The Beginners of a Nation

Three things had been discovered in Dale's time that were of importance to the colony. Dale had by personal experiment learned the two fishing seasons in the James River. The colonists had begun the profitable cultivation of tobacco, and the economic success of the colony was thereby assured. Lastly, even Dale's small experiment with private interest rendered the apportionment of the land and the establishment of private ownership certain to come in time. As early as 1614 it was estimated that three men working for themselves raised more corn than ten times as many when the labor was for the public stock. [19 - We may trust Hamor's True Discourse, p. 17, for some of these details, though the book generally is discredited by the account given in the Tragicall Relation, which Hamor himself signed with others in 1623. A comparison of all these authorities makes it evident that only eighty-one who were ranked as "farmers" derived any benefit from Dale's three-acre division, while about two hundred others were probably left in unmitigated bondage.]

XIII

Argall's government. Captain Argall, who succeeded Sir Thomas Dale, was a bold and notable mariner. He had built the first Virginia vessel; he had traded with the Indians for corn with as much enterprise and address as Captain Smith had shown; he had in a small ship called the Dainty made the first experimental voyage to James River by the westward route, avoiding the long circuit by the Canaries and West Indies. It had been his fortune to be the first Englishman to see the American bison, which he found near the Potomac. He it was who by a shrewd trick had captured Pocahontas and held her as hostage; and he drove the French out of Maine, despoiling their settlement at Mount Desert. To a mastery of all the arts that make the skillful navigator he added the courteous politeness of a man of the city and the unfaltering rapacity of a pirate. As governor, he robbed the company with one hand and the hapless colonists with the other. While using the ships and men of the colony to carry on the Indian trade, he turned all the profits of it into his own wallet. The breeding animals of the colony accumulated by Dale he sold, and made no account of the proceeds. There was hardly anything portable or salable in Virginia that he did not purloin. He even plundered the property of Lady De la Warr, the widow of his predecessor. He boldly fitted out a ship belonging to Lord Rich, and sent an expedition of sheer piracy to the West Indies under an old letter of marque from the Duke of Savoy. When advices from England warned Argall that his downfall was imminent, he forthwith redoubled his felonious diligence. Lord Rich's intrigue. His chief partner in England was Lord Rich, who became the second Earl of Warwick in 1619, about the time of Argall's return, and who is known to history in his later character as a great Puritan nobleman, who served God while he contrived to better his estate with both hands by such means as troublous times put within his reach. He was not content with small pickings. Rich appears to have aimed at nothing less than wrecking the company and securing the land and government of Virginia. [20 - "And to protect Captain Argall from being called to an account for his government under shew of a new plantation to be set up in Virginia by Captain Argall and his partners, whereof the said earl (Warwick) hath since appeared to be one (which yet to this day hath had no beginning), there was procured a patent to the said captain and his associates for the said new plantation; whereby he and his Company, their heirs and assigns (save only in time of defence by war), were exempted from all power, authority, and jurisdiction to be from hence derived or there established, that so he might reign there as great and absolute master, without law or controulment, and without the fear of ever being called to any future reckoning… Whatsoever was remaining at that time in the colony belonging to the public … he converted it in a manner wholly to his own private use and possession, the very public lands cultivated, the Company's tenants and servants, their rents, corn and tributes of corn, their kine and other cattle, their stores and other provisions; whereby the company, being disabled in all appearance of ever setting up the same again or to bear the great burden of public charge both at home and abroad, being thus stripped of all revenue, the said Company must have failed and decayed and the whole colony have fallen in time into the hands of the said captain and his association to be there established, which seemeth to have been his prime and original desire… This course of depredation and roving not sufficing as likely to receive encounter and check from hence, new engines were used, some to dishearten and some to disgrace the Company, that so as it seemeth they might in time obtain the plantation and leave it as a prey to the said captain, his friends and followers, etc." Burk's History of Virginia, Appendix, vol. i. The extract is from the document known as The Company's Chief Root of Differences, etc. I have compared this copy with that in the MS. Records of the Virginia Company, Library of Congress, and find only slight verbal differences. At the instance of Warwick the authors of this paper – Lord Cavendish, Sir Edwin Sandys, and John and Nicholas Ferrar – were put under arrest in their own houses for this "impertinent declaration." The Warwick party had made "threats of blood" to deter Southampton from complaining to the king.] The first step toward this was to get a charter for a private or proprietary plantation within Virginia which should be exempt from all authority of the company and the colony. This independent government was to serve as a refuge from prosecutions for Argall and other piratical agents, and at last to possess itself of the wreck and remainder of Virginia. The second step in this intrigue was one that could have availed nothing in any time less respectful to shadowy technicalities and less prone to legal chicanery than that of James I. As we have seen, jealousy was excited in Virginia by the possibility of Captain Smith's wedding Pocahontas and setting up a claim to authority based on her inheritance from Powhatan. Stith, 142. A tradition lingered in Virginia a hundred years later that King James questioned Rolfe's right to intermarry with a foreign princess without the consent of his sovereign. If this had any foundation, it grew out of the value of a pretext in a time of technicality and intrigue. There may have been already a scheme to trade upon the hereditary right of Powhatan's daughter. Pocahontas died in England, leaving an infant son. Argall, on his arrival, hastened to notify the company that Opechankano, the brother and successor of Powhatan, had resolved not to sell any more land, but to reserve it for the son of Pocahontas when he should be grown. The company charged that this was a ruse to serve the ends which Argall, Rich, and others had in view. The larger plan miscarried, but Argall found his prey so tempting that he lingered longer than was safe, and got away in the nick of time by the aid of Lord Rich, who had stood guard like a burglar's pal, and who contrived to delay the ship carrying out the new governor until a small swift-sailing vessel could be sent to fetch away Argall and his varied booty of public and private plunder. The Companie's root of difference. MS. Rec. Va. Co., May 7, 1623. In that day justice often went by favor, and Argall consigned his spoils to hands so powerful that the Virginia Company, stripped bare by his treacherous villainy, could never recover any of its lost property. MS. Rec. Va. Co., passim. The embittered colonists had the bootless satisfaction of sending over after the runaway governor twenty-four bundles of accusatory depositions.

XIV

Fall of the lottery. From the first nobody reaped any profit from investments made in the new colony except the clique of merchants who had been allowed to sell wretched supplies for the distant settlers at ruinous rates. Rich and those interested with him had abundantly reimbursed themselves for all outlays on their part. The Virginia Company, swindled by commercial peculators at home, robbed by a pirate governor in America, and embarrassed by Spanish intrigues at the English court, had also been deprived of the lotteries, large and small, which had supplied money for sending eight hundred emigrants to Virginia. The lottery, which had fallen into great disrepute and had suffered "many foul aspersions," was abolished in compliance with a public sentiment. [21 - Birch's Court and Times of James the First, i, 311. Chamberlain to Carleton, May 16, 1614: "Sir Thomas Gates is come from Virginia, and brings word that plantation will fall to the ground if it be not presently supplied. He speaks of wonderful commodities that are to be had there if we could but have patience and would be at the cost to bring them to perfection." Out of this necessity for some present support came the great lottery. It was recommended by the Privy Council to the Mayor of Canterbury, February 22, 1615. There was a "running lottery" of smaller adventures in Paul's Churchyard before the "great standing lottery" was instituted, and then there were other "running lotteries" "in many other places after." Purchas, p. 1773. No doubt there were corruptions and abuses in these lotteries. The merchants prospered while Virginia languished. Its unpopularity is attributed to "malignant tongues," in the MS. Records of the Virginia Company, i, 158, and the overthrow of the lottery may have been part of the plot of those who sought soon after to wreck the company itself.] The company was tottering swiftly to a fall; vultures like Warwick were waiting longingly for its death.

Revival of interest, 1618. But there set in once more a widespread patriotic movement in its behalf. Such movements were characteristic of that vital age when love of country was fast coming to count for more as a motive to action than loyalty to the person of a prince. "Divers lords, knights, gentlemen, and citizens, grieved to see this great action fall to nothing," came to its rescue with one final effort which resulted after some years in putting the enterprise well beyond the danger of failure. They formed auxiliary societies within the Virginia Company, after the custom of corporations in that day. Each of these undertook to plant a settlement or "hundred." In one year the population rose from less than four hundred to about a thousand. The newly active element infused a more liberal spirit into the company, and set about correcting the abuses in its management.

XV

The Great Charter, 1618. The movement of 1618 was retarded by the disgrace into which the colony had fallen. An unbroken series of misfortunes and disappointments, the bad conduct of the company's affairs, the ill fame of Dale's remorseless tyranny, and the fresh Argall scandal, had made Virginia odious. Pub. Rec. Off. Col. Papers, iii, 40. Disc. of the Old Va. Co. One convict to whom the alternative was proposed, chose hanging in preference to transportation to Virginia. It was needful that something should be done to restore credit. The men who took the lead in the patriotic movement of 1618 on behalf of Virginia were mainly liberal statesmen – that Earl of Southampton who is known as the friend of Shakespeare; Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the greatest men of a great age, whose brave support of popular liberty had lost him the favor of the king; Sir John Danvers, and others. The records before the election of Sandys in 1619 were probably destroyed to conceal the guilt of the managers. We can only conjecture that the rising influence of the men who were able a few months later to overthrow the ruling party had much to do with the most notable change that took place in the conduct of affairs in the Virginia Company at this time. On the 13th of November, 1618 – memorable but neglected and forgotten date – the Virginia Company, acting within the powers conferred on it by its charter, granted to the residents in Virginia a document styled a "Great Charter or Commissions of Priviledges, Orders, and Lawes." No copy of this instrument now exists, but some of its provisions have been preserved. It established a legislative body, to consist of councilors of estate and of representatives or burgesses chosen by the several "plantations" or hundreds, and it limited the power of the governor. This charter was the starting point of constitutional government in the New World. It contained in embryo the American system of an executive power lodged mainly in one person, and a Legislature of two houses. One might without much exaggeration call this paper a sort of Magna Charta of America, and it was a long and probably a deliberate step toward popular government. [22 - My attention was first attracted to the date of the Great Charter of November 13, 1618, by a minute in the handwriting of Secretary Williamson in the Public Record Office, as follows: "Those Adventurers & Planters by Vertue of y

s

Lett

Patent of Incorporačon &c. made a Great charter of Lawes & Ord

for y

govermn

of the Country. It bore date at London, Nov. 13

1618." Col. Pprs, i, 11. The proceedings of the first Assembly in Virginia are preserved in the Public Record Office in Pory's Report. This report gives the only information we have regarding the provisions of this long-lost charter. An abstract of these proceedings is printed in the Calendar of Colonial Documents, and the whole document was reprinted in the New York Historical Society Collections, second series, vol. iii, and yet more carefully in the Colonial Records of Virginia, 1874. There is an allusion to this charter in the Briefe Relation, 1624. Various Virginia land grants deduce their authority from the Great Charter of Laws and Orders of November 13, 1618, as we learn from a note in the Aspinwall Papers, p. 14. There are many allusions to the charter of 1618 in the Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company in the Library of Congress.] If the results that have followed it be considered, it can hardly be accounted second in importance to any other state paper of the seventeenth century.

XVI

Division of land. Not only did this admirable charter establish a representative form of government and do away with martial law, but it fairly launched the Virginians on the current of freedom and advancement by authorizing a liberal division of land to all those who had arrived before the departure of Sir Thomas Dale. [23 - The Code of Lawes, Divine, Morall and Martiall, by which Dale reigned was edited and published by Strachey in 1612, and reprinted in Force's Tracts, vol. iii. This code appears to have had no other sanction than the approval of Sir Thomas Smythe, the governor of the company. The beneficial effect of these laws is maintained in Hamor's Discourse, in Rolfe's Relation, and in certain letters of Dale in the Record Office. It was not, indeed, the government by martial law, but Dale's abuse of his power, that wrought the mischief. After the emancipation the old settlers lived in perpetual terror lest some turn of the wheel should put them once more in the power of Sir Thomas Smythe and his divine and martial laws. See especially the Additional Statement appended to the Discourse of the Old Virginia Company. On the long and bitter dissension that resulted in the overthrow of the company, see Arthur Woodnoth's Short Collection of the most remarkable Passages from the Original to the Dissolution of the Virginia Company, a rare work of great value to the historian of this period.Note 17, page 56. (#x_2_i68) Rolfe's Relation has it that the ship which brought Yeardley brought also the news of the election of Sandys and John Ferrar. But Yeardley arrived in Virginia on the 18th of April (O.S.), and Sir Thomas Smythe's resignation did not take place until ten days later. Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company. The news that Sir George Yeardley did bring was no doubt that the power of Sir Thomas Smythe and his party was broken, and that the actual control of affairs was in the hands of such men as Sandys, Southampton, Cavendish, Danvers, and the two Ferrars. The whole policy of the company indicates that the new party was really in power, and the appointment of such a man as Yeardley was probably the work of the rising party. The records before the resignation of Sir Thomas Smythe were probably destroyed for purposes of concealment.] The oldest land titles in Virginia are deduced from the authority of the Great Charter of 1618. Aspinwall Papers, p. 14, note. Communism, pernicious everywhere, is at its worst in an infant settlement. True Declaration, p. 25. "Every man sharked for his own bootie," says a writer on Virginia in 1609, "but was altogether careless of the succeeding penurie." The distribution of land abolished the common stock system of labor, and opened a pathway to the ambition of the diligent.

The good news in Virginia. Tidings of the great change wrought in their condition and prospects by the new charter reached the dwellers on the James River in the spring of 1619, and the colonists were "ravished with so much joy" that they felt themselves "now fully satisfied for their long labors and as happy men as there were in the world." Note 17. (#x_3_i18) They valued their liberties as no man can who has not known the bitterness of bondage, and in 1623, when they had reason to fear the re-establishment of the old tyranny, the Virginia Assembly petitioned the king in these strong words: "Rather than be reduced to live under the like government, we desire his Majesty that commissioners may be sent over to hang us." Tragicall Relation, 1623. We have here, perhaps, the very first of the many protests of colonial Legislatures against oppression from England.

XVII

The sending of wives to Virginia. In 1618, before the adoption of the charter, it was concluded, in the quaint phrase of the time, "that a plantation can never flourish till families be planted and the respects of Wives and Children fix the people on the soyle," or, in simpler words, that a colony of bachelors can hardly found a state. [24 - Manuscript Book of Instructions, etc., Library of Congress. Letter to the Governor and Council by the ship Marmaduke, August 12, 1621. A proposal to send women had been made seven years earlier. Commons Journal, 1, 487, May 17, 1614. Extract from Martyn's Speech (for which he was reprimanded): "That they require but a few honest Labourers burthened with Children. – Moveth, a committee may consider of the means for this, for Seven Years; at which some of the Company may be present." On November 17, 1619, Sir Edwin Sandys pointed out in the court of the company that the people of Virginia "were not settled in their mindes to make it their place of rest and continuance." "For the remedying of the Mischiefe and for establishing a perpetuitie of the Plantation," he proposed the sending of "one hundred young maides to become wives." Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company, i, 44, 45. Two women, the first in the colony, had arrived in September, 1608. Oxford Tract, 47. There were women in Gates's party in 1610. It was even reported that some English women had intermingled with the natives. Calendar Colonial Papers, i, 13. An allowance of food to women in De la Warr's time is proof that women were there. In 1629 there was living Mistress Pearce, "an honest, industrious woman," who had been in Virginia "near twenty years." Rolfe (a copy of whose Relation is among the Duke of Manchester's MSS. now in the British Public Record Office) sets down a remainder of seventy-five of the three hundred and fifty-one persons in the colony at Dale's departure, as women and children. It is worth recalling here that D'Ogeron, who governed Santo Domingo in 1663 and after, supplied the buccaneers with wives brought from France; and the plan was also put into practice in Louisiana about a century later than the Virginia experiment, and the same expedient, as is well known, was resorted to in Canada. In Virginia more pains were taken to have all the women thus imported of a good character than in some of the French colonies.] The first ship laden with home-makers carried over ninety maids, and the company thought it necessary to promise special rewards to the men who should marry these young women. If the maids were as certified, "young, handsome, and well recommended," they needed no such dowry in a land that had hardly a woman in it. Young or old, handsome or homely, the maids did not prove a drug. Shipload after shipload of them were eagerly bought by the planters, who had to pay a round sum in the high-priced tobacco of that early time to defray the cost of transporting these wives. Besides having to pay for his wife, the planter could have her only on the condition of winning her consent; and the eager courtship that ensued on the arrival of a shipload of maids must have been one of the most amusing scenes in the settlement of America. Suitors far outnumbered the women, and the latter had things pretty much their own way. The first cargo of this interesting merchandise was landed in 1619, but as late as 1624 the women were probably in danger of setting the colonists by the ears, for the governor felt obliged to issue a proclamation threatening fine or whipping for the offense of betrothal to more than one person at a time. [25 - The belief that these maids were "pressed" or coerced into going is probably erroneous (see the speech of Sandys, July 7, 1620, Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company). He says, "These people (including the maids) are to be provided as they have formerly beene, partlie by printed publication of the supplies indicated, together with the conditions offered to these publique tennants, partlie by help of such noble friends and others in remote parts as have formerlie given great assistance." The notion that some of the maidens were pressed seems to have had its rise in the counterfeiting of the great seal and the issuing of forged commissions to press maidens for "breeders for the King" in the Bermudas and Virginia in order to extort money. One Owen Evans was accused of such practices in October, 1618 (Sainsbury, p. 19), and one Robinson was hanged, drawn, and quartered for this or similar offences in November of the same year (Birch's Court of James I, 108). In order to encourage the adventurers or shareholders to subscribe to the sending of maids, a town was laid off in Virginia to be called Maydstown. The subscribers were to be allowed shares in this town. Manuscript Records, May 20, 1622, on the general subject; also Records under date of November 3, 1621, and the 17th of the same month, June 11, and November 21, 1621, and the manuscript book in the Library of Congress, which I refer to in these notes as Manuscript Book of Instructions, pp. 76 and 89. I may remark here that this book has not been in use in recent times for reference. Its origin is uncertain, nor can the authorities of the library tell where it came from. It was compiled in the latter part of the seventeenth century, judging from internal evidence, and was perhaps kept among the records of the colony for reference on what we should call constitutional questions. I found a loose memorandum laid in its pages in the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, to whom the book probably once belonged.] In 1632, thirteen years after the first shipment, we find the colony still being replenished with women sent in the same fashion. In that year, two, whose behavior during the voyage had been disgraceful, were sent back as unfit to be mothers of Virginians. The precaution could not have been of much practical use, but it indicates the early growth of a wholesome local pride. When there were house mothers in the cabins, and children born in the country, the settlers no longer dreamed of returning to England; and there was soon a young generation that knew no other skies than those that spanned the rivers, fields, and vast primeval forests of their native Virginia, which now for the first time became a home.

XVIII

The struggle ended, 1624. It is not the Virginia colony alone that we have seen in the crucible. The fate of English colonization was no doubt settled by the experiments made during the first years on the James River, and the story told in this chapter is but the overture to the whole history of life in the United States. In our colonizing age a settlement might be made in the heart of Africa with a far smaller loss of life than was incurred in the first sixteen years in Virginia. From 1607 to 1623 there were landed in Virginia more than six thousand people. The number that returned to England was inconsiderable, but in the year 1624, when the colony passed under a royal government, there remained alive in the colony only twelve hundred and seventy-five. Of those who came in these early years four fifths perished. A part of this loss was due to radically wrong conceptions of the nature, end, and proper methods of colonization, a part to corrupt and incompetent management in the London Company. The bad character of many of the earliest emigrants was one cause of difficulty. The writers of the time probably exaggerated this evil in order to excuse the severity of the government and the miseries into which the settlers fell. But the loss of many of the early comers must be accounted a distinct gain to Virginia. Unfitted for their environment, they were doomed to extinction by that pitiless law which works ever to abolish from the earth the improvident, the idle, and the vicious.

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

THE PROCESSION OF MOTIVES

I

The chief mistake. The cause of the sorrows of Virginia will be more plainly seen if we turn again to the motives that propelled Englishmen to plant a colony. The chief mistake lay in the main purpose. If the founding of a state had been other than a secondary and remote end, the managers might have sent at first families and not bachelors, farmers and not gentlemen, laborers and not riff-raff. But more visionary motives dominated the action. A state was planted, but something else was mainly intended by the first projectors. The work seemed continuous, but the end in view shifted and the actors gradually changed. The only motive that held from first to last, and ran through all the rest, was the rivalry with Spain.

The rivalry with Spain. The colonies attempted by Frobisher and Gilbert were to serve as relays in the work of exploration for a sea passage to the Pacific and the search for mines, but they mark strongly the influence of the Spanish example on English projects. Ralegh was a lifelong opponent in peace and war of Spanish intrigue and aggression, and his efforts to plant colonies in the virgin land were suggested by a knowledge of the almost exhaustless treasure that flowed into Spanish coffers from America. The opportune capture of a Spanish carack bound homeward from Mexico with letters describing the wealth of Mexican mines brought the support of English merchants to Ralegh's undertaking. Imbued with the same spirit, Ralegh's governor wrote from Roanoke Island in 1585 that his colony would be a means of deliverance from the domination of Spain, "whose strength doth altogether grow from the mines of her treasure." Lane to Sydney. Aug. 12, 1585. Sainsbury. In the perilous isolation of the little company on Roanoke Island, Lane assures himself that God will feed his men by means of ravens rather than suffer their "enemies the papists" "to triumph at the overthrow of this most Christian action." Lane to Walsingham. Aug. 12, 1585. Sainsbury. The home-staying English of that age were spurred to colony-planting by three main motives – cupidity, patriotic feeling, and religious zeal – and all of these were provoked by emulation and jealousy of Spain. [26 - Two of the chapter heads to Hakluyt's Westerne Planting, printed in 2d Maine Historical Collections, ii, sufficiently indicate the views prevailing at the time:"V. That this voyadge will be a greate bridle to the Indies of the Kinge of Spaine, and a meane that wee may arreste at our pleasure for the space of tenne weekes or three monethes every yere, one or two hundred saile of his subjectes Shippes at the fysshinge in Newfounde lande."VI. That the mischefe that the Indian threasure wroughte in time of Charles the late Emperor, father to the Spanishe Kinge, is to be had in consideration of the Queens moste excellent Majestie, least the contynuall comynge of the like threasure from thence to his sonne worke the unrecoverable annoye of this realme, wherof already wee have had very dangerous experience."The heading of the first chapter should be added: "I. That this westerne discoverie will be greately for thinlargemente of the gospell of Christe whereunto the princes of the refourmed relligion are chefely bounde, amongst whome her Majestie ys principall."It would be foreign to the purpose of the present work to tell the story of Spanish jealousy of Virginia, and of the diplomatic intrigues for the overthrow of the colony. See documents in Mr. Alexander Brown's Genesis of the United States. One can not but regret that Mr. Brown did not give also the original of his Spanish papers; no translation is adequate to the use of the historian.Note 2, page 78. (#x_3_i30) This method was recommended to the colonists as late as 1753 in Pullein's Culture of Silk for the Use of the American Colonies, and it had probably long prevailed on the continent of Europe.]

II

Delusions in colony-planting. The prolonged movement for a colonial establishment, which extended over the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth and almost the whole of the reign of James I, was kept alive by delusions. The ultimate ends for which colonies were proposed and planted in the last quarter of the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth century were none of them attained. The movable passage through North America to the Pacific was still leading explorers a merry dance when the first Jamestown emigrants sailed in 1606, and gold mines of comminuted mica, of iron pyrites, of Indian mineral paints, and of pure fable were potent attractions for some time after. The gradual increase of geographical knowledge caused the "South Sea" to take shelter in the unknown region behind the mountains, and the gold mines reported by Indians and discovered by sanguine prospectors were somehow lost in the interminable forests. In this exigency the first colony must have perished for want of support if new hopes as illusive as the old had not moved the English people to avert such a calamity.

Commodities. The production of commodities which the ungenial climate of the British Islands refused to grow was thought of from the beginning, and they became after 1616 the main hope of wealth from Virginia. For example, Carlisle's treatise, Anderson's Commerce, year 1583. It seemed grievous that England should spend her money in buying wine and silk from southern Europe and naval stores from the Baltic. The only maxim of political economy generally accepted in that day was that a nation is enriched by getting money from abroad and keeping it at home. The precious metals constituted the only recognized riches. Laws were made to restrain the exportation of gold and silver, and sumptuary laws to discourage the consumption of those things that must be bought of the foreigner. Efforts to raise in Great Britain the products of the Mediterranean region would have proved successful if the climate had been half as favorable to such enterprises as the government. Wine. The arguments advanced in favor of the possibility of producing wine in England did much, no doubt, to secure the sunshine of royal favor for experiments made to that end, but climatic conditions were inexorable. King James busied himself to no profit in raising mulberry trees and nursing a private stock of silkworms, in imitation of Henry IV, the reigning King of France, who succeeded in producing cocoons in the Tuileries but not in making silk culture profitable in the north of France. Silk. Anderson on the year 1589. Mulberries were first planted in England in 1608, two years after the sailing of the Virginia argonauts. James sent circulars to persons of influence among his subjects asking them to cultivate mulberry trees, and, in the years immediately following, the silk fever ran its course alongside the excitement about the great lottery in behalf of the Virginia colony. 1609. Hakluyt, spreading sails for America in every breeze, hastened to announce at the first mention of silk culture that mulberry trees, "apt to feed silke wormes to make silke," were a "chiefe commoditie" of Virginia.

The first principles that govern colony-planting were not yet understood. It was proposed to force everything from a forlorn camp of men dwelling under roofs of bark and sedge, environed by treacherous foes and in constant peril of starvation. The raising of silkworms was begun in Virginia in 1613, and before the colony was nine years old it was able to send to England silk that doubtless had cost more than a hundred times its market value. The experiment came to nothing. It could not have happened otherwise amid the miseries of those early years. The rats, which opportunely destroyed the eggs of the silk moth, were made to bear the responsibility for the failure.

A new silk fever. Silk was little known in England at the beginning of Elizabeth's reign, but it came into great request a few years later. Cal. Dom. S. P. James I, p. 428. In 1617 Lord Carew declares that there is "a madness for silk instead of cloth." This rage for silk led to the establishment of silk manufacturing in England; throwsters, dyers, and weavers were brought to England from abroad and settled in Spitalfields, "the cheap end of its metropolis," and in Moorfields. It seemed more than ever important to produce silk in the king's dominions, in order to supply these manufacturers with material without importation from alien lands. Accordingly, a new effort was made in 1620 to secure raw silk from Virginia. The Earl of Southampton, ever eager to promote the Virginia colony, "writt into Italy, France, and Spayne" for silkworm "seed"; the king gave some from his own stock, and the expert who had charge of the king's worms was sent over to look after the business. A French book on the subject was translated to instruct the colonists. Pory's Report, Pub. Rec. Off. The first Virginia Assembly in 1619 had passed a law to promote the raising of the mulberry. To save expense, the colonists at this time, or later, planted the trees in hedgerows and mowed them with a scythe. Phil. Trans. I, 201. In 1621 orders were sent from England that none but members of the Council and the heads of hundreds should wear silk, unless they had made it themselves. Hening i, 14. The prohibition shows how general was the craze for silk clothing. Original Records of Colony of Va. The climate of Virginia proved genial enough, but the massacre of 1622, the bitter Indian conflicts that ensued in 1623, and the epidemic of the same year, following one another swiftly, were enough to annihilate a hundred feeble projects. The real doom of silk-raising, however, came from the fact that the culture of tobacco in virgin soil was incalculably more profitable and vastly less troublesome to pioneers than hatching silkworms' eggs in one's pocket or bosom, or sleeping with them in a small box under one's bolster and covering them in the warm bed on rising. Note 2. (#x_4_i6) The project was blighted in the bud by adverse economic conditions – a killing frost more deadly to such enterprises than an ungenial climate. But a lesson in economic principles is one of the hardest for men to learn. Long after the colony had become prosperous, English projectors and Virginia experimenters tried again and again to supplant tobacco with silk. If we may credit the report, Virginia furnished a coronation robe of silk for Charles I, and Charles II certainly wore silk from worms hatched and fed in his Virginia dominions. One Esquire Digges brought Armenians to Virginia to attend his worms. 1655. But in the Reformed Virginia Silkworm, by Hartlib, the friend of Milton, it is announced that a young lady had discovered that silkworms would care for themselves on the trees, "to the instant wonderful enrichment of all the planters there, requiring neither cost, labour, or hindrance in any of their other employments." It is also suggested on the eager title-page of the pamphlet that "the Indians, seeing and finding that there is neither Art, Pains, or Skill in the thing," will "incontinently fall to raising silk." Comp. Va. Richly Valued, 1650, and Leah and Rachel, 1636. Not only were the gentle savages, and especially their women and children, to devote themselves to silk, but the American caterpillar – "the natural silkworm" as it was called – was expected to spin for the market if his cocoon could be "refined." [27 - The authorities on the early efforts to raise silk, in addition to those cited in the text and the margin, are too numerous to find place here. The most valuable of all is, of course, the copy of the Records of the Virginia Company after April, 1619, in the Library of Congress, passim. See, for example, under date of December 13, 1620, and June 11, 1621. See also A Declaration of Virginia, 1620, and Purchas, pp. 1777-1787, Hamor's True Discourse, Smith's General History, Book II, Anderson's Commerce under 1620, and various state papers abstracted by Sainsbury, with Sainsbury's preface to the first volume of his Calendar, and Hening, passim. The reader is also referred to Mr. Bruce's Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, issued as these pages are passing into the hands of the printer. The wildness of some of the proposals for the production of Virginia silk in the Commonwealth period is almost surpassed by other projects of the time. In Virginia Richly Valued, 1650, perfume was to be extracted from the muskrat, and the James River sturgeon were to be domesticated. Fishes may be "unwilded," says the author. Besides feeding silkworms, the Indians were to be used in pearl fisheries in Virginia waters. Wyckoff on Silk Manufacture, Tenth Census, says that experimental silkworms had been taken to Mexico by the Spaniards in 1531, without any permanent results.]

Hening ii, 242. By 1666 the silk delusion had passed, and the Virginia Assembly repealed all acts for the encouragement of mulberry trees. Ten years later, Glover, the botanist, found many of these trees still standing as melancholy witnesses to the waste of energy by the earlier promoters and settlers of the colony. Phil. Trans. XI, 628. Almost every other American colony made the same experiment for itself, and Virginia renewed its endeavors from time to time, each generation forgetting what its fathers had learned.

III

Silk-grass. Along with the silk fever went the silk-grass craze. 1585. Ralegh's people had seen the Indians wearing garments woven of the fiber of the Yucca filamentosa, the "Adam's needle and thread" of our popular speech. A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia. Hariot, in his account of it, declares that "the like grows in Persia," and that much of the "silk-works" coming thence to Europe was made of this fiber. He probably confounded the yucca with the ramie plant of the East, of which grass cloth is made. Of the yucca fiber taken to England in 1585, "a piece of silk grogram" was made, and of course pronounced "excellent good"; it was even presented to the queen. The coarse and rather brittle fiber of this plant was exalted by enthusiasts into something nearly equal to silk. Ordinances for planting it were sent from England; at least one legislative act in its favor was passed by the Virginia Assembly, and the most foolish hopes were entertained regarding the profit to be had from it. Proceedings of Va. Assembly, 1619. 2d N. Y. Hist. Society Coll. iii, 348. By 1619 it had come to be called "silk flax," and it was then advocated for homelier uses, such as cordage and linen, and every householder was compelled by law to set a hundred plants; the governor himself set five thousand. In 1624 it is spoken of as "a commoditie of speciall hope and much use." Purchas IV, p. 1777. There were by this time those who ventured to say that the silk-grass enterprise was "full of difficultie"; but the managers in England easily got rid of this objection by attributing the difficulty to "negligence and want of experience." Instr. of 24 July, 1624. MS. Bk. of Instr. Libr. of Cong. They were just then intent on finding some commodity that would take the place of tobacco, which was frowned upon by both court and Parliament. In spite of all discouragement, the hope of good results from the yucca fiber outlasted that generation, and was in full vigor in 1649, sixty-four years after Hariot's mistake.

IV

Wine. It was also proposed to produce wine in Virginia for English consumption. No more gold and silver should go out of the realm to buy port and canary to the profit of foreigners and the impoverishment of the good and loyal subjects of his Majesty. The instructions on this point were clear, and before the Virginia exiles had secured bread to stay their hunger they had made wine of the sour wild grapes of the country. French vine-dressers were sent over a little later and were forbidden to plant tobacco, but were compelled to employ themselves about vines, with the care of silkworms for variety. MS. Rec. Va. Co. i, 343. In 1621 these Frenchmen sent to England a cask of wine, the arrival of which was duly celebrated. Other experimental casks of wine were afterward sent to England from America at long intervals, but without decreasing the profits of wine growers in the Old World.

All the commodities sought from Virginia were unsuited to conditions in a new country. Other products sought. To the folly of making such experiments at all where living itself was an experiment, the managers added the folly of crowding a multiplicity of problematic enterprises on the colony at the same time. With a virgin continent in which to produce novelties, all things seemed possible in an age so hopeful. Plants of every clime grew rank in the imagination of projectors. Virginia was a wonderland, and it was readily believed without evidence that the "soyle and clymate" were "very apt and fit for sugar canes"; "also linseed and rapeseeds to make oiles," as a black-letter pamphlet of 1609 expresses it. Nova Brittania. Along with "orenges, limons, and almonds," this official writer proposes to plant "anniseeds, rice, cummin, cottonwool, carroway seeds, ginger, madder, olives, oris, sumacke," and, as if this breathless list were not enough for one new land, he adds, "and many such like that I can not now name." If we may trust the publications of the company, various West India plants were tried in the very first days of the colony, while the threefold peril of death from famine, pestilence, and savage war was imminent.

Timber and naval stores. But it was not enough to wring from an infant colony the products of the south; those derived from the north of Europe were straightway to be got there also. MS. Rec. Va. Co. 31 May and 23 June, 1620. German millwrights – "Dutch carpenters," in the phrase of the records – were brought from Hamburg by John Ferrar to build Virginia sawmills; timber was still sawed by hand in England. Pitch, tar, and potash were to be produced by Poles sent out for the purpose in the second year of the colony. Patriotism dictated that England should be relieved of her dependence on foreign countries for naval stores. Virginia had forests: why should she not produce these things? [28 - Even in Elizabeth's time efforts had been made to procure naval stores without the intervention of foreign merchants. As early as 1583, Carlisle, who was son-in-law to Secretary Walsingham, had subscribed a thousand pounds toward an American colony, which it was urged would buy English woolens, take off idle and burdensome people, and, among other things, produce naval stores. In 1601 Ralegh had protested eloquently against the act to compel Englishmen to sow hemp. "Rather let every man use his ground to that which it is most fit for," he said. Edwards, Life of Ralegh, p. 272.]

It had been found that the savages eagerly received glass beads in exchange for corn and peltries. Glass-making. Nothing more was required to prove the profitableness of glass-making. Some Germans were sent to the colony in 1608, and glass works were established. [29 - Why Germans were sent it is hard to say, as glass was made in England as early as 1557. Glass was produced in Virginia, according to Strachey, who says: "Although the country wants not Salsodiack enough to make glasse of, and of which we have made some stoore in a goodly howse sett up for the same purpose, with all offices and furnases thereto belonging, a little without the island, where Jamestown now stands." History of Travaile into Virginnia Brittannia, p. 71. The house appears to have been standing and in operation in 1624. Calendar of Colonial Documents, January 30, February 16, and number 20, pp. 38, 39.] For some reason no proper materials were available at first, and it became necessary to request that sand might be sent from England to make Virginia glass of at the glass works in the woods near Jamestown. The German glass blowers were prone to run away to the Indians, among whom work was lighter and food more abundant. The tribesmen encouraged these desertions by providing dusky wives for the men whose skill with tools and weapons they valued highly. In 1621 the glass business was revived, and this time it was intrusted to Italian workmen. Iron works. About the same time iron works were established at Falling Creek, with "forty skilled workmen from Sussex to carry them forward." [30 - Purchas, p. 1777, says that one hundred and fifty persons were sent over two years earlier to set up three iron works, but the statement seems hardly credible. In the midst of the misery following the massacre of 1622, and notwithstanding the imminent probability of the overthrow of the company, which was already impoverished, some of the adventurers or shareholders sent nine men to Virginia to try a different method of making iron from the one that had previously been used. Letter of August 6, 1623, in Manuscript Book of Instructions in Library of Congress, fol. 120. Having "failed to effect" the making of iron "by those great wayes which we have formerly attempted," the undiscouraged visionaries "most gladly embraced this more facile project" of making iron "by bloom," but with a like result, of course.] Twenty-five ship carpenters were sent to ply their trade on the James River, and it was also arranged that oil was to be distilled from walnuts by the "apothecaries." George Sandys was sent over in July, 1621, to have entire control of all schemes for staple commodities. There was a certain fitness in intrusting these creatures of the imagination to a poet. Pineapples, plantains, and other fruits were to be started forthwith. There was once again great hope from the "rich commodity of silk," an endowed school for Indians was founded, and the little Virginia pool became iridescent with many frail bubbles. Result of the massacre. The sudden and frightful massacre by the savages in March, 1622, obliterated instantly all vain and premature projects. This calamity did not cause the failure of these foredoomed schemes; it only saved them from a painful and lingering death, and provided their friends with a decent epitaph for them. The people who survived the massacre were decimated by an epidemic in the following year. What strength they could spare from frequent battles with the savages they spent in growing corn and tobacco, which last, of all the things tried, proved to be the only commodity profitable for export.

V

Tobacco. Against tobacco King James had written a book. A Covnter-Blaste to Tobacco, 1604. It was denounced in Parliament and regarded by all public-spirited men as an evil. Nevertheless, it turned the scale and saved the colony. In colony-planting the problem is fundamentally an economic one, and economic problems are solved by coarse and homely means. [31 - The raising of tobacco in Virginia was one of the earliest projects entertained. "We can send … tobacco after a yeare or two, five thousand pounds a yeare." Description of the Now-discovered river and Country of Virginia, with the Liklyhood of ensuing Ritches by England's Ayd and Industry, May 21, 1607. Public Record Office, printed in Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, iv, 59, 62. The paper is supposed to be from the pen of Captain Gabriel Archer.] John Rolfe, the first Englishman that ventured to wed an Indian, planted the first tobacco at Jamestown in 1612, and by 1616 the better West India variety had perhaps been substituted for the harsh kind grown by the Virginia Indians, and by them called "uppowoc" or "apooke." Tobacco prospered and was profitable, to the disgust of the pedantic king and the sorrow of all who had cherished hopes of beautiful products from a colony upon which so much poetic sentiment had been lavished. Neither gold nor spices came as had been expected; the strings of pearls seen by Ralegh's men were not again to be found, or were perhaps transformed on investigation into wampum beads; the silver mine once discovered on the upper James had vanished forever; tropical fruits refused to grow; even madder and woad failed, and, though the indigo plant would readily mature, nobody knew how to manufacture the dye. Silk was troublesome and unprofitable, shipbuilding, and such coarse but patriotic products as naval stores had come to naught. But the detestable "weed," as King James had dubbed it, throve apace. As early as 1617 the waste margins of the broad streets of Jamestown were planted with it by the eager settlers. The English merchants grasped at the profits of it, the farmers of the customs rejoiced in the heavy duties imposed on it, and a powerful mercenary interest in the prosperity of Virginia was established. [32 - In 1604 the king had, by a royal commission addressed to "our treasurer of England," arbitrarily raised the duty on tobacco from twopence a pound to six shillings tenpence. He was probably moved to make this surprising change by his antipathy to tobacco; but by increasing the profits of the farmers of customs and monopolists of tobacco, he no doubt contributed to that abandonment of Virginia to tobacco raising which seemed to him so lamentable. The use of Spanish tobacco in England was general before that from Virginia began to take its place. Barnabee Rich says, in 1614: "I have heard it tolde that now very lately there hath bin a cathologue taken of all those new erected houses that have set vppe that trade of selling tobacco in London, ande neare about London, and if a man may beleeue what is confidently reported, there are found to be vpward of 7000 houses that doth liue by that trade." He says such shops were "almost in euery lane and in euery by-corner round about London." The Honestie of this Age, p. 30.] By 1624, when the Virginia Company was dissolved, the danger that the colony would be abandoned as a result of Spanish intrigues, Indian massacres, or prolonged discouragement had passed away. Public spirit, patriotism, and religious enthusiasm no longer guarded it as a feeble house plant. It had struck root in the outdoor soil of human self-interest and its life was assured. From that time the colony that had been for seventeen years a fairyland to dreamers in England and a perdition to its inhabitants, became a sober money-making enterprise, uninteresting to enthusiasts and philanthropists. [33 - The MS. records of the Virginia Company and the State papers relating to Virginia in the Public Record Office, London, are the most important authorities on the subjects treated in the text. On the commodities attempted at the outset, Manuscript Book of Instructions, Library of Congress, the first volume of Hening's Statutes, passim, and Purchas, pp. 1777-1786, passim. On the inferiority of the Indian tobacco, see Strachey, p. 121.]

VI

Motives of sentiment. In the preceding sections of this chapter we have traced what may be called the series of commercial motives that, sometimes in succession, often in co-operation, propelled the Virginia movement. The agitation for a colony was primarily a commercial one. The London or Virginia Company by which it was carried forward had been organized in the form of the great trading corporations of the time, such as the Muscovy Company and the East India Company, and it was expected to yield large returns. But though commercial in form and purpose, the Virginia Company from the outset was able to appeal successfully in every emergency to motives that were far from mercenary. Into the chain-threads of commercial enterprise was woven a woof of patriotic feeling and religious sentiment.

VII

Rise of the patriot party in the Virginia Company. Dale's empty-handed return, and Argall's homecoming with hands full of the spoil of both colony and colonists, were severe blows to the hope of profit from Virginia, and thereafter commercial motives fell to a second place. The company began to pass more and more out of the control of traders like Sir Thomas Smyth and Alderman Johnson, and the corrupt clique of predatory merchants, as well as out of the reach of voracious noblemen like Warwick. More and more it passed into the hands of the great liberal statesmen whose leader was the incorruptible Sir Edwin Sandys, a man of rare gifts and knowledge and of great resoluteness. These men had suffered some disappointment, no doubt, in their struggle for parliamentary freedom in England. They might have succeeded better had their antagonist been a strong king, but against the pusillanimity, the vanity, the vacillation, and the pedantic dogmatism of James little permanent headway could be made. Without relinquishing the conflict in the House of Commons, they took it up in the Quarter Courts of the Virginia Company. In this new field they found themselves afresh confronted by the obstinacy of the king, who was stirred up to oppose them by the discarded governor, Sir Thomas Smyth, and his friends, by Warwick, and by all the partisans of high prerogative and all the advocates of the Spanish match. Woodnoth's Short Collection, p. 6. "Bedchamber men" and others about the king's person were engaged to work upon the king to come to the rescue of Sir Thomas Smyth's "honor." Peckard's Ferrar, 113. The Spanish ambassador Gondomar, who had spies in the Virginia Company, took pains to feed James's discontent. He told the king that it was time for him to look into the Virginia courts, which were held in the great hall of the house of the Ferrar family. Too many of the king's nobility and gentry resorted thither, in order to be in company with the popular Lord Southampton and the dangerous Sandys. They were deep politicians, and they entertained designs beyond a tobacco plantation. Their leaders, he said, were "subtle men of high courage who regarded neither his master nor their own."

Sir Edwin Sandys. Sandys, as assistant to Sir Thomas Smyth and virtual governor, had already succeeded in establishing in Virginia a constitutional state with a representative government. Royal Hist. MS. Comm. viii, II, 45. He was furthering plans for the foundation of the little separatist state of New Plymouth, and his enemies set agoing tales that he had dark designs of removing with the Pilgrims to America, in order to found a democratic state there. In 1619 Sir Thomas Smyth tendered his resignation, and the company, to his surprise, it would appear, accepted it, and chose Sandys to his place. When, in 1620, his first year of government drew to a close, Sir Edwin Sandys erected an elegant ballot-box in the midst of the hall of the Ferrars, that the brilliant assemblage of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and merchants might by a secret vote exercise the right of choice without any constraint. The king's interference. Just as the assemblage was about to begin voting, two clerks of the signet were announced with a message from the king forbidding the company to choose Sandys. 1620. "Choose the devil, if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys," was one form in which the king expressed his aversion. Southampton, braving the king's displeasure, allowed himself to be elected, with Sandys for deputy. In June, 1621, both Southampton and Sandys were imprisoned. A land of freedom. This attracted attention to Virginia as a "refuge from a more oppressive government in England." In three months' time twenty-five ships set sail for the colony, which gained an impetus from the king's opposition that put it beyond the danger of destruction by the calamities of the next two years. Even before the massacre and pestilence of 1622 and 1623, Southampton was assured by friends at court that it would come to "push of pike," and that the company would be overthrown. [34 - Peckard's Life of Ferrar supplies many of the particulars in this section. The Records of the Virginia Company and other original authorities do not sustain all of Peckard's statements. The author's view is evidently distorted by biographer's myopia. He often seems to depend on tradition, but in some passages his touch is more sure, and he writes like a man who has documents before him. Arthur Woodnoth's Short Collection of the Most Remarkable Passages from the Originall to the Dissolution of the Virginia Company is of great value. It is a scarce tract, which I met first in the White-Kennett Library, in the rooms of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. It is also in the British Museum, Harvard College, and the Library of Congress. It is to be taken with discrimination, but the view of the inner workings of court intrigue as it affected Virginia is so fresh and detailed that it would be a pity to miss its information. It was printed in 1651. There is a brief sketch of the life of Sandys in Brown's Genesis of the United States, ii, 993.] The charter of the company was vacated in 1624, but free government had so taken root in the colony that it could never afterward be quite extirpated. A new English state with a popular government had been founded of deliberate purpose by a group of English statesmen, at the head of which, and easily first, was Sir Edwin Sandys, whose great service to the people and nation that were to come has been almost forgotten.

VIII

Religious propagandism. We shall not have taken a just account of Virginia colonization if we do not reckon religious motives among the many forces that carried that wavering enterprise to success. From the excitement about American exploration and colonization the English church caught its first missionary impulse. The Indian captives brought from America at various times gave to Englishmen the novel sight of men and women from beyond the bounds of Christendom; people who had never been baptized, and had never learned to wear English garments, "naked slaves of the devil," as one of the early Virginia clergymen described them. To the benevolent desire of Englishmen for the deliverance of the savages from devil-worship and semi-nudity, there was added the natural wish for ecclesiastical extension. The separation of England from the Roman hierarchy had been a blow to the aspiration for an unattainable catholicity cherished in one form or another by Christian ecclesiastics of almost every school. It was not possible that the great men who were leaders of the English church in the reigns of Elizabeth and James should be content with the narrow limits of "the little English paddock," while Spanish conquerors and missionary priests were winning for the Roman communion a new and vast dominion in America. [35 - Hakluyt's Discourse concerneing Westerne Planting, printed first in the Maine Historical Collections, second series, vol. ii, page 11. "And this enterprise the princes of religion (amonge whome her Majestie ys principall) oughte the rather to take in hande because papists confirme themselves and drawe other to theire side shewinge that they are the true Catholicke churche because they have bene the onely converters of many millions of infidells. Yea, I myself have bene demanded of them how many infidells have bene by us converted."] English ecclesiastics felt keenly the reproach made against them by the Roman Catholics that they were not "converters of infidels."

Zeal of the clergy. Perhaps the earliest of all Anglican missionaries was Robert Hunt, the first minister in Virginia, a light shining in a dark place indeed. He bore with unfaltering courage and a sweet-hearted patience rarely equaled in the history of martyrdom the accumulating miseries of Jamestown, until he also perished in the general mortality. His nobleness of spirit softened the detestable rivalries of the early leaders. The most active and influential writers in favor of colonization were clergymen such as Hakluyt, Symonds, Purchas, and Crashaw. Other clergymen, following in the footsteps of Hunt, risked life itself in the Virginia colony, while devout laymen spent their money in its behalf. Thus did Anglican zeal further a colonization that, by a curious perversity of outcome, resulted in founding a nation of dissenters.