Narrative and Critical History of America, Vol. 3 (of 8) / English Explorations and Settlements in North America 1497-1689

by Unknown

CHAPTER V.

VIRGINIA, 1606-1689.

BY ROBERT A. BROCK,

Corresponding Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society.

ON the petition of Hakluyt (then prebendary of Westminster), Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and other “firm and hearty lovers of colonization,” James I., by patent dated the 10th of April, 1606, chartered two companies (the London and the Plymouth), and bestowed on them in equal proportions the vast territory (then known as Virginia) lying between the thirty-fourth and forty-fifth degrees of north latitude, together with the islands within one hundred miles of the coast stretching from Cape Fear to Halifax.

The code of laws provided for the government of the proposed colonies was complicated, inexpedient, and characteristic of the mind of the first Stuart. For each colony separate councils appointed by the King were instituted in England, and these were in turn to name resident councillors in the colonies, with power to choose their own president and to fill vacancies. Capital offences were to be tried by a jury, but all other cases were left to the decision of the council. This body was, however, to govern itself according to the prescribed mandates of the King. The religion of the Church of England was established, and the oath of obedience was a prerequisite to residence in the colony. Lands were to descend as at common law, and a community of labor and property was to continue for five years. The Adventurers, as the members of the Company were termed, were authorized to mine for gold, silver, and copper, to coin money, and to collect a revenue for twenty-one years from all vessels trading to their ports. Certain articles of necessity, imported for the use of the colonists, were exempted from duty for seven years. Sir Thomas Smith, an eminent merchant of London, who had been the chief of the assignees of Sir Walter Raleigh and ambassador to Russia, was appointed treasurer of the Company.

But the body of the men who composed the expedition had little care for forms of government. A wilder chimera than the impractical devices of the selfish and pedantic monarch possessed them. “I tell thee,” says Seagull, in the play of Eastward Ho! which was popular for years, “golde is more plentifull there than copper is with us; and for as much redde copper as I can bring I’ll have thrise the weight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans ... are pure gould; and all the chaines with which they chaine up their streets are massie gold; and for rubies and diamonds, they goe forth in Holydayes and gather ‘hem by the seashore, to hang on their children’s coates and sticke in their children’s caps, as commonly as our children weare saffron gilt brooches and groates with holes in ‘hem.” A life of ease and luxury is pictured by Seagull, and, as the climax of allurement, with “no more law than conscience, and not too much of eyther.”[227] The expedition left Blackwall on the 19th of December, but was detained by “unprosperous winds” in the Downs until the 1st of January, 1606-7. It consisted of three vessels,—the “Susan Constant,” of one hundred tons, with seventy-one persons, in charge of the experienced navigator Captain Christopher Newport (the commander of the fleet); the “God-Speed,” of forty tons, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, carrying fifty-two persons; and the “Discovery,” of twenty tons, Captain John Ratcliffe, carrying twenty persons. The crews of the ships must have constituted thirty-nine of the total of these, as the number of the first planters was one hundred and five. In the lists of their names, more than half are classed as “gentlemen,” and the remainder as laborers, tradesmen, and mechanics. Two “chirurgeons,” Thomas Wotton, or Wootton, and Wil. Wilkinson, are included; the service of the first of them in a professional capacity is afterwards noted. Sailing by the old route of the West Indies, the Virginia coast was reached on the 26th of April, and in Chesapeake Bay on that night the instructions from the King were examined. These, with a mystery well calculated to promote mischief, had been confided to Newport, in a sealed box, with the injunction that it should not be opened until he reached his destination. The councillors found to be designated were Edward Maria Wingfield, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and John Kendall. Wingfield, a man of honorable birth and a strict disciplinarian, who had been a companion of Ferdinando Gorges in the European wars, was chosen president; and Thomas Studley, cape-merchant, or treasurer.

On the 29th of the month a cross was planted at Cape Henry, which was so named in honor of the Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King James; the name of his second son, then Duke of York, afterwards Charles I., being perpetuated in the opposite cape. The point at which the ships anchored the next day was designated, in thankful spirit, Point Comfort. On the 13th of May, 1607, the colonists landed at a peninsula on the northern bank of the river known to the natives as Powhatan, after their king, but to which the English gave the name James River. Upon this spot, about fifty miles from its mouth, they resolved to build their first town, to which they also gave the name of the English monarch. The selection of this site is said to have been urged by Smith and objected to by Gosnold. The better judgment of the latter was vindicated in the sequel. Smith—at this time not yet twenty-eight years of age, a man the most remarkably endowed among those nominated for the council, and whose administrative capacity was to be so prominently evidenced—was at first excluded from his seat because, says Purchas, he had been “suspected of a supposed mutinie” on the voyage over.[228] This proscription in all probability had no more warrant than in the jealousy which the recent adventurous career and the confident bearing of Smith may be supposed to have excited, since he was admitted to office on the 10th of June following. The colonists at once set about building fortifications and establishing the settlement. Newport, Smith, and twenty-three others in the mean time ascended the river in a shallop on a tour of exploration. At an Indian village below the falls was found a lad of about ten years of age with yellow hair and whitish skin, who, it has been assumed, was the offspring of some representative of the ill-fated Roanoke Colony left by White, of which it is narrated that seven persons were preserved from slaughter by an Indian chief.[229] On the 26th of May, the day before the return of the explorers to Jamestown, the unfinished fort (not completed until the 15th of June) was attacked by the savages, who were repulsed by the colonists under the command of Wingfield. The colonists had one boy killed and eleven men wounded, one of whom died. Communion was administered by the chaplain, the Rev. Robert Hunt, on Sunday, the 21st of June, and on the next day Newport sailed for England in the “Susan Constant,” laden with specimens of the forest and with mineral productions. A bark or pinnace, with provisions sufficient to sustain the colonists for three months, was left with them. The prospect of the men thus cast upon their own resources, was not promising. Disturbed by the fatuous hope of discovering gold, divided by faction, unused to the labor and hardships to which they were now subjected, and in daily peril from the hostility of the savages, the difficulties of success were enhanced by the insalubrity of their ill-chosen settlement. By September fifty of them, including the intrepid Gosnold, had died, and the store of damaged provisions upon which they mainly depended was nearly exhausted. Violent dissension ensued, which resulted, on the 10th of the month, in the displacement of Wingfield by Ratcliffe in the office of president, and the deposing, imprisonment, and finally the execution of Kendall; by which the Council, never more than seven in number (including Newport), and in which no vacancies had been filled, was reduced to three only,—Ratcliffe, Smith, and Martin. Reprehensible as the conduct of the colonists at this period may have been, they yet held religious observances in regard. Their piety and reverence are instanced both by Smith and Wingfield. In Bagnall’s narrative in the Historie of the first, it is noted that “order was daily to haue Prayer, with a Psalme;”[230] and Wingfield states that when their store of liquors was reduced to two gallons each of “sack” and “aqua-vitæ,” the first was “reserued for the communion table.”[231]

JAMESTOWN.

This cut follows a sketch made about 1857 by a travelling Englishwoman, Miss Catherine C. Hopley, and shows the condition of the ruined church at that time.

Differences among the colonists being somewhat allayed, labor was resumed, habitations were provided, a church was built, and, through the courage and energy of Smith, supplies of corn were obtained from the Indians. Leaving the settlement on the 10th of December, Smith again ascended the Chickahominy to get provisions from the savages, but incurring their hostility, two of his companions, Emry and Robinson, were killed, and Smith himself was taken captive. Being released after a few weeks, on the promise of a ransom of “two great guns and a grindstone,” he returned to Jamestown. On his arrival there he found the number of the colonists reduced to forty, and that Captain Gabriel Archer had been admitted to the Council during his absence. Archer caused him to be arrested and indicted, under the Levitical law, for allowing the death of his two men; but in the evening of the same day, Jan. 8, 1607-8, Newport returned from England with additional settlers (a portion of the first supply), and at once released both Smith and Wingfield from custody. Within five or six days the fort and many of the houses at Jamestown were destroyed by an accidental fire. Newport, accompanied by Matthew Scrivener (newly arrived and admitted to the Council), with Smith as interpreter and thirty or forty others, now visited Powhatan at his abode of Werowocomico. This was at Timberneck Bay, on the north side of York River. On the east bank of the bay still stands a quaint stone chimney,[232] subsequently built for Powhatan by German workmen among the colonists. Hostages were exchanged; Namontack, an Indian who was taken to England by Newport, being received from Powhatan for Thomas Savage, a youth aged thirteen, who for many years afterwards rendered important service to the colonists as interpreter. With supplies of food obtained from Powhatan and Opecancanough, the chief of the Pamunkey tribe, the party returned to Jamestown.

The ship being loaded with iron ore, sassafras, cedar posts, and walnut boards, Newport, with Archer[233] and Wingfield as passengers, sailed on the 10th of April from Jamestown, and on the 20th of May, 1608, arrived in England. The diet of the colonists was soon reduced to meal and water, and through hunger and exposure death diminished them one half. While they were engaged in re-building Jamestown and in planting, to their great joy Captain Nelson, who had left England with Newport, but from whom he had been separated by storm and detained in the West Indies, arrived in the ship “Phœnix,” with provisions and seventy settlers, being the remainder of the first supply of one hundred and twenty. He departed for England on the 2d of June with a cargo of cedar-wood, carrying Martin of the Council. Smith, in an open boat, with fourteen others,—seven gentlemen (including Dr. Walter Russell of the last arrival), and seven soldiers,—accompanied the “Phœnix” down the river, and parted from her at Cape Henry, with the bold purpose of exploring Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, and establishing intercourse with the natives along their borders. To the islands lying off Cape Charles, Smith gave his own name. After a satisfactory cruise, having crossed the bay, visited its eastern shore, and explored the Potomac River some thirty miles, the party returned late in July to Jamestown for provisions. Smith again embarked on the 24th of July to complete his explorations, with a crew of twelve, similarly constituted as before, but with Anthony Bagnall as surgeon. At the head of Chesapeake Bay they were hospitably entertained by a tribe of Indians, supposed by Stith[234] to have been of the Iroquois, or Five Nations, and also by the Susquehannas, at a village on the Tockwogh (now Sassafras) River. The highest mountain to the northward observed by them was named Peregrine’s Mount, and Willoughby River was so called after the native town of Smith. The Indian tribes on the Patuxent, and the Moraughtacunds and the Wighcomoes on the Rappahannock, were visited. Richard Featherstone, a “gentleman” of the party, dying, was buried on the banks of the last-named river, which was explored to the falls, near where Fredericksburg now is. Here a skirmish took place with the Rappahannock tribe. The Pianketank, Elizabeth, and Nansemond rivers were in turn examined for a few miles. From the results of these discoveries Smith composed his Map of Virginia, a work so singularly exact that it has formed the basis of all like delineations since, and was adduced as authority as late as 1873 towards the settlement of the boundary dispute between the States of Virginia and Maryland. The drawing was sent to England by Newport before the close of the year, and in 1612 was published in the Oxford Tract. Returning to Jamestown, Sept. 7, 1608, Smith was elected President of the Council over Ratcliffe (who suffered from a wounded hand and was enfeebled by sickness), and now, for the first time, he had the “letters patent” of office placed in his hands.[235] Ever firm, courageous, and persevering, he at once instituted vigorous and salutary measures adapted to the wants and conducive to the discipline of the colonists. The church was repaired, the storehouse covered, and magazines erected. Soon after, Newport arrived for the third time from England, with the second supply of settlers, seventy in number. Among them were Captains Peter Wynne and Richard Waldo, Francis West (the brother of Lord Delaware), Raleigh Crashaw, Daniel Tucker, some German and Polish artisans for the manufacture of glass and other articles, Mrs. Thomas Forest, and her maid, Ann Burras. The last named of these—the first Englishwomen in the colony—became, before the close of the year, the wife of John Laydon. This was the first marriage celebrated in Virginia. Newport had left England under the silly pledge not to return without a lump of gold, or without tidings of the discovery of a passage to the North Sea, or without the rescue of one of the settlers of the lost company of Sir Walter Raleigh. The Company added the equally impossible condition that he should bring a freight in his vessel of equal value to the cost of the expedition, which was £2,000. In case of failure in these respects, the colonists were to be abandoned to their own resources. Much valuable time was consumed by Newport in an idle coronation of Powhatan (for whose household he had brought costly presents), and in futile efforts for the accomplishment of the visionary expectations of the Company. At last there was provided by those of the colonists who remained at their labors a part of a cargo of pitch, tar, glass, and iron ore, and Newport set sail, leaving at Jamestown about two hundred settlers. The iron ore which he carried was smelted in England, and seventeen tons of metal sold to the East India Company at £4 per ton. In the preservation of the colony until the next arrival, the genius and energy of Smith were strongly but successfully taxed,—for Captain Wynne dying, and Scrivener and Anthony Gosnold, with eight others, having been drowned, he alone of the Council remained. His measures were sagacious. Corn was planted, and blockhouses were built and garrisoned at Jamestown for defence, and an outpost was established at Hog Island, to give signal of the approach of shipping.

At the last place the hogs, which increased rapidly, were kept. But being subject to the treachery of the natives, the colonists were in continual danger of attack, and were too slothful to make due provision for their wants, so that the tenure of the settlement became like a brittle thread. The store of provisions having been spoiled by damp or eaten by vermin, their subsistence now depended precariously on fish, game, and roots. The prospects of the colony were so discouraging at the beginning of the year 1609, that, in the hope of improving them, the Company applied for a new charter with enlarged privileges. This was granted to them, on the 23d of May, under the corporate name of “The Treasurer and Company of Adventurers and Planters of the City of London for the first Colony in Virginia.” The new Association, which embraced representatives of every rank, trade, and profession, included twenty-one peers, and its list of names presents an imposing array of wealth and influence. By this charter Virginia was greatly enlarged, and made to comprise the coast-line and all islands within one hundred miles of it,—two hundred miles north and two hundred south of Point Comfort,—with all the territory within parallel lines thus distant and extending to the Pacific boundary; the Company was empowered to choose the Supreme Council in England, and, under the instructions and regulations of the last, the Governor was invested with absolute civil and military authority.

With the disastrous experience of the previous unstable system, a sterner discipline seems, under attending circumstances, to have been demanded to insure success. Thomas West (Lord Delaware), the descendant of a long line of noble ancestry, received the appointment of Governor and Captain-General of Virginia. The first expedition under the second charter, which was on a grander scale than any preceding it, and which consisted of nine vessels, sailed from Plymouth on the 1st of June, 1609.

Newport, the commander of the fleet, Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-General, and Sir George Somers, Admiral of Virginia, were severally authorized, whichever of them might first arrive at Jamestown, to supersede the existing administration there until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was to embark some months later; but not being able to settle the point of precedency among themselves, they embarked together in the same vessel, which carried also the wife and daughters of Gates. Among the five hundred colonists, were the returning Captains Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, divers other captains and gentlemen, and, by the suggestion of Hakluyt, a number of old soldiers[236] who had been trained in the Netherlands. On the 23d of July the fleet was caught in a hurricane; a small vessel was lost, others damaged, and the “Sea Venture,” which carried Gates, Somers, and Newport, with about one hundred and fifty settlers, was cast ashore on the Bermudas. Captain Samuel Argall (a relative of Sir Thomas Smith) arrived at Jamestown in July, with a shipload of wine and provisions, to trade on private account, contrary to the regulations of the Company. As the settlers were suffering for food, they seized his supplies. Many of them at this time had gone to live among the Indians, and eighty had formed a settlement twenty miles distant from the fort. Early in August the “Blessing,” Captain Archer, and three other vessels of the delayed fleet sailed up James River, and soon after the “Diamond,” Captain Ratcliffe, appeared, without her mainmast, and she was followed in a few days by the “Swallow,” in like condition.

The Council being all dead save Smith, he, obtaining the sympathy of the sailors, refused to surrender the government of the colony; and the newly arrived settlers elected Francis West, the brother of Lord Delaware, as temporary president. The term of Smith expiring soon after, George Percy—one of the original settlers, a brother of the Earl of Northumberland, and a brave and honorable man—was elected president, and West, Ratcliffe, and Martin were made councillors.

Smith, about Michaelmas (September 29), departed for England or, as all contemporary accounts other than his own state, was sent thither “to answer some misdemeanors.”[237] These were doubtless of a venial character; but the important services of Smith in the sustenance of the colony appear not to have been as highly esteemed by the Company as by Smith himself. He complains that his several petitions for reward were disregarded, and he never returned to Virginia. Modern investigation has discredited many of the so-long-accepted narratives in which he records his own achievements and judges so harshly the motives and conduct of all others of his companions; and the glamour of romance with which he invested his own exploits has been somewhat dissipated. But whatever may have been the fervor of his imagination as a historian, it was more than equalled by his fertility of resource in vital emergencies, and there is ample evidence that his services in the preservation of the infant colony were momentous. After his return to England but little is recorded of him until the year 1614, during which he made a successful voyage to New England, under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, which gained for him the title of Admiral of New England.[238] Whatever may have been the defects of Smith, the greatness of his deeds has impressed him enduringly on the pages of history as one of the most prominent figures of his period. At the time of his departure for England he left at Jamestown three ships, seven boats, a good stock of provisions, nearly five hundred settlers, twenty pieces of cannon, three hundred guns, with fishing-nets, working-tools, horses, cattle, swine, etc.

Jamestown was strongly fortified with palisades, and contained between fifty and sixty houses. The favorable prospects of the colony were soon threatened by the renewal of Indian hostilities. Provisions becoming scarce, West and Ratcliffe embarked in small vessels to procure corn. The latter, deceived by the treachery of Powhatan, was slain with thirty of his companions, two only escaping,—one of whom, Henry Spelman, a young gentleman well descended, was rescued by Pocahontas, and lived for many years among the Patowomekes. He acquired their language, and was afterwards highly serviceable to his countrymen as an interpreter. He was slain by the savages in 1622. No effort by tillage being made to replenish their provisions, the stock was soon consumed, and the horrors of famine were added to other calamities. The intense sufferings of the colonists were long remembered, and this period is referred to as “the starving time.” In six months their number was reduced to sixty, and such was the extremity of these that they must soon have perished but for speedy succor. The passengers of the wrecked “Sea Venture,” though mourned for as lost, had effected a safe landing at the Bermudas, where, favored by the tropical productions of the islands, they, under the direction of Gates and Somers, constructed for their deliverance two vessels from the materials of the wreck and cedar-wood, the largest of the vessels being of eighty tons burden. The Sabbath was duly observed by them under the faithful ministry of Mr. Bucke. Among the passengers was John Rolfe and wife,[239] to whom a male child was born on the island, who was christened Bermuda; a girl also born there was named Bermudas. Six of the company, including the wife of Sir Thomas Gates, died on the island. The company of one hundred and forty men and women embarked on the completed vessels—which were appropriately named the “Patience” and the “Deliverance”—on the 10th of May, 1610, and on the 23d they landed at Jamestown. Here the church bell was immediately rung, and such of the famished colonists as were physically able repaired to the sanctuary, where “a zealous and sorrowful prayer” was offered by Mr. Bucke. The new commission being read, Percy, the acting president, surrendered the former charter and his credentials of office. The fort was in a dismantled condition, and most of the habitations had been consumed for fire-wood. So forlorn was the condition of the settlement that Gates reluctantly resolved to abandon it and to return to England by way of Newfoundland, where he expected to receive succor from trading-vessels. Some of the colonists were with difficulty restrained from setting fire to the town, Gates, with a guard to prevent it, remaining on shore until all others had embarked. A farewell volley was fired; but the leave-taking of a spot associated with so much suffering was tearless.

In the mean time, the repeated ill tidings brought by returning ships to England, and the supposed loss of the “Sea Venture” had so dismayed the members of the Company in London that many of them withdrew their subscriptions. Lord Delaware—who is characterized in the “Declaration” of the Council, in 1610, as “one of approved courage, temper, and experience”—determined to go in person as Governor and Captain-General of Virginia (the first of such title and authority), and, disregarding the comforts of home and noble station, “did bare a grate part upon his owne charge.” By his example, constancy, and resolution, “that which was almost lifeless” was revived in the Company. On Feb. 21, 1609-10, William Crashaw, a preacher at the Temple (the father of the poet eulogized by Cowley), in view of the departure of Lord Delaware, delivered before the Council and Adventurers in London a stirring sermon, which was the first preached in England to any embarking for Virginia in a missionary cause.[240] Distinct and unequivocal testimony is given by the Company, in the “Declaration” already cited, as to the reputation of settlers for the colony, none being desired but those of blameless character. Five weeks later Lord Delaware sailed with three vessels and one hundred and fifty settlers, and arrived in Virginia providentially to intercept, off Mulberry Island, Gates and his disheartened companions as they were descending the river, who returned at once to Jamestown. The fleet, following, arrived there on Sunday, the 10th of June. The first act of Lord Delaware upon landing was to fall devoutly upon his knees and offer up a prayer, after which he repaired with the company to the church, to listen to a sermon by Mr. Bucke. Two days later a council was organized, consisting of Sir Thomas Gates, lieutenant-general, Sir Thomas Somers, admiral, Sir Ferdinando Wenman, master of ordnance (who soon died), Captain Newport, vice-admiral, Captain George Percy and William Strachey, secretary and recorder. Captain John Martin was made master of the steel and iron works. The restoration of the settlement was prosecuted with vigor, and the church, a building sixty feet in length by twenty-four in breadth, was repaired, and services were held regularly twice on Sunday, and again on Thursday. Two forts were also built on Southampton River, and called after the King’s sons, Henry and Charles, respectively.

The administration of Delaware, though ludicrously ostentatious for so insignificant a dominion, was yet highly wholesome, and under his judicious discipline the settlement was restored to order and contentment. On the 19th of June Sir George Somers, in his cedar pinnace, accompanied by Argall in another vessel, re-embarked to seek for provisions. The vessels separating, Argall on the 27th of August “came to anchor in nine fathoms, in a very great bay,” called by him Delaware,[241] and on the ninth of the month reached Cape Charles. Somers, soon after parting from Argall, reached the Bermudas, where, dying from the effects of the hardships he had undergone, his body was embalmed and conveyed to England by his nephew, Captain Matthew Somers. About Christmas, Captain Argall sailed in the “Discovery” up the Potomac for supplies of corn, and rescued the captive English boy Henry Spelman from Jopassus, the brother of Powhatan. In the month of February following, Argall, aided by a small land force under Captain Edward Brewster, attacked the chief of the Warraskoyacks for a breach of contract and burned two of his towns. Sir Thomas Gates, being despatched to England to report to the Company the condition of the colony, succeeded by strenuous appeals in inducing it to send a fresh supply of settlers and provisions. During his absence, the health of Lord Delaware failing, on the 28th of March, 1611, accompanied by Dr. Bohune and Captain Argall, he sailed for England by way of the Isle of Mevis, leaving Percy in authority. On the 17th of March Sir Thomas Dale, with the appointment of “high marshall,” had sailed with three vessels for the colony, with settlers (among whom was the Rev. Alexander Whitaker) and cattle. He reached Point Comfort May the 12th, and spent several days in provisioning and disciplining that station and the forts Henry and Charles on the Southampton River, and in planting corn.

Sir Thomas landed at Jamestown on Sunday the 19th, where, first repairing to the church, he listened to a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Poole, after which, his commission being read by Secretary Strachey, Percy surrendered the government to him. Under an extraordinary code of “Lawes, Divine, Morall, and Martiall,” compiled by William Strachey for Sir Thomas Smith, and based upon those observed in the wars in the Low Countries, Dale inaugurated vigorous measures for the government and advancement of the colony. The church was repaired, and store, powder, and block houses severally were built, while pales and posts were prepared for a new settlement. The site selected for the last was a peninsula in Varina Neck on James River, known as Farrar’s Island, which is formed by an extraordinary curve resembling that of a horseshoe, where the river, after a sweep of seven miles, returns to a point within a hundred and twenty yards from that of its deviation. The name of the bend, Dutch Gap,[242] by the events of the late civil war attained a historic notoriety. The building of the new town was delayed by insubordination among the colonists, which however, under the rigors of the martial code in force, was promptly quelled, eight of the ringleaders being executed. The pernicious system of a community of property was now to some extent remedied by Dale, in the allotment to each settler of three acres of land to be worked for his individual benefit. “Comon gardens for hemp and flaxe, and such other seedes,” were also laid out.[243]

In June, 1611, Sir Thomas Gates, accompanied by his wife (who died on the passage) and daughters and the Rev. Mr. Glover (who lived but a short time after his arrival in the colony), followed Dale with six ships, three hundred settlers, and one hundred cows, besides other cattle and an abundant supply of provisions. He arrived at Jamestown early in August, and thus increased the number of the colonists to seven hundred persons. Gates established himself at Hampton, deputed the command of Jamestown to Percy, and sent Dale, early in September, with three hundred and fifty men, to found the projected town of Henrico, at which, among the “three streets” of buildings erected, was a handsome church. The foundation of another, to be of brick, was laid.[244] In December, the Appomattox Indians having committed some depredations, Dale captured their town on the south side of the James, near the mouth of Appomattox River (and about five miles distant from Henrico), and upon its site established a third town, which he called Bermuda. Here the pious apostle Alexander Whitaker fixed his residence, serving as the minister both of Bermuda and Henrico.[245] Several plantations were laid out near Bermuda,—Upper and Lower Rochdale, West Shirley, and Digges’ Hundred. In conformity with the code of martial law, each hundred was subjected to the control of a captain. In December, also, Newport arrived at London from Jamestown, in the ship “Star,” with a cargo of “forty fine and large pines for masts,” and with the daughters of Sir Thomas Gates as passengers. Newport’s name does not again appear in connection with Virginia.[246] The reinforcements for the colony for some months were insignificant, the only ships sent over being the “John and Francis” and the “Sarah,” with few settlers and less provisions, and the “Treasurer” with fifty persons, under the bold and unscrupulous Captain Samuel Argall, who, sailing from England in July, 1612, arrived at Point Comfort, September 17.[247] This year was a marked one in the inauguration by John Rolfe of the systematic culture of tobacco,—a staple destined to exert a controlling influence in the future welfare and progress of the colony, and soon, by the paramount profit yielded by its culture, to subordinate all other interests, agricultural as well as manufacturing. This influence permeated the entire social fabric of the colony, directed its laws, was an element in all its political and religious disturbances, and became the direct instigation of its curse of African slavery. It may be added, however, as an indisputable fact, that the culture of tobacco constituted the basis of the present unrivalled prosperity of the United States, and that this staple is still one of the most prolific factors in the revenue of the General Government.

Early in the spring of 1613, the colonists needing food, Argall determined on a bold stroke, and with the bribe of a copper kettle induced Jopassus, the king of Potomac, in whose domain Pocahontas was sojourning, to betray her into his hands. Having sent a messenger to Powhatan, demanding as a ransom the restoration of all English captives held by him, and of all arms and tools stolen from the settlement, Argall returned with his captive to Jamestown. There was a protracted struggle in the breast of the savage chieftain between avarice and parental affection.

Some months later Dale, with a command of one hundred and fifty men, sailed up York River to Werowocomico, the seat of Powhatan, carrying Pocahontas with him. Meeting with defiance, he landed and destroyed the settlement, and then returned to Jamestown. The ship “Elizabeth” arriving in March with thirteen settlers, Sir Thomas Gates departed in her for England finally, leaving the government to Dale. An event most auspicious for the future welfare of the colony soon occurred. A mutual attachment springing up between John Rolfe and Pocahontas, with the consent of Sir Thomas Dale they were united in marriage by the Rev. Alexander Whitaker, about the 5th of April, 1614. This was a politic example, which Dale himself unsuccessfully attempted to follow, although he had then a wife in England. Sending Ralph Hamor (who had been secretary of the Council under Lord Delaware) to Powhatan, with a request for the younger sister of Pocahontas, a girl scarce twelve years of age, his overtures were disdainfully rejected. The results of the union of Rolfe and Pocahontas were the good-will of Powhatan during the remainder of his life, and a treaty of peace with the formidable Chickahominy tribe, by which the natives agreed ever to be called Englishmen, and to be true subjects to the British crown. With the immunity of peace, and under the wholesome discipline of Dale, industry was stimulated, property accumulated, and famine was no longer feared. Prosperity being now seemingly assured to the colony, the martial spirit of Dale sought other modes of manifesting itself. As early as 1605 the French had sent settlers to Acadia, and planted a colony at Port Royal, which had now attained some prominence.

SEAL OF THE VIRGINIA COMPANY.

This is a fac-simile of the engraving used in the publications of the Company. Cf. Calendar of Virginia State Papers, i. p. xxxix; Neill’s Virginia Company, p. 156. An example of this seal with the same dimensions and devices, but with the differing legend on the reverse of “Colonia Virginæ—Consilio Prima,” is in the collections of the Virginia Historical Society. It is of red wax between the leaves of a foolscap sheet of paper, and is affixed to a patent for land issued by Sir John Harvey, governor, dated March 4, 1638.

This being deemed by Dale an invasion of the territory of Virginia, which by charter extended to the forty-fifth degree of latitude, he sent Argall to dislodge the settlers, which was summarily accomplished.[248] Stimulated to new conquests, Argall on his return visited the Dutch settlement near the site of Albany, on the Hudson, and compelled its governor to capitulate.[249] It was however soon after reclaimed by the Dutch. Argall now sailed for England, where he and Gates both arrived in June, 1614. In March, 1612, a third charter had been granted to the Virginia Company, extending the boundaries of the colony so as to include all islands lying within three hundred leagues of the continent,—one object of which was to embrace the Bermuda or Summer Islands, of the fertility of which extravagant accounts had been given; but these last were soon after sold by the Company to one hundred and twenty of its members, who became a distinct corporation.[250] The privilege of holding lotteries for the benefit of the Company was also secured. Gates reporting that the colony in Virginia would perish unless better provided, the Company held for its relief a grand lottery, by which the sum of £29,000 was secured. The year 1615 is remarkable in the history of Virginia for the first establishment of a fixed property in the soil, in the granting by the Company of fifty acres to every freeman in absolute right.

Good order being established, and the colony prosperous, in April, 1616, Sir Thomas Dale, leaving the government to Captain George Yeardley as his deputy, accompanied by Rolfe, Pocahontas, and several Indians of both sexes, sailed for England, where he arrived on the 12th of June. The settlements in Virginia at this time were Henrico, the seat of the college for the education of the natives (of whom children of both sexes were already being taught), and of which the Rev. William Wickham was the minister,—its limits being Bermuda, Nether Hundred, or Presquile, the residence of the Deputy-Governor Yeardley and of the Rev. Alexander Whitaker; West and Shirley Hundred, Captain Isaac Madison, commander; Jamestown, Captain Francis West, Mr. Mease, minister; Kiquotan; and Dale’s Gift, on the sea-coast near Cape Charles, Lieutenant Cradock, commander. The total population of the colony was three hundred and fifty-one.

Pocahontas was the object of much kindly attention in London, where she was presented at court by Lady Delaware, attended by Lord Delaware, her husband, and other persons of quality. In March, 1617, John Rolfe prepared to return to Virginia with Pocahontas and their infant child Thomas,[251] but on the eve of embarkation Pocahontas was stricken with the small-pox, of which she died on the 21st instant, aged twenty-two years, and was buried at Gravesend, in the county of Kent.[252] Tobacco proving the most salable commodity of the colony, in 1616 Yeardley directed general attention to its culture, the profit of which speedily became so alluring that all other occupations were forsaken for it.

Through the influence of the court faction of the Company, in 1617, Captain Samuel Argall was elected Deputy-Governor of Virginia. He arrived in the colony on the 15th of May, with one hundred settlers, accompanied by Ralph Hamor as Vice-Admiral, and John Rolfe as “Secretary and Recorder-General.” They found “the market-place, streets, and all other spare places” in Jamestown planted with tobacco.[253] In a few days thereafter Captain Martin also arrived in a pinnace, after a passage of five weeks. The whole number of the colonists was now about four hundred. To reinforce the languishing colony, the Company, in April, 1618, sent thither Lord Delaware, the Governor-General, in the ship “Neptune,” with two hundred men, and supplies. After his departure the ship “George” arrived from Virginia with such complaints of the malfeasance of Argall, who under martial law had loaded the colonists with oppressive exactions and robbed them of their property, that letters were despatched to Lord Delaware to seize upon all goods and property in Argall’s possession. Lord Delaware dying on the passage, these letters fell into the hands of Argall, who, to make the most of his remaining time, grew yet more tyrannical. For seizing one of the servants of the estate of Lord Delaware, on the complaint of Edward Brewster, the son of its manager, Argall was arrested, and on the 15th of October, 1618, tried and sentenced to death; but the penalty was commuted to perpetual banishment. He secretly stole away from the colony April the 9th, 1619, leaving Captain Nathaniel Powell in authority. Upon the intelligence of the death of Lord Delaware, Captain George Yeardley, who was knighted on the occasion, was appointed to succeed him. Sir Edwin Sandys also displaced Sir Thomas Smith as treasurer of the Company.

LORD DELAWARE.

His portrait is preserved at Bourne, the seat of his descendant the present Earl de la Warr, in Cambridgeshire, England. There is a copy of it in the Library of the State of Virginia at Richmond, which was made by William L. Sheppard, an artist of that city in July, 1877. He is represented as a stout, ruddy-visaged Saxon, with a most benevolent expression of countenance. King James granted a pension to the widow of Lord Delaware, who was alive in 1644, and is called Dame Cecily Dowager de la Warre in the sixth Report of the Historical Commission to Parliament, in a paper in which the continuance of her pension is asked for.

Yeardley arrived in the colony April the 19th with a new authority under the charter, by which the authority of the governor was limited by a council and an annual general assembly, to be composed of the Governor and Council, and two burgesses from each plantation, to be freely elected by the inhabitants thereof. John Rolfe, who was succeeded in the office of Secretary of the Colony by John Pory, a graduate of Cambridge, a great traveller and a writer, was, with Captain Francis West, Captain Nathaniel Powell, William Wickham, and Samuel Macock, added to the Council. On Friday, July 30, 1619, in accordance with the summons of Governor Yeardley in June, the first representative legislative assembly ever held in America was convened in the chancel of the church at James City or Jamestown, and was composed of twenty-two burgesses from the eleven several towns, plantations, and hundreds, styled boroughs. The proceedings were opened with prayer by the Rev. Mr. Bucke, and each burgess took the oath of supremacy. John Pory was elected speaker, and sat in front of Governor Yeardley, and next was John Twine, the clerk, and at the bar stood Thomas Pierse, sergeant-at-arms. The delegates from Captain John Martin’s plantation were excluded, because by his patent, granted according to the unequal privilege of the manors of England, he was released from obeying any order of the colony except in time of war and the Company was prayed that the clause in the charter guaranteeing equal immunities and liberties might not be violated, so as to “divert out of the true course the free and public current of justice.” The education and religious instruction of the children of the natives was enjoined upon each settlement. Among the enactments, tobacco was authorized as a currency, and the treasurer of the colony (Abraham Percy) was directed to receive it at the valuation of three shillings per pound for the best, and eighteen-pence for the second quality. The government of ministers was prescribed according to the Church of England, and a tax of tobacco laid for their support. It was also enacted that “all persons whatsoever upon the Sabbath days shall frequent divine service and sermons, both forenoon and afternoon.” To compensate the officers of the Assembly, a tax of a pound of tobacco was laid upon every male above sixteen years of age.

The introduction of negro slavery into the colony is thus noted by John Rolfe: “About the last of August [1619] came in a Dutch man of warre, that sold us twenty Negars.”[254] During this year there were sent to the colony more than twelve hundred settlers, and one hundred “disorderly persons” or convicts, by order of the King, to be employed as servants. Boys and girls picked up in the streets of London were also sent, and were bound as apprentices[255] to the planters until the age of majority. In June twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, the crop of the preceding year, was shipped to England. In November the London Company adopted a coat-of-arms, and ordered a seal to be engraved.[256] The Company appears ever to have held in due regard the importance of education as intimately connected with the preservation and dissemination of Christianity in the colony. Under an order from the King, nearly £1,500 were collected by the bishops of the realm to build the college at Henrico, and fifteen thousand acres of land were appropriated for its support.[257] To cultivate it during the years 1619 and 1620 one hundred laborers were sent over under the charge of Mr. George Thorpe (a kinsman of Sir Thomas Dale) and Captain Thomas Newce as agents. At a meeting of the Company held June 28, 1620, the Earl of Southampton was elected to succeed Sir Edwin Sandys as treasurer.

The population of the colony in July was estimated at four thousand, and during the year forty thousand pounds of tobacco were shipped to England. The freedom of trade which the Company had enjoyed for a brief interval with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco, was in October, 1621, prohibited in Council, and thenceforward England claimed a monopoly of the trade of her plantations. The planters at length were absolved from service to the Company, and enjoyed the blessings of property in the soil and of domestic felicity. In the autumn of 1621 the practice was begun by the Company of shipping to the colony young women of respectability as wives for the colonists, who were chargeable with the cost of transportation. This charge was at first one hundred and twenty, afterwards one hundred and fifty, pounds of tobacco. A windmill, the first in America, was about this time erected by Sir George Yeardley, and iron-works (the primal inauguration of this essential manufacture in this country) were established at Falling Creek on James River, under the management of Mr. John Berkeley.[258]

Upon the request of Sir George Yeardley to be relieved of the cares of office, Sir Francis Wyatt was appointed to succeed him upon the expiration of his term of government on the 18th of November, 1621. Sir Francis, with a fleet of nine sail, arrived in October, accompanied by his brother, the Rev. Haut Wyatt, Dr John Pott as physician, William Claiborne (destined to later prominence in the colony) as surveyor of the Company’s lands, and George Sandys[259] as treasurer, who during his stay translated the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the First Book of Virgil’s Æneid. This first Anglo-American poetical production was published in 1626. Sir Francis Wyatt brought with him a new constitution for the colony, granted July 24, by which all former immunities and franchises were confirmed, trial by jury was secured, and the Assembly was to meet annually upon the call of the Governor, who was vested with the right of veto. No act of this body was to be valid unless ratified by the Company; but, on the other hand, no order of the Company was to be obligatory without the concurrence of the Assembly. This famous ordinance furnished the model of every subsequent provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies.[260] In November Daniel Gookin arrived from Ireland with fifty settlers under his control and thirty-six passengers, and planted himself in Elizabeth City County, at Mary’s Mount, just above Newport News.[261] There arrived during the year twenty-one vessels, bringing over thirteen hundred men, women, and children. The aggregate number of settlers arriving during the years 1619, 1620, and 1621 was thirty-five hundred and seventy.

Deluded by long peace, on the 22d of March, 1622, the unsuspecting colonists fell easy victims to a frightful Indian massacre of men, women, and children, to the number of three hundred and forty-seven. Among the slain were Mr. George Thorpe, the agent for the college at Henrico, and Mr. John Berkeley, master of the iron-works at Falling Creek.[262] Their death and the destruction of their charges terminated the prosecution of these material measures for the good of the colony. The future policy with the savages was aggressive until the peace of 1632. At an Assembly held in March, 1623, monthly courts to be appointed by the Governor were authorized. The Virginia Company, in their opposition to the King in the nomination of their officers, had already incurred his ill-will, which was increased by the freedom with which they discussed public measures so as to invoke his denunciation of them as “but a seminary to a seditious parliament.” Violent factions divided them, and the massacre came at a juncture to fan discontent. Commissioners were sent to Virginia by the King to gather materials for the ruin of the Company. The result was the annulling of its charter by the King’s Bench on the 16th of June, 1624. Sir Francis Wyatt was continued as governor by commission from King James, dated Aug. 26, 1624, and again in May, 1625, by the young monarch, Charles I., who appointed as councillors for the colony, during his pleasure, Francis West, Sir George Yeardley, George Sandys, Roger Smith, Ralph Hamor, John Martin, John Harvey, Samuel Matthews, Abraham Percy, Isaac Madison, and William Claiborne. He omitted all mention of an assembly, and there is no preserved record of the meeting of this body again until 1629. The administration of Wyatt was wise and pacific. The death of his father, Sir George Wyatt, calling him to Ireland, he was succeeded, in May, 1626, by Sir George Yeardley, who dying Nov. 14, 1627, the Council elected as his successor, on the following day, Francis West, a younger brother of Lord Delaware. West, departing for England on the 5th of March, 1628, was succeeded by Dr. John Pott. The export of tobacco in 1628 was five hundred thousand pounds. Charles, desiring a monopoly of the trade, directed an assembly to be called to grant it. That body, replying the 26th of March, demanded a higher price and more favorable terms than his Majesty was disposed to yield. The colony rapidly increased in strength and prosperity, the population in 1629 being five thousand. Pott was superseded as governor in March, 1630, by Sir John Harvey, who had been one of the commissioners sent in 1623 to procure evidence to be used against the Virginia Company. Between him and the colonists there was but little good-will, and his arbitrary rule soon rendered him odious.

In July, by a strange mutation of fortune, Pott, the late governor, was tried for cattle-stealing, and convicted. This was the first trial by jury in the colony. It was in 1630 that George Calvert, with his followers, arrived in the colonies; but the details of his experience here and of the disputes about jurisdiction arising out of the grant of the present territory of Maryland, made to him and confirmed to his son in 1632, are given in another chapter.[263] It was under successive grants from the governors in 1627, 1628, and 1629, and from Charles I. in 1631, that William Claiborne had established his trading-posts in the disputed territory, from which he was driven with bloodshed, and by the final decree of the King in 1639 despoiled of £6,000 of property. Harvey—actuated, it has been charged, by motives of private interest—sided with Maryland in the disputes, and rendered himself so obnoxious that an assembly was called for the 7th of May, 1635, to hear complaints against him. Before it met, however, he consented to go to England to answer the charges, and was “thrust out of his government” by the Council on the 28th of April, and Captain John West, a brother of Lord Delaware, was authorized to act as his successor until the King’s pleasure might be known. In 1634 the colony was divided into eight shires,[264] subject, as in England, to the government of a lieutenant.[265] The election of sheriffs, sergeants, and bailiffs was similarly provided for. The King, intolerant of opposition, reinstated the hated Harvey as governor, by commission dated April 2, 1636.[266] During his rule of three years thereafter, no assembly was held. Charles gradually relaxed his policy, and in November, 1639, displaced Harvey with Sir Francis Wyatt, who in turn was succeeded by Sir William Berkeley as governor in February, 1642. During the year three Congregational ministers came from Boston to Virginia to disseminate their doctrines.

Their stay, however, was but short; for by an enactment of the Assembly all ministers other than those of the Church of England were compelled to leave the colony. It will be shown that their success was limited. On the 18th of April, 1644, a second Indian massacre occurred. The number of victims has been differently stated as three and five hundred. During a visit by Berkeley to England, from June, 1644, to June, 1645, his place was filled by Richard Kemp. In 1642 the ship of Richard Ingle, from London, had been seized by Governor Brent, of Maryland, acting under a commission from Charles I., and an oath against Parliament tendered the crew. Ingle escaped, and, securing a commission from Parliament to cruise in the waters of the Chesapeake against Malignants, as the friends of the King were called, reappeared in February, 1645, in the ship “Reformation,” near St. Inigo Creek, where there was a popular uprising, and with the aid of the insurgents and forces from Virginia expelled Leonard Calvert and installed Colonel Edward Hill as governor. Calvert regained authority in August, 1646. The colony of Virginia continued to prosper. In 1648 the population consisted of fifteen thousand whites and three hundred negro slaves. Domestic animals were abundant; corn, wheat, rice, hemp, flax, and many vegetables were cultivated; there were fifteen varieties of fruit, and excellent wine was made. The average export of tobacco for several years had been 1,500,000 pounds. Besides the “old field schools,” there was a free school endowed by Benjamin Symmes with two hundred acres of land, a good house, forty milch cows, and other appurtenances.

The Dissenters, who had increased in number to one hundred and eighteen, now encountered the rigors of colonial authority in imprisonment and banishment, and all opposition to the Established Church was decisively quelled.[267]

With the beheading of Charles I. on the 30th of January, 1649, the Commonwealth of England was inaugurated; but Virginia still continued its allegiance to his son, the exiled prince, and offered an asylum to his fugitive adherents. Three hundred and thirty of these, including Colonel Henry Norwood and Majors Francis Morrison and Richard Fox, arrived near the close of 1649 in the “Virginia Merchant.”

Norwood was sent the following year by Berkeley to Holland to invite the fugitive King to Virginia as its ruler, and returned from Breda with a new commission for Berkeley as governor, dated June 3, and another for himself as treasurer of the colony, in approbation of the loyalty manifested. Charles II. was crowned by the Scotch at Scone in 1651, and, invading England with his followers, was utterly overthrown and defeated at Worcester, September 3. In the same month the Council of State issued instructions to Captain Robert Dennis, Richard Bennet, Thomas Steg,[268] and William Claiborne, as commissioners for the reduction of Virginia to the authority of the Commonwealth. Captain Dennis arrived at Jamestown in March, 1652, and the capitulation of the colony was ratified on the 12th instant upon liberal terms, which confirmed the existing privileges of the colonists and granted indemnity for all offences against Parliament. The commissioners Bennet and Claiborne soon after effected the reduction of Maryland, but with singular moderation allowed its Governor and Council to retain their offices upon the simple condition of issuing all writs in the name of the Commonwealth. A provisional government was organized in Virginia, on the 30th of April, by the election by the House of Burgesses of Richard Bennet as governor and William Claiborne as secretary of state, and a council of twelve, whose powers were to be defined by the Grand Assembly, of which they were ex-officio members.

A remarkable instance of individual enterprise was given in the early part of 1654 by Francis Yeardley,[269] who effected discoveries in North Carolina, and at the cost of £300 purchased from the natives “three great rivers and all such others as they should like southerly,” and took possession of the country in the name of the Commonwealth.[270] In March, 1655, Richard Bennet was appointed the agent of the colony at London, and was succeeded as governor by Edward Digges. In 1656 Colonel Edward Hill the elder, in endeavoring with one hundred men to dislodge seven hundred Ricahecrian Indians who had seated themselves at the Falls of James River, was utterly routed. Bloody Run, near Richmond, significantly derives its name from this encounter. On the 13th of March, 1657, Edward Digges was sent to London as the agent of the colony, and was succeeded as governor by Samuel Matthews. The government of the colony under the Commonwealth was beneficent, and the people were prosperous.

Upon the reception of the intelligence of the death of Oliver and of the accession of Richard Cromwell as Protector, obedience was acknowledged by the Assembly on the 9th of March, 1658. Richard Cromwell resigned on the 22d of April, 1659, and Matthews had died in January previously. England was for a time without a monarch, and Virginia without a governor. The Virginia Assembly, convening on the 23d of March, 1660, elected Sir William Berkeley as governor, and declared that all writs should be issued in the name of the Grand Assembly. On the 8th of May Charles II. was proclaimed as King in England, and on the 31st of July following he transmitted a new commission to his faithful adherent, Sir William Berkeley. In March, 1661, 44,000 pounds of tobacco were appropriated by the Assembly to defray the cost of an address to the King, praying him to pardon the inhabitants of Virginia for having yielded during the Commonwealth to a force they could not resist. And in contrition for their tacit submission to the “execrable power that so bloodily massacred the late King Charles the First of blessed and glorious memory,” it was enacted that “the 30th of January, the day the said King was beheaded, be annually solemnized with fasting and prayer, that our sorrows may expiate our crime, and our tears wash away our guilt.”[271] A little later, the 29th of May, the date of the restoration of Charles II., was decreed to be celebrated annually as a “holy day.”[272]

Berkeley being sent on the 30th of April, 1661, by the colony to England to protest against the enforcement of the Navigation Act, Colonel Francis Morrison was elected in his stead. Berkeley returned in the fall of 1662 with advantageous patents for himself, but without relief for the colony. Colonel William Claiborne, secretary of state, was displaced by Thomas Ludwell, commissioned by the King. Colonel Francis Morrison and Henry Randolph, clerk of the Assembly, were appointed to revise the laws, and it was ordered that all acts which “might keep in memory our forced deviation from his Majesty’s obedience” should be “expunged.” A satisfactory account of the condition of the colony in 1670 is afforded in a report made by Governor Berkeley to the Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations. The executive consisted of the Governor and sixteen councillors commissioned by the King, who determined all causes above £15; causes of less amount were tried by the county courts, of which there were twenty. The Assembly, composed of two burgesses from each county, met annually; it levied the taxes, and appeals lay to it. The legislative and executive powers rested in the Governor, Council, Assembly, and subordinate officers. The Acts of the Assembly were sent by the secretary of the colony to the Lord Chancellor. All freemen were bound to muster monthly in their own counties. The force of the colony numbered upwards of eight thousand horsemen. There were five forts, mounted with thirty cannon.

The whole population was forty thousand, of which two thousand were negro slaves, and six thousand white servants. Eighty vessels arrived yearly from England and Ireland for tobacco; a few small coasters came from New England. The annual exportation of tobacco was 15,000 hogsheads (about 12,000,000 pounds), upon which a duty of two shillings a hogshead was levied. Out of this revenue the Governor received as salary £1,200. The King had no revenue from the colony except the quit-rents.[273] There were forty-eight parishes, the ministers of which were well paid. Under the monopoly of the Navigation Act the price of tobacco was greatly depressed, the cost of imported goods enhanced, and the trade of the colony almost extinguished; yet the profligate King oppressed the colonists still further, and by a grant of the whole territory of Virginia to Lords Arlington and Culpeper they found themselves deprived of the very titles to the lands they owned. The privilege of franchise was even virtually withheld, for there had been no election of burgesses since the Restoration in 1660, the same legislature having continued to hold its sessions by prorogation. The colonists grew so impatient under their accumulated grievances that a revolt was near bursting forth in 1674. It was quieted for a time by some pacific concessions; but the fires only slumbered, and an immediate grievance and a popular leader were alone required to produce revolutionary measures. The severity of the policy against the Indians incensed them to hostility, and the lives of the colonists were in constant jeopardy. They petitioned the Governor for protection, and on the meeting of the Assembly in March, 1676, war was declared against the Indians, and a force of five hundred men raised and put under the command of Sir Henry Chicheley to subdue them; but when he was about to march he was suddenly and without apparent cause ordered by Berkeley to disband his forces. The Indians continued their murders until sixty lives had been sacrificed. The alarmed colonists, having in vain petitioned the Governor for protection, rose tumultuously in self-defence, including quite all the civil and military officers of the colony, and chose Nathaniel Bacon, Jr., as their leader. Bacon, who was of the distinguished English family of that name, had been but a short time in the colony; but he was a member of the Council, brave, rich, eloquent, and popular. He had an immediate stimulant, too, in the murder at his plantation, near the site of Richmond, of his overseer and a favorite servant.[274] Bacon, fruitlessly applying for a commission, marched at the head of five hundred men against the savages; and in the mean time Berkeley proclaimed them as traitors and ineffectually pursued them with an armed force. Bacon replied in a declaration denouncing the Governor as a tyrant and traitor to his King and the country. During Berkeley’s absence the planters in the lower counties rose, and, the revolt becoming general, he was forced to return, when he endeavored to quiet the storm. Writs for a new Assembly were issued, to which Bacon was elected. He, having punished the savages, while on his way to the Assembly was arrested in James River by an armed vessel, but was soon released on parole. When the Assembly met on the 5th of June, he read at the bar a written confession and apology for his conduct, and was thereupon pardoned and readmitted to his seat in the Council. He was also promised a commission to proceed against the Indians; but, being secretly informed of a plot by the Governor against his life, he fled, returning however to Jamestown in a few days with a large force, when, appealing to the Assembly, they declared him their general, vindicated his course, and sent a letter to England approving it. They also passed salutary laws of reform. Berkeley resisted, dissolved them, and in turn addressed the King. Bacon, all-powerful, having extorted a commission from the Governor, marched against the Indians. Berkeley once more proclaimed him as a traitor. Bacon, on hearing it, in the midst of a successful campaign returned; and Berkeley, deserted by his troops, fled to Accomac. Bacon, now supreme, called together, by an invitation signed by himself and four of the Council, a convention of the principal gentlemen of the colony, at the Middle Plantation, to consult for defence against the savages and protection against the tyranny of Berkeley. He also issued a reply to the proclamation of Berkeley, in which he vindicates himself in lofty strains.[275] He now again marched against the Indians; but in his absence a fleet which he had sent to capture Berkeley was betrayed, and the Governor returned to Jamestown at the head of the forces sent to capture him. Bacon now returned, and Berkeley, deserted by his men, fleeing again to Accomac, Bacon triumphantly entered Jamestown and burned the State House. He died shortly afterwards from disease contracted by exposure, and his followers, left without a leader, dispersed, and Berkeley was finally dominant. On the 29th of February, 1677, a fleet with a regiment of soldiers, commanded by Colonels Herbert Jeffreys and Francis Morrison, arrived in the colony to quell the rebellion. Jeffreys, Morrison, and Berkeley sat as a commission to try the insurgents. They were vindictively punished: the jails were filled, estates confiscated, and twenty-three persons executed. At length the Assembly, in an address to the Governor, deprecated any further sanguinary punishments, and he was prevailed upon, reluctantly, to desist. All the acts of the Assembly of June, 1676, called Bacon’s Laws, were repealed, though many of them were afterwards re-enacted. Berkeley, being recalled by the King, sailed for England on the 27th of April, 1677, and was succeeded by Sir Herbert Jeffreys as governor. Jeffreys effected a treaty with the Indians, but dying in December, 1678, was succeeded by Sir Henry Chicheley, who in turn gave place, on the 10th of May, 1680, to Lord Culpeper, who had been appointed in July, 1675, governor of Virginia for life. Virginia was now tranquil. The resources of the country continued to be developed. The production and export of tobacco—the chief staple—steadily increased, and with it the prosperity of the colony. The ease with which wealth was acquired fostered the habits of personal indulgence and ostentatious expenditure into which the Virginia planter was led by hereditary characteristics.

Undue stress has been laid by many historians upon the transportation of “convicts” to the colony. Such formed but a small proportion of the population, and it is believed that the offence of a majority of them was of a political nature. Be it as it may, all dangerous or debasing effect of their presence was effectually guarded against by rigorous enactments. The vile among them met the fate of the vicious, while the simply unfortunate who were industrious throve and became good citizens. It is clearly indicated that the aristocratic element of the colony preponderated.

The under stratum of society, formed by the “survival of the fittest” of the “indentured servant” and the “convict” classes, as they improved in worldly circumstances, rose to the surface and took their places socially and politically among the more favored class. The Virginia planter was essentially a transplanted Englishman in tastes and convictions, and emulated the social amenities and the culture of the mother country.[276] Thus in time was formed a society distinguished for its refinement, executive ability, and a generous hospitality, for which the Ancient Dominion is proverbial.

[CRITICAL ESSAY ON THE SOURCES OF INFORMATION.]

THERE is abundant evidence, as instanced by Mr. Deane in a paper in the Boston Daily Advertiser, July 31, 1877, that the name of Virginia commemorates Elizabeth, the virgin queen of England. Mr. Deane’s paper was in answer to a fanciful belief, expressed by Mr. C. W. Tuttle in Notes and Queries, 1877, that the Indian name Wingina, mentioned by Hakluyt, may have suggested the appellation.[277] The early patents are given in Purchas (abstract of the first), iv. 1683-84; Stith; Hazard’s Historical Collections, i. 50, 58, 72; Popham Memorial (the first), App. A; and Poor’s Gorges, App.

See a paper by L. W. Tazewell, on the “Limits of Virginia under the Charters,” in Maxwell’s Virginia Historical Register, i. 12. These bounds were relied on for Virginia’s claims at a later day to the Northwest Territory. Cf. H. B. Adams’s Maryland’s Influence in Founding a National Commonwealth, or Maryland Historical Society Publication Fund, no. 11. See also Lucas’s Charters of the Old English Colonies, London, 1850. Ridpath’s United States, p. 86, gives a convenient map of the grants by the English crown from 1606 to 1732. Mr. Deane has discussed the matter of forms used in issuing letters patent in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. xi. 166.

The earliest printed account of the settlement at Jamestown, covering the interval April 26, 1607-June 2, 1608, is entitled: A True Relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath hapned in Virginia since the first planting of that Collony which is now resident in the South part thereof, till the last returne from thence. Written by Captaine Smith, Coronell of the said Collony, to a worshipfull friend of his in England. Small quarto, black letter, London, 1608.[278]

The second contemporary account appears in Purchas His Pilgrimes, iv. 1685-1690, published in 1625, and is entitled, “Obseruations gathered out of a Discourse of the Plantations of the Southerne Colonie in Virginia by the English, 1606, written by that Honorable Gentleman Master George Percy.”[279] The narrative gives in minute detail the incidents of the first voyage and of the movements of the colonists after their arrival at Cape Henry until their landing, on the 14th of May, at Jamestown. It is to be regretted that a meagre abridgment only of so valuable a narrative should have been preserved by Purchas, who assigns as a reason for the omissions he made in it, that “the rest is more fully set down in Cap. Smith’s Relations.”

The third account of the period, “Newport’s Discoveries in Virginia,” was published for the first time in 1860 in Archæologia Americana, iv. 40-65. It consists of three papers, the most extended of which is entitled: “A Relatyon of the Discovery of our river from James Forte into the Maine; made by Captain Christopher Newport, and sincerely written and observed by a Gentleman of the Colony.” This “Relatyon” is principally confined to an account of the voyage from Jamestown up the river to the “Falls,” at which Richmond is now situated, and back again to Jamestown, beginning May 21 and ending June 21, the day before Newport sailed for England. The second paper, of four pages, is entitled: “The Description of the new-discovered river and country of Virginia, with the liklyhood of ensuing riches, by England’s ayd and industry.” The remaining paper, of only a little more than two pages, is: “A brief description of the People.” These papers were printed from copies made under the direction of the Hon. George Bancroft, LL.D., from the originals in the English State Paper Office, and were edited by the Rev. Edward Everett Hale.[280]

The next account to be noted, “A Discourse of Virginia,” by Edward Maria Wingfield, the first President of the colony, was also printed for the first time in Archæologia Americana, iv. 67-163, from a copy of the original manuscript in the Lambeth Library, edited by Charles Deane, LL.D., who also printed it separately. The narrative begins with the sailing of Newport for England, June 22, 1607, and ends May 21, 1608, on the author’s arrival in England. The final six pages are devoted by Wingfield to a defence of himself from charges of unfaithfulness in duty, on which he had been deposed from the Presidency and excluded from the Council. The narrative was cited for the first time by Purchas in the margin of the second edition of his Pilgrimage, 1614, pp. 757-768. He also refers to what is probably another writing, “M. Wingfield’s notes,” in the margin of p. 1706, of vol. iv. of his Pilgrimes. Mr. Deane reasonably conjectures that the narrative of Wingfield as originally written was more comprehensive, and that a portion of it has been lost.[281] Chapter I. of Neill’s English Colonization in America is devoted to Wingfield.

Another narrative of the period:—

A Relation of Virginia, written by Henry Spelman, “the third son of the Antiquary,” who came to the colony in 1609, was privately printed in 1872 at London for James Frothingham Hunnewell, Esq., of Charlestown, Mass., from the original manuscript.[282] Spelman, who was a boy when he first came to Virginia, lived for some time with the Indians, became afterwards an interpreter for the Colony, and was killed by the savages in 1622 or 1623.

In 1609 there were four tracts printed in London, illustrative of the progress of the new colony:—

1. Saules Prohibition staid, a reproof to those that traduce Virginia.

2. William Symondes’ Sermon before the London Company, April 25, 1609.[283]

3. Nova Britannia: offeringe most excellent Fruites by Planting in Virginia.[284]

4. A Good Speed to Virginia. The dedicator is R. G., who “neither in person nor purse” is able to be a “partaker in the business.”[285]

In 1610, appeared the following:—

1. W. Crashaw’s Sermon before Lord Delaware on his leaving for Virginia, Feb. 21, 1609.

2. A true and sincere declaration of the purpose and ends of the plantation begun in Virginia.[286]

3. A true declaration of the estate of the Colonie in Virginia.[287]

4. The mishaps of the first voyage and the wreck at Bermuda were celebrated in a little poem by R. Rich, one of the Company, called Newes from Virginia, which was printed in London in 1610.[288]

William Strachey was not an actual observer of events in the colony earlier than May 23, 1610, when he first reached Jamestown. The incidents of his letter, July 15, 1610, giving an account of the wreck at Bermuda and subsequent events (Purchas, iv. 1734), must, so far as antecedent Virginia events go, have been derived from others.[289]

In 1612 Strachey edited a collection of Lawes Divine of the colony.[290]

There are two MS. copies of his Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia; expressing the Cosmographie and Comodities of the Country, together with the Manners and Customes of the People,—one preserved in the British Museum among the Sloane Collection, and the other is among the Ashmolean MSS. at Oxford. They vary in no important respect. The former was the copy used by R. H. Major in editing it for the Hakluyt Society in 1849. This copy was dedicated to Sir Francis Bacon.

In 1611 Lord Delaware’s little Relation appeared in London.[291] In 1612 the Virginia Company, to thwart the evil intentions of the enemies of the colony, printed by authority a second part of Nova Britannia, called The New Life of Virginia. Its authorship is assigned to Robert Johnson.[292]

In 1612 the little quarto volume commonly referred to as the Oxford Tract was printed, with the following title: A Map of Virginia. With a Description of the Country, the Commodities, People, Government, and Religion, Written by Captaine Smith, sometimes Governour of the Country. Whereunto is annexed the proceedings of those Colonies since their first departure from England, with the discoveries, Orations, and relations of the Salvages, and the accidents that befell them in all their Iournies and discoveries. Taken faithfully as they were written out of the writings of Doctor Rvssell, Tho. Stvdley, Anas Todkill, Ieffra Abot, Richard Wiffin, Will. Phettiplace, Nathaniel Powell, Richard Potts. And the relations of divers other intelligent observers there present then, and now many of them in England, by W. S. At Oxford, Printed by Joseph Barnes, 1612. As the title indicates, the tract consists of two parts. The first, written as Smith says, in the Generall Historie, “with his owne hand,” is a topographical description of the country, embracing climate, soil, and productions, with a full account of the native inhabitants, and has only occasional reference to the proceedings of the colony at Jamestown. The second part of the Oxford Tract has a separate titlepage as follows: “The proceedings of the English Colonie in Virginia since their first beginning from England in the year 1606, till this present 1612, with all their accidents that befell them in their iournies and Discoveries. Also the Salvages’ discourses, orations, and relations of the Bordering Neighbours, and how they became subject to the English. Vnfolding even the fundamentall causes from whence haue sprang so many miseries to the vndertakers, and scandals to the businesse; taken faithfully as they were written out of the writings of Thomas Studley, the first provant maister, Anas Todkill, Walter Russell, Doctor of Phisicke, Nathaniel Powell, William Phettiface, Richard Wyffin, Thomas Abbay, Tho. Hops, Rich. Potts, and the labours of divers other diligent observers, that were residents in Virginia. And pervsed and confirmed by diverse now resident in England that were actors in this busines. By W. S. At Oxford, Printed by Joseph Barnes. 1612.”[293]

Alexander Whitaker’s Good Newes from Virginia was printed in 1613. He was minister of Henrico Parish, and had been in the country two years. The preface is by W. Crawshawe, the divine.[294] Ralph Hamor the younger, “late secretary of that colony,” printed in London in 1615 his True Discourse of the present state of Virginia, bringing the story down to June 18, 1614. It contains an account of the christening of Pocahontas and her marriage to Rolfe. It was reprinted in 1860 at Albany (200 copies) for Charles Gorham Barney, of Richmond.[295] Rolfe’s Relation of Virginia, a MS. now in the British Museum, was abbreviated in the 1617 edition of Purchas’s Pilgrimage, and printed at length in the Southern Literary Messenger, 1839, and in the Virginia Historical Register, i. 102. (See also Neill’s Virginia Company, ch. vi.) There are various other early printed tracts, besides those already mentioned, reprinted by Force, which are necessary to a careful study of Virginian history.[296]

Fortunately a copy of the records of the Company[297] from April 28, 1619, to June 7, 1624, is preserved. This copy was made from the originals, which are not now known to exist, at a time when the King gave sign of annulling their charter. Nicholas Ferrar (see the Memoir of Nicholas Ferrar by Peter Peckard, London, 1790, a volume throwing much light on early Virginian history, and compare Palfrey’s New England, i. 192), with the aid of Collingwood the secretary, seems to have procured the transcription at the house of Sir John Danvers, in Chelsea, an old mansion associated with Sir Thomas More’s memory. Collingwood compared each folio, signed it,—the work being completed only three days before judgment was pronounced against the Company,—and gave the whole into the hands of the Earl of Southampton for safe keeping, from whom the records passed to his son Thomas, Lord High Treasurer, after whose death, in 1667, William Byrd, of Virginia, bought them for sixty guineas, and it was from the Byrd family, at Westover, that Stith obtained them, to make use of in his History. By some means Stith’s brother-in-law, Peyton Randolph, got them, and at his death in 1775 his library was sold, when Jefferson bought it, and found these records among the books. Jefferson’s library afterwards becoming the property of the United States, these records in two volumes (pp. 354 and 387 respectively) passed into the Library of Congress, where they now are.

In May, 1868, Mr. Neill, who had used these records while working on his Terra Mariæ, memorialized Congress, explaining their value, and offering, without compensation, to edit the MS., under the direction of the Librarian of Congress.[298] The question of their publication had already been raised by Mr. J. Wingate Thornton ten years earlier, in a paper in the Historical Magazine, February, 1858, p. 33, and in a pamphlet, The First Records of Anglo-American Colonization, Boston, 1859. In these the history of their transmission varies a little from the one given above, which follows Neill’s statements.[299] Being thwarted in his original purpose, Mr. Neill made the records the basis of a History of the Virginia Company of London, Albany, 1869, which, somewhat changed, appeared in an English edition as English Colonization in America in the Seventeenth Century.[300] Of considerable importance among the papers transmitted to our time is the collection which had in large part belonged to Chalmers, and been used by him in his Political Annals; when passing to Colonel William Aspinwall,[301] they were by him printed in the Mass. Hist. Coll. 4th series, vols. ix. and x., with numerous notes, particularly concerning the earlier ones, beginning in 1617, in which the careers of Gates, Pory,[302] and Argall are followed.

Mr. Deane, True Relation, p. 14, quotes as in Mr. Bancroft’s hands a copy from a paper in the English State-Paper Office entitled “A Briefe Declaration of the Plantation of Virginia during the first twelve years when S^r Thomas Smyth was Governer of the Companie [1606-1619], and downe to the present tyme [1624], by the Ancient Planters now remaining alive in Virginia.” Mr. Noël Sainsbury, in his Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, London, 1860, etc., has opened new stores of early Virginian as well as of general Anglo-American history, between 1574 and 1660. The work of the Public Record Office has been well supplemented by the Reports of the Historical Commission, which has examined the stores of historical documents contained in private depositaries in Great Britain. Their third Report of 1872 and the appendix of their eighth Report are particularly rich in Virginian early history, covering documents belonging to the Duke of Manchester. The Index to the Catalogue of MSS. in the British Museum discloses others.

In 1860 the State of Virginia sent Colonel Angus W. McDonald to London to search for papers and maps elucidating the question of the Virginia bounds with Maryland, Tennessee, and North Carolina, which resulted in the accumulation of much documentary material, and a report to the Governor in March, 1861, Document 39 (1861), which was printed. See Hist. Mag. ix. 13.

Matter of historical interest will be found in other of the documents of this boundary contest: Document 40, Jan. 9, 1860; Senate Document, Report of Commissioners, Jan. 17, 1872, with eleven maps, including Smith’s; Final Report, 1874; Senate Document No. 21, being reprints in 1874 of Reports of Jan. 9, 1860, and March 9, 1861; House Document No. 6, Communication of the Governor, Jan. 9, 1877. There were also publications by the State of Maryland relating to the contest.[303]

In 1874 there was published, as a State Senate Document, Colonial Records of Virginia, quarto, which contains the proceedings of the first Assembly, convened in 1619 at Jamestown,[304] with other early papers, and an Introduction and Notes by the late Hon. Thomas H. Wynne. Attention was first called in America to these proceedings by Conway Robinson, Esq. (who had inspected the original manuscript in the State-Paper Office, London), in a Report made as chairman of its Executive Committee, at an annual meeting of the Virginia Historical Society, held at Richmond, Dec. 15, 1853, and published in the Virginia Historical Reporter, i. 7. They were first published in the Collections of the New York Historical Society, 1857, with an Introduction by George Bancroft.[305]

Abstracts from the English State-Paper Office have been furnished the State Library of Virginia by W. Noël Sainsbury, to Dec. 30, 1730.

There are various papers on the personnel of the colony in the lists of passengers for Virginia of 1635, which Mr. H. G. Somerby printed in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. ii. 111, 211, 268; iii. 184, 388; iv. 61, 189, 261; v. 61, 343; and xv. 142; and in the collection of such documents, mostly before published, which are conveniently grouped in Hotten’s Original Lists (1600-1700), London, 1874 and 1881; and in S. G. Drake’s Researches among the British Archives, 1860.

The Virginia Company published three lists of the venturers and emigrants in 1619, and in 1620 a similar enumeration in a Declaration of the State of the Colonie.[306] This was dated June 24; another brief Declaration bears date Sept. 20, 1620. A list of ships arriving in Jamestown 1607-1624 is given by Neill in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg., 1876, p. 415.

Neill has published various studies of the census of 1624 in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. for 1877, pp. 147, 265, 393.[307]

The most trustworthy source of information as to those who became permanent planters and founders of families is afforded by the Virginia records of land patents, which are continuous from 1620, and are no less valuable for topographical than for genealogical reference.[308]

The manuscript materials of the history of Virginia have been ever subject to casualty in the varied dangerous and destructive forms of removal, fire, and war. The first capital, Jamestown, was several times the scene of violence and conflagration. The colonial archives were exposed to accident when the seat of government was removed to Williamsburg; and finally when, in 1779, the latter was abandoned for the growing town of Richmond, and when, upon the apprehended advance of the British forces during the Revolution, they were again disturbed and removed hastily to the last place. It is probable that at the destruction by fire of the buildings of William and Mary College, in 1705, many valuable manuscripts were lost which had been left in them when the royal governors ceased to hold sessions of the Council within her walls, and when other government functionaries no longer performed their duties there. Many doubtless suffered the consequences of Arnold’s invasion in 1781, upon whose approach the contents of the public offices at Richmond were hastily tumbled into wagons and hurried off to distant counties. The crowning and fell period of universal destruction to archives and private papers was, however, that of our late unhappy war, when seats of justice, sanctuaries, and private dwellings alike were subjected to fire and pillage. The most serious loss sustained was at the burning of the State Court House at Richmond, incidental on the evacuation fire of April 3, 1865, when were consumed almost the entire records of the old General Court from the year 1619 or thereabout, together with those of many of the county courts (which had been brought thither to guard against the accidents of the war) and the greater part of the records of the State Court of Appeals.

Of the records of the General Court, a fragment of a volume covering the period April 4, 1670-March 16, 1676, is in the Collections of the Virginia Historical Society, and another fragment—Feb. 21, 1678-October, 1692—is in the archives of Henrico County Court at Richmond. In the State Library are preserved the journals of the General Assembly from 1697 to 1744, with occasional interruptions.

Of the records of the several counties, the great majority of those of an early period, it is certain, have been destroyed. Information as to the preservation of the following has been received by the writer: Northampton (old Accomac), continuous from 1634; Northumberland, from 1652; Lancaster, from 1652; Surrey, a volume beginning in 1652; Rappahannock, from 1656; Essex, from 1692; Charles City, a single volume, from Jan. 4, 1650, to Feb. 3, 1655, inclusive; Henrico, a deed book, 1697-1704, and, with interruptions, the same records to 1774,—all classes of records, unbroken, from October, 1781.

In elucidation of the social life and commerce of the period,—the three decades of the seventeenth century,—the following may be named: Letters of Colonel William Fitzhugh, of Stafford County, a lawyer and planter, May 15, 1679-April 29, 1699; Letters of Colonel William Byrd, of the “Falls,” James River, planter and Receiver-General of the colony, January, 1683-Aug. 3, 1691,—in the Collections of the Virginia Historical Society.

The following parish records preserved in the library of the Theological Seminary near Alexandria, Va., are valuable sources of early genealogical information; Registers of Charles River Parish, York County,—births 1648-1800, deaths 1665-1787;[309] Vestry Books (some with partial registers) of Christ Church Parish, Middlesex County, 1663-1767; Petsoe Parish, Gloucester County, from June 14, 1677; Kingston Parish, Matthews County, from 1679; St. Peter’s Parish, New Kent County, from 1686.

Of such of the early papers in the State archives at Richmond as escaped the casualties of the war, the Commonwealth intrusted the editing to William P. Palmer; and vol. i., covering 1652-1781 (with a very few, however, before 1689), was published in 1875 as Calendar of State Papers and other Manuscripts preserved in the Capitol at Richmond.[310]

On the life of Captain John Smith in general, some notes are made in another chapter of this volume.[311] It will be remembered that Fuller—in the earliest printed biography of Smith, contained in his Worthies of England—says of him, “It soundeth much to the diminution of his deeds, that he alone is the herald to publish and proclaim them.”

Mr. Deane first pointed out (1860), in a note to his edition of Wingfield’s Discourse, that the story of Pocahontas’s saving Smith’s life from the infuriated Powhatan, which Smith interpolates in his Generall Historie, was at variance with Smith’s earlier recitals in the tracts of which that book was composed when they had been issued contemporaneous with the events of which he was treating some years earlier, and that the inference was that Smith’s natural propensity for embellishment, as well as a desire to feed the interest which had been incited in Pocahontas when she visited England, was the real source of the story. Mr. Deane still farther enlarged upon this view in a note to his edition (p. 38) of Smith’s Relation in 1866.[312] It has an important bearing on the question that Hamor, who says so much of Pocahontas, makes no allusion to such a striking service. The substantial correctness of Smith’s later story is contended for by W. Robertson in the Hist. Mag., October, 1860; by William Wirt Henry, in Potter’s American Monthly, 1875; and a general protest is vaguely rendered by Stevens in his Historical Collections, p. 102.

The file of the Richmond Dispatch for 1877 contains various contributions on the early governors of the colony of Virginia by E. D. Neill, William Wirt Henry, and R. A. Brock, in which the claims of Smith’s narrative to consideration are discussed. Charles Dudley Warner, in A Study of the Life and Writings of John Smith, 1881, treats the subject humorously and with sceptical levity. Smith finds his latest champion, a second time, in William Wirt Henry, in an address, The Early Settlement at Jamestown, with Particular Reference to the late Attacks upon Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, and John Rolfe, delivered before the annual meeting of the Virginia Historical Society, held Feb. 24, 1882, and published with the Proceedings of the Society. Mr. Deane’s views are, however, supported by Henry Adams (North American Review, January, 1867, and Chapter of Erie, and other Essays, p. 192) and by Henry Cabot Lodge (English Colonies in America, p. 6). Mr. Bancroft allowed for a while the original story to stand, with a bare reference to Mr. Deane’s note (History of the United States, 1864, i. 132); but in his Centenary Edition (1879, vol. i. p. 102) he abandoned the former assertion, without expressing judgment. The most recent recitals of the story of Pocahontas under the color of these later investigations have been by Gay, in the Popular History of the United States, i. 283, and by Charles D. Warner in his Captain John Smith, before named,—the latter carefully going over all the evidence.

Alexander Brown has contributed several articles, published in the Richmond Dispatch in April and May, 1882, in which he controverts the views of Mr. Henry, not only as to the truth of the story of the rescue, but as to the general veracity of Smith as a historian, taking a more absolute position in this respect than any previous writer has done.

Pocahontas is thought to have died at Gravesend just as she was about re-embarking for America, March 21, 1617; and the entry on the records of St. George’s Church in that place—which speaks of a “lady Virginia born,” and has been supposed to refer to her—puts her burial March 21. 1617.[313]

For the tracing of Pocahontas’s descendants through the Bollings,—Robert Bolling having married Jane Rolfe, the daughter of Thomas Rolfe, the son of Powhatan’s daughter,—see The Descendants of Pocahontas, by Wyndham Robertson, 1855, and Wynne’s Historical Documents, vol. iv., entitled A Memoir of a Portion of the Bolling Family, Richmond, 1868 (fifty copies printed), which contains photographs of portraits of the Bollings.[314]

There is an engraving of Pocahontas by Simon Pass, which perhaps belongs to, but is seldom found in, Smith’s Generall Historie.[315] The original painting is said to have belonged to Henry Rolfe, of Narford,—a brother of John, the husband of Pocahontas,—and from him passed to Anthony Rolfe, of Tuttington, and from him again, probably by a marriage, to the Elwes of Tuttington, and it is mentioned in a catalogue of a sale of their effects in the last century. It has not since been traced.[316]

Richard Randolph, of Virginia, is said to have procured from England two portraits,—one of Rolfe, and the other of Pocahontas,—and they were hung in his house at Turkey Island. After his death, in 1784, they are said to have been bought by Thomas Bolling, of Cobbs, Va., and the inventory showing them is, or was, in the County Court of Henrico. In 1830 they were in the possession of Dr. Thomas Robinson, of Petersburg, when he wrote of the portrait of Pocahontas that “it is crumbling so rapidly that it may be considered as having already passed out of existence.” A letter of the late H. B. Grigsby to Mr. Charles Deane states that he had heard it was on panel let into the wainscot. In 1843, while still owned by Mr. Robinson, R. M. Sully made a copy of it, which seems to have proved acceptable, as appears from the attestations printed in M’Kinney and Hall’s Indian Tribes of North America, 1844, vol. iii., where at p. 64 is a reproduction in colors of Sully’s painting. Mr. Grigsby says that the original was finally destroyed in a contest which grew out of a dispute when the house was sold, whether the panel went with it or could be reserved.[317]

Of the massacre at Falling Creek, March 22, 1621-22, the Virginia Company printed, in Edward Waterhouse’s Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia, a contemporary account.[318] Mr. Neill has made the transaction the subject of special consideration in the Magazine of American History, i. 222, and in his Letter to N. G. Taylor in 1868, and has printed a considerable part of Waterhouse’s account in his Virginia Company, p. 317 et seq.

The massacre is also incidentally mentioned by the present writer in a paper, “Early Iron Manufacture in Virginia, 1619-1776,” in the Richmond Standard, Feb. 8, 1879, and by James M. Swank, in “Statistics of the Iron and Steel Production of the United States,” compiled for the Tenth Census, which may also be referred to for information as to that industry in the Colony of Virginia.

An examination of the story of Claiborne’s rebellion is made in the Maryland chapter in the present volume.

Respecting Bacon’s rebellion, the fullest of the contemporary accounts is that of T. M. on “The beginning, progress, and conclusion of Bacon’s Rebellion,” which is printed in Force’s Tracts, vol. i. no. 8.[319] Equally important is a MS. “Narrative of the Indian and Civil Wars in Virginia,” now somewhat defective, which was found among the papers of Captain Nathaniel Burwell, and lent to the Massachusetts Historical Society and printed carelessly in their Collections in 1814, vol. xi., and copied thence by Force in his Tracts, vol. i. no. 11, in 1836. The MS. was again collated in 1866, and reprinted accurately in the Society’s Proceedings, ix. 299, when the original was surrendered to the Virginia Historical Society (Proceedings, ix. 244, 298; x. 135). Tyler, American Literature, i. 80, assigns its authorship to one Cotton, of Aquia Creek, whose wife is said to be the writer of “An Account of our late troubles in Virginia,” which was first printed in the Richmond Enquirer, Sept. 12, 1804, and again in Force’s Tracts, vol. i. no. 9. The popular spreading of the news in England of the downfall of the rebellion was helped by a little tract, Strange news from Virginia, of which there is a copy in Harvard College Library. There is in the British Museum Sir William Berkeley’s list of those executed under that governor’s retaliatory measures, which has been printed in Force’s Tracts, vol. i. no. 10.

Other original documents may be found in Hening’s Statutes at Large, vol. ii.; in the appendix of Burk’s Virginia; and in the Aspinwall Papers, i. 162, 189, published in the Mass. Hist. Coll. An Historical Account of some Memorable Actions, particularly in Virginia, etc., by “Sir Thomas Grantham, Knight” (London, 1716), was reprinted in fac-simile with an Introduction by the present writer (Carlton McCarthy & Co., Richmond, 1882).[320] The fragment of the records of the General Court of Virginia, cited as being in the Collections of the Virginia Historical Society, contains details of the trial of the participants in the “rebellion” not included in Hening, and the abstracts from the English State-Paper Office, furnished by Mr. Sainsbury to the State Library of Virginia, give unpublished details. Extracts from the same source are in the library of the present writer. There are various papers in the early volumes of the Hist. Mag.; see April, 1867, for a contemporary letter. Massachusetts Bay proclaimed the insurgents rebels.[321]

The earliest History of Virginia after John Smith’s was an anonymous one published in London in 1705, with De Bry’s pictures reduced by Gribelin. When it was translated into French, and published two years later (1707) both at Amsterdam and Orleans (Paris), the former issue assigned the authorship to D. S., which has been interpreted D. Stevens, and so it remained in other editions, some only title editions, printed at Amsterdam in 1712, 1716, and 1718, though the later date may be doubtful. (Sabin, ii. 5112.) The true author, a native of Virginia and a Colonial official, had meanwhile died there in 1716. This was Robert Beverley.[322] The book is concisely written, and is not without raciness and crispness; but its merits are perhaps a little overestimated in Tyler’s American Literature, ii. 264. His considerate judgment of the Indians is not, however, less striking than praiseworthy. For the period following the Restoration he may be considered the most useful, though he is not independent of a partisan sympathy.

Sir William Keith’s History of Virginia was undertaken, at the instance of the Society for the Encouragement of Learning, as the beginning of a series of books on the English plantations; but no others followed. It was published in 1738 with two maps,—one of America, the other of Virginia,—and he depended almost entirely on Beverley, and brings the story down to 1723.[323] Forty years after Beverley the early history of the colony was again told, but only down to 1624, by the Rev. William Stith, then rector of Henrico Parish; being, however, at the time of his death (1755), the president of William and Mary College. He seems to have been discouraged from continuing his narrative because the “generous and public-spirited” gentlemen of Virginia were unwilling to pay the increased cost of putting into his Appendix the early documents which give a chief value to his book to-day. He had the use of the Collingwood transcript of the records of the Virginia Company. His book, History of the First Discovery and Settlement of Virginia, was published at Williamsburg in 1747, and there are variations in copies to puzzle the bibliographer.[324] Stith’s diffuseness and lack of literary skill have not prevented his becoming a high authority with later writers, notwithstanding that he implicitly trusts and even praises the honesty of Smith.[325]

The somewhat inexact History of Virginia by John Burk has some of the traits of expansive utterance which might be expected of an expatriated Irishman who had been implicated in political hazards, and who was yet to fall in a duel in 1808.[326] This book, which was published in three volumes at Petersburg (1804-5), was dedicated to Jefferson. A fourth volume, by Skelton Jones and Louis Hue Girardin, was added in 1816; but as the edition was in large part destroyed by a fire, it is rarely found with the other three.[327] Burk used the copy of the Virginia Company records which had belonged to John Randolph, as well as some collections made by Hickman (which Randolph had had made when it was his intention to write on Virginian history), and Colonel Byrd’s Journal.

The name of Campbell is twice associated with the history of Virginia. J. W. Campbell published in 1813 at Petersburg a meagre and unimportant History of Virginia, coming down to 1781. The best known, however, is the work of Charles Campbell, his son, who in 1847, at Richmond, published a well-written Introduction to the History of Virginia, and in 1860, at Philadelphia, a completed History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia, coming down to 1783,—a book written before John Smith was called a romancer. The book, however defective in arrangement and execution, is thought to be the best general authority.[328]

The most comprehensive History of Virginia is that of Robert R. Howison, vol. i. coming down to 1763, being published at Philadelphia in 1846, and vol. ii., ending in 1847, being published at Richmond the next year. He is a pleasing writer, but sacrifices fact to rhetoric, though he makes an imposing display of references.

To these may be added, in passing, William H. Brockenbrough’s Outline of History of Virginia to 1754; Martin’s Gazetteer, 1835, and Howe’s Historical Collections of Virginia, printed in Charleston, 1856.

Respecting the religious history of the colony, besides the general historians, there have been several special treatments. Mr. Neill has written upon the Puritan affinities in Hours at Home, November, 1867, and on Thomas Harrison and the Virginia Puritans in his English Colonization, where is also a chapter on the planting of the Church of England.

Patrick Copland’s sermon, Virginia’s God be thanked, was preached before the Company in London, April 18, 1622; a copy of which is in Harvard College Library. Cf. Mr. Neill’s Memoir of Rev. Patrick Copland, New York, 1871, p. 52, and his English Colonization, p. 104.

Further, see Hawkes’s Contributions to the Ecclesiastical History of the United States, “Virginia,” 1836; Hening’s Statutes; Papers relating to the History of the Church in Virginia, 1650-1770, by W. S. Perry, 1870; Hammond’s Leah and Rachel, 1656; Bishop Meade’s Old Churches, etc., 1855; “Notes on the Virginia Colonial Clergy” in the Episcopal Recorder, and reprinted separately by E. D. Neill, 1877; Savage’s Winthrop’s History of New England, and Anderson’s Church of England in the Colonies, 1856.

The writer has also in his possession the Records of the Monthly Meeting of Henrico County, June 10, 1699-1797, which he designs to use in a history of the Society of Friends in Virginia. He has also earlier isolated records, and a partial registry of births, marriages, and deaths of those of the faith of the Society in Henrico and Hanover counties in the eighteenth century.

For an account of early manufactures in Virginia, see Bishop’s History of American Manufactures, 1866. For a view of the early agriculture, see a paper by the present writer on the History of Tobacco in Virginia from its Settlement to 1790; Statistics, Agriculture, and Commerce, prepared for the Tenth Census; History of Agriculture in Virginia, by N. F. Cabell, 1857; the Farmers’ Register, 1833-42; Transactions of the State Agricultural Society of Virginia, 1855; and “Virginia Colonial Money and Tobacco’s Part therein,” by W. L. Royall, in Virginia Law Journal, August, 1877.

For a view of slavery in the colony, see Bancroft, ch. v.; O’Callaghan’s Voyages of the Slavers; Wilson’s Rise and Fall of the Slave Power; Cobb’s Inquiry; and the works of Cabell, Fitzhugh, Fletcher, Hammond, Ross, Stringfellow, and general histories.

It is evident that no single author has yet given an adequate history of Virginia; and while it is true that much precious material therefor has perished, it is believed that the original record is yet not wanting for such a representation of the past of the State as would be at once more intelligible as to the motives which occasioned events, and more convincingly just in the recital of them.

EDITORIAL NOTES.

A. Maps of Virginia or the Chesapeake.—There seem to have been visits of the Spaniards to the Chesapeake at an early day (1566-1573), and they may have made a temporary settlement (1570) on the Rappahannock. (Robert Greenhow in C. Robinson’s Discoveries in the West, p. 487, basing on Barcia’s Ensayo Chronologico; Historical Magazine, iii. 268, 318; J. G. Shea in Beach’s Indian Miscellany.) In the map which De Bry gave with the several editions of Hariot in 1590, the bay appears as “Chesepiooc Sinus;” but in the more general maps, shortly after, the name Chesipooc, or some form of it, is applied rather wildly to some bay on the coast, as by Wytfliet’s in 1597, or earlier still by Thomas Hood, 1592, where the “B. de S. Maria” of the Spaniards, if intended for the Chesapeake, is given an outline as vague as the rest of the neighboring coast, where it appears as shown in the sketch in chapter vi. between the Figs. 1 and 2. It may be, as Stevens contends (Historical and Geographical Notes), that not before Smith were the entangling Asian coast-lines thoroughly eliminated from this region; but certainly there was no wholly recognizable delineation of the bay till Smith recorded the results of the explorations which he describes in his Generall Historie, chs. v. and vi. Smith indicates by crosses on the affluents of the bay the limits of his own observations. Strachey’s Historie of Travaile, p. 42.

In Smith’s Map of Virginia, with a Description of the Country, etc., Oxford, 1612, W. S., or William Strachey, eked out the little tract with an appendix of others’ contributions. Strachey afterwards adopted a considerable part in his Historie of Travaile. Mr. Deane, in his edition of the True Relation, p. xxi, has given a full account of this tract. Smith reprinted it in his Generall Historie with some changes and additions and small omissions. Purchas reprinted it in his Pilgrimes, but not without changes and omissions of small extent, and with some additions, which he credits on the margin to Smith; and he had earlier given an abstract of it in his Pilgrimage. There is a copy of the original in the Lenox Library. Tyler, American Literature, i. 30, notices it.

The map accompanying this tract, engraved by W. Hole, appeared in three impressions (Stevens’s Bibliotheca Historica, 1870, no. 1,903). It was altered somewhat, and the words, “Page 41, Smith,” were put in the lower right-hand corner, when it was next used in the Generall Historie, 1624 and later; and in 1625 it was again inserted at pp. 1836-37 of Purchas’s Pilgrimes, vol. iv. De Bry next re-engraved it in part xiii. of his Great Voyages, printed in German, 1627, and in Latin 1634; and in part xiv. in German in 1630 (Carter-Brown Catalogue, i. 370-71). It was also re-engraved for Gottfriedt’s Newe Welt, published at Frankfort, and marked “Erforshet und beschriben durch Capitain Iohan Schmidt.” The compiler of this last book was J. Ph. Abelin, who had been one of De Bry’s co-workers, and he made this work in some sort an abridgment of De Bry’s, use being made of his plates, often inserting them in the text, the book being first issued in 1631, and again in 1655. (Muller’s Books on America, 1872, no. 636, and (1877) no. 1,269.)

The map was next used in two English editions of Hondy’s Mercator, “Englished by W. S.” 1635, etc., but with some fanciful additions, as Mr. Deane says (Bohn’s Lowndes, p. 1103). The map of the coast in De Laet, 1633 and 1640, was, it would seem, founded upon it for the Chesapeake region; cf. also the map of Virginia and Florida called “par Mercator,” of date 1633, and the maps by Blaeu, of 1655 and 1696.

Once more Smith’s plot adorned, in 1671, Ogilby’s large folio on America, p. 193, as it had also found place in the prototype of Ogilby, the Amsterdam Montanus of 1671 and 1673. In these two books (1671-73) also appeared the map “Virginiæ, partis australis et Floridæ, partis orientalis, nova descriptio,” which shows the coast from the Chesapeake down to the 30th degree of north latitude.

Smith’s was finally substantially copied as late as 1735, as the best available source, in A Short Account of the First Settlement of the Provinces, etc., London, 1735,—a contribution to the literature of the boundary dispute, and was doubtless the basis of the map in Keith’s Virginia in 1738; but it finally gave place to Fry and Jefferson’s map of the region in 1750.

A phototype fac-simile, reduced about one quarter, of the earliest state of the original map in the Harvard College copy of the Oxford tract of 1612 is given herewith. A similar fac-simile, full size, is given in Mr. Deane’s reprint of the True Relation, though it was not published in that tract. A lithographic fac-simile, full size, but without the pictures in the upper corners, is given in the Hakluyt Society’s edition of Strachey, p. 23. Other reproductions will be found in Scharf’s Maryland, i. 6, Scharf’s Baltimore City and County, 1881, p. 38, and in Cassell’s United States, p. 27. That in the Richmond (1819) reprint of the Generall Historie is well done, full size, on copper. This copperplate was rescued in 1867 from the brazier’s pot by the late Thomas H. Wynne, and at the sale of his library in 1875 was purchased for the State Library of Virginia.

Neill, in his Virginia Company, p. 191, mentions “A mapp of Virginia, discovered to y^e Hills and its latt. from 35 deg. and ½ neer Florida to 41 deg. bounds of New England. Domina Virginia Ferrar collegit, 1651,” and identifies this compiler of the map as a daughter of John Ferrar. The map we suppose to be the one engraved by Goddard. This map is associated with a London publication of 1650, called Virgo triumphans, or Virginia richly and truly valued, which is usually ascribed to Edward Williams, but is held nevertheless to be in substance the work of John Ferrar of Geding. There were two editions of this year (1650): Brinley Catalogue no. 3,816; Quaritch, General Catalogue, no. 12,535, held at £36 John Ferrar’s copy of the first edition, with his notes, and the original drawing of the map, inserted by Ferrar to make up a deficiency in the first edition, of which he complains. Quaritch prices a good copy without such annotations at £25. The second edition (1650) had additions, as shown in the title, Virginia, more especially the South part thereof, second edition, with addition of the discovery of silkworms, etc. In this the same map appeared engraved as above, and the Huth copy of it has it in two states, one without, and the other with an oval portrait of Sir Francis Drake. (Huth Catalogue, v. 1594.) The Harvard College copy lacks the map, which is described by Quaritch (no. 12,536, who prices this edition at £32) in a copy from the Bathurst Library, as a folding sheet exhibiting New Albion as well as Virginia, with the purpose of showing an easy northern passage to the Pacific, the text representing the Mississippi as dividing the two countries, and flowing into the South Sea; see also Menzies’ Catalogue, no. 2,143, and the note in Major’s edition of Strachey, p. 34, on a map published in 1651 in London. This second edition was the one which Force followed in reprinting it in his Tracts, vol. iii. no. 11. The Huth Catalogue notes a third edition, Virginia in America richly valued, 1651. The map is given on a later page.

B. The Virginia Historical Society.—From 1818 to 1828 the eleven volumes of the Evangelical and Literary Magazine, edited at Richmond by John Holt Rice, D.D., had contained some papers on the early history of the State, but no organized effort was made to work in this direction before the Virginia Historical and Philosophical Society was formed, in December, 1831, with Chief Justice Marshall as president, and under its auspices a small volume of Collections was issued in 1833; but from February, 1838, to 1847 the Society failed to be of any influence. Meanwhile, from 1834 to 1864 the Southern Literary Messenger afforded some means for the local antiquaries and historical students to communicate with one another and the public.

In December, 1847, a revival of interest resulted in a reorganization of the old Association as the Virginia Historical Society, with the Hon. William C. Rives as president. Promptly ensuing, Maxwell’s Virginia Historical Register was started as an organ of the Society, and was published from 1848 to 1853,—six volumes. The Society laid a plan of publishing the annals of the State, and, as preliminary, intrusted to Conway Robinson, Esq., the preparation of a volume which was published in 1848 as An Account of the Discoveries in the West until 1529, and of Voyages to and along the Atlantic Coast of North America from 1520 to 1573. This was an admirable summary, and deserves wider recognition than it has had. It subsequently published, besides various addresses, The Virginia Historical Reporter, 1854-1860, which contained accounts of the Society’s meetings. The Civil War interrupted its work, but in 1867 the Society was again resuscitated, and it has been under active management since. There is a bibliography of its publications in the Historical Magazine, xvii. 340. Its historical students have contributed to the files of the Richmond Standard since Sept. 7, 1878, much early reprinted and later original matter relating to Virginia.

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NOTE.—Since this chapter was completed has appeared Mr. George W. Williams’s Negro Race in America, which has a chapter on the history of Slavery in the colony of Virginia; and also Mr. J. A. Doyle’s The English in America, Virginia, Maryland, and the Carolinas, London, 1882.

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