SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF VIRGINIA
(1634-1652)
During the vicissitudes of government in Virginia the colony continued
to increase in wealth and population, and in 1634 eight counties were
created;[1] while an official census in April, 1635, showed nearly
five thousand people, to which number sixteen hundred were added in
1636. The new-comers during Harvey's time were principally servants
who came to work the tobacco-fields.[2] Among them were some convicts
and shiftless people, but the larger number were persons of
respectable standing, and some had comfortable estates and influential
connections in England.[3] Freed from their service in Virginia, not a
few attained positions as justices of the peace and burgesses in the
General Assembly.[4]
The trade of Virginia was become so extensive that Dutch as well as
English ships sought the colony. The principal settlements were on the
north side of James River, and as the voyager in 1634 sailed from
Chesapeake Bay he passed first the new fort at Point Comfort lately
constructed by Captain Samuel Matthews. About five miles farther on
was Newport News, chiefly remarkable for its spring, where all the
ships stopped to take in water, at this time the residence of Captain
Daniel Gookin, a prominent Puritan, who afterwards removed to
Massachusetts. Five miles above Newport News, at Deep Creek, was
Denbeigh, Captain Samuel Matthews's place, a miniature village rather
than plantation, where many servants were employed, hemp and flax
woven, hides tanned, leather made into shoes, cattle and swine raised
for the ships outward bound, and a large dairy and numerous poultry
kept.
A few hours' sail from Denbeigh was Littletown, the residence of
George Menifie. He had a garden of two acres on the river-side, which
was full of roses of Provence, apple, pear, and cherry trees, and the
various fruits of Holland, with different kinds of sweet-smelling
herbs, such as rosemary, sage, marjoram, and thyme. Growing around the
house was an orchard of peach-trees, which astonished his visitors
very much, for they were not to be seen anywhere else on the coast.[5]
About six miles farther was Jamestown, a village of three hundred
inhabitants, built upon two streets at the upper end of the island.
There the governor resided with some of his council, one of whom,
Captain William Pierce, had a garden of three or four acres, from
which his wife a few years before obtained a hundred bushels of
figs.[6] The houses there as elsewhere were of wood, with brick
chimneys, but architecture was improving.
In 1637 the General Assembly offered a lot to every person who should
build a house at Jamestown Island; and in pursuance of the
encouragement given, "twelve new houses and stores were built in the
town," one of brick by Richard Kempe, "the fairest ever known in this
country for substance and uniformity." About the same time money was
raised for a brick church and a brick state-house.[7] As to the
general condition of the colony in 1634, Captain Thomas Young reported
that there was not only a "very great plentie of milk, cheese, and
butter, but of corn, which latter almost every planter in the colony
hath."[8]
Such a "plentie of corn" must be contrasted with the scarcity in 1630,
for the current of prosperity did not run altogether smoothly. The
mortality still continued frightful, and "during the months of June,
July, and August, the people died like cats and dogs,"[9] a statement
especially true of the servants, of whom hardly one in five survived
the first year's hardships in the malarial tobacco-fields along the
creeks and rivers.[10] In 1630 tobacco tumbled from its high price of
3s. 6d. to 1d. per pound, and the colony was much "perplexed" for want
of money to buy corn, which they had neglected to raise. To relieve
the distress, Harvey, the next year, sent several ships to trade with
the Indians up Chesapeake Bay and on the coast as far south as Cape
Fear.[11]
Tobacco legislation for the next ten years consisted in regulations
vainly intended to prevent further declines. Tobacco fluctuated in
value from one penny to sixpence, and, as it was the general currency,
this uncertainty caused much trouble. Some idea of the general
dependency upon tobacco may be had from a statute in 1640, which,
after providing for the destruction of all the bad tobacco and half
the good, estimated the remainder actually placed upon the market by a
population of eight thousand at one million five hundred thousand
pounds.[12]
The decline in the price of tobacco had the effect of turning the
attention of the planters to other industries, especially the supply
of corn to the large emigration from England to Massachusetts. In 1631
a ship-load of corn from Virginia was sold at Salem, in Massachusetts,
for ten shillings the bushel.[13] In 1634 at least ten thousand
bushels were taken to Massachusetts, besides "good quantities of
beeves, goats, and hogs";[14] and Harvey declared that Virginia had
become "the granary of all his majesty's northern colonies,"[15] Yet
from an imported pestilence, the year 1636 was so replete with misery
that Samuel Maverick, of Massachusetts, who visited the colony,
reported that eighteen hundred persons died, and corn sold at twenty
shillings per bushel.[16]
Sir Francis Wyatt arrived in the colony, November, 1639, and
immediately called Harvey to account for his abuse of power. The
decree against Panton was repealed, and his estate, which had been
seized, was returned to him, while the property of Harvey was taken to
satisfy his numerous creditors.[17] The agitation for the renewal of
the charter still continued, and Wyatt called a general assembly
January, 1640, at which time it was determined to make another effort.
George Sandys was appointed agent of the colony in England, and
petitions reached England probably in the autumn of 1640. The breach
between the king and Parliament was then complete, and Charles had
thrown himself entirely into the arms of the court party. Sandys,
despairing of success from the king, appealed to Parliament in the
name of the "Adventurers and Planters in Virginia," and "the Virginia
patent was taken out again under the broad seal of England."[18] To
what extent the new charter established the boundaries of Virginia
does not appear, and the subsequent turn of affairs in Virginia made
the action of Parliament at this time a nullity.
To offset these proceedings, the king commissioned[19] Sir William
Berkeley, a vehement royalist, as successor to the popular Wyatt, and
he arrived in Virginia in January, 1642, where he at once called an
assembly to undo the work of Sandys. A petition to the king protesting
against the restoration of the company was adopted, but although it
was signed by the council and burgesses, as well as by Berkeley, the
preamble alludes to strong differences of opinion.[20] The change of
position was doubtless brought about by the issue made in England
between loyalty and rebellion; and, while desirous of a recharter, the
majority of the people of Virginia did not care to desert the king.
The petition was presented July 5, 1642, to Charles at his
headquarters at York, who returned a gracious reply that "he had not
the least intention to consent to the introduction of any
company."[21]
While loyal to the king, the people of Virginia had never been wedded
to the views of the high-church party in England. Among the ministers
the surplice was not usual, and there was a Puritan severity about the
laws in regard to the Sabbath and attendance at church. As the strife
in England became more pronounced, the people in Nansemond and lower
Norfolk counties, on the south of the James, showed decided leanings
towards Parliament and to the congregational form of worship.
Soon they began to think of separating from the church of England
altogether, and they sent for ministers to New England in 1642. In
response, the elders there despatched three of their number, who,
arriving in Virginia, set zealously to work to organize the
congregations on the Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers. According to
their own account, these ministers met with much success till they
were suddenly stopped in the work by Berkeley, who persuaded the
assembly, in March, 1643, to pass severe laws against Nonconformists;
and under this authority drove them out of the land in 1644.[22]
In the same year occurred an Indian attack which these preachers and
John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, thought to be a special
visitation of Providence. After the massacre in 1622 the war with the
Indians had continued in a desultory way for over twelve years. Year
after year squads of soldiers were sent in various directions against
the different tribes, and by 1634 the Indians were so punished that
the whites thought it safe to make peace. Now, after a repose of ten
years, the fierce instincts of the savages for blood were once more
excited.
April 18, 1644, was Good Friday, and Governor Berkeley ordered it to
be kept as a special fast day to pray for King Charles; instead, it
became a day of bloodshed and mourning.[23] The chief instigator of
the massacre of 1622 was still alive, old Opechancanough, who, by the
death of his brother Opitchapam, was now head chief of the Powhatan
Confederacy. Thinking the civil war in England a favorable occasion to
repeat the bloody deeds of twenty-two years before, on the day before
Good Friday he attacked the settlers, and continued the assault for
two days, killing over three hundred whites. The onslaught fell
severest on the south side of James River and on the heads of the
other rivers, but chiefly on the York River, where Opechancanough had
his residence.[24]
The massacre of 1622 shook the colony to its foundation, and it is
surprising to see how little that of 1644 affected the current of life
in Virginia. Berkeley seemed to think so little of the attack that
after making William Claiborne general of an expedition against the
Pamunkey tribe he left the colony in June, 1645.[25] He was gone a
whole year, and on his return found that Claiborne had driven the
Indians far away from the settlements. In 1646 he received information
which enabled him to close the war with dramatic effect. At the head
of a body of cavalry he surprised old Opechancanough in an encampment
between the falls of the Appomattox and the James, and brought him,
aged and blind, to Jamestown, where, about three weeks later, one of
his guards shot him to death.[26] A peace was made not long after with
Necotowance, his successor, by which the Indians agreed to retire
entirely from the peninsula between the York and James rivers.[27]
One of the most remarkable results of the massacre was the change it
produced in Rev. Thomas Harrison, Berkeley's chaplain at Jamestown,
who had used his influence with the governor to expel the
Nonconformist ministers of New England. He came to the belief of John
Winthrop that the massacre was a Providential visitation and turned
Puritan himself. After a quarrel with Berkeley he left Jamestown and
took charge of the churches on the Elizabeth and Nansemond rivers with
their Puritan congregations. Berkeley would probably have set the
law-officers upon him at once, but among his councillors was Richard
Bennett, himself of Harrison's congregation, and his influence held
the governor back for a time.
Three years passed, and at length Harrison and his elder, William
Durand, were peremptorily directed to leave the colony. Harrison went
first to New England and then to old England, while William Durand
emigrated to Maryland, where, aided by Bennett, he made terms with
Governor William Stone for the emigration of his flock; and in the
year 1649 more than one thousand persons left Virginia and settled on
the Severn and Patuxent rivers. The settlement was called Providence,
and was destined to play a remarkable part in the history of
Maryland.[28]
When the civil war in England was fairly on, emigration to Virginia
was much improved in material, and for many years was very large. The
new-comers came to make homes, not merely to make tobacco, and they no
longer consisted of servants, but of the merchants and yeomanry of
England. "If these troublous times hold long amongst us," wrote
William Hallam, a salter of Burnham, in Essex County, England, "we
must all faine come to Virginia."[29]
Hitherto the uncertainty resulting from the overthrow of the charter
made it difficult to secure a good class of ministers. Those who came
had been "such as wore black coats and could babble in a pulpet, and
roare in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their
dissolutenesse destroy than feed their flocks." Now these "wolves in
sheep's clothing" were by the assembly forced to depart the country
and a better class of clergymen arrived.[30] In 1649 there were twenty
churches and twenty ministers who taught the doctrines of the church
of England and "lived all in peace and love";[31] and at the head of
them was a roan of exemplary piety, Rev. Philip Mallory, son of Dr.
Thomas Mallory, Dean of Chester.[32]
The condition of things about 1648 is thus summed up by Hammond, a
contemporary writer: "Then began the gospel to flourish; civil,
honorable, and men of great estates flocked in; famous buildings went
forward; orchards innumerable were planted and preserved; tradesmen
set to work and, encouraged, staple commodities, as silk, flax,
potashes attempted on.... So that this country, which had a mean
beginning, many back friends, two ruinous and bloody massacres, hath
by God's grace outgrown all, and is become a place of pleasure and
plenty."
Later, after the beheading of King Charles in 1649, there was a large
influx of cavaliers, who, while they raised the quality of society,
much increased the sympathy felt in Virginia for the royal cause.
Under their influence Sir William Berkeley denounced the murder of
King Charles I., and the General Assembly adopted an act making it
treason to defend the late proceedings or to doubt the right of his
son, Charles II., to succeed to the crown.[33] Parliament was not long
in accepting the challenge which Berkeley tendered. In October, 1650,
they adopted an ordinance prohibiting trade with the rebellious
colonies of Virginia, Barbadoes, Antigua, and Bermuda Islands, and
authorizing the Council of State to take measures to reduce them to
terms.[34]
In October, 1651, was passed the first of the navigation acts, which
limited the colonial trade to England, and banished from Virginia the
Dutch vessels, which carried abroad most of the exports. About the
same time, having taken measures against Barbadoes, the Council of
State ordered a squadron to be prepared against Virginia. It was
placed under the command of Captain Robert Dennis; and Thomas Stegge,
Richard Bennett, and William Claiborne, members of Berkeley's council,
were joined with him in a commission[35] to "use their best endeavors
to reduce all the plantations within the Bay of Chesopiack." Bennett
and Claiborne were in Virginia at the time, and probably did not know
of their appointment till the ships arrived in Virginia.
The fleet left England in October, 1651, carrying six hundred men, but
on the way Captain Dennis and Captain Stegge were lost in a storm and
the command devolved on Captain Edmund Curtis.[36] In December they
reached the West Indies, where they assisted Sir George Ayscue in the
reduction of Barbadoes. In January, 1652, they reached Virginia, where
Curtis showed Claiborne and Bennett his duplicate instructions.
Berkeley, full of fight, called out the militia, twelve hundred
strong, and engaged the assistance of a few Dutch ships then trading
in James River contrary to the recent navigation act.
The commissioners acted with prudence and good sense. They did not
proceed at once to Jamestown, but first issued a proclamation intended
to disabuse the people of any idea that they came to make war.[37] The
result was that in March, 1652, when they appeared before the little
capital, the council and burgesses overruled Berkeley, and entered
into an agreement with Curtis, Claiborne, and Bennett, which proves
the absence of hard feelings on both sides. The Virginians recognized
the authority of the commonwealth of England, and promised to pass no
statute contrary to the laws of Parliament. On the other hand, the
commissioners acknowledged the submission of Virginia, "as a voluntary
act not forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the countrey"; and
conceded her right "to be free from all taxes, customs, and
impositions whatever, not enforced by the General Assembly." In
particular it was stipulated that "Virginia should have and enjoy the
antient bounds and lymitts granted by the charters of the former
kings."
The articles were signed March 12, 1652, and the commissioners soon
after sailed to St. Mary's and received the surrender of Maryland.
They returned in time to be present at a new meeting of the assembly
held at Jamestown in April, at which it was unanimously voted that
until the further pleasure of Parliament was known Richard Bennett
should be governor and William Claiborne secretary of state. To the
burgesses, as the representatives of the people, was handed over the
supreme power of thereafter electing all officers of the colony.[38]
Then Virginia, the last of the British dominions to abandon the king,
entered upon eight years of almost complete self-government, under the
protection of the commonwealth of England.
In 1652 the settlements in Virginia were embraced in thirteen
counties, of which Northampton, on the Accomack Peninsula, extended to
the southern boundary of Maryland. On the James River were nine
counties: Henrico, Charles City, James City, Surry, Warwick,
Warascoyack, or Isle of Wight, Elizabeth City, Nansemond, and Lower
Norfolk. On York River were York County on the south side and
Gloucester on the north side.[39] On the Rappahannock was Lancaster
County, extending on both sides of the river from Pianketank to
Dividing Creek in the Northern Neck; and on the Potomac was the county
of Northumberland, first settled about 1638 at Chicacoan and
Appomattox on the Potomac, by refugees from Maryland.[40]
Towards the south the plantations, following the watercourses, had
spread to the heads of the creeks and rivers, tributaries of the
James, and some persons more adventurous than the rest had even made
explorations in North Carolina.[41] Westward the extension was, of
course, greatest along the line of the James, reaching as far as the
Falls where Richmond now stands. The population was probably about
twenty thousand, of whom as many as five thousand were white servants
and five hundred were negroes.
The houses throughout the colony were generally of wood, a story and a
half high, and were roofed with shingles. The chimneys were of brick,
and the wealthier people lived in houses constructed wholly of
home-made brick.[42] "They had, besides, good English furniture" and a
"good store of plate." By ordinary labor at making tobacco any person
could clear annually £20 sterling, the equivalent of $500 to-day. The
condition of the servants had greatly improved, and their labor was
not so hard nor of such continuance as that of farmers and mechanics
in England. Thefts were seldom committed, and an old writer asserts
that "he was an eye-witness in England to more deceits and villanies
in four months than he ever saw or heard mention of in Virginia in
twenty years abode there."[43]
The plenty of everything made hospitality universal, and the health of
the country was greatly promoted by the opening of the forests.
Indeed, so contented were the people with their new homes that the
same writer declares, "Seldom (if ever) any that hath continued in
Virginia any time will or do desire to live in England, but post back
with what expedition they can, although many are landed men in
England, and have good estates there, and divers wayes of preferments
propounded to them to entice and perswade their continuance."
In striking contrast to New England was the absence of towns, due
mainly to two reasons--first, the wealth of watercourses, which
enabled every planter of means to ship his products from his own
wharf; and, secondly, the culture of tobacco, which scattered the
people in a continual search for new and richer lands. This rural
life, while it hindered co-operation, promoted a spirit of
independence among the whites of all classes which counteracted the
aristocratic form of government. The colony was essentially a
democracy, for though the chief offices in the counties and the colony
at large were held by a few families, the people were protected by a
popular House of Burgesses, which till 1736 was practically
established on manhood suffrage. Negro slavery tended to increase this
independence by making race and not wealth the great distinction; and
the ultimate result was seen after 1792, when Virginia became the
headquarters of the Democratic-Republican party--the party of popular
ideas.[44]
Under the conditions of Virginia society, no developed educational
system was possible, but it is wrong to suppose that there was none.
The parish institutions introduced from England included educational
beginnings; every minister had a school, and it was the duty of the
vestry to see that all poor children could read and write. The county
courts supervised the vestries and held a yearly "orphans' court,"
which looked after the material and educational welfare of all
orphans.[45]
The benevolent design of a free school in the colony, frustrated by
the massacre of 1622, was realized in 1635, when--three years before
John Harvard bequeathed his estate to the college near Boston which
bears his name--Benjamin Syms left "the first legacy by a resident of
the American plantations of England for the promotion of
education."[46] In 1659 Thomas Eaton established[47] a free school in
Elizabeth City County, adjoining that of Benjamin Syms; and a fund
amounting to $10,000, representing these two ancient charities, is
still used to carry on the public high-school at Hampton, Virginia. In
1655 Captain John Moon left a legacy for a free school in Isle of
Wight County; and in 1659 Captain William Whittington left two
thousand pounds of tobacco for a free school in Northampton County.
[Footnote 1: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 224.]
[Footnote 2: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, pp. 201, 231,
268.]
[Footnote 3: _William and Mary Quarterly_, IV., 173-176, V., 40.]
[Footnote 4: _Virginia's Cure_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No. xv.).]
[Footnote 5: De Vries, _Voyages_ (N.Y. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d
series, III., 34).]
[Footnote 6: Smith, _Works_ (Arber's ed.), 887.]
[Footnote 7: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 288. In 1639
Alexander Stonar, brickmaker, patented land on Jamestown Island "next
to the brick-kiln," Tyler, _Cradle of the Republic_, 46, 99.]
[Footnote 8: Mass. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 4th series, IX., 108.]
[Footnote 9: De Vries, _Voyages_ (N.Y. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 2d
series, III., 37)]
[Footnote 10: _William and Mary Quarterly_, VII., 66, 114.]
[Footnote 11: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 117.]
[Footnote 12: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 225.]
[Footnote 13: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 67.]
[Footnote 14: Mass. Hist. Soc., _Collections_, 4th series, IX., 110.]
[Footnote 15: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 184.]
[Footnote 16: Winthrop, _New England_, I., 228.]
[Footnote 17: _Va. Magazine_, V., 123-128.]
[Footnote 18: _Virginia and Maryland, or the Lord Baltimore's Printed
Case, uncased and answered_ (Force, _Tracts_, II, No. ix.).]
[Footnote 19: _Va. Magazine_, II., 281-288.]
[Footnote 20: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 230-235.]
[Footnote 21: _Manuscript Collection of Annals relating to Virginia_
(Force, _Tracts_, II., No. vi.).]
[Footnote 22: Latané, _Early Relations between Maryland and Virginia_
(_Johns Hopkins University Studies_, XIII., Nos. iii. and iv.).]
[Footnote 23: Winthrop, _New England_, III, 198, 199].
[Footnote 24: Ibid.; Beverley, _Virginia_, 48.]
[Footnote 25: _Va. Magazine_, VIII., 71-73.]
[Footnote 26: _A Perfect Description of Virginia_ (Force, _Tracts_,
II., No. viii.); Beverley, _Virginia_, 49.]
[Footnote 27: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 323-326.]
[Footnote 28: Latané, _Early Relations_ (_Johns Hopkins University
Studies_, XIII.).]
[Footnote 29: _William and Mary Quarterly_, VIII., 239.]
[Footnote 30: Hammond, _Leah and Rachel_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No.
xiv.).]
[Footnote 31: _Perfect Description_ (ibid., II., No. viii.).]
[Footnote 32: Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, 238; Tyler, _Cradle of the
Republic_, 90.]
[Footnote 33: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 359-361.]
[Footnote 34: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 343.]
[Footnote 35: _Md. Archives_, III., 265-267.]
[Footnote 36: _Cal. of State Pap., Col._, 1574-1660, p. 393.]
[Footnote 37: See report of the commissioners, _Va. Magazine_, XI.,
32.]
[Footnote 38: Hening, _Statutes_, I., 363, 371.]
[Footnote 39: Virginia Land Grants, _MSS_.]
[Footnote 40: _Md. Archives_, IV., 268, 315.]
[Footnote 41: Bancroft, _United States_ (22d ed.), II, 134.]
[Footnote 42: Tyler, "Colonial Brick Houses," in _Century Magazine_,
February, 1896.]
[Footnote 43: Hammond, _Leah and Rachel_ (Force, _Tracts_, III., No.
xiv.).]
[Footnote 44: Tyler, "Virginians Voting in the Colonial Period," in
_William and Mary Quarterly_, VI., 9.]
[Footnote 45: "Education in Colonial Virginia," _William and Mary
Quarterly_, V., 219-223, VI., 1-7, 71-86, 171-186, VII., 1-9, 65, 77.]
[Footnote 46: Neill, _Virginia Carolorum_, 112.]
[Footnote 47: "Eaton's Deed," in _William and Mary Quarterly_, XI,
19.]