Hallowed Heritage: The Life of Virginia

by Dorothy Margaret Torpey

During the same year, another historical milestone occurred in Virginia when a ship arrived at Jamestown with sixty young women from England. Each bachelor who desired a bride had to pay 120 pounds of tobacco for his bride's passage. The young women stayed at the married planters' homes until their marriage. These brave women made happy homes and helped shoulder the responsibilities so that community life in Virginia became more settled. They wrote such cheerful, courageous accounts of their life in Virginia that a second shipload soon followed and more homes were rapidly established.

In July 1621, the London Company issued to Virginia a code of written laws and a frame of government patterned after the English type: the Governor of the colony was to be appointed by the company, a Council was to be appointed by the company, and a House of Burgesses was to be elected by the colonists themselves. Whenever making laws, the councilors and burgesses were to sit together. A law would be proposed, debated and, if passed, be submitted to the Governor for his approval. The company in England would have the final ratification or rejection. The right of petition and the right of trial by jury were guaranteed. A unique feature was the provision that the burgesses had the power of vetoing any objectionable acts of the company. Thus, additional political rights were furnished to the colonists by this so-called Virginia Constitution of 1621.

At noon on March 22, 1622, the "Great Massacre" occurred. Complete annihilation of all the Jamestown inhabitants by the Powhatan Indian Confederacy was prevented primarily by the warning of an Indian convert, a boy named Chanco. The settlement of Henricopolis (now called Dutch Gap) was completely destroyed: 347 men, women and children—approximately one-third of the total population of the colony—were slain at this time under the strategy of Opechancanough, the leader of the Indians. An ironic happening of the Great Massacre was that one of the victims was George Thorpe, superintendent of the planned college and university of colonial Virginia. He had been a member of Parliament who had sold his estate in England and had come to Virginia to spend his personal fortune and the rest of his life for the conversion and the education of the Indians. By 1619 the General Assembly had set apart 10,000 acres of land for the construction and support of a college for educating Indian youth in "true religion, moral virtue, and civility." The College of Henrico, the first formal educational institution of higher learning in the English colonies, was also destroyed during this Indian Massacre. So strong was the vengeance of the British upon the Indians that no more serious trouble with the Indians occurred until 1644.

Some influential people in England who did not approve of a British colony in America tried to encourage the King to abolish the Virginia Company's charter. The Great Massacre gave King James I the opportunity he sought, and, since the company had been unable to pay its dividends, he finally annulled the company's charter on May 24, 1624. Virginia thus became the first royal or crown colony in England's history. The greatest change under the new governmental setup was that now the King, rather than the Virginia Company, appointed the Governor and the councilors, thus making the Governor a royal Governor rather than a company official. King James I died the following year and his son, Charles I, succeeded to the throne. Two years later, the King authorized the General Assembly to meet, primarily in order that he could obtain the excellent monopoly of the Virginia tobacco trade. Much to his surprise, the colonists refused to grant him such monopoly, and, as a result, he did not authorize another meeting for twelve years.

From 1629 through 1632, two more provinces were carved from Virginia by royal grants: the Province of Carolina to Sir Robert Heath and the Province of Maryland to Lord Baltimore. The Virginians had not protested much against the grant to Sir Robert Heath, but they did protest strongly against the grant to Lord Baltimore. The leader of this protest was William Claiborne who had previously organized a colony and a trading post on part of the Maryland grant area.

In 1634, the Virginia Colony was politically reorganized from four parishes to eight shires or counties: Accawmack (an Indian name meaning "the-across-the-water-place"; the name was later changed to Northampton, an English county name and the two present counties of Accomack and Northampton occupy the same original site), Charles City (named for King Charles), Charles River (changed to York in 1642-43 in honor of the Duke of York), Elizabeth City (formerly Kiccotan—named for Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King James), James City (named for King James), Henrico (named for Prince Henry, son of King James), Warrosquyoake (changed to Isle of Wight in 1637—some of the early patentees had come from the Isle of Wight in the English Channel: the word, "wight," means a passage or channel; therefore, it means "island of the channel"), and Warwick River (changed to Warwick in 1642-1643, named after the Earl of Warwick who was a prominent Virginia Company member). These counties were the second oldest unit of local government in the United States, the New England town being the first. The long distances between plantations and the difficult transportation facilities on land and on the rivers discouraged the use of the New England Town Meeting type of local government in the Virginia Colony. The counties themselves were patterned after the English counties. At this same time, suffrage was extended to all free male citizens for electing members of the House of Burgesses and county officials.

On February 12, 1634, Benjamin Syms of Elizabeth City County gave 200 acres of land plus 8 cows for the establishment of a free school for white children. This was the first legacy for the promotion of public school education, and Elizabeth City County was the birthplace of the Virginia public school system.

In 1642 Sir William Berkeley arrived in Virginia as a royal Governor. Until this time, there had been much religious tolerance in the Virginia Colony although the Church of England was the Established Church of the Colony. The religious laws were liberal, and other religions had existed without interference. Sir Edwin Sandys had encouraged some Separatists (Puritans) to live in Virginia, and by the time of the dissolution of the Virginia Company charter, thirteen parishes had been created and many clergymen had been active in the colony. Governor Berkeley was an extremely strong defender of the King and of the Church of England and disliked the Quakers and the Puritans very much. He was directly responsible for driving most of them from the Virginia Colony by enforcing a statute of 1643 which provided that no individual who disbelieved the doctrines of the English Church could teach, publicly or privately, or preach the gospel within the limits of Virginia.

In 1644 another Indian massacre occurred resulting in the death of 300-500 Virginians. This massacre was led by the aged, famous Indian leader, Opechancanough. It took place on Holy Thursday and the Puritans believed that this was a direct act of God as punishment for their previous treatment in Virginia. The settlers finally dispersed the Indians, destroyed their villages and destroyed the Powhatan Confederacy which had consisted of approximately fifty tribes. Opechancanough was later shot and killed.

In the following year, the General Assembly allowed the election of vestries by the qualified voters of each parish regardless of their religious faith. As counties were organized in Virginia, parishes likewise were established and vestries continued to be elected by the qualified voters. The vestry was the governing body of the parish, and although its membership number varied between the parishes, the number was finally fixed at twelve. They were self-perpetuating, and could only be removed by the General Assembly. They had the power to select a rector as well as to carry on regular parish duties. Under this arrangement, the Established Church was part of the county government with the officers of a parish having civil as well as religious duties and authority. Some of the civil duties included levying tax rates on parish inhabitants to raise revenue for carrying out their objectives, maintaining roads to and from the church, keeping the vital statistics (records of births, marriages, deaths, et cetera) and aiding the poor.