When Lord Bacon was informed that his great Queen Elizabeth had died just
before daybreak, he exclaimed, "A fine morning before sun-rising,"--the
rising of King James the First. Far more appropriate would have been the
words, "The sun has set before the night."
James the First shambles across the pages of history a grotesque figure
enough,--tottering on weak legs which seem incapable of supporting his
padded dirk-proof doublet, with pockets further distended by the unread
petitions ("sifflications" as he termed them) of his unhappy subjects.
From his mother, so conspicuous for grace and beauty, he seems to have
inherited nothing, unless we may credit the painters, who have given him
beautiful hands. His broad Scotch was rendered more uncouth by a thick
tongue which filled to overflowing his coarse mouth. His lips never closed
over his teeth. This body was a fitting casket for a depraved mind and
heart. In vain may the elder D'Israeli and others modify, apologize, and
cunningly seek out redeeming traits! His was a low, base nature, proven
by every action--and never disproven by the brave words and pious formula
with which he adorned his speech.
Only three years before the Virginia colonists set forth upon their
momentous enterprise, Sir Charles Percy and Thomas Somerset had posted
down to Scotland to hail James Stuart King of England. As King James
of Scotland he had led rather a hard life--and although his mother's
beautiful head had but lately fallen under an English axe, and although
he had vowed eternal vengeance upon her murderers, he accepted the crown
with childish eagerness.
His first request was peremptory: he must have money forthwith for his
journey to London, and the crown jewels of England must be immediately
forwarded for the use of his homely wife. The Council ventured to ignore
the latter. They thought he would hurry to London to attend the funeral
of Elizabeth--seeing she had herself named him as her successor. "Give
not my crown to a _rascal_!" she had said with her dying breath; "My
cousin of Scotland is a _king_!" It was not to be supposed, however,
that he would hasten his movements to honour "the defunct Queen," as he
called her (seeing she had cut off his mother's head), so he dawdled on
the way, hunting, feasting, and discovering the charms of "Theobald's" in
Hertfordshire, where he afterwards spent so much of his royal time. All
the way, in season and out of season, he would indulge in the oft-repeated
words, "I am the King," as if to reassure himself of the fact and recall
his powers and privileges. Casting about for opportunities to use them,
his eye fell upon a petty thief, a cut-purse who had stolen some trifling
coin from a courtier, had confessed his guilt, and begged for mercy. James
had the man hanged without legal trial, and when some cringing follower
suggested that this procedure was irregular, had exclaimed, "God's wounds!
I make what likes me law and gospel." (His oath--and each one of England's
sovereigns had his own favourite profanity--was a little milder than
Elizabeth's "God's death" and stronger than previous kings' "God's blood,"
"God's eyes," etc.) "God's wounds," stammered King James, "I make what
likes me law and gospel!"
He also made what liked him knights and lords. Shutting his eyes, which
could never endure the sight of a naked blade (and good reason!), he laid
the knight-conferring sword on shoulders which might well tingle under
the accolade, seeing how narrowly eyes escaped being put out, and ears
cut off. He bestowed this distinction upon nearly every person he met
during his journey. By the time he set foot in his palace of Whitehall,
he had knighted two hundred individuals, without respect to distinction of
merit or station. Before he had been three months a king, he had bestowed
the hitherto highly esteemed honour of knighthood upon seven hundred. It
seemed to be a relief to his feelings, immediately after a tedious oration
or ceremony, to create twenty or more knights.
Nor was he chary even of the honour of the English peerage, which
Elizabeth had held at so high a value. He presently added sixty-two names
to the list of peers. By that same token those of us who hunger for noble
descent are very shy of the strawberry leaves that grew in James the
First's time, and diligently seek for those that flourished under the
smiles of earlier potentates.
[Illustration: King James I.]
This was the grotesque figure before which England's great noblemen
kneeled down and did their homage: Lord Bacon, Cecil, the Earl of
Northumberland, Lord Grey, and hosts of others. To Northumberland Lord
Bacon had written: "Your Lordship shall find a prince the furthest from
vain-glory that may be, and rather like a prince of the ancient form
than of the latter time. His speech is swift and cursory, and in the full
dialect of his nation, in speech of business short, in speech of discourse
large," etc. Other persons, however, were less indulgent than Bacon. They
marked his "legs too weak to carry his body, his tongue too large for
his mouth, his goggle eyes, rolling and yet vacant, his apparel neglected
and dirty, his unmanly fears and ridiculous precautions," and expressed
their consequent astonishment and disgust. As time went on, these personal
defects paled in importance compared with the low tastes and principles
he developed. It matters not that he was learned in the Latin tongue,
and an obstinate supporter, in word at least, of the Protestant faith.
All history of poor human nature proves that taste, beauty, learning may
coexist with diabolical wickedness. It is hard to believe it, although we
see it every day. It was abundantly proven in King James's reign.
Of course we may imagine the society led by such a court. Never was there
more injustice, outrageous favouritism, disregard of the rights of birth
and property, more vice in high places, more extravagance, drunkenness,
and debauchery. It was unsafe to walk in the streets of London after
nightfall. A portion of the city was set apart as a refuge for murderers
and lawbreakers, whence the law had no power to drag them. Life was held
cheap in King James's time. Heads fell on the block as a matter of course.
Great ladies drove in their coaches to see Mrs. Turner executed. "Saw
three men hanged and so to breakfast," said Samuel Pepys a little later.
The common people were wretchedly poor. They slept on straw and lived on
barley. Only the servants of the rich could eat rye bread. Vagrants and
beggars swarmed over the kingdom. In a pamphlet entitled "Grievous Groans
of the Poor," the writer complains that "The country is pitifully pestered
with those who beg, filch, and steal for their maintenance, and travel
the highway of hell until the law bring them to fearful hanging." What to
do with these swarming "rogues," in case they could not be hanged, was a
tough question with Lord Coke,[4] conveniently answered later by imposing
them upon the starving colonists.
The picturesque beggar was not a very costly luxury. A curious pamphlet
entitled "Stanley's Remedy, or the Way to Reform Wandering Beggars,
Thieves, Highway Robbers, and Pickpockets," was published in 1646, in
which the cost of the diet and maintenance of every thievish, idle,
drunken person in the kingdom was estimated at threepence a day at least.
Of course it was unsafe for "true men" to travel except in numbers and
well armed, and whoever was about to take a journey had to wait until a
tolerably strong caravan had mustered for the same route. Among the chief
places of danger was Gadshill in Kent, where Falstaff achieved the glory
of killing the already dead Percy.
Thieves are always more interesting in a story than noblemen, but the
Virginia colony was more intimate with the latter than the former; at
least until the King graciously reënforced their numbers with a cargo of
outlaws. The company that undertook to support the colony was a London
Company, and the adventurers were mainly citizens of London. Those who
held the title of "gentlemen" may reasonably be supposed to have known
something of the luxuries they were now exchanging for the hardships of
colonial life. Some idea of the extravagance of the time may be gleaned
from old diaries and letters.
A very curious letter has been preserved, which reveals the domestic
economy of a family of distinction during the reign of James the First.
It is from the daughter of Sir John Spenser and wife of the Earl of
Northampton to her lord soon after their marriage. It is an amusing list
of the necessities of a lady of rank: "My sweet life, now I have declared
to you my mind for the settling of your estate, I suppose it were best
for me to bethink and consider within myself what allowance were meet
for me," and she proceeds to ask the sum of £2600, to be paid quarterly.
In addition to this, she must have £600 quarterly for sundries not to be
accounted for. In addition, the lady feels that she needs "three horses
that none shall dare lend or borrow," two gentlewomen and a horse for
each; six or eight mounted gentlemen, two coaches lined with velvet, four
horses to each; a coach for each of her women with gold lace, scarlet
cloth; four horses, and two coachmen for each coach; carriages for six
laundresses and other serving women; a gentleman usher on horseback; two
footmen; all of which to be maintained by her husband. For apparel she
needs twenty gowns, £6000 to buy jewels, £4000 to buy a pearl chain, in
all $76,000. For her house she wishes him to furnish beds, stools, chairs,
cushions, carpets; silver warming-pans; fair hangings, and cupboards of
plate, "all things fine and delicate." And in addition to all these she
thinks it would save trouble to have £2000 in case of emergency. The
letter concludes, "It is my desire that you lend no money, as you love
God, to my Lord Chamberlain, who would have all, perhaps your life, from
you." And then, on second thoughts, she asks that when her husband becomes
an earl £2000 more be allowed her and double attendance.[5] A note to the
letter adds, "Her husband went out of his wits."
We cannot begin to describe the Elizabethan magnificence in dress. The
artificial taste for dainty and costly living was also abundantly evident
in the epicurism of the time. The court that allotted a scanty diet of
cereal, oil, and vinegar to the men it sent out to subdue a wilderness,
could partake of no simple food or drink. The cookery was complicated and
consisted mainly of "villanous compounds" of great cost. Butter, cream,
marrow, ambergris, lemons, spices, dried fruits, oranges, the scarce
sugar--all of these entered largely in the composition of dishes. We read,
among the simple dishes, of an artificial hen made of paste, sitting upon
eggs in each of which, enclosed in paste, was a fat nightingale seasoned
with ambergris, then the most costly of flavours. There were snails stewed
or fried in oil, vinegar, and spices; frogs dressed into fricassees. There
was a wonderful receipt for cooking herring. "In hell they'll roast thee
like a herring," was the warning to Tam O'Shanter, but herrings were not
roasted in King James's time, Scotchman although he was. Here is a receipt
for salted herring[6] or "herring-pie," a little bit of which might serve
as an appetizer: "Take salt herrings being watered (soaked), wash them
between your hands and you shall loose the fish from the skin; take off
the skin whole, and lay them in a dish; then have a pound of almond paste
ready; mince the herrings and stamp them with the almond paste; two milts
or roes; five or six dates, some grated manchet, sugar, sack, rose-water
and saffron; make the composition somewhat stiff and fill the skins; put
butter in the bottom of your pie, lay on the herring, and on them dates,
gooseberries, currants, barberries, and butter; close it up and bake it;
being baked, liquor it with butter, verjuice, and sugar."
There was once a gathering of marquises, lords, knights, and squires
at Newcastle to celebrate a great anniversary, and each guest was
required to bring a dish. The specimen of Sir George Goring was reckoned
a masterpiece. It consisted of four huge, brawny pigs, piping hot,
bitted and harnessed with ropes of sausages all tied to a monstrous
bag-pudding.[7] The narrator explains that "on some occasions a coarse
and clownish dish was a pleasing variety."
We can imagine George Percy, John Smith, Gosnold, Newport (all of whom
were doubtless received in court circles), dining on this costly fare, and
drinking healths on their knees when the King was toasted. So much of the
drinking was attributed to Danish influence that it was a common saying
that "The Danes had again conquered England."
Before we join our colonists in their perilous enterprise we briefly
sketch some of the peculiarities of the life whence they came. This will
help to account for some things that follow. Of the political and literary
aspects of the times, we must be allowed a short notice, in order that
the ensuing story may be better understood.
A great convulsion, incident upon the Reformation, had passed over
the world. It raged on the Continent, and then extended to England and
Scotland, where it lasted until the death of Queen Elizabeth and the
accession to the throne of James the First, when Protestantism was
firmly established. The Roman Catholics were in high disfavour. The
dreadful Gunpowder Plot had aggravated the bitterness against them.
England, all the corruption at court notwithstanding, was full of
religious enthusiasts. With them the experiment in Virginia was only the
beginning of the conversion of a great multitude of savages. The first
charter expressed[8] a pious longing that "so noble a work may by the
providence of God hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in the
propagating of the Christian religion to such people as sit in darkness
and miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God." "This
is the work we first intended," says a writer of the time, "and have
published to the world to be chief in our thoughts; to bring the infidel
people from the worship of Devils to the service of God." "The end of this
voyage is the destruction of the Devil's Kingdom," said the good clergyman
who preached to the adventurers on the eve of their embarkation.
A more restless, inconsistent age cannot possibly be imagined. In
literature a race of giants appeared whose works were the expression
of the times. The epoch flowered in the great names which have made the
age of Elizabeth so illustrious. Bacon had published his "Advancement of
Learning," Spenser his "Faerie Queene," Shakespeare was at the head of
a great group of literary giants. A fine stage was set for the monarch,
just three years on his throne. He might have been the central jewel of
a splendid setting! He might have been the inspiration of a noble era.
All the material was at his hand. As it was, it is marvellous he did
not plunge the country into ruin. Old England owes much to her House of
Commons: "A troublesome body," said James, "but how can I get rid of it?
_I found it here!_"
When Bartholomew Gosnold, Richard Hakluyt, Robert Hunt, John Smith, and
others succeeded in obtaining a royal charter from the King, he busied
himself in drawing up the instrument for the government of the colony.[9]
"Everything began and ended with the King." A council of thirteen in
London, appointed by himself, was to govern, controlling a subordinate
council in Virginia. Trial by jury was allowed to criminals. The Christian
religion was to be preached to the Indians. In other respects, the colony
would have no rights other than those which King James the First chose to
allow it. There were to be two colonies, one hundred miles to intervene
between the boundaries of the two. The boundaries of the southern colony
were enlarged and exactly defined in 1609. It was to embrace the territory
two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of the mouth of James
River, and "to reach up into the land from sea to sea."
This vast territory was coolly claimed by the King of England, without
the slightest regard to the present sojourners on the soil. Had they
been wandering tribes never remaining long in one place, had the area
of country been a debatable land, the claim might have been reasonable,
but it soon appeared that the kingdom of Powhatan had descended to him
from generation to generation, or been acquired by conquest. The land was
accurately measured and "staked out," and was owned by his captains, who
knew and respected their boundaries.
All these things combined, we can better understand the disasters and
sufferings which ensued upon the landing of our adventurers.