Legends of Loudoun / An account of the history and homes of a border county of Virginia's Northern Neck

by Harrison Williams

CHAPTER II

ENGLAND ACQUIRES VIRGINIA

Mighty in her military strength and with an all but inexhaustible wealth pouring into her coffers from her American conquests, Spain stood as a very colossus over the Europe of the sixteenth century; and England, watching and fearing her hostile growth, grimly determined that she too, should have her share of that fabulous new world and its treasure. So deeply planted and so greatly grew this determination that it eventually became a part of England's public policy and in June, 1578, the great Elizabeth, with her eyes on the American coast, issued letters patent to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, and after Gilbert's death reissued them on the 25th March, 1584, to his half-brother Sir Walter Raleigh, to discover, have, hold and occupy forever, such "remote heathern and barbarous lands, countries and territories not actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people." As by its terms the new grant was to continue but for "the space of six yeares and no more," it was clear that advantage of its provisions should be taken with promptness; and Raleigh was not a man given to delay or indecision. He had been making his preparations; hardly more than a month elapsed before an expedition of two ships captained by Philip Amidas and Arthur Barlow set sail from England, bound for America. On the 4th of the following July, having landed on an island off the coast of the present Carolinas, these men raised the English flag and formally declared the sovereignty of England and its Queen. They brought home with them such glowing accounts of their discovery that Elizabeth was moved to bestow upon all the coast the name of Virginia—the land of the Virgin Queen. Two more attempts were made to establish permanent settlements in the neighborhood and although both failed, enough had been done to found a claim of English ownership and dominion, a claim which covered the entire coast from the French settlements in the north to the Spanish settlements upon the Florida peninsula, and thus the original Virginia became coextensive with England's pretensions on the North American continent. It is true that Spain then claimed the entire coast under a Papal Bull but Papal Bulls meant very little to Elizabeth or to her pugnacious sea-rovers. One of the many curiosities of history is that neither Raleigh nor his captains ever saw the soil of that part of America which was to become the Virginia we know, nor did the Queen who named it ever have knowledge of its physical characteristics, its resources or its inhabitants. In short, Virginia proper was neither to be discovered nor have its first precarious settlement until after Elizabeth's death.

After these first abortive attempts to found English settlements under his patent, Raleigh, on the 7th March, 1589, assigned it and all his rights thereunder to a company of merchants and adventurers who were resolved to proceed with the enterprise. These assigns, after the death of Elizabeth, became the leaders in seeking from King James I "leave to deduce a colony in Virginia." That monarch, says Bancroft, "promoted the noble work by readily issuing an ample patent" and on the 10th day of April, 1606, signed and affixed his seal to the first Charter of an English colony in America under which permanent settlement was to be effected. This charter declared the boundaries of Virginia to extend from the 34th to the 45th parallels of longitude and authorized the planting of two colonies. The first of these, to be founded by the London Company, largely made up of men of that city, was designated a "First Colony" to be established in the southerly portion of England's claim; the right to establish a "Second Colony" to be planted in the north, went to the Plymouth Company, whose membership, headed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Governor of the garrison of Plymouth in Devonshire, came principally from the west of England. Under this Charter the King named the first "Council for all matters which shall happen in Virginia;" under it the London Company dispatched the expedition of three ships in command of Sir Christopher Newport and having Captain John Smith among its members; and under it and the Second Charter (of 1609) the infant colony was governed until, in the year 1624, the Charter was revoked and the Crown took over the affairs of the Colony.

Until the troubled reign of the first Charles, the growth of Virginia's population had been very slow. It was not until the defeat of the Royalists in 1645 by the forces of the Parliament and the King's execution in January, 1649, that the first great increase in population occurred. In a pamphlet published in London in that latter year, by an unknown author, it is stated that her population was at that time 15,000 English and 300 negroes and these were scattered along the lower portions of the James and the York and the shores of the Chesapeake. Then the defeated Cavaliers began to arrive in such great numbers that by 1670 Sir William Berkeley estimated that 32,000 free whites, 6,000 indentured servants and 2,000 negroes were there. Many of the old population and the newer arrivals as well, were pressing northward to the land between the mouth of Rappahannock and that of the Potomac which in 1647 had been organized into a new county, under the name of Northumberland, to include all the lands lying between those latter rivers and running westerly to a still indefinite boundary. This was new territory recently, and still very sparsely, settled by the English and even as late as 1670 it was contemporaneously estimated that the Indians between the two rivers had nearly 200 warriors.

Although the Stuarts had been deposed in England and the younger Charles forced to fly to the Continent, he was still King in Virginia with loyal and devoted subjects. It was under such conditions that Charles, actuated not only by a desire to reward certain of his Cavalier adherents who were sharing his exile, but also to create a refuge for others of his followers from the ire and oppression of the triumphant Roundheads, granted by charter dated the 18th day of September, 1649, the whole domain between the Rappahannock and Potomac to seven of his faithful lieges who, during the Civil War, had fought valiantly in the Stuart cause. These men were described in the charter, still preserved in the British Museum, as Ralph Lord Hopton, Baron of Stratton; Henry Lord Jermyn, Baron of St. Edmund's Bury; John Lord Colepeper, Baron of Thoresway; Sir John Berkeley, Sir William Morton, Sir Dudley Wyatt and Thomas Colepeper Esq. And thus, says Fairfax Harrison, "the proprietary of the Northern Neck of Virginia came into existence."

He notes that of the patentees Lord Jermyn, after the Restoration, became Earl of St. Albans and Sir John Berkeley, Baron Berkeley of Stratton. "The only conditions" quotes Head "attached to the conveyance of the domain, the equivalent of a principality, were that one-fifth of all the gold and one-tenth of all the silver, discovered within its limits should be reserved for the royal use and that a nominal rent of a few pounds sterling should be paid into the treasury at Jamestown each year."

But to receive a grant of this splendid Proprietary from a fugitive and powerless King was one thing and to reduce it to actual possession was another and very different one. Charles might and did consider himself King in both England and Virginia and the ruling Virginians might and did consider themselves his very loyal and obedient subjects; but unfortunately for the seven Cavalier patentees of the Northern Neck, the Parliament and Cromwell took a radically different view of the matter and, even more unfortunately, were in a position to enforce that view. No sooner had the representatives of the new Proprietors come to Virginia and were duly welcomed by the royalist Governor Sir William Berkeley, than a Parliamentary fleet of warships arrived from England, deposed the Governor, set up the rule of Parliament in 1652 and abruptly ended, for the time being, the patentees' hopes of gaining possession of their new grant.

There was little to be done by these Cavaliers while Parliament and Cromwell ruled. And then the wheel of history, after its fashion, completed another cycle. On the 3rd September, 1658, Cromwell died and soon the ruthless and efficient but never very cheerful control of England by the Puritans came to an end. In 1659 word came to Virginia of the resignation of Richard Cromwell and the Puritan Governor Mathews dying about the same time, the Virginia Assembly in March, 1660, proceeded to elect Sir William Berkeley to be their Governor again. On the 8th of the following May, Charles II was proclaimed King in England and in September a royal commission for Berkeley, already elected by the Assembly, arrived, the Virginians themselves welcoming the restoration of Stuart rule with great enthusiasm.

The owners of the patent of the Northern Neck believed that their patience was at length to be rewarded. Again they sent a representative to Virginia, this time with instructions from King to Governor to give his aid to the Proprietors to obtain possession of their domain. But during all the years of their forced inactivity, the settlement of Virginia had gone on apace. What had been in 1649 a thinly settled frontier, shewed now a largely increased population and land grants to these new settlers had been freely issued by Virginia's government. Many of those newly seated in the Northern Neck were very influential men and in their opposition to the claims of the patentees received popular sympathy and encouragement. As a result, Berkeley found himself confronted by a Council which obstructed his every effort to carry out the King's instructions and the endeavours of the Proprietors to gain possession of their grant being completely blocked, they were obliged to appeal to the home government for relief. The outcome of negotiations between them and Francis Moryson, then representing Virginia in London, was that the patent of 1649 was surrendered by its holders for a new grant carrying on its face substantial limitations of the earlier patent. This new grant was dated the 8th day of May, 1669, almost twenty years after the first, and contained provisions recognizing the title to lands already seated or occupied under other authority; generally limiting the Proprietors' title to such other lands as should be "inhabited or planted" within the ensuing twenty-one years, together with a constructive recognition of the political jurisdiction of the Virginia government within the Proprietary.[2]