sailed for Virginia in the spring of 1611. The first to leave carried
300 men, in three ships, under the command of Sir Thomas Dale, another
veteran of the Netherlands fighting who had been commissioned as
marshal of the colony. It was impossible not to be impressed by the
evidence that a lack of discipline had contributed to the colony's
woes, and Dale, who sailed in March, undoubtedly was intended to draw
upon his experience as a soldier for the better discipline of the
colonists. Sir Thomas Gates, who followed Dale out in May, had a
broader task. He would continue to serve as the lieutenant governor
under Lord De la Warr, and, like Dale, he carried 300 passengers. But
his six ships also carried much more. One of the basic problems of
original colonization, though it has often been lost sight of, was to
stock the colony with cattle, hogs, poultry, etc. Later colonists, in
Maryland or Carolina, would buy these essentials in Virginia, but the
Virginia colonists had no established neighbor of their own nation on
which to rely, and during the starving time they had literally eaten
themselves out of stock. Nothing could better illustrate the fact that
the Virginia adventurers in 1611 had to begin all over again than the
100 cattle, the 200 swine, and the poultry in unspecified numbers Gates
had aboard his ships as they set their course westward. And if any one
wishes to estimate the value of a cow that had been transported across
the Atlantic, let him notice the penalty imposed by Dale's laws, so
called, for killing one.
As Gates dropped down the Thames in May, the adventurers must have
relaxed with the satisfaction that comes from real achievement. Twice
now, within the span of two years, they had raised a great fund with
which they sent each time nine vessels and 600 colonists to Virginia.
Indeed, they had done even more. Counting Argall's ship, which sailed
ahead of Somers in the spring of 1609, and the three vessels going over
with De la Warr in 1610, the company had dispatched to Virginia no less
than 22 vessels and close to 1,400 colonists in a two year period. But
Gates had hardly cleared the coasts of England before Lord De la Warr,
of all persons, turned up in London, to the great consternation of his
fellow adventurers.
A general assembly of the adventurers on June 25 listened to his
explanation, which was promptly published by order of the council.
The story briefly was this. Ever since he had reached Virginia
the preceding June he had suffered a succession of violent
sicknesses--fevers, the flux, gout, and finally scurvy, "till I was
upon the point to leave the world." In preference to this he left
Virginia in a vessel commanded by Argall, and in the hope that he might
recover his health with the aid of hot baths in the West Indies.
Contrary winds had forced him to alter his course to the Azores, where
oranges and lemons had cured him of the scurvy. He then resolved to
return to his post, but was persuaded to seek first a full recovery of
health "in the naturall ayre of my countrey." He deplored the ill
effects on the Virginia project of his return home, but argued that it
would have been far worse for Virginia had he remained there only to
die.
A nice advertisement this for the healthfulness of Virginia's climate.
One might wonder at the council's decision to publish the report were
it not for the obvious fact that the alternative would have been worse
still. Some explanation had to be given the public, for the adventurers
had counted heavily on the presence of Lord De la Warr in Virginia to
offset the discouragement of earlier reports from Jamestown, as their
promotional literature amply demonstrates. He was a nobleman, the head
of a great family, and a member of His Majesty's Council for Virginia.
"Now know yee," reads the commission he had received in February 1610,
"that we his Majesties said Councell upon good advise and deliberation
and upon notice had of the wisedome, valour, circumspection, and of the
virtue and especiall sufficiencie of the Right Honourable Sir Thomas
West, Knight Lord la Warr to be in principall place of authoritie and
government in the said collonie, and finding in him the said Lord la
Warr propensness and willingness to further and advance the good of
the said plantation, by virtue of the said authoritie unto us given by
the said letters pattents have nominated, made, ordained and apointed
... the said Sir Thomas West, Knight Lord la Warr to be principall
Governor, Commander and Captain Generall both by land and sea over the
said colonie and all other collonies planted or to be planted in
Virginia or within the limits specified in his Majesties said letters
pattents and over all persons, Admiralls Vice-Admirals and other
officers and commanders whether by sea or land of what qualitie soever
for and during the term of his natural life, and do hereby ordaine and
declare that he the said Lord la Warr during his life shall be stiled
and called by the name and title of Lord Governor and Captain General
of Virginia." And now, after little more than a year and before the
subscribers to the new joint-stock fund had paid in their second
installment, the Lord Governor and Captain General of Virginia was back
in London to make a public confession that in Virginia he had nearly
died of the ague, flux, and scurvy. From time to time thereafter the
company publicly suggested that the Lord Governor might soon return to
his post, but he did not undertake to do so until 1618 and then he died
on the way.
Once more the leaders of the company showed determination. Delinquent
subscribers were carried to court in a series of chancery actions
extending into 1614. How much was collected in this way cannot be said,
but the complaints entered in chancery have provided most helpful clues
to an understanding of the company's financial history. It seems
unlikely that anything collected as a result of these actions served to
do more than reduce an indebtedness incurred by the company in 1611 on
the promise of its subscribers. One thing is certain: there was no
chance of floating another subscription. By 1612 the adventurers were
complaining that only the name of God was more frequently profaned in
the streets and market places of London than was the name of Virginia.
After that year the Virginia lottery, its winning tickets entitling the
holder to an exchange for shares in the Virginia joint-stock, became
the company's chief dependence. Now and again there would also be found
some person who wanted to go to Virginia at his own cost, and was
willing to pay the cost in return for shares of stock guaranteeing an
ultimate title to land in the colony. These transactions, at a time
when Virginia's name had lost its magic, were perhaps too few to
suggest to any one of the adventurers that here was the future, not
only of the company, but of English colonization in North America.
Although the Virginia Company continued to be active for thirteen years
after 1611, the last of its great joint-stock funds was the one to
which men made their subscriptions just before Lord De la Warr came
home.
To this statement perhaps a qualification should be added. Virginia at
first had been to Englishmen America itself, and so it had remained in
a very real sense, despite an obvious tendency since 1609 for the
adventurers to pin their hopes increasingly on what might be found
within the reach of Jamestown. The continuance of the Virginia
adventure became thus not simply a matter of keeping the Jamestown
colony alive. What mattered was that somewhere in North America the
great task to which the company had committed itself should go forward.
And where better, after 1611, could this be tried than in the Bermudas?
Divine providence had pointed the way, so clearly that it might even be
possible to raise the needed funds in London. Moreover, Sir George
Somers, by being shipwrecked there and subsequently by dying there, had
provided a name for the islands that was both English and suggestive of
a climate so healthful that even Lord De la Warr might prosper there.
Accordingly, the leading members of the Virginia Company in 1612
undertook the colonization of the Somers Islands, a designation often
written as the Summer Islands, and for that purpose they subscribed to
a new joint-stock fund. The Bermuda joint-stock, however, seems to
have been a much more modest fund than that subscribed either in 1609
or 1611.
There was nothing unusual in thus creating within the framework of the
Virginia Company a special stock for investment under the direction of
its own officers and committees in the colonization of Bermuda. In the
great companies of London it was customary that each stock should be
separately administered. The only technical difficulty lay in the fact
that Bermuda was located outside the geographical limits granted the
Virginia adventurers. Under the second of their charters, rights at sea
(on both seas) had extended out from the coasts for only 100 miles,
which for the purposes of 1612 was not far enough. The adventurers,
therefore, sought and secured a third charter granting them rights
along the coast of Virginia, within the limits of 41° and 30° of
northerly latitude, to a distance of 300 leagues, in order to include
"divers Islands lying desolate and uninhabited, some of which are
already made known and discovered by the industry, travel, and expences
of the said Company, ... all and every of which it may import the said
Colony [of Virginia] both in safety and policy of trade to populate and
plant."
This extension of bounds undoubtedly represents the chief reason for
seeking the third Virginia charter, but the leaders of the company,
while they had the opportunity, also included other significant
provisions. Especially significant was a decision to enlarge the
authority belonging to the general assembly of the adventurers. To its
former prerogatives, which had been chiefly to elect members of the
council and to determine the apportionment of lands, the third charter
added three fundamental rights: to elect all officers of either company
or colony, to admit new members to the fellowship of the company, and
to draft laws and ordinances for the welfare of the plantation.
Heretofore, the council had been the true governing body, though
subject to a right of election and displacement by the adventurers in
general assembly. Now the general court of the adventurers was to
govern, with the council as its executive agency. Since voting in the
Virginia courts, as in those of other companies at the time, was by
head rather than by share, this provision of the charter can be
interpreted only as an attempt by the great men of the company to
encourage a renewed interest on the part of the general body of
adventurers by enlarging their influence on the conduct of the
company's affairs. It was the third charter which also authorized the
establishment of the Virginia lottery--the first of many attempts in
American history to exploit the gambler's instinct for the support of a
worthy cause. In the charter the king also gave assurance that his
courts would view favorably the company's suits against delinquent
subscribers.
[Illustration: Merchants of Virginia.
The Company of Merchants, called _Merchants of Virginia_, _Bermudas_,
or _Summer-Ilands_, for (as I heare) all these additions are given
them. I know not the time of their incorporating neither by whom their
Armes, Supporters, and Crest were granted, and therefore am compelled
to leaue them abruptly.
From John Stow, _Survey of London_, 1632
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: Virginia Seal
Courtesy Mrs. L. T. Jester and Mrs. P. W. Hiden]
[Illustration: A Declaration for the certaine time of dravving the
great standing Lottery
Heading for the Broadside issued by _The Virginia Company_, London,
1615
Photo by Virginia State Library. From photograph in Virginia Historical
Society.]
[Illustration: Royal Exchange, London. As it was in the time of the
Virginia Company.
Photo by New York Public Library]
[Illustration: Captain John Smith
From _The London Company of Virginia_ (New York and London, 1908)
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: THOMAS WEST, _Third Lord de la Warr_
From Alexander W. Weddell, _Virginia Historical Portraiture_
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: SIR THOMAS SMITH (or SMYTHE)
"The Right Worshipful Sir Thomas Smith, of London, Knight, one of his
Maiesties Councell for Virginia, and Treasurer for the Colonie, and
Gouernour of the Companies of the Moscovia and East India Merchants"
From the Original Portrait by an Unknown Artist, now in the possession
of The Skinners' Company, London.
From Alexander W. Weddell, _Virginia Historical Portraiture_
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: Henry Wriothesley
(Third Earl of Southampton)
From the painting by Michiel Jansz van Miereveldt
From _The London Company of Virginia_ (New York and London, 1908)
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: SIR EDWIN SANDYS
From the Original Portrait by an Unknown Artist, now in the possession
of Sir Edmund Arthur Lechmere, Bart, Bramham Gardens, London, England
From Alexander W. Weddell, _Virginia Historical Portraiture_
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: Sir Thomas Dale
Portrait by an unknown artist of the Anglo-Flemish School painted in
oils early in the 17th Century. The original portrait is preserved in
the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, Virginia
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
[Illustration: HENRY STUART
_Prince of Wales_
From Alexander Brown, _The Genesis of the United States_
Photo by Virginia State Library.]
The new charter having received the final seal in March 1612, a new
colony was established in Bermuda in the following July. Its early
history has a double significance for the later history of Virginia. In
the first place, the Bermuda colony emphasizes the growing interest of
the adventurers in what might be produced in America as against what
might be found by way of America. The occupation of the Bermuda Islands
might almost be described as a retreat from the earlier search for a
passage to China. The move could be viewed also as a reassertion of an
old interest in plundering the Spaniard, for the Bermudas lay athwart
the homeward route of Spain's treasure fleets. But in any case the
primary interest was in America and its own peculiar opportunities, and
the attention given by the early settlers in Bermuda to experiments
with tobacco, sugar, wine, ginger, and other such commodities suggests
that their purpose was not so much to plunder the Spaniard as rather to
emulate his success as a planter in the West Indies. Secondly, the
adventurers showed a marked inclination to encourage each adventurer to
meet his own costs. Provision was made for an early survey and division
of the land, with the result that men put their money chiefly into the
development of their own estates. A final survey was not completed
until 1617, but at that date some of the Bermuda adventurers at least
had known who their tenants were and approximately where their land
would lie for three full years. Whether for these or for other reasons,
Bermuda grew while Virginia languished. By 1616 over 600 colonists had
reached the Somers Islands, where most of them survived. In contrast,
Virginia had that year 350 people.
The Bermuda subscribers had been separately incorporated as the Somers
Island Company with its own royal charter in 1615. Indeed, ever since
1612, when the Bermuda adventurers helped to relieve the financial
embarrassment of the Virginia Company by paying £2,000 for its newly
acquired title to Bermuda, the Somers Island adventurers seem to have
functioned increasingly as a separate corporation. But the membership
of the two companies was much the same. It had been the more active and
interested of the Virginia adventurers who subscribed to the Bermuda
joint-stock in 1612, and for twelve years thereafter the active
membership of the Virginia Company came so close to duplicating the
membership of the Bermuda Company that the two bodies often met
virtually as one. Until 1619 Sir Thomas Smith served as governor of
both companies.
The growing interest of the London adventurers after 1612 in the
colonization of Bermuda did not mean that Virginia was wholly
neglected. Funds secured from the lottery and from suits against
delinquent subscribers were enough to keep the project alive. In 1612
the adventurers even sent out a stock of silkworms for a test of silk
production. Needless to say, returning ships brought back no silk; nor
did they bring sugar or wine. Lumber, including the valuable black
walnut, seems to have provided the chief cargo for return voyages. A
shipment of tobacco, Virginia's first, in 1614 gave some ground for
arguing that the agricultural experimentation to which the colonists
had been committed for several years now would pay off eventually. So
argued Sir Thomas Gates on his return home this same year after three
years of service in the colony, but the fact that he had come back
from Virginia apparently made more of an impression than did his
argument. Others also came home, their contracted term of service
ended, and rarely did they bring any news from Virginia which added
good to its name. Instead, they talked of the severe discipline under
which they had been forced to live, and made sport of the too hopeful
propaganda which had first persuaded them to become adventurers in
Virginia. The discipline, chiefly associated with Dale's office as
marshal, made his loyal decision to remain in the colony for another
two years as lieutenant governor a further contribution to the ill
repute of Virginia's name.
Dale finally came home in 1616, the year in which the dividend on the
1609 joint-stock fell due. The contrast between the high hopes of 1609
and the reality of 1616 was all too painfully apparent. Six hundred
men, women, and children had sailed for Virginia in the first of these
years under a plan to live and work together for a seven year period.
They would share, each according to his particular skill or aptitude,
in the common task of planting a colony, and they would live out of a
common store. By 1616, towns were to have been built, churches and
houses raised, and an increasing acreage brought under cultivation. A
variety of profitable crops would have been tested, and markets
established for them. The original stock of cattle would have increased
through care until there were enough for all. At the same time, the
trade with the Indians would have been put on a profitable basis, as
would have mining operations and perhaps even a trade to Cathay. Such
was the general prospect to which so many adventurers had responded in
1609. To the modern student all this seems so unrealistic as to be
almost unbelievable, but unless one grasps the reality of the original
dream he cannot hope to comprehend the extent of a later
disillusionment.
There were no funds to be divided in 1616, but the company did declare
a dividend of land--not the 500 acres per share that Alderman Johnson
had suggested as a possibility in 1609 but the more modest total of 50
acres. This 50 acres, however, was designated as a first dividend.
Others would follow, for an ultimate total of perhaps 200 acres per
share, as the area in the colony's "actual possession" was enlarged.
Plans were announced for dispatching a new governor to Virginia with
instructions for completing the necessary surveys, and the adventurers
were urged to seize the opportunity to gain a desirable priority in the
location of their shares by contributing £12 10s. toward meeting the
necessary costs. In return for this contribution, the adventurer would
be entitled to an additional 50 acres. The land now to be divided was
that lying along the James River, and only those adventurers who
submitted to the additional levy would be entitled to share in the
division, except apparently for adventurers then living in the colony.
These were the old planters, as they came to be called, whose rights
paralleled those of the old adventurers in England. It is evident that
the adventurers were in no position to claim a monopoly as the just
reward of their past sacrifices, for they also offered an immediate
dividend, on terms no different from those governing the rights of the
old adventurers, to any new adventurer who wished to join by paying £12
10s. per share. Such was the estate to which the Virginia Company had
been reduced after ten years of effort.
To employ a term that was destined to become common at a later period
of American history, the Virginia Company had become nothing more than
a land company. Its one asset was the land that had been bought with
the sacrifices of the first ten years, and after 1616 all of its plans
depended upon the hope that it might use its power to give title to
that land as an inducement for investment in the colony. In its
advertisement in 1616 adventurers, both old and new, were invited to
take up shares for occupancy by themselves or for development by
tenants sent for the purpose. Perhaps because the first response to
this appeal was disappointing, the company provided an additional
inducement in 1617 by promising 50 acres per head for every person
sent to the colony, the payment being due to the one who bore the cost.
This was the Virginia headright, as it came to be called, which was
destined to remain the chief feature of the colony's land policy
through many years after the demise of the company itself. Intended at
first to encourage the adventurers in England to send the labor that
was necessary for the development of the land, it served thereafter as
a land subsidy of the immigration on which the colony lived and grew.
By 1618 the fortunes of Virginia were taking a turn for the better. The
adventurers, or some of them at least, found encouragement in continued
shipments of tobacco. These shipments were small and the quality of the
tobacco could not be compared with the Spanish leaf of West Indian
production which was finding a growing market in London despite King
James's known disapproval of the habit on which the market grew. But
the quality of Virginia tobacco, for which Sir Thomas Smith seems to
have found a first market in the East Indies, no doubt could be
improved as the planters learned the art of its cultivation and the
adventurers found for them a better weed. No doubt, too, this success
with tobacco, whatever the imperfections of the current product, could
be viewed as a harbinger of other successful attempts to produce
commodities the Spaniard had for so long and so profitably grown in his
West Indian plantations.