Part 2 (1/2)

Photo by Virginia State Library.]

The new charter having received the final seal in March 1612, a new colony was established in Bermuda in the following July. Its early history has a double significance for the later history of Virginia. In the first place, the Bermuda colony emphasizes the growing interest of the adventurers in what might be produced in America as against what might be found by way of America. The occupation of the Bermuda Islands might almost be described as a retreat from the earlier search for a pa.s.sage to China. The move could be viewed also as a rea.s.sertion of an old interest in plundering the Spaniard, for the Bermudas lay athwart the homeward route of Spain's treasure fleets. But in any case the primary interest was in America and its own peculiar opportunities, and the attention given by the early settlers in Bermuda to experiments with tobacco, sugar, wine, ginger, and other such commodities suggests that their purpose was not so much to plunder the Spaniard as rather to emulate his success as a planter in the West Indies. Secondly, the adventurers showed a marked inclination to encourage each adventurer to meet his own costs. Provision was made for an early survey and division of the land, with the result that men put their money chiefly into the development of their own estates. A final survey was not completed until 1617, but at that date some of the Bermuda adventurers at least had known who their tenants were and approximately where their land would lie for three full years. Whether for these or for other reasons, Bermuda grew while Virginia languished. By 1616 over 600 colonists had reached the Somers Islands, where most of them survived. In contrast, Virginia had that year 350 people.

The Bermuda subscribers had been separately incorporated as the Somers Island Company with its own royal charter in 1615. Indeed, ever since 1612, when the Bermuda adventurers helped to relieve the financial embarra.s.sment of the Virginia Company by paying 2,000 for its newly acquired t.i.tle to Bermuda, the Somers Island adventurers seem to have functioned increasingly as a separate corporation. But the members.h.i.+p of the two companies was much the same. It had been the more active and interested of the Virginia adventurers who subscribed to the Bermuda joint-stock in 1612, and for twelve years thereafter the active members.h.i.+p of the Virginia Company came so close to duplicating the members.h.i.+p of the Bermuda Company that the two bodies often met virtually as one. Until 1619 Sir Thomas Smith served as governor of both companies.

The growing interest of the London adventurers after 1612 in the colonization of Bermuda did not mean that Virginia was wholly neglected. Funds secured from the lottery and from suits against delinquent subscribers were enough to keep the project alive. In 1612 the adventurers even sent out a stock of silkworms for a test of silk production. Needless to say, returning s.h.i.+ps brought back no silk; nor did they bring sugar or wine. Lumber, including the valuable black walnut, seems to have provided the chief cargo for return voyages. A s.h.i.+pment of tobacco, Virginia's first, in 1614 gave some ground for arguing that the agricultural experimentation to which the colonists had been committed for several years now would pay off eventually. So argued Sir Thomas Gates on his return home this same year after three years of service in the colony, but the fact that he had come back from Virginia apparently made more of an impression than did his argument. Others also came home, their contracted term of service ended, and rarely did they bring any news from Virginia which added good to its name. Instead, they talked of the severe discipline under which they had been forced to live, and made sport of the too hopeful propaganda which had first persuaded them to become adventurers in Virginia. The discipline, chiefly a.s.sociated with Dale's office as marshal, made his loyal decision to remain in the colony for another two years as lieutenant governor a further contribution to the ill repute of Virginia's name.

Dale finally came home in 1616, the year in which the dividend on the 1609 joint-stock fell due. The contrast between the high hopes of 1609 and the reality of 1616 was all too painfully apparent. Six hundred men, women, and children had sailed for Virginia in the first of these years under a plan to live and work together for a seven year period.

They would share, each according to his particular skill or apt.i.tude, in the common task of planting a colony, and they would live out of a common store. By 1616, towns were to have been built, churches and houses raised, and an increasing acreage brought under cultivation. A variety of profitable crops would have been tested, and markets established for them. The original stock of cattle would have increased through care until there were enough for all. At the same time, the trade with the Indians would have been put on a profitable basis, as would have mining operations and perhaps even a trade to Cathay. Such was the general prospect to which so many adventurers had responded in 1609. To the modern student all this seems so unrealistic as to be almost unbelievable, but unless one grasps the reality of the original dream he cannot hope to comprehend the extent of a later disillusionment.

There were no funds to be divided in 1616, but the company did declare a dividend of land--not the 500 acres per share that Alderman Johnson had suggested as a possibility in 1609 but the more modest total of 50 acres. This 50 acres, however, was designated as a first dividend.

Others would follow, for an ultimate total of perhaps 200 acres per share, as the area in the colony's ”actual possession” was enlarged.

Plans were announced for dispatching a new governor to Virginia with instructions for completing the necessary surveys, and the adventurers were urged to seize the opportunity to gain a desirable priority in the location of their shares by contributing 12 10s. toward meeting the necessary costs. In return for this contribution, the adventurer would be ent.i.tled to an additional 50 acres. The land now to be divided was that lying along the James River, and only those adventurers who submitted to the additional levy would be ent.i.tled to share in the division, except apparently for adventurers then living in the colony.

These were the old planters, as they came to be called, whose rights paralleled those of the old adventurers in England. It is evident that the adventurers were in no position to claim a monopoly as the just reward of their past sacrifices, for they also offered an immediate dividend, on terms no different from those governing the rights of the old adventurers, to any new adventurer who wished to join by paying 12 10s. per share. Such was the estate to which the Virginia Company had been reduced after ten years of effort.

To employ a term that was destined to become common at a later period of American history, the Virginia Company had become nothing more than a land company. Its one a.s.set was the land that had been bought with the sacrifices of the first ten years, and after 1616 all of its plans depended upon the hope that it might use its power to give t.i.tle to that land as an inducement for investment in the colony. In its advertis.e.m.e.nt in 1616 adventurers, both old and new, were invited to take up shares for occupancy by themselves or for development by tenants sent for the purpose. Perhaps because the first response to this appeal was disappointing, the company provided an additional inducement in 1617 by promising 50 acres per head for every person sent to the colony, the payment being due to the one who bore the cost.

This was the Virginia headright, as it came to be called, which was destined to remain the chief feature of the colony's land policy through many years after the demise of the company itself. Intended at first to encourage the adventurers in England to send the labor that was necessary for the development of the land, it served thereafter as a land subsidy of the immigration on which the colony lived and grew.

By 1618 the fortunes of Virginia were taking a turn for the better. The adventurers, or some of them at least, found encouragement in continued s.h.i.+pments of tobacco. These s.h.i.+pments were small and the quality of the tobacco could not be compared with the Spanish leaf of West Indian production which was finding a growing market in London despite King James's known disapproval of the habit on which the market grew. But the quality of Virginia tobacco, for which Sir Thomas Smith seems to have found a first market in the East Indies, no doubt could be improved as the planters learned the art of its cultivation and the adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, this success with tobacco, whatever the imperfections of the current product, could be viewed as a harbinger of other successful attempts to produce commodities the Spaniard had for so long and so profitably grown in his West Indian plantations.

Further encouragement came from the willingness of the handful of planters already in Virginia to remain there, and from the decision of Ralph Hamor and Samuel Argall, both of whom had formerly served the company in the colony, to return there. Especially significant were the arrangements under which Hamor and Argall planned their return early in 1617. One of the problems that had undoubtedly discouraged the adventurers from taking up the company's offer of a land grant in 1616 was the question of the supervision that could be provided for such tenants as they might elect to put on the land. In Bermuda, the adventurers had found an answer, or rather thought they had, by dividing the land into tribes, later designated as parishes, over which a bailif would exercise an office that was partly civil and partly traditional on the landed estates of England. In Virginia, Hamor and Argall pointed the way to a solution by entering into an a.s.sociation with several of the adventurers in England for the development of a jointly held plantation. Thus, in January 1617, the company awarded 16 bills of adventure to Hamor and six a.s.sociates for the 16 men they proposed to transport to Virginia at their own charge. The following month saw a similar transaction with Captain Argall and his a.s.sociates, five adventurers who had joined with this seasoned veteran to send out a total of 24 men. Argall went also as lieutenant governor in succession to George Yeardley, who had been left as deputy by Dale on his return to England in 1616, but the cost of getting the new governor out to his post seems to have been met entirely by his own a.s.sociates.

The arrangement has an obvious pertinence to an understanding of Argall's unhappy experience as governor, for he was later charged with neglect of the public interest through too great concern for his own personal interests. But here the emphasis belongs to the equally obvious fact that some of the adventurers were responding to an opportunity to send out tenants who would work under the management and direction of an experienced colonist.

In 1618 George Yeardley was back in London consulting with other adventurers, including some of the leading members of the company, who were interested in forming a.s.sociations for the development of ”particular plantations.” Late in the year he sailed for the colony as the newly designated governor of Virginia. With him he carried instructions which record for us further developments in the company's land policy. All adventurers, including delinquents who would pay up their subscription, were now promised 100 acres of land on the first dividend for each share of stock, and another 100 acres as a second dividend after the first had been occupied. Such of the ancient planters as had paid their own way to Virginia, which was to say those who had settled at their own cost before Dale's departure in 1616, were also to receive grants in like amount. The adventurers were encouraged to pool their rights for a common grant of land by the promise that their estate could be developed under their own management and would be treated as a separate administrative unit for civil and military purposes. What the company had in mind were the larger a.s.sociations already formed or on the point of being formed, such as that for the settlement of Southampton Hundred, which eventually embraced a nominal area of perhaps as much as 100,000 acres and in which the a.s.sociated adventurers invested a total of some 6,000. Another example is the a.s.sociation of Sir William Throckmorton, Sir George Yeardley, Richard Berkeley, George Thorpe, and John Smyth of North Nibley which early in 1619 received a first joint grant of 4,500 acres and which founded above Jamestown the plantation known as Berkeley Hundred. These new a.s.sociations were very much the same as the a.s.sociation of the Virginia adventurers which in 1612 had undertaken the colonization of Bermuda.

For the development of their common grant they pooled the necessary capital in their own joint-stock fund and directed its investment through their own courts, a.s.semblies, or committees as they saw fit.

For every tenant sent to the plantation, the a.s.sociated adventurers were ent.i.tled to an additional headright of 50 acres. They were awarded also an additional 1,500 acres for the support of public charges in the hundred, such as those incurred for the maintenance of a church and minister.

How many of the colonists who migrated to Virginia between 1618 and 1624 went by agreement with such a.s.sociations as these is difficult to say, but there can be no doubt that they were a very large part of the total. The Virginia Company, which had served theretofore as the immediate colonizing agent, was becoming more and more a supervisory body for the encouragement of individual and a.s.sociated adventurers in their own colonizing efforts. For itself, the company looked forward to a continuing revenue from quitrents to be paid, at the rate of two s.h.i.+llings per hundred acres after a term of seven years from the original grant, by all save the ancient adventurers and the planters who had migrated before 1616 at their own costs. To this revenue from quitrents could be added the benefit to be expected from the company's control of the colony's trade.

As in 1609, there seems to be no doubt that all plans looked ultimately to the establishment of individual land t.i.tles. Where the record has survived, the a.s.sociated adventurers clearly intended that their common grant would in time be divided. In the case of Berkeley Hundred, the evidence suggests too that the a.s.sociates used the promise of a share in this division for the recruitment of their first tenants. Yeardley's instructions reaffirmed the company's promise of a headright in terms inviting the migration of individual settlers at their own cost.

To understand the plans of 1618, the modern American needs to dismiss any idea that the isolated farm house of later America represented the ideal toward which men looked at this time. He should think rather of the English village community, or of the New England town, where men lived together with the advantages of a close social relations.h.i.+p and where the land they cultivated lay close at hand to the village and its church. If the a.s.sociated adventurers continued to depend for a time on variations of the original joint-stock plan, it was not merely because they wanted to share the risk of a still uncertain venture or because they were seeking some useful device for meeting the problems of management. It was also because the plantation they hoped to establish was to have at its heart a town, and it was thought that the town could best be built through some common effort.

What has been said above is not intended to suggest that the company's role after 1618 was to be purely supervisory. Although it had an acc.u.mulated debt of some 9,000, or possibly because of this debt, the company agreed for the encouragement of individual adventurers to a.s.sume heavy responsibilities of leaders.h.i.+p. It directed Yeardley to lay out four towns, or boroughs, along the James in which grants to individuals or the lesser a.s.sociations would fall--Kecoughtan at the mouth of the James, Henrico at the head of its navigation, and in between Charles City and James City. From the Bermuda adventurers the company borrowed the idea of establis.h.i.+ng a public estate intended to meet as nearly as possible all costs of government. In each borough 3,000 acres were to be set aside as the company's land for cultivation by its own tenants, who would work at half shares. Out of the company's moiety would come the support of all superior officers, excepting the governor, for whom an additional 3,000 acres would be set aside in James City. The company thus committed itself to a not inconsiderable program of colonization on its own responsibility.

One wonders what it was that inspired this renewed, and most ambitious, venture in Virginia--a venture that would carry to Virginia over the next five years something like 4,500 colonists. Several possibilities can be suggested. First of all, it should be noted that the interest of the London adventurers in the colonization of America had never faltered, despite repeated disappointment, since they had originally laid their hands to the task in 1606. This, at any rate, is true of the adventurers who led, and more especially of Sir Thomas Smith. After it had become no longer possible to push the adventure in Virginia, they had turned to Bermuda, where an initial success seems to have encouraged another try in Virginia. The plans adopted for Bermuda and later for Virginia indicate that the adventurers shrewdly capitalized on the desire of Englishmen in many different walks of life for t.i.tle to the undeveloped lands of America. A newly stirring missionary impulse had its part to play, if only by giving to the name of Virginia more helpful a.s.sociations. Argall had captured Pocahontas, the favored daughter of Powhatan, and with her as hostage the colonists had forced a peace with a heretofore implacable foe. More than that John Rolfe had married the Princess Pocahontas, as the English liked to call her, and Sir Thomas Dale as his last major service to the colony had brought her to England in 1616. In London, at court, and elsewhere, she and her entourage of Indian maidens had been a most effective advertis.e.m.e.nt of Virginia. Even after her own death in 1617, her maiden consorts had stayed on for many months before being finally returned to Virginia by way of Bermuda. Since 1613 the Virginia Company had leaned heavily on the missionary appeal in its efforts to encourage continued support of the colony, and it may well have been the company itself which prompted the bishops of the Church of England in the year of Pocahontas' death to sponsor a collection of funds for an Indian mission in Virginia. In any case, the approximately 1,500 raised for the purpose were turned over to the company, which in 1618 ordered Yeardley to set aside 10,000 acres at Henrico for the support of an Indian college.

The adventurers in 1618 also decreed certain legal and political reforms that were helpful in giving Virginia a better name than it had enjoyed for several years past. Disgruntled colonists returning from Jamestown had brought exaggerated stories of Dale's discipline, with the result that Virginia had gained the reputation almost of a penal colony. The company's renewed guarantee that the settlers would enjoy the full common law rights of Englishmen at home was coupled with provision for a general a.s.sembly of the colonists, a body which first met at Jamestown in 1619. In short, the company had the benefit in 1618, as so frequently in the past, of leaders.h.i.+p of the highest quality.

Sir Thomas Smith was still the governor of the company in 1618, and without question his leaders.h.i.+p must be considered to be a major factor shaping the new life then being infused into the colony. But a factional strife that would soon help to destroy the company already had made its appearance. The sources of this factionalism were varied, and some of them had little to do with the affairs of Virginia. Thus, at this time Sir Thomas found a determined enemy in the Rich family, headed by the wealthy Earl of Warwick and represented most ably by Sir Nathaniel Rich, who for many years was an active leader in the House of Commons. Warwick had a way of investing in voyages which bordered closely on piracy, and as a result of one such investment had become involved in a long and bitter conflict with Smith as the governor of the East India Company. Unquestionably of more fundamental importance was a growing opposition to Smith that was based upon discontent with the former management of the Virginia project. It seems almost as though the Virginia adventurers, before they could place full confidence in the new program for the colony's development, had to find some more satisfying explanation for the company's previous failures by charging gross mismanagement of its affairs. Such, at any rate, was the conviction to which many adventurers came, chiefly it would seem the lesser adventurers who were easily prejudiced against the great merchants of London, of whom Sir Thomas was the chief. In a company where the ultimate power to decide had been vested since 1612 in a general a.s.sembly of the adventurers voting by head rather than by share, the discontent of the lesser adventurers could become under the guidance of an effective leader a very potent force.

The leader was found in Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the ablest parliamentarians of seventeenth century England. Sandys himself was not one of the lesser adventurers. He had been a member of the Virginia Council since 1607, and in 1611 he had responded to the company's appeal for a subscription of 37 10s. by subscribing double that amount, thereby matching the subscription of Sir Thomas Smith. With the aid of other prominent adventurers, including the Earl of Southampton, and by making common cause for the moment with the Rich faction, Sir Edwin won election to the governors.h.i.+p of the company in the spring of 1619. In the absence of anything approaching a full record, it is impossible to say what justification there may have been for the charges of mismanagement that were brought against Smith's administration. It would not be surprising if over the long and frequently discouraging years of his leaders.h.i.+p, and especially in the period since 1612, some irregularities, some carelessness had crept into the conduct of the company's business. A very noticeable result of Sandys' election was an effort to systematize the company's procedures by adoption of new standing orders and regulations, and to bring order out of an alleged confusion of the company's records, especially those pertaining to the rights of the adventurers to land in Virginia. But it is possible to speak with full a.s.surance on only one point: no other of the adventurers had shown more courage or more devotion to the colony, no other of them deserves to be better remembered than Sir Thomas Smith.

There can be no question, however, that the reviving interest in Virginia received an additional stimulant from the fact that the business now had a new management. At the close of 1618, and largely as the result of emigration during that year, the population of the colony stood at approximately 1,000 persons. During the year after Sandys'

election, a total of 1,261 emigrants left England for Virginia, over 800 of them at the company's charge. This substantial evidence of the company's determination to a.s.sume the lead encouraged additional a.s.sociations of adventurers to take up patents for their own plantations, with the result that by the summer of 1622 the council could announce that over 3,500 people had migrated to Virginia since the spring of 1619. This was a remarkable record, testifying to the very great gifts Sir Edwin possessed as a leader and the confidence men placed in his leaders.h.i.+p.

The minutes of the company's courts have survived for the period after the election of Sandys, and so it is possible to get a clearer picture of the company's organization and procedures than can be had for any earlier date. Further help comes from the ”Orders and Const.i.tutions”

drawn up after Sandys' election and published in 1620 as part of a pamphlet skilfully written to convey the impression that Virginia's affairs were then being managed much better than in the past. The company depended basically upon decisions reached in four great quarter courts, which were general a.s.semblies of all the adventurers who wished to attend and which were scheduled for regular meeting on next to the last Wednesday of each of the quarterly terms in which the king's courts sat at Westminster. Only a quarter court could elect officers, either of the colony or of the company, enact laws and ordinances, or determine policies governing the distribution of lands in the colony and the conduct of its trade. On the Monday preceding each meeting of the quarter court, a preparatory court would settle the agenda for the following Wednesday, in order that the members might have warning of the business to be taken up at that time. Each fortnight, except in the ”long vacations” between court terms, an ordinary court would meet, again on Wednesday, with a quorum that required the presence of at least five members of the council, the treasurer or his deputy, and ”fifteene of the generality.” The hour of meeting for all courts was 2 P.M., and at no court could a question be put after 6 P.M. A decision reached by any lesser court, including the extraordinary court that might be called in case of special emergency, could be overridden by a quarter court. This was the governing body of the company, a popular a.s.sembly in which Sir Edwin often demonstrated his special talent as a parliamentary tactician. Attendance varied according to the importance of the business at hand, but as many as 150 might attend.