between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth parallels of north latitude,
the King certainly provided an ample field for the success of the
patentees. This tract extends from Cape Fear to Halifax, and embraces all
the lands between its boundaries in North America, except perhaps the
French settlement in Arcadia, which had already been so far matured as to
come under the excluding clause of the patent. For colonizing this
extensive region the King appointed two companies of adventurers--the
first consisting of noblemen, knights, gentlemen, and others in and about
the city of London, which, through all its subsequent modifications, was
known by the title of the London Company; the other consisted of knights,
gentlemen, merchants, and others in and about the town of Plymouth, and
was known as the Plymouth Company, though its operations were never
extensive and were at last utterly fruitless.
To the London adventurers was granted exclusive right to all the
territory lying between the thirty-fourth and thirty-eighth parallels and
running from the ocean to an indefinite extent westward into the wilds of
America, even to the waters of the Pacific. They were also allowed all
the islands, fisheries, and other marine treasures within one hundred
miles directly eastward from their shores and within fifty miles from
their most northern and most southern settlements, following the coast to
the northeast or southwest, as might be necessary. Within these limits
ample jurisdiction was conferred upon them. To the Plymouth Company were
granted in like manner the land and appurtenances between the forty-first
and forty-fifth parallels. Thus the whole region between thirty-eight and
forty-one was left open to the enterprise of both companies; but to
render angry collision impossible, the charter contained the judicious
clause above noted, by which each colony might claim exclusive right
fifty miles north or south of its extreme settlements, and thus neither
could approach within one hundred miles of the other.
The hope of gold and silver from America was yet clinging with tenacity
to the English mind. James grants to the companies unlimited right to dig
and obtain the precious and other metals, but reserves to himself
one-fifth of all the gold and silver and one-fifteenth of all the copper
that might be discovered. Immediately after this clause we find a section
granting to the councils for the colonies authority to coin money and use
it among the settlers and natives. This permission may excite some
surprise when we remember that the right to coin has been always guarded
with peculiar jealousy by English monarchs, and that this constituted one
serious charge against the Massachusetts colony in the unjust proceedings
by which her charter was wrested from her in subsequent years.
To the companies was given power to carry settlers to Virginia and plant
them upon her soil, and no restriction was annexed to this authority
except that none should be taken from the realm upon whom the King should
lay his injunction to remain. The colonists were permitted to have arms
and to resist and repel all intruders from foreign states; and it was
provided that none should trade and traffic within the colonies unless
they should pay or agree to pay to the treasurers of the companies 2½ per
cent, on their stock in trade if they were English subjects, and 5 per
cent, if they were aliens. The sums so paid were to be appropriated to
the company for twenty-one years from the date of the patent, and
afterward were transferred to the crown. James never forgot a prospect
for gain, and could not permit the colonists to enjoy forever the customs
which, as consumers of foreign goods, they must necessarily have paid
from their resources.
The jealous policy which at this time forbade the exportation, without
license, of English products to foreign countries, has left its impress
upon this charter. The colonists were, indeed, allowed to import all
"sufficient shipping and furniture of armour, weapons, ordinance, powder,
victual, and all other things necessary," without burdensome restraint;
but it was provided that if any goods should be shipped from England or
her dependencies "with pretence" to carry them to Virginia, and should
afterward be conveyed to foreign ports, the goods there conveyed and the
vessel containing them should be absolutely forfeited to his majesty, his
heirs and successors.
The lands held in the colonies were to be possessed by their holders
under the most favorable species of tenure known to the laws of the
mother-country. King James had never admired the military tenure entailed
upon England by the feudal system, and he had made a praiseworthy though
unsuccessful effort to reduce them all to the form of "free and common
soccage," a mode of holding land afterward carried into full effect under
Charles II, and which, if less pervaded by the knightly spirit of feudal
ages, was more favorable to the holder and more congenial with the
freedom of the English constitution. This easy tenure was expressly
provided for the lands of the new country; and it is a happy circumstance
that America has been little affected even by the softened bonds thus
early imposed upon her.
But how shall these colonial subjects be governed? and from whom shall
they derive their laws? These were questions to which the vanity and the
arbitrary principles of the King soon found a reply. Two councils were to
be provided, one for each colony, and each consisting of thirteen
members. They were to govern the colonists according to such laws,
ordinances, and instructions as should afterward be given by the King
himself, under his sign manual and the privy seal of the realm of
England; and the members of the council were to be "ordained, made, and
removed from time to time," as the same instructions should direct. In
addition to these provincial bodies a council of thirteen, likewise
appointed by the King, was to be created in England, to which was
committed the general duty of superintending the affairs of both
colonies.
And to prove the pious designs of a monarch whose religion neither
checked the bigotry of his spirit nor the profaneness of his language it
was recited in the preamble of this charter that one leading object of
the enterprise was the propagation of Christianity among "such people as
yet live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and
worship of God, and might in time be brought to human civility and to a
settled and quiet government."
Such was the first charter of James to the colony of Virginia. We will
not now pause to consider it minutely either for praise or for blame.
With some provisions that seem to be judicious, and which afterward
proved themselves to be salutary, it embraces the most destructive
elements of despotism and dissension. The settlers were deprived of the
meanest privilege of self-government, and were subjected to the control
of a council wholly independent of their own action, and of laws
proceeding directly or indirectly from the King himself. The Parliament
of England would have been a much safer depositary of legislative power
for the colonists than the creatures of a monarch who held doctrines
worthy of the Sultan of Turkey or the Czar of the Russian empire.
But all parties seemed well satisfied with this charter, and neither the
King nor the adventurers had before their minds the grand results that
were now giving birth. The patentees diligently urged forward
preparations for the voyage, and James employed his leisure hours in
preparing the instructions and code of laws contemplated by the charter.
His wondrous wisdom rejoiced in the task of acting the modern Solon, and
penning statutes which were to govern the people yet unborn; and neither
his advisers nor the colonists seemed to have reflected upon the enormous
exercise of prerogative herein displayed. The adventurers did not cease
to be Englishmen in becoming settlers of a foreign clime, and the charter
had expressly guaranteed to them "all liberties, franchises, and
immunities" enjoyed by native-born subjects of the realm. Even acts of
full Parliament bind not the colonies unless they be expressly included,
and an English writer of subsequent times has not hesitated to pronounce
this conduct of the royal law-maker in itself illegal (November 20th).
But James proceeded with much eagerness to a task grateful alike to his
vanity and his principles of government.
By these articles of instruction, the King first establishes the general
council, to remain in England, for the superintendence of the colonies.
It consisted originally of thirteen, but was afterward increased to
nearly forty, and a distinction was made in reference to the London and
Plymouth companies. In this body we note many names which were afterward
well known both in the interests of America and the mother-land.
Sir William Wade, lieutenant of the Tower of London; Sir Thomas Smith,
Sir Oliver Cromwell, Sir Herbert Croft, Sir Edwin Sandys, and others
formed a power to whom were intrusted many of the rights of the intended
settlement. They were authorized, at the pleasure and in the name of his
majesty, to give directions for the good government of the settlers in
Virginia, and to appoint the first members of the councils to be resident
in the colonies.
These resident councils thus appointed, or the major part of them, were
required to choose from their own body a member, not being a minister of
God's Word, who was to be president, and to continue in office for a
single year. They were authorized to fill vacancies in their own body,
and, for sufficient cause, to remove the president and elect another in
his stead; but the authority to "increase, alter, or change" these
provincial councils was reserved as a final right to the King.
The Church of England was at once established, and the local powers were
to require that the true word and service of God, according to her
teachings, should be preached, planted, and used, not only among the
settlers, but, as far as possible, among the sons of the forest.
The crimes of the rebellion, tumults, conspiracy, mutiny, and sedition,
as well as murder, incest, rape, and adultery, were to be punished with
death, without benefit of clergy. To manslaughter, clergy was allowed.
These crimes were to be tried by jury, but the president and council were
to preside at the trial--to pass sentence of death--to permit no reprieve
without their order, and no absolute pardon without the sanction of the
King, under the great seal of England.
But with the exception of these capital felonies, the president and
council were authorized to hear and determine all crimes and
misdemeanors, and all civil cases, without the intervention of a jury.
These judicial proceedings were to be summary and verbal, and the
judgment only was to be briefly registered in a book kept for the
purpose.
For five years succeeding the landing of the settlers, all the results of
their labor were to be held in common, and were to be stored in suitable
magazines. The president and the council were to elect a "cape merchant"
to superintend these public houses of deposit, and two clerks to note all
that went into or came out from them, and every colonist was to be
supplied from the magazines by the direction and appointment of these
officers or of the council.
The adventurers of the first colony were to choose from their number one
or more companies, each to consist of at least three persons, to reside
in or near London, and these were to superintend the general course of
trade between the mother-country and her distant daughter, and direct it
into such channels as would be most advantageous to both.
No person was to be admitted to reside in the colonies but such as would
take oath of obedience to the King, in the ample form provided for by a
statute passed early in the reign of James, and any rash offenders who
should attempt to withdraw from allegiance to his majesty was to be
imprisoned until reformation, or else sent to England, there to receive
"condign punishment."
The president and councils, or the major part of them, were empowered,
from time to time, to make, ordain, and constitute laws, ordinances, and
officers for the better government of the colony, provided that none of
these laws affected life or limb in the settlers. Their enactments were
also required to be, in substance, consonant to the jurisprudence of
England, and the King or the council in the mother-country was invested
with absolute power at any time to rescind and make void the acts of the
provincial councils.
As the colonists should increase in population and influence the King
reserves to himself the right to legislate for them; but condescends to
restrict his law-making energies to such action as might be "consonant to
the law of England or the equity thereof."
And to show his tender feelings toward the aborigines, whose lands he was
so deliberately appropriating to the use of his subjects, his majesty
requires that they shall be treated with all kindness and charity and
that all proper means should be used to bring them to "the knowledge of
God and the obedience of the King, his heirs and successors, under such
severe pains and punishments as should be inflicted by the respective
presidents and councils of the several colonies."
On these kindly ordinances the philosophic reader will not fail to
observe the impress of the man. The stern penalty of death visited the
crimes of rebellion and conspiracy, which aimed a blow at sovereign
power, and even the popular tumult, which kings have so much cause to
dread, was stilled by the same bloody monitor; yet arson and burglary
were left to the discretion of the councils. Adultery was punished with
death--a penalty never inflicted even in England, except during a time of
puritanic zeal, which offered God a service without knowledge. In the eye
of divine purity the offender, by this crime, may be the vilest of the
vile, but if the Redeemer of the world refused to denounce the punishment
of death against one taken in the act, it devolved not on this Scottish
Draco to render it a capital crime. The whole legislative power is vested
in the council, without any reference to the interests or the rights of
the people whom they were to govern, and the King retains absolute
control over the present and future laws of the colony, thus rendering
their great distance from his face the best protection they could have
against his tyranny. The trial by jury was required for capital felonies
and manslaughter; but all inferior offences and every civil interest,
however overwhelming in importance to the colonist, were to be summarily
decided upon by the provincial councils. In the same space it would have
been difficult to compress more absurd concession and of ruinous
restraint. The clause requiring all things to be held in common was
destructive of the most powerful stimulus that urges man to labor; the
semblance of mercy which forbade war upon the savages often held the hand
of the settler when raised in self-defence; and the church establishment,
forced by the arm of the law upon reckless adventurers, made religion a
hated bondage and the tithe-gatherer more odious than the author of evil.
But notwithstanding the defects and deformities of a charter which, in
modern times, would have been indignantly rejected as an invasion of the
rights of man, the London Company eagerly prepared for their proposed
scheme of settlement. Sir Thomas Smith was elected treasurer--a gentleman
who had amassed great wealth by merchandise, who was one of the assignees
under Raleigh's patent, and was soon afterward made governor of the East
India Company. Much has been said against him; but he was a man of public
spirit and expanded views, and urged forward the enterprise with his
influence and his contributions. The means of the company were at first
very limited; three ships only were prepared, the largest of which was of
not more than one hundred tons burden, and Christopher Newport was
selected for the command. He was a navigator of some renown, principally
derived from a voyage of destruction against the Spaniards in 1592; but
he was a vain and affected character, little calculated for decisive and
manly action. Instructions were prepared, but the King, with his
accustomed profundity of folly, directed that they should be sealed in a
box, and not opened until the voyagers arrived upon the coasts of
Virginia. In the vessels there embarked, beyond the regular crews, one
hundred five persons, to form the settlement. And it does not seem
extravagant to assert that Virginia has felt, through all her subsequent
history, the influence of these first settlers in giving a peculiar bias
to her population. Besides the six gentlemen intended for the council,
and Mr. Robert Hunt, a minister of the gospel, we find the names of more
than fifty cavaliers, who are carefully reckoned in the shipping list as
"gentlemen," and who were better fitted for the adventures of the
drawing-room than for the rude scenes of the American forest.
Disappointed in hope and reduced in fortune, these restless wanderers
sought the New World with desire for exciting adventure and speedy
wealth. Among them was George Percy, a member of a noble family and
brother to the Earl of Northumberland. In this singular band we note but
eleven professed laborers, four carpenters, one blacksmith, one
bricklayer, and one mason: but we are not surprised to find a barber to
aid in making the toilet of the "gentlemen," a tailor to decorate their
persons, and a drummer to contribute to their martial aspirations!
Thus prepared with the elements of a refined colony, Newport set sail
from Blackwall, December 19, 1606. Adverse winds kept him long upon the
coast of England, and with disappointment came discord and murmuring
among the voyagers. The preacher suffered with weakening disease, but his
soothing counsels alone preserved peace among this wild company. Instead
of following Gosnold's former voyage immediately across the Atlantic,
they sailed by the Canaries and West Indies; and while in full route, the
dissensions among the great men raged so furiously that Captain John
Smith was seized and committed to close confinement on the false charge
that he intended to murder the council and make himself King of Virginia.
Arriving at length near the coast of America, their false reckoning kept
them in suspense so alarming that Ratcliffe, commander of one of the
barks, was anxious to bear away again for England.
But heaven, by its storms, contributed more to the settlements of
Virginia than men by their infatuated counsels (1607). A furious tempest
drove them all night under bare poles, and on April 26th they saw before
them the broad inlet into the Bay of Chesapeake. The cape to the south
they honored with the name of Henry, from the Prince of Wales, a noble
youth, whose character gave the fairest promise of a career of
high-souled action, whose love to Raleigh was only succeeded by his
father's hatred, and whose early death gave England cause for unaffected
mourning. The northern headland was called Charles, from the King's
second son, who afterward succeeded to his throne.
As they passed the first cape a desire for recreation possessed them--and
thirty, without arms, went on shore; but they were soon attacked by five
savages, and two of the English were dangerously hurt. This inhospitable
treatment promised but little for future peace. The sealed box was now
opened, and it was found that Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Edward
Maria Wingfield, Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and
George Kendall were named as members of the Provincial Council.
Sailing leisurely up the beautiful expanse of water to which the Indians
had given a name that Europeans have never violated, the voyagers were
charmed with the prospect before them. The season was mild, and nature
had fully assumed that emerald robe of spring. On either side the distant
land presented a scene of tranquil verdure, upon which the eye might
rejoice to repose. The noble bay received into its bosom the waters of
many broad streams, which descended from the highlands faintly visible in
the dim horizon. Green islands saluted them at times as they advanced and
invited their approach by their peaceful loveliness.
At length they reached the mouth of the magnificent river, that tempted
them too strongly to be resisted. This was the "Powhatan" of the Indians;
and no true lover of Virginia can cease to deplore the change which
robbed this graceful stream of a title pregnant with all the associations
of Indian valor and of the departed glory of their empire, and bestowed a
name that can only recall a royal pedant and a timid despot!
Seventeen days were employed in searching for a spot suited to a
settlement (May 13th). At length they selected a peninsula, on the north
side of the river, about forty miles from its mouth, and immediately
commenced the well-known city of Jamestown.
A commendable industry seems at first to have prevailed. The council
contrived a fort, the settlers felled the trees, pitched their tents,
prepared gardens, made nets for the fish which abounded in the river, and
already began to provide clapboards to freight the ships on their return
to England.
But these fair promises of good were destined to a speedy betrayal.
Already discord prevailed in their counsels, and a flagrant act of
injustice had been committed, which soon recoiled upon the heads of its
authors. We have heretofore mentioned the name of John Smith among the
persons nominated for the council, and have spoken of the violent
imprisonment to which he was subjected during the outward voyage.
Jealousy of his merit and commanding talents did not stop at this point.
He was excluded from his place in the council, and an entry was made in
their records detailing the alleged reason for this act.
John Smith is the hero of the romantic destinies that attended the early
life of Virginia; and the historian who would attempt to tell of her
fortunes and yet neglect his story would be recreant to his trust.
Nations have generally owed their brightest days of power or of happiness
to the genius of a single person--directing their energies, subduing
their follies, enlightening their seasons of early ignorance. Assyria has
had her Semiramis, China her Confucius, Arabia her Mahomet, England her
Alfred; and were we required to point to the man to whom America is
principally indebted for the care of her infant years, we would not
hesitate to name the heroic spirit who now appears before us.
His talent for command excited the mean jealousy of inferior souls, only
that his merit might appear brighter by contrast. If we have aught to
urge against him, it is that he met the treachery of the Indians with a
severe spirit, but too much akin to that of the Spaniards in the South.
Yet we cannot reproach him with undeserved cruelty or with deliberate
falsehood, and the stern demands of his circumstances often rendered
inevitable acts which would otherwise have been ungrateful to his soul.
When the council was constituted, Edward Maria Wingfield was elected
president--a man who always proved an inveterate enemy to Smith, and who
speedily attracted the hatred even of his accomplices by his rapacity,
his cowardice, and his selfish extravagance. Smith demanded a trial, but
the council feared to trust their wretched charge to an impartial jury,
and pretended, in mercy to him, to keep him under suspension. But their
own incompetence soon brought his talents into demand. He accompanied
Newport upon an exploring voyage up the river, and ascended to the
residence of King Powhatan, a few miles below the falls, and not far from
the spot now occupied by the city of Richmond. The royal seat consisted
of twelve small houses, pleasantly placed on the north bank of the river,
and immediately in front of three verdant islets. His Indian majesty
received them with becoming hospitality, though his profound
dissimulation corresponded but too well with the treacherous designs of
his followers. He had long ruled with sovereign sway among the most
powerful tribes of Virginia, who had been successively subdued by his
arms, and he now regarded with distrust the event of men whom his
experience taught him to fear and his injuries to detest.