OLD VIRGINIA AND HER NEIGHBOURS.
CHAPTER X.
THE COMING OF THE CAVALIERS.
Virginia depicted.
“These things that follow in this ensuing relation are certified by divers letters from Virginia, by men of worth and credit there, written to a friend in England, that for his own and others’ satisfaction was desirous to know these particulars and the present estate of that country. And let no man doubt of the truth of it. There be many in England, land and seamen, that can bear witness of it. And if this plantation be not worth encouragement, let every true Englishman judge.”
Animals.
Such is the beginning of an enthusiastic little pamphlet, of unknown authorship, published in London in 1649,[1] the year in which Charles I. perished on the scaffold. It is entitled “A Perfect Description of Virginia,” and one of its effects, if not its purpose, must have been to attract immigrants to that colony from the mother country. In Virginia “there is nothing wanting” to make people happy; there are “plenty, health, and wealth.” Of English about 15,000 are settled there, with 300 negro servants. Of kine, oxen, bulls, and calves, there are 20,000, and there is plenty of good butter and cheese. There are 200 horses, 50 asses, 3,000 sheep with good wool, 5,000 goats, and swine and poultry innumerable. Besides these European animals, there are many deer, with “rackoons, as good meat as lamb,” and “passonnes” [opossums], otters and beavers, foxes and dogs that “bark not.” In the waters are “above thirty sorts” of fish “very excellent good in their kinds.” The wild turkey sometimes weighs sixty pounds, and besides partridges, ducks, geese, and pigeons, the woods abound in sweet songsters and “most rare coloured parraketoes, and [we have] one bird we call the mock-bird; for he will imitate all other birds’ notes and cries, both day and night birds, yea, the owls and nightingales.”
Agriculture.
The farmers have under cultivation many hundred acres of excellent wheat; their maize, or “Virginia corn,” yields an increase of 500 for 1, and makes “good bread and furmity” [porridge]; they have barley in plenty, and six brew-houses which brew strong and well-flavoured beer. There are fifteen kinds of fruit that for delicacy rival the fruits of Italy; in the gardens grow potatoes, turnips, carrots, parsnips, onions, artichokes, asparagus, beans, and better peas than those of England, with all manner of herbs and “physick flowers.” The tobacco is everywhere “much vented and esteemed,” but such immense crops are raised that the price is but three pence a pound. There is also a hope that indigo, hemp and flax, vines and silk-worms, can be cultivated with profit, since it is chiefly hands that are wanted. It surely would be better to grow silk here, where mulberry trees are so plenty, than to fetch it as we do from Persia and China “with great charge and expense and hazard,” thereby enriching “heathen and Mahumetans.”
Northwest passage.
At the same time they are hoping soon to discover a way to China, “for Sir Francis Drake was on the back side of Virginia in his voyage about the world in 37 degrees ... and now all the question is only how broad the land may be to that place [i. e. California] from the head of James River above the falls.” By prosecuting discovery in this direction “the planters in Virginia shall gain the rich trade of the East India, and so cause it to be driven through the continent of Virginia, part by land and part by water, and in a most gainful way and safe, and far less expenseful and dangerous, than now it is.”
Commercial rivals.
It behooves the English, says our pamphlet, to be more vigilant, and to pay more heed to their colonies; for behold, “the Swedes have come and crept into a river called Delawar, that is within the limits of Virginia,” and they are driving “a great and secret trade of furs.” Moreover, “the Hollanders have stolen into a river called Hudson’s River, in the limits also of Virginia, ... they have built a strong fort ... and drive a trade of fur there with the natives for above £10,000 a year. These two plantations are ... on our side of Cape Cod which parts us and New England. Thus are the English nosed in all places, and out-traded by the Dutch. They would not suffer the English to use them so; but they have vigilant statesmen, and advance all they can for a common good, and will not spare any encouragements to their people to discover.”
New England.
Health of body and soul.
“Concerning New England,” which is but four days’ sail from Virginia, a trade goes to and fro; but except for the fishing, “there is not much in that land,” which in respect of frost and snow is as Scotland compared with England, and so barren withal that, “except a herring be put into the hole that you set the corn or maize in, it will not come up.” What a pity that the New England people, “being now about 20,000, did not seat themselves at first to the south of Virginia, in a warm and rich country, where their industry would have produced sugar, indigo, ginger, cotton, and the like commodities!” But here in Virginia the land “produceth, with very great increase, whatsoever is committed into the bowels of it; ... a fat rich soil everywhere watered with many fine springs, small rivulets, and wholesome waters.” As to healthiness, fewer people die in a year proportionately than in England; “since that men are provided with all necessaries, have plenty of victual, bread, and good beer, ... all which the Englishman loves full dearly.” Nor is their spiritual welfare neglected, for there are twenty churches, with “doctrine and orders after the church of England;” and “the ministers’ livings are esteemed worth at least £100 per annum; they are paid by each planter so much tobacco per poll, and so many bushels of corn; they live all in peace and love.”
Schools.
Captain Mathews and his household.
“I may not forget to tell you we have a free school, with 200 acres of land, a fine house upon it, 40 milch kine, and other accommodations; the benefactor deserves perpetual memory; his name, Mr. Benjamin Symes, worthy to be chronicled; other petty schools also we have.” Various details of orchards and vineyards, of Mr. Kinsman’s pure perry and Mr. Pelton’s strong metheglin, entertain us; and a pleasant tribute is paid to “worthy Captain Mathews,” the same who fourteen years before had assisted at the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey. “He hath a fine house, and all things answerable to it; he sows yearly store of hemp and flax, and causes it to be spun; he keeps weavers, and hath a tan house, causes leather to be dressed, hath eight shoemakers employed in their trade, hath forty negro servants, brings them up to trades in his house; he yearly sows abundance of wheat, barley, &c., the wheat he selleth at four shillings the bushel, kills store of beeves, and sells them to victual the ships when they come thither; hath abundance of kine, a brave dairy, swine great store, and poultry; he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Hinton, and, in a word, keeps a good house, lives bravely, and a true lover of Virginia; he is worthy of much honour.”
Rapid growth of population.
It will be observed that Captain Mathews possessed, in his forty black servants, nearly one seventh part of the negro population. Of the conditions under which wholesale negro slavery grew up, I shall treat hereafter. In the third quarter of the seventeenth century it was still in its beginnings. Between 1650 and 1670, along with an extraordinary growth in the total population, we observe a marked increase in the number of black slaves. In the latter year Berkeley estimated the population at 32,000 free whites, 6,000 indentured white servants, and 2,000 negroes. Large estates, cultivated by wholesale slave labour, were coming into existence, and a peculiar type of aristocratic or in some respects patriarchal society was growing up in Virginia. It was still for the most part confined to the peninsula between the James and York rivers and the territory to the south of the former, from Nansemond as far as the Appomattox, although in Gloucester likewise there was a considerable population, and there were settlements in Middlesex and Lancaster counties, on opposite banks of the Rappahannock, and even as far as Northumberland and Westmoreland on the Potomac. In the course of the disputes over Kent Island, settlements began upon those shores and increased apace.
Names of Virginia counties.
Some significant history is fossilized in the names of Virginia counties. When they are not the old shire names imported from England, like those just mentioned, they are apt to be personal names indicating the times when the counties were first settled, or when they acquired a distinct existence as counties. For a long time such personal names were chiefly taken from the royal household. Thus, while Charles City County bears the name of Charles I., bestowed upon the region before that king ascended the throne, the portion of it south of James River, set off in 1702 as Prince George County, was named for George of Denmark, consort of Queen Anne. So King William County on the south bank of the Mattapony, and King and Queen County on its north bank, carry us straight to the times of William and Mary, and indicate the position of the frontier in the days of Charles II.; while to the west of them the names of Hanover and the two Hanoverian princesses, Caroline and Louisa, carry us on to the days of the first two Georges.[2] At the time with which our narrative is now concerned, all that region to the south of Spottsylvania was unbroken wilderness. In 1670 a careful estimate was made of the number of Indians comprised within the immediate neighbourhood of the colony, and there were counted up 725 warriors, of whom more than 400 were on the Appomattox and Pamunkey frontiers, and nearly 200 between the Potomac and Rappahannock.
Scarcity of royalist names on the map of New England.
The map of Virginia, in the light in which I have here considered it, shows one remarkable point of contrast with the map of New England. On the coast of the latter one finds a very few names commemorative of royalty, such as Charles River, named by Captain John Smith, Cape Anne, named by Charles I. when Prince of Wales, and the Elizabeth Islands, named by Captain Gosnold still earlier and in the lifetime of the great Queen. But when it comes to names given by the settlers themselves, one cannot find in all New England a county name taken from any English sovereign or prince, except Dukes for the island of Martha’s Vineyard, and that simply recalls the fact that the island once formed a part of the proprietary domain of James, Duke of York, and sent a delegate to the first legislature that assembled at Manhattan. Except for this one instance, we should never know from the county names of New England that such a thing as kingship had ever existed. As for names of towns, there is in Massachusetts a Lunenburg, which is said to have received its name at the suggestion of a party of travellers from England in the year 1726;[3] it was afterward copied in Vermont; and by diligently searching the map of New England we may find half a dozen Hanovers and Brunswicks, counting originals and copies. Between this showing and that of Virginia, where the sequence of royal names is full enough to preserve a rude record of the country’s expansion, the contrast is surely striking. The difference between the Puritan temper and that of the Cavaliers seems to be written ineffaceably upon the map.
The Cavaliers in Virginia: some popular misconceptions.
Some democratic protests.
We are thus brought to the question as to how far the Cavalier element predominated in the composition of Old Virginia. It is a subject concerning which current general statements are apt to be loose and misleading. It has given rise to much discussion, and, like a good deal of what passes for historical discussion, it has too often been conducted under the influence of personal or sectional prejudices. Half a century ago, in the days when the people of the slave states and those of the free states found it difficult to think justly or to speak kindly of one another, one used often to hear sweeping generalizations. On the one hand, it was said that Southerners were the descendants of Cavaliers, and therefore presumably of gentle blood, while Northerners were descendants of Roundheads, and therefore presumably of ignoble origin. Some such notion may have prompted the famous remark of Robert Toombs, in 1860: “We [i. e. the Southerners] are the gentlemen of this country.” On the other hand, it was retorted that the people of the South were in great part descended from indentured white servants sent from the jails and slums of England.[4] This point will receive due attention in a future chapter. At present we may note that descent from Cavaliers has not always been a matter of pride with Southern speakers and writers. There was a time when the fierce spirit of democracy was inclined to regard such a connection as a stigma. The father of President Tyler “used to say that he cared naught for any other ancestor than Wat Tyler the blacksmith, who had asserted the rights of oppressed humanity, and that he would have no other device on his shield than a sledge hammer raised in the act of striking.”[5] On the subject of Cavaliers a well known Virginian writer, Hugh Blair Grigsby, once grew very warm. “The Cavalier,” said he, “was essentially a slave, a compound slave, a slave to the King and a slave to the Church. I look with contempt on the miserable figment which seeks to trace the distinguishing points of the Virginia character to the influence of those butterflies of the British aristocracy.”[6] Historical questions are often treated in this way. We grow up with a vague conception of something in the past which we feel in duty bound to condemn, and then if we are told that our own forefathers were part and parcel of the hated thing we lose our tempers. Mr. Grigsby’s remarks are an expression of American feeling in what may be called its Elijah Pogram period, when the knowledge of history was too slender and the historic sense too dull to be shocked at the incongruity of classing such men as Strafford and Falkland with “butterflies.” The study of history in such a mood is not likely to be fruitful of much beside rhetoric.
Sweeping statements are inadmissible.
Before we proceed, a few further words are desirable concerning the fallacies and misconceptions which abound in the opinions cited in the foregoing paragraph. It is impossible to make any generalization concerning the origin of the white people of the South as a whole, or of the North as a whole, further than to say that their ancestors came from Europe, and a large majority of them from the British islands. The facts are too complicated to be embraced in any generalization more definitely limited than this. When sweeping statements are made about “the North” and “the South,” it is often apparent that the speaker has in mind only Massachusetts and tidewater Virginia, making these parts do duty for the whole. The present book will make it clear that it is only in connection with tidewater Virginia that the migration of Cavaliers from England to America has any historical significance.
Difference between Cavaliers and Roundheads was political, not social.
It is a mistake to suppose that the contrast between Cavaliers and Roundheads was in any wise parallel with the contrast between high-born people and low-born. A majority of the landed gentry, titled and untitled, supported Charles I., while the chief strength of the Parliament lay in the smaller landholders and in the merchants of the cities. But the Roundheads also included a large and powerful minority of the landed aristocracy, headed by the Earls of Bedford, Warwick, Manchester, Northumberland, Stamford, and Essex, the Lords Fairfax and Brooke, and many others. The leaders of the party, Pym and Hampden, Vane and Cromwell, were of gentle blood; and among the officers of the New Model were such as Montagues, Pickerings, Fortescues, Sheffields, and Sidneys. In short, the distinction between Cavalier and Roundhead was no more a difference in respect of lineage or social rank than the analogous distinction between Tory and Whig. The mere fact of a man’s having belonged to the one party or the other raises no presumption as to his “gentility.”
England has never had a noblesse, or upper caste.
Contrast with France.
Importance of the middle class.
It is worth while here to correct another error which is quite commonly entertained in the United States. It is the error of supposing that in Great Britain there are distinct orders of society, or that there exists anything like a sharp and well defined line between the nobility and the commonalty. The American reader is apt to imagine a “peerage,” the members of which have from time immemorial constituted a kind of caste clearly marked off from the great body of the people, and into which it has always been very difficult for plain people to rise. In this crude conception the social differences between England and America are greatly exaggerated. In point of fact the British islands are the one part of Europe where the existence of a peerage has not resulted in creating a distinct upper class of society. The difference will be most clearly explained by contrasting England with France. In the latter country, before the Revolution of 1789, there was a peerage consisting of great landholders, local rulers and magistrates, and dignitaries of the church, just as in England. But in France all the sons and brothers of a peer were nobles distinguished by a title and reckoned among the peerage, and all were exempt from sundry important political duties, including the payment of taxes. Thus they constituted a real noblesse, or caste apart from the people, until the Revolution at a single blow destroyed all their privileges. At the present day French titles of nobility are merely courtesy titles, and through excessive multiplication have become cheap. On the other hand, in England, the families of peers have never been exempt from their share of the public burdens. The “peerage,” or hereditary right to sit in the House of Lords, belongs only to the head of the family; all the other members of the family are commoners, though some may be addressed by courtesy titles. During the formative period of modern political society, from the fourteenth century onward, the sons of peers habitually competed for seats in the House of Commons, side by side with merchants and yeomen. This has prevented anything like a severance between the interests of the higher and of the lower classes in England, and has had much to do with the peaceful and healthy political development which has so eminently characterized our mother country. England has never had a noblesse. As the upper class has never been sharply distinguished politically, so it has not held itself separate socially. Families with titles have intermarried with families that have none, the younger branches of a peer’s family become untitled gentry, ancient peerages lapse while new ones are created, so that there is a “circulation of gentle blood” that has thus far proved eminently wholesome. More than two thirds of the present House of Lords are the grandsons or great-grandsons of commoners. Of the 450 or more hereditary peerages now existing, three date from the thirteenth century and four from the fourteenth; of those existing in the days of Thomas Becket not one now remains in the same family. It has always been easy in England for ability and character to raise their possessor in the social scale; and hence the middle class has long been recognized as the abiding element in England’s strength. Voltaire once compared the English people to their ale,—froth at the top and dregs at the bottom, but sound and bright and strong in the middle. As to the last he was surely right.
Respect paid to industry in England.
One further point calls for mention. In mediæval and early modern England, great respect was paid to incorporated crafts and trades. The influence and authority wielded by county magnates over the rural population was paralleled by the power exercised in the cities by the livery companies or guilds. Since the twelfth century, the municipal franchise in the principal towns and cities of Great Britain has been for the most part controlled by the various trade and craft guilds. In the seventeenth century, when the migrations to America were beginning, it was customary for members of noble families to enter these guilds as apprentices in the crafts of the draper, the tailor, the vintner, or the mason, etc. Many important consequences have flowed from this. Let it suffice here to note that this fact of the rural aristocracy keeping in touch with the tradesmen and artisans has been one of the safeguards of English liberty; it has been one source of the power of the Commons, one check upon the undue aspirations of the Crown. It indicates a kind of public sentiment very different from that which afterward grew up in our southern states under the malignant influence of slavery, which proclaimed an antagonism between industry and gentility that is contrary to the whole spirit of English civilization.
The Cavalier exodus.
With these points clear in our minds, we may understand the true significance of the arrival of the Cavaliers in Virginia. The date to be remembered in connection with that event is 1649, and it is instructive to compare it with the exodus of Puritans to New England. The little settlement of the Mayflower Pilgrims was merely a herald of the great Puritan exodus, which really began in 1629, when Charles I. entered upon his period of eleven years of rule without a parliament, and continued until about 1642, when the Civil War broke out. During those thirteen years more than 20,000 Puritans came to New England. The great Cavalier exodus began with the king’s execution in 1649, and probably slackened after 1660. It must have been a chief cause of the remarkable increase of the white population of Virginia from 15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670.
Political complexion of Virginia before 1649.
The great exchange of 1649.
The period of the Commonwealth in England thus marks an important epoch in Virginia, and we must be on our guard against confusing what came after with what preceded it. As to the political complexion of Virginia in the earliest time, it would be difficult to make a general statement, except that there was a widespread feeling in favour of the Company as managed by Sandys and Southampton. This meant that the settlers knew when they were well governed. They did not approve of a party that sent an Argall to fleece them, even though it were the court party. So, too, in the thrusting out of Sir John Harvey in 1635 we see the temper of the councillors and burgesses flatly opposed to the king’s unpopular representative. But such instances do not tell us much concerning the attitude of the colonists upon questions of English politics. The fortunes of the Puritan settlers in Virginia afford a surer indication. At first, as we have seen, when the Puritans as a body had not yet separated from the Church, there were a good many in Virginia; and by 1640 they probably formed about seven per cent. of the population. The legislation against them beginning in 1631 seems to indicate that public sentiment in Virginia favoured the policy of Laud; while the slackness with which such legislation was enforced raises a suspicion that such sentiment was at first not very strong. It seems probable that as the country party in England came more and more completely under the control of Puritanism, and as Puritanism grew more and more radical in temper, the reaction toward the royalist side grew more and more pronounced in Virginia. If there ever was a typical Cavalier of the more narrow-minded sort, it was Sir William Berkeley, who at the same time was by no means the sort of person that one might properly call a “butterfly.” If the eloquent Mr. Grigsby had once got into those iron clutches, he would have sought some other term of comparison. When Berkeley arrived in Virginia, and for a long time afterward, he was extremely popular. We have seen him acting with so much energy against the Puritans that in the course of the year 1649 not less than 1,000 of them left the colony. Upon the news of the king’s death, Berkeley sent a message to England inviting royalists to come to Virginia, and within a twelvemonth perhaps as many as 1,000 had arrived, picked men and women of excellent sort. Thus it curiously happened that the same moment which saw Virginia lose most of her Puritan population, also saw it replaced by an equal number of devoted Cavaliers.
Moderation shown in Virginia.
From this moment we may date the beginnings of Cavalier ascendency in Virginia. But for the next ten years that growing ascendency was qualified by the necessity of submitting to the Puritan government in England. In 1652 Berkeley was obliged to retire from the governorship, and the king’s men in Virginia found it prudent to put some restraint upon the expression of their feelings. But in this change, as we have seen, there was no violence. It is probable that there was a considerable body of colonists “comparatively indifferent to the struggle of parties in England, anxious only to save Virginia from spoliation and bloodshed, and for that end willing to throw in their lot with the side whose success held out the speediest hopes of peace. There is another consideration which helps to explain the moderation of the combatants. In England each party was exasperated by grievous wrongs, and hence its hour of triumph was also its hour of revenge. The struggle in Virginia was embittered by no such recollections.”[7]
Colonel Richard Lee.
Election of Berkeley by the assembly.
A name inseparably associated with Berkeley is that of Colonel Richard Lee, who is described as “a man of good stature, comely visage, an enterprising genius, a sound head, vigorous spirit, and generous nature,”[8] qualities that may be recognized in many of his famous descendants. This Richard Lee belonged to an ancient family, the Lees of Coton Hall, in Shropshire, whom we find from the beginning of the thirteenth century in positions of honour and trust. He came to Virginia about 1642, and obtained that year an estate which he called Paradise, near the head of Poropotank Creek, on the York River. He was from the first a man of much importance in the colony, serving as justice, burgess, councillor, and secretary of state. In 1654 we find him described as “faithful and useful to the interests of the Commonwealth,” but, as Dr. Edmund Lee says, “it is only fair to observe that this claim was made for him by a friend in his absence;”[9] or perhaps it only means that he was not one of the tribe of fanatics who love to kick against the pricks.[10] Certain it is that Colonel Lee was no Puritan, though doubtless he submitted loyally to the arrangement of 1652, as so many others did. There was nothing for the king’s men to do but possess their souls in quiet until 1659, when news came of the resignation of Richard Cromwell. “Worthy Captain Mathews,” whom the assembly had chosen governor, died about the same time. Accordingly, in March, 1660, the assembly resolved that, since there was then in England no resident sovereign generally recognized, the supreme power in Virginia must be regarded as lodged in the assembly, and that all writs should issue in the name of the Grand Assembly of Virginia until such a command should come from England as the assembly should judge to be lawful. Having passed this resolution, the assembly showed its political complexion by electing Sir William Berkeley for governor: and in the same breath it revealed its independent spirit by providing that he must call an assembly at least once in two years, and oftener if need be; and that he must not dissolve it without the consent of a majority of the members. On these terms Berkeley accepted office at the hands of the assembly.
Lee’s visit to Brussels.
Charles II. proclaimed king.
Before this transaction, perhaps in 1658, Colonel Lee seems to have visited Charles II. at Brussels, where he handed over to the still exiled prince the old commission of Berkeley, and may have obtained from him a new one for future use, reinstating him as governor.[11] There is a vague tradition that on this occasion he asked how soon Charles would be likely to be able to protect the colony in case it should declare its allegiance to him; and from this source may have arisen the wild statement, recorded by Beverley and promulgated by the eminent historian Robertson, that Virginia proclaimed Charles II. as sovereign a year or two before he was proclaimed in England.[12] The absurdity of this story was long ago pointed out;[13] but since error has as many lives as a cat, one may still hear it repeated. Charles II. was proclaimed king in England on the 8th of May, 1660, and in Virginia on the 20th of September following.[14] In October the royal commission for Berkeley arrived, and the governor may thus have felt that the conditions on which he accepted his office from the assembly were no longer binding. Our next chapter will show how lightly he held them.
If one may judge from the public accounts of York County in 1660, expressed in the arithmetic of a tobacco currency, the 20th of September must have been a joyful occasion:—
Att the proclaiming of his sacred Maisty:
| To ye Hoble Govnr p a barrell powdr, 112 lb. | .00996 |
| To Capt ffox six cases of drams | .00900 |
| To Capt ffox for his great gunnes | .00500 |
| To Mr Philip Malory | .00500 |
| To ye trumpeters | .00800 |
| To Mr Hansford 176 Gallons Sydr at 15 & 35 gall at 20, caske 264 | .03604 |
There can be no doubt that it was an occasion prolific in legend. The historian Robert Beverley, who was born about fifteen years afterward, tells us that Governor Berkeley’s proclamation named Charles II. as “King of England, Scotland, France, Ireland, and Virginia.” The document itself, however, calls him “our most gratious soveraigne, Charles the Second, King of England, Scotland, ffrance, & Ireland,” and makes no mention of Virginia.
The seal of Virginia.
William Lee tells us that it was “in consequence of this step” that the motto En dat Virginia quintam was placed upon the seal of the colony.[15] Since “this step” was never taken, the statement needs some qualification. The idea of of designating Virginia as an additional kingdom to those over which the English sovereign ruled in Europe was already entertained in 1590 by Edmund Spenser, who dedicated his “Faëry Queene” to Elizabeth as queen of “England, France,[16] and Ireland, and of Virginia.”[17] As early as 1619 the London Company adopted a coat-of-arms, upon which was the motto En dat Virginia quintum, in which the unexpressed noun is regnum; “Behold, Virginia gives the fifth [kingdom].” After the restoration of Charles II. a new seal for Virginia, adopted about 1663, has the same motto, the effect of which was to rank Virginia by the side of his Majesty’s other four dominions, England, Scotland, “France,” and Ireland. We are told by the younger Richard Henry Lee that in these circumstances originated the famous epithet “Old Dominion.” In 1702, among several alterations in the seal, the word quintum was changed to quintam, to agree with the unexpressed noun coronam; “Behold, Virginia gives the fifth [crown].” After the legislative union of England with Scotland in 1707, another seal, adopted in 1714, substituted quartam for quintam.[18]
Increase in the size of land grants.
Just how many members of the royalist party came to Virginia while their young king was off upon his travels, it would be difficult to say. But there were unquestionably a great many. We have already remarked upon the very rapid increase of white population, from about 15,000 in 1649 to 38,000 in 1670. Along with this there was a marked increase in the size of the land grants, both the average size and the maximum; and in this coupling of facts there is great significance, for they show that the increase of population was predominantly an increase in the numbers of the upper class, of the people who could afford to have large estates. In these respects the year 1650 marks an abrupt change,[19] which may best be shown by a tabular view of the figures:—
| Years. | Largest number of acres in a single grant. | Average number of acres in a grant. |
|---|---|---|
| 1632 | 350 | |
| 1634 | 5,350 | 719 |
| 1635 | 2,000 | 380 |
| 1636 | 2,000 | 351 |
| 1637 | 5,350 | 445 |
| 1638 | 3,000 | 423 |
| 1640 | 1,300 | 405 |
| 1641 | 872 | 343 |
| 1642 | 3,000 | 559 |
| 1643 | 4,000 | 595 |
| 1644 | 670 | 370 |
| 1645 | 1,090 | 333 |
| 1646 | 1,200 | 360 |
| 1647 | 650 | 361 |
| 1648 | 1,800 | 412 |
| 1649 | 3,500 | 522 |
| 1650 | 5,350 | 677 |
| 1651-55 | 10,000 | 591 |
| 1656-66 | 10,000 | 671 |
| 1667-79 | 20,000 | 890 |
| 1680-89 | 20,000 | 607 |
Another way of showing the facts is still more striking:—
| Years. | Number of grants exceeding 5,000 acres. |
|---|---|
| 1632-50 | 3 |
| 1651-55 | 3 |
| 1656-66 | 20 |
| 1667-79 | 37 |
| 1680-89 | 19 |
Cavalier families.
Ancestry of George Washington.
Value of genealogy.
The increase in the number of slaves after 1650 is a fact of similar import with the greater size of the estates. All the circumstances agree in showing that there was a large influx of eminently well-to-do people. It is well known, moreover, who these people were. It is in the reign of Charles II. that the student of Virginian history begins to meet frequently with the familiar names, such as Randolph, Pendleton, Madison, Mason, Monroe, Cary, Ludwell, Parke, Robinson, Marshall, Washington, and so many others that have become eminent. All these were Cavalier families that came to Virginia after the downfall of Charles I. Whether President Tyler was right in claiming descent from the Kentish rebel of 1381 is not clear, but there is no doubt that his first American ancestor, who came to Virginia after the battle of Worcester, was a gentleman and a royalist.[20] Until recently there was some uncertainty as to the pedigree of George Washington, but the researches of Mr. Fitz Gilbert Waters of Salem have conclusively proved that he was descended from the Washingtons of Sulgrave, in Northamptonshire, a family that had for generations worthily occupied positions of honour and trust. In the Civil War the Washingtons were distinguished royalists. The commander who surrendered Worcester in 1646 to the famous Edward Whalley was Colonel Henry Washington;[21] and his cousin John, who came to Virginia in 1657, was great-grandfather of George Washington. After the fashion that prevailed a hundred years ago, the most illustrious of Americans felt little interest in his ancestry; but with the keener historic sense and broader scientific outlook of the present day, the importance of such matters is better appreciated. The pedigrees of horses, dogs, and fancy pigeons have a value that is quotable in terms of hard cash. Far more important, for the student of human affairs, are the pedigrees of men. By no possible ingenuity of constitution-making or of legislation can a society made up of ruffians and boors be raised to the intellectual and moral level of a society made up of well-bred merchants and yeomen, parsons and lawyers. One might as well expect to see a dray horse win the Derby. It is, moreover, only when we habitually bear in mind the threads of individual relationship that connect one country with another, that we get a really firm and concrete grasp of history. Without genealogy the study of history is comparatively lifeless. No excuse is needed, therefore, for giving in this connection a tabulated abridgment of the discoveries of Mr. Waters concerning the forefathers of George Washington.[22] Beside the personal interest attaching to everything associated with that immortal name, this pedigree has interest and value as being in large measure typical. It is a fair sample of good English middle-class pedigrees, and it is typical as regards the ancestry of leading Cavalier families in Virginia; an inspection of many genealogies of those who came between 1649 and 1670 yields about the same general impression. Moreover, this pedigree is equally typical as regards the F ancestry of leading Puritan families in New England. The genealogies, for example, of Winthrop, Dudley, Saltonstall, Chauncey, or Baldwin give the same general impression as those of Randolph, or Cary, or Cabell, or Lee. The settlers of Virginia and of New England were opposed to each other in politics, but they belonged to one and the same stratum of society, and in their personal characteristics they were of the same excellent quality. To quote the lines of Sir William Jones, written as a paraphrase of the Greek epigram of Alcæus inscribed upon my title-page:—