VIRGINIA, 1606-1689.
BY ROBERT A. BROCK,
_Corresponding Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society._
ON the petition of Hakluyt (then prebendary of Westminster), Sir
Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and other “firm and hearty lovers
of colonization,” James I., by patent dated the 10th of April, 1606,
chartered two companies (the London and the Plymouth), and bestowed on
them in equal proportions the vast territory (then known as Virginia)
lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north
latitude, together with the islands within one hundred miles of the
coast stretching from Cape Fear to Halifax.
[Illustration]
The code of laws provided for the government of the proposed colonies
was complicated, inexpedient, and characteristic of the mind of the
first Stuart. For each colony separate councils appointed by the King
were instituted in England, and these were in turn to name resident
councillors in the colonies, with power to choose their own president
and to fill vacancies. Capital offences were to be tried by a jury, but
all other cases were left to the decision of the council. This body
was, however, to govern itself according to the prescribed mandates
of the King. The religion of the Church of England was established,
and the oath of obedience was a prerequisite to residence in the
colony. Lands were to descend as at common law, and a community of
labor and property was to continue for five years. The Adventurers,
as the members of the Company were termed, were authorized to mine
for gold, silver, and copper, to coin money, and to collect a revenue
for twenty-one years from all vessels trading to their ports. Certain
articles of necessity, imported for the use of the colonists, were
exempted from duty for seven years. Sir Thomas Smith, an eminent
merchant of London, who had been the chief of the assignees of Sir
Walter Raleigh and ambassador to Russia, was appointed treasurer of the
Company.
But the body of the men who composed the expedition had little care
for forms of government. A wilder chimera than the impractical devices
of the selfish and pedantic monarch possessed them. “I tell thee,”
says Seagull, in the play of _Eastward Ho!_ which was popular for
years, “golde is more plentifull there than copper is with us; and for
as much redde copper as I can bring I’ll have thrise the weight in
gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans ... are pure gould; and all
the chaines with which they chaine up their streets are massie gold;
and for rubies and diamonds, they goe forth in Holydayes and gather
‘hem by the seashore, to hang on their children’s coates and sticke
in their children’s caps, as commonly as our children weare saffron
gilt brooches and groates with holes in ‘hem.” A life of ease and
luxury is pictured by Seagull, and, as the climax of allurement, with
“no more law than conscience, and not too much of eyther.”[227] The
expedition left Blackwall on the 19th of December, but was detained
by “unprosperous winds” in the Downs until the 1st of January,
1606-7. It consisted of three vessels,—the “Susan Constant,” of one
hundred tons, with seventy-one persons, in charge of the experienced
navigator Captain Christopher Newport (the commander of the fleet);
the “God-Speed,” of forty tons, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, carrying
fifty-two persons; and the “Discovery,” of twenty tons, Captain John
Ratcliffe, carrying twenty persons. The crews of the ships must have
constituted thirty-nine of the total of these, as the number of the
first planters was one hundred and five. In the lists of their names,
more than half are classed as “gentlemen,” and the remainder as
laborers, tradesmen, and mechanics. Two “chirurgeons,” Thomas Wotton,
or Wootton, and Wil. Wilkinson, are included; the service of the first
of them in a professional capacity is afterwards noted. Sailing by the
old route of the West Indies, the Virginia coast was reached on the
26th of April, and in Chesapeake Bay on that night the instructions
from the King were examined. These, with a mystery well calculated
to promote mischief, had been confided to Newport, in a sealed box,
with the injunction that it should not be opened until he reached
his destination. The councillors found to be designated were Edward
Maria Wingfield, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Christopher Newport,
John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and John Kendall. Wingfield, a man of
honorable birth and a strict disciplinarian, who had been a companion
of Ferdinando Gorges in the European wars, was chosen president; and
Thomas Studley, cape-merchant, or treasurer.
On the 29th of the month a cross was planted at Cape Henry, which
was so named in honor of the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King
James; the name of his second son, then Duke of York, afterwards
Charles I., being perpetuated in the opposite cape. The point at which
the ships anchored the next day was designated, in thankful spirit,
Point Comfort. On the 13th of May, 1607, the colonists landed at a
peninsula on the northern bank of the river known to the natives as
Powhatan, after their king, but to which the English gave the name
James River. Upon this spot, about fifty miles from its mouth, they
resolved to build their first town, to which they also gave the name
of the English monarch. The selection of this site is said to have
been urged by Smith and objected to by Gosnold. The better judgment
of the latter was vindicated in the sequel. Smith—at this time not
yet twenty-eight years of age, a man the most remarkably endowed among
those nominated for the council, and whose administrative capacity was
to be so prominently evidenced—was at first excluded from his seat
because, says Purchas, he had been “suspected of a supposed mutinie”
on the voyage over.[228] This proscription in all probability had no
more warrant than in the jealousy which the recent adventurous career
and the confident bearing of Smith may be supposed to have excited,
since he was admitted to office on the 10th of June following. The
colonists at once set about building fortifications and establishing
the settlement. Newport, Smith, and twenty-three others in the mean
time ascended the river in a shallop on a tour of exploration. At an
Indian village below the falls was found a lad of about ten years
of age with yellow hair and whitish skin, who, it has been assumed,
was the offspring of some representative of the ill-fated Roanoke
Colony left by White, of which it is narrated that seven persons
were preserved from slaughter by an Indian chief.[229] On the 26th
of May, the day before the return of the explorers to Jamestown, the
unfinished fort (not completed until the 15th of June) was attacked by
the savages, who were repulsed by the colonists under the command of
Wingfield. The colonists had one boy killed and eleven men wounded,
one of whom died. Communion was administered by the chaplain, the Rev.
Robert Hunt, on Sunday, the 21st of June, and on the next day Newport
sailed for England in the “Susan Constant,” laden with specimens of the
forest and with mineral productions. A bark or pinnace, with provisions
sufficient to sustain the colonists for three months, was left with
them. The prospect of the men thus cast upon their own resources, was
not promising. Disturbed by the fatuous hope of discovering gold,
divided by faction, unused to the labor and hardships to which they
were now subjected, and in daily peril from the hostility of the
savages, the difficulties of success were enhanced by the insalubrity
of their ill-chosen settlement. By September fifty of them, including
the intrepid Gosnold, had died, and the store of damaged provisions
upon which they mainly depended was nearly exhausted. Violent
dissension ensued, which resulted, on the 10th of the month, in the
displacement of Wingfield by Ratcliffe in the office of president,
and the deposing, imprisonment, and finally the execution of Kendall;
by which the Council, never more than seven in number (including
Newport), and in which no vacancies had been filled, was reduced to
three only,—Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin. Reprehensible as the conduct
of the colonists at this period may have been, they yet held religious
observances in regard. Their piety and reverence are instanced both
by Smith and Wingfield. In Bagnall’s narrative in the _Historie_ of
the first, it is noted that “order was daily to haue Prayer, with a
Psalme;”[230] and Wingfield states that when their store of liquors was
reduced to two gallons each of “sack” and “aqua-vitæ,” the first was
“reserued for the communion table.”[231]
[Illustration: JAMESTOWN.
This cut follows a sketch made about 1857 by a travelling Englishwoman,
Miss Catherine C. Hopley, and shows the condition of the ruined church
at that time.]
Differences among the colonists being somewhat allayed, labor was
resumed, habitations were provided, a church was built, and, through
the courage and energy of Smith, supplies of corn were obtained from
the Indians. Leaving the settlement on the 10th of December, Smith
again ascended the Chickahominy to get provisions from the savages, but
incurring their hostility, two of his companions, Emry and Robinson,
were killed, and Smith himself was taken captive. Being released after
a few weeks, on the promise of a ransom of “two great guns and a
grindstone,” he returned to Jamestown. On his arrival there he found
the number of the colonists reduced to forty, and that Captain Gabriel
Archer had been admitted to the Council during his absence. Archer
caused him to be arrested and indicted, under the Levitical law, for
allowing the death of his two men; but in the evening of the same day,
Jan. 8, 1607-8, Newport returned from England with additional settlers
(a portion of the first supply), and at once released both Smith and
Wingfield from custody. Within five or six days the fort and many of
the houses at Jamestown were destroyed by an accidental fire. Newport,
accompanied by Matthew Scrivener (newly arrived and admitted to the
Council), with Smith as interpreter and thirty or forty others, now
visited Powhatan at his abode of Werowocomico. This was at Timberneck
Bay, on the north side of York River. On the east bank of the bay still
stands a quaint stone chimney,[232] subsequently built for Powhatan by
German workmen among the colonists. Hostages were exchanged; Namontack,
an Indian who was taken to England by Newport, being received from
Powhatan for Thomas Savage, a youth aged thirteen, who for many years
afterwards rendered important service to the colonists as interpreter.
With supplies of food obtained from Powhatan and Opecancanough, the
chief of the Pamunkey tribe, the party returned to Jamestown.
The ship being loaded with iron ore, sassafras, cedar posts, and
walnut boards, Newport, with Archer[233] and Wingfield as passengers,
sailed on the 10th of April from Jamestown, and on the 20th of May,
1608, arrived in England. The diet of the colonists was soon reduced
to meal and water, and through hunger and exposure death diminished
them one half. While they were engaged in re-building Jamestown and
in planting, to their great joy Captain Nelson, who had left England
with Newport, but from whom he had been separated by storm and detained
in the West Indies, arrived in the ship “Phœnix,” with provisions
and seventy settlers, being the remainder of the first supply of one
hundred and twenty. He departed for England on the 2d of June with a
cargo of cedar-wood, carrying Martin of the Council. Smith, in an open
boat, with fourteen others,—seven gentlemen (including Dr. Walter
Russell of the last arrival), and seven soldiers,—accompanied the
“Phœnix” down the river, and parted from her at Cape Henry, with the
bold purpose of exploring Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and
establishing intercourse with the natives along their borders. To
the islands lying off Cape Charles, Smith gave his own name. After a
satisfactory cruise, having crossed the bay, visited its eastern shore,
and explored the Potomac River some thirty miles, the party returned
late in July to Jamestown for provisions. Smith again embarked on the
24th of July to complete his explorations, with a crew of twelve,
similarly constituted as before, but with Anthony Bagnall as surgeon.
At the head of Chesapeake Bay they were hospitably entertained by a
tribe of Indians, supposed by Stith[234] to have been of the Iroquois,
or Five Nations, and also by the Susquehannas, at a village on the
Tockwogh (now Sassafras) River. The highest mountain to the northward
observed by them was named Peregrine’s Mount, and Willoughby River
was so called after the native town of Smith. The Indian tribes
on the Patuxent, and the Moraughtacunds and the Wighcomoes on the
Rappahannock, were visited. Richard Featherstone, a “gentleman” of the
party, dying, was buried on the banks of the last-named river, which
was explored to the falls, near where Fredericksburg now is. Here
a skirmish took place with the Rappahannock tribe. The Pianketank,
Elizabeth, and Nansemond rivers were in turn examined for a few miles.
From the results of these discoveries Smith composed his Map of
Virginia, a work so singularly exact that it has formed the basis of
all like delineations since, and was adduced as authority as late as
1873 towards the settlement of the boundary dispute between the States
of Virginia and Maryland. The drawing was sent to England by Newport
before the close of the year, and in 1612 was published in the _Oxford
Tract_. Returning to Jamestown, Sept. 7, 1608, Smith was elected
President of the Council over Ratcliffe (who suffered from a wounded
hand and was enfeebled by sickness), and now, for the first time, he
had the “letters patent” of office placed in his hands.[235] Ever
firm, courageous, and persevering, he at once instituted vigorous and
salutary measures adapted to the wants and conducive to the discipline
of the colonists. The church was repaired, the storehouse covered,
and magazines erected. Soon after, Newport arrived for the third time
from England, with the second supply of settlers, seventy in number.
Among them were Captains Peter Wynne and Richard Waldo, Francis West
(the brother of Lord Delaware), Raleigh Crashaw, Daniel Tucker, some
German and Polish artisans for the manufacture of glass and other
articles, Mrs. Thomas Forest, and her maid, Ann Burras. The last named
of these—the first Englishwomen in the colony—became, before the
close of the year, the wife of John Laydon. This was the first marriage
celebrated in Virginia. Newport had left England under the silly
pledge not to return without a lump of gold, or without tidings of the
discovery of a passage to the North Sea, or without the rescue of one
of the settlers of the lost company of Sir Walter Raleigh. The Company
added the equally impossible condition that he should bring a freight
in his vessel of equal value to the cost of the expedition, which was
£2,000. In case of failure in these respects, the colonists were to be
abandoned to their own resources. Much valuable time was consumed by
Newport in an idle coronation of Powhatan (for whose household he had
brought costly presents), and in futile efforts for the accomplishment
of the visionary expectations of the Company. At last there was
provided by those of the colonists who remained at their labors a part
of a cargo of pitch, tar, glass, and iron ore, and Newport set sail,
leaving at Jamestown about two hundred settlers. The iron ore which he
carried was smelted in England, and seventeen tons of metal sold to the
East India Company at £4 per ton. In the preservation of the colony
until the next arrival, the genius and energy of Smith were strongly
but successfully taxed,—for Captain Wynne dying, and Scrivener and
Anthony Gosnold, with eight others, having been drowned, he alone of
the Council remained. His measures were sagacious. Corn was planted,
and blockhouses were built and garrisoned at Jamestown for defence,
and an outpost was established at Hog Island, to give signal of the
approach of shipping.
At the last place the hogs, which increased rapidly, were kept. But
being subject to the treachery of the natives, the colonists were in
continual danger of attack, and were too slothful to make due provision
for their wants, so that the tenure of the settlement became like a
brittle thread. The store of provisions having been spoiled by damp or
eaten by vermin, their subsistence now depended precariously on fish,
game, and roots. The prospects of the colony were so discouraging at
the beginning of the year 1609, that, in the hope of improving them,
the Company applied for a new charter with enlarged privileges. This
was granted to them, on the 23d of May, under the corporate name of
“The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of
London for the first Colony in Virginia.” The new Association, which
embraced representatives of every rank, trade, and profession, included
twenty-one peers, and its list of names presents an imposing array of
wealth and influence. By this charter Virginia was greatly enlarged,
and made to comprise the coast-line and all islands within one hundred
miles of it,—two hundred miles north and two hundred south of Point
Comfort,—with all the territory within parallel lines thus distant
and extending to the Pacific boundary; the Company was empowered to
choose the Supreme Council in England, and, under the instructions and
regulations of the last, the Governor was invested with absolute civil
and military authority.
[Illustration]
With the disastrous experience of the previous unstable system, a
sterner discipline seems, under attending circumstances, to have been
demanded to insure success. Thomas West (Lord Delaware), the descendant
of a long line of noble ancestry, received the appointment of Governor
and Captain-General of Virginia. The first expedition under the second
charter, which was on a grander scale than any preceding it, and which
consisted of nine vessels, sailed from Plymouth on the 1st of June,
1609.
[Illustration]
Newport, the commander of the fleet, Sir Thomas Gates,
Lieutenant-General, and Sir George Somers, Admiral of Virginia,
were severally authorized, whichever of them might first arrive at
Jamestown, to supersede the existing administration there until the
arrival of Lord Delaware, who was to embark some months later; but
not being able to settle the point of precedency among themselves,
they embarked together in the same vessel, which carried also the
wife and daughters of Gates. Among the five hundred colonists, were
the returning Captains Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, divers other
captains and gentlemen, and, by the suggestion of Hakluyt, a number
of old soldiers[236] who had been trained in the Netherlands. On the
23d of July the fleet was caught in a hurricane; a small vessel was
lost, others damaged, and the “Sea Venture,” which carried Gates,
Somers, and Newport, with about one hundred and fifty settlers, was
cast ashore on the Bermudas. Captain Samuel Argall (a relative of Sir
Thomas Smith) arrived at Jamestown in July, with a shipload of wine and
provisions, to trade on private account, contrary to the regulations of
the Company. As the settlers were suffering for food, they seized his
supplies. Many of them at this time had gone to live among the Indians,
and eighty had formed a settlement twenty miles distant from the
fort. Early in August the “Blessing,” Captain Archer, and three other
vessels of the delayed fleet sailed up James River, and soon after the
“Diamond,” Captain Ratcliffe, appeared, without her mainmast, and she
was followed in a few days by the “Swallow,” in like condition.
The Council being all dead save Smith, he, obtaining the sympathy of
the sailors, refused to surrender the government of the colony; and
the newly arrived settlers elected Francis West, the brother of Lord
Delaware, as temporary president. The term of Smith expiring soon
after, George Percy—one of the original settlers, a brother of the
Earl of Northumberland, and a brave and honorable man—was elected
president, and West, Ratcliffe, and Martin were made councillors.
[Illustration: George Percy]
Smith, about Michaelmas (September 29), departed for England or, as
all contemporary accounts other than his own state, was sent thither
“to answer some misdemeanors.”[237] These were doubtless of a venial
character; but the important services of Smith in the sustenance of
the colony appear not to have been as highly esteemed by the Company
as by Smith himself. He complains that his several petitions for
reward were disregarded, and he never returned to Virginia. Modern
investigation has discredited many of the so-long-accepted narratives
in which he records his own achievements and judges so harshly the
motives and conduct of all others of his companions; and the glamour
of romance with which he invested his own exploits has been somewhat
dissipated. But whatever may have been the fervor of his imagination
as a historian, it was more than equalled by his fertility of resource
in vital emergencies, and there is ample evidence that his services in
the preservation of the infant colony were momentous. After his return
to England but little is recorded of him until the year 1614, during
which he made a successful voyage to New England, under the auspices
of the Plymouth Company, which gained for him the title of Admiral of
New England.[238] Whatever may have been the defects of Smith, the
greatness of his deeds has impressed him enduringly on the pages of
history as one of the most prominent figures of his period. At the time
of his departure for England he left at Jamestown three ships, seven
boats, a good stock of provisions, nearly five hundred settlers, twenty
pieces of cannon, three hundred guns, with fishing-nets, working-tools,
horses, cattle, swine, etc.
Jamestown was strongly fortified with palisades, and contained between
fifty and sixty houses. The favorable prospects of the colony were soon
threatened by the renewal of Indian hostilities. Provisions becoming
scarce, West and Ratcliffe embarked in small vessels to procure corn.
The latter, deceived by the treachery of Powhatan, was slain with
thirty of his companions, two only escaping,—one of whom, Henry
Spelman, a young gentleman well descended, was rescued by Pocahontas,
and lived for many years among the Patowomekes. He acquired their
language, and was afterwards highly serviceable to his countrymen as an
interpreter. He was slain by the savages in 1622. No effort by tillage
being made to replenish their provisions, the stock was soon consumed,
and the horrors of famine were added to other calamities. The intense
sufferings of the colonists were long remembered, and this period is
referred to as “the starving time.” In six months their number was
reduced to sixty, and such was the extremity of these that they must
soon have perished but for speedy succor. The passengers of the wrecked
“Sea Venture,” though mourned for as lost, had effected a safe landing
at the Bermudas, where, favored by the tropical productions of the
islands, they, under the direction of Gates and Somers, constructed
for their deliverance two vessels from the materials of the wreck and
cedar-wood, the largest of the vessels being of eighty tons burden.
The Sabbath was duly observed by them under the faithful ministry of
Mr. Bucke. Among the passengers was John Rolfe and wife,[239] to whom
a male child was born on the island, who was christened Bermuda; a
girl also born there was named Bermudas. Six of the company, including
the wife of Sir Thomas Gates, died on the island. The company of
one hundred and forty men and women embarked on the completed
vessels—which were appropriately named the “Patience” and the
“Deliverance”—on the 10th of May, 1610, and on the 23d they landed at
Jamestown. Here the church bell was immediately rung, and such of the
famished colonists as were physically able repaired to the sanctuary,
where “a zealous and sorrowful prayer” was offered by Mr. Bucke. The
new commission being read, Percy, the acting president, surrendered
the former charter and his credentials of office. The fort was in a
dismantled condition, and most of the habitations had been consumed for
fire-wood. So forlorn was the condition of the settlement that Gates
reluctantly resolved to abandon it and to return to England by way of
Newfoundland, where he expected to receive succor from trading-vessels.
Some of the colonists were with difficulty restrained from setting fire
to the town, Gates, with a guard to prevent it, remaining on shore
until all others had embarked. A farewell volley was fired; but the
leave-taking of a spot associated with so much suffering was tearless.
In the mean time, the repeated ill tidings brought by returning ships
to England, and the supposed loss of the “Sea Venture” had so dismayed
the members of the Company in London that many of them withdrew their
subscriptions. Lord Delaware—who is characterized in the “Declaration”
of the Council, in 1610, as “one of approved courage, temper, and
experience”—determined to go in person as Governor and Captain-General
of Virginia (the first of such title and authority), and, disregarding
the comforts of home and noble station, “did bare a grate part upon
his owne charge.” By his example, constancy, and resolution, “that
which was almost lifeless” was revived in the Company. On Feb. 21,
1609-10, William Crashaw, a preacher at the Temple (the father of the
poet eulogized by Cowley), in view of the departure of Lord Delaware,
delivered before the Council and Adventurers in London a stirring
sermon, which was the first preached in England to any embarking for
Virginia in a missionary cause.[240] Distinct and unequivocal testimony
is given by the Company, in the “Declaration” already cited, as to
the reputation of settlers for the colony, none being desired but
those of blameless character. Five weeks later Lord Delaware sailed
with three vessels and one hundred and fifty settlers, and arrived in
Virginia providentially to intercept, off Mulberry Island, Gates and
his disheartened companions as they were descending the river, who
returned at once to Jamestown. The fleet, following, arrived there on
Sunday, the 10th of June. The first act of Lord Delaware upon landing
was to fall devoutly upon his knees and offer up a prayer, after which
he repaired with the company to the church, to listen to a sermon by
Mr. Bucke. Two days later a council was organized, consisting of Sir
Thomas Gates, lieutenant-general, Sir Thomas Somers, admiral, Sir
Ferdinando Wenman, master of ordnance (who soon died), Captain Newport,
vice-admiral, Captain George Percy and William Strachey, secretary and
recorder. Captain John Martin was made master of the steel and iron
works. The restoration of the settlement was prosecuted with vigor, and
the church, a building sixty feet in length by twenty-four in breadth,
was repaired, and services were held regularly twice on Sunday, and
again on Thursday. Two forts were also built on Southampton River, and
called after the King’s sons, Henry and Charles, respectively.
The administration of Delaware, though ludicrously ostentatious for
so insignificant a dominion, was yet highly wholesome, and under
his judicious discipline the settlement was restored to order and
contentment. On the 19th of June Sir George Somers, in his cedar
pinnace, accompanied by Argall in another vessel, re-embarked to seek
for provisions. The vessels separating, Argall on the 27th of August
“came to anchor in nine fathoms, in a very great bay,” called by him
Delaware,[241] and on the ninth of the month reached Cape Charles.
Somers, soon after parting from Argall, reached the Bermudas, where,
dying from the effects of the hardships he had undergone, his body
was embalmed and conveyed to England by his nephew, Captain Matthew
Somers. About Christmas, Captain Argall sailed in the “Discovery” up
the Potomac for supplies of corn, and rescued the captive English boy
Henry Spelman from Jopassus, the brother of Powhatan. In the month of
February following, Argall, aided by a small land force under Captain
Edward Brewster, attacked the chief of the Warraskoyacks for a breach
of contract and burned two of his towns. Sir Thomas Gates, being
despatched to England to report to the Company the condition of the
colony, succeeded by strenuous appeals in inducing it to send a fresh
supply of settlers and provisions. During his absence, the health of
Lord Delaware failing, on the 28th of March, 1611, accompanied by
Dr. Bohune and Captain Argall, he sailed for England by way of the
Isle of Mevis, leaving Percy in authority. On the 17th of March Sir
Thomas Dale, with the appointment of “high marshall,” had sailed with
three vessels for the colony, with settlers (among whom was the Rev.
Alexander Whitaker) and cattle. He reached Point Comfort May the 12th,
and spent several days in provisioning and disciplining that station
and the forts Henry and Charles on the Southampton River, and in
planting corn.
Sir Thomas landed at Jamestown on Sunday the 19th, where, first
repairing to the church, he listened to a sermon from the Rev. Mr.
Poole, after which, his commission being read by Secretary Strachey,
Percy surrendered the government to him. Under an extraordinary code
of “Lawes, Divine, Morall, and Martiall,” compiled by William Strachey
for Sir Thomas Smith, and based upon those observed in the wars in the
Low Countries, Dale inaugurated vigorous measures for the government
and advancement of the colony. The church was repaired, and store,
powder, and block houses severally were built, while pales and posts
were prepared for a new settlement. The site selected for the last
was a peninsula in Varina Neck on James River, known as Farrar’s
Island, which is formed by an extraordinary curve resembling that of a
horseshoe, where the river, after a sweep of seven miles, returns to
a point within a hundred and twenty yards from that of its deviation.
The name of the bend, Dutch Gap,[242] by the events of the late civil
war attained a historic notoriety. The building of the new town was
delayed by insubordination among the colonists, which however, under
the rigors of the martial code in force, was promptly quelled, eight of
the ringleaders being executed. The pernicious system of a community
of property was now to some extent remedied by Dale, in the allotment
to each settler of three acres of land to be worked for his individual
benefit. “Comon gardens for hemp and flaxe, and such other seedes,”
were also laid out.[243]
In June, 1611, Sir Thomas Gates, accompanied by his wife (who died on
the passage) and daughters and the Rev. Mr. Glover (who lived but a
short time after his arrival in the colony), followed Dale with six
ships, three hundred settlers, and one hundred cows, besides other
cattle and an abundant supply of provisions. He arrived at Jamestown
early in August, and thus increased the number of the colonists to
seven hundred persons. Gates established himself at Hampton, deputed
the command of Jamestown to Percy, and sent Dale, early in September,
with three hundred and fifty men, to found the projected town of
Henrico, at which, among the “three streets” of buildings erected,
was a handsome church. The foundation of another, to be of brick, was
laid.[244] In December, the Appomattox Indians having committed some
depredations, Dale captured their town on the south side of the James,
near the mouth of Appomattox River (and about five miles distant from
Henrico), and upon its site established a third town, which he called
Bermuda. Here the pious apostle Alexander Whitaker fixed his residence,
serving as the minister both of Bermuda and Henrico.[245] Several
plantations were laid out near Bermuda,—Upper and Lower Rochdale,
West Shirley, and Digges’ Hundred. In conformity with the code of
martial law, each hundred was subjected to the control of a captain.
In December, also, Newport arrived at London from Jamestown, in the
ship “Star,” with a cargo of “forty fine and large pines for masts,”
and with the daughters of Sir Thomas Gates as passengers. Newport’s
name does not again appear in connection with Virginia.[246] The
reinforcements for the colony for some months were insignificant, the
only ships sent over being the “John and Francis” and the “Sarah,”
with few settlers and less provisions, and the “Treasurer” with fifty
persons, under the bold and unscrupulous Captain Samuel Argall, who,
sailing from England in July, 1612, arrived at Point Comfort, September
17.[247] This year was a marked one in the inauguration by John Rolfe
of the systematic culture of tobacco,—a staple destined to exert
a controlling influence in the future welfare and progress of the
colony, and soon, by the paramount profit yielded by its culture, to
subordinate all other interests, agricultural as well as manufacturing.
This influence permeated the entire social fabric of the colony,
directed its laws, was an element in all its political and religious
disturbances, and became the direct instigation of its curse of African
slavery. It may be added, however, as an indisputable fact, that the
culture of tobacco constituted the basis of the present unrivalled
prosperity of the United States, and that this staple is still one of
the most prolific factors in the revenue of the General Government.
Early in the spring of 1613, the colonists needing food, Argall
determined on a bold stroke, and with the bribe of a copper kettle
induced Jopassus, the king of Potomac, in whose domain Pocahontas was
sojourning, to betray her into his hands. Having sent a messenger to
Powhatan, demanding as a ransom the restoration of all English captives
held by him, and of all arms and tools stolen from the settlement,
Argall returned with his captive to Jamestown. There was a protracted
struggle in the breast of the savage chieftain between avarice and
parental affection.
Some months later Dale, with a command of one hundred and fifty men,
sailed up York River to Werowocomico, the seat of Powhatan, carrying
Pocahontas with him. Meeting with defiance, he landed and destroyed
the settlement, and then returned to Jamestown. The ship “Elizabeth”
arriving in March with thirteen settlers, Sir Thomas Gates departed
in her for England finally, leaving the government to Dale. An event
most auspicious for the future welfare of the colony soon occurred.
A mutual attachment springing up between John Rolfe and Pocahontas,
with the consent of Sir Thomas Dale they were united in marriage by
the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, about the 5th of April, 1614. This was a
politic example, which Dale himself unsuccessfully attempted to follow,
although he had then a wife in England. Sending Ralph Hamor (who had
been secretary of the Council under Lord Delaware) to Powhatan, with
a request for the younger sister of Pocahontas, a girl scarce twelve
years of age, his overtures were disdainfully rejected. The results of
the union of Rolfe and Pocahontas were the good-will of Powhatan during
the remainder of his life, and a treaty of peace with the formidable
Chickahominy tribe, by which the natives agreed ever to be called
Englishmen, and to be true subjects to the British crown. With the
immunity of peace, and under the wholesome discipline of Dale, industry
was stimulated, property accumulated, and famine was no longer feared.
Prosperity being now seemingly assured to the colony, the martial
spirit of Dale sought other modes of manifesting itself. As early as
1605 the French had sent settlers to Acadia, and planted a colony at
Port Royal, which had now attained some prominence.
[Illustration: SEAL OF THE VIRGINIA COMPANY.
This is a fac-simile of the engraving used in the publications of the
Company. Cf. _Calendar of Virginia State Papers_, i. p. xxxix; Neill’s
_Virginia Company_, p. 156. An example of this seal with the same
dimensions and devices, but with the differing legend on the reverse
of “COLONIA VIRGINÆ—CONSILIO PRIMA,” is in the collections of the
Virginia Historical Society. It is of red wax between the leaves of a
foolscap sheet of paper, and is affixed to a patent for land issued by
Sir John Harvey, governor, dated March 4, 1638.]
This being deemed by Dale an invasion of the territory of Virginia,
which by charter extended to the forty-fifth degree of latitude,
he sent Argall to dislodge the settlers, which was summarily
accomplished.[248] Stimulated to new conquests, Argall on his return
visited the Dutch settlement near the site of Albany, on the Hudson,
and compelled its governor to capitulate.[249] It was however soon
after reclaimed by the Dutch. Argall now sailed for England, where he
and Gates both arrived in June, 1614. In March, 1612, a third charter
had been granted to the Virginia Company, extending the boundaries of
the colony so as to include all islands lying within three hundred
leagues of the continent,—one object of which was to embrace the
Bermuda or Summer Islands, of the fertility of which extravagant
accounts had been given; but these last were soon after sold by the
Company to one hundred and twenty of its members, who became a distinct
corporation.[250] The privilege of holding lotteries for the benefit
of the Company was also secured. Gates reporting that the colony in
Virginia would perish unless better provided, the Company held for
its relief a grand lottery, by which the sum of £29,000 was secured.
The year 1615 is remarkable in the history of Virginia for the first
establishment of a fixed property in the soil, in the granting by the
Company of fifty acres to every freeman in absolute right.
Good order being established, and the colony prosperous, in April,
1616, Sir Thomas Dale, leaving the government to Captain George
Yeardley as his deputy, accompanied by Rolfe, Pocahontas, and several
Indians of both sexes, sailed for England, where he arrived on the
12th of June. The settlements in Virginia at this time were Henrico,
the seat of the college for the education of the natives (of whom
children of both sexes were already being taught), and of which the
Rev. William Wickham was the minister,—its limits being Bermuda,
Nether Hundred, or Presquile, the residence of the Deputy-Governor
Yeardley and of the Rev. Alexander Whitaker; West and Shirley Hundred,
Captain Isaac Madison, commander; Jamestown, Captain Francis West, Mr.
Mease, minister; Kiquotan; and Dale’s Gift, on the sea-coast near Cape
Charles, Lieutenant Cradock, commander. The total population of the
colony was three hundred and fifty-one.
Pocahontas was the object of much kindly attention in London, where she
was presented at court by Lady Delaware, attended by Lord Delaware,
her husband, and other persons of quality. In March, 1617, John Rolfe
prepared to return to Virginia with Pocahontas and their infant child
Thomas,[251] but on the eve of embarkation Pocahontas was stricken with
the small-pox, of which she died on the 21st instant, aged twenty-two
years, and was buried at Gravesend, in the county of Kent.[252] Tobacco
proving the most salable commodity of the colony, in 1616 Yeardley
directed general attention to its culture, the profit of which speedily
became so alluring that all other occupations were forsaken for it.
Through the influence of the court faction of the Company, in 1617,
Captain Samuel Argall was elected Deputy-Governor of Virginia. He
arrived in the colony on the 15th of May, with one hundred settlers,
accompanied by Ralph Hamor as Vice-Admiral, and John Rolfe as
“Secretary and Recorder-General.” They found “the market-place,
streets, and all other spare places” in Jamestown planted with
tobacco.[253] In a few days thereafter Captain Martin also arrived
in a pinnace, after a passage of five weeks. The whole number of the
colonists was now about four hundred. To reinforce the languishing
colony, the Company, in April, 1618, sent thither Lord Delaware, the
Governor-General, in the ship “Neptune,” with two hundred men, and
supplies. After his departure the ship “George” arrived from Virginia
with such complaints of the malfeasance of Argall, who under martial
law had loaded the colonists with oppressive exactions and robbed them
of their property, that letters were despatched to Lord Delaware to
seize upon all goods and property in Argall’s possession. Lord Delaware
dying on the passage, these letters fell into the hands of Argall,
who, to make the most of his remaining time, grew yet more tyrannical.
For seizing one of the servants of the estate of Lord Delaware, on
the complaint of Edward Brewster, the son of its manager, Argall
was arrested, and on the 15th of October, 1618, tried and sentenced
to death; but the penalty was commuted to perpetual banishment. He
secretly stole away from the colony April the 9th, 1619, leaving
Captain Nathaniel Powell in authority. Upon the intelligence of the
death of Lord Delaware, Captain George Yeardley, who was knighted on
the occasion, was appointed to succeed him. Sir Edwin Sandys also
displaced Sir Thomas Smith as treasurer of the Company.
[Illustration: LORD DELAWARE.
His portrait is preserved at Bourne, the seat of his descendant the
present Earl de la Warr, in Cambridgeshire, England. There is a copy
of it in the Library of the State of Virginia at Richmond, which was
made by William L. Sheppard, an artist of that city in July, 1877. He
is represented as a stout, ruddy-visaged Saxon, with a most benevolent
expression of countenance. King James granted a pension to the widow of
Lord Delaware, who was alive in 1644, and is called Dame Cecily Dowager
de la Warre in the sixth _Report of the Historical Commission_ to
Parliament, in a paper in which the continuance of her pension is asked
for.]
Yeardley arrived in the colony April the 19th with a new authority
under the charter, by which the authority of the governor was limited
by a council and an annual general assembly, to be composed of the
Governor and Council, and two burgesses from each plantation, to
be freely elected by the inhabitants thereof. John Rolfe, who was
succeeded in the office of Secretary of the Colony by John Pory, a
graduate of Cambridge, a great traveller and a writer, was, with
Captain Francis West, Captain Nathaniel Powell, William Wickham,
and Samuel Macock, added to the Council. On Friday, July 30, 1619,
in accordance with the summons of Governor Yeardley in June, the
first representative legislative assembly ever held in America was
convened in the chancel of the church at James City or Jamestown, and
was composed of twenty-two burgesses from the eleven several towns,
plantations, and hundreds, styled boroughs. The proceedings were
opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Bucke, and each burgess took the
oath of supremacy. John Pory was elected speaker, and sat in front
of Governor Yeardley, and next was John Twine, the clerk, and at the
bar stood Thomas Pierse, sergeant-at-arms. The delegates from Captain
John Martin’s plantation were excluded, because by his patent, granted
according to the unequal privilege of the manors of England, he was
released from obeying any order of the colony except in time of war
and the Company was prayed that the clause in the charter guaranteeing
equal immunities and liberties might not be violated, so as to “divert
out of the true course the free and public current of justice.” The
education and religious instruction of the children of the natives
was enjoined upon each settlement. Among the enactments, tobacco was
authorized as a currency, and the treasurer of the colony (Abraham
Percy) was directed to receive it at the valuation of three shillings
per pound for the best, and eighteen-pence for the second quality.
The government of ministers was prescribed according to the Church
of England, and a tax of tobacco laid for their support. It was also
enacted that “all persons whatsoever upon the Sabbath days shall
frequent divine service and sermons, both forenoon and afternoon.” To
compensate the officers of the Assembly, a tax of a pound of tobacco
was laid upon every male above sixteen years of age.
The introduction of negro slavery into the colony is thus noted by
John Rolfe: “About the last of August [1619] came in a Dutch man of
warre, that sold us twenty Negars.”[254] During this year there were
sent to the colony more than twelve hundred settlers, and one hundred
“disorderly persons” or convicts, by order of the King, to be employed
as servants. Boys and girls picked up in the streets of London were
also sent, and were bound as apprentices[255] to the planters until
the age of majority. In June twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, the
crop of the preceding year, was shipped to England. In November the
London Company adopted a coat-of-arms, and ordered a seal to be
engraved.[256] The Company appears ever to have held in due regard the
importance of education as intimately connected with the preservation
and dissemination of Christianity in the colony. Under an order from
the King, nearly £1,500 were collected by the bishops of the realm to
build the college at Henrico, and fifteen thousand acres of land were
appropriated for its support.[257] To cultivate it during the years
1619 and 1620 one hundred laborers were sent over under the charge of
Mr. George Thorpe (a kinsman of Sir Thomas Dale) and Captain Thomas
Newce as agents. At a meeting of the Company held June 28, 1620,
the Earl of Southampton was elected to succeed Sir Edwin Sandys as
treasurer.
The population of the colony in July was estimated at four thousand,
and during the year forty thousand pounds of tobacco were shipped to
England. The freedom of trade which the Company had enjoyed for a brief
interval with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco, was in
October, 1621, prohibited in Council, and thenceforward England claimed
a monopoly of the trade of her plantations. The planters at length
were absolved from service to the Company, and enjoyed the blessings
of property in the soil and of domestic felicity. In the autumn of
1621 the practice was begun by the Company of shipping to the colony
young women of respectability as wives for the colonists, who were
chargeable with the cost of transportation. This charge was at first
one hundred and twenty, afterwards one hundred and fifty, pounds of
tobacco. A windmill, the first in America, was about this time erected
by Sir George Yeardley, and iron-works (the primal inauguration of this
essential manufacture in this country) were established at Falling
Creek on James River, under the management of Mr. John Berkeley.[258]
Upon the request of Sir George Yeardley to be relieved of the cares
of office, Sir Francis Wyatt was appointed to succeed him upon the
expiration of his term of government on the 18th of November, 1621. Sir
Francis, with a fleet of nine sail, arrived in October, accompanied by
his brother, the Rev. Haut Wyatt, Dr John Pott as physician, William
Claiborne (destined to later prominence in the colony) as surveyor of
the Company’s lands, and George Sandys[259] as treasurer, who during
his stay translated the _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid and the First Book
of Virgil’s _Æneid_. This first Anglo-American poetical production
was published in 1626. Sir Francis Wyatt brought with him a new
constitution for the colony, granted July 24, by which all former
immunities and franchises were confirmed, trial by jury was secured,
and the Assembly was to meet annually upon the call of the Governor,
who was vested with the right of veto. No act of this body was to be
valid unless ratified by the Company; but, on the other hand, no order
of the Company was to be obligatory without the concurrence of the
Assembly. This famous ordinance furnished the model of every subsequent
provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies.[260] In
November Daniel Gookin arrived from Ireland with fifty settlers under
his control and thirty-six passengers, and planted himself in Elizabeth
City County, at Mary’s Mount, just above Newport News.[261] There
arrived during the year twenty-one vessels, bringing over thirteen
hundred men, women, and children. The aggregate number of settlers
arriving during the years 1619, 1620, and 1621 was thirty-five hundred
and seventy.
Deluded by long peace, on the 22d of March, 1622, the unsuspecting
colonists fell easy victims to a frightful Indian massacre of men,
women, and children, to the number of three hundred and forty-seven.
Among the slain were Mr. George Thorpe, the agent for the college at
Henrico, and Mr. John Berkeley, master of the iron-works at Falling
Creek.[262] Their death and the destruction of their charges terminated
the prosecution of these material measures for the good of the colony.
The future policy with the savages was aggressive until the peace
of 1632. At an Assembly held in March, 1623, monthly courts to be
appointed by the Governor were authorized. The Virginia Company, in
their opposition to the King in the nomination of their officers, had
already incurred his ill-will, which was increased by the freedom with
which they discussed public measures so as to invoke his denunciation
of them as “but a seminary to a seditious parliament.” Violent factions
divided them, and the massacre came at a juncture to fan discontent.
Commissioners were sent to Virginia by the King to gather materials
for the ruin of the Company. The result was the annulling of its
charter by the King’s Bench on the 16th of June, 1624. Sir Francis
Wyatt was continued as governor by commission from King James, dated
Aug. 26, 1624, and again in May, 1625, by the young monarch, Charles
I., who appointed as councillors for the colony, during his pleasure,
Francis West, Sir George Yeardley, George Sandys, Roger Smith, Ralph
Hamor, John Martin, John Harvey, Samuel Matthews, Abraham Percy,
Isaac Madison, and William Claiborne. He omitted all mention of an
assembly, and there is no preserved record of the meeting of this body
again until 1629. The administration of Wyatt was wise and pacific.
The death of his father, Sir George Wyatt, calling him to Ireland, he
was succeeded, in May, 1626, by Sir George Yeardley, who dying Nov.
14, 1627, the Council elected as his successor, on the following day,
Francis West, a younger brother of Lord Delaware. West, departing for
England on the 5th of March, 1628, was succeeded by Dr. John Pott. The
export of tobacco in 1628 was five hundred thousand pounds. Charles,
desiring a monopoly of the trade, directed an assembly to be called
to grant it. That body, replying the 26th of March, demanded a higher
price and more favorable terms than his Majesty was disposed to yield.
The colony rapidly increased in strength and prosperity, the population
in 1629 being five thousand. Pott was superseded as governor in March,
1630, by Sir John Harvey, who had been one of the commissioners sent
in 1623 to procure evidence to be used against the Virginia Company.
Between him and the colonists there was but little good-will, and his
arbitrary rule soon rendered him odious.
[Illustration]
In July, by a strange mutation of fortune, Pott, the late governor,
was tried for cattle-stealing, and convicted. This was the first trial
by jury in the colony. It was in 1630 that George Calvert, with his
followers, arrived in the colonies; but the details of his experience
here and of the disputes about jurisdiction arising out of the grant
of the present territory of Maryland, made to him and confirmed to his
son in 1632, are given in another chapter.[263] It was under successive
grants from the governors in 1627, 1628, and 1629, and from Charles
I. in 1631, that William Claiborne had established his trading-posts
in the disputed territory, from which he was driven with bloodshed,
and by the final decree of the King in 1639 despoiled of £6,000 of
property. Harvey—actuated, it has been charged, by motives of private
interest—sided with Maryland in the disputes, and rendered himself so
obnoxious that an assembly was called for the 7th of May, 1635, to hear
complaints against him. Before it met, however, he consented to go to
England to answer the charges, and was “thrust out of his government”
by the Council on the 28th of April, and Captain John West, a brother
of Lord Delaware, was authorized to act as his successor until the
King’s pleasure might be known. In 1634 the colony was divided into
eight shires,[264] subject, as in England, to the government of a
lieutenant.[265] The election of sheriffs, sergeants, and bailiffs was
similarly provided for. The King, intolerant of opposition, reinstated
the hated Harvey as governor, by commission dated April 2, 1636.[266]
During his rule of three years thereafter, no assembly was held.
Charles gradually relaxed his policy, and in November, 1639, displaced
Harvey with Sir Francis Wyatt, who in turn was succeeded by Sir
William Berkeley as governor in February, 1642. During the year three
Congregational ministers came from Boston to Virginia to disseminate
their doctrines.
[Illustration]
Their stay, however, was but short; for by an enactment of the Assembly
all ministers other than those of the Church of England were compelled
to leave the colony. It will be shown that their success was limited.
On the 18th of April, 1644, a second Indian massacre occurred. The
number of victims has been differently stated as three and five
hundred. During a visit by Berkeley to England, from June, 1644, to
June, 1645, his place was filled by Richard Kemp. In 1642 the ship
of Richard Ingle, from London, had been seized by Governor Brent,
of Maryland, acting under a commission from Charles I., and an oath
against Parliament tendered the crew. Ingle escaped, and, securing a
commission from Parliament to cruise in the waters of the Chesapeake
against Malignants, as the friends of the King were called, reappeared
in February, 1645, in the ship “Reformation,” near St. Inigo Creek,
where there was a popular uprising, and with the aid of the insurgents
and forces from Virginia expelled Leonard Calvert and installed Colonel
Edward Hill as governor. Calvert regained authority in August, 1646.
The colony of Virginia continued to prosper. In 1648 the population
consisted of fifteen thousand whites and three hundred negro slaves.
Domestic animals were abundant; corn, wheat, rice, hemp, flax, and many
vegetables were cultivated; there were fifteen varieties of fruit, and
excellent wine was made. The average export of tobacco for several
years had been 1,500,000 pounds. Besides the “old field schools,” there
was a free school endowed by Benjamin Symmes with two hundred acres of
land, a good house, forty milch cows, and other appurtenances.
The Dissenters, who had increased in number to one hundred and
eighteen, now encountered the rigors of colonial authority in
imprisonment and banishment, and all opposition to the Established
Church was decisively quelled.[267]
With the beheading of Charles I. on the 30th of January, 1649, the
Commonwealth of England was inaugurated; but Virginia still continued
its allegiance to his son, the exiled prince, and offered an asylum to
his fugitive adherents. Three hundred and thirty of these, including
Colonel Henry Norwood and Majors Francis Morrison and Richard Fox,
arrived near the close of 1649 in the “Virginia Merchant.”
Norwood was sent the following year by Berkeley to Holland to invite
the fugitive King to Virginia as its ruler, and returned from Breda
with a new commission for Berkeley as governor, dated June 3, and
another for himself as treasurer of the colony, in approbation of the
loyalty manifested. Charles II. was crowned by the Scotch at Scone in
1651, and, invading England with his followers, was utterly overthrown
and defeated at Worcester, September 3. In the same month the Council
of State issued instructions to Captain Robert Dennis, Richard Bennet,
Thomas Steg,[268] and William Claiborne, as commissioners for the
reduction of Virginia to the authority of the Commonwealth. Captain
Dennis arrived at Jamestown in March, 1652, and the capitulation
of the colony was ratified on the 12th instant upon liberal terms,
which confirmed the existing privileges of the colonists and granted
indemnity for all offences against Parliament. The commissioners Bennet
and Claiborne soon after effected the reduction of Maryland, but with
singular moderation allowed its Governor and Council to retain their
offices upon the simple condition of issuing all writs in the name of
the Commonwealth. A provisional government was organized in Virginia,
on the 30th of April, by the election by the House of Burgesses of
Richard Bennet as governor and William Claiborne as secretary of state,
and a council of twelve, whose powers were to be defined by the Grand
Assembly, of which they were ex-officio members.
A remarkable instance of individual enterprise was given in the early
part of 1654 by Francis Yeardley,[269] who effected discoveries
in North Carolina, and at the cost of £300 purchased from the
natives “three great rivers and all such others as they should like
southerly,” and took possession of the country in the name of the
Commonwealth.[270] In March, 1655, Richard Bennet was appointed the
agent of the colony at London, and was succeeded as governor by Edward
Digges. In 1656 Colonel Edward Hill the elder, in endeavoring with
one hundred men to dislodge seven hundred Ricahecrian Indians who had
seated themselves at the Falls of James River, was utterly routed.
Bloody Run, near Richmond, significantly derives its name from this
encounter. On the 13th of March, 1657, Edward Digges was sent to London
as the agent of the colony, and was succeeded as governor by Samuel
Matthews. The government of the colony under the Commonwealth was
beneficent, and the people were prosperous.
Upon the reception of the intelligence of the death of Oliver and
of the accession of Richard Cromwell as Protector, obedience was
acknowledged by the Assembly on the 9th of March, 1658. Richard
Cromwell resigned on the 22d of April, 1659, and Matthews had died
in January previously. England was for a time without a monarch, and
Virginia without a governor. The Virginia Assembly, convening on the
23d of March, 1660, elected Sir William Berkeley as governor, and
declared that all writs should be issued in the name of the Grand
Assembly. On the 8th of May Charles II. was proclaimed as King in
England, and on the 31st of July following he transmitted a new
commission to his faithful adherent, Sir William Berkeley. In March,
1661, 44,000 pounds of tobacco were appropriated by the Assembly to
defray the cost of an address to the King, praying him to pardon the
inhabitants of Virginia for having yielded during the Commonwealth
to a force they could not resist. And in contrition for their tacit
submission to the “execrable power that so bloodily massacred the
late King Charles the First of blessed and glorious memory,” it was
enacted that “the 30th of January, the day the said King was beheaded,
be annually solemnized with fasting and prayer, that our sorrows may
expiate our crime, and our tears wash away our guilt.”[271] A little
later, the 29th of May, the date of the restoration of Charles II., was
decreed to be celebrated annually as a “holy day.”[272]
Berkeley being sent on the 30th of April, 1661, by the colony to
England to protest against the enforcement of the Navigation Act,
Colonel Francis Morrison was elected in his stead. Berkeley returned
in the fall of 1662 with advantageous patents for himself, but
without relief for the colony. Colonel William Claiborne, secretary
of state, was displaced by Thomas Ludwell, commissioned by the
King. Colonel Francis Morrison and Henry Randolph, clerk of the
Assembly, were appointed to revise the laws, and it was ordered that
all acts which “might keep in memory our forced deviation from his
Majesty’s obedience” should be “expunged.” A satisfactory account of
the condition of the colony in 1670 is afforded in a report made by
Governor Berkeley to the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations.
The executive consisted of the Governor and sixteen councillors
commissioned by the King, who determined all causes above £15; causes
of less amount were tried by the county courts, of which there were
twenty. The Assembly, composed of two burgesses from each county, met
annually; it levied the taxes, and appeals lay to it. The legislative
and executive powers rested in the Governor, Council, Assembly, and
subordinate officers. The Acts of the Assembly were sent by the
secretary of the colony to the Lord Chancellor. All freemen were bound
to muster monthly in their own counties. The force of the colony
numbered upwards of eight thousand horsemen. There were five forts,
mounted with thirty cannon.
The whole population was forty thousand, of which two thousand were
negro slaves, and six thousand white servants. Eighty vessels arrived
yearly from England and Ireland for tobacco; a few small coasters
came from New England. The annual exportation of tobacco was 15,000
hogsheads (about 12,000,000 pounds), upon which a duty of two shillings
a hogshead was levied. Out of this revenue the Governor received as
salary £1,200. The King had no revenue from the colony except the
quit-rents.[273] There were forty-eight parishes, the ministers of
which were well paid. Under the monopoly of the Navigation Act the
price of tobacco was greatly depressed, the cost of imported goods
enhanced, and the trade of the colony almost extinguished; yet the
profligate King oppressed the colonists still further, and by a grant
of the whole territory of Virginia to Lords Arlington and Culpeper they
found themselves deprived of the very titles to the lands they owned.
The privilege of franchise was even virtually withheld, for there had
been no election of burgesses since the Restoration in 1660, the same
legislature having continued to hold its sessions by prorogation.
The colonists grew so impatient under their accumulated grievances
that a revolt was near bursting forth in 1674. It was quieted for a
time by some pacific concessions; but the fires only slumbered, and
an immediate grievance and a popular leader were alone required to
produce revolutionary measures. The severity of the policy against the
Indians incensed them to hostility, and the lives of the colonists were
in constant jeopardy. They petitioned the Governor for protection,
and on the meeting of the Assembly in March, 1676, war was declared
against the Indians, and a force of five hundred men raised and put
under the command of Sir Henry Chicheley to subdue them; but when he
was about to march he was suddenly and without apparent cause ordered
by Berkeley to disband his forces. The Indians continued their murders
until sixty lives had been sacrificed. The alarmed colonists, having
in vain petitioned the Governor for protection, rose tumultuously in
self-defence, including quite all the civil and military officers of
the colony, and chose Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., as their leader. Bacon,
who was of the distinguished English family of that name, had been
but a short time in the colony; but he was a member of the Council,
brave, rich, eloquent, and popular. He had an immediate stimulant,
too, in the murder at his plantation, near the site of Richmond, of
his overseer and a favorite servant.[274] Bacon, fruitlessly applying
for a commission, marched at the head of five hundred men against the
savages; and in the mean time Berkeley proclaimed them as traitors
and ineffectually pursued them with an armed force. Bacon replied in
a declaration denouncing the Governor as a tyrant and traitor to his
King and the country. During Berkeley’s absence the planters in the
lower counties rose, and, the revolt becoming general, he was forced to
return, when he endeavored to quiet the storm. Writs for a new Assembly
were issued, to which Bacon was elected. He, having punished the
savages, while on his way to the Assembly was arrested in James River
by an armed vessel, but was soon released on parole. When the Assembly
met on the 5th of June, he read at the bar a written confession and
apology for his conduct, and was thereupon pardoned and readmitted to
his seat in the Council. He was also promised a commission to proceed
against the Indians; but, being secretly informed of a plot by the
Governor against his life, he fled, returning however to Jamestown in
a few days with a large force, when, appealing to the Assembly, they
declared him their general, vindicated his course, and sent a letter
to England approving it. They also passed salutary laws of reform.
Berkeley resisted, dissolved them, and in turn addressed the King.
Bacon, all-powerful, having extorted a commission from the Governor,
marched against the Indians. Berkeley once more proclaimed him as a
traitor. Bacon, on hearing it, in the midst of a successful campaign
returned; and Berkeley, deserted by his troops, fled to Accomac. Bacon,
now supreme, called together, by an invitation signed by himself and
four of the Council, a convention of the principal gentlemen of the
colony, at the Middle Plantation, to consult for defence against the
savages and protection against the tyranny of Berkeley. He also issued
a reply to the proclamation of Berkeley, in which he vindicates himself
in lofty strains.[275] He now again marched against the Indians;
but in his absence a fleet which he had sent to capture Berkeley was
betrayed, and the Governor returned to Jamestown at the head of the
forces sent to capture him. Bacon now returned, and Berkeley, deserted
by his men, fleeing again to Accomac, Bacon triumphantly entered
Jamestown and burned the State House. He died shortly afterwards
from disease contracted by exposure, and his followers, left without
a leader, dispersed, and Berkeley was finally dominant. On the 29th
of February, 1677, a fleet with a regiment of soldiers, commanded by
Colonels Herbert Jeffreys and Francis Morrison, arrived in the colony
to quell the rebellion. Jeffreys, Morrison, and Berkeley sat as a
commission to try the insurgents. They were vindictively punished:
the jails were filled, estates confiscated, and twenty-three persons
executed. At length the Assembly, in an address to the Governor,
deprecated any further sanguinary punishments, and he was prevailed
upon, reluctantly, to desist. All the acts of the Assembly of June,
1676, called Bacon’s Laws, were repealed, though many of them were
afterwards re-enacted. Berkeley, being recalled by the King, sailed for
England on the 27th of April, 1677, and was succeeded by Sir Herbert
Jeffreys as governor. Jeffreys effected a treaty with the Indians,
but dying in December, 1678, was succeeded by Sir Henry Chicheley,
who in turn gave place, on the 10th of May, 1680, to Lord Culpeper,
who had been appointed in July, 1675, governor of Virginia for life.
Virginia was now tranquil. The resources of the country continued
to be developed. The production and export of tobacco—the chief
staple—steadily increased, and with it the prosperity of the colony.
The ease with which wealth was acquired fostered the habits of personal
indulgence and ostentatious expenditure into which the Virginia planter
was led by hereditary characteristics.
Undue stress has been laid by many historians upon the transportation
of “convicts” to the colony. Such formed but a small proportion of the
population, and it is believed that the offence of a majority of them
was of a political nature. Be it as it may, all dangerous or debasing
effect of their presence was effectually guarded against by rigorous
enactments. The vile among them met the fate of the vicious, while
the simply unfortunate who were industrious throve and became good
citizens. It is clearly indicated that the aristocratic element of the
colony preponderated.
The under stratum of society, formed by the “survival of the fittest”
of the “indentured servant” and the “convict” classes, as they improved
in worldly circumstances, rose to the surface and took their places
socially and politically among the more favored class. The Virginia
planter was essentially a transplanted Englishman in tastes and
convictions, and emulated the social amenities and the culture of the
mother country.[276] Thus in time was formed a society distinguished
for its refinement, executive ability, and a generous hospitality, for
which the Ancient Dominion is proverbial.
CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
THERE is abundant evidence, as instanced by Mr. Deane in a paper in the
_Boston Daily Advertiser_, July 31, 1877, that the name of Virginia
commemorates Elizabeth, the virgin queen of England. Mr. Deane’s paper
was in answer to a fanciful belief, expressed by Mr. C. W. Tuttle in
_Notes and Queries_, 1877, that the Indian name Wingina, mentioned by
Hakluyt, may have suggested the appellation.[277] The early patents are
given in Purchas (abstract of the first), iv. 1683-84; Stith; Hazard’s
_Historical Collections_, i. 50, 58, 72; _Popham Memorial_ (the first),
App. A; and Poor’s _Gorges_, App.
See a paper by L. W. Tazewell, on the “Limits of Virginia under
the Charters,” in Maxwell’s _Virginia Historical Register_, i. 12.
These bounds were relied on for Virginia’s claims at a later day to
the Northwest Territory. Cf. H. B. Adams’s _Maryland’s Influence in
Founding a National Commonwealth_, or Maryland Historical Society
Publication Fund, no. 11. See also Lucas’s _Charters of the Old English
Colonies_, London, 1850. Ridpath’s _United States_, p. 86, gives a
convenient map of the grants by the English crown from 1606 to 1732.
Mr. Deane has discussed the matter of forms used in issuing letters
patent in _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ xi. 166.
The earliest printed account of the settlement at Jamestown, covering
the interval April 26, 1607-June 2, 1608, is entitled: _A True Relation
of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath hapned in Virginia
since the first planting of that Collony which is now resident in the
South part thereof, till the last returne from thence. Written by
Captaine Smith, Coronell of the said Collony, to a worshipfull friend
of his in England_. Small quarto, black letter, London, 1608.[278]
The second contemporary account appears in _Purchas His Pilgrimes_, iv.
1685-1690, published in 1625, and is entitled, “Obseruations gathered
out of a Discourse of the Plantations of the Southerne Colonie in
Virginia by the English, 1606, written by that Honorable Gentleman
Master George Percy.”[279] The narrative gives in minute detail the
incidents of the first voyage and of the movements of the colonists
after their arrival at Cape Henry until their landing, on the 14th of
May, at Jamestown. It is to be regretted that a meagre abridgment only
of so valuable a narrative should have been preserved by Purchas, who
assigns as a reason for the omissions he made in it, that “the rest is
more fully set down in Cap. Smith’s Relations.”
The third account of the period, “Newport’s Discoveries in Virginia,”
was published for the first time in 1860 in _Archæologia Americana_,
iv. 40-65. It consists of three papers, the most extended of which is
entitled: “A Relatyon of the Discovery of our river from James Forte
into the Maine; made by Captain Christopher Newport, and sincerely
written and observed by a Gentleman of the Colony.” This “Relatyon”
is principally confined to an account of the voyage from Jamestown
up the river to the “Falls,” at which Richmond is now situated, and
back again to Jamestown, beginning May 21 and ending June 21, the day
before Newport sailed for England. The second paper, of four pages, is
entitled: “The Description of the new-discovered river and country of
Virginia, with the liklyhood of ensuing riches, by England’s ayd and
industry.” The remaining paper, of only a little more than two pages,
is: “A brief description of the People.” These papers were printed from
copies made under the direction of the Hon. George Bancroft, LL.D.,
from the originals in the English State Paper Office, and were edited
by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale.[280]
The next account to be noted, “A Discourse of Virginia,” by Edward
Maria Wingfield, the first President of the colony, was also printed
for the first time in _Archæologia Americana_, iv. 67-163, from a
copy of the original manuscript in the Lambeth Library, edited by
Charles Deane, LL.D., who also printed it separately. The narrative
begins with the sailing of Newport for England, June 22, 1607, and
ends May 21, 1608, on the author’s arrival in England. The final six
pages are devoted by Wingfield to a defence of himself from charges
of unfaithfulness in duty, on which he had been deposed from the
Presidency and excluded from the Council. The narrative was cited for
the first time by Purchas in the margin of the second edition of his
_Pilgrimage_, 1614, pp. 757-768. He also refers to what is probably
another writing, “M. Wingfield’s notes,” in the margin of p. 1706, of
vol. iv. of his _Pilgrimes_. Mr. Deane reasonably conjectures that the
narrative of Wingfield as originally written was more comprehensive,
and that a portion of it has been lost.[281] Chapter I. of Neill’s
_English Colonization in America_ is devoted to Wingfield.
Another narrative of the period:—
_A Relation of Virginia_, written by Henry Spelman, “the third son
of the Antiquary,” who came to the colony in 1609, was privately
printed in 1872 at London for James Frothingham Hunnewell, Esq., of
Charlestown, Mass., from the original manuscript.[282] Spelman, who
was a boy when he first came to Virginia, lived for some time with
the Indians, became afterwards an interpreter for the Colony, and was
killed by the savages in 1622 or 1623.
In 1609 there were four tracts printed in London, illustrative of the
progress of the new colony:—
1. _Saules Prohibition staid, a reproof to those that traduce Virginia._
2. William Symondes’ _Sermon_ before the London Company, April 25,
1609.[283]
3. _Nova Britannia: offeringe most excellent Fruites by Planting in
Virginia._[284]
4. _A Good Speed to Virginia._ The dedicator is R. G., who “neither in
person nor purse” is able to be a “partaker in the business.”[285]
In 1610, appeared the following:—
1. W. Crashaw’s _Sermon_ before Lord Delaware on his leaving for
Virginia, Feb. 21, 1609.
2. _A true and sincere declaration of the purpose and ends of the
plantation begun in Virginia._[286]
3. A true declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia.[287]
4. The mishaps of the first voyage and the wreck at Bermuda were
celebrated in a little poem by R. Rich, one of the Company, called
_Newes from Virginia_, which was printed in London in 1610.[288]
William Strachey was not an actual observer of events in the colony
earlier than May 23, 1610, when he first reached Jamestown. The
incidents of his letter, July 15, 1610, giving an account of the wreck
at Bermuda and subsequent events _(Purchas_, iv. 1734), must, so far as
antecedent Virginia events go, have been derived from others.[289]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
In 1612 Strachey edited a collection of _Lawes Divine_ of the
colony.[290]
There are two MS. copies of his _Historie of Travaile into Virginia
Britannia; expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country,
together with the Manners and Customes of the People_,—one preserved
in the British Museum among the Sloane Collection, and the other is
among the Ashmolean MSS. at Oxford. They vary in no important respect.
The former was the copy used by R. H. Major in editing it for the
Hakluyt Society in 1849. This copy was dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon.
In 1611 Lord Delaware’s little _Relation_ appeared in London.[291] In
1612 the Virginia Company, to thwart the evil intentions of the enemies
of the colony, printed by authority a second part of _Nova Britannia_,
called _The New Life of Virginia_. Its authorship is assigned to Robert
Johnson.[292]
In 1612 the little quarto volume commonly referred to as the _Oxford
Tract_ was printed, with the following title: _A Map of Virginia. With
a Description of the Country, the Commodities, People, Government,
and Religion, Written by Captaine Smith, sometimes Governour of the
Country. Whereunto is annexed the proceedings of those Colonies since
their first departure from England, with the discoveries, Orations,
and relations of the Salvages, and the accidents that befell them in
all their Iournies and discoveries. Taken faithfully as they were
written out of the writings of Doctor Rvssell, Tho. Stvdley, Anas
Todkill, Ieffra Abot, Richard Wiffin, Will. Phettiplace, Nathaniel
Powell, Richard Potts. And the relations of divers other intelligent
observers there present then, and now many of them in England, by W.
S. At Oxford, Printed by Joseph Barnes_, 1612. As the title indicates,
the tract consists of two parts. The first, written as Smith says,
in the _Generall Historie_, “with his owne hand,” is a topographical
description of the country, embracing climate, soil, and productions,
with a full account of the native inhabitants, and has only occasional
reference to the proceedings of the colony at Jamestown. The second
part of the _Oxford Tract_ has a separate titlepage as follows: “The
proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia since their first
beginning from England in the year 1606, till this present 1612, with
all their accidents that befell them in their iournies and Discoveries.
Also the Salvages’ discourses, orations, and relations of the Bordering
Neighbours, and how they became subject to the English. Vnfolding even
the fundamentall causes from whence haue sprang so many miseries to the
vndertakers, and scandals to the businesse; taken faithfully as they
were written out of the writings of Thomas Studley, the first provant
maister, Anas Todkill, Walter Russell, Doctor of Phisicke, Nathaniel
Powell, William Phettiface, Richard Wyffin, Thomas Abbay, Tho. Hops,
Rich. Potts, and the labours of divers other diligent observers, that
were residents in Virginia. And pervsed and confirmed by diverse now
resident in England that were actors in this busines. By W. S. At
Oxford, Printed by Joseph Barnes. 1612.”[293]
Alexander Whitaker’s _Good Newes from Virginia_ was printed in 1613.
He was minister of Henrico Parish, and had been in the country two
years. The preface is by W. Crawshawe, the divine.[294] Ralph Hamor the
younger, “late secretary of that colony,” printed in London in 1615
his _True Discourse of the present state of Virginia_, bringing the
story down to June 18, 1614. It contains an account of the christening
of Pocahontas and her marriage to Rolfe. It was reprinted in 1860
at Albany (200 copies) for Charles Gorham Barney, of Richmond.[295]
Rolfe’s _Relation of Virginia_, a MS. now in the British Museum,
was abbreviated in the 1617 edition of Purchas’s _Pilgrimage_, and
printed at length in the _Southern Literary Messenger_, 1839, and
in the _Virginia Historical Register_, i. 102. (See also Neill’s
_Virginia Company_, ch. vi.) There are various other early printed
tracts, besides those already mentioned, reprinted by Force, which are
necessary to a careful study of Virginian history.[296]
Fortunately a copy of the records of the Company[297] from April
28, 1619, to June 7, 1624, is preserved. This copy was made from
the originals, which are not now known to exist, at a time when the
King gave sign of annulling their charter. Nicholas Ferrar (see the
_Memoir of Nicholas Ferrar_ by Peter Peckard, London, 1790, a volume
throwing much light on early Virginian history, and compare Palfrey’s
_New England_, i. 192), with the aid of Collingwood the secretary,
seems to have procured the transcription at the house of Sir John
Danvers, in Chelsea, an old mansion associated with Sir Thomas More’s
memory. Collingwood compared each folio, signed it,—the work being
completed only three days before judgment was pronounced against the
Company,—and gave the whole into the hands of the Earl of Southampton
for safe keeping, from whom the records passed to his son Thomas, Lord
High Treasurer, after whose death, in 1667, William Byrd, of Virginia,
bought them for sixty guineas, and it was from the Byrd family, at
Westover, that Stith obtained them, to make use of in his _History_.
By some means Stith’s brother-in-law, Peyton Randolph, got them, and
at his death in 1775 his library was sold, when Jefferson bought it,
and found these records among the books. Jefferson’s library afterwards
becoming the property of the United States, these records in two
volumes (pp. 354 and 387 respectively) passed into the Library of
Congress, where they now are.
In May, 1868, Mr. Neill, who had used these records while working on
his _Terra Mariæ_, memorialized Congress, explaining their value, and
offering, without compensation, to edit the MS., under the direction
of the Librarian of Congress.[298] The question of their publication
had already been raised by Mr. J. Wingate Thornton ten years earlier,
in a paper in the _Historical Magazine_, February, 1858, p. 33, and
in a pamphlet, _The First Records of Anglo-American Colonization_,
Boston, 1859. In these the history of their transmission varies a
little from the one given above, which follows Neill’s statements.[299]
Being thwarted in his original purpose, Mr. Neill made the records
the basis of a _History of the Virginia Company of London_, Albany,
1869, which, somewhat changed, appeared in an English edition as
_English Colonization in America in the Seventeenth Century_.[300] Of
considerable importance among the papers transmitted to our time is
the collection which had in large part belonged to Chalmers, and been
used by him in his _Political Annals_; when passing to Colonel William
Aspinwall,[301] they were by him printed in the _Mass. Hist. Coll._ 4th
series, vols. ix. and x., with numerous notes, particularly concerning
the earlier ones, beginning in 1617, in which the careers of Gates,
Pory,[302] and Argall are followed.
Mr. Deane, _True Relation_, p. 14, quotes as in Mr. Bancroft’s hands a
copy from a paper in the English State-Paper Office entitled “A Briefe
Declaration of the Plantation of Virginia during the first twelve
years when S^r Thomas Smyth was Governer of the Companie [1606-1619],
and downe to the present tyme [1624], by the Ancient Planters now
remaining alive in Virginia.” Mr. Noël Sainsbury, in his _Calendar of
State Papers, Colonial Series_, London, 1860, etc., has opened new
stores of early Virginian as well as of general Anglo-American history,
between 1574 and 1660. The work of the Public Record Office has been
well supplemented by the _Reports of the Historical Commission_, which
has examined the stores of historical documents contained in private
depositaries in Great Britain. Their third Report of 1872 and the
appendix of their eighth Report are particularly rich in Virginian
early history, covering documents belonging to the Duke of Manchester.
The _Index_ to the Catalogue of MSS. in the British Museum discloses
others.
In 1860 the State of Virginia sent Colonel Angus W. McDonald to London
to search for papers and maps elucidating the question of the Virginia
bounds with Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina, which resulted
in the accumulation of much documentary material, and a report to the
Governor in March, 1861, Document 39 (1861), which was printed. See
_Hist. Mag._ ix. 13.
Matter of historical interest will be found in other of the documents
of this boundary contest: Document 40, Jan. 9, 1860; Senate Document,
Report of Commissioners, Jan. 17, 1872, with eleven maps, including
Smith’s; Final Report, 1874; Senate Document No. 21, being reprints
in 1874 of Reports of Jan. 9, 1860, and March 9, 1861; House Document
No. 6, Communication of the Governor, Jan. 9, 1877. There were also
publications by the State of Maryland relating to the contest.[303]
In 1874 there was published, as a State Senate Document, _Colonial
Records of Virginia_, quarto, which contains the proceedings of the
first Assembly, convened in 1619 at Jamestown,[304] with other early
papers, and an Introduction and Notes by the late Hon. Thomas H.
Wynne. Attention was first called in America to these proceedings by
Conway Robinson, Esq. (who had inspected the original manuscript in
the State-Paper Office, London), in a Report made as chairman of its
Executive Committee, at an annual meeting of the Virginia Historical
Society, held at Richmond, Dec. 15, 1853, and published in the
_Virginia Historical Reporter_, i. 7. They were first published in
the _Collections_ of the New York Historical Society, 1857, with an
Introduction by George Bancroft.[305]
Abstracts from the English State-Paper Office have been furnished the
State Library of Virginia by W. Noël Sainsbury, to Dec. 30, 1730.
There are various papers on the _personnel_ of the colony in the lists
of passengers for Virginia of 1635, which Mr. H. G. Somerby printed in
the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ ii. 111, 211, 268; iii. 184, 388;
iv. 61, 189, 261; v. 61, 343; and xv. 142; and in the collection of
such documents, mostly before published, which are conveniently grouped
in Hotten’s _Original Lists_ (1600-1700), London, 1874 and 1881; and in
S. G. Drake’s _Researches among the British Archives_, 1860.
The Virginia Company published three lists of the venturers and
emigrants in 1619, and in 1620 a similar enumeration in a _Declaration
of the State of the Colonie_.[306] This was dated June 24; another
brief _Declaration_ bears date Sept. 20, 1620. A list of ships arriving
in Jamestown 1607-1624 is given by Neill in the _N. E. Hist. and
Geneal. Reg._, 1876, p. 415.
Neill has published various studies of the census of 1624 in the _N. E.
Hist. and Geneal. Reg._ for 1877, pp. 147, 265, 393.[307]
The most trustworthy source of information as to those who became
permanent planters and founders of families is afforded by the Virginia
records of land patents, which are continuous from 1620, and are no
less valuable for topographical than for genealogical reference.[308]
The manuscript materials of the history of Virginia have been ever
subject to casualty in the varied dangerous and destructive forms of
removal, fire, and war. The first capital, Jamestown, was several
times the scene of violence and conflagration. The colonial archives
were exposed to accident when the seat of government was removed to
Williamsburg; and finally when, in 1779, the latter was abandoned for
the growing town of Richmond, and when, upon the apprehended advance
of the British forces during the Revolution, they were again disturbed
and removed hastily to the last place. It is probable that at the
destruction by fire of the buildings of William and Mary College,
in 1705, many valuable manuscripts were lost which had been left in
them when the royal governors ceased to hold sessions of the Council
within her walls, and when other government functionaries no longer
performed their duties there. Many doubtless suffered the consequences
of Arnold’s invasion in 1781, upon whose approach the contents of the
public offices at Richmond were hastily tumbled into wagons and hurried
off to distant counties. The crowning and fell period of universal
destruction to archives and private papers was, however, that of our
late unhappy war, when seats of justice, sanctuaries, and private
dwellings alike were subjected to fire and pillage. The most serious
loss sustained was at the burning of the State Court House at Richmond,
incidental on the evacuation fire of April 3, 1865, when were consumed
almost the entire records of the old General Court from the year 1619
or thereabout, together with those of many of the county courts (which
had been brought thither to guard against the accidents of the war) and
the greater part of the records of the State Court of Appeals.
Of the records of the General Court, a fragment of a volume covering
the period April 4, 1670-March 16, 1676, is in the _Collections_
of the Virginia Historical Society, and another fragment—Feb. 21,
1678-October, 1692—is in the archives of Henrico County Court at
Richmond. In the State Library are preserved the journals of the
General Assembly from 1697 to 1744, with occasional interruptions.
Of the records of the several counties, the great majority of those of
an early period, it is certain, have been destroyed. Information as
to the preservation of the following has been received by the writer:
Northampton (old Accomac), continuous from 1634; Northumberland,
from 1652; Lancaster, from 1652; Surrey, a volume beginning in 1652;
Rappahannock, from 1656; Essex, from 1692; Charles City, a single
volume, from Jan. 4, 1650, to Feb. 3, 1655, inclusive; Henrico, a
deed book, 1697-1704, and, with interruptions, the same records to
1774,—all classes of records, unbroken, from October, 1781.
In elucidation of the social life and commerce of the period,—the
three decades of the seventeenth century,—the following may be named:
Letters of Colonel William Fitzhugh, of Stafford County, a lawyer
and planter, May 15, 1679-April 29, 1699; Letters of Colonel William
Byrd, of the “Falls,” James River, planter and Receiver-General of
the colony, January, 1683-Aug. 3, 1691,—in the _Collections_ of the
Virginia Historical Society.
The following parish records preserved in the library of the
Theological Seminary near Alexandria, Va., are valuable sources of
early genealogical information; Registers of Charles River Parish, York
County,—births 1648-1800, deaths 1665-1787;[309] Vestry Books (some
with partial registers) of Christ Church Parish, Middlesex County,
1663-1767; Petsoe Parish, Gloucester County, from June 14, 1677;
Kingston Parish, Matthews County, from 1679; St. Peter’s Parish, New
Kent County, from 1686.
Of such of the early papers in the State archives at Richmond as
escaped the casualties of the war, the Commonwealth intrusted the
editing to William P. Palmer; and vol. i., covering 1652-1781 (with a
very few, however, before 1689), was published in 1875 as _Calendar
of State Papers and other Manuscripts preserved in the Capitol at
Richmond_.[310]
On the life of Captain John Smith in general, some notes are made
in another chapter of this volume.[311] It will be remembered that
Fuller—in the earliest printed biography of Smith, contained in his
_Worthies of England_—says of him, “It soundeth much to the diminution
of his deeds, that he alone is the herald to publish and proclaim them.”
Mr. Deane first pointed out (1860), in a note to his edition of
Wingfield’s _Discourse_, that the story of Pocahontas’s saving Smith’s
life from the infuriated Powhatan, which Smith interpolates in his
_Generall Historie_, was at variance with Smith’s earlier recitals in
the tracts of which that book was composed when they had been issued
contemporaneous with the events of which he was treating some years
earlier, and that the inference was that Smith’s natural propensity
for embellishment, as well as a desire to feed the interest which had
been incited in Pocahontas when she visited England, was the real
source of the story. Mr. Deane still farther enlarged upon this view
in a note to his edition (p. 38) of Smith’s _Relation_ in 1866.[312]
It has an important bearing on the question that Hamor, who says so
much of Pocahontas, makes no allusion to such a striking service. The
substantial correctness of Smith’s later story is contended for by W.
Robertson in the _Hist. Mag._, October, 1860; by William Wirt Henry,
in _Potter’s American Monthly_, 1875; and a general protest is vaguely
rendered by Stevens in his _Historical Collections_, p. 102.
The file of the _Richmond Dispatch_ for 1877 contains various
contributions on the early governors of the colony of Virginia by E.
D. Neill, William Wirt Henry, and R. A. Brock, in which the claims
of Smith’s narrative to consideration are discussed. Charles Dudley
Warner, in _A Study of the Life and Writings of John Smith_, 1881,
treats the subject humorously and with sceptical levity. Smith finds
his latest champion, a second time, in William Wirt Henry, in an
address, _The Early Settlement at Jamestown, with Particular Reference
to the late Attacks upon Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and John
Rolfe_, delivered before the annual meeting of the Virginia Historical
Society, held Feb. 24, 1882, and published with the _Proceedings_ of
the Society. Mr. Deane’s views are, however, supported by Henry Adams
(_North American Review_, January, 1867, and _Chapter of Erie, and
other Essays_, p. 192) and by Henry Cabot Lodge (_English Colonies in
America_, p. 6). Mr. Bancroft allowed for a while the original story
to stand, with a bare reference to Mr. Deane’s note (_History of the
United States_, 1864, i. 132); but in his Centenary Edition (1879,
vol. i. p. 102) he abandoned the former assertion, without expressing
judgment. The most recent recitals of the story of Pocahontas under the
color of these later investigations have been by Gay, in the _Popular
History of the United States_, i. 283, and by Charles D. Warner in his
_Captain John Smith_, before named,—the latter carefully going over
all the evidence.
Alexander Brown has contributed several articles, published in the
_Richmond Dispatch_ in April and May, 1882, in which he controverts
the views of Mr. Henry, not only as to the truth of the story of the
rescue, but as to the general veracity of Smith as a historian, taking
a more absolute position in this respect than any previous writer has
done.
Pocahontas is thought to have died at Gravesend just as she was about
re-embarking for America, March 21, 1617; and the entry on the records
of St. George’s Church in that place—which speaks of a “lady Virginia
born,” and has been supposed to refer to her—puts her burial March 21.
1617.[313]
For the tracing of Pocahontas’s descendants through the
Bollings,—Robert Bolling having married Jane Rolfe, the daughter of
Thomas Rolfe, the son of Powhatan’s daughter,—see _The Descendants
of Pocahontas_, by Wyndham Robertson, 1855, and Wynne’s Historical
Documents, vol. iv., entitled _A Memoir of a Portion of the Bolling
Family_, Richmond, 1868 (fifty copies printed), which contains
photographs of portraits of the Bollings.[314]
There is an engraving of Pocahontas by Simon Pass, which perhaps
belongs to, but is seldom found in, Smith’s _Generall Historie_.[315]
The original painting is said to have belonged to Henry Rolfe, of
Narford,—a brother of John, the husband of Pocahontas,—and from him
passed to Anthony Rolfe, of Tuttington, and from him again, probably
by a marriage, to the Elwes of Tuttington, and it is mentioned in a
catalogue of a sale of their effects in the last century. It has not
since been traced.[316]
Richard Randolph, of Virginia, is said to have procured from England
two portraits,—one of Rolfe, and the other of Pocahontas,—and they
were hung in his house at Turkey Island. After his death, in 1784, they
are said to have been bought by Thomas Bolling, of Cobbs, Va., and the
inventory showing them is, or was, in the County Court of Henrico. In
1830 they were in the possession of Dr. Thomas Robinson, of Petersburg,
when he wrote of the portrait of Pocahontas that “it is crumbling so
rapidly that it may be considered as having already passed out of
existence.” A letter of the late H. B. Grigsby to Mr. Charles Deane
states that he had heard it was on panel let into the wainscot. In
1843, while still owned by Mr. Robinson, R. M. Sully made a copy of it,
which seems to have proved acceptable, as appears from the attestations
printed in M’Kinney and Hall’s _Indian Tribes of North America_, 1844,
vol. iii., where at p. 64 is a reproduction in colors of Sully’s
painting. Mr. Grigsby says that the original was finally destroyed in
a contest which grew out of a dispute when the house was sold, whether
the panel went with it or could be reserved.[317]
Of the massacre at Falling Creek, March 22, 1621-22, the Virginia
Company printed, in Edward Waterhouse’s _Declaration of the State of
the Colony and Affairs in Virginia_, a contemporary account.[318] Mr.
Neill has made the transaction the subject of special consideration in
the _Magazine of American History_, i. 222, and in his _Letter to N. G.
Taylor_ in 1868, and has printed a considerable part of Waterhouse’s
account in his _Virginia Company_, p. 317 _et seq._
The massacre is also incidentally mentioned by the present writer
in a paper, “Early Iron Manufacture in Virginia, 1619-1776,” in
the _Richmond Standard_, Feb. 8, 1879, and by James M. Swank, in
“Statistics of the Iron and Steel Production of the United States,”
compiled for the Tenth Census, which may also be referred to for
information as to that industry in the Colony of Virginia.
An examination of the story of Claiborne’s rebellion is made in the
Maryland chapter in the present volume.
Respecting Bacon’s rebellion, the fullest of the contemporary accounts
is that of T. M. on “The beginning, progress, and conclusion of Bacon’s
Rebellion,” which is printed in Force’s _Tracts_, vol. i. no. 8.[319]
Equally important is a MS. “Narrative of the Indian and Civil Wars in
Virginia,” now somewhat defective, which was found among the papers of
Captain Nathaniel Burwell, and lent to the Massachusetts Historical
Society and printed carelessly in their _Collections_ in 1814, vol.
xi., and copied thence by Force in his _Tracts_, vol. i. no. 11, in
1836. The MS. was again collated in 1866, and reprinted accurately in
the Society’s _Proceedings_, ix. 299, when the original was surrendered
to the Virginia Historical Society (_Proceedings_, ix. 244, 298; x.
135). Tyler, _American Literature_, i. 80, assigns its authorship to
one Cotton, of Aquia Creek, whose wife is said to be the writer of “An
Account of our late troubles in Virginia,” which was first printed in
the _Richmond Enquirer_, Sept. 12, 1804, and again in Force’s _Tracts_,
vol. i. no. 9. The popular spreading of the news in England of the
downfall of the rebellion was helped by a little tract, _Strange news
from Virginia_, of which there is a copy in Harvard College Library.
There is in the British Museum Sir William Berkeley’s list of those
executed under that governor’s retaliatory measures, which has been
printed in Force’s _Tracts_, vol. i. no. 10.
Other original documents may be found in Hening’s _Statutes at Large_,
vol. ii.; in the appendix of Burk’s _Virginia_; and in the _Aspinwall
Papers_, i. 162, 189, published in the _Mass. Hist. Coll._ _An
Historical Account of some Memorable Actions, particularly in Virginia,
etc._, by “Sir Thomas Grantham, Knight” (London, 1716), was reprinted
in fac-simile with an Introduction by the present writer (Carlton
McCarthy & Co., Richmond, 1882).[320] The fragment of the records
of the General Court of Virginia, cited as being in the Collections
of the Virginia Historical Society, contains details of the trial
of the participants in the “rebellion” not included in Hening, and
the abstracts from the English State-Paper Office, furnished by Mr.
Sainsbury to the State Library of Virginia, give unpublished details.
Extracts from the same source are in the library of the present writer.
There are various papers in the early volumes of the _Hist. Mag._; see
April, 1867, for a contemporary letter. Massachusetts Bay proclaimed
the insurgents rebels.[321]
* * * * *
The earliest _History of Virginia_ after John Smith’s was an anonymous
one published in London in 1705, with De Bry’s pictures reduced by
Gribelin. When it was translated into French, and published two
years later (1707) both at Amsterdam and Orleans (Paris), the former
issue assigned the authorship to D. S., which has been interpreted
D. Stevens, and so it remained in other editions, some only title
editions, printed at Amsterdam in 1712, 1716, and 1718, though the
later date may be doubtful. (Sabin, ii. 5112.) The true author, a
native of Virginia and a Colonial official, had meanwhile died there in
1716. This was Robert Beverley.[322] The book is concisely written,
and is not without raciness and crispness; but its merits are perhaps
a little overestimated in Tyler’s _American Literature_, ii. 264. His
considerate judgment of the Indians is not, however, less striking
than praiseworthy. For the period following the Restoration he may be
considered the most useful, though he is not independent of a partisan
sympathy.
Sir William Keith’s _History of Virginia_ was undertaken, at the
instance of the Society for the Encouragement of Learning, as the
beginning of a series of books on the English plantations; but no
others followed. It was published in 1738 with two maps,—one of
America, the other of Virginia,—and he depended almost entirely on
Beverley, and brings the story down to 1723.[323] Forty years after
Beverley the early history of the colony was again told, but only down
to 1624, by the Rev. William Stith, then rector of Henrico Parish;
being, however, at the time of his death (1755), the president of
William and Mary College. He seems to have been discouraged from
continuing his narrative because the “generous and public-spirited”
gentlemen of Virginia were unwilling to pay the increased cost of
putting into his Appendix the early documents which give a chief value
to his book to-day. He had the use of the Collingwood transcript
of the records of the Virginia Company. His book, _History of the
First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia_, was published at
Williamsburg in 1747, and there are variations in copies to puzzle the
bibliographer.[324] Stith’s diffuseness and lack of literary skill
have not prevented his becoming a high authority with later writers,
notwithstanding that he implicitly trusts and even praises the honesty
of Smith.[325]
The somewhat inexact _History of Virginia_ by John Burk has some of the
traits of expansive utterance which might be expected of an expatriated
Irishman who had been implicated in political hazards, and who was
yet to fall in a duel in 1808.[326] This book, which was published in
three volumes at Petersburg (1804-5), was dedicated to Jefferson. A
fourth volume, by Skelton Jones and Louis Hue Girardin, was added in
1816; but as the edition was in large part destroyed by a fire, it
is rarely found with the other three.[327] Burk used the copy of the
Virginia Company records which had belonged to John Randolph, as well
as some collections made by Hickman (which Randolph had had made when
it was his intention to write on Virginian history), and Colonel Byrd’s
Journal.
The name of Campbell is twice associated with the history of Virginia.
J. W. Campbell published in 1813 at Petersburg a meagre and unimportant
_History of Virginia_, coming down to 1781. The best known, however,
is the work of Charles Campbell, his son, who in 1847, at Richmond,
published a well-written _Introduction to the History of Virginia_,
and in 1860, at Philadelphia, a completed _History of the Colony and
Ancient Dominion of Virginia_, coming down to 1783,—a book written
before John Smith was called a romancer. The book, however defective
in arrangement and execution, is thought to be the best general
authority.[328]
The most comprehensive _History of Virginia_ is that of Robert R.
Howison, vol. i. coming down to 1763, being published at Philadelphia
in 1846, and vol. ii., ending in 1847, being published at Richmond the
next year. He is a pleasing writer, but sacrifices fact to rhetoric,
though he makes an imposing display of references.
To these may be added, in passing, William H. Brockenbrough’s _Outline
of History of Virginia to 1754_; Martin’s _Gazetteer_, 1835, and Howe’s
_Historical Collections of Virginia_, printed in Charleston, 1856.
* * * * *
Respecting the religious history of the colony, besides the general
historians, there have been several special treatments. Mr. Neill has
written upon the Puritan affinities in _Hours at Home_, November,
1867, and on Thomas Harrison and the Virginia Puritans in his _English
Colonization_, where is also a chapter on the planting of the Church of
England.
Patrick Copland’s sermon, _Virginia’s God be thanked_, was preached
before the Company in London, April 18, 1622; a copy of which is in
Harvard College Library. Cf. Mr. Neill’s _Memoir of Rev. Patrick
Copland_, New York, 1871, p. 52, and his _English Colonization_, p. 104.
Further, see Hawkes’s _Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History
of the United States_, “Virginia,” 1836; Hening’s Statutes; _Papers
relating to the History of the Church in Virginia_, 1650-1770, by W.
S. Perry, 1870; Hammond’s _Leah and Rachel_, 1656; Bishop Meade’s _Old
Churches, etc._, 1855; “Notes on the Virginia Colonial Clergy” in the
_Episcopal Recorder_, and reprinted separately by E. D. Neill, 1877;
Savage’s Winthrop’s _History of New England_, and Anderson’s _Church of
England in the Colonies_, 1856.
The writer has also in his possession the Records of the Monthly
Meeting of Henrico County, June 10, 1699-1797, which he designs to
use in a history of the Society of Friends in Virginia. He has also
earlier isolated records, and a partial registry of births, marriages,
and deaths of those of the faith of the Society in Henrico and Hanover
counties in the eighteenth century.
For an account of early manufactures in Virginia, see Bishop’s _History
of American Manufactures_, 1866. For a view of the early agriculture,
see a paper by the present writer on the _History of Tobacco in
Virginia from its Settlement to 1790_; _Statistics, Agriculture, and
Commerce_, prepared for the Tenth Census; _History of Agriculture in
Virginia_, by N. F. Cabell, 1857; the _Farmers’ Register_, 1833-42;
_Transactions of the State Agricultural Society of Virginia_, 1855; and
“Virginia Colonial Money and Tobacco’s Part therein,” by W. L. Royall,
in _Virginia Law Journal_, August, 1877.
For a view of slavery in the colony, see Bancroft, ch. v.;
O’Callaghan’s _Voyages of the Slavers_; Wilson’s _Rise and Fall of the
Slave Power_; Cobb’s _Inquiry_; and the works of Cabell, Fitzhugh,
Fletcher, Hammond, Ross, Stringfellow, and general histories.
It is evident that no single author has yet given an adequate history
of Virginia; and while it is true that much precious material therefor
has perished, it is believed that the original record is yet not
wanting for such a representation of the past of the State as would be
at once more intelligible as to the motives which occasioned events,
and more convincingly just in the recital of them.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
EDITORIAL NOTES.
=A.= MAPS OF VIRGINIA OR THE CHESAPEAKE.—There seem to have been
visits of the Spaniards to the Chesapeake at an early day (1566-1573),
and they may have made a temporary settlement (1570) on the
Rappahannock. (Robert Greenhow in C. Robinson’s _Discoveries in the
West_, p. 487, basing on Barcia’s _Ensayo Chronologico_; _Historical
Magazine_, iii. 268, 318; J. G. Shea in Beach’s _Indian Miscellany_.)
In the map which De Bry gave with the several editions of Hariot in
1590, the bay appears as “Chesepiooc Sinus;” but in the more general
maps, shortly after, the name Chesipooc, or some form of it, is applied
rather wildly to some bay on the coast, as by Wytfliet’s in 1597, or
earlier still by Thomas Hood, 1592, where the “B. de S. Maria” of the
Spaniards, if intended for the Chesapeake, is given an outline as vague
as the rest of the neighboring coast, where it appears as shown in the
sketch in chapter vi. between the Figs. 1 and 2. It may be, as Stevens
contends (_Historical and Geographical Notes_), that not before Smith
were the entangling Asian coast-lines thoroughly eliminated from this
region; but certainly there was no wholly recognizable delineation
of the bay till Smith recorded the results of the explorations which
he describes in his _Generall Historie_, chs. v. and vi. Smith
indicates by crosses on the affluents of the bay the limits of his own
observations. Strachey’s _Historie of Travaile_, p. 42.
In Smith’s _Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country_, etc.,
Oxford, 1612, W. S., or William Strachey, eked out the little tract
with an appendix of others’ contributions. Strachey afterwards adopted
a considerable part in his _Historie of Travaile_. Mr. Deane, in his
edition of the _True Relation_, p. xxi, has given a full account of
this tract. Smith reprinted it in his _Generall Historie_ with some
changes and additions and small omissions. Purchas reprinted it in his
_Pilgrimes_, but not without changes and omissions of small extent,
and with some additions, which he credits on the margin to Smith; and
he had earlier given an abstract of it in his _Pilgrimage_. There
is a copy of the original in the Lenox Library. Tyler, _American
Literature_, i. 30, notices it.
The map accompanying this tract, engraved by W. Hole, appeared in three
impressions (Stevens’s _Bibliotheca Historica_, 1870, no. 1,903). It
was altered somewhat, and the words, “Page 41, Smith,” were put in
the lower right-hand corner, when it was next used in the _Generall
Historie_, 1624 and later; and in 1625 it was again inserted at pp.
1836-37 of Purchas’s _Pilgrimes_, vol. iv. De Bry next re-engraved
it in part xiii. of his _Great Voyages_, printed in German, 1627,
and in Latin 1634; and in part xiv. in German in 1630 (_Carter-Brown
Catalogue_, i. 370-71). It was also re-engraved for Gottfriedt’s _Newe
Welt_, published at Frankfort, and marked “Erforshet und beschriben
durch Capitain Iohan Schmidt.” The compiler of this last book was J.
Ph. Abelin, who had been one of De Bry’s co-workers, and he made this
work in some sort an abridgment of De Bry’s, use being made of his
plates, often inserting them in the text, the book being first issued
in 1631, and again in 1655. (Muller’s _Books on America_, 1872, no.
636, and (1877) no. 1,269.)
The map was next used in two English editions of Hondy’s _Mercator_,
“Englished by W. S.” 1635, etc., but with some fanciful additions, as
Mr. Deane says (Bohn’s _Lowndes_, p. 1103). The map of the coast in
De Laet, 1633 and 1640, was, it would seem, founded upon it for the
Chesapeake region; cf. also the map of Virginia and Florida called “par
Mercator,” of date 1633, and the maps by Blaeu, of 1655 and 1696.
Once more Smith’s plot adorned, in 1671, Ogilby’s large folio on
_America_, p. 193, as it had also found place in the prototype of
Ogilby, the Amsterdam Montanus of 1671 and 1673. In these two books
(1671-73) also appeared the map “Virginiæ, partis australis et Floridæ,
partis orientalis, nova descriptio,” which shows the coast from the
Chesapeake down to the 30th degree of north latitude.
Smith’s was finally substantially copied as late as 1735, as the best
available source, in _A Short Account of the First Settlement of the
Provinces_, etc., London, 1735,—a contribution to the literature of
the boundary dispute, and was doubtless the basis of the map in Keith’s
_Virginia_ in 1738; but it finally gave place to Fry and Jefferson’s
map of the region in 1750.
A phototype fac-simile, reduced about one quarter, of the earliest
state of the original map in the Harvard College copy of the Oxford
tract of 1612 is given herewith. A similar fac-simile, full size, is
given in Mr. Deane’s reprint of the _True Relation_, though it was not
published in that tract. A lithographic fac-simile, full size, but
without the pictures in the upper corners, is given in the Hakluyt
Society’s edition of Strachey, p. 23. Other reproductions will be
found in Scharf’s _Maryland_, i. 6, Scharf’s _Baltimore City and
County_, 1881, p. 38, and in Cassell’s _United States_, p. 27. That
in the Richmond (1819) reprint of the _Generall Historie_ is well
done, full size, on copper. This copperplate was rescued in 1867 from
the brazier’s pot by the late Thomas H. Wynne, and at the sale of his
library in 1875 was purchased for the State Library of Virginia.
Neill, in his _Virginia Company_, p. 191, mentions “A mapp of Virginia,
discovered to y^e Hills and its latt. from 35 deg. and ½ neer Florida
to 41 deg. bounds of New England. Domina Virginia Ferrar collegit,
1651,” and identifies this compiler of the map as a daughter of John
Ferrar. The map we suppose to be the one engraved by Goddard. This
map is associated with a London publication of 1650, called _Virgo
triumphans, or Virginia richly and truly valued_, which is usually
ascribed to Edward Williams, but is held nevertheless to be in
substance the work of John Ferrar of Geding. There were two editions
of this year (1650): _Brinley Catalogue_ no. 3,816; Quaritch, _General
Catalogue_, no. 12,535, held at £36 John Ferrar’s copy of the first
edition, with his notes, and the original drawing of the map, inserted
by Ferrar to make up a deficiency in the first edition, of which he
complains. Quaritch prices a good copy without such annotations at
£25. The second edition (1650) had additions, as shown in the title,
_Virginia, more especially the South part thereof, second edition,
with addition of the discovery of silkworms, etc._ In this the same
map appeared engraved as above, and the Huth copy of it has it in two
states, one without, and the other with an oval portrait of Sir Francis
Drake. (_Huth Catalogue_, v. 1594.) The Harvard College copy lacks
the map, which is described by Quaritch (no. 12,536, who prices this
edition at £32) in a copy from the Bathurst Library, as a folding sheet
exhibiting New Albion as well as Virginia, with the purpose of showing
an easy northern passage to the Pacific, the text representing the
Mississippi as dividing the two countries, and flowing into the South
Sea; see also _Menzies’ Catalogue_, no. 2,143, and the note in Major’s
edition of Strachey, p. 34, on a map published in 1651 in London. This
second edition was the one which Force followed in reprinting it in his
_Tracts_, vol. iii. no. 11. The _Huth Catalogue_ notes a third edition,
_Virginia in America richly valued_, 1651. The map is given on a later
page.
=B.= THE VIRGINIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY.—From 1818 to 1828 the eleven
volumes of the _Evangelical and Literary Magazine_, edited at Richmond
by John Holt Rice, D.D., had contained some papers on the early
history of the State, but no organized effort was made to work in this
direction before the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society was
formed, in December, 1831, with Chief Justice Marshall as president,
and under its auspices a small volume of _Collections_ was issued in
1833; but from February, 1838, to 1847 the Society failed to be of
any influence. Meanwhile, from 1834 to 1864 the _Southern Literary
Messenger_ afforded some means for the local antiquaries and historical
students to communicate with one another and the public.
In December, 1847, a revival of interest resulted in a reorganization
of the old Association as the Virginia Historical Society, with the
Hon. William C. Rives as president. Promptly ensuing, Maxwell’s
_Virginia Historical Register_ was started as an organ of the Society,
and was published from 1848 to 1853,—six volumes. The Society laid
a plan of publishing the annals of the State, and, as preliminary,
intrusted to Conway Robinson, Esq., the preparation of a volume which
was published in 1848 as _An Account of the Discoveries in the West
until 1529, and of Voyages to and along the Atlantic Coast of North
America from 1520 to 1573_. This was an admirable summary, and deserves
wider recognition than it has had. It subsequently published, besides
various addresses, _The Virginia Historical Reporter_, 1854-1860, which
contained accounts of the Society’s meetings. The Civil War interrupted
its work, but in 1867 the Society was again resuscitated, and it has
been under active management since. There is a bibliography of its
publications in the _Historical Magazine_, xvii. 340. Its historical
students have contributed to the files of the _Richmond Standard_ since
Sept. 7, 1878, much early reprinted and later original matter relating
to Virginia.
* * * * *
NOTE.—Since this chapter was completed has appeared Mr. George W.
Williams’s _Negro Race in America_, which has a chapter on the history
of Slavery in the colony of Virginia; and also Mr. J. A. Doyle’s _The
English in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas_, London,
1882.