Chapter VIII
1614-1617.
Hamor visits Powhatan--Richard Hakluyt--Pocahontas Baptized-- Fixed Property in the Soil established--Dale Embarks for England accompanied by Pocahontas--Yeardley, Deputy Governor-- Culture of Tobacco introduced--Pocahontas in England-- Tomocomo--Death of Pocahontas--John and Thomas Rolfe--Smith and Pocahontas.
RALPH HAMOR[112:A] having obtained permission from Sir Thomas Dale to visit Powhatan, and taking with him Thomas Savage, as interpreter, and two Indian guides, started from Bermuda (Hundred) in the morning, and reached Matchot (Eltham) on the evening of the next day. Powhatan recognizing the boy Thomas Savage, said to him: "My child, I gave you leave, being my boy, to go see your friends; and these four years I have not seen you nor heard of my own man, Namontack, I sent to England, though many ships have been returned from thence." Turning then to Hamor, he demanded the chain of beads which he had sent to Sir Thomas Dale at his first arrival, with the understanding that whenever he should send a messenger, he should wear that chain about his neck; otherwise he was to be bound, and sent home. Sir Thomas had made such an arrangement, and on this occasion had directed his page to give the necklace to Hamor; but the page had forgotten it. However, Hamor being accompanied by two of Powhatan's own people, he was satisfied, and conducted him to the royal cabin, where a guard of two hundred bowmen stood always in attendance. He offered his guest a pipe of tobacco, and then inquired after his brother, Sir Thomas Dale, and his daughter, Pocahontas, and his unknown son-in-law, Rolfe, and "how they lived and loved." Being answered that Pocahontas was so well satisfied, that she would never live with him again, he laughed, and demanded the object of his visit. Hamor gave him to understand that his message was private, to be made known only to him and to Papaschicher, one of the guides who was in the secret. Forthwith Powhatan ordered out all his people, except his two queens "that always sit by him," and bade Hamor deliver his message. He then, by his interpreter, let him know that Sir Thomas Dale had sent him pieces of copper, strings of white and blue beads, wooden combs, fish-hooks, and a pair of knives, and would give him a grindstone, when he would send for it; that his brother Dale, hearing of the charms of his younger daughter, desired that he would send her to Jamestown, as well because he intended to marry her, as on account of the desire of Pocahontas to see her, and he believed that there could be no better bond of peace and friendship than such a union. While Hamor was speaking, Powhatan repeatedly interrupted him, and when he had ended, the old chief replied: "I gladly accept your salute of love and peace which, while I live, I shall exactly keep. His pledges thereof I receive with no less thanks, although they are not so great as I have received before. But, for my daughter, I have sold her within these few days to a great werowance, three days journey from me, for two bushels of rawrenoke." Hamor: "I know your highness, by returning the rawrenoke, might call her back again, to gratify your brother, Sir Thomas Dale, and the rather because she is but twelve years old. Besides its forming a bond of peace, you shall have in return for her, three times the value of the rawrenoke, in beads, copper, and hatchets." Powhatan: "I love my daughter as my life, and though I have many children, I delight in none so much as her, and if I should not often see her I could not possibly live, and if she lived at Jamestown I could not see her, having resolved on no terms to put myself into your hands, or go among you. Therefore, I desire you to urge me no further, but return my brother this answer: I desire no firmer assurance of his friendship than the promise he hath made. From me he has a pledge, one of my daughters, which, so long as she lives, shall be sufficient; when she dies, he shall have another. I hold it not a brotherly part to desire to bereave me of my two children at once. Further, tell him that though he had no pledge at all, he need not fear any injury from me or my people; there have been too many of his men and mine slain; and, by my provocation, there never shall be any more, (I who have power to perform it, have said it,) even if I should have just cause, for I am now old, and would gladly end my days in peace; if you offer me injury, my country is large enough for me to go from you. This, I hope, will satisfy my brother. Now, since you are weary and I sleepy, we will here end." So Hamor and his companions lodged at Matchot that night. While there they saw William Parker, who had been captured three years before at Fort Henry. He had grown so like an Indian in complexion and manner, that his fellow-countrymen recognized him only by his language. He begged them to intercede for his release, but upon their undertaking it, Powhatan replied: "You have one of my daughters, and I am satisfied; but you cannot see one of your men with me, but you must have him away, or break friendship; but if you must needs have him, you shall go home without guides, and if any evil befall you, thank yourselves." They answered him that if any harm befell them he must expect revenge from his brother Dale. At this Powhatan, in a passion, left them; but returning to supper, he entertained them with a pleasant countenance. About midnight he awoke them, and promised to let them return in the morning with Parker, and charged them to remind his brother Dale to send him ten large pieces of copper, a shaving-knife, a frowl, a grindstone, a net, fish-hooks, and other such presents. Lest they might forget, he made them write down the list of articles in a blank book that he had. They requesting him to give them the book, he declined doing so, saying, "it did him much good to show it to strangers."[114:A]
During the year 1614 Sir Walter Raleigh published his "History of the World;" Captain John Smith made a voyage to North Virginia, and gave it the name of New England; and the Dutch, as already mentioned, effected a settlement near the site of Albany, on the Hudson River. Sir Thomas Gates, upon his return to England, reported that the plantation of Virginia would fall to the ground unless soon reinforced with supplies.[114:B] Martin, a lawyer, employed by the Virginia Company to recommend some measure to the House of Commons, having spoken disparagingly of that body, was arraigned at the bar of the House; but, upon making due acknowledgment upon his knees, was pardoned.[115:A] During this year died Richard Hakluyt, the compiler of a celebrated collection of voyages and discoveries. He was of an ancient family in Herefordshire, and, after passing some time at Westminster School, was elected to a studentship at Oxford, where he contracted a friendship with Sir Philip Sydney, to whom he inscribed his first collection of Voyages and Discoveries printed in 1582. Having imbibed a taste for the study of geography and cosmography from a cousin of the same name, a student of law at the Temple, he applied himself to that department of learning with diligence, and was at length appointed to lecture at the University on that subject. He contributed valuable aid in fitting out Sir Humphrey Gilbert's expedition. Soon after, taking holy orders, he proceeded to Paris as chaplain to Sir Edward Stafford, the English Ambassador. During his absence he was appointed to a prebendal stall at Bristol, and upon his return to England he frequently resided there. He was afterwards preferred to the rectory of Witheringset, in Suffolk. In 1615 he was appointed a prebendary of Westminster, and became a member of the council of the Virginia Company. He continued to watch over the affairs of the colony until his death. He was buried in Westminster Abbey. Hakluyt's Voyages consist of five volumes, folio.
Pocahontas was now carefully instructed in the Christian religion, and such was the change wrought in her, that after some time she lost all desire to return to her father, and retained no longer any fondness for the rude society of her own people. She had already, before her marriage, openly renounced the idolatry of her country, confessed the faith of Christ, and had been baptized. Master Whitaker, the preacher, in a letter dated June 18th, 1614, expresses his surprise that so few of the English ministers, "that were so hot against the surplice and subscription," came over to Virginia, where neither was spoken of. At the end of June Captain Argall returned to England with tidings of the more auspicious state of affairs. The Virginia Company now proceeded to draw the lottery, which had been made up to promote the interests of the colony, and twenty-nine thousand pounds were thus contributed; but Parliament shortly after prohibited this pernicious practice. It has been said that this is the first instance of raising money in England by lottery;[116:A] but this is erroneous, for there had been a lottery drawn for the purpose of repairing the harbors of the kingdom as far back as 1569.[116:B]
The year 1615 is remarkable in Virginia history for the first establishment of a fixed property in the soil, fifty acres of land being granted by the company to every freeman in absolute right.[116:C] This salutary reform was brought about mainly by the influence of Sir Thomas Dale, one of the best of the early governors. Sir Thomas having now, after a stay of five years in Virginia, established good order at Jamestown, appointed George Yeardley to be deputy governor in his absence, and embarked for England, accompanied by John Rolfe and his wife, the Princess Pocahontas, and other Indians of both sexes. They arrived at Plymouth on the 12th of June, 1616, about six weeks after the death of Shakespeare, who died on the twenty-third of April. The arrival is thus noticed in a news-letter: "Sir Thomas Dale is arrived from Virginia, and brought with him some ten or twelve old and young of that country, among whom is Pocahontas, daughter of Powhatan, a king or cacique of that country, married to one Rolfe, an Englishman. I hear not of any other riches or matter of worth, but only some quantity of sassafras, tobacco, pitch, tar, and clapboard--things of no great value, unless there were plenty and nearer hand. All I can hear of it is, that the country is good to live in, if it were stored with people, and might in time become commodious. But there is no present profit to be expected."[116:D]
Reverting to the condition of affairs in the colony, it is to be observed, that the oligarchical government of the president and council, with all its odious features, had long before this come to an end; order and diligence had now taken the place of confusion and idleness; peace with the Indians had given rise to a free trade with them, and the English acquired their commodities by lawful purchase instead of extorting them by force of arms. The places inhabited by the whites, at this time, were Henrico and the limits, Bermuda Nether Hundred, West and Shirley Hundred, Jamestown, Kiquotan, and Dale's Gift. At Henrico there were thirty-eight men and boys, of whom twenty-two were farmers. The Rev. William Wickham was the minister of this place. It was the seat of the college established for the education of the natives; they had already brought hither some of their children, of both sexes, to be taught. At Bermuda Nether Hundred (Presquile) the number of inhabitants was one hundred and nineteen. Captain Yeardley, deputy governor, lived here for the most part. The minister here was Master Alexander Whitaker. At West and Shirley Hundred there were twenty-five men under Captain Madison. At Jamestown fifty, under Captain Francis West; the Rev. Mr. Bucke minister. At Kiquotan Captain Webb commanded; Rev. Mr. Mease the minister. Dale's Gift, on the sea-coast, near Cape Charles, was occupied by seventeen men under Lieutenant Cradock. The total population of the colony, at this time, was three hundred and fifty-one.[117:A] Yeardley directed the attention of the colony to tobacco, as the most saleable commodity that they could raise, and its cultivation was introduced into Virginia in this year, 1616, for the first time. The English now found the climate to suit their constitutions so well, that fewer people died here in proportion than in England. The Chickahominies refusing to pay the tribute of corn agreed upon by the treaty, Yeardley went up their river with one hundred men, and, after killing some and making some prisoners, brought off much of their corn. On his return he met Opechancanough at Ozinies, about twelve miles above the mouth of the Chickahominy. In this expedition Henry Spilman, who had been rescued from death by Pocahontas, now a captain, acted as interpreter.
In the mean time Pocahontas was kindly received in London; by the care of her husband and friends she was, by this time, taught to speak English intelligibly; her manners received the softening influence of English refinement, and her mind was enlightened by the truths of religion. Having given birth to a son, the Virginia Company provided for the maintenance of them both, and many persons of quality were very kind to her. Before she reached London, Captain Smith, who was well acquainted at court, and in especial favor with Prince Charles, in requital for her former preservation of his life, had prepared an account of her in a small book, and he presented it to Queen Anne. But, at this time, being about to embark for New England, he could not pay her such attentions as he desired and she well deserved. Nevertheless, learning that she was staying at Brentford, where she had repaired in order to avoid the smoke of the city, he went, accompanied by several friends, to see her. After a modest salutation, without uttering a word, she turned away, and hid her face, as if offended. In that posture she remained for two or three hours, her husband and Smith and the rest of the company having, in the mean while, gone out of the room, and Smith now regretting that he had written to the queen that Pocahontas could speak English. At length she began to talk, and she reminded Captain Smith of the kindness she had shown him in her own country, saying: "You did promise Powhatan what was yours should be his, and he the like to you; you called him father, being in his land a stranger, and for the same reason so I must call you." But Smith, on account of the king's overweening and preposterous jealousy of the royal prerogative, felt constrained to decline the appellation of "father," for she was "a king's daughter." She then exclaimed, with a firm look: "Were you not afraid to come into my father's country, and cause fear in him and all his people (but me,) and fear you here that I should call you father? I tell you then I will, and you shall call me child, and I will be forever and ever your countrywoman. They did tell us always you were dead, and I knew no other till I came to Plymouth; yet Powhatan did command Uttomattomakkin to seek you, and know the truth, because your countrymen will lie much." It is remarkable that Rolfe, her husband, must have been privy to the deception thus practised on her; are we to attribute this to his secret apprehension that she would never marry him until she believed that Smith was dead?
Tomocomo, or Uttamattomakkin, or Uttamaccomack, husband of Matachanna, one of Powhatan's daughters, being a priest, and esteemed a wise and knowing one among his people, Powhatan, or, as Sir Thomas Dale supposed, Opechancanough, had sent him out to England, in company of Pocahontas, to number the people there, and bring back to him an account of that country. Upon landing at Plymouth he provided himself, according to his instructions, with a long stick, and undertook, by notching it, to keep a tally of all the men he could see; but he soon grew weary of the task, and gave it out in despair. Meeting with Captain Smith in London, Uttamattomakkin told him that Powhatan had ordered him to seek him out, that he might show him the English God, the king, queen, and prince. Being informed that he had already seen the king, he denied it; but on being convinced of it, he said: "You gave Powhatan a white dog, which Powhatan fed as himself; but your king gave me nothing, and I am better than your white dog." On his return to Virginia, when Powhatan interrogated him as to the number of people in England, he is said to have replied: "Count the stars in the heavens, the leaves on the trees, the sands on the sea-shore." Whether this and other such figurative expressions attributed to the Indians, were actually uttered by them, or whether they have received some poetical embellishment in the course of interpretation, the judicious reader may determine for himself.
During Smith's brief stay in London, many courtiers and others of his acquaintance daily called upon him for the purpose of being introduced to Pocahontas, and they expressed themselves satisfied that the hand of Providence was manifest in her conversion, and declared that they had seen many English ladies worse favored, proportioned, and behaviored. She was presented at Court by Lady Delaware, attended by the lord her husband, and other persons of quality, and was graciously received. Her modest, dignified, and graceful deportment, excited the admiration of all, and she received the particular attentions of the king and queen.
It is said, upon the authority of a well-established tradition, that King James was at first greatly offended at Rolfe for having presumed to marry a princess without his consent; but that upon a fuller representation of the matter, his majesty was pleased to express himself satisfied. There is hardly any folly so foolish but that it may have been committed by "the wisest fool in Christendom."
"The Virginia woman, Pocahontas, with her father counsellor, have been with the king, and graciously used, and both she and her assistant well placed at the masque."[120:A] She was styled the "Lady Pocahontas," and carried herself "as the daughter of a king." Lady Delaware and other noble persons waited on her to masquerades, balls, plays, and other public entertainments. Purchas, the compiler of Voyages and Travels, was present at an entertainment given in honor of her by the Bishop of London, Doctor King, which exceeded in pomp and splendor any other entertainment of the kind that the author of "The Pilgrim" had ever witnessed there.
Sir Walter Raleigh, after thirteen years' confinement in the Tower, had been released on the seventeenth of March preceding, and, upon gaining his liberty, he went about the city looking at the changes that had occurred since his imprisonment. It is not improbable that he may have seen Pocahontas.
Early in 1617 John Rolfe prepared to embark for Virginia, with his wife and child, in Captain Argall's vessel, the George. Pocahontas was reluctant to return. On the eve of her embarkation it pleased God to take her unexpectedly from the world. She died at Gravesend, on the Thames, in the latter part of March. As her life had been sweet and lovely, so her death was serene, and crowned with the hopes of religion.
"The Virginia woman, whose picture I sent you, died this last week at Gravesend, as she was returning home."[120:B] The parish register of burials at Gravesend, in the County of Kent, contains the following entry: "1616, March 21, Rebecca Wrothe, wyffe of Thomas Wrothe, Gent. A Virginia Lady borne, was buried in the Chancell." The date, 1616, corresponds with the historical year 1617. It appears that there was formerly a family of the name of Wrothe resident near Gravesend. This name might therefore easily be confounded with that of Rolfe, the sound being similar. Nor is the mistake of Thomas for John at all improbable. Gravesend Church, in which Pocahontas was buried, was destroyed by fire in 1727, and no monument to her memory remains, if any ever existed.[121:A]
According to Strachey, a good authority, the Indians had several different names given them at different times, and Powhatan called his favorite daughter when quite young, Pocahontas, that is, "Little Wanton," but at a riper age she was called Amonate. According to Stith,[121:B] her real name was Matoax, which the people of her nation concealed from the English, and changed it to Pocahontas from a superstitious fear, lest, knowing her true name, they should do her some injury. Others suppose Matoax to have been her individual name, Pocahontas her title. After her conversion she was baptized by the name of Rebecca, and she was sometimes styled the "Lady Rebecca." The ceremony of her baptism has been made the subject of a picture, (by Chapman,) exhibited in the rotundo of the Capitol at Washington.
Of the brothers of Pocahontas, Nantaquaus, or Nantaquoud, is especially distinguished for having shown Captain Smith "exceeding great courtesy," interceding with his father, Powhatan, in behalf of the captive, and he was the "manliest, comeliest, boldest spirit," Smith ever saw in a savage.
Of the sisters of Pocahontas two are particularly mentioned, Cleopatre and Matachanna. Strachey has recorded the names of the numerous wives and children of Powhatan, the greater part of which are harsh and guttural, and apparently almost incapable of being pronounced by the vocal organs of civilized man.
Smith says that Pocahontas, "with her wild train, visited Jamestown as freely as her father's habitation." In these visits she had to cross the York River, some two miles wide, in a canoe, ("quintan" in the Powhatan language,) and then walk some ten or twelve miles across to Jamestown. She is described as "being of a great spirit, however her stature;" from which it may be inferred that she was below the middle height.[122:A] She died at the age of twenty-two, having been born about the year 1595. Her infant son, Thomas Rolfe, was left for a time at Plymouth, under the care of Sir Lewis Stukely, Vice-Admiral of Devon, who afterwards, by his base treachery toward Sir Walter Raleigh, covered himself with infamy, and by dishonest and criminal practices reduced himself to beggary. The son of Pocahontas was subsequently removed to London, where he was educated under the care of his uncle, Henry Rolfe, a merchant.[122:B]
Thomas Rolfe came to Virginia and became a person of fortune and note in the colony. It has been said that he married in England a Miss Poyers; however that may have been, he left an only daughter, Jane Rolfe, who married Colonel Robert Bolling. He lies buried at Farmingdale, in the County of Prince George.[122:C] This Colonel Robert Bolling was the son of John and Mary Bolling, of Alhallows, Barkin Parish, Tower Street, London. He was born in December, 1646, and came to Virginia in October, 1660, and died in July, 1709, aged sixty-two years. Colonel Robert Bolling, and Jane Rolfe, his wife, left an only son, Major John Bolling, father of Colonel John Bolling and several daughters, who married respectively, Col. Richard Randolph, Colonel John Fleming, Doctor William Gay, Mr. Thomas Eldridge, and Mr. James Murray.
Censure is sometimes cast upon Captain Smith for having failed to marry Pocahontas; but history no where gives any just ground for such a reproach. The rescue of Smith took place in the winter of 1607, when he was twenty-eight years of age, and she only twelve or thirteen.[123:A] Smith left Virginia early in 1609, and never returned. Pocahontas was then about fourteen years of age; but if she had been older, it would have been impossible for him to marry her unless by kidnapping her, as was done by the unscrupulous Argall some years afterwards--a measure which, if it had been adopted in 1609, when the colony was so feeble, and so rent by faction, would probably have provoked the vengeance of Powhatan, and overwhelmed the plantation in premature ruin. It was in 1612 that Argall captured Pocahontas on the banks of the Potomac, and from the departure of Smith until this time she never had been seen at Jamestown, but had lived on the distant banks of the Potomac. In the spring of 1613 it is stated, that long before that time "Mr. John Rolfe had been in love with Pocahontas, and she with him." This attachment must, therefore, have been formed immediately after her capture, if it did not exist before; and the marriage took place in April, 1613. It is true that Pocahontas had been led to believe that Smith was dead, and in practising this deception upon her, Rolfe must have been a party; but Smith was in no manner whatever privy to it; he cherished for her a friendship animated by the deepest emotions of gratitude; and friendship, according to Spenser, a cotemporary poet, is a more exalted sentiment than love.
Pocahontas appears to have regarded Smith with a sort of filial affection, and she accordingly said to him, in the interview at Brentford, "I tell you then, I will call you father, and you shall call me child." The delusion practised on her relative to Smith's death would, indeed, seem to argue an apprehension on the part of Rolfe and his friends that she would not marry another while Smith was alive, and the particular circumstances of the interview at Brentford would seem to confirm the existence of such an apprehension. Yet, however that may have been, the honor and integrity of Smith remain untarnished.
FOOTNOTES:
[112:A] Smith, ii. 19. There appears to be a mistake in affixing William Parker's name to the account of this visit, for it was evidently written by Hamor.
[114:A] Smith, ii. 21.
[114:B] Court and Times of James the First, i. 311.
[115:A] Court and Times of James the First, i. 317.
[116:A] Chalmers' Annals, 33.
[116:B] Anderson's Hist. Col. Church, i. 27, in note.
[116:C] Chalmers' Introduc., i. 10.
[116:D] Court and Times of James the First, i. 415.
[117:A] Sir Thomas Dale, at one haul with a seine, had caught five thousand fish, three hundred of which were as large as cod, and the smallest of the others a kind of salmon-trout, two feet long. He durst not adventure on the main school, for fear it would destroy his nets.
[120:A] Court and Times of James the First, i. 388.
[120:B] Letter of John Chamberlain to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated at London, March, 1617, in Court and Times of James the First, ii. 3.
[121:A] Letter of C. W. Martin, Leeds Castle, England, to Conway Robinson, Esq., in Va. Hist. Reg, ii. 187.
[121:B] Stith, 136 and 285.
[122:A] Smith, ii. 31; Beverley, B. i. 27.
[122:B] Stith, 144; Beverley, B. i. 34.
[122:C] Of Farmingdale, or Farmingdell, John Randolph of Roanoke said, in a letter dated 1832: "But the true name is Kippax, called after the village of Kippax and Kippax Park, adjacent thereto, the seat of my maternal ancestors, the Blands, of the West Riding of York." Bland, of Kippax, County York, anciently seated at Bland's Gill, in that county, was raised to the degree of baronet in 1642. The present representative (1854) is Thomas Davison Bland, of Kippax Park, Esq. Gill signifies dell or valley.
[123:A] Inscription of date on Smith's likeness, prefixed to his history; Stith, 55, 127.
Chapter IX
1617-1618.
Argall, Governor--Condition of Jamestown--Death of Lord Delaware--Name of Delaware River--Argall's Martial Law-- Brewster's Case--Argall leaves Virginia--His Character-- Powhatan's Death--His Name, Personal Appearance, Dominions, Manner of Life, Character--Succeeded by Opitchapan.
LORD RICH, an unscrupulous and corrupt head of a faction in the Virginia Company, having entered into partnership with Captain Samuel Argall, (a relative of Sir Thomas Smith, the Treasurer or Governor of the Company,) by his intrigues contrived to have him elected Deputy-Governor of Virginia and Admiral of that country and the seas adjoining. He sailed for Virginia early in 1617, accompanied by Ralph Hamor, his vice-admiral, and arrived at Jamestown in May. Argall was welcomed by Captain Yeardley and his company, the right file of which was led by an Indian. At Jamestown were found but five or six habitable houses, the church fallen, the palisades broken, the bridge foundrous, the well spoiled, the storehouse used for a church; the market-place, streets, and other vacant ground planted with tobacco; the savages as frequent in the houses as the English, who were dispersed about as each man could find a convenient place for planting corn and tobacco. Tomocomo, who (together with the other Indians that had gone out to England in the suite of Pocahontas, as may be presumed, although the fact is not expressly mentioned,) had returned with Argall, was immediately, upon his arrival, sent to Opechancanough, who came to Jamestown, and received a present with great joy and thankfulness. But Tomocomo denounced England and the English in bitter terms, especially Sir Thomas Dale. Powhatan having some time before this resigned the cares of government into the hands of Opechancanough, went about from place to place, still continuing in friendship with the English, but greatly lamenting the death of Pocahontas. He rejoiced, nevertheless, that her child was living, and he and Opechancanough both expressed much desire to see him. During this year a Mr. Lambert introduced the method of curing tobacco on lines instead of in heaps, as had been the former practice.[125:A] Argall's energetic measures procured from the Indians, by trade, a supply of corn. The whole number of colonists now was about four hundred, with numerous cattle, goats, and swine. The corn contributed to the public store was about four hundred and fifty bushels, and from the tributary Indians seven hundred and fifty, being considerably less than the usual quantity. Of the "Company's company" there remained not more than fifty-four, including men, women, and children. Drought, and a storm that poured down hailstones eight or nine inches in circumference, greatly damaged the crops of corn and tobacco.
The following is found among the early records:--
"BY THE ADMIRAL, ETC.
"To all to whom these presents shall come, I, Samuel Argall, Esq., admiral, and for the time present principal Governor of Virginia, send greeting in our Lord God everlasting, si'thence in all places of wars and garrison towns, it is most expedient and necessary to have an honest and careful provost marshall, to whose charge and safe custody all delinquents and prisoners of what nature or quality soever their offences be, are to be committed; now know ye that for the honesty, sufficiency, and carefulness in the execution and discharge of the said office, which I conceived of William Cradock, I do by these presents nominate, constitute, ordain, and appoint the said William Cradock to be provost marshall of the Bermuda City, and of all the Hundred thereto belonging, giving and granting unto the said William Cradock, all power and authority to execute all such offices, duties, and commands belonging to the said place of provost marshall; with all privileges, rights, and preëminences thereunto belonging, and in all cases which require his speedy execution of his said office, by virtue of these presents, he shall require all captains, officers, soldiers, or any other members of this colony, to be aiding and assisting to him, to oppose all mutinies, factions, rebellions, and all other discords contrary to the quiet and peaceable government of this Commonwealth, as they will answer the contrary at their peril.
"Given at Bermuda City this twentieth of February, in the 15th year of the reign of our Sovereign Lord James, by the Grace of God, King of England, and of Scotland the 51st, and in the 11th year of this Plantation. Anno Domini, 1617.
"Extract and recorded per John Rolf, Sec'y and Recorder Genl.
["Copia. Test. R. Hickman, Ck. Secy's office."]
To reinforce the colony the Company sent out a vessel of two hundred and fifty tons, well stored, with two hundred and fifty people, under command of Lord Delaware. They set sail in April, 1618; during the voyage thirty died, and among them Lord Delaware, a generous friend of the colony. The intelligence of his death reached London October fifth. Stith[126:A] says: "And I think I have somewhere seen that he died about the mouth of Delaware Bay, which thence took its name from him." Stith fell into a mistake on this point, and Belknap, equally distinguished for his general accuracy, has followed him.[126:B] Delaware Bay (the mouth of the river called by the Indians Chihohocki) and River were named as early as 1611, when Lord Delaware put in there, during his homeward voyage.[126:C] According to Strachey, the bay was discovered in 1610, by Captain Argall, and he named Cape Delaware, "where he caught halibut, cod, and ling fish, and brought some of them to Jamestown."
His lordship's family name was West, and persons descended from the same stock are yet found in Virginia bearing the name. West-Point, at the head of York, derived its name from the same source, and it was at first called Delaware. Lord Delaware married, in 1602, the daughter of Sir Thomas Shirley, of Whiston; and, perhaps, the name of Shirley, the ancient seat on James River, may be traced to this source.
Martial law had already been established in Virginia by Dale; Argall came over invested with powers to make the government still more arbitrary and despotic, and bent upon acquiring gain by all possible means of extortion and oppression. He decreed that goods should be sold at an advance of twenty-five per cent., and tobacco rated at the Procrustean value of three shillings--the penalty for rating it either higher or lower being three years slavery to the colony; that there should be no trade or intercourse with the Indians, and that none of them should be taught the use of fire-arms; the penalty for violating which ordinance was death to teacher and learner. Yet it has been contended by some, that the use of fire-arms by the savages hastened their extermination, because they thus became dependent on the whites for arms and ammunition; when their guns came to be out of order they became useless to them, for they wanted the skill to repair them; and, lastly, fire-arms in their hands when effective, were employed by hostile tribes in mutual destruction.
"The white faith of history cannot show That e'er a musket yet could beat a bow."[127:A]
Argall also issued edicts that no one should hunt deer or hogs without his leave; that no man should fire a gun before a new supply of ammunition, except in self-defence, on pain of a year's slavery; absence from church on Sundays or holidays, was punished by confinement for the night and one week's slavery to the colony; for the second offence the offender should be a slave for a month; and for the third, for a year and a day. Several of these regulations were highly judicious, but the penalties of some of them were excessive and barbarous, and the vigorous enforcement of these, and his oppressive proceedings, rendered Argall odious to the colony, and a report of his tyranny and extortions having reached England, Sir Thomas Smith, Alderman Johnson, deputy treasurer, Sir Lionel Cranfield, and others of the council, addressed a letter dated August 23, 1618, to him, in which they recapitulated a series of charges against him of dishonesty, corruption, and oppression. At the same time a letter, of the same purport, was written to Lord Delaware, and he was told, that such was the indignation felt by the stockholders in the Virginia Company against Argall that they could hardly be restrained from going to the king, although on a distant progress, and procuring his majesty's command for recalling him as a malefactor. The letter contained further instructions to Lord Delaware to seize upon all the goods and property in Argall's possession. These letters, by Lord Delaware's death, fell into Argall's hands, and finding his sand running low, he determined to make the best of his remaining time, and so he multiplied his exactions, and grew more tyrannical than ever. The case of Edward Brewster was a remarkable instance of this. A person of good repute in the colony, he had the management of Lord Delaware's estate. Argall, without any rightful authority, removed the servants from his lordship's land, and employed them on his own. Brewster endeavored to make them return, and upon this being flatly refused by one of them, threatened him with the consequences of his contumacy. Brewster was immediately arrested by Argall's order, charged with sedition and mutiny, and condemned to death by a court-martial. The members of the court, however, and some of the clergy, shocked at such a conviction, interceded earnestly for his pardon, and Argall reluctantly granted it on condition that Brewster should depart from Virginia, with an oath never to return, and never to say or do anything to the disparagement of the deputy governor. Brewster, nevertheless, upon his return to England, discarding the obligation of an oath extorted under duress, appealed to the Company against the tyranny of the deputy governor, and the inhuman sentence was reversed. John Rolfe, a friend of Argall, made light of the affair.[128:A]
During this year, 1618, a ship called the Treasurer was sent out from England by Lord Rich, who had now become Earl of Warwick, a person of great note afterwards in the civil wars, and commander of the fleet against the king. This ship was manned with recruits from the colony, and dispatched on a semi-piratical cruise in the West Indies, where she committed some depredations on the Spanish possessions.
Upon receiving intelligence of the death of Lord Delaware, the Virginia Company appointed Captain George Yeardley, who was knighted upon this occasion, Governor and Captain-General of Virginia. Before his arrival in the colony Argall embarked for England, in a vessel laden with his effects, and being a relation of Sir Thomas Smith, and a partner in trade of the profligate Earl of Warwick, he escaped with impunity. In 1620 Argall commanded a ship-of-war in an expedition fitted out against the Algerines, and in 1623 was knighted by King James. Argall's character has been variously represented; he appears to have been an expert mariner of talents, courage, enterprise, and energy, but selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous, arbitrary and cruel.
In April, 1618, Powhatan died, being upwards of seventy years of age. He was, perhaps, so called from one of his places of residence;[129:A] he was also sometimes styled Ottaniack, and sometimes Mamanatowick,[129:B] but his proper name was Wahunsonacock. The country subject to him was called Powhatan, as was likewise the chief river, and his subjects were called Powhatans. His hereditary domain consisted only of Powhatan, Arrohattox, Appamatuck, Youghtanund, Pamunkey, and Matapony, together with Werowocomoco and Kiskiack. All the rest were his conquests, and they consisted of the country on the James River and its branches, from its mouth to the falls, and thence across the country to the north, nearly as high as the falls of all the great rivers over the Potomac, as far as to the Patuxent in Maryland. Some nations on the Eastern Shore also owned subjection to this mighty werowance. In each of his several hereditary dominions he had houses built like arbors, thirty or forty feet long, and whenever he was about to visit one of these, it was supplied beforehand with provision for his entertainment. The English first met with him at a place of his own name, (which it still retains,) a short distance below the falls of James River, where now stands the picturesque City of Richmond.[129:C] His favorite residence was Werowocomoco, on the east bank of what is now known as Timberneck Bay, on York River, in the County of Gloucester; but in his latter years, disrelishing the increasing proximity of the English, he withdrew himself to Orapakes, a hunting-town in the "desert," as it was called, more properly the wilderness, between the Chickahominy and the Pamunkey. It is not improbable that he died and was buried there, for a mile from Orapakes, in the midst of the woods, he had a house where he kept his treasure of furs, copper, pearl, and beads, "which he storeth up against the time of his death and burial."[130:A] This place is about twelve miles northeast from Richmond.
At the time of the first settlement of the colony, Powhatan was usually attended, especially when asleep, by a body-guard of fifty tall warriors; he afterwards augmented the number to about two hundred. He had as many wives as he pleased, and when tired of any one of them, he bestowed her on some favorite. In the year 1608, by treachery, he surprised the Payanketanks, his own subjects, while asleep in their cabins, massacred twenty-four men, and made prisoners their werowance with the women and children, who were reduced to slavery. Captain Smith, himself a prisoner, saw at Werowocomoco the scalps of the slain suspended on a line between two trees. Powhatan caused certain malefactors to be bound hand and foot, then a great quantity of burning coals to be collected from a number of fires, and raked round in the form of a cock-pit, and the victims of his barbarity thrown in the midst and burnt to death.[130:B] He was not entirely destitute of some better qualities; in him some touches of princely magnanimity are curiously blended with huckstering cunning, and the tenderness of a doating father with the cruelty of an unrelenting despot.
Powhatan was succeeded by his second brother, Opitchapan, sometimes called Itopatin, or Oeatan, who, upon his accession, again changed his name to Sasawpen; as Opechancanough, upon the like occasion, changed his to Mangopeomen. Opitchapan being decrepid in body and inert in mind, was in a short time practically superseded in the government by his younger, bolder, and more ambitious brother, the famous Opechancanough; though for a time he was content to be styled the Werowance of Chickahominy. Both renewed the assurances of continued friendship with the English.
FOOTNOTES:
[125:A] Stith, 147.
[126:A] Stith, 147.
[126:B] Belknap, ii. 115.
[126:C] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 271-311.
[127:A] Cited in Logan's Scottish Gaël, 223.
[128:A] Smith, ii. 37.
[129:A] Stith, 53.
[129:B] Strachey.
[129:C] In an act, dated 1705, found in the old "Laws of Virginia," mention is made of a ferry from Powhatantown to the landing at Swineherd's. The site of this Powhatantown is on the upper part of Flower de Hundred Plantation. Numerous Indian relics have been found there, and earthworks, evidently thrown up for fortification, are still extant. The name of Powhatantown was given to this spot by the whites. Near Jamestown is the extensive Powhatan Swamp.
[130:A] Smith, i. 143.
[130:B] Smith, i. 144.
Chapter X
Sir Walter Raleigh--His Birth and Parentage--Student at Oxford--Enlists in Service of Queen of Navarre--His stay in France--Returns to England--At the Middle Temple--Serves in Netherlands and Ireland--Returns to England--His Gallantry-- Undertakes Colonization of Virginia--Member of Parliament-- Knighted--In Portuguese Expedition--Loses Favor at Court-- Retires to Ireland--Spenser--Sir Walter in the Tower--His Flattery of the Queen--She grants him the Manor of Sherborne-- His Expedition to Guiana--Joins Expedition against Cadiz-- Wounded--Makes another Voyage to Guiana--Restored to Queen's Favor--Contributes to Defeat of Treason of Essex--Raleigh made Governor of Jersey--His Liberal Sentiments--Elizabeth's Death-- Accession of James the First--Raleigh confined in the Tower-- Found guilty of High Treason--Reprieved--Still a Prisoner in the Tower--Devotes himself to Study--His Companions--His "History of the World"--Lady Raleigh's Petition--Raleigh Released--His Last Expedition to Guiana--Its Failure--His Son killed--Sir Walter's Return to England--His Arrest, Condemnation, Execution, Character.
DURING the same year, 1618, died the founder of Virginia colonization, the famous Sir Walter Raleigh. He was born at Hayes, a farm in the Parish of Budley, Devonshire, 1552, being the fourth son of Walter Raleigh, Esq., of Fardel, near Plymouth, and Catharine, daughter of Sir Philip Champernon, and widow of Otho Gilbert, of Compton, Devonshire. After passing some time at Oriel College, Oxford, about the year 1568, where he distinguished himself by his genius and attainments, at the age of seventeen he joined a volunteer company of gentlemen, under Henry Champernon, in an expedition to assist the Protestant Queen of Navarre. He remained in France five years, and while in Paris, under the protection of the English embassy, he witnessed the massacre of St. Bartholomew's day. On returning to England he was for a while in the Middle Temple; but whether as a student is uncertain. His leisure hours were devoted to poetry. In the year 1578 he accompanied Sir John Norris to the Netherlands. In the following year he joined in Sir Humphrey Gilbert's first and unsuccessful voyage. Now, when at the age of twenty-seven, it is said that of the twenty-four hours he allotted four to study and only five to sleep; but this is rather improbable, for so much activity of employment as always characterized him, demanded a proportionate degree of repose. In 1580 he served in Ireland as captain of horse, under Lord Grey, and became familiar with the dangers and atrocities of civil war. In 1581, the following year, he became acquainted with the poet Spenser, then resident at Kilcolman. Disgusted with a painful service, Raleigh returned to England during this year, and it was at this period that he exhibited a famous piece of gallantry to the queen. She, in a walk, coming to a "plashy place," hesitated to proceed, when he "cast and spread his new plush cloak on the ground" for her to tread on. By his graceful wit and fascinating manners, he rose rapidly in Elizabeth's favor, and "she took him for a kind of oracle." His munificent and persevering efforts in the colonization of Virginia ought to have moderated the too sweeping charge of levity and fickleness brought against him by Hume.
During the year 1583 Raleigh became member of Parliament for Devonshire; was knighted, and made Seneschal of Cornwall and Warden of the Stanneries. Engaged in the expedition whose object was to place Don Antonio on the throne of Portugal, Sir Walter for his good conduct received a gold chain from the queen. The rivalship of the Earl of Essex having driven Raleigh into temporary exile in Ireland, he there renewed his acquaintance with the author of the "Faëry Queen," who accompanied him on his return to England.
Sir Walter was arrested in 1592, and confined in the Tower, on account of a criminal intrigue with one of the maids of honor, who was imprisoned at the same time; and this incident is alluded to in Sir Walter Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel." The lady was Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, and a celebrated beauty, whom Raleigh afterwards married. In a letter written from the Tower, and addressed to Sir Robert Cecil, Raleigh indulged in a vein of extravagant flattery of the queen: "I that was wont to behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking like Venus--the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometime sitting in the shade like a goddess; sometime singing like an angel; sometime playing like Orpheus." Elizabeth was at this time about sixty years old.
In 1593 she granted him the Manor of Sherborne, in Dorsetshire. About this period he distinguished himself in the House of Commons. In 1595 he commanded an expedition to Guiana, in quest of the golden El Dorado, and another in the following year. In an expedition against Cadiz he led the van in action, and received a severe wound in the leg. Upon his return to England he embarked in his third voyage to Guiana. In 1597 he was restored to his place of captain of the guard, and entirely reinstated in the queen's favor.
Essex having engaged in a rash treasonable conspiracy, the object of which was to seize upon the queen's person, so as thereby to control the government, Raleigh aided in defeating his designs. But after the execution of his popular rival, Raleigh's fortune began to wane. Nevertheless, in 1600 he was made Governor of the Isle of Jersey. In the following year, in a speech made in Parliament on an act for sowing hemp, Sir Walter said: "For my part, I do not like this constraining of men to manure or use their grounds at our wills, but rather let every man use his ground to that which it is most fit for, and therein use his discretion." Queen Elizabeth died in 1603, and Raleigh's happiness ended with her life.
James the First came to the throne of Great Britain prejudiced against Raleigh. He was also at this time extremely unpopular, and especially odious to the friends of the highly gifted, but rash and unfortunate Earl of Essex. In three months after the arrival of King James in England, Sir Walter was arrested on a charge of high treason, in conspiring with the Lords Cobham and Grey to place the Lady Arabella Stuart on the throne. Arraigned on charges frivolous and contradictory, tried under circumstances of insult and oppression, he was found guilty without any sufficient evidence. By their conduct on this occasion, Sir Edward Coke, Lord Chief Justice Popham, and Sir Robert Cecil proved themselves fit tools for the abject and heartless James. Raleigh, though reprieved, remained a prisoner in the Tower at the king's mercy.
Lady Raleigh and her son were not excluded from the Tower, and Carew, the youngest, was born there. During his long confinement, Sir Walter devoted himself to literature and science, and enjoyed the society of a few friends, among them Hariot and the Earl of Northumberland, who was likewise a State prisoner. Sir Walter was also frequently visited by Prince Henry, the heir-apparent, who was devotedly attached to him, and who said that "none but his father would keep such a bird in a cage." Prince Charles, on the contrary, appears to have entertained a strong dislike to him. In the Tower Raleigh composed his great work, the "History of the World," the first volume of which appeared in the year 1614; it extended from the creation to the close of the Macedonian war, and embraced a period of about four thousand years. It was dedicated to Prince Henry. Raleigh intended to compose two other volumes, but owing to the untimely death of that prince, and to the suppression of it by King James, on the ground that it censured princes too freely, and perhaps to the magnitude of the task, he proceeded no further than the first volume. Oliver Cromwell recommended this work to his son.
During his confinement the king gave away Raleigh's estate of Sherborne to his favorite, Sir Robert Carr, afterwards the infamous Viscount Rochester and Earl of Somerset, who swayed the influence at Court from 1611 to 1615, when he was supplanted by the equally corrupt George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham.
When Lady Raleigh, with her children around her, kneeling in tears, besought James to restore this estate, the only answer she received was, "I maun have the land, I maun have it for Carr." At length, owing in part to the death of some of his enemies, and in part to the influence of money, Sir Walter Raleigh was released from the Tower for the purpose of making another voyage to Guiana. The expedition failed in its object, and Sir Walter, after losing his son in an action with the Spaniards, returned to England, where he was arrested.
James was now wholly bent on effecting a match between his son, Prince Charles, afterwards Charles the First, and the Spanish Infanta, and to gratify the Court of Spain and his own malignity, he resolved to sacrifice Raleigh. He was condemned, after a most eloquent defence, under the old conviction of 1603, notwithstanding that he had been recently commissioned commander of a fleet and Governor of Guiana, which had unquestionably annulled that conviction. "He was condemned (said his son Carew) for being a friend of the Spaniards, and lost his life for being their bitter enemy."
Queen Anne, then in declining health, interceded for him, not long before his execution, in the following note, addressed to the Marquis of Buckingham:--
"MY KIND DOG:--
"If I have any power or credit with you, in dealing sincerely and earnestly with the king, that Sir Walter Raleigh's life may not be called in question. If you do it so that the success answer my expectation, assure yourself that I will take it extraordinarily kindly at your hands, and rest one that wisheth you well, and desires you to continue still (as you have been) a true servant to your master.
"ANNE R."[136:A]
Sir Walter Raleigh was executed on the twenty-ninth day of October, 1618, in the Old Palace Yard. He died with Christian heroism. Distinguished as a navigator and discoverer, a naval and military commander, an author in prose and verse, a wit, a courtier, a statesman and philosopher, there is perhaps in English history no name associated with such lofty and versatile genius, so much glorious action, and so much wise reflection. He was indeed proud, fond of splendor, of a restless and fiery ambition, sometimes unscrupulous. An ardent imagination, excited by the enthusiasm of an extraordinary age, infused an extravagance and marvellousness into some of his relations of his voyages and discoveries, that gave some occasion for distrust. The ardor of his temperament and an over-excited imagination involved him in several projects that terminated unhappily. But with his weaknesses and his faults he united noble virtues, and Virginia will ever be proud of so illustrious a founder.[136:B]
The Queen Anne, of Denmark, who had in vain employed her kind offices in his behalf, did not long survive him; she died in March, 1619. Without any extraordinary qualities, she was accomplished, distinguished for the easy elegance of her manners, amiable, and the generous friend of the oppressed and unfortunate.
FOOTNOTES:
[136:A] Miss Strickland's Lives of Queens of England, vii. 357.
[136:B] Oldy's Life of Raleigh, 74; Belknap, i. art. Raleigh, 289, 370; "A Brief Relation of Sir Walter Raleigh's Troubles," Harleian Mis., No. 100. There are also lives of Raleigh by Birch, Cayley, Southey, and Mrs. Thompson.
Chapter XI
1619.
Sir Edwin Sandys, Treasurer of London Company--Powell, Deputy Governor--Sir George Yeardley, Governor--First Assembly meets--Its Proceedings.
SIR THOMAS SMITH, Treasurer or Governor of the Virginia Company, was displaced in 1618, and succeeded by Sir Edwin Sandys.[138:A] This enlightened statesman and exemplary man was born in Worcestershire, in 1561, being the second son of the Archbishop of York. Educated at Oxford under the care of "the judicious Hooker," he obtained a prebend in the church of York. He afterwards travelled in foreign countries, and published his observations in a work entitled "Europæ Speculum, or a View of the State of Religion in the Western World." He resigned his prebend in 1602, was subsequently knighted by James, in 1603, and employed in diplomatic trusts. His appointment as treasurer gave great satisfaction to the colony; for free principles were now, under his auspices, in the ascendant. His name is spelt sometimes Sandis, sometimes Sands. Sir Thomas Smith was shortly after reappointed, by the Virginia Company, President of the Somers Islands.
When Argall, in April, stole away from Virginia, he left for his deputy, Captain Nathaniel Powell,[138:B] who had come over with Captain Smith in 1607, and had evinced courage and discretion. He was one of the writers from whose narratives Smith compiled his General History. Powell held his office only about ten days, when Sir George Yeardley, recently knighted, arrived as Governor-General, bringing with him new charters for the colony. He added to the council Captain Francis West, Captain Nathaniel Powell, John Rolfe, William Wickham, and Samuel Macock.[139:A] John Rolfe, who had been secretary, now lost his place, probably owing to his connivance at Argall's malepractices, and was succeeded by John Pory. He was educated at Cambridge, where he took the degree of Master of Arts, in April, 1610. It is supposed that he was a member of the House of Commons. He was much of a traveller, and was at Venice in 1613, at Amsterdam in 1617, and shortly after at Paris. By the Earl of Warwick's influence he now procured the place of Secretary for the Colony of Virginia, having come over in April, 1619, with Sir George Yeardley, who appointed him one of his council.
In June, Governor Yeardley summoned the first legislative assembly that ever met in America. It assembled at James City or Jamestown, on Friday, the 30th of July, 1619, upwards of a year before the Mayflower left England with the Pilgrims. A record of the proceedings is preserved in the London State Paper Office, in the form of a Report from the Speaker, John Pory.[139:B]
John Pory, Secretary of the Colony, was chosen Speaker, and John Twine, Clerk. The Assembly sate in the choir of the church, the members of the council sitting on either side of the Governor, and the Speaker right before him, the Clerk next the Speaker, and Thomas Pierse, the Sergeant, standing at the bar.
Before commencing business, prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister. Each burgess then, as called on, took the oath of supremacy. When the name of Captain Ward was called, the Speaker objected to him as having seated himself on land without authority. Objection was also made to the burgesses appearing to represent Captain Martin's patent, because they were, by its terms, exempted from any obligation to obey the laws of the colony. Complaint was made by Opochancano, that corn had been forcibly taken from some of his people in the Chesapeake, by Ensign Harrison, commanding a shallop belonging to this Captain John Martin, "Master of the Ordinance." The Speaker read the commission for establishing the Council of State and the General Assembly, and also the charter brought out by Sir Thomas Yeardley. This last was referred to several committees for examination, so that if they should find anything "not perfectly squaring with the state of the colony, or any law pressing or binding too hard," they might by petition seek to have it redressed, "especially because this great charter is to bind us and our heirs forever." Mr. Abraham Persey was the Cape-merchant. The price at which he was to receive tobacco, "either for commodities or upon bills," was fixed at three shillings for the best and eighteen pence for the second rate. After inquiry the burgesses from Martin's patent were excluded, and the Assembly "humbly demanded" of the Virginia Company an explanation of that clause in his patent entitling him to enjoy his lands as amply as any lord of a manor in England, adding, "the least the Assembly can allege against this clause is, that it is obscure, and that it is a thing impossible for us here to know the prerogatives of all the manors in England." And they prayed that the clause in the charter guaranteeing equal liberties and immunities to grantees, might not be violated, so as to "divert out of the true course the free and public current of justice." Thus did the first Assembly of Virginia insist upon the principle of the Declaration of Rights of 1776, that "no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services." Certain of the instructions sent out from England were "drawn into laws" for protection of the Indians from injury, and regulating intercourse with them, and educating their children, and preparing some of the most promising boys "for the college intended for them; that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion;" for regulating agriculture, tobacco, and sassafras, then the chief merchantable commodities raised. Upon Captain Powell's petition, "a lewd and treacherous servant of his" was sentenced to stand for four days with his ears nailed to the pillory, and be whipped each day. John Rolfe complained that Captain Martin had made unjust charges against him, and cast "some aspersion upon the present government, which is the most temperate and just that ever was in this country--too mild, indeed, for many of this colony, whom unwonted liberty hath made insolent, and not to know themselves." On the last day of the session were enacted such laws as issued "out of every man's private conceit." "It shall be free for every man to trade with the Indians, servants only excepted upon pain of whipping, unless the master will redeem it off with the payment of an angel." "No man to sell or give any of the greater hoes to the Indians, or any English dog of quality, as a mastiff, greyhound, bloodhound, land or water spaniel." Any man selling arms or ammunition to the Indians, to be hanged so soon as the fact is proved. All ministers shall duly "read divine service, and exercise their ministerial function according to the ecclesiastical laws and orders of the Church of England, and every Sunday, in the afternoon, shall catechise such as are not ripe to come to the communion." All persons going up or down the James River were to touch at James City, "to know whether the governor will command them any service." "All persons whatsoever, upon the Sabbath days, shall frequent divine service and sermons, both forenoon and afternoon; and all such as bear arms shall bring their pieces, swords, powder, and shot."
Captain Henry Spellman, charged by Robert Poole, interpreter, with speaking ill of the governor "at Opochancano's court," was degraded from his rank of captain, and condemned to serve the colony for seven years as interpreter to the governor. Paspaheigh, embracing three hundred acres of land, was also called Argallstown, and was part of the tract appropriated to the governor. To compensate the speaker, clerk, sergeant, and provost marshal, a pound of the best tobacco was levied from every male above sixteen years of age. The Assembly prayed that the treasurer, council, and company would not "take it in ill part if these laws, which we have now brought to light, do pass current, and be of force till such time as we may know their further pleasure out of England; for otherwise this people (who now at length have got their reins of former servitude into their own swindge) would, in short time, grow so insolent as they would shake off all government, and there would be no living among them." They also prayed the company to "give us power to allow or disallow of their orders of court, as his majesty hath given them power to allow or reject our laws." So early did it appear, that from the necessity of the case, the colony must in large part legislate for itself, and so early did a spirit of independence manifest itself. Owing to the heat of the weather, several of the burgesses fell sick, and one died, and thus the governor was obliged abruptly, on the fourth of August, to prorogue the Assembly till the first of March.[142:A] There being as yet no counties laid off, the representatives were elected from the several towns, plantations, and hundreds, styled boroughs, and hence they were called burgesses.
FOOTNOTES:
[138:A] Court and Times of James the First, i. 161.
[138:B] A Welsh name.
[139:A] Macocks, the seat on James River, opposite to Berkley, was called after this planter, who was the first proprietor.
[139:B] This interesting document, discovered by Mr. Bancroft, was published by the New York Historical Society in 1857, and a number of copies were sent to Richmond by George Henry Moore, Esq., Secretary of that Society, for distribution among the members of the Assembly. The attention of Virginians was first drawn to the existence of this document by Conway Robinson, Esq., Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Virginia Historical Society.
The number of burgesses was twenty-two. For James City, Captain William Powell, Ensign William Spense; for Charles City, Samuel Sharpe and Samuel Jordan; for the City of Henricus, Thomas Dowse, John Polentine; for Kiccowtan, Captain William Tucker, William Capp; for Martin-Brandon, Captain John Martin's Plantation, Mr. Thomas Davis, Mr. Robert Stacy; for Smythe's Hundred, Captain Thomas Graves, Mr. Walter Shelley; for Martin's Hundred, Mr. John Boys, John Jackson; for Argall's Gift, Mr. Pawlett, Mr. Gourgainy; for Flowerdieu Hundred, Ensign Rossingham, Mr. Jefferson; for Captain Lawne's Plantation, Captain Christopher Lawne, Ensign Washer; for Captain Ward's Plantation, Captain Ward, Lieutenant Gibbes.
[142:A] Proceedings of the First Assembly of Virginia, in 1619.
Chapter XII
1619-1621.
The New Laws--Yeardley, Governor--Affairs of the Colony-- Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth--Negroes Imported into Virginia--Supplies sent out from England--Wives for the Colonists--The Bishops directed to take up Collections for aid of the Colony in erecting Churches and Schools--England claims a Monopoly of Virginia Tobacco--Charitable Donations.
THUS after eleven years of suffering, peril, discord, and tyranny, intermingled with romantic adventure, bold enterprise, the dignity of danger, virtuous fortitude, and generous heroism, were at length established a local legislature and a regular administration of right. The Virginia planters expressed their gratitude to the company, and begged them to reduce into a compend, with his majesty's approbation, such of the laws of England as were applicable to Virginia, with suitable additions, "because it was not fit that his subjects should be governed by any other rules than such as received their influence from him." The acts of the Assembly were transmitted to England for the approval of the treasurer and company. They were thought to have been very judiciously framed, but the company's committee found them "exceeding intricate and full of labor." There was granted to the old planters an exemption from all compulsive service to the colony, with a confirmation of their estates, which were to be holden as by English subjects.
It is remarkable, that from about 1614, for some seven years, James the First had governed England without a parliament; and the Virginia Company was during this period a rallying point for the friends of civil and religious freedom, and the colony enjoyed the privilege, denied to the mother country, of holding a legislative assembly.
Yeardley finding a scarcity of corn, undertook to promote the cultivation of it, and this year was blessed with abundant crops of grain. But an extraordinary mortality carried off not less than three hundred of the people. Three thousand acres of land were allotted to the governor, and twelve thousand to the company. The Margaret, of Bristol, arrived with some settlers, and "also many devout gifts." The Trial brought a cargo of corn and cattle. The expenditure of the Virginia Company at this period, on account of the colony, was estimated at between four and five thousand pounds a year.
A body of English Puritans, persecuted on account of their nonconformity, had, in 1608, sought an asylum in Holland. In 1617 they conceived the design of removing to America, and in 1619 they obtained from the Virginia Company, by the influence of Sir Edward Sandys, the treasurer, "a large patent," authorizing them to settle in Virginia. They embarked in the latter part of the year 1620, in the Mayflower, intending to settle somewhere near the Hudson River, which lay within the Virginia Company's territory. The Pilgrims were, however, conducted to the bleak and barren coast of Massachusetts, where they landed on the twenty-second day of December, (new style,) 1620, on the rock of Plymouth. Thus, thirteen years after the settlement of Jamestown, was laid the foundation of the New England States. The place of their landing was beyond the limits of the Virginia Company.
In the month of August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war visited Jamestown and sold the settlers twenty negroes, the first introduced into Virginia. Some time before this, Captain Argall sent out, at the expense of the Earl of Warwick, on a "filibustering" cruise to the West Indies, a ship called the Treasurer, manned "with the ablest men in the colony," under an old commission from the Duke of Savoy against the Spanish dominions in the western hemisphere. She returned to Virginia after some ten months, with her booty, which consisted of captured negroes, who were not left in Virginia, because Captain Argall had gone back to England, but were put on the Earl of Warwick's plantation in the Somer Islands.[144:A]
It is probable that the planters who purchased the negroes from the Dutch man-of-war reasoned but little on the morality of the act, or if any scruples of conscience presented themselves, they could be readily silenced by reflecting that the negroes were heathens, descendants of Ham, and consigned by Divine appointment to perpetual bondage.[145:A] The planters may, if they reasoned at all on the subject, have supposed that they were even performing a humane act in releasing these Africans from the noisome hold of the ship. They might well believe that the condition of the negro slave would be less degraded and wretched in Virginia than it had been in their native country. This first purchase was probably not looked upon as a matter of much consequence, and for several ages the increase of the blacks in Virginia was so inconsiderable as not to attract any special attention. The condition of the white servants of the colony, many of them convicts, was so abject, that men, accustomed to see their own race in bondage, could look with more indifference at the worse condition of the slaves.
The negroes purchased by the slavers on the coast of Africa were brought from the interior, convicts sold into slavery, children sold by heathen parents destitute of natural affection, kidnapped villagers, and captives taken in war, the greater part of them born in hereditary bondage. The circumstances under which they were consigned to the slave-ship evince the wretchedness of their condition in their native country, where they were the victims of idolatry, barbarism, and war. The negroes imported were usually between the ages of fourteen and thirty, two-thirds of them being males. The new negro, just transferred from the wilds of a distant continent, was indolent, ignorant of the modes and implements of labor, and of the language of his master, and perhaps of his fellow-laborers.[145:B] To tame and domesticate, to instruct in the modes of industry, and to reduce to subordination and usefulness a barbarian, gross, obtuse, perverse, must have demanded persevering efforts and severe discipline.
While the cruel slave-trade was prompted by a remorseless cupidity, an inscrutable Providence turned the wickedness of men into the means of bringing about beneficent results. The system of slavery, doubtless, entailed many evils on slave and slave-holder, and, perhaps, the greater on the latter. These evils are the tax paid for the elevation of the negro from his aboriginal condition.
Among the vessels that came over to Virginia from England, about this time, is mentioned a bark of five tons. A fleet sent out by the Virginia Company brought over, in 1619, more than twelve hundred settlers.[146:A] The planters at length enjoyed the blessings of property in the soil, and the society of women. The wives were sold to the colonists for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, and it was ordered that this debt should have precedence of all others. The price of a wife afterwards became higher. The bishops in England, by the king's orders, collected nearly fifteen hundred pounds to build a college or university at Henrico, intended in part for the education of Indian children.[146:B]
In July, 1620, the population of the colony was estimated at four thousand. One hundred "disorderly persons" or convicts, sent over during the previous year by the king's order, were employed as servants.[147:A] For a brief interval the Virginia Company had enjoyed freedom of trade with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco; but in October, 1621, this was prohibited by an order in council; and from this time England claimed a monopoly of the trade of her plantations, and this principle was gradually adopted by all the European powers as they acquired transatlantic settlements.[147:B]
Two persons unknown presented plate and ornaments for the communion-table at the college, and at Mrs. Mary Robinson's Church, so called because she had contributed two hundred pounds toward the founding of it. Another person unknown gave five hundred and fifty pounds for the education of Indian children in Christianity; he subscribed himself "Dust and Ashes;" and was afterwards discovered to be Mr. Gabriel Barber, a member of the company.
FOOTNOTES:
[144:A] Belknap, art. Argall, citing Declaration of Va. Council, 1623, and Burk's Hist. of Va., i. 319; Smith, ii. 39, where Rolfe gives the true date, 1619; Stith, 171; Beverley, B. i. 37; Chalmers' Annals, 49; Burk, i. 211, and Hening, i. 146, all (as Bancroft, i. 177, remarks,) rely on Beverley. It may be added, that they were all misled by him in making the date 1620. I was enabled to rectify this date by an intimation from the Rev. Dr. Wm. H. Foote, author of "Sketches of Virginia."
[145:A] Burk, i. 211.
[145:B] Bancroft, iii. 402.
[146:A] They were disposed of in the following way: eighty tenants for the governor's land, one hundred and thirty for the company's land, one hundred for the college, fifty for the glebe, ninety young women of good character for wives, fifty servants, fifty whose labors were to support thirty Indian children; the rest were distributed among private plantations.
[146:B] The following is a copy of the letter addressed by the king on this occasion to the archbishops, authorizing them to invite the members of the church throughout the kingdom to assist in the establishment of the college, and such works of piety. The exact date of the letter has not been ascertained; but it was about the year 1620. It has never been published until recently, and is the first document of the kind ever issued in England for the benefit of the colonies. It is as follows:--
"Most reverend father in God, right, trusty, and well-beloved counsellor, we greet you well. You have heard ere this time of the attempt of divers worthy men, our subjects, to plant in Virginia, (under the warrant of our letters patents,) people of this kingdom as well as for the enlarging of our dominions, as for the propagation of the gospel amongst infidels: wherein there is good progress made and hope of further increase; so as the undertakers of that plantation are now in hand with the erecting of some churches and schools for the education of the children of those barbarians, which cannot but be to them a very great charge and above the expense which, for the civil plantation, doth come to them. In which we doubt not but that you and all others who wish well to the increase of Christian religion, will be willing to give all assistance and furtherance, you may, and therein to make experience of the zeal and devotion of our well-minded subjects, especially those of the clergy. Wherefore we do require you, and hereby authorize you to write your letters to the several bishops of the dioceses in your province, that they do give order to the ministers and other zealous men of their dioceses, both by their own example in contribution and by exhortation to others to move our people within their several charges to contribute to so good a work, in as liberal a manner as they may; for the better advancing whereof our pleasure is, that those collections be made in all the particular parishes, four several times within these two years next coming; and that the several accounts of each parish, together with the moneys collected, be returned from time to time to the bishops of the dioceses, and by them be transmitted half yearly to you; and so to be delivered to the treasurer of that plantation to be employed for the godly purposes intended, and no other." (Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 315; Stith's Hist. of Va., 159.)
[147:A] Mr. Jefferson appears to have fallen into a mistake as to the period of time when malefactors were first shipped over to this country from England, for he says: "It was at a late period of their history that the practice began." (Writings of Jefferson, i. 405.)
[147:B] Chalmers' Introduc., i. 15. The following letter accompanied a shipment of marriageable females sent out from England to Virginia:--
"LONDON, August 21, 1621.
"We send you a shipment, one widow and eleven maids, for wives of the people of Virginia: there hath been especial care had in the choice of them, for there hath not one of them been received but upon good commendations.
"In case they cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that have wives, until they can be provided with husbands. There are nearly fifty more that are shortly to come, and are sent by our honorable lord and treasurer, the Earl of Southampton, and certain worthy gentlemen, who, taking into consideration that the plantation can never flourish till families be planted, and the respect of wives and children for their people on the soil, therefore having given this fair beginning; reimbursing of whose charges it is ordered that every man that marries them, give one hundred and twenty pounds of best leaf tobacco for each of them.
"We desire that the marriage be free according to nature, and we would not have those maids deceived and married to servants, but only to such freemen or tenants as have means to maintain them. We pray you, therefore, to be fathers of them in this business, not enforcing them to marry against their wills." (Hubbard's note in Belknap, art. ARGALL.)
Chapter XIII
Proceedings in London of Virginia Company--Lord Southampton elected Treasurer--Sir Francis Wyat appointed Governor--New frame of Government--Instructions for Governor and Council-- George Sandys, Treasurer in Virginia--Notice of his Life and published Works--Productions of the Colony.
SIR EDWIN SANDYS held the office of treasurer of the company but for one year, being excluded from a re-election by the arbitrary interference of the king. The election was by ballot. The day for it having arrived, the company met, consisting of twenty peers of the realm, near one hundred knights, together with as many more of gallant officers and grave lawyers, and a large number of worthy citizens--an imposing array of rank, and wealth, and talents, and influence. Sir Edwin Sandys being first nominated as a candidate, a lord of the bedchamber and another courtier announced that it was the king's pleasure not to have Sir Edwin Sandys chosen; and because he was unwilling to infringe their right of election, he (the king) would nominate three persons, and permit the company to choose one of them. The company, nevertheless, voted to proceed to an election, as they had a right to do under the charter. Sir Edwin Sandys withdrew his name from nomination, and, at his suggestion it was finally agreed that the king's messengers should name two candidates, and the company one. Upon counting the ballots, it was ascertained that one of the royal candidates received only one vote, and the other only two. The Earl of Southampton received all the rest.
The Virginia Company was divided into two parties, the minority enjoying the favor of the king, and headed by the Earl of Warwick; the other, the liberal, or opposition, or reform party, headed by the Earl of Southampton. The Warwick faction were greatly embittered against Yeardley, and their virulence was increased by his having intercepted a packet from his own secretary, Pory, containing proofs of Argall's misconduct, to be used against him at his trial, which the secretary had been bribed by his friend, the Earl of Warwick, to convey to him. The mild and gentle Yeardley, overcome by these annoyances, at length requested leave to retire from the cares of office. His commission expired in November, 1621; but he continued in the colony, was a member of the council, and enjoyed the respect and esteem of the people. During his short administration, many new settlements were made on the James and York rivers; and the planters, being now supplied with wives and servants, began to be more content, and to take more pleasure in cultivating their lands. The brief interval of free trade with Holland had enlarged the demand for tobacco, and it was cultivated more extensively.
Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the company's council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of Southampton, appointed Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentleman of Ireland, whose education, family, fortune, and integrity, well qualified him for the place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and brought over a new frame of government constituted by the company, and dated July the 24th, 1621, establishing a council of State and a general assembly--vesting the governor with a negative upon the acts of the assembly; this body to be convoked by him in general once a year, and to consist of the council of State and of two burgesses from every town, hundred, or plantation; the trial by jury secured; no act of the assembly to be valid unless ratified by the company in England; and, on the other hand, no order of the company to be obligatory upon the colony without the consent of the assembly. This last feature displays that spirit of constitutional freedom which then pervaded the Virginia Company. A commission bearing the same date with the new frame of government recognized Sir Francis Wyat as the first governor under it; and this famous ordinance became the model of every subsequent provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies.[150:A]
Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the permanent guidance of the governor and council. He was to provide for the service of God in conformity with the Church of England as near as may be; to be obedient to the king, and to administer justice according to the laws of England; not to injure the natives, and to forget old quarrels now buried; to be industrious, and to suppress drunkenness, gaming, and excess in clothes; not to permit any but the council and heads of hundreds to wear gold in their clothes, or to wear silk, till they make it themselves; not to offend any foreign prince; to punish pirates; to build forts; to endeavor to convert the heathen; and each town to teach some of the Indian children fit for the college which was to be built; to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals, dyes, gums, and medicinal drugs, and to draw off the people from the excessive planting of tobacco; to take a census of the colony; to put 'prentices to trades and not let them forsake them for planting tobacco, or any such useless commodity; to build water-mills; to make salt, pitch, tar, soap, and ashes; to make oil of walnuts, and employ apothecaries in distilling lees of beer; to make small quantity of tobacco, and that very good.
Wyat, entering on the duties of his office on the eighteenth of November, dispatched Mr. Thorpe to renew the treaties of peace and friendship with Opechancanough, who was found apparently well affected and ready to confirm the pledges of harmony. A vessel from Ireland brought in eighty immigrants, who planted themselves at Newport's News. The company sent out during this year twenty-one vessels, navigated with upwards of four hundred sailors, and bringing over thirteen hundred men, women, and children. The aggregate number of settlers that arrived during 1621 and 1622 was three thousand five hundred.
With Sir Francis Wyat came over George Sandys, treasurer in Virginia, brother of Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the company in England. George Sandys, who was born in 1577, after passing some time at Oxford, in 1610, travelled over Europe to Turkey, and visited Palestine and Egypt. He published his travels, at Oxford, in 1615, and they were received with great favor. The first poetical production in Anglo-American literature was composed by him, while secretary of the colony; and in the midst of the confusion which followed the massacre of 1622,--"by that imperfect light which was snatched from the hours of night and repose,"--he translated the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the First Book of Virgil's Æneid, which was published in 1626, and dedicated to King Charles the First. He also published several other works, and enjoyed the favor of the literary men of the day. Dryden pronounced Sandys the best versifier of his age. Pope declared that English poetry owed much of its beauty to his translations; and Montgomery, the poet, renders his meed of praise to the beauty of the Psalms translated by him. Having lived chiefly in retirement, he died in 1643, at the house of Sir Francis Wyat, in Bexley, Kent. A fine copy of the translation of Ovid and Virgil, printed in 1632, in folio, elegantly illustrated, once the property of the Duke of Sussex, is now in the library of Mr. Grigsby. Mr. Thomas H. Wynne, of Richmond, also has a copy of this rare work.
FOOTNOTES:
[150:A] Chalmers' Introduc., i. 13-16; Belknap, art. SIR FRANCIS WYAT. Belknap is an excellent authority, as accurate as Stith without his diffuseness; and Hubbard's notes are worthy of the text. The ordinance and commission may be seen in Hening's Statutes at Large, i. 110-113.
Chapter XIV
Use of Tobacco in England--Raleigh's Habits of Smoking--His Tobacco-box--Anecdotes of Smoking--King James, his Counterblast --Denunciations against Tobacco--Amount of Tobacco Imported.
IN 1615 twelve different commodities had been shipped from Virginia; sassafras and tobacco were now the only exports. During the year 1619 the company in England imported twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, the entire crop of the preceding year. James the First endeavored to draw a "prerogative" revenue from what he termed a pernicious weed, and against which he had published his "Counterblast;" but he was restrained from this illegal measure by a resolution of the House of Commons. In 1607 he sent a letter forbidding the use of tobacco at St. Mary's College, Cambridge.
Smoking was the first mode of using tobacco in England, and when Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom among people of fashion, in order to escape observation he smoked privately in his house, (at Islington,) the remains of which were till of late years to be seen, as an inn, long known as the Pied Bull. This was the first house in England in which it was smoked, and Raleigh had his arms emblazoned there, with a tobacco-plant on the top. There existed also another tradition in the Parish of St. Matthew, Friday Street, London, that Raleigh was accustomed to sit smoking at his door in company with Sir Hugh Middleton. Sir Walter's guests were entertained with pipes, a mug of ale, and a nutmeg, and on these occasions he made use of his tobacco-box, which was of cylindrical form, seven inches in diameter and thirteen inches long; the outside of gilt leather, and within a receiver of glass or metal, which held about a pound of tobacco. A kind of collar connected the receiver with the case, and on every side the box was pierced with holes for the pipes. This relic was preserved in the museum of Ralph Thoresby, of Leeds, in 1719, and about 1843 was added, by the late Duke of Sussex, to his collection of the smoking utensils of all nations.[154:A]
Although Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom of smoking tobacco in England, yet its use appears to have been not entirely unknown before, for one Kemble, condemned for heresy in the time of Queen Mary the Bloody, while walking to the stake smoked a pipe of tobacco. Hence the last pipe that one smokes was called the Kemble pipe.
The writer of a pamphlet, supposed to have been Milton's father, describes many of the play-books and pamphlets of that day, 1609, as "conceived over night by idle brains, impregnated with tobacco smoke and mulled sack, and brought forth by the help of midwifery of a caudle next morning." At the theatres in Shakespeare's time, the spectators were allowed to sit on the stage, and to be attended by pages, who furnished them with pipes and tobacco.
About the time of the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, the characteristics of a man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt-handled sword, and a Spanish dagger; to play at cards or dice in the chamber of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard, or at the playhouse.
The peers engaged in the trial of the Earls of Essex and Southampton smoked much while they deliberated on their verdict. It was alleged against Sir Walter Raleigh that he used tobacco on the occasion of the execution of the Earl of Essex, in contempt of him; and it was perhaps in allusion to this circumstance that when Raleigh was passing through London to Winchester, to stand his trial, he was followed by the execrations of the populace, and pelted with tobacco-pipes, stones, and mud. On the scaffold, however, he protested that during the execution of Essex he had retired far off into the armory, where Essex could not see him, although he saw Essex, and shed tears for him. Raleigh used tobacco on the morning of his own execution.
As early as the year 1610 tobacco was in general use in England. The manner of using it was partly to inhale the smoke and blow it out through the nostrils, and this was called "drinking tobacco," and this practice continued until the latter part of the reign of James the First. In 1614 the number of tobacco-houses in or near London was estimated at seven thousand. In 1620 was chartered the Society of Tobacco-pipe Makers of London; they bore on their shield a tobacco-plant in full blossom.
The "Counterblast against Tobacco," attributed to James the First, if in some parts absurd and puerile, yet is not without a good deal of just reasoning and good sense; some fair hits are made in it, and those who have ridiculed that production might find it not easy to controvert some of its views. King James, in his Counterblast, does not omit the opportunity of expressing his hatred toward Sir Walter Raleigh, in terms worthy of that despicable monarch. He continued his opposition to tobacco as long as he lived, and in his ordinary conversation oftentimes argued and inveighed against it.
The Virginia tobacco in early times was imported into England in the leaf, in bundles, as at present; the Spanish or West Indian tobacco in balls. Molasses or other liquid preparation was used in preparing those balls. Tobacco was then, as now, adulterated in various ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots, that is, white jars. The tobacco was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for lighting pipes, and among the rich silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes called the American Silver Weed.
The Turkish Vizier thrust pipes through the noses of smokers; and the Shah of Persia cropped the ears and slit the noses of those who made use of the fascinating leaf. The Counterblast says of it: "And for the vanity committed in this filthy custom, is it not both great vanity and uncleanness, that at the table--a place of respect of cleanliness, of modesty--men should not be ashamed to sit tossing of tobacco-pipes and puffing of smoke, one at another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof to exhale athwart the dishes, and infect the air, when very often men who abhor it are at their repast? Surely smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining-chamber; and yet it makes the kitchen oftentimes in the inward parts of man, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-takers that after their deaths were opened."
"A Counterblast to Tobacco," by James the First, King of England, was first printed in quarto, without name or date, at London, 1616. In the frontispiece was engraved the tobacco-smoker's coat of arms, consisting of a blackamoor's head, cross-pipes, cross-bones, death's-head, etc. It is not improbable that it was intended to foment the popular prejudice against Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced the use of tobacco into England, and who was put to death in the same year, 1616. King James alludes to the introduction of the use of tobacco and of Raleigh as follows: "It is not so long since the first entry of this abuse among us here, as that this present age cannot very well remember both the first author and the form of the first introduction of it among us. It was neither brought in by king, great conqueror, nor learned doctor of physic. With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some two or three savage men were brought in together with this savage custom; but the pity is, the poor wild barbarous men died, but that vile barbarous custom is still alive, yea, in fresh vigor; so as it seems a miracle to me how a custom springing from so vile a ground, and brought in by a father so generally hated, should be welcomed upon so slender a warrant."
The king thus reasons against the Virginia staple: "Secondly, it is, as you use or rather abuse it, a branch of the sin of drunkenness, which is the root of all sins,[156:A] for as the only delight that drunkards love any weak or sweet drink, so are not those (I mean the strong heat and fume) the only qualities that make tobacco so delectable to all the lovers of it? And as no man loves strong heavy drinks the first day, (because nemo repente fuit turpissimus,) but by custom is piece and piece allured, while in the end a drunkard will have as great a thirst to be drunk as a sober man to quench his thirst with a draught when he hath need of it; so is not this the true case of all the great takers of tobacco, which therefore they themselves do attribute to a bewitching quality in it? Thirdly, is it not the greatest sin of all that you, the people of all sorts of this kingdom, who are created and ordained by God to bestow both your persons and goods for the maintenance both of the honor and safety of your king and commonwealth, should disable yourself to this shameful imbecility, that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jew's Sabbath but you must have a reeky coal brought you from the next poor-house to kindle your tobacco with? whereas he cannot be thought able for any service in the wars that cannot endure oftimes the want of meat, drink, and sleep; much more then must he endure the want of tobacco." A curious tractate on tobacco, by Dr. Tobias Venner, was published at London in 1621. The author was a graduate of Oxford, and a physician at Bath, and is mentioned in the Oxoniæ Athenienses.[157:A]
The amount of tobacco imported in 1619 into England, from Virginia, being the entire crop of the preceding year, was twenty thousand pounds. At the end of seventy years there were annually imported into England more than fifteen millions of pounds of it, from which was derived a revenue of upwards of £100,000.[157:B]
In April, 1621, the House of Commons debated whether it was expedient to prohibit the importation of tobacco entirely; and they determined to exclude all save from Virginia and the Somer Isles. It was estimated that the consumption of England amounted to one thousand pounds per diem. This seductive narcotic leaf, which soothes the mind and quiets its perturbations, has found its way into all parts of the habitable globe, from the sunny tropics to the snowy regions of the frozen pole. Its fragrant smoke ascends alike to the blackened rafters of the lowly hut, and the gilded ceilings of luxurious wealth.
FOOTNOTES:
[154:A] Introduction to "A Counterblast to Tobacco, by James the First, King of England," published at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1843.
[156:A] And one from which the king himself was not free.
[157:A] A copy of this rare pamphlet was lent me by N. S. Walker, Esq., of Richmond.
[157:B] Chalmers, Introduc. to Hist. of Revolt of Amer. Colonies, i. 13.
Chapter XV
1621-1622.
Silk in Virginia--Endowment of East India School--Ministers in Virginia--Sermon at Bow Church--Corporation of Henrico.
IN November and December, 1621, at an assembly held at James City, acts were passed for encouraging the planting of mulberry-trees, and the making of silk; but this enterprise, so early commenced in Virginia, and so earnestly revived of late years, is still unsuccessful; and it may be concluded that the climate of Virginia is unpropitious to that sort of production.
The Rev. Mr. Copeland, Chaplain on board of the Royal James, East Indiaman, on the return voyage from the East Indies, prevailed upon the officers and crew of that ship to contribute seventy pounds toward the establishment of a church and school in Virginia, and Charles City County was selected as the site of it, and it was to be called the East India School, and to be dependent upon the college at Henrico. The Virginia Company allotted one thousand acres of land for the maintenance of the master and usher, and presented three hundred acres to Mr. Copeland. Workmen were accordingly sent out early in 1622, to begin the building. The clergymen in Virginia at this time were Messrs. Whitaker, Mease, Wickham, Stockham, and Bargrave.[158:A]
Early in 1622 very favorable intelligence from Virginia reached England, and upon this occasion, on the seventeenth of April, the Rev. Mr. Copeland, by appointment, preached before the Virginia Company, at Bow Church. He was shortly afterwards appointed a member of the Virginia Council and rector of the college established for the conversion of the Indians; but all these benevolent purposes and hopeful anticipations were suddenly darkened and defeated by the news of a catastrophe which had, in a few hours, blasted the labors of so many years.
FOOTNOTES:
[158:A] The following is found in the early records:--
THE CORPORATION OF HENRICO.
On the northerly ridge of James River, from the falls down to Henrico, containing ten miles in length, are the public lands, surveyed and laid out; whereof, ten thousand acres for the university lands, three thousand acres for the company's lands, with other lands belonging to the college. The common land for that corporation, fifteen hundred acres.
On the southerly side, beginning from the falls, there are there patented, viz.:--
Acres. John Petterson 100 Anthony Edwards 100 Nathaniel Norton 100 John Proctor 200 Thomas Tracy 100 John Vithard 100 Francis Weston 300 Phettiplace Close 100 John Price 150 Peter Nemenart 110 William Perry 100 John Plower 100 Surveyed for the use of the iron-work. Edward Hudson 100 Thomas Morgan 150 Thomas Sheffield 150
Cosendale, within the Corporation of Henrico:--
Acres. Lieut. Edward Barckley 112 Richard Poulton 100 Robert Analand 200 John Griffin 50 Peter Nemenart 40 Thomas Tindall 100 Thomas Reed 100 John Laydon 200
Chapter XVI
1622.
The Massacre--Its Origin, Nemattanow--Opechancanough--Security of Colonists--Perfidy of the Indians--Particulars of Massacre-- Its Consequences--Brave Defence of some--Supplies sent from England--Captain Smith's Offer.
ON the twenty-second day of March, 1622, there occurred in the colony a memorable massacre, which originated, as was believed, in the following circumstances: There was among the Indians a famous chief, named Nemattanow, or "Jack of the Feather," as he was styled by the English, from his fashion of decking his hair. He was reckoned by his own people invulnerable to the arms of the English. This Nemattanow coming to the store of one of the settlers named Morgan, persuaded him to go to Pamunkey to trade, and murdered him by the way. Nemattanow, in two or three days, returned to Morgan's house, and finding there two young men, Morgan's servants, who inquired for their master, answered them that he was dead. The young men, seeing their master's cap on the Indian's head, suspected the murder, and undertook to conduct him to Mr. Thorpe, who then lived at Berkley, on the James River, since well known as a seat of the Harrisons, and originally called "Brickley." Nemattanow so exasperated the young men on the way that they shot him, and he falling, they put him into a boat and conveyed him to the governor at Jamestown, distant seven or eight miles. The wounded chief in a short time died. Feeling the approaches of death, he entreated the young men not to disclose that he had been mortally wounded by a bullet: so strong is the desire for posthumous fame even in the breast of a wild, untutored savage!
Opechancanough, the ferocious Indian chief, agitated with mingled emotions of grief and indignation at the loss of his favorite Nemattanow, at first muttered threats of revenge; but the retorted defiance of the English made him for a time smother his resentment and dissemble his dark designs under the guise of friendship. Accordingly, upon Sir Francis Wyat's arrival, all suspicion of Indian treachery had died away; the colonists, in delusive security, were in general destitute of arms; the plantations lay dispersed, as caprice suggested, or a rich vein of land allured, as for as the Potomac River;[161:A] their houses everywhere open to the Indians, who fed at their tables and lodged under their roofs. About the middle of March, a messenger being sent upon some occasion to Opechancanough, he entertained him kindly, and protested that he held the peace so firm that "the sky should fall before he broke it." On the twentieth of the same month, the Indians guided some of the English safely through the forest, and the more completely to lull all suspicion, they sent one Brown, who was sojourning among them for the purpose of learning their language, back home to his master. They even borrowed boats from the whites to cross the river when about holding a council on the meditated attack. The massacre took place on Friday, the twenty-second of March, 1622. On the evening before, and on that very morning, the Indians, as usual, came unarmed into the houses of the unsuspecting colonists, with fruits, fish, turkeys, and venison for sale: in some places they actually sate down to breakfast with the English. At about the hour of noon the savages, rising suddenly and everywhere at the same time, butchered the colonists with their own implements, sparing neither age, nor sex, nor condition; and thus fell in a few hours three hundred and forty-nine men, women, and children. The infuriated savages wreaked their vengeance even on the dead, dragging and mangling the lifeless bodies, smearing their hands in blood, and bearing off the torn and yet palpitating limbs as trophies of a brutal triumph.
Among their victims was Mr. George Thorpe, (a kinsman of Sir Thomas Dale,) who had been of the king's bedchamber, deputy to the college lands, and one of the principal men of the colony--a pious gentleman, who had labored zealously for the conversion of the Indians, and had treated them with uniform kindness. As an instance of this, they having at one time expressed their fears of the English mastiff dogs, he had caused some of them to be put to death, to the great displeasure of their owners. Opechancanough inhabiting a paltry cabin, Mr. Thorpe had built him a handsome house after the English manner.[162:A] But the savage miscreants, equally deaf to the voice of humanity and the emotions of gratitude, murdered their benefactor with every circumstance of remorseless cruelty. He had been forewarned of his danger by a servant, but making no effort to escape, fell a victim to his misplaced confidence. With him ten other persons were slain at Berkley.
Another of the victims was Captain Nathaniel Powell, one of the first settlers, a brave soldier, and who had for a brief interval filled the place of governor of the colony. His family fell with him. Nathaniel Causie, another of Captain Smith's old soldiers, when severely wounded and surrounded by the Indians, slew one of them with an axe, and put the rest to flight. At Warrasqueake a colonist named Baldwin, by repeatedly firing his gun, saved himself and family, and divers others. The savages at the same time made an attempt upon the house of a planter named Harrison, (near Baldwin's,) where were Thomas Hamor with some men, and a number of women and children. The Indians tried to inveigle Hamor out of the house, by pretending that Opechancanough was hunting in the neighboring woods and desired to have his company; but he not coming out, they set fire to a tobacco-house; the men ran toward the fire, and were pursued by the Indians, who pierced them with arrows and beat out their brains. Hamor having finished a letter that he was writing, and suspecting no treachery, went out to see what was the matter, when, being wounded in the back with an arrow, he returned to the house and barricaded it. Meanwhile Harrison's boy, finding his master's gun loaded, fired it at random, and the Indians fled. Baldwin still continuing to discharge his gun, Hamor, with twenty-two others, withdrew to his house, leaving their own in flames. Hamor next retired to a new house that he was building, and there defending himself with spades, axes, and brickbats, escaped the fury of the savages. The master of a vessel lying in the James River sent a file of musqueteers ashore, who recaptured from the enemy the Merchant's store-house. In the neighborhood of Martin's Hundred seventy-three persons were butchered; yet a small family there escaped, and heard nothing of the massacre until two days after.
Thus fell in so short a space of time one-twelfth part of the colonists of Virginia, including six members of the council. The destruction might have been universal but for the disclosure of a converted Indian, named Chanco, who, during the night preceding the massacre, revealed the plot to one Richard Pace, with whom he lived. Pace, upon receiving this intelligence, after fortifying his own house, repaired before day to Jamestown, and gave the alarm to Sir Francis Wyat, the Governor; his vigilance saved a large part of the colony from destruction.[163:A] Eleven were killed at Berkley, fifty at Edward Bonit's plantation, two at Westover, five at Macocks, four on Appomattox River, six at Flower-de-Hundred, twenty-one of Sir George Yeardley's people at Weyanoke, and seventy-three at Martin's Hundred, seven miles from Jamestown.
The horrors of famine threatened to follow in the train of massacre, and the consternation of the survivors was such that twenty or thirty days elapsed before any plan of defence was concerted. Many were urgent to abandon the James River, and take refuge on the eastern shore, where some newly settled plantations had escaped. At length it was determined to abandon the weaker plantations, and to concentrate their surviving population in five or six well fortified places, Shirley, Flower-de-Hundred, Jamestown, with Paspahey, and the plantations opposite to Kiquotan, and Southampton Hundred. In consequence a large part of the cattle and effects of the planters fell a prey to the enemy. Nevertheless, a planter, "Master Gookins," at Newport's News, refused to abandon his plantation, and with thirty-five men resolutely held it.
The family of Gookins is ancient, and appears to have been found originally at Canterbury, in Kent, England. The name has undergone successive changes--Colkin, Cockin, Cockayn, Cocyn, Cokain, Cokin, Gockin, Gokin, Gookin, Gookins, Gooking, and others. The early New England chroniclers spelled it "Goggin."[164:A] Daniel Gookin removed to County Cork, in Ireland, and thence to Virginia, arriving in November, 1621, with fifty men of his own and thirty passengers, exceedingly well furnished with all sorts of provision and cattle, and planted himself at Newport's News. In the massacre he held out with a force of thirty-five men against the savages, disregarding the order to retire. It is probable that he affected to make a settlement independent of the civil power of the colony, and it appears to have been styled by his son a "lordship." It was above Newport's News, and was called "Mary's Mount."[164:B]
To return to the incidents of the massacre. Samuel Jordan, with the aid of a few refugees, maintained his ground at Beggar's Bush;[164:C] as also did Mr. Edward Hill, at Elizabeth City. "Mrs. Proctor, a proper, civil, modest gentlewoman," defended herself and family for a month after the massacre, until at last constrained to retire by the English officers, who threatened, if she refused, to burn her house down; which was done by the Indians shortly after her withdrawal. Captain Newce, of Elizabeth City, and his wife, distinguished themselves by their liberality to the sufferers. Several families escaped to the country afterwards known as North Carolina, and settled there.[164:D]
When intelligence of this event reached England, the king granted the Virginia Company some unserviceable arms out of the Tower, and "lent them twenty barrels of powder;" Lord St. John of Basing gave sixty coats of mail; the privy council sent out supplies, and the City of London dispatched one hundred settlers.[165:A]
One effect of the massacre was the ruin of the iron-works at Falling Creek, on the south side of the James River, (near Ampthill in the present County of Chesterfield,) where, of twenty-four people, only a boy and girl escaped by hiding themselves.[165:B] Lead was found near these iron-works. King James promised to send over four hundred soldiers for the protection of the colony; but he never could be induced to fulfil his promise. Captain John Smith offered, if the company would send him to Virginia, with a small force, to reduce the savages to subjection, and protect the colony from future assaults. His project failed on account of the dissensions of the company, and the niggardly terms proposed by the few members that were found to act on the matter. The Rev. Jonas Stockham, in May, 1621, previous to the massacre, had expressed the opinion that it was utterly in vain to undertake the conversion of the savages, until their priests and "ancients" were put to the sword. Captain Smith held the same opinion, and he states that the massacre drove all to believe that Mr. Stockham was right in his view on this point.[165:C] The event justified the policy of Argall in prohibiting intercourse with the natives, and had that measure been enforced, the massacre would probably have been prevented. The violence and corruption of such rulers as Argall serve to disgrace and defeat even good measures; while the virtues of the good are sometimes perverted to canonize the most pernicious.
FOOTNOTES:
[161:A] Beverley, 39.
[162:A] The chief was so charmed with it, especially with the lock and key, that he locked and unlocked the door a hundred times a day.
[163:A] Purchas, his Pilgrim, iv. 1788; Smith, ii. 65: a list of the slain may be found on page 70.
[164:A] ARMS. Quarterly: First, gules, a chevron ermine between three cocks or, two in chief, one in base, Gookin. Second and third, sable, a cross crosslet, ermine. Fourth, or, a lion rampant, gules between six crosses fitchée. CREST. On a mural crown, gules, a cock or, beaked and legged azure, combed and wattled gu.
[164:B] Article by J. Wingate Thornton, Esq., of Boston, in Mass. Gen. and Antiq. Register, vol. for 1847, page 345, referring, among other authorities, to Records of General Court of Virginia.
[164:C] Afterwards called and still known as Jordan's Point, in the County of Prince George, the seat of the revolutionary patriot Richard Bland. Beggar's Bush, as already mentioned, was the title of one of Fletcher's comedies then in vogue in England. (Hallam's Hist. of Literature, ii. 210.)
[164:D] Martin's Hist. of North Carolina, i. 87.
[165:A] Smith, ii. 79; Chalmers' Introduction, i. 19; Belknap, art. WYAT.
[165:B] Beverley, 43.
[165:C] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 343; Smith, 139; Stith, 233.
Chapter XVII
1622.
Crashaw and Opechancanough--Captain Madison massacres a Party of the Natives--Yeardley invades the Nansemonds and the Pamunkies--They are driven back--Reflections on their Extermination.
DURING these calamitous events that had befallen the colony, Captain Raleigh Crashaw had been engaged in a trading cruise up the Potomac. While he was there, Opechancanough sent two baskets of beads to Japazaws, the chief of the Potomacs, to bribe him to slay Crashaw and his party, giving at the same time tidings of the massacre, with an assurance that "before the end of two moons" there should not be an Englishman left in all the country. Japazaws communicated the message to Crashaw, and he thereupon sent Opechancanough word "that he would nakedly fight him, or any of his, with their own swords." The challenge was declined. Not long afterwards Captain Madison, who occupied a fort on the Potomac River, suspecting treachery on the part of the tribe there, rashly killed thirty or forty men, women, and children, and carried off the werowance and his son, and two of his people, prisoners to Jamestown. The captives were in a short time ransomed.
When the corn was ripe, Sir George Yeardley, with three hundred men, invaded the country of the Nansemonds, who, setting fire to their cabins, and destroying whatever they could not carry away, fled; whereupon the English seized their corn, and completed the work of devastation. Sailing next to Opechancanough's seat, at the head of York River, Yeardley inflicted the same chastisement on the Pamunkies. In New England it was said: "Since the news of the massacre in Virginia, though the Indians continue their wonted friendship, yet are we more wary of them than before, for their hands have been embrued in much English blood, only by too much confidence, but not by force."[166:A]
The red men of Virginia were driven back, like hunted wolves, from their ancient haunts. While their fate cannot fail to excite commiseration, it may reasonably be concluded that the perpetual possession of this country by the aborigines would have been incompatible with the designs of Providence in promoting the welfare of mankind. A productive soil could make little return to a people so destitute of the art and of the implements of agriculture, and habitually indolent. Navigable rivers, the natural channels of commerce, would have failed in their purpose had they borne no freight but that of the rude canoe; primeval forests would have slept in gloomy inutility, where the axe was unknown; and the mineral and metallic treasures of the earth would have remained forever entombed. In Virginia, since the aboriginal population was only about one to the square mile, they could not be justly held occupants of the soil. However well-founded their title to those narrow portions which they actually occupied, yet it was found impossible to take possession of the open country, to which the savages had no just claim, without also exterminating them from those particular spots that rightfully belonged to them. This inevitable necessity actuated the pious Puritans of Plymouth as well as the less scrupulous settlers of Jamestown; and force was resorted to in all the Anglo-American settlements except in that effected, at a later day, by the gentle and sagacious Penn. The unrelenting hostility of the savages, their perfidy and vindictive implacability, made sanguinary measures necessary. In Virginia, the first settlers, a small company, in an unknown wilderness, were repeatedly assaulted, so that resistance and retaliation were demanded by the natural law of self-defence. Nor were these settlers voluntary immigrants; the bulk of them had been sent over, without regard to their choice, by the king or the Virginia Company. Nor did the king or the company authorize any injustice or cruelty to be exercised toward the natives; on the contrary, the colonists, however unfit, were enjoined to introduce the Christian religion among them, and to propitiate their good will by a humane and lenient treatment. Smith and his comrades, so far from being encouraged to maltreat the Indians, were often hampered in making a necessary self-defence, by a fear of offending an arbitrary government at home.
It has been remarked by Mr. Jefferson,[168:A] that it is not so general a truth, as has been supposed, that the lands of Virginia were taken from the natives by conquest, far the greater portion having been purchased by treaty. It may be objected, that the consideration was often inadequate; but a small consideration may have been sufficient to compensate for a title which, for the most part, had but little validity; besides, a larger compensation would oftentimes have been thrown away upon men so ignorant and indolent. Groping in the dim twilight of nature, and slaves of a gross idolatry, their lives were circumscribed within a narrow uniform circle of animal instincts and the necessities of a precarious subsistence. Cunning, bloody, and revengeful, engaged in frequent wars, they were strangers to that Arcadian innocence and the Elysian scenes of a golden age of which youthful poets so fondly dream. If an occasional exception occurs, it is but a solitary ray of light shooting across the surrounding gloom. Yet we cannot be insensible to the many injuries they have suffered, and cannot but regret that their race could not be united with our own. The Indian has long since disappeared from Virginia; his cry no longer echoes in the woods, nor is the dip of his paddle heard on the water. The exterminating wave still urges them onward to the setting sun, and their tribes are fading one by one forever from the map of existence. Geology shows that in the scale of animal life, left impressed on the earth's strata, the inferior species has still given place to the superior: so likewise is it with the races of men.
FOOTNOTES:
[166:A] Purchas, iv. 1840.
[168:A] Notes on Va., 102.
Chapter XVIII
1622-1625.
James the First jealous of Virginia Company--Gondomar--The King takes Measures to annul the Charter--Commissioners appointed--Assembly Petitions the King--Disputes between Commissioners and Assembly--Butler's Account of the Colony-- Nicholas Ferrar--Treachery of Sharpless, and his Punishment-- The Charter of Virginia Company dissolved--Causes of this Proceeding--Character of the Company--Records of the Company-- Death of James the First--Charles the First succeeds him--The Virginia Company--Earl of Southampton--Sir Edwin Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar--The Rev. Jonas Stockham's Letter--Injustice of the Dissolution of the Charter--Beneficial Results-- Assembly of 1624.
THE Court of James the First, already jealous of the growing power and republican spirit of the Virginia Company, was rendered still more inimical by the malign influence of Count Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, who was jealous of any encroachment on the Spanish colony of Florida. He remarked to King James, of the Virginia Company, that "they were deep politicians, and had further designs than a tobacco-plantation; that as soon as they should get to be more numerous, they intended to step beyond their limits, and, for aught he knew, they might visit his master's mines." The massacre afforded an occasion to the enemies of the company to attribute all the calamities of the colony to its mismanagement and neglect, and thus to frame a plausible pretext for dissolving the charter.
Captain Nathaniel Butler, a dependent of the Earl of Warwick, had, by his influence, been sent out Governor of Bermudas for three years, where he exercised the same oppression and extortion as Argall had exhibited in Virginia. Upon finding himself compelled to leave those islands, he came to Virginia, in the midst of the winter succeeding the massacre. He was hospitably entertained by Governor Wyat, which kindness he proved himself wholly unworthy of, his conduct being profligate and disorderly. He demanded a seat in the council, to which he was in no way entitled. He went up the James as far as to the mouth of the Chickahominy, where "he plundered Lady Dale's cattle;" and after a three months' stay, he set sail for England. Upon his return, Butler was introduced to the king, and published "The Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia, as it was in the Winter of 1622," in which he took advantage of the misfortunes of the colony, and exaggerated its deplorable condition. The Rev. William Mease, (who had been for ten years resident in the colony,) with several others, replied to this defamatory pamphlet.[170:A]
The company was divided into two parties, the one headed by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Cavendish, Sir Edward Sackville, Sir John Ogle, Sir Edwin Sandys, with several others of less note; on the other side, the leaders were the Earl of Warwick, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Nathaniel Rich, Sir Henry Mildmay, Alderman Johnson, etc. They appeared before the king, the Earl of Warwick's faction presenting their accusations against the company, and the other side defending it; and Sir Edward Sackville used such freedom of language that "the king was fain to take him down soundly and roundly." However, by the lord treasurer's intervention, the matter was reconciled on the next day.[170:B]
In May, 1623, a commission was issued authorizing Sir William Jones, a justice of the common pleas, Sir Nicholas Fortescue, Sir Francis Goston, Sir Richard Sutton, Sir William Pitt, Sir Henry Bourchier, and Sir Henry Spilman,[170:C] to inquire into the affairs of the colony. By an order of the privy council the records of the company were seized, and the deputy treasurer, Nicholas Ferrar, imprisoned, and on the arrival of a ship from Virginia, her packets were seized and laid before the privy council.
Nicholas Ferrar, Jr., was born in London in 1592, educated at Cambridge, where he was noted for his talents, acquirements, and piety.[171:A] Upon leaving the university he made the tour of Europe, winning the esteem of the learned, passing through many adventures and perils with Christian heroism, and maintaining everywhere an unsullied character. Upon his return to England, in 1618, he was appointed king's counsel for the Virginia Plantation. In the year 1622 he was chosen deputy treasurer of the Virginia Company, (which office his brother John also filled for some years,) and so remained till its dissolution. In the House of Commons he distinguished himself by his opposition to the political corruption of that day, and abandoned public life when little upwards of thirty years of age, "in obedience to a religious fancy he had long entertained," and formed of his family and relations a sort of little half-popish convent, in which he passed the remainder of his life.[171:B]
Carlyle[171:C] thus describes this singular place of retirement: "Crossing Huntingdonshire in his way northward, his majesty[171:D] had visited the establishment of Nicholas Ferrar, at Little Gidding, on the western border of that county. A surprising establishment now in full flower, wherein above fourscore persons, including domestics, with Ferrar and his brother, and aged mother at the head of them, had devoted themselves to a kind of Protestant monachism, and were getting much talked of in those times. They followed celibacy and merely religious duties; employed themselves in binding of prayer-books, embroidering of hassocks, in almsgiving also, and what charitable work was possible in that desert region; above all, they kept up, night and day, a continual repetition of the English liturgy, being divided into relays and watches, one watch relieving another, as on shipboard, and never allowing at any hour the sacred fire to go out."
In October, 1623, the king declared his intention to grant a new charter modelled after that of 1606. This astounding order was read three times, at a meeting of the company, before they could credit their own ears; then, by an overwhelming vote, they refused to relinquish their charter, and expressed their determination to defend it.
The king, in order to procure additional evidence to be used against the company, appointed five commissioners to make inquiries in Virginia into the state and condition of the colony. In November, 1623, when two of these commissioners had just sailed for Virginia, the king ordered a writ of quo warranto to be issued against the Virginia Company.
In the colony, hitherto, the proclamations of the governors, which had formed the rule of action, were now enacted into laws; and it was declared that the governor should no more impose taxes on the colonists without the consent of the Assembly, and that he should not withdraw the inhabitants from their private labor to any service of his; and further, that the burgesses should be free from arrest during the session of the Assembly. These acts of the legislature of the infant colony, while under the control of the Virginia Company, render it certain that there was more of constitutional and well-regulated freedom in Virginia then, than in the mother country.
Of the commissioners appointed to make inquiries in Virginia, John Harvey and John Pory arrived there early in 1624; Samuel Matthews and Abraham Percy were planters resident in the colony, and the latter a member of the House of Burgesses; John Jefferson, the other commissioner, did not come over to Virginia, nor did he take any part in the matter, being a hearty friend to the company.[172:A] Thomas Jefferson, in his memoir of himself,[172:B] says that one of his name was secretary to the Virginia Company. The Virginia planters at first looking on it as a dispute between the crown and the company, in which they were not essentially interested, paid little attention to it; but two petitions, defamatory of the colony and laudatory of Sir Thomas Smith's arbitrary rule, having come to the knowledge of the Assembly, in February, 1624, that body prepared spirited replies, and drafted a petition to the king, which, with a letter to the privy council, and other papers, were entrusted to Mr. John Pountis, a member of the council.[173:A] He died during the voyage to England. The letter addressed to the privy council prayed "that the governors may not have absolute power, that they might still retain the liberty of popular assemblies, than which nothing could more conduce to the public satisfaction and public utility." At the same time the Virginia Company, in England, presented a petition to the House of Commons against the arbitrary proceedings of the king; but although favorably received, it was withdrawn as soon as the king's disapprobation was announced.
In Virginia the commissioners refused to exhibit their commission and instructions, and the Assembly therefore refused to give them access to their records. Pory, one of the commissioners, who had formerly lost his place of secretary of the colony by betraying its secrets to the Earl of Warwick, suborned Edward Sharpless, clerk of the council, to expose to him copies of the journal of that body, and of the House of Burgesses. Sharpless being convicted of this misdemeanor was sentenced to the pillory, with the loss of his ears.[173:B] Only a part of one ear was actually cut off.
The commissioners, having failed to obtain from the Assembly a declaration of their willingness to submit to the king's purpose of revoking the charter, made a report against the company's management of the colony and the government of it, as too popular, that is, democratic, under the present charter. The king, by a proclamation issued in July, suppressed the meetings of the company, and ordered for the present a committee of the privy council, and others, to sit every Thursday, at the house of Sir Thomas Smith, in Philpot Lane, for conducting the affairs of the colony. Viscount Mandeville was at the head of this committee: Sir George Calvert, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Sir Samuel Argall, John Pory, Sir John Wolstenholme, and others, were members. At the instance of the attorney-general, to enable the company to make a defence, their books were restored and the deputy treasurer released. In Trinity term, 1624, the writ of quo warranto was tried in the Court of King's Bench, and the charter of the Virginia Company was annulled. The case was determined only upon a technicality in the pleadings.
In one of the hearings against the company, before the privy council, the Marquis of Hamilton said of the letters and instructions of the company, written by Nicholas Ferrar, Jr.: "They are papers as admirably well penned as any I ever heard." And the Earl of Pembroke remarked: "They all deserve the highest commendation: containing advices far more excellent than I could have expected to have met with in the letters of a trading company. For they abound with soundness of good matter and profitable instruction, with respect both to religion and policy; and they possess uncommon elegance of language."[174:A]
The company had been long obnoxious to the king's ill will for several reasons; it had become a nursery for rearing and training leaders of the opposition, many of its members being likewise members of parliament. It was a sort of reform club. The king, in a speech, swore that "the Virginia Company was a seminary for a seditious parliament." The company had chosen a treasurer in disregard of the king's nomination; and in electing Carew Raleigh, a member, they had made allusions to his father, Sir Walter Raleigh, which were doubtless unpalatable to the author of his judicial murder. The king was greedy of power and of money, which he wanted the sense and the virtue to make a good use of; and he hoped to find in Virginia a new field for extortion. Fortunately for the history of the colony, copies of the company's records were made by the precaution of Nicholas Ferrar: these being deposited in the hands of the Earl of Southampton, after his death, which took place in 1624, descended to his son. After his death, in 1667, they were purchased from his executors, for sixty guineas, by the first Colonel William Byrd, then in England. From these two folio volumes, in possession of Sir John Randolph, and from the records of the colony, Stith compiled much of his History of Virginia, which comes down to the year 1624.[174:B]
On the sixth day of April, 1625, died King James the First, aged fifty-nine, after a reign of twenty years. By his consort, Anne of Denmark, he had issue, Henry and Robert, who died young, Charles, his successor, and Elizabeth, who married Frederic the Fifth, elector Palatine. Charles the First succeeding to the crown and the principles of his father, took the government of Virginia into his own hands.
The company thus dissolved, had expended one hundred and fifty thousand pounds in establishing the colony, and had transported nine thousand settlers without the aid of government. The number of stockholders was about one thousand; and the annual value of exports from Virginia was, at the period of the dissolution of the charter, only twenty thousand pounds.
The company embraced much of the rank, wealth, and talents of the kingdom--near fifty noblemen, several hundred knights, and many gentlemen, merchants, and citizens. Among the leaders in its courts were Lord Cavendish, afterwards Earl of Devonshire; Sir Edwin Sandys; and Sir Edward Sackville, afterwards the celebrated Earl of Dorset; and, above all, the Earl of Southampton, the friend of Essex, and the patron of Shakespeare. Henry Wriothesley, third Earl of Southampton, in 1601, was implicated with the Earl of Essex in his hair-brained and abortive conspiracy to seize the person of Queen Elizabeth. Essex lost his life. Southampton was convicted, attainted and imprisoned during the queen's life. Upon the accession of James the First he was liberated, and restored in 1603. He was afterwards made Captain of the Isle of Wight and Governor of Carisbroke Castle; and in 1618 a member of the privy council. Brave and generous, but haughty and impetuous, he was by no means adapted to the court and cabinet of James, where fawning servility and base intrigue were the ordinary stepping-stones of political advancement.
About the year 1619, the Earl of Southampton was imprisoned through the influence of Buckingham, "whom he rebuked with some passion for speaking often to the same thing in the house, and out of order." In 1620 he was chosen Treasurer, or Governor of the Virginia Company, contrary to the king's wishes; but he, nevertheless, continued in that office until the charter was dissolved, and at its meetings, and in parliament, opposed the measures of a feeble and corrupt court. He and Sir Edwin Sandys, the leaders, together with the bulk of the members of the company, shared largely in the spirit of civil and religious freedom, which was then manifesting itself so strongly in England. In the hostile course pursued against the company, the attacks were especially directed against the earl and his associates Sir Edwin Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar. These three were celebrated: Lord Southampton for wisdom, eloquence, and sweet deportment; Sir Edwin Sandys for great knowledge and integrity; and Nicholas Ferrar for wonderful abilities, unwearied diligence, and the strictest virtue.[176:A] The earl and Sir Edwin were particular objects of the king's hatred. Sir Edwin, a member of the House of Commons, was arbitrarily imprisoned in 1621, during the session of parliament; and the earl was arrested after its dissolution. Spain had, at this time, acquired the ascendancy in the English Court, and this malign influence was skilfully maintained by the intrigues of her crafty ambassador, Count Gondomar. It was believed by many that James was even willing to sacrifice the interests of the English colonies for the benefit of those of Spain. The Rev. Jonas Stockham, a minister in Virginia, in a letter dated in May, 1621, and addressed to the Council of the Virginia Company, said: "There be many Italianated and Spaniolized Englishmen envies our prosperities, and by all their ignominious scandals they can devise, seeks to dishearten what they can those that are willing to further this glorious enterprise. To such I wish, according to the decree of Darius, that whosoever is an enemy to our peace, and seeketh either by getting monipolical patents, or by forging unjust tales to hinder our welfare--that his house were pulled down, and a pair of gallows made of the wood, and he hanged on them in the place."
The Earl of Southampton was grandson of Wriothesley, the famous Chancellor of Edward the Sixth, father to the excellent and noble Treasurer Southampton, grandfather to Rachel Lady Russel. In his later years he commanded an English regiment in the Dutch service, and died in the Netherlands, 1624. Shakespeare dedicated some of his minor poems to him; the County of Southampton, in Virginia, probably also took its name from him. Captain Smith, who had been unjustly displaced by the company, approved of the dissolution of their charter. Yet, as no compensation was rendered for the enormous expenditure incurred, it can be looked upon as little better than confiscation effected by chicane and tyranny. A parliamentary committee, of which Sir Edwin Sandys was a member, in the same year, 1624, drew up articles of impeachment against Lord Treasurer Cranfield for his agency in bringing about the dissolution of the charter.[177:A] Nevertheless, the result was undoubtedly favorable to the colony, as is candidly acknowledged by that honest chronicler, Stith, although no one could be more strenuously opposed to the arbitrary means employed.
An Assembly had been held in March, 1624, and its acts are preserved: they are brief and simple, coming directly to the point, without the redundancy of modern statutes; and refer mainly to agriculture, the church establishment, and defence against the Indians.[177:B] The following is a list of the members of this early Assembly:--
Sir Francis Wyat, Knt., Governor, etc. Captain Francis West, | John Pott, Sir George Yeardley, | Captain Roger Smith, George Sandys, Treasurer, | Captain Ralph Hamor, And John Pountis, of the Council.
BURGESSES. | BURGESSES. William Tucker, | Nathaniel Bass, Jabez Whitakers, | John Willcox, William Peeine, | Nicolas Marten, Raleigh Crashaw, | Clement Dilke, Richard Kingsmell, | Isaac Chaplin, Edward Blany, | John Chew, Luke Boyse, | John Utie, John Pollington, | John Southerne, Nathaniel Causey, | Richard Bigge, Robert Adams, | Henry Watkins, Thomas Harris, | Gabriel Holland, Richard Stephens, | Thomas Morlatt, R. Hickman, Clerk.
FOOTNOTES:
[170:A] Stith, 243, 268.
[170:B] Court and Times of James the First, ii. 389.
[170:C] Stith calls him Spilman; Burk, Spiller. (See Belknap, art. WYAT.)
[171:A] His father, of the same name, a London merchant, was one of the leading stockholders in the Virginia Company. Sir Walter Raleigh, Sir John Hawkins, Sir Francis Drake, Sir Edwin Sandys, and the like, were frequent guests at his table.
[171:B] Belknap, art. WYAT, in note; Foster's Miscellanies, 368.
[171:C] Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell, i. 69.
[171:D] Charles the First.
[172:A] Stith, 297.
[172:B] Writings of Jefferson, i. 1.
[173:A] Hening, i. 120.
[173:B] Stith, 315.
[174:A] Hist. Mag., ii. 34.
[174:B] It has been said that these folios were sent back to England by John Randolph of Roanoke, (Belknap, art. WYAT;) but it appears that they came into possession of Congress as part of Mr. Jefferson's library, and are now in the Law Library at Washington. There is to be found there also a volume of papers and records of the Virginia Company, from 1621 to 1625. (See article by J. Wingate Thornton, Esq., of Boston, in Hist. Mag., ii. 33, recommending that these documents should be published by Congress.) There are also valuable MS. historical materials in Richmond which ought to be published. The recent destruction of the library of William and Mary College shows the precarious tenure by which the collections of the Virginia Historical Society, and the records preserved in the State Capitol, are held.
[176:A] Peckard's Life of Ferrar--a work which throws much light on the early history of Virginia.
[177:A] Belknap.
[177:B] Hening's Statutes, i. 119, 129.
Chapter XIX
1624-1632.
Charles the First commissions Sir Thomas Wyat, Governor-- Assemblies not allowed--Royal Government virtually established in Virginia--Other Colonies on Atlantic Coast--Wyat returns to Ireland--Succeeded by Yeardley--Yeardley succeeded by West-- Letter of Charles the First directing an Assembly to meet-- Assembly's Reply--John Pott, Governor--Condition of Colony-- Statistics--Diet--Pott superseded by Harvey--Dr. John Pott Convicted of Stealing Cattle--Sir John Harvey--Lord Baltimore visits Virginia--Refuses to take the Oaths tendered to him-- Procures from Charles the First a Grant of Territory--Acts relative to Ministers, Agriculture, Indians, etc.
IN August, 1624, King Charles the First granted a commission appointing Sir Thomas Wyat Governor, with a council during pleasure, and omitting all mention of an assembly, thinking so "popular a course" the chief source of the recent troubles and misfortunes. The eleven members of the council were, Francis West, Sir George Yeardley, George Sandys, Roger Smith, Ralph Hamor, who had been of the former council, with the addition of John Martin, John Harvey, Samuel Matthews, Abraham Percy, Isaac Madison, and William Clayborne. Several of these were then, or became afterwards, men of note in the colony. This is the first mention of William Clayborne, who was destined to play an important part in the future annals of Virginia.
Thus in effect a royal government was now established in Virginia; hitherto she had been subject to a complex threefold government of the company, the crown, and her own president or governor and council.[179:A]
From 1624 to 1628 there is no mention in the statute-book of Virginia, or in the journal of the Virginia Company, of any assembly having been held in the colony, and in 1628 appeals were made to the governor and council; whereas had there been an assembly, it would have been the appellate court.
The French had established themselves as early as 1625 in Canada; the Dutch were now colonizing the New Netherlands; a Danish colony had been planted in New Jersey; the English were extending their confines in New England (where New Plymouth numbered thirty-two houses and one hundred and eighty settlers) and Virginia; while the Spaniards, the first settlers of the coast, still held some feeble posts in Florida.
Sir Thomas Wyat, the governor of the colony of Virginia, on the death of his father, Sir George Wyat, returning, in 1626, to Ireland, to attend to his private affairs there, was succeeded by Sir George Yeardley. He, during the same year, by proclamation, which now again usurped the place of law, prohibited the selling of corn to the Indians; made some commercial regulations, and directed houses to be palisaded. Yeardley dying, was succeeded in November, 1627, by Francis West, elected by the council. He was a younger brother of Lord Delaware.[180:A]
At a court held at James City, November the sixteenth, Lady Temperance Yeardley came and confirmed the conveyance made by her late husband, Sir George Yeardley, knight, late governor, to Abraham Percy, Esq., for the lands of Flowerdieu Hundred, being one thousand acres, and of Weanoke, on the opposite side of the water, being two thousand two hundred acres. This lady's Christian name is Puritanical; another such was Obedience Robins, a burgess of Accomac in 1630.
James the First had extorted a revenue from the tobacco of Virginia by an arbitrary resort to his prerogative, and in violation of the charter. Charles the First, in a letter dated June, 1628, proposed that a monopoly of the tobacco trade should be granted to him, and recommended the culture of several new products, and desired that an assembly should be called to take these matters into consideration. The ensuing assembly replied, demanding a higher price and more favorable terms than his majesty was disposed to yield. As to the introduction of new staples, they explained why, in their opinion, that was impracticable. This letter was signed by Francis West, Governor, five members of the council, and thirty-one members of the House of Burgesses.
Sir George Yeardley, the late governor, with two or three of the council, had resided for the most part at Jamestown; the rest of the council repaired there as occasion required. There was a general meeting of the governor and council once in every three months. The population of the colony was estimated at not less than fifteen hundred; they inhabited seventeen or eighteen plantations, of these the greater part, lying toward the falls of the James River, were well fortified against the Indians by means of palisades. The planters dwelling above Jamestown, found means to procure an abundant supply of fish. On the banks of that river the red men themselves were now seldom seen, but their fires were occasionally observed in the woods.[181:A]
There was no family in the colony so poor as not to have a sufficient stock of tame hogs. Poultry was equally abundant; bread plenty and good. For drink the colonists made use of a home-made ale; but the better sort of people were well supplied with sack, aqua-vitæ, and good English beer. The common diet of the servants was milk-hominy, that is, bruised Indian-corn, pounded and boiled thick, and eaten with milk. This dish was also in esteem with the better sort. Hominy, according to Strachey, is an Indian word; Lord Bacon calls it "the cream of maize," and commends it as a nutritious diet. The planters were generally provided with arms and armor, and on every holiday each plantation exercised its men in the use of arms, by which means, together with hunting and fowling, the greater part of them became excellent marksmen. Tobacco was the only staple cultivated for sale. The health of the country was greatly improved by clearing the land, so that the sun had power to exhale up the humid vapors. Captain Francis West continued governor till March, 1628, and he then being about to embark for England, John Pott was elected governor by the council.
In the year 1629 most of the land about Jamestown was cleared; little corn planted; but all the ground converted into pasture and gardens, "wherein doth grow all manners of English herbs and roots and very good grass." Such is the cotemporaneous statement, but after the lapse of more than two centuries Eastern Virginia depends largely on the Northern States for her supply of hay. The greater portion of the cattle of the colony was kept near Jamestown, the owners being dispersed about on plantations, and visiting Jamestown as inclination prompted, or, at the arrival of shipping, come to trade. In this year the population of Virginia amounted to five thousand, and the cattle had increased in the like proportion. The colony's stock of provisions was sufficient to feed four hundred more than its own number of inhabitants. Vessels procured supplies in Virginia; the number of arrivals in 1629 was twenty-three. Salt fish was brought from New England; Kecoughtan supplied peaches.
Mrs. Pearce, an honest industrious woman, after passing twenty years in Virginia, on her return to England reported that she had a garden at Jamestown, containing three or four acres, where in one year she had gathered a hundred bushels of excellent figs, and that of her own provision she could keep a better house in Virginia, than in London for three or four hundred pounds a year, although she had gone there with little or nothing. The planters found the Indian-corn so much better for bread than wheat, that they began to quit sowing it.
An assembly met at Jamestown in October, 1629; it consisted of John Pott, Governor, four councillors, and forty-six burgesses, returned from twenty-three plantations. Pott was superseded in the same year by Sir John Harvey, at some time between October and March. In March, the quarter court ordered an assembly to be called, to meet Sir John Harvey on the twenty-fourth of that month; and nothing was done in Pott's name after October, so far as can be found in the records.
The late governor was, during the ensuing year, Rob-Roy-like, convicted of stealing cattle. The trial commenced on the ninth of July, 1630; the number of jurors was thirteen, of whom three were members of the council. The first day was wholly spent in pleading, the next in unnecessary disputations, Dr. John Pott endeavoring to prove Mr. Kingsmell, one of the witnesses against him, a hypocrite by the story of "Gusman of Alfrach, the Rogue." Pott was found guilty, but in consideration of his rank and station, judgment was suspended until the king's pleasure should be known; and all the council became his security.
Sir John Harvey, the new governor, had been one of the commissioners sent out by King James to Virginia, in 1623, for the purpose of investigating the state and condition of the colony, and of procuring evidence which might serve to justify the dissolution of the charter of the Virginia Company. Harvey had also been a member of the provisional government in the year 1625. Returning now to Virginia, no doubt with embittered recollections of the collisions with the assembly in which he had been formerly involved, he did not fail to imitate the arbitrary rule that prevailed "at home," and to render himself odious to the inhabitants of the colony.
Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, descended from a noble family in Flanders, born at Kipling, in Yorkshire, England, was educated partly at Trinity College, Oxford, and partly on the continent. Sir Robert Cecil, lord treasurer, employed him as his secretary, and he was promoted to the clerkship of the council. In 1618 he was knighted, and in the succeeding year he was made a secretary of state, and one of the committee of trade and plantations, with a pension of one thousand pounds. Through the influence of Sir Thomas Wentworth, afterwards Earl of Strafford, he was chosen a member of Parliament. Receiving a patent for the southeastern peninsula of Newfoundland, he undertook to establish, in 1621, the plantation of Ferryland, which he called the Province of Avalon--a name derived from some mediæval legend. In 1624 he professed the Romish faith, and resigned his place of secretary of state; but James the First still retained this strenuous defender of royal prerogative as a member of his privy council, and created him[183:A] Baron of Baltimore, in the County of Longford, in Ireland, he being at this time the representative of the University of Oxford in the House of Commons. Still bent upon establishing a colony in America, for the promotion of his private interests, and to provide an asylum for the unmolested exercise of his religion, embarking in a ship lent him by King Charles the First, he came over to Virginia in the year 1629.
Virginia was founded by men devoted to the principles of the Reformation, amid vivid recollections of the persecutions of Mary, the Spanish armada, and the recent gunpowder plot, and when horror of papists was at its height. The charter of the colony expressly required that the oaths of allegiance and supremacy should be taken for the purpose of guarding against "the superstitions of the Church of Rome."[184:A]
The assembly being in session at the time of Lord Baltimore's arrival, proposed these oaths to him and those with him. He declined complying with the requisition, submitting, however, a form which he was ready to accept, whereupon the assembly determined to refer the matter to the privy council. The virtues of this able and estimable nobleman did not secure him from personal indignity. In the old records is found this entry: "March 25th, 1630, Thomas Tindall to be pilloried two hours for giving my Lord Baltimore the lie, and threatening to knock him down."[184:B]
Finding the Virginians unanimously averse to the very name of papist, he proceeded to the head of Chesapeake Bay, and observing an attractive territory on the north side of the Potomac River unoccupied, returned to England, and, in violation of the territorial rights of Virginia, obtained from Charles the First a grant of the country, afterwards called Maryland,[184:C] but before the sealing of his patent.
During the session of 1629-30 ministers were ordered to conform themselves in all things "according to the canons of the Church of England." It would appear that Puritanism had begun to develope itself among the clergy as well as the laity of the colony. Measures were adopted for erecting a fort at Point Comfort; new-comers were exempted from military service during the first five years after their arrival; engrossing and forestalling were prohibited. For the furtherance of the production of potashes and saltpetre, experiments were ordered to be made; to prevent a scarcity of corn, it was enacted that two acres of land, or near thereabouts, be planted for every head that works in the ground; regulations were established for the improvement of the staple of tobacco. An act provided that the war commenced against the Indians be effectually prosecuted, and that no peace be concluded with them.[185:A]
The first act of the session of February, 1632, provides that there be a uniformity throughout this colony, both in substance and circumstance, to the canons and constitution of the Church of England, as near as may be, and that every person yield ready obedience to them, upon penalty of the pains and forfeitures in that case appointed. Another act directs that ministers shall not give themselves to excess in drinking, or riot, spending their time idly, by day or night, playing at dice, cards, or any other unlawful game. Another order was, that all the council and burgesses of the assembly shall in the morning be present at divine service, in the room where they sit, at the third beating of the drum, an hour after sunrise. No person was suffered to "tend" above fourteen leaves of the tobacco-plant, nor to gather more than nine leaves, nor to tend any slips of old stalks of tobacco, or any of the second crop; and it was ordained that all tobacco should be taken down before the end of November. No person was permitted to speak or parley with the Indians, either in the woods or on any plantation, "if he can possibly avoid it by any means." The planters, however, were required to observe all terms of amity with them, taking care, nevertheless, to keep upon their guard. The spirit of constitutional freedom exhibited itself in an act declaring that the governor and council shall not lay any taxes or impositions upon the colony, their land, or commodities, otherwise than by authority of the grand assembly, to be levied and employed as by the assembly shall be appointed.
Act XL. provides, that the governor shall not withdraw the inhabitants from their private labors to service of his own, upon any color whatsoever. In case of emergency, the levying of men shall be ordered by the governor, with the consent of the whole body of the council. For the encouragement of men to plant a plenty of corn, it was enacted, that the price shall not be restricted, but it shall be free for every man to sell it as dear as he can. Men were not allowed to work in the grounds without their arms, and a sentinel on guard; due watch to be kept at night when necessary; no commander of any plantation shall either himself spend, or suffer others to spend, powder unnecessarily, that is to say, in drinking or entertainments. All men fit to bear arms were required to bring their pieces to the church on occasion of public worship. No person within the colony, upon any rumor of supposed change and alteration, was to presume to be disobedient to the present government, nor servants to their private officers, masters, and overseers, at their uttermost peril. No boats were permitted to go and trade to Canada or elsewhere that be not of the burthen of ten tons, and have a flush deck, or fitted with a grating and a tarpauling, excepting such as be permitted for discovery by a special license from the governor.[186:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[179:A] Chalmers' Introduction, i. 22. Beverley, B. i. 47, says expressly that an assembly was allowed. Burk, ii. 15, asserts that "assemblies convened and deliberated in the usual form, unchecked and uninterrupted by royal interference, from the dissolution of the proprietary government to the period when a regular constitution was sent over with Sir W. Berkeley in 1639." For authority reference is made to a document in the Appendix, which document, however, is not to be found there. The opinions of Chalmers--who, as clerk of the privy council, had access to the archives in England--and Hening, confirmed by a corresponding hiatus in the records, appear conclusive against the unsupported statements of Beverley and Burk.
[180:A] Belknap, art. WYAT, errs in making Sir John Harvey the successor.
[181:A] The number of cattle amounted to several thousand head; the stock of goats was large, and their increase rapid; the forests abounded with wild hogs, which were killed and eaten by the savages.
[183:A] 1625.
[184:A] Burk, ii. 25; Hen., i. 73, 97.
[184:B] 1 Hen., 552.
[184:C] Belknap, iii. 206; Allen's Biog. Dic., art. CALVERT.
[185:A] 1 Hening, 149.
[186:A] 1 Hening, 155, 175.
Chapter XX
1632-1635.
Charles the First appoints Council of Superintendence for Virginia--Acts of Assembly--William Clayborne authorized by the Crown to make Discoveries and Trade--George Lord Baltimore dies--The Patent of Territory granted is confirmed to his Son Cecilius, Lord Baltimore--Virginia remonstrates against the grant to Baltimore--Lord Baltimore employs his Brother, Leonard Calvert, to found the Colony of Maryland--St. Mary's Settled--Harvey visits Calvert--Clayborne's Opposition to the New Colony--Character of Baltimore's Patent--Contest between Clayborne and the Marylanders--He is convicted of High Crimes--Escapes to Virginia--Goes to England for trial of the Case.
IN the year 1632 King Charles issued a commission appointing a Council of Superintendence over Virginia, empowering them to ascertain the state and condition of the colony. The commissioners were Edward, Earl of Dorset, Henry, Earl of Derby, Dudley, Viscount Dorchester, Sir John Coke, Sir John Davers, Sir Robert Killegrew, Sir Thomas Rowe, Sir Robert Heath, Sir Kineage Tench, Sir Dudley Diggs, Sir John Holstenholm, Sir Francis Wyat, Sir John Brooks, Sir Kenelm Digby, Sir John Tench, John Banks, Esq., Thomas Gibbs, Esq., Samuel Rott, Esq., George Sands, Esq., John Wolstenholm, Esq., Nicholas Ferrar, Esq., Gabriel Barber, and John Ferrar, Esquires.[187:A]
Elaborate acts passed by the Colonial Legislature at this period, for improving the staple of tobacco and regulating the trade in it, evince the increasing importance of that crop. Tithes were imposed of tobacco and corn; and the twentieth "calfe, kidd of goates and pigge" granted unto the minister. During the year 1633 every fortieth man in the neck of land between the James River and the York, (then called the Charles,) was directed to repair to the plantation of Dr. John Pott, to be employed in building of houses and securing that tract of land lying between Queen's Creek, emptying into Charles River, and Archer's Hope Creek, emptying into James River. This was Middle Plantation, (now Williamsburg,) so called as being midway between the James River and the York. Each person settling there was entitled to fifty acres of land and exemption from general taxes. All new-comers were ordered to pay sixty-four pounds of tobacco toward the maintenance of the fort at Point Comfort.[188:A] Thus far, under Harvey's administration, the Assembly had met regularly, and several judicious and wholesome acts had been passed.
The Chesapeake Bay is supposed to have been discovered by the Spaniards as early as the year 1566 or before, being called by them the Bay of Santa Maria.[188:B] It was discovered by the English in 1585, when Ralph Lane was Governor of the first Colony of Virginia. In 1620 John Pory made a voyage of discovery in the Chesapeake Bay, and found one hundred English happily settled on its borders, (in what particular place is not known,) animated with the hope of a very good trade in furs.[188:C] During the years 1627, 1628, and 1629 the governors of Virginia gave authority to William Clayborne, "Secretary of State of this Kingdom," as the Ancient Dominion was then styled, to discover the source of the bay, or any part of that government from the thirty-fourth to the forty-first degree of north latitude.[188:D] In May, 1631, Charles the First granted a license to "our trusty and well-beloved William Clayborne," one of the council and Secretary of State for the colony, authorizing him to make discoveries, and to trade. This license was, by the royal instructions, confirmed by Governor Harvey; and Clayborne shortly afterwards established a trading post on Kent Island, in the Chesapeake Bay, not far from the present capital of Maryland, Annapolis; and subsequently another at the mouth of the Susquehanna River. In the year 1632 a burgess was returned from the Isle of Kent to the Assembly at Jamestown.[189:A] In 1633 a warehouse was established in Southampton River for the inhabitants of Mary's Mount, Elizabeth City, Accomac, and the Isle of Kent.
In the mean time, George, the elder Lord Baltimore, dying on the fifteenth of April, 1632, aged fifty, at London, before his patent was issued, it was confirmed June twentieth of this year, to his son Cecilius, Baron of Baltimore. The new province was named Maryland in honor of Henrietta Maria, Queen Consort of Charles the First of England, and daughter of Henry the Fourth of France. For eighteen months from the signing of the Maryland charter, the expedition to the new colony was delayed by the strenuous opposition made to the proceeding. The Virginians felt no little aggrieved at this infraction of their chartered territory; and they remonstrated to the king in council in 1633, against the grant to Lord Baltimore, alleging that "it will be a general disheartening to them, if they shall be divided into several governments." Future events were about to strengthen their sense of the justice of their cause. In July of this year the case was decided in the Star Chamber, the privy council, influenced by Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Earl of Strafford, deeming it fit to leave Lord Baltimore to his patent and the complainants to the course of law "according to their desire," recommending, at the same time, a spirit of amity and good correspondence between the planters of the two colonies. So futile a decision could not terminate the contest, and Clayborne continued to claim Kent Island, and to abnegate the authority of the proprietary of Maryland.
At length, Lord Baltimore having engaged the services of his brother, Leonard Calvert, for founding the colony, he with two others, one of them probably being another brother, were appointed commissioners. The expedition consisted of some twenty gentlemen of fortune, and two or three hundred of the laboring class, nearly all of them Roman Catholics. Imploring the intercession of the Blessed Virgin, St. Ignatius, and all the guardian angels of Maryland, they set sail from Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, in November, 1633, St. Cecilia's day. The canonized founder of the order of the Jesuits, Ignatius Loyola, was the patron saint of the infant Maryland. February twenty-seventh, 1634, they reached Point Comfort, filled with apprehensions of the hostility of the Virginians to their colonial enterprise. Letters from King Charles and the chancellor of the exchequer conciliated Governor Harvey, who hoped, by his kindness to the Maryland colonists, to insure the recovery of a large sum of money due him from the royal treasury. The Virginians were at this time all under arms expecting the approach of a hostile Spanish fleet. Calvert, after a hospitable entertainment, embarked on the third of March for Maryland. Clayborne, who had accompanied Harvey to Point Comfort to see the strangers, did not fail to intimidate them by accounts of the hostile spirit which they would have to encounter in the Indians of that part of the country to which they were destined. Calvert, on arriving in Maryland, was accompanied in his explorations of the country by Captain Henry Fleet, an early Virginia pioneer, who was familiar with the settlements and language of the savages, and in much favor with them; and it was under his guidance and direction that the site of St. Mary's, the ancient capital of Maryland, was selected.[190:A] White, a Jesuit missionary, says of Fleet: "At the first he was very friendly to us; afterwards, seduced by the evil counsels of a certain Clayborne, who entertained the most hostile disposition, he stirred up the minds of the natives against us."[190:B] White mentions that the Island of Monserrat, in the West Indies, where they touched, was inhabited by Irishmen who had been expelled by the English of Virginia "on account of their profession of the Catholic faith."
In a short time after the landing of Leonard Calvert in Maryland, Sir John Harvey, Governor of Virginia, visited him at St. Mary's. His arrival attracted to the same place the Indian chief of Patuxent, who said: "When I heard that a great werowance of the English was come to Yoacomoco, I had a great desire to see him; but when I heard the werowance of Pasbie-haye was come thither also to see him, I presently start up, and without further counsel came to see them both."[191:A]
In March, 1634, at a meeting of the governor and council, Clayborne inquired of them how he should demean himself toward Lord Baltimore and his deputies in Maryland, who claimed jurisdiction over the colony at Kent Isle. The governor and council replied that the right of his lordship's patent being yet undetermined in England, they were bound in duty and by their oaths to maintain the rights and privileges of the colony of Virginia. Nevertheless, in all humble submission to his majesty's pleasure, they resolved to keep and observe all good correspondence with the Maryland new-comers.[191:B]
The Maryland patent conferred upon Lord Baltimore, a popish recusant, the entire government of the colony, including the patronage and advowson of all churches, the same to be dedicated and consecrated according to the ecclesiastical law. This charter was illegal, inasmuch as it granted powers which the king himself did not possess; the grantee being a papist could not conform to the ecclesiastical laws of England; and, therefore, the provisions of this extraordinary instrument could not be, and were not designed to be, executed according to the plain and obvious meaning. Such was the character of the instrument by which King Charles the First despoiled Virginia of so large a portion of her territory. It is true, indeed, that the Virginia charter had been annulled, but this was done upon the condition explicitly and repeatedly declared by the royal government, that vested rights should receive no prejudice thereby.[192:A]
Clayborne, rejecting the authority of the new plantation, Lord Baltimore gave orders to seize him if he should not submit himself to the proprietary government of Maryland. The Indians beginning to exhibit some indications of hostility toward the settlers, they attributed it to the machinations of Clayborne, alleging that it was he who stirred up the jealousy of the savages, persuading them that the new-comers were Spaniards and enemies to the Virginians, and that he had also infused his own spirit of insubordination into the inhabitants of Kent Island. A trading vessel called the Longtail, employed by Clayborne in the Indian trade in the Chesapeake Bay, was captured by the Marylanders. He thereupon fitted out an armed pinnace with a crew of fourteen men under one of his adherents, Lieutenant Warren, to rescue the vessel. Two armed pinnaces were sent out by Calvert under Captain Cornwallis; and in an engagement that ensued in the Potomac, or, as some accounts have it, the Pocomoke River, one of the Marylanders fell, and three of the Virginians, including Lieutenant Warren. The rest were carried prisoners to St. Mary's. Clayborne was indicted although not arrested, and convicted of murder and piracy, constructive crimes inferred from his opposition. The chief of Patuxent was interrogated as to Clayborne's intrigues among the Indians.[192:B]
Harvey, either from fear of the popular indignation, or from some better motive, refused to surrender the fugitive Clayborne to the Maryland commissioners, and according to one authority[192:C] sent him to England, accompanied by the witnesses. Chalmers, good authority on the subject, makes no allusion to the circumstance, and it appears more probable that Clayborne having appealed to the king, went voluntarily to England.[192:D] It is certain that he was not brought to trial there.
FOOTNOTES:
[187:A] 2 Burk's Hist. of Va., 35.
[188:A] 1 Hening, 188, 190, 199, 208, 222. The pay of the officers at Point Comfort was at this time:--
Lbs. Tobacco. Bbls. Corn.
To the captain of the fort 2000 10 To the gunner 1000 6 To the drummer and porter 1000 6 For four other men, each of them 500 pounds of tobacco, 4 bbls. corn 2000 16 ---- ---- Total 6000 38
[188:B] Early Voyages to America, 483.
[188:C] Chalmers' Polit. Annals, 206.
[188:D] Chalmers' Annals, 227.
[189:A] 1 Hening, 154.
[190:A] White's Relation, 4; Force's Hist. Tracts.
[190:B] White's Relation of the Colony of the Lord Baron of Baltimore in Maryland, near Virginia, and a Narrative of the Voyage to Maryland, was copied from the archives of the Jesuit's College at Rome, by Rev. William McSherry, of Georgetown College, and translated from the Latin. An abstract of it may be found in chapter first of History of Maryland, by James McSherry. The first part of the Relation is a description of the country, and appears to have been written at London previous to the departure of Calvert; the remainder details the incidents of the voyage and the first settlement of the colony, especially of the proceedings of the Jesuit missionaries down to the year 1677.
[191:A] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, ii. 120, referring to "Relation of the successful beginnings of the Lord Baltimore's Plantation, in Maryland," signed by Captain Wintour, and others, adventurers in the expedition, and published in 1634.
[191:B] Chalmers' Annals. Chalmers is the more full and satisfactory in his account of Maryland, because he had resided there for many years.
[192:A] Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.; Virginia and Maryland, 7 et seq.; and Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, ii. 113.
[192:B] McSherry's Maryland, 40; Chalmers' Annals, 211, 232; Force's Historical Tracts, ii. 13.
[192:C] Burk's Hist. of Va., ii. 41, referring to "Ancient Records" of the London Company.
[192:D] Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.; Maryland and Virginia, 22.
Chapter XXI
1635-1639.
Eight Shires--Harvey's Grants of Territory--His Corrupt and Tyrannical Administration--The Crown guarantees to the Virginians the Rights which they enjoyed before the Dissolution of the Charter--Burk's Opinion of Clayborne-- Governor Harvey deposed--Returns to England--Charles the First reinstates him--Disturbances in Kent Island--Charles reprimands Lord Baltimore for his Maltreatment of Clayborne-- The Lords Commissioners decide in favor of Baltimore-- Threatening State of Affairs in England--Harvey recalled-- Succeeded by Sir Francis Wyat.
IN the year 1634 Virginia was divided into eight shires: James City, Henrico, Charles City, Elizabeth City, Warrasqueake, Charles River, and Accomac. The original name of Pamaunkee, or Pamunkey, had then been superseded by Charles River, which afterwards gave way to the present name of York. Pamunkey, at first the name of the whole river, is now restricted to one of its branches. The word Pamaunkee is said to signify "where we took a sweat."
The grant of Maryland to Lord Baltimore opened the way for similar grants to other court-favorites, of lands lying to the north and to the south of the settled portion of the Ancient Colony and Dominion of Virginia. While Charles the First was lavishing vast tracts of her territory upon his favorites, Sir John Harvey, a worthy pacha of such a sultan, in collusion with the royal commissioners, imitated the royal munificence by giving away large bodies not only of the public, or crown lands, but even of such as belonged to private planters.[193:A] In the contests between Clayborne and the proprietary of Maryland, while the people of Virginia warmly espoused their countryman's cause, Harvey sided with Baltimore, and proved himself altogether a fit instrument of the administration then tyrannizing in England. He was extortionate, proud, unjust, and arbitrary; he issued proclamations in derogation of the legislative powers of the assembly; assessed, levied, held, and disbursed the colonial revenue, without check or responsibility; transplanted into Virginia exotic English statutes; multiplied penalties and exactions, and appropriated fines to his own use; he added the decrees of the court of high commission of England to the ecclesiastical constitutions of Virginia. The assembly, nevertheless, met regularly; and the legislation of the colony expanded itself in accordance with the exigencies of an increasing population. Tobacco was subjected, by royal ordinances, to an oppressive monopoly; and in those days of prerogative, a remonstrance to the Commons for redress proved fruitless.
At length, in July, 1634, the council's committee for the colonies, either from policy or from compassion, transmitted instructions to the governor and council, saying: "That it is not intended that interests which men have settled when you were a corporation, should be impeached; that for the present they may enjoy their estates with the same freedom and privilege as they did before the recalling of their patents," and authorizing the appropriation of lands to the planters, as had been the former custom.[194:A]
Whether these concessions were inadequate in themselves, or were not carried into effect by Harvey, upon the petition of many of the inhabitants, an assembly was called to meet on the 7th of May, 1635, to hear complaints against that obnoxious functionary. There is hardly any point on which a people are more sensitive than in regard to their territory, and it may therefore be concluded, that one of Harvey's chief offences was his having sided with Lord Baltimore in his infraction of the Virginia territory.
Burk, in his History of Virginia, has stigmatized Clayborne as "an unprincipled incendiary" and "execrable villain;" other writers have applied similar epithets to him. It appears to have been only his resolute defence of his own rights and those of Virginia that subjected him to this severe denunciation. He was long a member of the council; long filled the office of secretary; was held in great esteem by the people, and was for many years a leading spirit of the colony. Burk[195:A] denounces Sir John Harvey for refusing to surrender the fugitive Clayborne to the demand of the Maryland Commissioners, and adds: "But the time was at hand when this rapacious and tyrannical prefect (Harvey) would experience how vain and ineffectual are the projects of tyranny when opposed to the indignation of freemen." Thus the governor, who excited the indignation of the Virginians by his collusion with the Marylanders, was afterwards reprobated by historians for sympathizing with Clayborne in his defence of the rights of Virginia, and opposition to the Marylanders. If Harvey, in violation of the royal license granted to Clayborne in 1631, had surrendered him to the Maryland Commissioners, he would have exposed himself to the royal resentment; and nothing could have more inflamed the indignation of freemen than such treatment of the intrepid vindicator of their territorial rights.
Before the assembly (called to hear complaints against the governor) met, Harvey, having consented to go to England to answer them, was "thrust out of the government" by the council on the 28th of April, 1635, and Captain John West was authorized to act as governor until the king's pleasure should be known. The assembly having collected the evidence, deputed two members of the council to go out with Harvey to prefer the charges against him. It was also ordered that during the vacancy in the office of governor, the secretary (Clayborne) should sign commissions and passes, and manage the affairs of the Indians.[195:B]
King Charles the First, offended at the presumption of the council and assembly, reinstated Sir John, and he resumed his place, in or before the month of January, 1636. Chalmers[195:C] says that he returned in April, 1637. Thus the first open resistance to tyranny, and vindication of constitutional right, took place in the colony of Virginia; and the deposition of Harvey foreshadowed the downfall of Charles the First. The laws that had been enacted by the first assembly of Maryland, having been sent over to England for his approval, he rejected them, on the ground that the right of framing them was vested in himself; and he directed an assembly to be summoned to meet in January, 1638, to have his dissent announced to them.
Early in 1637 a court was established by the Maryland authorities, in Kent Island, and toward the close of that year Captain George Evelin was appointed commander of the island. Many of Clayborne's adherents there refused to submit to the jurisdiction of Lord Baltimore's colony, and the governor, Leonard Calvert, found it necessary to repair there in March, 1638, in person, with a military force, to reduce to submission these Virginia malecontents. The Maryland legislature, convened in compliance with Lord Baltimore's orders, refused to acquiesce in his claim of the legislative power, and in the event they gained their point, his lordship being satisfied with a controlling influence in the choice of the delegates, and his veto.
The Virginians captured by Cornwallis in his engagement with Warren, had been detained prisoners without being brought to trial, there being no competent tribunal in the colony. At length Thomas Smith, second in command to Warren, was brought to trial for the murder of William Ashmore, (who had been killed in the skirmish,) and was found guilty, and sentenced to death; but it is not certain that he was executed. Clayborne was attainted, and his property confiscated; and these proceedings probably produced those disturbances in Kent Island which required the governor's presence.
Harvey, after his restoration, continued to be governor of Virginia for about three years, during which period there appears to have been no meeting of the assembly, and of this part of his administration no record is left.
In July, 1638, Charles the First addressed a letter to Lord Baltimore, referring to his former letters to "Our Governor and Council of Virginia, and to others, our officers and subjects in these parts, (in which) we signified our pleasure that William Clayborne, David Morehead, and other planters in the island near Virginia, which they have nominated Kentish Island, should in no sort be interrupted by you or any other in your right, but rather be encouraged to proceed in so good a work." The king complains to Baltimore that his agents, in spite of the royal instructions, had "slain three of our subjects there, and by force possessed themselves by night of that island, and seized and carried away both the persons and estates of the said planters." His majesty concludes by enjoining a strict compliance with his former orders.[197:A]
In 1639 Father John Gravener, a Jesuit missionary, resided at Kent Island. In April of this year the Lords Commissioners of Plantations, with Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, at their head, held a meeting at Whitehall, and determined the controversy between Clayborne and Lord Baltimore. This decision was made in consequence of a petition presented in 1637 by Clayborne to the king, claiming, by virtue of discovery and settlement, Kent Island and another plantation at the mouth of the Susquehanna River, and complaining of the attempts of Lord Baltimore's agents there to dispossess him and his associates, and of outrages committed upon them. The decision was now absolute in favor of Baltimore; and Clayborne, despairing of any peaceable redress, returned to Virginia, and having in vain prayed for the restoration of his property, awaited some future opportunity to vindicate his rights, and to recover property amounting in value to six thousand pounds, of which he had been despoiled.[197:B]
The Governor of Maryland, engaged in hostilities with the Indians, obtained a supply of arms, ammunition, and provision from the Governor of Virginia.
Charles the First, bred in all the arts of corrupt and arbitrary government, had now for many years governed England by prerogative, without a parliament, until at length his necessities constrained him to convene one; and his apprehensions of that body, and the revolt of the Scotch, and other alarming ebullitions of discontent, admonished him and his advisers to mitigate the high-handed measures of administration. The severity of colonial rule was also relaxed, and in November, 1639, the unpopular Sir John Harvey was displaced, and succeeded by Sir Francis Wyat.[198:A] But Harvey remained in Virginia, and continued to be a member of the council. About this time mention is made of the exportation of cattle from Virginia to New England.
FOOTNOTES:
[193:A] Beverley, B. i. 50.
[194:A] By the words "for the present," was probably intended "at present," "now," otherwise their interests might be impeached at a future day, although not immediately. Chalmers, Hist. of Revolt of Amer. Colonies, 36, so interprets the expression.
[195:A] Hist. of Va., ii. 40.
[195:B] Hen., i. 223.
[195:C] Hist. of Revolt of Amer. Colonies, i. 36.
[197:A] Chalmers' Annals, 232.
[197:B] Clayborne is the same name with Claiborne; it is found sometimes spelt Claiborn, and sometimes Cleyborne.
[198:A] 1 Hening's Stat. at Large, 4. Burk, Hist. of Va., ii. 46, erroneously makes Sir William Berkley succeed Harvey.
Chapter XXII
1640-1644.
Alarming State of Affairs in England--The Long Parliament summoned--In Virginia Stephen Reekes pilloried--Sir William Berkley made Governor--Assembly declare against Restoration of Virginia Company--The King's Letter--Puritans in Virginia--Act against Non-conformists--Massacre of 1644--Opechancanough captured--His Death--Civil War in England--Sir William Berkley visits England--Clayborne expels Calvert from Maryland, and seizes the Government--Treaty with Necotowance--Statistics of the Colony.
THE spirit of constitutional freedom awakened by the Reformation, and which had been long gradually gaining strength, began to develope itself with new energy in England. The arbitrary temper of Charles the First excited so great dissatisfaction in the people, and such a strenuous opposition in parliament, as to exact at length his assent to the "Petition of Right." The public indignation was carried to a high pitch by the forced levying of ship-money, that is, of money for the building of ships-of-war, and John Hampden stood forth in a personal resistance to this unconstitutional mode of raising money. The Puritans found within the pale of the Established Church, as well as without, were arrayed against the despotic rule of the crown and the hierarchy; and Scotland was not less offended against the king, who undertook to obtrude the Episcopal liturgy upon the Presbyterian land of his birth. In the year 1640 Charles the First found himself compelled to call together the Long Parliament. Virginia meantime remained loyal; the decrees of the courts of high commission were the rule of conduct, and the authority of Archbishop Laud was as absolute in the colony as in the fatherland. Stephen Reekes was pilloried for two hours, with a label on his back signifying his offence, fined fifty pounds, and imprisoned during pleasure, for saying "that his majesty was at confession with the Lord of Canterbury," that is, Archbishop Laud.
In May, 1641, the Earl of Strafford was executed, and Archbishop Laud sent to the Tower, where he was destined to remain until he suffered the same fate. The massacre of the Protestants in Ireland occurring in the latter part of this year, rendered still more portentous the threatening storm. January tenth, the king left London, to which he was not destined to return till brought back a prisoner.
In February, 1642, Sir Francis Wyat gave way to Sir William Berkley, whose destiny it was to hold the office of governor for a period longer than any other governor, and to undergo extraordinary vicissitudes of fortune. His commission and instructions declared that it was intended to give due encouragement to the plantation of Virginia, and that ecclesiastical as well as temporal matters should be regulated according to the laws of England; provision was also made for securing to England a monopoly of the trade of the colony. By some salutary measures which Sir William Berkley introduced shortly after his arrival, and by his prepossessing manners, he soon rendered himself very acceptable to the Virginians.
In April, 1642, the assembly made a declaration against the restoration of the Virginia Company then proposed, denouncing the company as having been the source of intolerable calamities to the colony by its illegal proceedings, barbarous punishments, and monopolizing policy. They insisted that its restoration would cause them to degenerate from the condition of their birthright, and convert them from subjects of a monarchy to the creatures of a popular and tumultuary government, to which they would be obliged to resign their lands held from the crown; which they intimate, if necessary, would be more fitly resigned to a branch of the royal family than to a corporation. They averred that the revival of the company would prove a deathblow to freedom of trade, "the life-blood of a commonwealth." Finally, the assembly protested against the restoration of the company, and decreed severe penalties against any who should countenance the scheme.[200:A]
At a court holden at James City, June the 29th, 1642, present Sir William Berkley, knight, governor, etc., Captain John West, Mr. Rich. Kemp, Captain William Brocas, Captain Christopher Wormley, Captain Humphrey Higginson. The commission for the monthly court of Upper Norfolk was renewed, and the commissioners appointed were, Captain Daniel Gookin, commander, Mr. Francis Hough, Captain Thomas Burbage, Mr. John Hill, Mr. Oliver Spry, Mr. Thomas Den, Mr. Randall Crew, Mr. Robert Bennett, Mr. Philip Bennett. The captains of trained bands: Captain Daniel Gookin, Captain Thomas Burbage.[201:A]
Among the converts made by one of the New England missionaries, named Thompson, was Daniel Gookin (son of the early settler of that name.) He removed to Boston in May, 1644, being probably one of those who were driven away from Virginia for non-conformity. He went away with his family in a ship bought by him from the governor, and was received with distinction at Boston. He soon became eminent in New England, and afterwards enjoyed the confidence of Cromwell, of whom he was a devoted adherent. He was author of several historical works. He died in March, 1686-7[201:B].
The alarming crisis in the affairs of Charles the First strongly dictated the necessity of a conciliatory course; and the remonstrance, together with a petition, being communicated to him, then at York, just on the eve of the "Grand Rebellion," he replied to it, firmly engaging never to restore the Virginia Company.
The following is a copy of the king's letter:--
"C. R.
"Trusty and well-beloved, we greet you all. Whereas, we have received a petition from you, our governor, council and burgesses of the grand assembly in Virginia, together with a declaration and protestation of the first of April, against a petition presented in your names to our House of Commons in this our kingdom, for restoring of the letters patent for the incorporation of the late treasurer and council, contrary to our intent and meaning, and against all such as shall go about to alienate you from our immediate protection. And whereas, you desire by your petition that we should confirm this your declaration and protestation under our royal signet, and transmit the same to that our colony; these are to signify, that your acknowledgments of our great bounty and favors toward you, and your so earnest desire to continue under our immediate protection, are very acceptable to us; and that as we had not before the least intention to consent to the introduction of any company over that our colony; so we are by it much confirmed in our former resolutions, as thinking it unfit to change a form of government wherein (besides many other reasons given, and to be given,) our subjects there (having had so long experience of it) receive so much content and satisfaction. And this our approbation of your petition and protestation we have thought fit to transmit unto you under our royal signet.
"Given at our Court, at York, the 5th of July, 1642.
"To our trusty and well-beloved our Governor, Council, and Burgesses of the Grand Assembly of Virginia."[202:A]
It was in this year that the name of Charles City County was changed into York.
As early as 1619 a small party of English Puritans had come over to Virginia; and a larger number would have followed them, but they were prevented by a royal proclamation issued at the instance of Bancroft, the persecuting Archbishop of Canterbury. In 1642 a deputation was sent from some Virginia dissenters to Boston, soliciting a supply of pastors from the New England churches; three clergymen were accordingly sent, with letters recommending them to the governor, Sir William Berkley. On their arrival in Virginia they began to preach in various parts of the country, and the people flocked eagerly to hear them. The following year the assembly passed the following act: "For the preservation of the purity of doctrine and unity of the church, it is enacted, that all ministers whatsoever, which shall reside in the colony, 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 governor and council do take care, that all non-conformists, upon notice of them, shall be compelled to depart the colony with all convenience."[203:A] Sir William Berkley, equally averse to the religious tenets and political principles of the Puritan preachers, issued a proclamation in consonance with this exclusive act. Mather says of the three New England missionaries: "They had little encouragement from the rulers of the place, but they had a kind entertainment with the people;" and Winthrop: "Though the State did silence the ministers, because they would not conform to the order of England, yet the people resorted to them in private houses to hear them." In a short time the preachers returned to their own country.
The Indians, whose hatred to the whites, although dissembled, had never been abated, headed by Opechancanough, committed a second massacre on the 18th day of April, 1644. It was attributed to the encroachments made upon them by some of Sir John Harvey's grants; but it was suspected by some that Opechancanough was instigated to this massacre by certain of the colonists themselves, who informed him of the civil war then raging in England, and of the dissensions that disturbed the colony, and told him, that now was his time or never, to root out all of the English. This is improbable. Had the Indians followed up the first blow, the colonists must have all been cut off; but after their first treacherous onslaught, their courage failed them, and they fled many miles from the settlements. The colonists availed themselves of this opportunity to gather together, call an assembly, secure their cattle, and to devise some plan of defence and attack.
Opechancanough, the fierce and implacable enemy of the whites, was now nearly a hundred years old, and the commanding form, which had so often shone conspicuous in scenes of blood, was worn down by the fatigues of war, and bending under the weight of years. No longer able to walk, he was carried from place to place by his warriors in a litter. His body was emaciated, and he could only see when his eyelids were opened by his attendants. Sir William Berkley at length moving rapidly with a party of horse, surprised the superannuated chief at some distance from his residence, and he was carried a prisoner to Jamestown, and there kindly treated. He retained a spirit unconquered by decrepitude of body or reverse of fortune. Hearing one day footsteps in the room where he lay, he requested his eyelids to be raised, when, perceiving a crowd of persons attracted there by a curiosity to see the famous chief, he called for the governor, and upon his appearance, said to him: "Had it been my fortune to take Sir William Berkley prisoner, I would have disdained to make a show of him." He, however, had made a show of Captain Smith when he was a prisoner. About a fortnight after Opechancanough's capture, one of his guards, for some private revenge, basely shot him in the back. Languishing awhile of the wound, he died at Jamestown, and was probably buried there. His death brought about a peace with the Indian savages, which endured for many years without interruption.
Sir William Berkley left Virginia for England in June, 1644, and returned in June, 1645, his place being filled during his absence by Richard Kemp.
The spirit of freedom long gaining ground, like a smothered fire, began now to flame up and burst forth in England. Charles the First, incomparably superior to his father in manners, habits, and tastes--a model of kingly grace and dignity, yet was a more determined and dangerous enemy to the rights of the people. On the 19th of March, 1642, having escaped from insurgent London, he reached the ancient capital, York, and on the twenty-fifth day of August raised his standard, under inauspicious omens, at Nottingham. The royal forces under Prince Rupert suffered a disastrous defeat at Marston Moor, July 2d, 1644; and while Sir William Berkley was crossing the Atlantic, the king was overthrown at Naseby, on the 4th of June, 1645. In this eventful year, and so disastrous to the king, of whom the Berkleys were such staunch supporters, Gloucester, the chief city of the county where they resided, and which had been ravaged and plundered by Rupert, was now in the hands of the parliamentary forces, and Cromwell had been early in the year convoying ammunition thither.[204:A] A sad time for the visit of the loyal Berkley!
During the troubles in England the correspondence of the colony was interrupted, supplies reduced, trade obstructed; and the planters looked forward with solicitude to the issue of such alarming events.
In the mean while Lord Baltimore, taking advantage of the weakness of the crown, had shown some contempt for its authority, and had drawn upon himself the threat of a quo warranto.
Early in 1645, Clayborne, profiting by the distractions of the mother country, and animated by an indomitable, or, as his enemies alleged, a turbulent spirit, and by a sense of wrongs long unavenged, at the head of a band of insurgents, expelled Leonard Calvert, deputy governor, from Maryland, and seized the reins of government. In the month of August, 1646, Calvert, who had taken refuge in Virginia, regained command of Maryland. Nevertheless, Clayborne and his confederates, with but few exceptions, emerged in impunity from this singular contest.
Opechancanough was succeeded by Necotowance, styled "King of the Indians," and in October, 1646, a treaty was effected with him, by which he agreed to hold his authority from the King of England, (who was now bereft of his own,) while the assembly engaged to protect him from his enemies; in acknowledgment whereof, he was to deliver to the governor a yearly tribute of twenty beaver skins at the departure of the wild-geese.[205:A] By this treaty it was further agreed, that the Indians were to occupy the country on the north side of York River, and to cede to the English all the country between the York and the James, from the falls to Kiquotan; death for an Indian to be found within this territory, unless sent in as a messenger; messengers to be admitted into the colony by means of badges of striped cloth; and felony for a white man to be found on the Indian hunting-ground, which was to extend from the head of Yapin, the Blackwater, to the old Mannakin town, on the James River; badges to be received at Fort Royal and Fort Henry, alias Appomattox. Fort Henry had been established not long before this, at the falls of the Appomattox, now site of Petersburg; Fort Charles at the falls of the James; Fort James on the Chickahominy. This one was under command of Lieutenant Thomas Rolfe, son of Pocahontas.[206:A] Fort Royal was on the Pamunkey.
The colony bore a natural resemblance to the mother country, no little modified by new circumstances, and followed her, yet not with equal step. The government and the people were apparently, in the main, loyal, but there was a growing Puritan party, and William Clayborne appears to have been at the head of it. In 1647 certain ministers, refusing to read the Common Prayer on the Sabbath, were declared not entitled to tythes. Two years before, mercenary attorneys had been, by law, expelled from the courts, and now attorneys were prohibited from receiving any compensation for their services, and the courts were directed not to allow any professional attorneys to appear in civil causes. In case there appeared danger of a party suffering in his suit by reason of his weakness, the court was directed to appoint some suitable person in his behalf from the people. It has been suggested in modern times, as an improvement in the administration of justice, to allow the parties to make their own statements.
There were in Virginia, in 1648, about fifteen thousand English, and of negroes that had been imported, three hundred good servants. Of cows, oxen, bulls, and calves, "twenty thousand, large and good;" and the colonists made plenty of butter and good cheese. The number of horses and mares, of good breed, was two hundred; of asses fifty. The sheep numbered three thousand, producing good wool; there were five thousand goats. Hogs, tame and wild, innumerable, and the bacon excellent; poultry equally abundant. Wheat was successfully cultivated. The abundant crop of barley supplied malt, and there were public brew-houses, and most of the planters brewed a good and strong beer for themselves. Hops were found to thrive well. The price-current of beef was two pence halfpenny (about five cents) a pound, pork six cents. Cattle bore about the same price as in England; most of the vessels arriving laid in their stores here. Thirty different sorts of river and sea fish were caught. Thirty species of birds and fowls had been observed, and twenty kinds of quadrupeds; deer abundant. The varieties of fruit were estimated at fifteen, and they were comparable to those of Italy. Twenty-five different kinds of trees were noticed, suitable for building ships, houses, etc. The vegetables were potatoes, asparagus, carrots, parsnips, onions, artichokes, peas, beans, and turnips, with a variety of garden herbs and medicinal flowers. Virginia (or Indian) corn yielded five hundred fold; it was planted like garden-peas; it made good bread and furmity, and malt for beer, and was found to keep for seven years. It was planted in April or May, and ripened in five months. Bees, wild and domestic, supplied plenty of honey and wax. Indigo was made from the leaves of a small tree, and great hopes were entertained that Virginia would in time come to supply all Christendom with the commodity which was then procured "from the Mogul's country." The Virginia tobacco was in high esteem, yet the crop raised was so large that the price was only about three pence, or six cents, a pound. A man could plant enough to make two thousand pounds, and also sufficient corn and vegetables for his own support. The culture of hemp and flax had been commenced. Good iron-ore was found, and there were sanguine anticipations of the profits to be derived from that source. There were wind-mills and water-mills, horse-mills and hand-mills: a saw-mill was greatly needed, it being considered equivalent to the labor of twenty men. There came yearly to trade above thirty vessels, navigated by seven or eight hundred men. They brought linens, woollens, stockings, shoes, etc. They cleared in March, with return cargoes of tobacco, staves, and lumber. Many of the masters and chief mariners of these vessels had plantations, houses, and servants, in the colony. Pinnaces, boats, and barges were numerous, the most of the plantations being situated on the banks of the rivers. Pitch and tar were made. Mulberry-trees abounded, and it was confidently believed that silk could be raised in Virginia as well as in France. Hopeful anticipations of making wine from the native grape were entertained, but have never been realized. Virginia was now considered healthy; the colonists being so amply provided with the necessaries and comforts of life, the number of deaths was believed to be less, proportionally, than in England. The voyage from England to Virginia occupied about six weeks; the outward-bound voyage averaging about twenty-five days.
At this time a thousand colonists were seated upon the Accomac shore, near Cape Charles, where Captain Yeardley was chief commander. The settlement was then called Northampton; the name of Accomac having been changed in 1643 to Northampton, but the original name was afterwards restored. Lime was found abundant in Virginia; bricks were made, and already some houses built of them. Mechanics found profitable employment, such as turners, potters, coopers, sawyers, carpenters, tilemakers, boatwrights, tailors, shoemakers, tanners, fishermen, and the like. There were at this time twelve counties. The number of churches was twenty, each provided with a minister, and the doctrine and orders after the Church of England. The ministers' livings were worth one hundred pounds, or five hundred dollars, per annum, paid in tobacco and corn. The colonists all lived in peace and love, happily exempt by distance from the horrors of civil war that convulsed the mother country. The Virginia planters were intending to make further discoveries to the south and west. A colony of Swedes had made a settlement on the banks of the Delaware River, within the limits of Virginia, and were carrying on a profitable traffic in furs. The Dutch had also planted a colony on the Hudson River, within the Virginia territory, and their trade in furs amounted to ten thousand pounds per annum. Cape Cod was then looked upon as the point of demarcation between Virginia and New England. Cattle, corn, and other commodities were shipped from Virginia to New England. Sir William Berkley had made an experiment in the cultivation of rice, and found that it produced thirty fold, the soil and climate being well adapted to it, as the negroes affirmed, who, in Africa, had subsisted mostly on that grain. There were now many thousands of acres of cleared land in Virginia, and about one hundred and fifty ploughs at work. Captain Brocas of the council, a great traveller, had planted a vineyard, and made excellent wine.
At Christmas, 1647, there were in the James River ten vessels from London, two from Bristol, twelve from Holland, and seven from New England. Mr. Richard Bennet expressed twenty butts of excellent cider from apples of his own orchard. They began now to engraft on the crab-apple tree, which was found indigenous. Another planter had for several years made, from pears of his own raising, forty or fifty butts of perry. The governor, Sir William Berkley, in his new orchard, had fifteen hundred fruit trees, besides his apricots, peaches, mellicotons, quinces, wardens, and the like.
Captain Matthews, an old planter, of above thirty years' standing, one of the council, and "a most deserving commonwealth man," had a fine house, sowed much hemp and flax, and had it spun; he kept weavers, and had a tannery, where leather was dressed; and had eight shoemakers at work; had forty negro servants, whom he brought up to mechanical trades; he sowed large crops of wheat and barley. The wheat he sold at four shillings (about a dollar) a bushel. He also supplied vessels trading in Virginia, with beef. He had a plenty of cows, a fine dairy, a large number of hogs and poultry. Captain Matthews married a daughter of Sir Thomas Hinton, and "kept a good house, lived bravely, and was a true lover of Virginia."
There was a free school, with two hundred acres of land appurtenant, a good house, forty milch cows, and other accommodations. It was endowed by Mr. Benjamin Symms. There were, besides, some small schools in the colony, probably such as are now known as "old-field schools."[209:A]
FOOTNOTES:
[200:A] 1 Hening, 230; Burk, ii. 68.
[201:A] Art. by J. Wingate Thornton, Esq., in Mass Gen. and Antiq. Register for 1847, page 348.
[201:B] Ibid., 352.
[202:A] Chalmers' Annals, 133.
[203:A] 1 Hening, 277.
[204:A] Carlyle's Cromwell, i. 144.
[205:A] Cohonk, the cry of the wild-geese, was an Indian term for winter.
[206:A] Toward the end of 1641 he had petitioned the governor for permission to visit his kinsman, Opechancanough, and Cleopatre, his aunt.
[209:A] Hening, i. 252.
Chapter XXIII
1648-1659.
Beauchamp Plantagenet visits Virginia--Settlement of other Colonies--Dissenters persecuted and banished from Virginia-- Some take refuge in Carolina; some in Maryland--Charles the First executed--Commonwealth of England--Virginia Assembly denounces the Authors of the King's Death--Colonel Norwood's Voyage to Virginia--The Virginia Dissenters in Maryland--The Long Parliament prohibits Trade with Virginia--A Naval Force sent to reduce the Colony, Bennet and Clayborne being two of the Commissioners--Captain Dennis demands surrender of Virginia--Sir William Berkley constrained to yield--Articles of Capitulation.
DURING the year 1648 Beauchamp Plantagenet, a royalist with a high-flown name, flying from the fury of the grand rebellion, visited America in behalf of a company of adventurers, in quest of a place of settlement, and in the course of his explorations came to Virginia. At Newport's News he was hospitably entertained by Captain Matthews, Mr. Fantleroy, and others, finding free quarter everywhere. The Indian war was now ended by the courage of Captain Marshall and the valiant Stillwell, and by the resolute march of Sir William Berkley, who had made the veteran Opechancanough prisoner. The explorer went to Chicaoen, on the Potomac, and found Maryland involved in war with the Sasquesahannocks and other Indians, and at the same time in a civil war. Kent Island appeared to be too wet, and the water was bad.[210:A]
In the month of March, 1648, Nickotowance, the Indian chief, visited Governor Berkley, at Jamestown, accompanied by five other chiefs, and presented twenty beaver skins to be sent to King Charles as tribute. About this time the Indians reported to Sir William Berkley that within five days' journey to the southwest there was a high mountain, and at the foot of it great rivers that run into a great sea; that men came hither in ships, (but not the same as the English;) that they wore apparel, and had red caps on their heads, and rode on beasts like horses, but with much longer ears. These people were probably the Spaniards. Sir William Berkley prepared to make an exploration with fifty horse and as many foot,[211:A] but he was disappointed in this enterprise.
At this period the settlement of all the New England States had been commenced; the Dutch possessed the present States of New York, New Jersey, and part of Connecticut, and they had already pushed their settlements above Albany; the Swedes occupied the shores of Pennsylvania and Delaware; Maryland was still in her infancy; Virginia was prosperous; the country now known as the Carolinas belonged to the assignees of Sir Robert Heath, but as yet no advances had been made toward the occupation of it.[211:B]
Upon complaint of the necessities of the people, occasioned by barren and over-wrought land, and want of range for cattle and hogs, permission was granted them to remove during the following year to the north side of Charles (York) and Rappahannock rivers.[211:C]
The congregation of dissenters collected by the three missionaries before mentioned from Massachusetts, amounted in 1648 to one hundred and eighteen members. They encountered the continual opposition of the colonial authorities. Mr. Durand, their elder, had already been banished by the governor; and in the course of this year their pastor, Harrison, being ordered to depart, retired to New England. On his arrival there he represented that many of the Virginia council were favorably disposed toward the introduction of Puritanism, and that "one thousand of the people, by conjecture, were of a similar mind."[211:D] The members of the council at that time were Captain John West, Richard Kempe, secretary, Captain William Brocas, Captain Thomas Pettus, Captain William Bernard, Captain Henry Browne, and Mr. George Ludlow. When the prevalence of Puritanism in the mother country is considered, and the numerous ties of interest and consanguinity that connected it with the colony, the estimate of the number favorably disposed toward Puritanism does not appear improbable. John Hammond afterwards gave an account of the proceedings against the Puritans in Virginia.[212:A] According to him, during the reign of Charles the First, Virginia "was wholly for monarchy." A congregation of people calling themselves Independents having organized a church, (probably in Nansemond County,) and daily increasing, several consultations were held by the authorities of the colony how to suppress and extinguish them. At first their pastor was banished, next their other teachers, then many were confined in prison; next they were generally disarmed, which was a very harsh measure in such a country, where they were surrounded by the Indian savages; lastly, the non-conformists were put in a condition of banishment, so that they knew not how in those straits to dispose of themselves. The leader in this persecution, according to Hammond, was Colonel Samuel Matthews, member of the council in 1643, and subsequently agent for Virginia to the parliament. A number of these dissenters having gained the consent of Lord Baltimore and his deputy governor of Maryland, retired to that colony, and settled there. Among these, one of the principal was Richard Bennet, a merchant and a Roundhead. For a time these refugees prospered and remained apparently content with their new place of abode; and others, induced by their example, likewise removed thither.
King Charles the First, after having been a prisoner for several years, was beheaded in front of Whitehall Palace, on the 30th day of January, 1648. He died with heroic firmness and dignity.[212:B] The Commonwealth of England now commenced, and continued till the restoration of Charles the Second, in 1660. Upon the dissolution of the monarchy in England, there were not wanting those in Virginia who held that the colonial government, being derived from the crown, was itself now extinct; but the assembly, by an act of October of the same year, declared that whoever should defend the late traitorous proceedings against the king, should be adjudged an accessory after the fact, to his death, and be proceeded against accordingly; to asperse the late most pious king's memory was made an offence punishable at the discretion of the governor and council; to express a doubt of the right of succession of Charles the Second, or to propose a change of government, or to derogate from the full power of the government of the colony, was declared to be high treason.[213:A] The principle, however, that the authority of the colonial government ceased with the king's death, was expressly recognized at the surrender of the colony to the parliamentary naval force in 1651.
Colonel Norwood, a loyal refugee in Holland, having formed a plan with two comrades, Major Francis Morrison and Major Richard Fox, to seek their fortunes in Virginia, they met in London, August, 1649, for the purpose of embarking. At the time when they had first concerted their scheme, Charles the First was a prisoner at Carisbrook Castle, in the Isle of Wight. He had since been executed; the royalists, thunderstruck at this catastrophe, saw their last gleam of hope extinguished; and Norwood and his friends were eager to escape from the scene of their disasters. At the Royal Exchange, whose name was now for a time to be altered to the "Great Exchange," the three forlorn cavaliers engaged a passage to Virginia in the "Virginia Merchant," burden three hundred tons, mounting thirty guns or more. The charge for the passage was six pounds a head, for themselves and servants. The colony of Virginia they deemed preferable for them in their straitened pecuniary circumstances; and they brought over some goods with them for the purpose of mercantile adventure. September the 23d, 1649, they embarked in the "Virginia Merchant," having on board three hundred and thirty souls. Touching at Fayal, Norwood and his companions met with a Portuguese lady of rank with her family returning, in an English ship, the "John," from the Brazils to her own country. With her they drank the healths of their kings, amid thundering peals of cannon. The English gentlemen discovered a striking resemblance between the lady's son and their own prince, Charles, which filled them with fond admiration, and flattered the vanity of the beautiful Portuguese. Passing within view of the charming Bermuda, the "Virginia Merchant" sailing for Virginia, struck upon a breaker early in November, near the stormy Cape Hatteras. Narrowly escaping from that peril, she was soon overtaken by a storm, and tossed by mountainous towering northwest seas. Amid the horrors of the evening prospect, Norwood observed innumerable ill-omened porpoises that seemed to cover the surface of the sea as far as the eye could reach. The ship at length losing forecastle and mainmast, became a mere hulk, drifting at the mercy of the winds and waves. Some of the passengers were swept overboard by the billows that broke over her; the rest suffered the tortures of terror and famine. At last the tempest subsiding, the ship drifted near the coast of the Eastern Shore. Here Norwood and a party landing on an island, were abandoned by the Virginia Merchant. After enduring the extremities of cold and hunger, of which some died, Norwood and the survivors in the midst of the snow were rescued by a party of friendly Indians. In the mean while the ship having arrived in the James River, a messenger was dispatched by Governor Berkley in quest of Norwood and his party. Conducted to the nearest plantation, they were everywhere entertained with the utmost kindness. Stephen Charlton (afterwards, in 1652, burgess from Northampton County,) would have the Colonel to put on a good farmer-like suit of his own. After visiting Captain Yeardley, (son of Sir George Yeardley, the former governor,) the principal person in that quarter of the colony, Norwood crossed the Chesapeake Bay in a sloop, and landed at 'Squire Ludlow's plantation on York River. Next he proceeded to the neighboring plantation of Captain Ralph Wormley, at that time burgess from York County, and member of his majesty's council. At Captain Wormley's he found some of his friends, who had likewise recently arrived from England, feasting and carousing. The cavaliers had changed their clime but not their habits. These guests were Sir Thomas Lundsford, Sir Henry Chicheley, (pronounced Chickley,) Sir Philip Honeywood, and Colonel Hammond. Sir Thomas Lundsford lies buried in the churchyard of Williamsburg. At Jamestown Norwood was cordially welcomed by Sir William Berkley, who took him to his house at Greenspring, where he remained for some months. Sir William, on many occasions, showed great respect to all the royal party who made that colony their refuge; and his house and purse were open to all such. To Major Fox, who had no other friend in the colony to look to for aid, he exhibited signal kindness; to Major Morrison he gave command of the fort at Point Comfort, and by his interest afterwards advanced him to be governor of the colony. In 1650 Governor Berkley dispatched Norwood to Holland to find the fugitive king, and to solicit for the place of treasurer of Virginia, which Sir William took to be void by "the delinquency" of William Clayborne, the incumbent, who had long held that place. The governor furnished Norwood with money to defray the charge of the solicitation, which was effectual, although Prince Charles was not found in Holland, he having gone to Scotland. Charles the Second was crowned by the Scotch at Scone, in 1651.[215:A]
Bennet and other dissenting Virginians, who had settled in Maryland, were not long there before they became dissatisfied with the proprietary government. The authority of Papists was irksome to Puritans, and they began to avow their aversion to the oath of allegiance imposed upon them; for by the terms of it Lord Baltimore affected to usurp almost royal authority, concluding his commissions and writs with "We," "us," and "given under our hand and greater seal of arms, in such a year of our dominion." The Protestants of Maryland, no doubt saw, in the political character of the Commonwealth of England, a fair prospect of the speedy subversion of Baltimore's power; nor were they disappointed in this hope.
In October, 1650, the Long Parliament passed an ordinance prohibiting trade with Barbadoes, Virginia, Bermuda, and Antigua. The act recited that these colonies were, and of right ought to be, subject to the authority of Parliament; that divers acts of rebellion had been committed by many persons inhabiting Virginia, whereby they have most traitorously usurped a power of government, and set themselves in opposition to this commonwealth. It therefore declared such persons notorious robbers and traitors; forbade all correspondence or commerce with them, and appointed commissioners, and dispatched Sir George Ayscue, with a powerful fleet and army, to reduce Barbadoes, Bermuda, and Antigua to submission.
Charles the Second having invaded England at the head of a Scottish army, was utterly defeated and overthrown by Cromwell, at Worcester, September the 3d, 1651. Charles himself, not long after, with difficulty and in disguise, escaped to France. In September of the same year the council of state, of which Bradshaw was president, issued instructions for Captain Robert Dennis, Mr. Richard Bennet, Mr. Thomas Steg,[216:A] and Captain William Clayborne, appointed commissioners, for the reducement of Virginia and the inhabitants thereof, to their due obedience to the Commonwealth of Virginia. A fleet was put under command of Captain Dennis, and the commissioners embarked in the Guinea frigate. They were empowered to assure pardon and indemnity to all the inhabitants of the said plantations that shall submit unto the present government and authority, as it is established in the Commonwealth of England. In case they shall not submit by fair ways and means, the commissioners were to use all acts of hostility that lay in their power to enforce them; and if they should find the people so to stand out as that they could by no other ways or means reduce them to their due obedience, they, or any two or more of them, whereof Captain Robert Dennis was to be one, had the power to appoint captains and other officers, and to raise forces within each of the aforesaid plantations, for the furtherance of the service; and such persons as should come in and serve as soldiers, if their masters should stand in opposition to the government of the English Commonwealth, might be discharged and set free from their masters, by the commissioners. A similar measure was adopted by Lord Dunmore in 1776. In case of the death of Captain Dennis, his place was to be filled by Captain Edmund Curtis, commander of the Guinea frigate.[217:A] It is a mistake to suppose that the members of the Long Parliament were all of them, or a majority of them, Puritans, in the religious sense of the term; but they were so in political principles.
In March, 1652, Captain Dennis arrived at Jamestown, and demanded a surrender of the colony. It is said by some historians that Sir William Berkley, either with a hope of repelling them, or of commanding better terms, prepared for a gallant resistance, and undertook to strengthen himself by making use of several Dutch ships,[217:B] which happened to be there engaged in a contraband trade, and which he hired for the occasion; that there chanced to be on board of the parliament's fleet some goods belonging to two members of the Virginia council, and that Dennis sent them word that their goods should be forfeited if the colony was not immediately surrendered; and that the threat kindled dissensions in the council, and the governor found himself constrained to yield on condition of a general amnesty.[217:C]
Such is the account of several chroniclers, but it appears to be based only on a loose and erroneous tradition. It would have been a mere empty gasconade for Sir William Berkley to oppose the English naval force, and the truth appears to be, that as soon as the parliamentary squadron entered the Chesapeake Bay, all thoughts of resistance were laid aside. If the story of the preparation for resistance were credited, it must at the same time be believed that this chivalry and loyalty suddenly evaporated under the more potent influence of pecuniary interest.[217:D]
The capitulation was ratified on the 12th of March, 1652, by which it was agreed that the Colony of Virginia should be subject to the Commonwealth of England; that the submission should be considered voluntary, not forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the country; and that "they shall have and enjoy such freedoms and privileges as belong to the free-born people of England;" the assembly to meet as formerly, and transact the affairs of the colony, but nothing to be done contrary to the government of the Commonwealth of England; full indemnity granted for all offences against the Parliament of England; Virginia to have and enjoy the ancient bounds and limits granted by the charters of former kings; "and that we shall seek a new charter from the Parliament to that purpose, against any that have entrenched upon the rights thereof," alluding no doubt to Lord Baltimore's intrusion into Maryland; that the privilege of having fifty acres of land for every person transported to the colony, shall continue as formerly granted; that the people of Virginia shall have free trade, as the people of England do enjoy, to all places, and with all nations, according to the laws of that Commonwealth; and that Virginia shall enjoy all privileges equally with any English plantation in America.
The navigation act had been passed in the preceding October, forbidding any goods, wares, or merchandise, to be imported into England, except either in English ships, or in ships of the country where the commodities were produced--a blow aimed at the carrying-trade of the Dutch. It was further agreed by the articles of surrender, that Virginia was to be free from all taxes, customs, and impositions whatsoever, and none to be imposed on them without consent of the grand assembly; and so that neither forts nor castles be erected, or garrisons maintained, without their consent: no charge to be made upon Virginia on account of this present fleet; the engagement or oath of allegiance to be tendered to all the inhabitants of Virginia; recusants to have a year's time to remove themselves and their effects out of Virginia, and in the mean time, during the said year, to have equal justice as formerly; the use of the Book of Common Prayer to be permitted for one year, with the consent of a majority of a parish, provided that those things which relate to kingship, or that government, be not used publicly; and ministers to be continued in their places, they not misdemeaning themselves; public ammunition, powder and arms, to be given up, security being given to make satisfaction for them; goods already brought hither by the Dutch to remain unmolested; the quit-rents granted by the late king to the planters of Virginia for seven years, to be confirmed; finally, the parliamentary commissioners engage themselves and the honor of the Parliament for the full performance of the articles, the governor and council and burgesses making the same pledge for the colony.[219:A]
On the same day some other articles were ratified by the commissioners and the governor and council, exempting the governor and council from taking the oath of allegiance for a year, and providing that they should not be censured for praying for, or speaking well of the king, for one whole year in their private houses, or "neighboring conference;" Sir William Berkley was permitted to send an agent to give an account to his majesty of the surrender of the country; Sir William and the members of the council were permitted to dispose of their estates, and transport themselves "whither they please." Protection of liberty and property were guaranteed to Sir William Berkley.
Major Fox, (comrade of Norwood,) commander of the fort, at Point Comfort, was allowed compensation for the building of his house on Fort Island. A general amnesty was granted to the inhabitants, and it was agreed that in case Sir William or his councillors should go to London, or any other place in England, that they should be free from trouble or hindrance of arrests, or such like, and that they may prosecute their business there for six months. It would seem that some important articles of surrender were not ratified by the Long Parliament.
The Fourth Article was, "That Virginia shall have and enjoy the ancient bounds and limits granted by the charters of the former kings, and that we shall seek a new charter from the Parliament to that purpose, against any that entrenched against the rights thereof." This article was referred in August, 1652, to the committee of the navy, to consider what patent was fit to be granted to the inhabitants of Virginia.
The Seventh Article was, "That the people of Virginia have free trade, as the people of England do enjoy, to all places and with all nations, according to the laws of that commonwealth; and that Virginia shall enjoy all privileges equal with any English plantations in America." The latter clause was referred to the same committee.
The Eighth Article was, "That Virginia shall be free from all taxes, customs, and impositions, whatsoever, and none to be imposed on them without consent of the grand assembly, and so that neither forts nor castles be erected, or garrisons maintained, without their consent." This was also referred to the navy committee, together with several papers relative to the disputes between Virginia and Maryland. The committee made a report in December, which seems merely confined to the Fourth Article, relative to the question of boundary and the contest with Lord Baltimore. In the ensuing July the Long Parliament was dissolved.[220:A]
The articles of surrender were subscribed by Richard Bennet, William Clayborne, and Edmund Curtis, commissioners in behalf of the Parliament. Bennet, a merchant and Roundhead, driven from Virginia by the persecution of Sir William Berkley's administration, had taken refuge in Maryland. Having gone thence to England, his Puritanical principles and his knowledge of the colonies of Virginia and Maryland, had recommended him for the place of commissioner. Clayborne, too, who had formerly been obliged to fly to England, and whose office of treasurer of Virginia Sir William Berkley had held to be forfeited by delinquency, and which the fugitive Charles had bestowed on Colonel Norwood--this impetuous and indomitable Clayborne was another of the commissioners sent to reduce the colonies within the Chesapeake Bay.
A new era was now opening in these two colonies; and the prominent parts which Bennet and Clayborne were destined to perform in this novel scene, exhibit a signal example of the vicissitudes of human fortune. The drama that was enacted in the mother country was repeated on a miniature theatre in the colonies.
FOOTNOTES:
[210:A] Description of New Albion, in Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.
[211:A] Hening, i. 353.
[211:B] Martin's History of North Carolina, i. 105-6. This is a valuable work, but marred, especially in the first volume, by the unparalleled misprinting, the engagements of the author not permitting him to correct the proofs.
[211:C] Force's Hist. Tracts, ii., "A New Description of Va."
[211:D] Hawks' Narrative, 57, citing Savage's Winthrop, ii. 334.
[212:A] Leah and Rachel, in Force's Hist. Tracts, iii., Leah and Rachel representing the two sisters, Virginia and Maryland.
[212:B] In the same year the Netherlands became independent.
[213:A] Hening, i. 360.
[215:A] Force's Hist. Tracts, iii.; Churchill's Voyages. A Major Norwood is mentioned in Pepys' Diary, i. 46.
[216:A] A Mr. Thomas Stagg was a resident planter of Virginia in 1652. Hening, i. 375.
[217:A] Virginia and Maryland, 18; Force's Hist. Tracts, ii.
[217:B] Only one ship appears to have been confiscated. Hening, i. 382.
[217:C] Chalmers' Annals, 123; Beverley, B. i. 54.
[217:D] Bancroft, Hist. of U. S., i. 223, citing Clarendon, B. xiii. 466, and other authorities, says that the fleet was sent over by Cromwell, and came to Virginia after having reduced the West India Islands. Cromwell, however, although at this time the master-spirit of England, had not yet assumed dictatorial powers.
[219:A] Hening, i. 363.
[220:A] "Virginia and Maryland," Force's Hist. Tracts, ii. 20, in note. Mr. Force, whose researches have brought to light such a magazine of curious and instructive historical materials, appears to have been the first to mention the non-ratification of some of the articles of surrender. He says: "Three of the articles were not confirmed," and therefore did not receive the last formal and final and definitive ratification which Burk [Hist. of Va., ii. 92,] supposes they did. But it appears that Burk referred only to the ratification by the parties at Jamestown, and had no reference to the ulterior confirmation by the Parliament.