ENGLAND ACQUIRES VIRGINIA
Mighty in her military strength and with an all but inexhaustible wealth
pouring into her coffers from her American conquests, Spain stood as a
very colossus over the Europe of the sixteenth century; and England,
watching and fearing her hostile growth, grimly determined that she too,
should have her share of that fabulous new world and its treasure. So
deeply planted and so greatly grew this determination that it eventually
became a part of England's public policy and in June, 1578, the great
Elizabeth, with her eyes on the American coast, issued letters patent to
Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and after Gilbert's death reissued them on the
25th March, 1584, to his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, to discover,
have, hold and occupy forever, such "remote heathern and barbarous
lands, countries and territories not actually possessed by any Christian
prince, nor inhabited by Christian people." As by its terms the new
grant was to continue but for "the space of six yeares and no more," it
was clear that advantage of its provisions should be taken with
promptness; and Raleigh was not a man given to delay or indecision. He
had been making his preparations; hardly more than a month elapsed
before an expedition of two ships captained by Philip Amidas and Arthur
Barlow set sail from England, bound for America. On the 4th of the
following July, having landed on an island off the coast of the present
Carolinas, these men raised the English flag and formally declared the
sovereignty of England and its Queen. They brought home with them such
glowing accounts of their discovery that Elizabeth was moved to bestow
upon all the coast the name of Virginia--the land of the Virgin Queen.
Two more attempts were made to establish permanent settlements in the
neighborhood and although both failed, enough had been done to found a
claim of English ownership and dominion, a claim which covered the
entire coast from the French settlements in the north to the Spanish
settlements upon the Florida peninsula, and thus the original Virginia
became coextensive with England's pretensions on the North American
continent. It is true that Spain then claimed the entire coast under a
Papal Bull but Papal Bulls meant very little to Elizabeth or to her
pugnacious sea-rovers. One of the many curiosities of history is that
neither Raleigh nor his captains ever saw the soil of that part of
America which was to become the Virginia we know, nor did the Queen who
named it ever have knowledge of its physical characteristics, its
resources or its inhabitants. In short, Virginia proper was neither to
be discovered nor have its first precarious settlement until after
Elizabeth's death.
After these first abortive attempts to found English settlements under
his patent, Raleigh, on the 7th March, 1589, assigned it and all his
rights thereunder to a company of merchants and adventurers who were
resolved to proceed with the enterprise. These assigns, after the death
of Elizabeth, became the leaders in seeking from King James I "leave to
deduce a colony in Virginia." That monarch, says Bancroft, "promoted the
noble work by readily issuing an ample patent" and on the 10th day of
April, 1606, signed and affixed his seal to the first Charter of an
English colony in America under which permanent settlement was to be
effected. This charter declared the boundaries of Virginia to extend
from the 34th to the 45th parallels of longitude and authorized the
planting of two colonies. The first of these, to be founded by the
London Company, largely made up of men of that city, was designated a
"First Colony" to be established in the southerly portion of England's
claim; the right to establish a "Second Colony" to be planted in the
north, went to the Plymouth Company, whose membership, headed by Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, Governor of the garrison of Plymouth in Devonshire,
came principally from the west of England. Under this Charter the King
named the first "Council for all matters which shall happen in
Virginia;" under it the London Company dispatched the expedition of
three ships in command of Sir Christopher Newport and having Captain
John Smith among its members; and under it and the Second Charter (of
1609) the infant colony was governed until, in the year 1624, the
Charter was revoked and the Crown took over the affairs of the Colony.
Until the troubled reign of the first Charles, the growth of Virginia's
population had been very slow. It was not until the defeat of the
Royalists in 1645 by the forces of the Parliament and the King's
execution in January, 1649, that the first great increase in population
occurred. In a pamphlet published in London in that latter year, by an
unknown author, it is stated that her population was at that time 15,000
English and 300 negroes and these were scattered along the lower
portions of the James and the York and the shores of the Chesapeake.
Then the defeated Cavaliers began to arrive in such great numbers that
by 1670 Sir William Berkeley estimated that 32,000 free whites, 6,000
indentured servants and 2,000 negroes were there. Many of the old
population and the newer arrivals as well, were pressing northward to
the land between the mouth of Rappahannock and that of the Potomac which
in 1647 had been organized into a new county, under the name of
Northumberland, to include all the lands lying between those latter
rivers and running westerly to a still indefinite boundary. This was new
territory recently, and still very sparsely, settled by the English and
even as late as 1670 it was contemporaneously estimated that the Indians
between the two rivers had nearly 200 warriors.
Although the Stuarts had been deposed in England and the younger Charles
forced to fly to the Continent, he was still King in Virginia with loyal
and devoted subjects. It was under such conditions that Charles,
actuated not only by a desire to reward certain of his Cavalier
adherents who were sharing his exile, but also to create a refuge for
others of his followers from the ire and oppression of the triumphant
Roundheads, granted by charter dated the 18th day of September, 1649,
the whole domain between the Rappahannock and Potomac to seven of his
faithful lieges who, during the Civil War, had fought valiantly in the
Stuart cause. These men were described in the charter, still preserved
in the British Museum, as Ralph Lord Hopton, Baron of Stratton; Henry
Lord Jermyn, Baron of St. Edmund's Bury; John Lord Colepeper, Baron of
Thoresway; Sir John Berkeley, Sir William Morton, Sir Dudley Wyatt and
Thomas Colepeper Esq. And thus, says Fairfax Harrison, "the proprietary
of the Northern Neck of Virginia came into existence."
He notes that of the patentees Lord Jermyn, after the Restoration,
became Earl of St. Albans and Sir John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of
Stratton. "The only conditions" quotes Head "attached to the conveyance
of the domain, the equivalent of a principality, were that one-fifth of
all the gold and one-tenth of all the silver, discovered within its
limits should be reserved for the royal use and that a nominal rent of a
few pounds sterling should be paid into the treasury at Jamestown each
year."
But to receive a grant of this splendid Proprietary from a fugitive and
powerless King was one thing and to reduce it to actual possession was
another and very different one. Charles might and did consider himself
King in both England and Virginia and the ruling Virginians might and
did consider themselves his very loyal and obedient subjects; but
unfortunately for the seven Cavalier patentees of the Northern Neck, the
Parliament and Cromwell took a radically different view of the matter
and, even more unfortunately, were in a position to enforce that view.
No sooner had the representatives of the new Proprietors come to
Virginia and were duly welcomed by the royalist Governor Sir William
Berkeley, than a Parliamentary fleet of warships arrived from England,
deposed the Governor, set up the rule of Parliament in 1652 and abruptly
ended, for the time being, the patentees' hopes of gaining possession
of their new grant.
There was little to be done by these Cavaliers while Parliament and
Cromwell ruled. And then the wheel of history, after its fashion,
completed another cycle. On the 3rd September, 1658, Cromwell died and
soon the ruthless and efficient but never very cheerful control of
England by the Puritans came to an end. In 1659 word came to Virginia of
the resignation of Richard Cromwell and the Puritan Governor Mathews
dying about the same time, the Virginia Assembly in March, 1660,
proceeded to elect Sir William Berkeley to be their Governor again. On
the 8th of the following May, Charles II was proclaimed King in England
and in September a royal commission for Berkeley, already elected by the
Assembly, arrived, the Virginians themselves welcoming the restoration
of Stuart rule with great enthusiasm.
The owners of the patent of the Northern Neck believed that their
patience was at length to be rewarded. Again they sent a representative
to Virginia, this time with instructions from King to Governor to give
his aid to the Proprietors to obtain possession of their domain. But
during all the years of their forced inactivity, the settlement of
Virginia had gone on apace. What had been in 1649 a thinly settled
frontier, shewed now a largely increased population and land grants to
these new settlers had been freely issued by Virginia's government. Many
of those newly seated in the Northern Neck were very influential men and
in their opposition to the claims of the patentees received popular
sympathy and encouragement. As a result, Berkeley found himself
confronted by a Council which obstructed his every effort to carry out
the King's instructions and the endeavours of the Proprietors to gain
possession of their grant being completely blocked, they were obliged to
appeal to the home government for relief. The outcome of negotiations
between them and Francis Moryson, then representing Virginia in London,
was that the patent of 1649 was surrendered by its holders for a new
grant carrying on its face substantial limitations of the earlier
patent. This new grant was dated the 8th day of May, 1669, almost twenty
years after the first, and contained provisions recognizing the title to
lands already seated or occupied under other authority; generally
limiting the Proprietors' title to such other lands as should be
"inhabited or planted" within the ensuing twenty-one years, together
with a constructive recognition of the political jurisdiction of the
Virginia government within the Proprietary.[2]
[2] Harrison's _Virginia Land Grants_, 63.
This appeared a reasonably satisfactory compromise of the controversy to
both sides. But suddenly in February, 1673, Charles made a grant of all
Virginia to the Earl of Arlington and Lord Colepeper to hold for
thirty-one years at an annual rent of forty shillings to be paid at
Michaelmas. Thus was Virginia rewarded for her faithful loyalty to the
Stuarts. When the news came to Jamestown the Colony flamed with
resentment and anger; and now Berkeley and his Council were in hearty
accord with the wrathful indignation of the Colonists. Even though the
King had not intended to interfere with the title of individual planters
in possession of their land, his action threw the whole situation, and
particularly in the Northern Neck, into turmoil and confusion.
Exasperation was directed against the holders of the Charter of 1669 as
well as those of 1673 and again the original patentees appealed to the
Privy Council for relief. Again the King sought to help them but by this
time they had grown weary of the long controversy and indicated their
willingness to sell out their rights to the Colony; before an agreement
could be reached, Bacon's Rebellion flared up and the whole subject was
again in abeyance.
* * * * *
We must now return to the Indians. The Dutch settlements along the
Hudson had early developed a very lucrative and active trade with their
native neighbours, particularly the Iroquois, who brought to them furs
for which they were given European manufactures, especially spirits and
firearms and when, in 1664, the English conquered and took possession of
these Hudson settlements, they continued the Dutch trade and friendship
with the Iroquois. To obtain furs, the hunters and warriors of the Five
Nations ranged further and further afield and before long were in bitter
conflict with the Susquehannocks who had their headquarters and
principal stronghold fifty or sixty miles above the present Port Deposit
in Maryland on the east bank of that river from which they derived their
name. They were mighty men and warriors, these Susquehannocks. All the
early English who mention them pay tribute to their splendid strength
and stature. Smith who, it will be remembered, came in contact with them
before his skirmish with the Manahoacs, said of them that "such great
and well proportioned men are seldom seen, for they seem like giants to
the English, yea to their neighbours." And in 1666 Alsop wrote that the
Christian inhabitants of Maryland regarded them as "the most noble and
heroic nation of Indians that dwelt upon the confines of America....
Men, women and children both summer and winter went practically naked,"
and adds, among other details, that they painted their faces in red,
green, white and black stripes; that the hair of their heads was black,
long and coarse but that the hair growing on other parts of their bodies
was removed by pulling it out hair by hair; and that some tattooed their
bodies, breasts and arms with outlines. Our American soil, from the
beginning, appears to have favoured the art of the barber and
beauty-shop.
From the English in Maryland these Susquehannocks acquired guns and
ammunition and thus were able to hold their own with their Iroquois foe
for over twenty years of the harshest warfare. But the Iroquois were
relentless and though repulsed again and again, returned year after year
to the attack. The Susquehannocks finally weakened by an epidemic of
smallpox, were overcome, the Iroquois captured their main stronghold and
completely overthrew their power. Fugitive bands of Susquehannocks,
nominally friendly to the English of Maryland and Virginia, then roamed
the western frontiers of those colonies and along both banks of the
Potomac, still harassed by pursuing bands of Senecas.
Under such conditions it was not long before they came in open conflict
with the English settlers, some say through Indian thefts, others
because the English attacked a party of them, mistaking them for
pilfering Algonquin Doegs. The fighting, once begun, spread rapidly and
the settlers on their exposed frontiers, denied practical assistance by
the Virginia Governor Berkeley and his colleagues (whom rumor said were
making such substantial profits from the Indian trade that they were
loath to antagonize the Indians by sending organized forces against
them) turned for leadership to Nathaniel Bacon, a young planter of
gentle birth, not long come out from England. Bacon was a natural
leader, their cause was popular and soon Virginia found herself in the
midst of an Indian war and a rebellion against the Jamestown government
as well. Bacon led his men to victory over both Indians and Governor but
suddenly dying from a dysentery or from poison--to this day the cause of
his death is surrounded by uncertainty--the "rebellion collapsed with
surprising suddenness," his former followers were overcome by the
Governor with the aid of English troops and Berkeley proceeded to wreak
a vindictive and merciless revenge.
Meanwhile knowledge of the turmoil had reached England and the King sent
Commissioners to Virginia to investigate the causes of the trouble and
Berkeley's wholesale executions and confiscations of estates. These men
made a fair report of their findings to the King, which, added to the
many complaints from the families of Berkeley's victims, caused Charles
to exclaim: "As I live, that old fool has taken more lives in that naked
country than I have done for the murder of my father." In the spring of
1677 the royal order for Berkeley's removal arrived and he sailed for
England in an attempt to justify himself in an audience with Charles,
his departure being "joyfully celebrated with bonfires and salutes of
the cannon" by the Virginians. But in England he found that the King,
resentful at his abuse of power, avoided meeting him and in July the old
man fell ill and died, his end hastened, it is said, by his vexation and
chagrin over the King's attitude.
Upon the death of Berkeley, the King appointed Lord Colepeper Governor
of Virginia. As he was not ready nor, possibly, inclined to go
immediately to his post, the King issued a special commission to Sir
Herbert Jeffries, who had been one of his emissaries to investigate
Berkeley, as Lieutenant Governor in immediate charge of affairs.
Jeffries ruled until his death in 1678 when he was succeeded by Sir
Henry Chicheley as Deputy Governor under an old Commission issued to him
as early as 1674. Colepeper did not personally take charge on Virginia's
soil until 1680, and then but for a brief period, soon returning to
England and remaining there over two years. It was not until December,
1682, that we again find him in Virginia.
Colepeper, it will be remembered, was not only by inheritance a part
owner of the patents of 1649 and 1669 to the Northern Neck but he was
coproprietor with Arlington under the grant of 1673 of all Virginia and
now in his own person Governor of the Colony as well. For good measure,
his cousin, Alexander Colepeper, was also an owner by inheritance of a
share in the grants of 1649 and 1669. It was apparent that he was in a
position at long last to turn his Virginia interests to account; but in
doing so he sought to make the new dispensation as personally profitable
to his rapacious self as possible. Therefore he opened negotiations with
his old associates, by 1681 had succeeded in buying most of them out,
and declared himself sole owner of all these grants, although his cousin
still owned his one-sixth interest. But the King had become annoyed at
his conduct and the stories of his rapacity and, seeking an opportunity
to punish him, seized upon the pretext that he had been absent from his
post without leave. On this charge he, in 1682, was deprived of his
office as Governor. Two years later (1684) Colepeper sold out his rights
under the so-called Arlington Charter of 1673 to the English Crown for a
pension of L600 a year for twenty-one years. He tried also to sell to
Virginia his rights to the Northern Neck under the Charter of 1669, but
in that transaction he was unsuccessful. A curiously ironic fate seemed
intent upon keeping the Northern Neck Proprietary, reward of Cavalier
loyalty and devotion, as an inheritance for the still unborn sixth Lord
Fairfax, scion and representative of the family of two of the most able
of the Parliamentary leaders.
Although Bacon and his men, when they took the field in 1676, had
thoroughly disciplined the Indians in Virginia, the Iroquois and the
Susquehannocks still entered Piedmont and roamed its forests. The
Iroquois are believed to have driven out the Manahoacs and their kinsmen
prior to 1670 and certainly claimed their lands by conquest; not
coveting them for settlement but for hunting and particularly for such
furs as they could trap and collect in a land plentiful of beaver and
otter. The Virginians built forts at the navigation heads of the great
rivers for the protection of settlers; but the northern Indians passed
beyond and between them and not only attacked the tributary Virginia
Algonquin tribes, from time to time, but were frequently in conflict
with the English as well. Lord Howard of Effingham, successor to
Colepeper as Governor, met Governor Dongan of New York in July, 1684,
and with him closed a treaty with the Iroquois whereby the latter were
to call out of Virginia and Maryland "all their young braves who had
been sent thither for war; they were to observe profound peace with the
friendly Indians; they were to make no incursions upon the whites in
either state; and when they marched southward they were not to approach
near to the heads of the great rivers on which plantations had been
made."[3] But the treaty also contained a provision that the Iroquois,
when in Virginia, should "Keep at the Foot of the Mountains" which
seemed to acknowledge their right to be there and so continued the
Indian menace to such settlers as pushed into Piedmont. Nevertheless the
frontier forts of the Virginians were allowed to fall into disuse, the
Colony depending on companies of armed and mounted rangers to patrol the
back country and keep the Indians in order, and there seemed some
prospect of peace though the outlying plantations, long keyed up to
Indian alarms, remained alert and watchful. However for awhile there was
less Indian trouble in the upper country and then a new alarm occurred,
resulting in the first recorded exploration of the present Loudoun.
[3] Howison's _History of Virginia_, I., 387.