THE JACKS IN THE THIRTEEN COLONIES OF NORTH AMERICA.
We now turn to the history of the Jacks in the country to the south of Canada, where immigration from England had been building up the thirteen English colonies which subsequently became the United States of America. The Spanish flag had been planted in 1492 by Columbus upon San Salvador in the Bahamas. In 1497, Cabot had placed the St. George cross, the English Jack of Henry VII., on the North Atlantic shores, and the English claim by right of first discovery was thereafter laid to Newfoundland, Labrador, and the coast of America, from Cape Breton to Maine. Under Elizabeth, Raleigh, in 1584, expanded the claim of the St. George cross in Virginia far to the south, and in 1602, under the same flag, Bartholomew Gosnold, sailing out for the merchant adventurers of Bristol, exploited the shores of Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, and Elizabeth, which still retain the names he then gave them. Other adventurers, too, there were, who were searching the unknown resources of the new continent. Jacques Cartier, in his second voyage, had, in 1535, occupied Stadacona (Quebec), and the French flag had been established on the shores of the St. Lawrence, the permanent settlement at Quebec being founded by Champlain, in 1608. For more than two hundred years the cross of St. George had been prospecting along the Atlantic coasts and laying claim to their possession, but no settlements were permanently established on these shores by any except the Frenchman, De Monts, who raised the white flag of France at Port Royal, on the Bay of Fundy, and laid the foundations of the town in 1605, and from this time on began the contest for their final ownership.
The sovereigns of France and England had with profuse liberality given royal grants of American territory to their venturesome merchant seamen, and in this manner James I., in 1605, partitioned off the larger part of these shores to the two merchant-adventurer companies of London and Plymouth.
The Plymouth Company was granted the country between what is now known as New Brunswick and Long Island, to be called Northern Virginia, and the London Company from the Potomac to Cape Fear in Carolina, to be called Southern Virginia—the two hundred miles intervening between them being left unoccupied in order to separate their boundaries, and so ensure peace between the rival companies, each company being warned not to make any occupation beyond the limits of the territory so allotted to them.
The London Company in 1607 established themselves in Virginia, where their Capt. Newport, after a weary and wave-tossed voyage, named their first shelter and landing place "Point Comfort," and the river the "James," and their settlement "Jamestown," in honour of his King.
It was into this interval between the two English companies that Hendrick Hudson sailed in 1609, and planted the Dutch flag, with its three lengthwise stripes of orange, white and blue, the orange being the uppermost, over New Amsterdam (now New York).
To these English colonists fell the honour of the first contest for the flag.
The French had occupied Acadia, and were quietly extending southward, when, in 1613, Commander Samuel Argall, of Southern Virginia,[81] finding them trading off Mount Desert, in what is now Maine, captured and destroyed their new shore settlement of St. Sauveur, and next year, heading an expedition sent out by his Colony, advanced farther northward, and destroyed their headquarters at Port Royal. Thus the colonists of Virginia, acting for their nation, defended the English claim, and repelled the interference made with the cross of St. George in its rights of prior discovery under Cabot.
The Plymouth Company had not been so energetic as were the London Company in the occupying of their "plantations," but, in 1614, Captain John Smith, on their behalf, settled a port which he called "New Plymouth," and gave the name of "New England" to the surrounding country.