Smith was not cast down by his reverses. No sooner had he laid his
latest betrayers by the heels than he set himself resolutely to obtain
money and means for establishing a colony in New England, and to this
project and the cultivation in England of interest in New England he
devoted the rest of his life.
His Map and Description of New England was published in 1616, and he
became a colporteur of this, beseeching everywhere a hearing for his
noble scheme. It might have been in 1617, while Pocahontas was about
to sail for Virginia, or perhaps after her death, that he was again
in Plymouth, provided with three good ships, but windbound for three
months, so that the season being past, his design was frustrated, and
his vessels, without him, made a fishing expedition to Newfoundland.
It must have been in the summer of this year that he was at Plymouth
with divers of his personal friends, and only a hundred pounds among
them all. He had acquainted the nobility with his projects, and was
afraid to see the Prince Royal before he had accomplished anything, “but
their great promises were nothing but air to prepare the voyage against
the next year.” He spent that summer in the west of England, visiting
“Bristol, Exeter, Bastable? Bodman, Perin, Foy, Milborow, Saltash,
Dartmouth, Absom, Pattnesse, and the most of the gentry in Cornwall and
Devonshire, giving them books and maps,” and inciting them to help his
enterprise.
So well did he succeed, he says, that they promised him twenty sail of
ships to go with him the next year, and to pay him for his pains and
former losses. The western commissioners, in behalf of the company,
contracted with him, under indented articles, “to be admiral of that
country during my life, and in the renewing of the letters-patent so to
be nominated”; half the profits of the enterprise to be theirs, and half
to go to Smith and his companions.
Nothing seems to have come out of this promising induction except the
title of “Admiral of New England,” which Smith straightway assumed and
wore all his life, styling himself on the title-page of everything he
printed, “Sometime Governor of Virginia and Admiral of New England.”
As the generous Captain had before this time assumed this title, the
failure of the contract could not much annoy him. He had about as good
right to take the sounding name of Admiral as merchants of the west of
England had to propose to give it to him.
The years wore away, and Smith was beseeching aid, republishing his
works, which grew into new forms with each issue, and no doubt making
himself a bore wherever he was known. The first edition of “New
England's Trials”--by which he meant the various trials and attempts
to settle New England was published in 1620. It was to some extent a
repetition of his “Description” of 1616. In it he made no reference to
Pocahontas. But in the edition of 1622, which is dedicated to Charles,
Prince of Wales, and considerably enlarged, he drops into this
remark about his experience at Jamestown: “It Is true in our greatest
extremitie they shot me, slue three of my men, and by the folly of them
that fled tooke me prisoner; yet God made Pocahontas the king's
daughter the meanes to deliver me: and thereby taught me to know their
treacheries to preserve the rest. [This is evidently an allusion to the
warning Pocahontas gave him at Werowocomoco.] It was also my chance in
single combat to take the king of Paspahegh prisoner, and by keeping
him, forced his subjects to work in chains till I made all the country
pay contribution having little else whereon to live.”
This was written after he had heard of the horrible massacre of 1622
at Jamestown, and he cannot resist the temptation to draw a contrast
between the present and his own management. He explains that the Indians
did not kill the English because they were Christians, but to get their
weapons and commodities. How different it was when he was in Virginia.
“I kept that country with but 38, and had not to eat but what we had
from the savages. When I had ten men able to go abroad, our commonwealth
was very strong: with such a number I ranged that unknown country 14
weeks: I had but 18 to subdue them all.” This is better than Sir John
Falstaff. But he goes on: “When I first went to those desperate designes
it cost me many a forgotten pound to hire men to go, and procrastination
caused more run away than went.” “Twise in that time I was President.”
[It will be remembered that about the close of his first year he gave up
the command, for form's sake, to Capt. Martin, for three hours, and then
took it again.] “To range this country of New England in like manner,
I had but eight, as is said, and amongst their bruite conditions I met
many of their silly encounters, and without any hurt, God be thanked.”
The valiant Captain had come by this time to regard himself as the
inventor and discoverer of Virginia and New England, which were explored
and settled at the cost of his private pocket, and which he is not
ashamed to say cannot fare well in his absence. Smith, with all his good
opinion of himself, could not have imagined how delicious his character
would be to readers in after-times. As he goes on he warms up: “Thus you
may see plainly the yearly success from New England by Virginia, which
hath been so costly to this kingdom and so dear to me.
“By that acquaintance I have with them I may call them my children [he
spent between two and three months on the New England coast] for they
have been my wife, my hawks, my hounds, my cards, my dice, and total my
best content, as indifferent to my heart as my left hand to my right....
Were there not one Englishman remaining I would yet begin again as I
did at the first; not that I have any secret encouragement for any I
protest, more than lamentable experiences; for all their discoveries I
can yet hear of are but pigs of my sowe: nor more strange to me than to
hear one tell me he hath gone from Billingate and discovered Greenwich!”
As to the charge that he was unfortunate, which we should think might
have become current from the Captain's own narratives, he tells his
maligners that if they had spent their time as he had done, they would
rather believe in God than in their own calculations, and peradventure
might have had to give as bad an account of their actions. It is strange
they should tax him before they have tried what he tried in Asia,
Europe, and America, where he never needed to importune for a reward,
nor ever could learn to beg: “These sixteen years I have spared neither
pains nor money, according to my ability, first to procure his majesty's
letters patent, and a Company here to be the means to raise a company to
go with me to Virginia [this is the expedition of 1606 in which he was
without command] as is said: which beginning here and there cost me near
five years work, and more than 500 pounds of my own estate, besides all
the dangers, miseries and encumbrances I endured gratis, where I stayed
till I left 500 better provided than ever I was: from which blessed
Virgin (ere I returned) sprung the fortunate habitation of Somer Isles.”
“Ere I returned” is in Smith's best vein. The casual reader would
certainly conclude that the Somers Isles were somehow due to the
providence of John Smith, when in fact he never even heard that Gates
and Smith were shipwrecked there till he had returned to England, sent
home from Virginia. Neill says that Smith ventured L 9 in the Virginia
company! But he does not say where he got the money.
New England, he affirms, hath been nearly as chargeable to him and his
friends: he never got a shilling but it cost him a pound. And now, when
New England is prosperous and a certainty, “what think you I undertook
when nothing was known, but that there was a vast land.” These are
some of the considerations by which he urges the company to fit out an
expedition for him: “thus betwixt the spur of desire and the bridle of
reason I am near ridden to death in a ring of despair; the reins are in
your hands, therefore I entreat you to ease me.”
The Admiral of New England, who since he enjoyed the title had had
neither ship, nor sailor, nor rod of land, nor cubic yard of salt water
under his command, was not successful in his several “Trials.” And in
the hodge-podge compilation from himself and others, which he had
put together shortly after,--the “General Historie,” he pathetically
exclaims: “Now all these proofs and this relation, I now called New
England's Trials. I caused two or three thousand of them to be printed,
one thousand with a great many maps both of Virginia and New England,
I presented to thirty of the chief companies in London at their Halls,
desiring either generally or particularly (them that would) to imbrace
it and by the use of a stock of five thousand pounds to ease them of the
superfluity of most of their companies that had but strength and health
to labor; near a year I spent to understand their resolutions, which was
to me a greater toil and torment, than to have been in New England about
my business but with bread and water, and what I could get by my labor;
but in conclusion, seeing nothing would be effected I was contented as
well with this loss of time and change as all the rest.”
In his “Advertisements” he says that at his own labor, cost, and loss
he had “divulged more than seven thousand books and maps,” in order to
influence the companies, merchants and gentlemen to make a plantation,
but “all availed no more than to hew Rocks with Oister-shels.”
His suggestions about colonizing were always sensible. But we can
imagine the group of merchants in Cheapside gradually dissolving as
Smith hove in sight with his maps and demonstrations.
In 1618, Smith addressed a letter directly to Lord Bacon, to which there
seems to have been no answer. The body of it was a condensation of
what he had repeatedly written about New England, and the advantage to
England of occupying the fisheries. “This nineteen years,” he writes, “I
have encountered no few dangers to learn what here I write in these few
leaves:... their fruits I am certain may bring both wealth and honor for
a crown and a kingdom to his majesty's posterity.” With 5,000, pounds
he will undertake to establish a colony, and he asks of his Majesty a
pinnace to lodge his men and defend the coast for a few months, until
the colony gets settled. Notwithstanding his disappointments and losses,
he is still patriotic, and offers his experience to his country: “Should
I present it to the Biskayners, French and Hollanders, they have made
me large offers. But nature doth bind me thus to beg at home, whom
strangers have pleased to create a commander abroad.... Though I can
promise no mines of gold, the Hollanders are an example of my project,
whose endeavors by fishing cannot be suppressed by all the King of
Spain's golden powers. Worth is more than wealth, and industrious
subjects are more to a kingdom than gold. And this is so certain a
course to get both as I think was never propounded to any state for
so small a charge, seeing I can prove it, both by example, reason and
experience.”
Smith's maxims were excellent, his notions of settling New England were
sound and sensible, and if writing could have put him in command of New
England, there would have been no room for the Puritans. He addressed
letter after letter to the companies of Virginia and Plymouth, giving
them distinctly to understand that they were losing time by not availing
themselves of his services and his project. After the Virginia massacre,
he offered to undertake to drive the savages out of their country with
a hundred soldiers and thirty sailors. He heard that most of the company
liked exceedingly well the notion, but no reply came to his overture.
He laments the imbecility in the conduct of the new plantations. At
first, he says, it was feared the Spaniards would invade the plantations
or the English Papists dissolve them: but neither the councils of
Spain nor the Papists could have desired a better course to ruin the
plantations than have been pursued; “It seems God is angry to see
Virginia in hands so strange where nothing but murder and indiscretion
contends for the victory.”
In his letters to the company and to the King's commissions for the
reformation of Virginia, Smith invariably reproduces his own exploits,
until we can imagine every person in London, who could read, was sick
of the story. He reminds them of his unrequited services: “in neither
of those two countries have I one foot of land, nor the very house I
builded, nor the ground I digged with my own hands, nor ever any content
or satisfaction at all, and though I see ordinarily those two countries
shared before me by them that neither have them nor knows them, but by
my descriptions.... For the books and maps I have made, I will thank him
that will show me so much for so little recompense, and bear with their
errors till I have done better. For the materials in them I cannot deny,
but am ready to affirm them both there and here, upon such ground as
I have propounded, which is to have but fifteen hundred men to subdue
again the Salvages, fortify the country, discover that yet unknown, and
both defend and feed their colony.”
There is no record that these various petitions and letters of advice
were received by the companies, but Smith prints them in his History,
and gives also seven questions propounded to him by the commissioners,
with his replies; in which he clearly states the cause of the disasters
in the colonies, and proposes wise and statesman-like remedies. He
insists upon industry and good conduct: “to rectify a commonwealth with
debauched people is impossible, and no wise man would throw himself into
such society, that intends honestly, and knows what he understands, for
there is no country to pillage, as the Romans found; all you expect from
thence must be by labour.”
Smith was no friend to tobacco, and although he favored the production
to a certain limit as a means of profit, it is interesting to note his
true prophecy that it would ultimately be a demoralizing product. He
often proposes the restriction of its cultivation, and speaks with
contempt of “our men rooting in the ground about tobacco like swine.”
The colony would have been much better off “had they not so much doated
on their tobacco, on whose furnish foundation there is small stability.”
So long as he lived, Smith kept himself informed of the progress of
adventure and settlement in the New World, reading all relations and
eagerly questioning all voyagers, and transferring their accounts to his
own History, which became a confused patchwork of other men's exploits
and his own reminiscences and reflections. He always regards the new
plantations as somehow his own, and made in the light of his advice;
and their mischances are usually due to the neglect of his counsel. He
relates in this volume the story of the Pilgrims in 1620 and the years
following, and of the settlement of the Somers Isles, making himself
appear as a kind of Providence over the New World.
Out of his various and repetitious writings might be compiled quite
a hand-book of maxims and wise saws. Yet all had in steady view one
purpose--to excite interest in his favorite projects, to shame the
laggards of England out of their idleness, and to give himself honorable
employment and authority in the building up of a new empire. “Who can
desire,” he exclaims, “more content that hath small means, or but only
his merit to advance his fortunes, than to tread and plant that ground
he hath purchased by the hazard of his life; if he have but the taste
of virtue and magnanimity, what to such a mind can be more pleasant than
planting and building a foundation for his posterity, got from the rude
earth by God's blessing and his own industry without prejudice to any;
if he have any grace of faith or zeal in Religion, what can be more
healthful to any or more agreeable to God than to convert those poor
salvages to know Christ and humanity, whose labours and discretion will
triply requite any charge and pain.”
“Then who would live at home idly,” he exhorts his countrymen, “or think
in himself any worth to live, only to eat, drink and sleep, and so die;
or by consuming that carelessly his friends got worthily, or by using
that miserably that maintained virtue honestly, or for being descended
nobly, or pine with the vain vaunt of great kindred in penury, or to
maintain a silly show of bravery, toil out thy heart, soul and time
basely; by shifts, tricks, cards and dice, or by relating news of other
men's actions, sharke here and there for a dinner or supper, deceive
thy friends by fair promises and dissimulations, in borrowing when thou
never meanest to pay, offend the laws, surfeit with excess, burden thy
country, abuse thyself, despair in want, and then cozen thy kindred,
yea, even thy own brother, and wish thy parent's death (I will not say
damnation), to have their estates, though thou seest what honors and
rewards the world yet hath for them that will seek them and worthily
deserve them.”
“I would be sorry to offend, or that any should mistake my honest
meaning: for I wish good to all, hurt to none; but rich men for the most
part are grown to that dotage through their pride in their wealth, as
though there were no accident could end it or their life.”
“And what hellish care do such take to make it their own misery and
their countrie's spoil, especially when there is such need of their
employment, drawing by all manner of inventions from the Prince and his
honest subjects, even the vital spirits of their powers and estates; as
if their bags or brags were so powerful a defense, the malicious could
not assault them, when they are the only bait to cause us not only to
be assaulted, but betrayed and smothered in our own security ere we will
prevent it.”
And he adds this good advice to those who maintain their children
in wantonness till they grow to be the masters: “Let this lamentable
example [the ruin of Constantinople] remember you that are rich (seeing
there are such great thieves in the world to rob you) not grudge to lend
some proportion to breed them that have little, yet willing to learn how
to defend you, for it is too late when the deed is done.”
No motive of action did Smith omit in his importunity, for “Religion
above all things should move us, especially the clergy, if we are
religious.” “Honor might move the gentry, the valiant and industrious,
and the hope and assurance of wealth all, if we were that we would seem
and be accounted; or be we so far inferior to other nations, or our
spirits so far dejected from our ancient predecessors, or our minds
so upon spoil, piracy and such villainy, as to serve the Portugall,
Spaniard, Dutch, French or Turke (as to the cost of Europe too many do),
rather than our own God, our king, our country, and ourselves; excusing
our idleness and our base complaints by want of employment, when here
is such choice of all sorts, and for all degrees, in the planting and
discovering these North parts of America.”
It was all in vain so far as Smith's fortunes were concerned. The
planting and subjection of New England went on, and Smith had no part in
it except to describe it. The Brownists, the Anabaptists, the Papists,
the Puritans, the Separatists, and “such factious Humorists,” were
taking possession of the land that Smith claimed to have “discovered,”
and in which he had no foothold. Failing to get employment anywhere,
he petitioned the Virginia Company for a reward out of the treasury in
London or the profits in Virginia.
At one of the hot discussions in 1623 preceding the dissolution of the
Virginia Company by the revocation of their charter, Smith was present,
and said that he hoped for his time spent in Virginia he should receive
that year a good quantity of tobacco. The charter was revoked in 1624
after many violent scenes, and King James was glad to be rid of what he
called “a seminary for a seditious parliament.” The company had made
use of lotteries to raise funds, and upon their disuse, in 1621, Smith
proposed to the company to compile for its benefit a general history.
This he did, but it does not appear that the company took any action on
his proposal. At one time he had been named, with three others, as a
fit person for secretary, on the removal of Mr. Pory, but as only three
could be balloted for, his name was left out. He was, however, commended
as entirely competent.
After the dissolution of the companies, and the granting of new
letters-patent to a company of some twenty noblemen, there seems to have
been a project for dividing up the country by lot. Smith says: “All this
they divided in twenty parts, for which they cast lots, but no lot
for me but Smith's Isles, which are a many of barren rocks, the most
overgrown with shrubs, and sharp whins, you can hardly pass them;
without either grass or wood, but three or four short shrubby old
cedars.”
The plan was not carried out, and Smith never became lord of even these
barren rocks, the Isles of Shoals. That he visited them when he sailed
along the coast is probable, though he never speaks of doing so. In the
Virginia waters he had left a cluster of islands bearing his name also.
In the Captain's “True Travels,” published in 1630, is a summary of the
condition of colonization in New England from Smith's voyage thence till
the settlement of Plymouth in 1620, which makes an appropriate close to
our review of this period:
“When I first went to the North part of Virginia, where the Westerly
Colony had been planted, it had dissolved itself within a year, and
there was not one Christian in all the land. I was set forth at the sole
charge of four merchants of London; the Country being then reputed by
your westerlings a most rocky, barren, desolate desart; but the good
return I brought from thence, with the maps and relations of the
Country, which I made so manifest, some of them did believe me, and they
were well embraced, both by the Londoners, and Westerlings, for whom I
had promised to undertake it, thinking to have joyned them all together,
but that might well have been a work for Hercules. Betwixt them long
there was much contention: the Londoners indeed went bravely forward:
but in three or four years I and my friends consumed many hundred pounds
amongst the Plimothians, who only fed me but with delays, promises, and
excuses, but no performance of anything to any purpose. In the interim,
many particular ships went thither, and finding my relations true, and
that I had not taken that I brought home from the French men, as had
been reported: yet further for my pains to discredit me, and my calling
it New England, they obscured it, and shadowed it, with the title of
Canada, till at my humble suit, it pleased our most Royal King Charles,
whom God long keep, bless and preserve, then Prince of Wales, to confirm
it with my map and book, by the title of New England; the gain thence
returning did make the fame thereof so increase that thirty, forty or
fifty sail went yearly only to trade and fish; but nothing would be done
for a plantation, till about some hundred of your Brownists of England,
Amsterdam and Leyden went to New Plimouth, whose humorous ignorances,
caused them for more than a year, to endure a wonderful deal of misery,
with an infinite patience; saying my books and maps were much better
cheap to teach them than myself: many others have used the like
good husbandry that have payed soundly in trying their self-willed
conclusions; but those in time doing well, diverse others have in small
handfulls undertaken to go there, to be several Lords and Kings of
themselves, but most vanished to nothing.”