on without interruption.[9]

May 23, 1609, a new charter was granted to the company, constituting it a corporation entirely independent of the North Virginia or Plymouth Company. The stockholders, seven hundred and sixty-five in number, came from every rank, profession, or trade in England, and even included the merchant guilds in London.[10] The charter increased the company's bounds to a tract fronting on the Atlantic Ocean, "from the point of land called Cape, or Point, Comfort all along the sea-coast to the northward two hundred miles, and from the point of Cape Comfort all along the sea-coast to the southward two hundred miles," and extending "up into the land, throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest,"[11] a clause which subsequently caused much dispute.

The governing power was still far from taking a popular form, being centred in a treasurer and council, vacancies in which the company had the right to fill. For the colonists it meant nothing more than change of one tyranny for another, since the local government in Virginia was made the rule of an absolute governor. For this office the council selected one of the peers of the realm, Thomas West, Lord Delaware, but as he could not go out at once they commissioned Sir Thomas Gates as first governor of Virginia,[12] arming him with a code of martial law which fixed the penalty of death for many offences.

All things being in readiness, the "Third Supply" left Falmouth, June 8, 1609, in nine ships, carrying about six hundred men, women, and children, and in one of the ships called the Sea Venture sailed the governor, Sir Thomas Gates, and the two officers next in command, Sir George Somers and Captain Christopher Newport.

When within one hundred and fifty leagues of the West Indies they were caught in the tail of a hurricane, which scattered the fleet and sank one of the ships. To keep the Sea Venture from sinking, the men bailed for three days without intermission, standing up to their middle in water. Through this great danger they were preserved by Somers, who acted as pilot, without taking food or sleep for three days and nights, and kept the ship steady in the waves till she stranded, July 29, 1609, on one of the Bermuda Islands, where the company, one hundred and fifty in number, landed in safety. They found the island a beautiful place, full of wild hogs, which furnished them an abundance of meat, to which they added turtles, wild fowl, and various fruits. How to get away was the question, and though they had not a nail they started promptly to build two small ships, the Patience and Deliverance, out of the cedar which covered the country-side. May 10, 1610, they were ready to sail with the whole party for Jamestown, which they reached without accident May 23.[13]

At Jamestown a sad sight met their view. The place looked like "some ancient fortification" all in ruins; the palisades were down, the gates were off their hinges, and the church and houses were in a state of utter neglect and desolation. Out of the ruins tottered some sixty wretches, looking more like ghosts than human beings, and they told a story of suffering having hardly a parallel.[14]

The energetic Captain Argall, whose arrival at Jamestown has been already noticed, temporarily relieved the destitution there, first by supplies which he brought from England and afterwards by sturgeon which he caught in the river.[15] August 11, 1609, four of the storm-tossed ships of Gates's fleet entered Hampton Roads, and not long after three others joined them. They set on land at Jamestown about four hundred passengers, many of them ill with the London plague; and as it was the sickly season in Virginia, and most of their provisions were spoiled by rain and sea-water, their arrival simply aggravated the situation.

To these troubles, grave enough of themselves, were added dissensions among the chief men. Ratcliffe, Martin, and Archer returned at this time, and President Smith showed little disposition to make friends with them or with the new-comers, and insisted upon his authority under the old commission until Gates could be heard from. In the wrangles that ensued, nearly all the gentlemen opposed Smith, while the mariners on the ships took his side, and it was finally decided that Smith should continue in the presidency till September 10, when his term expired.[16]

Thus having temporarily settled their differences, the leaders divided the immigrants into three parties, retaining one under Smith at Jamestown, and sending another under John Martin to Nansemond, and a third under Francis West to the falls of the James River. The Indians so fiercely assailed the two latter companies that both Martin and West soon returned. Smith was suspected of instigating these attacks, and thus fresh quarrels broke out. About the time of the expiration of his presidency Smith was injured by an explosion of gunpowder, and in this condition, exasperated against Martin, Archer, and Ratcliffe of the former council, he would neither give up the royal commission nor lay down his office; whereupon they deposed him and elected George Percy president.[17] When the ships departed in October, 1609, Smith took passage for England, and thus the colony lost its strongest character. Whatever qualifications must be made in his prejudiced account of the colony, the positions of trust which he enjoyed after reaching home prove that his merit does not rest solely upon his own opinions.

Under Percy the colony went from bad to worse. Sickness soon incapacitated him, and his advisers, Martin, Archer, Ratcliffe, and West, were not men of ability. Probably no one could have accomplished much good under the conditions; and though it became fashionable afterwards in England to abuse the emigrants as a "lewd company" and "gallants packed thither by their friends to escape worse destinies at home," the broadsides issued by the company show that the emigrants of the "Third Supply" were chiefly artisans of all sorts.[18] The Rev. William Croshaw perhaps stated the case fairly in a sermon which he preached in 1610,[19] when he said that "those who were sent over at the company's expense were, for aught he could see, like those that were left behind, even of all sorts, better and worse," and that the gentlemen "who went on their own account" were "as good as the scoffers at home, and, it may be, many degrees better."

The colonists at first made various efforts to obtain supplies; and at President Percy's command John Ratcliffe, in October, 1609, established a fort called Algernourne and a fishery at Point Comfort, and in the winter of 1609-1610[20] went in a pinnace to trade with Powhatan in York River; but was taken off his guard and slain by the Indians with twenty-seven of his men.[21] Captain West tried to trade also, but failing in the attempt, sailed off to England.[22] Matters reached a crisis when the Indians killed and carried off the hogs, drove away the deer, and laid ambushes all around the fort at Jamestown.[23]

Finally came a period long remembered as the "Starving Time," when corn and even roots from the swamps failed. The starving settlers killed and ate the dogs and horses and then the mice and snakes found about the fort. Some turned cannibals, and an Indian who had been slain was dug out of the ground and devoured. Others crazed with hunger dogged the footsteps of their comrades; and one man cut his wife into pieces and ate her up, for which barbarous act he was executed. Even religion failed to afford any consolation, and a man threw his Bible into the fire and cried out in the market-place, "There is no God in heaven."

Only Daniel Tucker, afterwards governor of Bermuda, seemed able to take any thought. He built a boat and caught fish in the river, and "this small relief did keep us from killing one another to eat," says Percy. Out of more than five hundred colonists in Virginia in the summer of 1609 there remained about the latter part of May, 1610, not above sixty persons—men, women, and children—and even these were so reduced by famine and disease that had help been delayed ten days longer all would have perished.[24]

The arrival of Sir Thomas Gates relieved the immediate distress, and he asserted order by the publication of the code of martial law drawn up in England.[25] Then he held a consultation with Somers, Newport, and Percy, and decided to abandon the settlement. As the provisions brought from the Bermudas were only sufficient to last the company sixteen days longer, he prepared to go to Newfoundland, where, as it was the fishing season, he hoped to get further supplies which might enable them to reach England.[26] Accordingly, he sent the pinnace Virginia to Fort Algernourne to take on the guard; and then embarked (June 7, 1610) the whole party at Jamestown in the two cedar vessels built in the Bermudas. Darkness fell upon them at Hog Island, and the next morning at Mulberry Island they met the Virginia returning up the river, bearing a letter from Lord Delaware announcing his arrival at Point Comfort, and commanding him to take his ships and company back to Jamestown; which order Gates obeyed, landing at Jamestown that very night.[27]

It seems that the reports which reached the council of the company in England in December, of the disappearance of Sir Thomas Gates and the ill condition of things at Jamestown, threw such a coldness over the enterprise that they had great difficulty in fitting out the new fleet. Nevertheless, March 2, 1610, Lord Delaware left Cowes with three ships and one hundred and fifty emigrants, chiefly soldiers and mechanics, with only enough "knights and gentlemen of quality" to furnish the necessary leadership.[28]

He arrived at Point Comfort June 6; and, following Gates up the river, reached Jamestown June 10. His first work was to cleanse and restore the settlement, after which he sent Robert Tindall to Cape Charles to fish, and Argall and Somers to the Bermuda Islands for a supply of hog meat. Argall missed his way and went north to the fishing banks of Newfoundland, while Somers died in the Bermudas.

Delaware next proceeded to settle matters with the Indians. The policy of the company had been to treat them justly, and after the first summer the settlers bought Jamestown Island from the Paspaheghs for some copper,[29] and during his presidency Captain Smith purchased the territory at the Falls.[30] For their late proceedings the Indians had incurred the penalties of confiscation, but Lord Delaware did not like harsh measures and sent to Powhatan to propose peace. His reply was that ere he would consider any accommodation Lord Delaware must send him a coach and three horses and consent to confine the English wholly to their island territory.[31] Lord Delaware at once ordered Gates to attack and drive Powhatan's son Pochins and his Indians from Kecoughtan; and when this was done he erected two forts at the mouth of Hampton River, called Charles and Henry, about a musket-shot distance from Fort Algernourne.

No precautions, however, could prevent the diseases incident to the climate, and during the summer no less than one hundred and fifty persons perished of fever. In the fall Delaware concentrated the settlers, now reduced to less than two hundred, at Jamestown and Algernourne fort. Wishing to carry out his instructions, he sent an expedition to the falls of James River to search for gold-mines; but, like its predecessor, it proved a failure, and many of the men were killed by the Indians.[32] Delaware himself fell sick, and by the spring was so reduced that he found it necessary to leave the colony. When he departed, March 28, 1611, the storehouse contained only enough supplies to last the people three months at short allowance; and probably another "Starving Time" was prevented only by the arrival of Sir Thomas Dale, May 10, 1611.[33]

From this time till the death of Lord Delaware in 1618 the government was administered by a succession of deputy governors, Sir Thomas Gates, Sir Thomas Dale, Captain George Yardley, and Captain Samuel Argall. For five years—1611-1616—of this period the ruling spirit was Sir Thomas Dale, who had acquired a great reputation in the army of the Netherlands as a disciplinarian. His policy in Virginia seemed to have been the advancement of the company's profit at the expense of the settlers, whom he pretended to regard as so abandoned that they needed the extreme of martial law. In 1611 he restored the settlements at forts Charles and Henry; in 1613 he founded Bermuda Hundred and Bermuda City (otherwise called Charles Hundred and Charles City, now City Point), and in 1614 he established a salt factory at Smith Island near Cape Charles.[34]

In laboring at these works the men were treated like galley-slaves and given a diet "that hogs refused to eat." As a consequence some of them ran away, and Dale set the Indians to catch them, and when they were brought back he burned several of them at the stake. Some attempted to go to England in a barge, and for their temerity were shot to death, hanged, or broken on the wheel. Although for the most part the men in the colony at this time were old soldiers, mechanics, and workmen, accustomed to labor, we are told that among those who perished through Dale's cruelty were many young men "of Auncyent Houses and born to estates of L1000 by the year,"[35] persons doubtless attracted to Virginia by the mere love of adventure, but included by Dale in the common slavery. Even the strenuous Captain John Smith testified concerning Jeffrey Abbott, a veteran of the wars in Ireland and the Netherlands, but put to death by Dale for mutiny, that "he never saw in Virginia a more sufficient soldier, (one) less turbulent, a better wit, (one) more hardy or industrious, nor any more forward to cut them off that sought to abandon the country or wrong the colony."[36]

To better purpose Dale's strong hand was felt among the Indians along the James and York rivers, whom he visited with heavy punishments. The result was that Powhatan's appetite for war speedily diminished; and when Captain Argall, in April, 1613, by a shrewd trick got possession of Pocahontas, he offered peace, which was confirmed in April, 1614, by the marriage of Pocahontas to a leading planter named John Rolfe. The ceremony is believed to have been performed at Jamestown by Rev. Richard Buck, who came with Gates in 1610, and it was witnessed by several of Powhatan's kindred.[37]

Dale reached out beyond the territory of the London Company, and hearing that the French had made settlements in North Virginia, he sent Captain Samuel Argall in July, 1613, to remove them. Argall reached Mount Desert Island, captured the settlement, and carried some of the French to Jamestown, where as soon as Dale saw them he spoke of "nothing but ropes" and of gallows and hanging "every one of them." To make the work complete, Argall was sent out on a second expedition, and this time he reduced the French settlements at Port Royal and St. Croix River.[38] On his return voyage to Virginia he is said to have stopped at the Hudson River, where, finding a Dutch trading-post consisting of four houses on Manhattan Island, he forced the Dutch governor likewise to submit by a "letter sent and recorded" in Virginia. Probably in one of these voyages the Delaware River was also visited, when the "atturnment of the Indian kings" was made to the king of England.[39] It appears to have received its present name from Argall in 1610.[40]

Towards the end of his stay in Virginia, Dale seemed to realize that some change must be made in the colony, and he accordingly abolished the common store and made every man dependent on his own labor. But the exactions he imposed upon the settlers in return made it certain that he did not desire their benefit so much as to save expense to his masters in England. The "Farmers," as he called a small number to whom he gave three acres of land to be cultivated in their own way, had to pay two and a half barrels of corn per acre and give thirty days' public service in every year; while the "Laborers," constituting the majority of the colony, had to slave eleven months, and were allowed only one month to raise corn to keep themselves supplied for a year. The inhabitants of Bermuda Hundred counted themselves more fortunate than the rest because they were promised their freedom in three years and were given one month in the year and one day in the week, from May till harvest-time, "to get their sustenance," though of this small indulgence they were deprived of nearly half by Dale. Yet even this slender appeal to private interest was accompanied with marked improvement, and in 1614 Ralph Hamor, Jr., Dale's secretary of state, wrote, "When our people were fed out of the common store and labored jointly in the manuring of ground and planting corn, ... the most honest of them, in a general business, would not take so much faithful and true pains in a week as now he will do in a day."[41]

These were really dark days for Virginia, and Gondomar, the Spanish minister, wrote to Philip III. that "here in London this colony Virginia is in such bad repute that not a human being can be found to go there in any way whatever."[42] Some spies of King Philip were captured in Virginia, and Dale was much concerned lest the Spaniards would attack the settlement, but the Spanish king and his council thought that it would die of its own weakness, and took no hostile measure.[43] In England the company was so discouraged that many withdrew their subscriptions, and in 1615 a lottery was tried as a last resort to raise money.[44]

When Dale left Virginia (May, 1616) the people were very glad to get rid of him, and not more than three hundred and fifty-one persons—men, women, and children—survived altogether.[45] Within a very short time the cabins which he erected were ready to fall and the palisades could not keep out hogs. A tract of land called the "company's garden" yielded the company L300 annually, but this was a meagre return for the enormous suffering and sacrifice of life.[46] Dale took Pocahontas with him to England, and Lady Delaware presented her at court, and her portrait engraved by the distinguished artist Simon de Passe was a popular curiosity.[47] While in England she met Captain John Smith, and when Smith saluted her as a princess Pocahontas insisted on calling him father and having him call her his child.[48]

It was at this juncture that in the cultivation of tobacco, called "the weed" by King James, a new hope for Virginia was found. Hamor says that John Rolfe began to plant tobacco in 1612 and his example was soon followed generally. Dale frowned upon the new occupation, and in 1616 commanded that no farmer should plant tobacco until he had put down two acres of his three-acre farm in corn.[49] After Dale's departure Captain George Yardley, who acted as deputy governor for a year, was not so exacting. At Jamestown, in the spring of 1617, the market-place and even the narrow margin of the streets were set with tobacco. It was hard, indeed, to suppress a plant which brought per pound in the London market sometimes as much as $12 in present money. Yardley's government lasted one year, and the colony "lived in peace and best plentye that ever it had till that time."[50]

[Footnote 1: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 114, 130.]

[Footnote 2: Hotten, Emigrants to America, 245; Brown, First Republic, 114.]

[Footnote 3: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 121.]

[Footnote 4: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 23, 125, 442, 449, 460.]

[Footnote 5: Breife Declaration.]

[Footnote 6: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 133-147, 154.]

[Footnote 7: Breife Declaration.]

[Footnote 8: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 159; Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 343.]

[Footnote 9: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 250-321.]

[Footnote 10: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 228.]

[Footnote 11: Hening, Statutes, I., 80-98; Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 206-224.]

[Footnote 12: True and Sincere Declaration, in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 345.]

[Footnote 13: Purchas, Pilgrimes, IV., 1734-1754; Plain Description of the Barmudas (Force, Tracts, III., No. iii.); Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 346, 347.]

[Footnote 14: Purchas, Pilgrimes, IV., 1749.]

[Footnote 15: Breife Declaration; Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 404-406.]

[Footnote 16: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 330-332.]

[Footnote 17: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 480-485; Archer's letter, in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 331-332; Ratcliffe's letter, ibid., 334-335; Brown, First Republic, 94-97.]

[Footnote 18: Brown, First Republic, 92.]

[Footnote 19: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 364.]

[Footnote 20: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 497.]

[Footnote 21: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 483-488.]

[Footnote 22: True Declaration (Force, Tracts, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 23: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 498.]

[Footnote 24: Breife Declaration; Percy, Trewe Relacyon, quoted by Brown, First Republic, 94, and by Eggleston, Beginners of a Nation, 39; The Tragical Relation, in Neill, Virginia Company, 407-411; True Declaration (Force, Tracts, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 25: Laws Divine, Morall and Martiall (Force, Tracts, III., No. ii.).]

[Footnote 26: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 401-415.]

[Footnote 27: Ibid., 407.]

[Footnote 28: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 400-415; Purchas, Pilgrimes, IV., 1734-1756; True Declaration (Force, Tracts, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 29: True Declaration (Force, Tracts, III., No. i.).]

[Footnote 30: Spelman, in Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 483-488.]

[Footnote 31: Purchas, Pilgrimes, IV., 1756.]

[Footnote 32: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 490.]

[Footnote 33: Breife Declaration.]

[Footnote 34: Hamor, True Discourse, 29-31; Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 501-508.]

[Footnote 35: The Tragical Relation, in Neill, Virginia Company, 407-411.]

[Footnote 36: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 508.]

[Footnote 37: Hamor, True Discourse, 11.]

[Footnote 38: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 709-725.]

[Footnote 39: A Description of the Province of New Albion (1648) (Force, Tracts, II., No. vii.).]

[Footnote 40: Brown, Genesis of the United States, I., 438.]

[Footnote 41: Hamor, True Discourse, 17; Breife Declaration.]

[Footnote 42: Brown, Genesis of the United States, II., 739, 740.]

[Footnote 43: Ibid., 657.]

[Footnote 44: Ibid., 760, 761.]

[Footnote 45: John Rolfe, Relation, in Va. Historical Register, I., 110.]

[Footnote 46: Virginia Company, Proceedings (Va. Hist. Soc., Collections, new series, VII.), I., 65.]

[Footnote 47: Neill, Virginia Company, 98.]

[Footnote 48: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 533.]

[Footnote 49: Rolfe, Relation, in Va. Historical Register, I., 108.]

[Footnote 50: Breife Declaration.]



CHAPTER V

TRANSITION OF VIRGINIA

(1617-1640)

During the period of Dale's administration the constitution of the London Company underwent a change, because the stockholders grew restless under the powers of the treasurer and council and applied for a third charter, limiting all important business to a quarterly meeting of the whole body.

As they made the inclusion of the Bermuda Islands the ostensible object, the king without difficulty signed the paper, March 12, 1612; and thus the company at last became a self-governing body.[1] On the question of governing the colony it soon divided, however, into the court party, in favor of continuing martial law, at the head of which was Sir Robert Rich, afterwards earl of Warwick; and the "country," or "patriot party," in favor of ending the system of servitude. The latter party was led by Sir Thomas Smith, who had been treasurer ever since 1607, Sir Edwin Sandys, the earl of Southampton, Sir John Danvers, and John and Nicholas Ferrar.[2] Of the two, the country party was more numerous, and when the joint stock partnership expired, November 30, 1616, they appointed Captain Samuel Argall, a kinsman of Treasurer Smith, to be deputy governor of Virginia, with instructions to give every settler his own private dividend of fifty acres and to permit him to visit in England if he chose.[3]

Argall sailed to Virginia about the first part of April, 1617, taking with him Pocahontas's husband, John Rolfe, as secretary of state. Pocahontas was to go with him, but she sickened and died, and was buried at Gravesend March 21, 1617. She left one son named Thomas, who afterwards resided in Virginia, where he has many descendants at this day.[4] Argall, though in a subordinate capacity he had been very useful to the settlers, proved wholly unscrupulous as deputy governor. Instead of obeying his instructions he continued the common slavery under one pretence or another, and even plundered the company of all the servants and livestock belonging to the "common garden." He censured Yardley for permitting the settlers to grow tobacco, yet brought a commission for himself to establish a private tobacco plantation, "Argall's Gift," and laid off two other plantations of the same nature.

In April, 1618, the company, incensed at Argall's conduct, despatched the Lord Governor Delaware with orders to arrest him and send him to England, but Delaware died on the way over, and Argall continued his tyrannical government another year. He appropriated the servants on Lord Delaware's private estates, and when Captain Edward Brewster protested, tried him by martial law and sentenced him to death; but upon the petitions of the ministers resident in the colony commuted the punishment to perpetual banishment.[5]

Meanwhile, Sandys, who had a large share in draughting the second and third charters, was associated with Sir Thomas Smith in preparing a document which has been called the "Magna Charta of America." November 13, 1618, the company granted to the residents of Virginia the "Great charter or commission of priviledges, orders, and laws"; and in January, 1619, Sir George Yardley was sent as "governor and captain-general," with full instructions to put the new government into operation. He had also orders to arrest Argall, but, warned by Lord Rich, Argall fled from the colony before Yardley arrived. Argall left within the jurisdiction of the London Company in Virginia, as the fruit of twelve years' labor and an expenditure of money representing $2,000,000, but four hundred settlers inhabiting some broken-down settlements. The plantations of the private associations—Southampton Hundred, Martin Hundred, etc.—were in a flourishing condition, and the settlers upon them numbered upward of six hundred persons.[6]

Sir George Yardley arrived in Virginia April 19, 1619, and made known the intentions of the London Company that there was to be an end of martial law and communism. Every settler who had come at his own charge before the departure of Sir Thomas Dale in April, 1616, was to have one hundred acres "upon the first division," to be afterwards augmented by another hundred acres, and as much more for every share of stock (L12 6s.) actually paid by him. Every one imported by the company within the same period was, after the expiration of his service, to have one hundred acres; while settlers who came at their own expense, after April, 1616, were to receive fifty acres apiece. In order to relieve the inhabitants from taxes "as much as may be," lands were to be laid out for the support of the governor and other officers, to be tilled by servants sent over for that purpose. Four corporations were to be created, with Kecoughtan, Jamestown, Charles City, and Henrico as capital cities in each, respectively; and it was announced that thereafter the people of the colony were to share with the company in the making of laws.[7]

Accordingly, July 30, 1619, the first legislative assembly that ever convened on the American continent met in the church at Jamestown. It consisted of the governor, six councillors, and twenty burgesses, two from each of ten plantations. The delegates from Brandon, Captain John Martin's plantation, were not seated, because of a particular clause in his patent exempting it from colonial authority. The assembly, after a prayer from Rev. Richard Buck, of Jamestown, sat six days and did a great deal of work. Petitions were addressed to the company in England for permission to change "the savage name of Kecoughtan," for workmen to erect a "university and college," and for granting the girls and boys of all the old planters a share of land each, "because that in a new plantation it is not known whether man or woman be the more necessary." Laws were made against idleness, drunkenness, gaming, and other misdemeanors, but the death penalty was prescribed only in case of such "traitors to the colony" as sold fire-arms to the Indians. To prevent extravagance in dress parish taxes were "cessed" according to apparel—"if he be unmarried, according to his own apparel; if he be married, according to his own and his wife's or either of their apparel." Statutes were also passed for encouraging agriculture and for settling church discipline according to the rules of the church of England.[8]

Another significant event during this memorable year was the introduction of negro slavery into Virginia. A Dutch ship arrived at Jamestown in August, 1619, with some negroes, of whom twenty were sold to the planters.[9]

A third event was the arrival of a ship from England with ninety "young maidens" to be sold to the settlers for wives, at the cost of their transportation—viz., one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco (equivalent to $500 in present currency).[10] Cargoes of this interesting merchandise continued to arrive for many years.

It was fortunate that with the arrival of Yardley the supervision of Virginia affairs in England passed into hands most interested in colonial welfare. Sir Thomas Smith had been treasurer or president of the company for twelve years; but as he was also president of four other companies some thought that he did not give the proper attention to Virginia matters. For this reason, and because he was considered responsible for the selection of Argall, the leaders of his party determined to elect a new treasurer; and a private quarrel between Smith and the head of the court party, Lord Rich, helped matters to this end. To gratify a temporary spleen against Smith, Lord Rich consented to vote for Sir Edwin Sandys, and April 28, 1619, he was accordingly elected treasurer with John Ferrar as his deputy. Smith was greatly piqued, abandoned his old friends, and soon after began to act with Rich in opposition to Sandys and his group of supporters.[11]

Sandys threw himself into his work with great ardor, and scarcely a month passed that a ship did not leave England loaded with emigrants and cattle for Virginia. At the end of the year the company would have elected him again but for the interference of King James, who regarded him as the head of the party in Parliament opposed to his prerogative. He sent word to "choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys." Thereupon Sandys stepped aside and the earl of Southampton, who agreed with him in all his views, was appointed and kept in office till the company's dissolution; and for much of this time Nicholas Ferrar, brother of John, acted as deputy to the earl.[12] The king, however, was no better satisfied, and Count Gondomar, the Spanish minister, took advantage of the state of things to tell James that he had "better look to the Virginia courts which were kept at Ferrar's house, where too many of his nobility and gentry resorted to accompany the popular Lord Southampton and the dangerous Sandys. He would find in the end these meetings would prove a seminary for a seditious parliament."[13] These words, it is said, made a deep impression upon the king, always jealous for his prerogatives.

For two years, however, the crown stayed its hand and the affairs of Virginia greatly improved. Swarms of emigrants went out and many new plantations sprang up in the Accomack Peninsula and on both sides of the James. The most striking feature of these settlements was the steady growth of the tobacco trade. In 1619 twenty thousand pounds were exported, and in 1622 sixty thousand pounds. This increasing importation excited the covetousness of the king, as well as the jealousy of the Spanish government, whose West India tobacco had hitherto monopolized the London market. Directly contrary to the provision of the charter which exempted tobacco from any duty except five per cent., the king in 1619 levied an exaction of one shilling a pound, equal to twenty per cent. The London Company submitted on condition that the raising of tobacco in England should be prohibited, which was granted. In 1620 a royal proclamation limited the importation of tobacco from Virginia and the Bermuda Islands to fifty-five thousand pounds, whereupon the whole of the Virginia crop for that year was transported to Flushing and sold in Holland. As this deprived the king of his revenue, the Privy Council issued an order in 1621 compelling the company to bring all their tobacco into England.[14]

Nevertheless, these disturbances did not interfere with the prosperity of the settlers. Large fortunes were accumulated in a year or two by scores of planters;[15] and soon in the place of the old log-cabins arose framed buildings better than many in England. Lands were laid out for a free school at Charles City (now City Point) and for a university and college at Henrico (Dutch Gap). Monthly courts were held in every settlement, and there were large crops of corn and great numbers of cattle, swine, and poultry. A contemporary writer states that "the plenty of those times, unlike the old days of death and confusion, was such that every man gave free entertainment to friends and strangers."[16]

This prosperity is marred by a story of heart-rending sickness and suffering. An extraordinary mortality due to imported epidemics, and diseases of the climate for which in these days we have found a remedy in quinine, slew the new-comers by hundreds. One thousand people were in Virginia at Easter, 1619, and to this number three thousand five hundred and seventy more were added during the next three years,[17] yet only one thousand two hundred and forty were resident in the colony on Good Friday, March 22, 1622, a day when the horrors of an Indian massacre reduced the number to eight hundred and ninety-four.[18]

Since 1614, when Pocahontas married John Rolfe, peace with the Indians continued uninterruptedly, except for a short time in 1617, when there was an outbreak of the Chickahominies, speedily suppressed by Deputy Governor Yardley. In April, 1618, Powhatan died,[19] and the chief power was wielded by a brother, Opechancanough, at whose instance the savages, at "the taking up of Powhatan's bones" in 1621, formed a plot for exterminating the English. Of this danger Yardley received some information, and he promptly fortified the plantations, but Opechancanough professed friendship. Under Sir Francis Wyatt for some months everything went on quietly; but about the middle of March, 1622, a noted Indian chief, called Nemmattanow, or Jack o' the Feather, slew a white man and was slain in retaliation. Wyatt was alarmed, but Opechancanough assured him that "he held the peace so firme that the sky should fall ere he dissolved it," so that the settlers again "fed the Indians at their tables and lodged them in their bedchambers."[20]

Then like lightning from a clear sky fell the massacre upon the unsuspecting settlers. The blow was terrible to the colonists: the Indians, besides killing many of the inhabitants, burned many houses and destroyed a great quantity of stock. At first the settlers were panic-stricken, but rage succeeded fear. They divided into squads, and carried fire and sword into the Indian villages along the James and the York. In a little while the success of the English was so complete that they were able to give their time wholly to their crops and to rebuilding their houses.[21]

To the company the blow was a fatal one, though it did not manifest its results immediately. So far was the massacre from affecting the confidence of the public in Southampton and his friends at the head of the company that eight hundred good settlers went to Virginia during the year 1622, and John Smith wrote, "Had I meanes I might have choice of ten thousand that would gladly go."[22] But during the summer the members of the company were entangled in a dispute, of which advantage was taken by their enemies everywhere. At the suggestion of the crafty earl of Middlesex, the lord high treasurer of England, they were induced to apply to the king for a monopoly of the sale of tobacco in England; and it was granted on two conditions—viz., that they should pay the king L20,000 (supposed to be the value of a third of the total crop of Virginia tobacco) and import at least forty thousand pounds weight of Spanish tobacco. Though this last was a condition demanded by the king doubtless to placate the Spanish court, with whom he was negotiating for the marriage of his son Charles to the infanta, the contract on the whole was displeasing to Count Gondomar, the Spanish minister. He fomented dissensions in the company over the details, and Middlesex, the patron of the measure, being a great favorer of the Spanish match, changed sides upon his own proposition.[23]

In April, 1623, Alderman Robert Johnson, deputy to Sir Thomas Smith during the time of his government, brought a petition to the king for the appointment of a commission in England to inquire into the condition of the colony, which he declared was in danger of destruction by reason of "dissensions among ourselves and the massacre and hostility of the natives." This petition was followed by a scandalous paper, called The Unmasking of Virginia, presented to the king by another tool of Count Gondomar, one Captain Nathaniel Butler.[24] The company had already offended the king, and these new developments afforded him all the excuse that he wanted for taking extreme measures. He first attempted to cow the company into a "voluntary" surrender by seizing their books and arresting their leading members. When this did not avail, the Privy Council, November 3, 1623, appointed a commission to proceed to Virginia and make a report upon which judicial proceedings might be had. The company fought desperately, and in April, 1624, appealed to Parliament, but King James forbade the Commons to interfere.

In June, 1624, the expected paper from Virginia came to hand, and the cause was argued the same month at Trinity term on a writ of quo warranto before Chief-Justice James Ley of the King's Bench. The legal status of the company was unfavorable, for it was in a hopeless tangle, and the death record in the colony was an appalling fact. When, therefore, the attorney-general, Coventry, attacked the company for mismanagement, even an impartial tribune might have quashed the charter. But the case was not permitted to be decided on its merits. The company made a mistake in pleading, which was taken advantage of by Coventry, and on this ground the patent was voided the last day of the term (June 16, 1624).[25]

Thus perished the great London Company, which in settling Virginia expended upward of L200,000 (equal to $5,000,000 in present currency) and sent more than fourteen thousand emigrants. It received back from Virginia but a small part of the money it invested, and of all the emigrants whom it sent over, and their children, only one thousand two hundred and twenty-seven survived the charter. The heavy cost of the settlement was not a loss, for it secured to England a fifth kingdom and planted in the New World the germs of civil liberty. In this service the company did not escape the troubles incident to the mercenary purpose of a joint-stock partnership, yet it assumed a national and patriotic character, which entitles it to be considered the greatest and noblest association ever organized by the English people.[26] However unjust the measures taken by King James to overthrow the London Company, the incident was fortunate for the inhabitants of Virginia. The colony had reached a stage of development which needed no longer the supporting hand of a distant corporation created for profit.

In Virginia, sympathy with the company was so openly manifested that the Governor's council ordered their clerk, Edward Sharpless, to lose his ears[27] for daring to give King James's commissioners copies of certain of their papers; and in January, 1624, a protest, called The Tragical Relation, was addressed to the king by the General Assembly, denouncing the administration of Sir Thomas Smith and his faction and extolling that of Sandys and Southampton. The sufferings of the colony under the former were vigorously painted, and they ended by saying, "And rather (than) to be reduced to live under the like government we desire his ma^tie y^t commissioners may be sent over w^th authoritie to hang us."

Although Wyatt cordially joined in these protests, and was a most popular governor, the General Assembly about the same time passed an act[28] in the following words: "The governor shall not lay any taxes or ympositions upon the colony, their lands or commodities, other way than by authority of the General Assembly to be levied and ymployed as the said assembly shall appoynt." By this act Virginia formally asserted the indissoluble connection of taxation and representation.

The next step was to frame a government which would correspond to the new relations of the colony. June 24, 1624, a few days after the decision of Chief-Justice Ley, the king appointed a commission of sixteen persons, among whom were Sir Thomas Smith and other opponents of Sandys and Southampton, to take charge, temporarily, of Virginia affairs; and (July 15) he enlarged this commission by forty more members. On their advice he issued, August 26, 1624, authority to Sir Francis Wyatt, governor, and twelve others in Virginia, as councillors to conduct the government of the colony, under such instructions as they might receive from him or them.

In these orders it is expressly stated that the king's intention was not to disturb the interest of either planter or adventurer; while their context makes it clear that he proposed to avoid "the popularness" of the former government and to revive the charter of 1606 with some amendments. King James died March 27, 1625, and by his death this commission for Virginia affairs expired.[29]

Charles I. had all the arbitrary notions of his father, but fortunately he was under personal obligations to Sir Edwin Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar, Jr., and for their sake was willing to be liberal in his dealing with the colonists.[30] Hence, soon after his father's death, he dismissed the former royal commissioners and intrusted affairs relating to Virginia to a committee of the Privy Council, who ignored the Smith party and called the Sandys party into consultation.[31] These last presented a paper in April, 1625, called The Discourse of the Old Company, in which they reviewed fully the history of the charter and petitioned to be reincorporated. Charles was not unwilling to grant the request, and in a proclamation dated May 13, 1625, he avowed that he had come to the same opinion as his father, and intended to have a "royal council in England and another in Virginia, but not to impeach the interest of any adventurer or planter in Virginia."

Still ignorant of the death of King James, Governor Sir Francis Wyatt and his council, together with representatives from the plantations informally called, sent George Yardley to England with a petition, dated June 15, 1625, that they be permitted the right of a general assembly, that worthy emigrants be encouraged, and that none of the old faction of Sir Thomas Smith and Alderman Johnson have a part in the administration; "for rather than endure the government of these men they were resolved to seek the farthest part of the world."

Yardley reached England in October; and the king, when informed of Wyatt's desire to resign the government of Virginia on account of his private affairs, issued a commission, dated April 16, 1626, renewing the authority of the council in Virginia and appointing Yardley governor.[32] The latter returned to Virginia, but died in 1627. After his death the king sent directions to Acting Governor Francis West to summon a general assembly; and March 26, 1628, after an interval of four years, the regular law-making body again assembled at Jamestown, an event second only in importance to the original meeting in 1619.[33]

Other matters besides the form of government pressed upon the attention of the settlers. Tobacco entered more and more into the life of the colony, and the crop in the year 1628 amounted to upward of five hundred thousand pounds.[34] King Charles took the ground of Sandys and Southampton, that the large production was only temporary, and like his father, subjected tobacco in England to high duties and monopoly. He urged a varied planting and the making of pitch and tar, pipe-staves, potashes, iron, and bay-salt, and warned the planters against "building their plantation wholly on smoke." It was observed, however, that Charles was receiving a large sum of money from customs on tobacco,[35] and it was not likely that his advice would be taken while the price was 3s. 6d. a pound. Indeed, it was chiefly under the stimulus of the culture of tobacco that the population of the colony rose from eight hundred and ninety-four, after the massacre in 1622, to about three thousand in 1629.[36]

In March, 1629, Captain West went back to England, and a new commission was issued to Sir John Harvey as governor.[37] He did not come to the colony till the next year, and in the interval Dr. John Pott acted as his deputy. At the assembly called by Pott in October, 1629, the growth of the colony was represented by twenty-three settlements as against eleven ten years before. As in England, there were two branches of the law-making body, a House of Burgesses, made up of the representatives of the people, and an upper house consisting of the governor and council. In the constitution of the popular branch there was no fixed number of delegates, but each settlement had as many as it chose to pay the expenses of, a custom which prevailed until 1660, when the number of burgesses was limited to two members for each county and one member for Jamestown.[38]

In March, 1630, Harvey arrived, and Pott's former dignity as governor did not save him from a mortifying experience. The council was not only an upper house of legislation, but the supreme court of the colony, and in July, 1630, Pott was arraigned before this tribunal for stealing cattle, and declared guilty. Perhaps Harvey realized that injustice was done, for he suspended the sentence, and on petition to the king the case was re-examined in England by the commissioners for Virginia, who decided that "condemning Pott of felony was very rigorous if not erroneous."[39]

The year 1630 was the beginning of a general movement of emigration northward, and in October Chiskiack, an Indian district on the south side of the York, about twenty-seven miles below the forks of the river where Opechancanough resided, was occupied in force. So rapid was the course of population that in less than two years this first settlement upon the York was divided into Chiskiack and York. One year after Chiskiack was settled, Kent Island in Chesapeake Bay was occupied by a company under William Claiborne, the secretary of state; and in 1632 Middle Plantation (afterwards Williamsburg) was laid out and defended by a line of palisades from tide-water to tide-water.[40]

Meanwhile, the old colonial parties did not cease to strive with one another in England. Harvey had been appointed by the vacillating Charles to please the former court party, but during the quarrel with his Parliament over the Petition of Right he became anxious again to conciliate the colonists and the members of the old company; and in May, 1631, he appointed[41] a new commission, consisting of the earls of Dorset and Danby, Sir John Danvers, Sir Dudley Digges, John Ferrar, Sir Francis Wyatt, and others, to advise him upon "some course for establishing the advancement of the plantation of Virginia." This commission had many consultations, and unanimously resolved to recommend to the king the renewal of the charter of 1612 with all its former privileges—except the form of government, which was to be exercised by the king through a council in London and a governor and council in Virginia, both appointed by him.

In June, 1632, Charles I. so vacillated as to grant Maryland, within the bounds of "their ancient territories," to Lord Baltimore, regardless of the protest of the Virginians; and April 28, 1634, he revoked the liberal commission of 1631, and appointed another, called "the Commission for Foreign Plantations," composed almost entirely of opponents of the popular course of government, with William Laud, archbishop of Canterbury, at the head. This commission had power to "make laws and orders for government of English colonies planted in foreign parts, to remove governors and require an account of their government, to appoint judges and magistrates, to establish courts, to amend all charters and patents, and to revoke those surreptitiously and unduly obtained."[42]

Harvey's conduct in Virginia reflected the views of the court party in England. He offended his council by acting in important matters without their consent, contrary to his instructions; and showed in many ways that he was a friend of the persons in England who were trying to make a monopoly of the tobacco trade. He attempted to lay taxes, but the assembly, in February, 1632, re-enacted the law of 1624 asserting their exclusive authority over the subject.[43] At the head of the opposition to Harvey was William Claiborne, the secretary of state, who opposed Lord Baltimore's claim to Maryland, and, in consequence, was in the latter part of 1634 turned out of office by Harvey, to make way for Richard Kempe, one of Lord Baltimore's friends.

The people of Virginia began in resentment to draw together in little groups, and talked of asking for the removal of the governor; and matters came to a crisis in April, 1635, when Harvey suppressed a petition addressed to the king by the assembly regarding the tobacco contract, and justified an attack by Lord Baltimore's men upon a pinnace of Claiborne engaged in the fur trade from Kent Island. At York, in April, 1635, a meeting of protest was held at the house of William Warren.

Harvey was enraged at the proceeding and caused the leaders to be arrested. Then he called a council at Jamestown, and the scenes in the council chamber are interestingly described in contemporary letters. Harvey demanded the execution of martial law upon the prisoners, and when the council held back he flew into a passion and attempted to arrest George Menifie, one of the members, for high-treason. Captain John Utie and Captain Samuel Matthews retorted by making a similar charge against Harvey, and he was arrested by the council, and confined at the house of Captain William Brocas. Then the council elected Captain John West, of Chiskiack, brother of Lord Delaware, as governor, and summoned an assembly to meet at Jamestown in May following. This body promptly ratified the action of the council, and Harvey was put aboard a ship and sent off to England in charge of two members of the House of Burgesses.[44]

This deposition of a royal governor was a bold proceeding and mightily surprised King Charles. He declared it an act of "regal authority," had the two daring burgesses arrested, and on the complaint of Lord Baltimore, who befriended Harvey, caused West, Utie, Menifie, Matthews, and others of the unfriendly councillors to appear in England to answer for their crimes. Meanwhile, to rebuke the dangerous precedent set in Virginia, he thought it necessary to restore Harvey to his government.[45]

Harvey did not enjoy his second lease of power long, for the king, in the vicissitudes of English politics, found it wise to turn once more a favorable ear to the friends of the old company, and in January, 1639, Sir Francis Wyatt, who had governed Virginia so acceptably once before, was commissioned to succeed Harvey. The former councillors in Virginia were restored to power, and in the king's instructions to Wyatt the name of Captain West was inserted as "Muster-Master-General" in Charles's own handwriting.[46]

[Footnote 1: Brown, Genesis of the United States, II., 543-554; First Republic, 165-167.]

[Footnote 2: Brown, English Politics in Early Virginia History, 24-33.]

[Footnote 3: Brown, Genesis of the United States, II., 775-779, 797-799.]

[Footnote 4: Ibid., 967.]

[Footnote 5: Virginia Company, Proceedings (Va. Hist. Soc., Collections, new series, VII., VIII.), I., 65, II., 198.]

[Footnote 6: Discourse of the Old Company, in Va. Magazine, I., 157.]

[Footnote 7: Instructions to Yardley, 1618, ibid., II., 154-165.]

[Footnote 8: Assembly Journal, 1619, in Va. State Senate Documents, 1874.]

[Footnote 9: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 541.]

[Footnote 10: Virginia Company, Proceedings (Va. Hist. Soc., Collections, new series, VII.), I., 67.]

[Footnote 11: Brown, Genesis of the United States, II., 1014; Bradford, Plymouth, 47.]

[Footnote 12: Virginia Company, Proceedings (Va. Hist. Soc., Collections, new series, VII.), I., 78.]

[Footnote 13: Peckard, Ferrar, 115.]

[Footnote 14: Discourse of the Old Company, in Va. Magazine, I., 161.]

[Footnote 15: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 562.]

[Footnote 16: Breife Declaration; Neill, Virginia Company, 395-406.]

[Footnote 17: Neill, Virginia Company, 334.]

[Footnote 18: Brown, First Republic, 464, 467.]

[Footnote 19: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 539.]

[Footnote 20: William and Mary Quarterly, IX., 203-214; Neill, Virginia Company, 293, 307-321; Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 572-594.]

[Footnote 21: Neill, Virginia Company, 364, 366.]

[Footnote 22: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 263.]

[Footnote 23: Discourse of the Old Company, in Va. Magazine, I., 291-293.]

[Footnote 24: Neill, Virginia Company, 395-407.]

[Footnote 25: Peckard, Ferrar, 145; Discourse of the Old Company, in Va. Magazine, I., 297.]

[Footnote 26: Brown, First Republic, 615.]

[Footnote 27: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, 74; Neill, Virginia Company, 407.]

[Footnote 28: Hening, Statutes., I., 124.]

[Footnote 29: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1674, p. 64, 1574-1660, p. 62.]

[Footnote 30: Brown, English Politics in Early Virginia History, 89.]

[Footnote 31: Brown, First Republic, 640, 641].

[Footnote 32: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 73, 74, 79.]

[Footnote 33: Ibid., 86, 88; Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 55.]

[Footnote 34: Hening, Statutes, I., 134.]

[Footnote 35: In 1624 the crop was three hundred thousand pounds, the total importations from Virginia, Bermuda, and Spain four hundred and fifty thousand pounds, and the profit in customs to the crown was L93,350.]

[Footnote 36: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 89.]

[Footnote 37: Ibid., 88.]

[Footnote 38: Hening, Statutes, I., 147, II., 20.]

[Footnote 39: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 133.]

[Footnote 40: Hening, Statutes, I., 208, 257; Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 4th series, IX., III.]

[Footnote 41: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 130.]

[Footnote 42: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 136, 177.]

[Footnote 43: Hening, Statutes, I., 171.]

[Footnote 44: Va. Magazine, I., 416, 425, VIII., 299-306; Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 118-120.]

[Footnote 45: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 216, 217.]

[Footnote 46: Wyatt's commission, in Va. Magazine, XI., 50-54; Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1674, p. 83.]



CHAPTER VI

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF VIRGINIA

(1634-1652)

During the vicissitudes of government in Virginia the colony continued to increase in wealth and population, and in 1634 eight counties were created;[1] while an official census in April, 1635, showed nearly five thousand people, to which number sixteen hundred were added in 1636. The new-comers during Harvey's time were principally servants who came to work the tobacco-fields.[2] Among them were some convicts and shiftless people, but the larger number were persons of respectable standing, and some had comfortable estates and influential connections in England.[3] Freed from their service in Virginia, not a few attained positions as justices of the peace and burgesses in the General Assembly.[4]

The trade of Virginia was become so extensive that Dutch as well as English ships sought the colony. The principal settlements were on the north side of James River, and as the voyager in 1634 sailed from Chesapeake Bay he passed first the new fort at Point Comfort lately constructed by Captain Samuel Matthews. About five miles farther on was Newport News, chiefly remarkable for its spring, where all the ships stopped to take in water, at this time the residence of Captain Daniel Gookin, a prominent Puritan, who afterwards removed to Massachusetts. Five miles above Newport News, at Deep Creek, was Denbeigh, Captain Samuel Matthews's place, a miniature village rather than plantation, where many servants were employed, hemp and flax woven, hides tanned, leather made into shoes, cattle and swine raised for the ships outward bound, and a large dairy and numerous poultry kept.

A few hours' sail from Denbeigh was Littletown, the residence of George Menifie. He had a garden of two acres on the river-side, which was full of roses of Provence, apple, pear, and cherry trees, and the various fruits of Holland, with different kinds of sweet-smelling herbs, such as rosemary, sage, marjoram, and thyme. Growing around the house was an orchard of peach-trees, which astonished his visitors very much, for they were not to be seen anywhere else on the coast.[5]

About six miles farther was Jamestown, a village of three hundred inhabitants, built upon two streets at the upper end of the island. There the governor resided with some of his council, one of whom, Captain William Pierce, had a garden of three or four acres, from which his wife a few years before obtained a hundred bushels of figs.[6] The houses there as elsewhere were of wood, with brick chimneys, but architecture was improving.

In 1637 the General Assembly offered a lot to every person who should build a house at Jamestown Island; and in pursuance of the encouragement given, "twelve new houses and stores were built in the town," one of brick by Richard Kempe, "the fairest ever known in this country for substance and uniformity." About the same time money was raised for a brick church and a brick state-house.[7] As to the general condition of the colony in 1634, Captain Thomas Young reported that there was not only a "very great plentie of milk, cheese, and butter, but of corn, which latter almost every planter in the colony hath."[8]

Such a "plentie of corn" must be contrasted with the scarcity in 1630, for the current of prosperity did not run altogether smoothly. The mortality still continued frightful, and "during the months of June, July, and August, the people died like cats and dogs,"[9] a statement especially true of the servants, of whom hardly one in five survived the first year's hardships in the malarial tobacco-fields along the creeks and rivers.[10] In 1630 tobacco tumbled from its high price of 3s. 6d. to 1d. per pound, and the colony was much "perplexed" for want of money to buy corn, which they had neglected to raise. To relieve the distress, Harvey, the next year, sent several ships to trade with the Indians up Chesapeake Bay and on the coast as far south as Cape Fear.[11]

Tobacco legislation for the next ten years consisted in regulations vainly intended to prevent further declines. Tobacco fluctuated in value from one penny to sixpence, and, as it was the general currency, this uncertainty caused much trouble. Some idea of the general dependency upon tobacco may be had from a statute in 1640, which, after providing for the destruction of all the bad tobacco and half the good, estimated the remainder actually placed upon the market by a population of eight thousand at one million five hundred thousand pounds.[12]

The decline in the price of tobacco had the effect of turning the attention of the planters to other industries, especially the supply of corn to the large emigration from England to Massachusetts. In 1631 a ship-load of corn from Virginia was sold at Salem, in Massachusetts, for ten shillings the bushel.[13] In 1634 at least ten thousand bushels were taken to Massachusetts, besides "good quantities of beeves, goats, and hogs";[14] and Harvey declared that Virginia had become "the granary of all his majesty's northern colonies,"[15] Yet from an imported pestilence, the year 1636 was so replete with misery that Samuel Maverick, of Massachusetts, who visited the colony, reported that eighteen hundred persons died, and corn sold at twenty shillings per bushel.[16]

Sir Francis Wyatt arrived in the colony, November, 1639, and immediately called Harvey to account for his abuse of power. The decree against Panton was repealed, and his estate, which had been seized, was returned to him, while the property of Harvey was taken to satisfy his numerous creditors.[17] The agitation for the renewal of the charter still continued, and Wyatt called a general assembly January, 1640, at which time it was determined to make another effort. George Sandys was appointed agent of the colony in England, and petitions reached England probably in the autumn of 1640. The breach between the king and Parliament was then complete, and Charles had thrown himself entirely into the arms of the court party. Sandys, despairing of success from the king, appealed to Parliament in the name of the "Adventurers and Planters in Virginia," and "the Virginia patent was taken out again under the broad seal of England."[18] To what extent the new charter established the boundaries of Virginia does not appear, and the subsequent turn of affairs in Virginia made the action of Parliament at this time a nullity.

To offset these proceedings, the king commissioned[19] Sir William Berkeley, a vehement royalist, as successor to the popular Wyatt, and he arrived in Virginia in January, 1642, where he at once called an assembly to undo the work of Sandys. A petition to the king protesting against the restoration of the company was adopted, but although it was signed by the council and burgesses, as well as by Berkeley, the preamble alludes to strong differences of opinion.[20] The change of position was doubtless brought about by the issue made in England between loyalty and rebellion; and, while desirous of a recharter, the majority of the people of Virginia did not care to desert the king. The petition was presented July 5, 1642, to Charles at his headquarters at York, who returned a gracious reply that "he had not the least intention to consent to the introduction of any company."[21]

While loyal to the king, the people of Virginia had never been wedded to the views of the high-church party in England. Among the ministers the surplice was not usual, and there was a Puritan severity about the laws in regard to the Sabbath and attendance at church. As the strife in England became more pronounced, the people in Nansemond and lower Norfolk counties, on the south of the James, showed decided leanings towards Parliament and to the congregational form of worship.

Soon they began to think of separating from the church of England altogether, and they sent for ministers to New England in 1642. In response, the elders there despatched three of their number, who, arriving in Virginia, set zealously to work to organize the congregations on the Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers. According to their own account, these ministers met with much success till they were suddenly stopped in the work by Berkeley, who persuaded the assembly, in March, 1643, to pass severe laws against Nonconformists; and under this authority drove them out of the land in 1644.[22]

In the same year occurred an Indian attack which these preachers and John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, thought to be a special visitation of Providence. After the massacre in 1622 the war with the Indians had continued in a desultory way for over twelve years. Year after year squads of soldiers were sent in various directions against the different tribes, and by 1634 the Indians were so punished that the whites thought it safe to make peace. Now, after a repose of ten years, the fierce instincts of the savages for blood were once more excited.

April 18, 1644, was Good Friday, and Governor Berkeley ordered it to be kept as a special fast day to pray for King Charles; instead, it became a day of bloodshed and mourning.[23] The chief instigator of the massacre of 1622 was still alive, old Opechancanough, who, by the death of his brother Opitchapam, was now head chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. Thinking the civil war in England a favorable occasion to repeat the bloody deeds of twenty-two years before, on the day before Good Friday he attacked the settlers, and continued the assault for two days, killing over three hundred whites. The onslaught fell severest on the south side of James River and on the heads of the other rivers, but chiefly on the York River, where Opechancanough had his residence.[24]

The massacre of 1622 shook the colony to its foundation, and it is surprising to see how little that of 1644 affected the current of life in Virginia. Berkeley seemed to think so little of the attack that after making William Claiborne general of an expedition against the Pamunkey tribe he left the colony in June, 1645.[25] He was gone a whole year, and on his return found that Claiborne had driven the Indians far away from the settlements. In 1646 he received information which enabled him to close the war with dramatic effect. At the head of a body of cavalry he surprised old Opechancanough in an encampment between the falls of the Appomattox and the James, and brought him, aged and blind, to Jamestown, where, about three weeks later, one of his guards shot him to death.[26] A peace was made not long after with Necotowance, his successor, by which the Indians agreed to retire entirely from the peninsula between the York and James rivers.[27]

One of the most remarkable results of the massacre was the change it produced in Rev. Thomas Harrison, Berkeley's chaplain at Jamestown, who had used his influence with the governor to expel the Nonconformist ministers of New England. He came to the belief of John Winthrop that the massacre was a Providential visitation and turned Puritan himself. After a quarrel with Berkeley he left Jamestown and took charge of the churches on the Elizabeth and Nansemond rivers with their Puritan congregations. Berkeley would probably have set the law-officers upon him at once, but among his councillors was Richard Bennett, himself of Harrison's congregation, and his influence held the governor back for a time.

Three years passed, and at length Harrison and his elder, William Durand, were peremptorily directed to leave the colony. Harrison went first to New England and then to old England, while William Durand emigrated to Maryland, where, aided by Bennett, he made terms with Governor William Stone for the emigration of his flock; and in the year 1649 more than one thousand persons left Virginia and settled on the Severn and Patuxent rivers. The settlement was called Providence, and was destined to play a remarkable part in the history of Maryland.[28]

When the civil war in England was fairly on, emigration to Virginia was much improved in material, and for many years was very large. The new-comers came to make homes, not merely to make tobacco, and they no longer consisted of servants, but of the merchants and yeomanry of England. "If these troublous times hold long amongst us," wrote William Hallam, a salter of Burnham, in Essex County, England, "we must all faine come to Virginia."[29]

Hitherto the uncertainty resulting from the overthrow of the charter made it difficult to secure a good class of ministers. Those who came had been "such as wore black coats and could babble in a pulpet, and roare in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissolutenesse destroy than feed their flocks." Now these "wolves in sheep's clothing" were by the assembly forced to depart the country and a better class of clergymen arrived.[30] In 1649 there were twenty churches and twenty ministers who taught the doctrines of the church of England and "lived all in peace and love";[31] and at the head of them was a roan of exemplary piety, Rev. Philip Mallory, son of Dr. Thomas Mallory, Dean of Chester.[32]

The condition of things about 1648 is thus summed up by Hammond, a contemporary writer: "Then began the gospel to flourish; civil, honorable, and men of great estates flocked in; famous buildings went forward; orchards innumerable were planted and preserved; tradesmen set to work and, encouraged, staple commodities, as silk, flax, potashes attempted on.... So that this country, which had a mean beginning, many back friends, two ruinous and bloody massacres, hath by God's grace outgrown all, and is become a place of pleasure and plenty."

Later, after the beheading of King Charles in 1649, there was a large influx of cavaliers, who, while they raised the quality of society, much increased the sympathy felt in Virginia for the royal cause. Under their influence Sir William Berkeley denounced the murder of King Charles I., and the General Assembly adopted an act making it treason to defend the late proceedings or to doubt the right of his son, Charles II., to succeed to the crown.[33] Parliament was not long in accepting the challenge which Berkeley tendered. In October, 1650, they adopted an ordinance prohibiting trade with the rebellious colonies of Virginia, Barbadoes, Antigua, and Bermuda Islands, and authorizing the Council of State to take measures to reduce them to terms.[34]

In October, 1651, was passed the first of the navigation acts, which limited the colonial trade to England, and banished from Virginia the Dutch vessels, which carried abroad most of the exports. About the same time, having taken measures against Barbadoes, the Council of State ordered a squadron to be prepared against Virginia. It was placed under the command of Captain Robert Dennis; and Thomas Stegge, Richard Bennett, and William Claiborne, members of Berkeley's council, were joined with him in a commission[35] to "use their best endeavors to reduce all the plantations within the Bay of Chesopiack." Bennett and Claiborne were in Virginia at the time, and probably did not know of their appointment till the ships arrived in Virginia.

The fleet left England in October, 1651, carrying six hundred men, but on the way Captain Dennis and Captain Stegge were lost in a storm and the command devolved on Captain Edmund Curtis.[36] In December they reached the West Indies, where they assisted Sir George Ayscue in the reduction of Barbadoes. In January, 1652, they reached Virginia, where Curtis showed Claiborne and Bennett his duplicate instructions. Berkeley, full of fight, called out the militia, twelve hundred strong, and engaged the assistance of a few Dutch ships then trading in James River contrary to the recent navigation act.

The commissioners acted with prudence and good sense. They did not proceed at once to Jamestown, but first issued a proclamation intended to disabuse the people of any idea that they came to make war.[37] The result was that in March, 1652, when they appeared before the little capital, the council and burgesses overruled Berkeley, and entered into an agreement with Curtis, Claiborne, and Bennett, which proves the absence of hard feelings on both sides. The Virginians recognized the authority of the commonwealth of England, and promised to pass no statute contrary to the laws of Parliament. On the other hand, the commissioners acknowledged the submission of Virginia, "as a voluntary act not forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the countrey"; and conceded her right "to be free from all taxes, customs, and impositions whatever, not enforced by the General Assembly." In particular it was stipulated that "Virginia should have and enjoy the antient bounds and lymitts granted by the charters of the former kings."

The articles were signed March 12, 1652, and the commissioners soon after sailed to St. Mary's and received the surrender of Maryland. They returned in time to be present at a new meeting of the assembly held at Jamestown in April, at which it was unanimously voted that until the further pleasure of Parliament was known Richard Bennett should be governor and William Claiborne secretary of state. To the burgesses, as the representatives of the people, was handed over the supreme power of thereafter electing all officers of the colony.[38] Then Virginia, the last of the British dominions to abandon the king, entered upon eight years of almost complete self-government, under the protection of the commonwealth of England.

In 1652 the settlements in Virginia were embraced in thirteen counties, of which Northampton, on the Accomack Peninsula, extended to the southern boundary of Maryland. On the James River were nine counties: Henrico, Charles City, James City, Surry, Warwick, Warascoyack, or Isle of Wight, Elizabeth City, Nansemond, and Lower Norfolk. On York River were York County on the south side and Gloucester on the north side.[39] On the Rappahannock was Lancaster County, extending on both sides of the river from Pianketank to Dividing Creek in the Northern Neck; and on the Potomac was the county of Northumberland, first settled about 1638 at Chicacoan and Appomattox on the Potomac, by refugees from Maryland.[40]

Towards the south the plantations, following the watercourses, had spread to the heads of the creeks and rivers, tributaries of the James, and some persons more adventurous than the rest had even made explorations in North Carolina.[41] Westward the extension was, of course, greatest along the line of the James, reaching as far as the Falls where Richmond now stands. The population was probably about twenty thousand, of whom as many as five thousand were white servants and five hundred were negroes.

The houses throughout the colony were generally of wood, a story and a half high, and were roofed with shingles. The chimneys were of brick, and the wealthier people lived in houses constructed wholly of home-made brick.[42] "They had, besides, good English furniture" and a "good store of plate." By ordinary labor at making tobacco any person could clear annually L20 sterling, the equivalent of $500 to-day. The condition of the servants had greatly improved, and their labor was not so hard nor of such continuance as that of farmers and mechanics in England. Thefts were seldom committed, and an old writer asserts that "he was an eye-witness in England to more deceits and villanies in four months than he ever saw or heard mention of in Virginia in twenty years abode there."[43]

The plenty of everything made hospitality universal, and the health of the country was greatly promoted by the opening of the forests. Indeed, so contented were the people with their new homes that the same writer declares, "Seldom (if ever) any that hath continued in Virginia any time will or do desire to live in England, but post back with what expedition they can, although many are landed men in England, and have good estates there, and divers wayes of preferments propounded to them to entice and perswade their continuance."

In striking contrast to New England was the absence of towns, due mainly to two reasons—first, the wealth of watercourses, which enabled every planter of means to ship his products from his own wharf; and, secondly, the culture of tobacco, which scattered the people in a continual search for new and richer lands. This rural life, while it hindered co-operation, promoted a spirit of independence among the whites of all classes which counteracted the aristocratic form of government. The colony was essentially a democracy, for though the chief offices in the counties and the colony at large were held by a few families, the people were protected by a popular House of Burgesses, which till 1736 was practically established on manhood suffrage. Negro slavery tended to increase this independence by making race and not wealth the great distinction; and the ultimate result was seen after 1792, when Virginia became the headquarters of the Democratic-Republican party—the party of popular ideas.[44]

Under the conditions of Virginia society, no developed educational system was possible, but it is wrong to suppose that there was none. The parish institutions introduced from England included educational beginnings; every minister had a school, and it was the duty of the vestry to see that all poor children could read and write. The county courts supervised the vestries and held a yearly "orphans' court," which looked after the material and educational welfare of all orphans.[45]

The benevolent design of a free school in the colony, frustrated by the massacre of 1622, was realized in 1635, when—three years before John Harvard bequeathed his estate to the college near Boston which bears his name—Benjamin Syms left "the first legacy by a resident of the American plantations of England for the promotion of education."[46] In 1659 Thomas Eaton established[47] a free school in Elizabeth City County, adjoining that of Benjamin Syms; and a fund amounting to $10,000, representing these two ancient charities, is still used to carry on the public high-school at Hampton, Virginia. In 1655 Captain John Moon left a legacy for a free school in Isle of Wight County; and in 1659 Captain William Whittington left two thousand pounds of tobacco for a free school in Northampton County.

[Footnote 1: Hening, Statutes, I., 224.]

[Footnote 2: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 201, 231, 268.]

[Footnote 3: William and Mary Quarterly, IV., 173-176, V., 40.]

[Footnote 4: Virginia's Cure (Force, Tracts, III., No. xv.).]

[Footnote 5: De Vries, Voyages (N.Y. Hist. Soc., Collections, 2d series, III., 34).]

[Footnote 6: Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 887.]

[Footnote 7: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 288. In 1639 Alexander Stonar, brickmaker, patented land on Jamestown Island "next to the brick-kiln," Tyler, Cradle of the Republic, 46, 99.]

[Footnote 8: Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 4th series, IX., 108.]

[Footnote 9: De Vries, Voyages (N.Y. Hist. Soc., Collections, 2d series, III., 37)]

[Footnote 10: William and Mary Quarterly, VII., 66, 114.]

[Footnote 11: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 117.]

[Footnote 12: Hening, Statutes, I., 225.]

[Footnote 13: Winthrop, New England, I., 67.]

[Footnote 14: Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 4th series, IX., 110.]

[Footnote 15: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 184.]

[Footnote 16: Winthrop, New England, I., 228.]

[Footnote 17: Va. Magazine, V., 123-128.]

[Footnote 18: Virginia and Maryland, or the Lord Baltimore's Printed Case, uncased and answered (Force, Tracts, II, No. ix.).]

[Footnote 19: Va. Magazine, II., 281-288.]

[Footnote 20: Hening, Statutes, I., 230-235.]

[Footnote 21: Manuscript Collection of Annals relating to Virginia (Force, Tracts, II., No. vi.).]

[Footnote 22: Latane, Early Relations between Maryland and Virginia (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII., Nos. iii. and iv.).]

[Footnote 23: Winthrop, New England, III, 198, 199].

[Footnote 24: Ibid.; Beverley, Virginia, 48.]

[Footnote 25: Va. Magazine, VIII., 71-73.]

[Footnote 26: A Perfect Description of Virginia (Force, Tracts, II., No. viii.); Beverley, Virginia, 49.]

[Footnote 27: Hening, Statutes, I., 323-326.]

[Footnote 28: Latane, Early Relations (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII.).]

[Footnote 29: William and Mary Quarterly, VIII., 239.]

[Footnote 30: Hammond, Leah and Rachel (Force, Tracts, III., No. xiv.).]

[Footnote 31: Perfect Description (ibid., II., No. viii.).]

[Footnote 32: Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 238; Tyler, Cradle of the Republic, 90.]

[Footnote 33: Hening, Statutes, I., 359-361.]

[Footnote 34: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 343.]

[Footnote 35: Md. Archives, III., 265-267.]

[Footnote 36: Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 393.]

[Footnote 37: See report of the commissioners, Va. Magazine, XI., 32.]

[Footnote 38: Hening, Statutes, I., 363, 371.]

[Footnote 39: Virginia Land Grants, MSS.]

[Footnote 40: Md. Archives, IV., 268, 315.]

[Footnote 41: Bancroft, United States (22d ed.), II, 134.]

[Footnote 42: Tyler, "Colonial Brick Houses," in Century Magazine, February, 1896.]

[Footnote 43: Hammond, Leah and Rachel (Force, Tracts, III., No. xiv.).]

[Footnote 44: Tyler, "Virginians Voting in the Colonial Period," in William and Mary Quarterly, VI., 9.]

[Footnote 45: "Education in Colonial Virginia," William and Mary Quarterly, V., 219-223, VI., 1-7, 71-86, 171-186, VII., 1-9, 65, 77.]

[Footnote 46: Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 112.]

[Footnote 47: "Eaton's Deed," in William and Mary Quarterly, XI, 19.]



CHAPTER VII

FOUNDING OF MARYLAND

(1632-1650)

The founding of Maryland was due chiefly to the personal force of George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore, son of Leonard Calvert. He was born near Kiplin, in Yorkshire, about 1580, and graduated at Trinity College, Oxford, 1597. After making a tour of Europe he became the private secretary of Sir Robert Cecil, who rapidly advanced his fortunes. He served upon several missions to investigate the affairs of Ireland, was knighted in 1617, and in 1619 succeeded Sir Thomas Lake as principal secretary of state.

In this office he began to revolve plans of colonization in America, to which his attention was directed as a member of the Virginia Company since 1609. In 1620 he bought from Sir William Vaughan the southeastern peninsula of Newfoundland, known as Ferryland, and the next year sent some colonists thither. He supported the Spanish match; and when Charles changed his policy he obtained from the king in 1623 a charter for his province, which he called Avalon. In 1625 he resigned his secretaryship and openly avowed his adherence to the church of Rome; but the king, as a mark of favor, raised him to the Irish peerage, with the title of Baron of Baltimore, after a small town of that name in Ireland.[1]