But it must be remembered that this Virginia was of the seventeenth, not of the nineteenth century. And law had cruel and idiot faces as well as faces just and wise. Hitherto the colony possessed no written statutes. The Company now resolved to impose upon the wayward an iron restraint. It fell to Dale to enforce the regulations known as "Lawes and Orders, dyvine, politique, and martiall for the Colonye of Virginia"—not English civil law simply, but laws "chiefly extracted out of the Lawes for governing the army in the Low Countreys." The first part of this code was compiled by William Strachey; the latter part is thought to have been the work of Sir Edward Cecil, Sir Thomas Gates, and Dale himself, approved and accepted by the Virginia Company. Ten years afterwards, defending itself before a Committee of Parliament, the Company through its Treasurer declared "the necessity of such laws, in some cases ad terrorem, and in some to be truly executed."

Seventeenth-century English law herself was terrible enough in all conscience, but "Dale's Laws" went beyond. Offences ranged from failure to attend church and idleness to lese majeste. The penalties were gross—cruel whippings, imprisonments, barbarous puttings to death. The High Marshal held the unruly down with a high hand.

But other factors than this Draconian code worked at last toward order in this English West. Dale was no small statesman, and he played ferment against ferment. Into Virginia now first came private ownership of land. So much was given to each colonist, and care of this booty became to each a preoccupation. The Company at home sent out more and more settlers, and more and more of the industrious, peace-loving sort. By 1612 the English in America numbered about eight hundred. Dale projected another town, and chose for its site the great horseshoe bend in the river a few miles below the Falls of the Far West, at a spot we now call Dutch Gap. Here Dale laid out a town which he named Henricus after the Prince of Wales, and for its citizens he drafted from Jamestown three hundred persons. To him also are due Bermuda and Shirley Hundreds and Dale's Gift over on the Eastern Shore. As the Company sent over more colonists, there began to show, up and down the James though at far intervals, cabins and clearings made by white men, set about with a stockade, and at the river edge a rude landing and a fastened boat. The restless search for mines of gold and silver now slackened. Instead eyes turned for wealth to the kingdom of the plant and tree, and to fur trade and fisheries.

* Hitherto there had been no trading or landholding by individuals. All the colonists contributed the products of their toil to the common store and received their supplies from the Company. The adventurers (stockholders) contributed money to the enterprise; the colonists, themselves and their labor.

Those ships that brought colonists were in every instance expected to return to England laden with the commodities of Virginia. At first cargoes of precious ores were looked for. These failing, the Company must take from Virginia what lay at hand and what might be suited to English needs. In 1610 the Company issued a paper of instructions upon this subject of Virginia commodities. The daughter was expected to send to the mother country sassafras root, bay berries, puccoon, sarsaparilla, walnut, chestnut, and chinquapin oil, wine, silk grass, beaver cod, beaver and otter skins, clapboard of oak and walnut, tar, pitch, turpentine, and powdered sturgeon.

It might seem that Virginia was headed to become a land of fishers, of foresters, and vine dressers, perhaps even, when the gold should be at last discovered, of miners. At home, the colonizing merchants and statesmen looked for some such thing. In return for what she laded into ships, Virginia was to receive English-made goods, and to an especial degree woolen goods, "a very liberall utterance of our English cloths into a maine country described to be bigger than all Europe." There was to be direct trade, country kind for country kind, and no specie to be taken out of England. The promoters at home doubtless conceived a hardy and simple trans-Atlantic folk of their own kindred, planters for their own needs, steady consumers of the plainer sort of English wares, steady gatherers, in return, of necessaries for which England otherwise must trade after a costly fashion with lands which were not always friendly. A simple, sturdy, laborious Virginia, white men and Indians. If this was their dream, reality was soon to modify it.

A new commodity of unsuspected commercial value began now to be grown in garden-plots along the James—the "weed" par excellence, tobacco. That John Rolfe who had been shipwrecked on the Sea Adventure was now a planter in Virginia. His child Bermuda had died in infancy, and his wife soon after their coming to Jamestown. Rolfe remained, a young man, a good citizen, and a Christian. And he loved tobacco. On that trivial fact hinges an important chapter in the economic history of America. In 1612 Rolfe planted tobacco in his own garden, experimented with its culture, and prophesied that the Virginian weed would rank with the best Spanish. It was now a shorter plant, smaller-leafed and smaller-flowered, but time and skilful gardening would improve it.

England had known tobacco for thirty years, owing its introduction to Raleigh. At first merely amused by the New World rarity, England was now by general use turning a luxury into a necessity. More and more she received through Dutch and Spanish ships tobacco from the Indies. Among the English adventurers to Virginia some already knew the uses of the weed; others soon learned from the Indians. Tobacco was perhaps not indigenous to Virginia, but had probably come through southern tribes who in turn had gained it from those who knew it in its tropic habitat. Now, however, tobacco was grown by all Virginia Indians, and was regarded as the Great Spirit's best gift. In the final happy hunting-ground, kings, werowances, and priests enjoyed it forever. When, in the time after the first landing, the Indians brought gifts to the adventurers as to beings from a superior sphere, they offered tobacco as well as comestibles like deer-meat and mulberries. Later, in England and in Virginia, there was some suggestion that it might be cultivated among other commodities. But the Company, not to be diverted from the path to profits, demanded from Virginia necessities and not new-fangled luxuries. Nevertheless, a little tobacco was sent over to England, and then a little more, and then a larger quantity. In less than five years it had become a main export; and from that time to this profoundly has it affected the life of Virginia and, indeed, of the United States.

This then is the wide and general event with which John Rolfe is connected. But there is also a narrower, personal happening that has pleased all these centuries. Indian difficulties yet abounded, but Dale, administrator as well as man of Mars, wound his way skilfully through them all. Powhatan brooded to one side, over there at Werowocomoco. Captain Samuel Argall was again in Virginia, having brought over sixty-two colonists in his ship, the Treasurer. A bold and restless man, explorer no less than mariner, he again went trading up the Potomac, and visited upon its banks the village of Japazaws, kinsman of Powhatan. Here he found no less a personage than Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas. An idea came into Argall's active and somewhat unscrupulous brain. He bribed Japazaws with a mighty gleaming copper kettle, and by that chief's connivance took Pocahontas from the village above the Potomac. He brought her captive in his boat down the Chesapeake to the mouth of the James and so up the river to Jamestown, here to be held hostage for an Indian peace. This was in 1613.

Pocahontas stayed by the James, in the rude settlers' town, which may have seemed to the Indian girl stately and wonderful enough. Here Rolfe made her acquaintance, here they talked together, and here, after some scruples on his part as to "heathennesse," they were married. He writes of "her desire to be taught and instructed in the knowledge of God; her capableness of understanding; her aptnesse and willingnesse to recieve anie good impression, and also the spiritual, besides her owne incitements stirring me up hereunto." First she was baptized, receiving the name Rebecca, and then she was married to Rolfe in the flower-decked church at Jamestown. Powhatan was not there, but he sent young chiefs, her brothers, in his place. Rolfe had lands and cabins thereupon up the river near Henricus. He called this place Varina, the best Spanish tobacco being Varinas. Here he and Pocahontas dwelled together "civilly and lovingly." When two years had passed the couple went with their infant son upon a visit to England. There court and town and country flocked to see the Indian "princess." After a time she and Rolfe would go back to Virginia. But at Gravesend, before their ship sailed, she was stricken with smallpox and died, making "a religious and godly end," and there at Gravesend she is buried. Her son, Thomas Rolfe, who was brought up in England, returned at last to Virginia and lived out his life there with his wife and children. Today no small host of Americans have for ancestress the daughter of Powhatan. In England-in-America the immediate effect of the marriage was really to procure an Indian peace outlasting Pocahontas's brief life.

In Dale's years there rises above the English horizon the cloud of New France. The old, disaster-haunted Huguenot colony in Florida was a thing of the past, to be mourned for when the Spaniard wiped it out—for at that time England herself was not in America. But now that she was established there, with some hundreds of men in a Virginia that stretched from Spanish Florida to Nova Scotia, the French shadow seemed ominous. And just in this farther region, amid fir-trees and snow, upon the desolate Bay of Fundy, the French for some years had been keeping the breath of life in a huddle of cabins named Port Royal. More than this, and later than the Port Royal building, Frenchmen—Jesuits that!—were trying a settlement on an island now called Mount Desert, off a coast now named Maine. The Virginia Company-doubtless with some reference back to the King and Privy Council—De La Warr, Gates, the deputy governor, and Dale, the High Marshal, appear to have been of one mind as to these French settlements. Up north there was still Virginia—in effect, England! Hands off, therefore, all European peoples speaking with an un-English tongue!

Now it happened about this time that Captain Samuel Argall received a commission "to go fishing," and that he fished off that coast that is now the coast of Maine, and brought his ship to anchor by Mount Desert. Argall, a swift and high-handed person, fished on dry land. He swept into his net the Jesuits on Mount Desert, set half of them in an open boat to meet with what ship they might, and brought the other half captive to Jamestown. Later, he appeared before Port Royal, where he burned the cabins, slew the cattle, and drove into the forest the settler Frenchmen. But Port Royal and the land about it called Acadia, though much hurt, survived Argall's fishing.*

* Argall, on his fishing trip, has been credited with attacking not only the French in Acadia but the Dutch traders on Manhattan. But there are grounds for doubt if he did the latter.

There was also on Virginia in these days the shadow of Spain. In 1611 the English had found upon the beach near Point Comfort three Spaniards from a Spanish caravel which, as the Englishmen had learned with alarm, "was fitted with a shallop necessarie and propper to discover freshetts, rivers, and creekes." They took the three prisoner and applied for instructions to Dale, who held them to be spies and clapped them into prison at Point Comfort.

That Dale's suspicions were correct, is proved by a letter which the King of Spain wrote in cipher to the Spanish Ambassador in London ordering him to confer with the King as to the liberty of three prisoners whom Englishmen in Virginia have captured. The three are "the Alcayde Don Diego de Molino, Ensign Marco Antonio Perez, and Francisco Lembri an English pilot, who by my orders went to reconnoitre those ports." Small wonder that Dale was apprehensive. "What may be the daunger of this unto us," he wrote home, "who are here so few, so weake, and unfortified,... I refer me to your owne honorable knowledg."

Months pass, and the English Ambassador to Spain writes from Madrid that he "is not hasty to advertise anything upon bare rumours, which hath made me hitherto forbeare to write what I had generally heard of their intents against Virginia, but now I have been... advertised that without question they will speedily attempt against our plantation there. And that it is a thing resolved of, that ye King of Spain must run any hazard with England rather than permit ye English to settle there....Whatsoever is attempted, I conceive will be from ye Havana."

Rumors fly back and forth. The next year 1613—the Ambassador writes from Madrid: "They have latelie had severall Consultations about our Plantation in Virginia. The resolution is—That it must be removed, but they thinke it fitt to suspend the execution of it,... for that they are in hope that it will fall of itselfe."

The Spanish hope seemed, at this time, not at all without foundation. Members of the Virginia Company had formed the Somers Islands Company named for Somers the Admiral—and had planted a small colony in Bermuda where the Sea Adventure had been wrecked. Here were fair, fertile islands without Indians, and without the diseases that seemed to rise, no man knew how, from the marshes along those lower reaches of the great river James in Virginia. Young though it was, the new plantation "prospereth better than that of Virginia, and giveth greater incouragement to prosecute yt." In England there arose, from some concerned, the cry to Give up Virginia that has proved a project awry! As Gates was once about to remove thence every living man, so truly they might "now removed to these more hopeful islands!" The Spanish Ambassador is found writing to the Spanish King: "Thus they are here discouraged... on account of the heavy expenses they have incurred, and the disappointment, that there is no passage from there to the South Sea... nor mines of gold or silver." This, be it noted, was before tobacco was discovered to be an economic treasure.

The Elizabeth from London reached Virginia in May, 1613. It brought to the colony news of Bermuda, and incidentally of that new notion brewing in the mind of some of the Company. When the Elizabeth, after a month in Virginia, turned homeward, she carried a vigorous letter from Dale, the High Marshal, to Sir Thomas Smith, Treasurer of the Company.

"Let me tell you all at home [writes Dale] this one thing, and I pray remember it; if you give over this country and loose it, you, with your wisdoms, will leap such a gudgeon as our state hath not done the like since they lost the Kingdom of France; be not gulled with the clamorous report of base people; believe Caleb and Joshua; if the glory of God have no power with them and the conversion of these poor infidels, yet let the rich mammons' desire egge them on to inhabit these countries. I protest to you, by the faith of an honest man, the more I range the country the more I admire it. I have seen the best countries in Europe; I protest to you, before the Living God, put them all together, this country will be equivalent unto them if it be inhabited with good people."

If ever Mother England seriously thought of moving Virginia into Bermuda, the idea was now given over. Spain, suspending the sword until Virginia "will fall of itselfe," saw that sword rust away.

Five years in all Dale ruled Virginia. Then, personal and family matters calling, he sailed away home to England, to return no more. Soon his star "having shined in the Westerne, was set in the Easterne India." At the helm in Virginia he left George Yeardley, an honest, able man. But in England, what was known as the "court party" in the Company managed to have chosen instead for De La Warr's deputy governor, Captain Samuel Argall. It proved an unfortunate choice. Argall, a capable and daring buccaneer, fastened on Virginia as on a Spanish galleon. For a year he ruled in his own interest, plundering and terrorizing. At last the outcry against him grew so loud that it had to be listened to across the Atlantic. Lord De La Warr was sent out in person to deal with matters but died on the way; and Captain Yeardley, now knighted and appointed Governor, was instructed to proceed against the incorrigible Argall. But Argall had already departed to face his accusers in England.



CHAPTER VII. YOUNG VIRGINIA

The choice of Sir Edwyn Sandys as Treasurer of the Virginia Company in 1619 marks a turning-point in the history of both Company and colony. At a moment when James I was aiming at absolute monarchy and was menacing Parliament, Sandys and his party—the Liberals of the day—turned the sessions of the Company into a parliament where momentous questions of state and colonial policy were freely debated. The liberal spirit of Sandys cast a beam of light, too, across the Atlantic. When Governor Yeardley stepped ashore at Jamestown in mid-April, he brought with him, as the first fruits of the new regime, no less a boon than the grant of a representative assembly.

There were to be in Virginia, subject to the Company, subject in its turn to the Crown, two "Supreme Councils," one of which was to consist of the Governor and his councilors chosen by the Company in England. The other was to be elected by the colonists, two representatives or burgesses from each distinct settlement. Council and House of Burgesses were to constitute the upper and lower houses of the General Assembly. The whole had power to legislate upon Virginian affairs within the bounds of the colony, but the Governor in Virginia and the Company in England must approve its acts.

A mighty hope in small was here! Hedged about with provisions, curtailed and limited, here nevertheless was an acorn out of which, by natural growth and some mutation, was to come popular government wide and deep. The planting of this small seed of freedom here, in 1619, upon the banks of the James in Virginia, is an event of prime importance.

On the 30th of July, 1619, there was convened in the log church in Jamestown the first true Parliament or Legislative Assembly in America. Twenty-two burgesses sat, hat on head, in the body of the church, with the Governor and the Council in the best seats. Master John Pory, the speaker, faced the Assembly; clerk and sergeant-at-arms were at hand; Master Buck, the Jamestown minister, made the solemn opening prayer. The political divisions of this Virginia were Cities, Plantations, and Hundreds, the English population numbering now at least a thousand souls. Boroughs sending burgesses were James City, Charles City, the City of Henricus, Kecoughtan, Smith's Hundred, Flowerdieu Hundred, Martin's Hundred, Martin Brandon, Ward's Plantation, Lawne's Plantation, and Argall's Gift. This first Assembly attended to Indian questions, agriculture, and religion.

Most notable is this year 1619, a year wrought of gold and iron. John Rolfe, back in Virginia, though without his Indian princess, who now lies in English earth, jots down and makes no comment upon what he has written: "About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre that sold us twenty Negars."

No European state of that day, few individuals, disapproved of the African slave trade. That dark continent made a general hunting-ground. England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, captured, bought, and sold slaves. Englishmen in Virginia bought without qualm, as Englishmen in England bought without qualm. The cargo of the Dutch ship was a commonplace. The only novelty was that it was the first shipload of Africans brought to English-America. Here, by the same waters, were the beginnings of popular government and the young upas-tree of slavery. A contradiction in terms was set to resolve itself, a riddle for unborn generations of Americans.

Presently there happened another importation. Virginia, under the new management, had strongly revived. Ships bringing colonists were coming in; hamlets were building; fields were being planted; up and down were to be found churches; a college at Henricus was projected so that Indian children might be taught and converted from "heathennesse." Yet was the population almost wholly a doublet—and—breeches—wearing population. The children for whom the school was building were Indian children. The men sailing to Virginia dreamed of a few years there and gathered wealth, and then return to England.

Apparently it was the new Treasurer, Sir Edwyn Sandys, who first grasped the essential principle of successful colonization: Virginia must be HOME to those we send! Wife and children made home. Sandys gathered ninety women, poor maidens and widows, "young, handsome, and chaste," who were willing to emigrate and in Virginia become wives of settlers. They sailed; their passage money was paid by the men of their choice; they married—and home life began in Virginia. In due course of time appeared fair-haired children, blue or gray of eye, with all England behind them, yet native-born, Virginians from the cradle.

Colonists in number sailed now from England. Most ranks of society and most professions were represented. Many brought education, means, independent position. Other honest men, chiefly young men with little in the purse, came over under indentures, bound for a specified term of years to settlers of larger means. These indentured men are numerous; and when they have worked out their indebtedness they will take up land of their own.

An old suggestion of Dale's now for the first time bore fruit. Over the protest of the "country party" in the Company, there began to be sent each year out of the King's gaols a number, though not at any time a large number, of men under conviction for various crimes. This practice continued, or at intervals was resumed, for years, but its consequences were not so dire, perhaps, as we might imagine. The penal laws were execrably brutal, and in the drag-net of the law might be found many merely unfortunate, many perhaps finer than the law.

Virginia thus was founded and established. An English people moved through her forests, crossed in boats her shining waters, trod the lanes of hamlets builded of wood but after English fashions. Climate, surrounding nature, differed from old England, and these and circumstance would work for variation. But the stock was Middlesex, Surrey, Devon, and all the other shires of England. Scotchmen came also, Welshmen, and, perhaps as early as this, a few Irish. And there were De La Warr's handful of Poles and Germans, and several French vinedressers.

Political and economic life was taking form. That huge, luxurious, thick-leafed, yellow-flowered crop, alike comforting and extravagant, that tobacco that was in much to mould manners and customs and ways of looking at things, was beginning to grow abundantly. In 1620, forty thousand pounds of tobacco went from Virginia to England; two years later went sixty thousand pounds. The best sold at two shillings the pound, the inferior for eighteen pence. The Virginians dropped all thought of sassafras and clapboard. Tobacco only had any flavor of Golconda.

At this time the rich soil, composed of layer on layer of the decay of forests that had lived from old time, was incredibly fertile. As fast as trees could be felled and dragged away, in went the tobacco. Fields must have laborers, nor did these need to be especially intelligent. Bring in indentured men to work. Presently dream that ships, English as well as Dutch, might oftener load in Africa and sell in Virginia, to furnish the dark fields with dark workers! In Dale's time had begun the making over of land in fee simple; in Yeardley's time every "ancient" colonist—that is every man who had come to Virginia before 1616—was given a goodly number of acres subject to a quit-rent. Men of means and influence obtained great holdings; ownership, rental, sale, and purchase of the land began in Virginia much as in older times it had begun in England. Only here, in America, where it seemed that the land could never be exhausted, individual holdings were often of great acreage. Thus arose the Virginia Planter.

In Yeardley's time John Berkeley established at Falling Creek the first iron works ever set up in English-America. There were by this time in Virginia, glass works, a windmill, iron works. To till the soil remained the chief industry, but the tobacco culture grew until it overshadowed the maize and wheat, the pease and beans. There were cattle and swine, not a few horses, poultry, pigeons, and peacocks.

In 1621 Yeardley, desiring to be relieved, was succeeded by Sir Francis Wyatt. In October the new Governor came from England in the George, and with him a goodly company. Among others is found George Sandys, brother of Sir Edwyn. This gentleman and scholar, beneath Virginia skies and with Virginia trees and blossoms about him, translated the "Metamorphoses" of Ovid and the First Book of the "Aeneid", both of which were published in London in 1626. He stands as the first purely literary man of the English New World. But vigorous enough literature, though the writers thereof regarded it as information only, had, from the first years, emanated from Virginia. Smith's "True Relation", George Percy's "Discourse", Strachey's "True Repertory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates", and his "Historie of Travaile into Virginia Brittannia", Hamor's "True Discourse", Whitaker's "Good News"—other letters and reports—had already flowered, all with something of the strength and fragrance of Elizabethan and early Jacobean work.

For some years there had seemed peace with the Indians. Doubtless members of the one race may have marauded, and members of the other showed themselves highhanded, impatient, and unjust, but the majority on each side appeared to have settled into a kind of amity. Indians came singly or in parties from their villages to the white men's settlements, where they traded corn and venison and what not for the magic things the white man owned. A number had obtained the white man's firearms, unwisely sold or given. The red seemed reconciled to the white's presence in the land; the Indian village and the Indian tribal economy rested beside the English settlement, church, and laws. Doubtless a fragment of the population of England and a fragment of the English in Virginia saw in a pearly dream the red man baptized, clothed, become Christian and English. At the least, it seemed that friendliness and peace might continue.

In the spring of 1622 a concerted Indian attack and massacre fell like a bolt from the blue. Up and down the James and upon the Chesapeake, everywhere on the same day, Indians, bursting from the dark forest that was so close behind every cluster of log houses, attacked the colonists. Three hundred and forty-seven English men, women, and children were slain. But Jamestown and the plantations in its neighborhood were warned in time. The English rallied, gathered force, turned upon and beat back to the forest the Indian, who was now and for a long time to come their open foe.

There followed upon this horror not a day or a month but years of organized retaliation and systematic harrying. In the end the great majority of the Indians either fell or were pushed back toward the upper Pamunkey, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and westward upon the great shelf or terrace of the earth that climbed to the fabled mountains. And with this westward move there passed away that old vision of wholesale Christianizing.



CHAPTER VIII. ROYAL GOVERNMENT

In November, 1620, there sailed into a quiet harbor on the coast of what is now Massachusetts a ship named the Mayflower, having on board one hundred and two English Non-conformists, men and women and with them a few children. These latest colonists held a patent from the Virginia Company and have left in writing a statement of their object: "We... having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia—". The mental reservation is, of course, "where perchance we may serve God as we will!" In England there obtained in some quarters a suspicion that "they meant to make a free, popular State there." Free—Popular—Public Good! These are words that began, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, to shine and ring. King and people had reached the verge of a great struggle. The Virginia Company was divided, as were other groups, into factions. The court party and the country party found themselves distinctly opposed. The great, crowded meetings of the Company Sessions rang with their divisions upon policies small and large. Words and phrases, comprehensive, sonorous, heavy with the future, rose and rolled beneath the roof of their great hall. There were heard amid warm discussion: Kingdom and Colony—Spain—Netherlands—France—Church and State—Papists and Schismatics—Duties, Tithes, Excise Petitions of Grievances—Representation—Right of Assembly. Several years earlier the King had cried, "Choose the Devil, but not Sir Edwyn Sandys!" Now he declared the Company "just a seminary to a seditious parliament!" All London resounded with the clash of parties and opinions.* "Last week the Earl of Warwick and the Lord Cavendish fell so foul at a Virginia... court that the lie passed and repassed.... The factions... are grown so violent that Guelfs and Ghibellines were not more animated one against another!"

* In his work on "Joint-stock Companion", vol.II, pp. 266 ff., W. R. Scott traces the history of these acute dissensions in the Virginia Company and draws conclusions distinctly unfavorable to the management of Sandys and his party.—Editor.

Believing that the Company's sessions foreshadowed a "seditious parliament," James Stuart set himself with obstinacy and some cunning to the Company's undoing. The court party gave the King aid, and circumstances favored the attempt. Captain Nathaniel Butler, who had once been Governor of the Somers Islands and had now returned to England by way of Virginia, published in London "The Unmasked Face of Our Colony in Virginia", containing a savage attack upon every item of Virginian administration.

The King's Privy Council summoned the Company, or rather the "country" party, to answer these and other allegations. Southampton, Sandys, and Ferrar answered with strength and cogency. But the tide was running against them. James appointed commissioners to search out what was wrong with Virginia. Certain men were shipped to Virginia to get evidence there, as well as support from the Virginia Assembly. In this attempt they signally failed. Then to England came a Virginia member of the Virginia Council, with long letters to King and Privy Council: the Sandys-Southampton administration had done more than well for Virginia. The letters were letters of appeal. The colony hoped that "the Governors sent over might not have absolute authority, but might be restrained to the consent of the Council.... But above all they made it their most humble request that they might still retain the liberty of their General Assemblies; than which nothing could more conduce to the publick Satisfaction and publick Liberty."

In London another paper, drawn by Cavendish, was given to King and Privy Council. It answered many accusations, and among others the statement that "the Government of the companies as it then stood was democratical and tumultuous, and ought therefore to be altered, and reduced into the Hands of a few." It is of interest to hear these men speak, in the year 1623, in an England that was close to absolute monarchy, to a King who with all his house stood out for personal rule. "However, they owned that, according to his Majesty's Institution, their Government had some Show of a democratical Form; which was nevertheless, in that Case, the most just and profitable, and most conducive to the Ends and Effects aimed at thereby.... Lastly, they observed that the opposite Faction cried out loudly against Democracy, and yet called for Oligarchy; which would, as they conceived, make the Government neither of better Form, nor more monarchical."

But the dissolution of the Virginia Company was at hand. In October, 1623, the Privy Council stated that the King had "taken into his princely Consideration the distressed State of the Colony of Virginia, occasioned, as it seemed, by the Ill Government of the Company." The remedy for the ill-management lay in the reduction of the Government into fewer hands. His Majesty had resolved therefore upon the withdrawal of the Company's charter and the substitution, "with due regard for continuing and preserving the Interest of all Adventurers and private persons whatsoever," of a new order of things. The new order proved, on examination, to be the old order of rule by the Crown. Would the Company surrender the old charter and accept a new one so modeled?

The Company, through the country party, strove to gain time. They met with a succession of arbitrary measures and were finally forced to a decision. They would not surrender their charter. Then a writ of quo warranto was issued; trial before the King's Bench followed; and judgment was rendered against the Company in the spring term of 1624. Thus with clangor fell the famous Virginia Company.

That was one year. The March of the next year James Stuart, King of England, died. That young Henry who was Prince of Wales when the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery sailed past a cape and named it for him Cape Henry, also had died. His younger brother Charles, for whom was named that other and opposite cape, now ascended the throne as King Charles the First of England.

In Virginia no more General Assemblies are held for four years. King Charles embarks upon "personal rule." Sir Francis Wyatt, a good Governor, is retained by commission and a Council is appointed by the King. No longer are affairs to be conducted after a fashion "democratical and tumultuous." Orders are transmitted from England; the Governor, assisted by the Council, will take into cognizance purely local needs; and when he sees some occasion he will issue a proclamation.

Wyatt, recalled finally to England; George Yeardley again, who died in a year's time; Francis West, that brother of Lord De La Warr and an ancient planter—these in quick succession sit in the Governor's chair. Following them John Pott, doctor of medicine, has his short term. Then the King sends out Sir John Harvey, avaricious and arbitrary, "so haughty and furious to the Council and the best gentlemen of the country," says Beverley, "that his tyranny grew at last insupportable."

The Company previously, and now the King, had urged upon the Virginians a diversified industry and agriculture. But Englishmen in Virginia had the familiar emigrant idea of making their fortunes. They had left England; they had taken their lives in their hands; they had suffered fevers, Indian attacks, homesickness, deprivation. They had come to Virginia to get rich. Now clapboards and sassafras, pitch, tar, and pine trees for masts, were making no fortune for Virginia shippers. How could they, these few folk far off in America, compete in products of the forest with northern Europe? As to mines of gold and silver, that first rich vision had proved a disheartening mirage. "They have great hopes that the mountains are very rich, from the discovery of a silver mine made nineteen years ago, at a place about four days' journey from the falls of James river; but they have not the means of transporting the ore." So, dissatisfied with some means of livelihood and disappointed in others, the Virginians turned to tobacco.

Every year each planter grew more tobacco; every year more ships were laden. In 1628 more than five hundred thousand pounds were sent to England, for to England it must go, and not elsewhere. There it must struggle with the best Spanish, for a long time valued above the best Virginian. Finally, however, James and after him Charles, agreed to exclude the Spanish. Virginia and the Somers Islands alone might import tobacco into England. But offsetting this, customs went up ruinously; a great lump sum must go annually to the King; the leaf must enter only at the port of London; so forth and so on. Finally Charles put forth his proposal to monopolize the industry, giving Virginia tobacco the English market but limiting its production to the amount which the Government could sell advantageously. Such a policy required cooperation from the colonists. The King therefore ordered the Governor to grant a Virginia Assembly, which in turn should dutifully enter into partnership with him—upon his terms. So the Virginia Assembly thus came back into history. It made a "Humble Answere" in which, for all its humility, the King's proposal was declined. The idea of the royal monopoly faded out, and Virginia continued on its own way.

The General Assembly, having once met, seems of its own motion to have continued meeting. The next year we find it in session at Jamestown, and resolving "that we should go three severall marches upon the Indians, at three severall times of the yeare," and also "that there be an especiall care taken by all commanders and others that the people doe repaire to their churches on the Saboth day, and to see that the penalty of one pound of tobacco for every time of absence, and 50 pounds for every month's absence... be levyed, and the delinquents to pay the same." About this time we read: "Dr. John Pott, late Governor, indicted, arraigned, and found guilty of stealing cattle, 13 jurors, 3 whereof councellors. This day wholly spent in pleading; next day, in unnecessary disputation."

These were moving times in the little colony whose population may by now have been five thousand. Harvey, the Governor, was rapacious; the King at home, autocratic. Meanwhile, signs of change and of unrest were not wanting in Europe. England was hastening toward revolution; in Germany the Thirty Years' War was in mid-career; France and Italy were racked by strife; over the world the peoples groaned under the strain of oppression. In science, too, there was promise of revolution. Harvey—not that Governor Harvey of Virginia, but a greater in England was writing upon the circulation of the blood. Galileo brooded over ideas of the movement of the earth; Kepler, over celestial harmonies and solar rule. Descartes was laying the foundation of a new philosophy.

In the meantime, far across the Atlantic, bands of Virginians went out against the Indians—who might, or might not, God knows! have put in a claim to be considered among the oppressed peoples. In Virginia the fat, black, tobacco-fields, steaming under a sun like the sun of Spain, called for and got more labor and still more labor. Every little sailing ship brought white workmen—called servants—consigned, indentured, apprenticed to many-acred planters. These, in return for their passage money, must serve Laban for a term of years, but then would receive Rachel, or at least Leah, in the shape of freedom and a small holding and provision with which to begin again their individual life. If they were ambitious and energetic they might presently be able, in turn, to import labor for their own acres. As yet, in Virginia, there were few African slaves—not more perhaps than a couple of hundred. But whenever ships brought them they were readily purchased.

In Virginia, as everywhere in time of change, there arose anomalies. Side by side persisted a romantic devotion to the King and a determination to have popular assemblies; a great sense of the rights of the white individual together with African slavery; a practical, easy-going, debonair naturalism side by side with an Established Church penalizing alike Papist, Puritan, and atheist. Even so early as this, the social tone was set that was to hold for many and many a year. The suave climate was somehow to foster alike a sense of caste and good neighborliness—class distinctions and republican ideas.

The "towns" were of the fewest and rudest—little more than small palisaded hamlets, built of frame or log, poised near the water of the river James. The genius of the land was for the plantation rather than the town. The fair and large brick or frame planter's house of a later time had not yet risen, but the system was well inaugurated that set a main or "big" house upon some fair site, with cabins clustered near it, and all surrounded, save on the river front, with far-flung acres, some planted with grain and the rest with tobacco. Up and down the river these estates were strung together by the rudest roads, mere tracks through field and wood. The cart was as yet the sole wheeled vehicle. But the Virginia planter—a horseman in England—brought over horses, bred horses, and early placed horsemanship in the catalogue of the necessary colonial virtues. At this point, however, in a land of great and lesser rivers, with a network of creeks, the boat provided the chief means of communication. Behind all, enveloping all, still spread the illimitable forest, the haunt of Indians and innumerable game.

Virginians were already preparing for an expansion to the north. There was a man in Virginia named William Claiborne. This individual—able, determined, self-reliant, energetic—had come in as a young man, with the title of surveyor-general for the Company, in the ship that brought Sir Francis Wyatt, just before the massacre of 1622. He had prospered and was now Secretary of the Province. He held lands, and was endowed with a bold, adventurous temper and a genius for business. In a few years he had established widespread trading relations with the Indians. He and the men whom he employed penetrated to the upper shores of Chesapeake, into the forest bordering Potomac and Susquehanna: Knives and hatchets, beads, trinkets, and colored cloth were changed for rich furs and various articles that the Indians could furnish. The skins thus gathered Claiborne shipped to London merchants, and was like to grow wealthy from what his trading brought.

Looking upon the future and contemplating barter on a princely scale, he set to work and obtained exhaustive licenses from the immediate Virginian authorities, and at last from the King himself. Under these grants, Claiborne began to provide settlements for his numerous traders. Far up the Chesapeake, a hundred miles or so from Point Comfort, he found an island that he liked, and named it Kent Island. Here for his men he built cabins with gardens around them, a mill and a church. He was far from the river James and the mass of his fellows, but he esteemed himself to be in Virginia and upon his own land. What came of Claiborne's enterprise the sequel has to show.



CHAPTER IX. MARYLAND

There now enters upon the scene in Virginia a man of middle age, not without experience in planting colonies, by name George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore. Of Flemish ancestry, born in Yorkshire, scholar at Oxford, traveler, clerk of the Privy Council, a Secretary of State under James, member of the House of Commons, member of the Virginia Company, he knew many of the ramifications of life. A man of worth and weight, he was placed by temperament and education upon the side of the court party and the Crown in the growing contest over rights. About the year 1625, under what influence is not known, he had openly professed the Roman Catholic faith—and that took courage in the seventeenth century, in England!

Some years before, Calvert had obtained from the Crown a grant of a part of Newfoundland, had named it Avalon, and had built great hopes upon its settlement. But the northern winter had worked against him. He knew, for he had resided there himself with his family in that harsh clime. "From the middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter on all this land." He is writing to King Charles, and he goes on to say "I have had strong temptations to leave all proceedings in plantations... but my inclination carrying me naturally to these kind of works... I am determined to commit this place to fishermen that are able to encounter storms and hard weather, and to remove myself with some forty persons to your Majesty's dominion of Virginia where, if your Majesty will please to grant me a precinct of land... I shall endeavour to the utmost of my power, to deserve it."

With his immediate following he thereupon does sail far southward. In October, 1629, he comes in between the capes, past Point Comfort and so up to Jamestown—to the embarrassment of that capital, as will soon be evident.

Here in Church of England Virginia was a "popish recusant!" Here was an old "court party" man, one of James's commissioners, a person of rank and prestige, known, for all his recusancy, to be in favor with the present King. Here was the Proprietary of Avalon, guessed to be dissatisfied with his chilly holding, on the scent perhaps of balmier, easier things!

The Assembly was in session when Lord Baltimore came to Jamestown. All arrivers in Virginia must take the oath of supremacy. The Assembly proposed this to the visitor who, as Roman Catholic, could not take it, and said as much, but offered his own declaration of friendliness to the powers that were. This was declined. Debate followed, ending with a request from the Assembly that the visitor depart from Virginia. Some harshness of speech ensued, but hospitality and the amenities fairly saved the situation. One Thomas Tindall was pilloried for "giving my lord Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him down." Baltimore thereupon set sail, but not, perhaps, until he had gained that knowledge of conditions which he desired.

In England he found the King willing to make him a large grant, with no less powers than had clothed him in Avalon. Territory should be taken from the old Virginia; it must be of unsettled land—Indians of course not counting. Baltimore first thought of the stretch south of the river James between Virginia and Spanish Florida—a fair land of woods and streams, of good harbors, and summer weather. But suddenly William Claiborne was found to be in London, sent there by the Virginians, with representations in his pocket. Virginia was already settled and had the intention herself of expanding to the south.

Baltimore, the King, and the Privy Council weighed the matter. Westward, the blue mountains closed the prospect. Was the South Sea just beyond their sunset slopes, or was it much farther away, over unknown lands, than the first adventurers had guessed? Either way, too rugged hardship marked the west! East rolled the ocean. North, then? It were well to step in before those Hollanders about the mouth of the Hudson should cast nets to the south. Baltimore accordingly asked for a grant north of the Potomac.

He received a huge territory, stretching over what is now Maryland, Delaware, and a part of Pennsylvania. The Potomac, from source to mouth, with a line across Chesapeake and the Eastern Shore to the ocean formed his southern frontier; his northern was the fortieth parallel, from the ocean across country to the due point above the springs of the Potomac. Over this great expanse he became "true and absolute lord and proprietary," holding fealty to England, but otherwise at liberty to rule in his own domain with every power of feudal duke or prince. The King had his allegiance, likewise a fifth part of gold or silver found within his lands. All persons going to dwell in his palatinate were to have "rights and liberties of Englishmen." But, this aside, he was lord paramount. The new country received the name Terra Mariae—Maryland—for Henrietta Maria, then Queen of England.

Here was a new land and a Lord Proprietor with kingly powers. Virginians seated on the James promptly petitioned King Charles not to do them wrong by so dividing their portion of the earth. But King and Privy Council answered only that Virginia and Maryland must "assist each other on all occasions as becometh fellow-subjects." William Claiborne, indeed, continued with a determined voice to cry out that lands given to Baltimore were not, as had been claimed, unsettled, seeing that he himself had under patent a town on Kent Island and another at the mouth of the Susquehanna.

Baltimore was a reflective man, a dreamer in the good sense of the term, and religiously minded. At the height of seeming good fortune he could write:

"All things, my lord, in this world pass away.... They are but lent us till God please to call for them back again, that we may not esteem anything our own, or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone, who only remains forever." Like his King, Baltimore could carry far his prerogative and privilege, maintaining the while not a few degrees of inner freedom. Like all men, here he was bound, and here he was free.

Baltimore's desire was for "enlarging his Majesty's Empire," and at the same time to provide in Maryland a refuge for his fellow Catholics. These were now in England so disabled and limited that their status might fairly be called that of a persecuted people. The mounting Puritanism promised no improvement. The King himself had no fierce antagonism to the old religion, but it was beginning to be seen that Charles and Charles's realm were two different things. A haven should be provided before the storm blackened further. Baltimore thus saw put into his hands a high and holy opportunity, and made no doubt that it was God-given. His charter, indeed, seemed to contemplate an established church, for it gave to Baltimore the patronage of all churches and chapels which were to be "consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of England"; nevertheless, no interpretation of the charter was to be made prejudicial to "God's holy and true Christian religion." What was Christian and what was prejudicial was, fortunately for him, left undefined. No obstacles were placed before a Catholic emigration.

Baltimore had this idea and perhaps a still wider one: a land—Mary's land—where all Christians might foregather, brothers and sisters in one home! Religious tolerance—practical separation of Church and State—that was a broad idea for his age, a generous idea for a Roman Catholic of a time not so far removed from the mediaeval. True, wherever he went and whatever might be his own thought and feeling, he would still have for overlord a Protestant sovereign, and the words of his charter forbade him to make laws repugnant to the laws of England. But Maryland was distant, and wise management might do much. Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, Dissidents, and Nonconformists of almost any physiognomy, might come and be at home, unpunished for variations in belief.

Only the personal friendship of England's King and the tact and suave sagacity of the Proprietary himself could have procured the signing of this charter, since it was known—as it was to all who cared to busy themselves with the matter—that here was a Catholic meaning to take other Catholics, together with other scarcely less abominable sectaries, out of the reach of Recusancy Acts and religious pains and penalties, to set them free in England-in-America; and, raising there a state on the novel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the heathen to all manner of errors, and embark on mischiefs far too large for definition. Taking things as they were in the world, remembering acts of the Catholic Church in the not distant past, the ill-disposed might find some color for the agitation which presently did arise. Baltimore was known to be in correspondence with English Jesuits, and it soon appeared that Jesuit priests were to accompany the first colonists. At that time the Society of Jesus loomed large both politically and educationally. Many may have thought that there threatened a Rome in America. But, however that may have been, there was small chance for any successful opposition to the charter, since Parliament had been dissolved by the King, not to be summoned again for eleven years. The Privy Council was subservient, and, as the Sovereign was his friend, Baltimore saw the signing of the charter assured and began to gather together his first colonists. Then, somewhat suddenly, in April, 1632, he sickened, and died at the age of fifty-three.

His son, Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, took up his father's work. This young man, likewise able and sagacious, and at every step in his father's confidence, could and did proceed even in detail according to what had been planned. All his father's rights had descended to him; in Maryland he was Proprietary with as ample power as ever a Count Palatine had enjoyed. He took up the advantage and the burden.

The father's idea had been to go with his colonists to Maryland, and this it seems that the son also meant to do. But now, in London, there deepened a clamor against such Catholic enterprise. Once he were away, lips would be at the King's ear. And with England so restless, in a turmoil of new thought, it might even arise that King and Privy Council would find trouble in acting after their will, good though that might be. The second Baltimore therefore remained in England to safeguard his charter and his interests.

The family of Baltimore was an able one. Cecil Calvert had two brothers, Leonard and George, and these would go to Maryland in his place. Leonard he made Governor and Lieutenant-general, and appointed him councilor. Ships were made ready—the Ark of three hundred tons and the Dove of fifty. The colonists went aboard at Gravesend, where these ships rode at anchor. Of the company a great number were Protestants, willing to take land, if their condition were bettered so, with Catholics. Difficulties of many kinds kept them all long at the mouth of the Thames, but at last, late in November, 1633, the Ark and the Dove set sail. Touching at the Isle of Wight, they took aboard two Jesuit priests, Father White and Father Altham, and a number of other colonists. Baltimore reported that the expedition consisted of "two of my brothers with very near twenty other gentlemen of very good fashion, and three hundred labouring men well provided in all things."

These ships, with the first Marylanders, went by the old West Indies sea route. We find them resting at Barbados; then they swung to the north and, in February, 1634, came to Point Comfort in Virginia. Here they took supplies, being treated by Sir John Harvey (who had received a letter from the King) with "courtesy and humanity." Without long tarrying, for they were sick now for land of their own, they sailed on up the great bay, the Chesapeake.

Soon they reached the mouth of the Potomac—a river much greater than any of them, save shipmasters and mariners, had ever seen—and into this turned the Ark and the Dove. After a few leagues of sailing up the wide stream, they came upon an islet covered with trees, leafless, for spring had hardly broken. The ships dropped anchor; the boats were lowered; the people went ashore. Here the Calverts claimed Maryland "for our Savior and for our Sovereign Lord the King of England," and here they heard Mass. St. Clement's they called the island.

But it was too small for a home. The Ark was left at anchor, while Leonard Calvert went exploring with the Dove. Up the Potomac some distance he went, but at the last he wisely determined to choose for their first town a site nearer the sea. The Dove turned and came back to the Ark, and both sailed on down the stream from St. Clement's Isle. Before long they came to the mouth of a tributary stream flowing in from the north. The Dove, going forth again, entered this river, which presently the party named the River St. George. Soon they came to a high bank with trees tinged with the foliage of advancing spring. Here upon this bank the English found an Indian village and a small Algonquin group, in the course of extinction by their formidable Iroquois neighbors, the giant Susquehannocks. The white men landed, bearing a store of hatchets, gewgaws, and colored cloth. The first Lord Baltimore, having had opportunity enough for observing savages, had probably handed on to his sagacious sons his conclusions as to ways of dealing with the natives of the forest. And the undeniable logic of events was at last teaching the English how to colonize. Englishmen on Roanoke Island, Englishmen on the banks of the James, Englishmen in that first New England colony, had borne the weight of early inexperience and all the catalogue of woes that follow ignorance. All these early colonists alike had been quickly entangled in strife with the people whom they found in the land.

First they fell on their knees, And then on the Aborigines.

But by now much water had passed the mill. The thinking kind, the wiser sort, might perceive more things than one, and among these the fact that savages had a sense of justice and would even fight against injustice, real or fancied.

The Calverts, through their interpreter, conferred with the inhabitants of this Indian village. Would they sell lands where the white men might peaceably settle, under their given word to deal in friendly wise with the red men? Many hatchets and axes and much cloth would be given in return.

To a sylvan people store of hatchets and axes had a value beyond many fields of the boundless earth. The Dove appeared before them, too, at the psychological moment. They had just discussed removing, bag and baggage, from the proximity of the Iroquois. In the end, these Indians sold to the English their village huts, their cleared and planted fields, and miles of surrounding forest. Moreover they stayed long enough in friendship with the newcomers to teach them many things of value. Then they departed, leaving with the English a clear title to as much land as they could handle, at least for some time to come. Later, with other Indians, as with these, the Calverts pursued a conciliatory policy. They were aided by the fact that the Susquehannocks to the north, who might have given trouble, were involved in war with yet more northerly tribes, and could pay scant attention to the incoming white men. But even so, the Calverts proved, as William Penn proved later, that men may live at peace with men, honestly and honorably, even though hue of skin and plane of development differ.

Now the Ark joins the Dove in the River St. George. The pieces of ordnance are fired; the colonists disembark; and on the 27th of March, 1634, the Indian village, now English, becomes St. Mary's.

On the whole how advantageously are they placed! There is peace with the Indians. Huts, lodges, are already built, fields already cleared or planted. The site is high and healthful. They have at first few dissensions among themselves. Nor are they entirely alone or isolated in the New World. There is a New England to the north of them and a Virginia to the south. From the one they get in the autumn salted fish, from the other store of swine and cattle. Famine and pestilence are far from them. They build a "fort" and perhaps a stockade, but there are none of the stealthy deaths given by arrow and tomahawk in the north, nor are there any of the Spanish alarms that terrified the south. From the first they have with them women and children. They know that their settlement is "home." Soon other ships and colonists follow the Ark and the Dove to St. Mary's, and the history of this middle colony is well begun.

In Virginia, meantime, there was jealousy enough of the new colony, taking as it did territory held to be Virginian and renaming it, not for the old, independent, Protestant, virgin queen, but for a French, Catholic, queen consort—even settling it with believers in the Mass and bringing in Jesuits! It was, says a Jamestown settler, "accounted a crime almost as heinous as treason to favour, nay to speak well of that colony." Beside the Virginian folk as a whole, one man, in particular, William Claiborne, nursed an individual grievance. He had it from Governor Calvert that he might dwell on in Kent Island, trading from there, but only under license from the Lord Proprietor and as an inhabitant of Maryland, not of Virginia. Claiborne, with the Assembly at Jamestown secretly on his side, resisted this interference with his rights, and, as he continued to trade with a high hand, he soon fell under suspicion of stirring up the Indians against the Marylanders.

At the time, this quarrel rang loud through Maryland and Virginia, and even echoed across the Atlantic. Leonard Calvert had a trading-boat of Claiborne's seized in the Patuxent River. Thereupon Claiborne's men, with the shallop Cockatrice, in retaliation attacked Maryland pinnaces and lost both their lives and their boat. For several years Maryland and Kent Island continued intermittently to make petty war on each other. At last, in 1638, Calvert took the island by main force and hanged for piracy a captain of Claiborne's. The Maryland Assembly brought the trader under a Bill of Attainder; and a little later, in England, the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations formally awarded Kent Island to the Lord Proprietor. Thus defeated, Claiborne, nursing his wrath, moved down the bay to Virginia.



CHAPTER X. CHURCH AND KINGDOM

Virginia, all this time, with Maryland a thorn in her side, was wrestling with an autocratic governor, John Harvey. This avaricious tyrant sowed the wind until in 1635 he was like to reap the whirlwind. Though he was the King's Governor and in good odor in England, where rested the overpower to which Virginia must bow, yet in this year Virginia blew upon her courage until it was glowing and laid rude hands upon him. We read: "An Assembly to be called to receive complaints against Sr. John Harvey, on the petition of many inhabitants, to meet 7th of May." But, before that month was come, the Council, seizing opportunity, acted for the whole. Immediately below the entry above quoted appears: "On the 28th of April, 1635, Sr. John Harvey thrust out of his government, and Capt. John West acts as Governor till the King's pleasure known."*

* Hening's "Statutes" vol. I p. 223.

So Virginia began her course as rebel against political evils! It is of interest to note that Nicholas Martian, one of the men found active against the Governor, was an ancestor of George Washington.

Harvey, thrust out, took first ship for England, and there also sailed commissioners from the Virginia Assembly with a declaration of wrongs for the King's ear. But when they came to England, they found that the King's ear was for the Governor whom he had given to the Virginians and whom they, with audacious disobedience, had deposed. Back should go Sir John Harvey, still governing Virginia; back without audience the so-called commissioners, happy to escape a merited hanging! Again to Jamestown sailed Harvey. In silence Virginia received him, and while he remained Governor no Assembly sat.

But having asserted his authority, the King in a few years' time was willing to recall his unwelcome representative. So in 1639 Governor Harvey vanishes from the scene, and in comes the well-liked Sir Francis Wyatt as Governor for the second time. For two years he remains, and is then superseded by Sir William Berkeley, a notable figure in Virginia for many years to come. The population was now perhaps ten thousand, both English born and Virginians born of English parents. A few hundred negroes moved in the tobacco fields. More would be brought in and yet more. And now above a million pounds of tobacco were going annually to England.

The century was predominantly one of inner and outer religious conflict. What went on at home in England reechoed in Virginia. The new Governor was a dyed-in-the-wool Cavalier, utterly stubborn for King and Church. The Assemblies likewise leaned that way, as presumably did the mass of the people. It was ordered in 1631: "That there bee a uniformitie throughout this colony both in substance and circumstance to the cannons and constitutions of the church of England as neere as may bee, and that every person yeald readie obedience unto them uppon penaltie of the paynes and forfeitures in that case appoynted." And, indeed, the pains and forfeitures threatened were savage enough.

Official Virginia, loyal to the Established Church, was jealous and fearful of Papistry and looked askance at Puritanism. It frowned upon these and upon agnosticisms, atheisms, pantheisms, religious doubts, and alterations in judgment—upon anything, in short, that seemed to push a finger against Church and Kingdom. Yet in this Virginia, governed by Sir William Berkeley, a gentleman more cavalier than the Cavaliers, more royalist than the King, more churchly than the Church, there lived not a few Puritans and Dissidents, going on as best they might with Established Church and fiery King's men. Certain parishes were predominantly Puritan; certain ministers were known to have leanings away from surplices and genuflections and to hold that Archbishop Laud was some kin to the Pope. In 1642, to reenforce these ministers, came three more from New England, actively averse to conformity. But Governor and Council and the majority of the Burgesses will have none of that. The Assembly of 1643 takes sharp action.

For the preservation of the puritie of doctrine and unitie of the church, IT IS ENACTED that all ministers whatsoever which shall reside in the collony are to be conformable to the orders and constitutions of the church of England, and the laws therein established, and not otherwise to be admitted to teach or preach publickly or privately. And that the Gov. and Counsel do take care that all nonconformists upon notice of them shall be compelled to depart the collony with all conveniencie. And so in consequence out of Virginia, to New England where Independents were welcome, or to Maryland where any Christian might dwell, went these tainted ministers. But there stayed behind Puritan and nonconforming minds in the bodies of many parishioners. They must hold their tongues, indeed, and outwardly conform—but they watched lynx-eyed for their opportunity and a more favorable fortune.

Having launched thunderbolts against schismatics of this sort, Berkeley, himself active and powerful, with the Council almost wholly of his party and the House of Burgesses dominantly so, turned his attention to "popish recusants." Of these there were few or none dwelling in Virginia. Let them then not attempt to come from Maryland! The rulers of the colony legislated with vigor: papists may not hold any public place; all statutes against them shall be duly executed; popish priests by chance or intent arriving within the bounds of Virginia shall be given five days' warning, and, if at the end of this time they are yet upon Virginian soil, action shall be brought against them. Berkeley sweeps with an impatient broom.

The Kingdom is cared for not less than the Church in Virginia. Any and all persons coming into the colony by land and by sea shall have administered to them the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance. "Which if any shall refuse to take," the commander of the fort at Point Comfort shall "committ him or them to prison." Foreigners in birth and tongue, foreigners in thought, must have found the place and time narrow indeed.

On the eve of civil war there arose on the part of some in England a project to revive and restore the old Virginia Company by procuring from Charles, now deep in troubles of his own, a renewal of the old letters patent and the transference of the direct government of the colony into the hands of a reorganized and vast corporation. Virginia, which a score of years before had defended the Company, now protested vigorously, and, with regard to the long view of things, it may be thought wisely. The project died a natural death. The petition sent from Virginia shows plainly enough the pen of Berkeley. There are a multitude of reasons why Virginia should not pass from King to Company, among which these are worthy of note: "We may not admit of so unnatural a distance as a Company will interpose between his sacred majesty and us his subjects from whose immediate protection we have received so many royal favours and gracious blessings. For, by such admissions, we shall degenerate from the condition of our birth, being naturalized under a monarchical government and not a popular and tumultuary government depending upon the greatest number of votes of persons of several humours and dispositions."

When this paper reached England, it came to a country at civil war. The Long Parliament was in session. Stafford had been beheaded, the Star Chamber swept away, the Grand Remonstrance presented. On Edgehill bloomed flowers that would soon be trampled by Rupert's cavalry. In Virginia the Assembly took notice of these "unkind differences now in England," and provided by tithing for the Governor's pension and allowance, which were for the present suspended and endangered by the troubles at home. That the forces banded against the Lord's anointed would prove victorious must at this time have appeared preposterously unlikely to the fiery Governor and the ultra-loyal Virginia whom he led. The Puritans and Independents in Virginia—estimated a little earlier at "a thousand strong" and now, for all the acts against them, probably stronger yet—were to be found chiefly in the parishes of Isle of Wight and Nansemond, but had representatives from the Falls to the Eastern Shore. What these Virginians thought of the "unkind differences" does not appear in the record, but probably there was thought enough and secret hopes.

In 1644, the year of Marston Moor, Virginia, too, saw battle and sudden and bloody death. That Opechancanough who had succeeded Powhatan was now one hundred years old, hardly able to walk or to see, dwelling harmlessly in a village upon the upper Pamunkey. All the Indians were broken and dispersed; serious danger was not to be thought of. Then, of a sudden, the flame leaped again. There fell from the blue sky a massacre directed against the outlying plantations. Three hundred men, women, and children were killed by the Indians. With fury the white men attacked in return. They sent bodies of horse into the untouched western forests. They chased and slew without mercy. In 1646 Opechancanough, brought a prisoner to Jamestown, ended his long tale of years by a shot from one of his keepers. The Indians were beaten, and, lacking such another leader, made no more organized and general attacks. But for long years a kind of border warfare still went on.

Even Maryland, tolerant and just as was the Calvert policy, did not altogether escape Indian troubles. She had to contend with no such able chief as Opechancanough, and she suffered no sweeping massacres. But after the first idyllic year or so there set in a small, constant friction. So fast did the Maryland colonists arrive that soon there was pressure of population beyond those first purchased bounds. The more thoughtful among the Indians may well have taken alarm lest their villages and hunting-grounds might not endure these inroads. Ere long the English in Maryland were placing "centinells" over fields where men worked, and providing penalties for those who sold the savages firearms. But at no time did young Maryland suffer the Indian woes that had vexed young Virginia.

Nor did Maryland escape the clash of interests which beset the beginnings of representative assemblies in all proprietary provinces. The second, like the first, Lord Baltimore, was a believer in kings and aristocracies, in a natural division of human society into masters and men. His effort was to plant intact in Maryland a feudal order. He would be Palatine, the King his suzerain. In Maryland the great planters, in effect his barons, should live upon estates, manorial in size and with manorial rights. The laboring men—the impecunious adventurers whom these greater adventurers brought out—would form a tenantry, the Lord Proprietary's men's men. It is true that, according to charter, provision was made for an Assembly. Here were to sit "freemen of the province," that is to say, all white males who were not in the position of indentured servants. But with the Proprietary, and not with the Assembly, would rest primarily the lawmaking power. The Lord Proprietary would propose legislation, and the freemen of the country would debate, in a measure advise, represent, act as consultants, and finally confirm. Baltimore was prepared to be a benevolent lord, wise, fatherly.

In 1635 met the first Assembly, Leonard Calvert and his Council sitting with the burgesses, and this gathering of freemen proceeded to inaugurate legislation. There was passed a string of enactments which presumably dealt with immediate wants at St. Mary's, and which, the Assembly recognized, must have the Lord Proprietary's assent. A copy was therefore sent by the first ship to leave. So long were the voyages and so slow the procedure in England that it was 1637 before Baltimore's veto upon the Assembly's laws reached Maryland. It would seem that he did not disapprove so much of the laws themselves as of the bold initiative of the Assembly, for he at once sent over twelve bills of his own drafting. Leonard Calvert was instructed to bring all freemen together in Assembly and present for their acceptance the substituted legislation.

Early in 1638 this Maryland Assembly met. The Governor put before it for adoption the Proprietary's laws. The vote was taken. Governor and some others were for, the remainder of the Assembly unanimously against, the proposed legislation. There followed a year or two of struggle over this question, but in the end the Proprietary in effect acknowledged defeat. The colonists, through their Assembly, might thereafter propose laws to meet their exigencies, and Governor Calvert, acting for his brother, should approve or veto according to need.

When civil war between King and Parliament broke out in England, sentiment in Maryland as in Virginia inclined toward the King. But that Puritan, Non-conformist, and republican element that was in both colonies might be expected to gain if, at home in England, the Parliamentary party gained. A Royal Governor or a Lord Proprietary's Governor might alike be perplexed by the political turmoil in the mother country. Leonard Calvert felt the need of first-hand consultation with his brother. Leaving Giles Brent in his place, he sailed for England, talked there with Baltimore himself, perplexed and filled with foreboding, and returned to Maryland not greatly wiser than when he went.

Maryland was soon convulsed by disorders which in many ways reflected the unsettled conditions in England. A London ship, commanded by Richard Ingle, a Puritan and a staunch upholder of the cause of Parliament, arrived before St. Mary's, where he gave great offense by his blatant remarks about the King and Rupert, "that Prince Rogue." Though he was promptly arrested on the charge of treason, he managed to escape and soon left the loyal colony far astern.

In the meantime Leonard Calvert had come back to Maryland, where he found confusion and a growing heat and faction and side-taking of a bitter sort. To add to the turmoil, William Claiborne, among whose dominant traits was an inability to recognize defeat, was making attempts upon Kent Island. Calvert was not long at St. Mary's ere Ingle sailed in again with letters-of-marque from the Long Parliament. Ingle and his men landed and quickly found out the Protestant moiety of the colonists. There followed an actual insurrection, the Marylanders joining with Ingle and much aided by Claiborne, who now retook Kent Island. The insurgents then captured St. Mary's and forced the Governor to flee to Virginia. For two years Ingle ruled and plundered, sequestrating goods of the Proprietary's adherents, and deporting in irons Jesuit priests. At the end of this time Calvert reappeared, and behind him a troop gathered in Virginia. Now it was Ingle's turn to flee. Regaining his ship, he made sail for England, and Maryland settled down again to the ancient order. The Governor then reduced Kent Island. Claiborne, again defeated, retired to Virginia, whence he sailed for England.

In 1647 Leonard Calvert died. Until the Proprietary's will should be known, Thomas Greene acted as Governor. Over in England, Lord Baltimore stood at the parting of the ways. The King's cause had a hopeless look. Roundhead and Parliament were making way in a mighty tide. Baltimore was marked for a royalist and a Catholic. If the tide rose farther, he might lose Maryland. A sagacious mind, he proceeded to do all that he could, short of denying his every belief, to placate his enemies. He appointed as Governor of Maryland William Stone, a Puritan, and into the Council, numbering five members, he put three Puritans. On the other hand the interests of his Maryland Catholics must not be endangered. He required of the new Governor not to molest any person "professing to believe in Jesus Christ, and in particular any Roman Catholic." In this way he thought that, right and left, he might provide against persecution.

Under these complex influences the Maryland Assembly passed in 1649 an Act concerning Religion. It reveals, upon the one hand, Christendom's mercilessness toward the freethinker—in which mercilessness, whether through conviction or policy, Baltimore acquiesced—and, on the other hand, that aspiration toward friendship within the Christian fold which is even yet hardly more than a pious wish, and which in the seventeenth century could have been felt by very few. To Baltimore and the Assembly of Maryland belongs, not the glory of inaugurating an era of wide toleration for men and women of all beliefs or disbeliefs, whether Christian or not, but the real though lesser glory of establishing entire toleration among the divisions within the Christian circle itself. According to the Act,*

"Whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto belonging, shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is curse him, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, or shall deny the holy Trinity,... or the Godhead of any of the said three persons of the Trinity, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachful speeches, words or language concerning the said Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shall be punished with death and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her lands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heires.... Whatsoever person or persons shall from henceforth use or utter any reproachfull words, or speeches, concerning the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of our Saviour, or the holy Apostles or Evangelists, or any of them, shall in such case for the first offence forfeit to the said Lord Proprietary and his heires the sum of five pound sterling.... Whatsoever person shall henceforth upon any occasion... declare, call, or denominate any person or persons whatsoever inhabiting, residing, traffiqueing, trading or comerceing within this Province, or within any of the Ports, Harbors, Creeks or Havens to the same belonging, an heritick, Scismatick, Idolator, puritan, Independant, Presbiterian, popish priest, Jesuite, Jesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvenist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Separtist, or any other name or term in a reproachful manner relating to matter of Religion, shall for every such Offence forfeit... the sum of tenne shillings sterling....

"Whereas the inforceing of the conscience in matters of Religion hath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in those commonwealths where it hath been practised,... be it therefore also by the Lord Proprietary with the advice and consent of this Assembly, ordeyned and enacted... that no person or persons whatsoever within this Province...professing to beleive in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforth bee any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof... nor anyway compelled to the beleif or exercise of any other Religion against his or her consent, soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary or molest or conspire against the civill Government..."

* "Archives of Maryland, Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly", vol. I, pp. 244-247.



CHAPTER XI. COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION

On the 30th of January, 1649, before the palace of Whitehall, Charles the First of England was beheaded. In Virginia the event fell with a shock. Even those within the colony who were Cromwell's men rather than Charles's men seem to have recoiled from this act. Presently, too, came fleeing royalists from overseas, to add their passionate voices to those of the royalists in Virginia. Many came, "nobility, clergy and gentry, men of the first rate." A thousand are said to have arrived in the year after the King's death.

In October the Virginia Assembly met. Parliament men—and now these were walking with head in the air—might regret the execution of the past January, and yet be prepared to assert that with the fall of the kingdom fell all powers and offices named and decreed by the hapless monarch. What was a passionate royalist government doing in Virginia now that England was a Commonwealth? The passionate government answered for itself in acts passed by this Assembly. With swelling words, with a tragic accent, it denounced the late happenings in England and all the Roundhead wickedness that led up to them. It proclaimed loyalty to "his sacred Majesty that now is"—that is, to Charles Stuart, afterwards Charles the Second, then a refugee on the Continent. Finally it enacted that any who defended the late proceedings, or in the least affected to question "the undoubted and inherent right of his Majesty that now is to the Collony of Virginia" should be held guilty of high treason; and that "reporters and divulgers" of rumors tending to change of government should be punished "even to severity."

Berkeley's words may be detected in these acts of the Assembly. In no great time the Cavalier Governor conferred with Colonel Henry Norwood, one of the royalist refugees to Virginia. Norwood thereupon sailed away upon a Dutch ship and came to Holland, where he found "his Majesty that now is." Here he knelt, and invited that same Majesty to visit his dominion of Virginia, and, if he liked it, there to rest, sovereign of the Virginian people. But Charles still hoped to be sovereign in England and would not cross the seas. He sent, however, to Sir William Berkeley a renewal of his Governor's commission, and appointed Norwood Treasurer of Virginia, and said, doubtless, many gay and pleasant things.

In Virginia there continued to appear from England adherents of the ancient regime. Men, women, and children came until to a considerable degree the tone of society rang Cavalier. This immigration, now lighter, now heavier, continued through a rather prolonged period. There came now to Virginia families whose names are often met in the later history of the land. Now Washingtons appear, with Randolphs, Carys, Skipwiths, Brodnaxes, Tylers, Masons, Madisons, Monroes, and many more. These persons are not without means; they bring with them servants; they are in high favor with Governor and Council; they acquire large tracts of virgin land; they bring in indentured labor; they purchase African slaves; they cultivate tobacco. From being English country gentlemen they turn easily to become Virginia planters.

But the Virginia Assembly had thrown a gauntlet before the victorious Commonwealth; and the Long Parliament now declared the colony to be in contumacy, assembled and dispatched ships against her, and laid an embargo upon trade with the rebellious daughter. In January of 1652 English ships appeared off Point Comfort. Four Commissioners of the Commonwealth were aboard, of whom that strong man Claiborne was one. After issuing a proclamation to quiet the fears of the people, the Commissioners made their way to Jamestown. Here was found the indomitable Berkeley and his Council in a state of active preparation, cannon trained. But, when all was said, the Commissioners had brought wisely moderate terms: submit because submit they must, acknowledge the Commonwealth, and, that done, rest unmolested! If resistance continued, there were enough Parliament men in Virginia to make an army. Indentured servants and slaves should receive freedom in exchange for support to the Commonwealth. The ships would come up from Point Comfort, and a determined war would be on. What Sir William Berkeley personally said has not survived. But after consultation upon consultation Virginia surrendered to the commonwealth.

Berkeley stepped from the Governor's chair, retiring in wrath and bitterness of heart to his house at Greenspring. In his place sat Richard Bennett, one of the Commissioners. Claiborne was made Secretary. King's men went out of office; Parliament men came in. But there was no persecution. In the bland and wide Virginia air minds failed to come into hard and frequent collision. For all the ferocities of the statute books, acute suffering for difference of opinion, whether political or religious, did not bulk large in the life of early Virginia.

The Commissioners, after the reduction of Virginia, had a like part to play with Maryland. At St. Mary's, as at Jamestown, they demanded and at length received submission to the Commonwealth. There was here the less trouble owing to Baltimore's foresight in appointing to the office of Governor William Stone, whose opinions, political and religious, accorded with those of revolutionary England. Yet the Governor could not bring himself to forget his oath to Lord Baltimore and agree to the demand of the Commissioners that he should administer the Government in the name of "the Keepers of the Liberties of England." After some hesitation the Commissioners decided to respect his scruples and allow him to govern in the name of the Lord Proprietary, as he had solemnly promised.

In Virginia and in Maryland the Commonwealth and the Lord Protector stand where stood the Kingdom and the King. Many are far better satisfied than they were before; and the confirmed royalist consumes his grumbling in his own circle. The old, exhausting quarrel seems laid to rest. But within this wider peace breaks out suddenly an interior strife. Virginia would, if she could, have back all her old northward territory. In 1652 Bennett's Government goes so far as to petition Parliament to unseat the Catholic Proprietary of Maryland and make whole again the ancient Virginia. The hand of Claiborne, that remarkable and persistent man, may be seen in this.

In Maryland, Puritans and Independents were settled chiefly about the rivers Severn and Patuxent and in a village called Providence, afterwards Annapolis. These now saw their chance to throw off the Proprietary's rule and to come directly under that of the Commonwealth. So thinking, they put themselves into communication with Bennett and Claiborne. In 1654 Stone charged the Commissioners with having promoted "faction, sedition, and rebellion against the Lord Baltimore." The charge was well founded. Claiborne and Bennett assumed that they were yet Parliament Commissioners, empowered to bring "all plantations within the Bay of Chesapeake to their due obedience to the Parliament and Commonwealth of England." And they were indeed set against the Lord Baltimore. Claiborne would head the Puritans of Providence; and a troop should be raised in Virginia and march northward. The Commissioners actually advanced upon St. Mary's, and with so superior a force that Stone surrendered, and a Puritan Government was inaugurated. A Puritan Assembly met, debarring any Catholics. Presently it passed an act annulling the Proprietary's Act of Toleration. Professors of the religion of Rome should "be restrained from the exercise thereof." The hand of the law was to fall heavily upon "popery, prelacy, or licentiousness of opinion." Thus was intolerance alive again in the only land where she had seemed to die!

In England now there was hardly a Parliament, but only the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. Content with Baltimore's recognition of the Protectorate, Cromwell was not prepared to back, in their independent action, the Commissioners of that now dissolved Parliament. Baltimore made sure of this, and then dispatched messengers overseas to Stone, bidding him do all that lay in him to retake Maryland. Stone thereupon gathered several hundred men and a fleet of small sailing craft, with which he pushed up the bay to the Severn. In the meantime the Puritans had not been idle, but had themselves raised a body of men and had taken over the Golden Lyon, an armed merchantman lying before their town. On the 24th of March, 1655, the two forces met in the Battle of the Severn. "In the name of God, fall on!" cried the men of Providence, and "Hey for St. Mary's!" cried the others. The battle was won by the Providence men. They slew or wounded fifty of the St. Mary's men and desperately wounded Stone himself and took many prisoners, ten of whom were afterwards condemned to death and four were actually executed.

Now followed a period of up and down, the Commissioners and the Proprietary alike appealing to the Lord Protector for some expression of his "determinate will." Both sides received encouragement inasmuch as he decided for neither. His own authority being denied by neither, Cromwell may have preferred to hold these distant factions in a canceling, neutralizing posture. But far weightier matters, in fact, were occupying his mind. In 1657, weary of her "very sad, distracted, and unsettled condition," Maryland herself proceeded—Puritan, Prelatist, and Catholic together—to agree henceforth to disagree. Toleration viewed in retrospect appears dimly to have been seen for the angel that it was. Maryland would return to the Proprietary's rule, provided there should be complete indemnity for political offenses and a solemn promise that the Toleration Act of 1649 should never be repealed. This without a smile Baltimore promised. Articles were signed; a new Assembly composed of all manner of Christians was called; and Maryland returned for a time to her first allegiance.