Cruel punishments.
To meet the occasion, a searching code of laws had already been sanctioned by the Company. In this code several capital crimes were specified. Among them were failure to attend the church services, or blaspheming God's name, or speaking "against the known articles of the Christian faith." Any man who should "unworthily demean himself "toward a clergyman, or fail to "hold him in all reverent regard," was to be thrice publicly whipped, and after each whipping was to make public acknowledgment of the heinousness of his crime and the justice of the punishment. Not only to speak evil of the king, but even to vilify the London Company, was a treasonable offence, to be punished with death. Other capital offences were unlicensed trading with the Indians, the malicious uprooting of a crop, or the slaughter of cattle or poultry without the High Marshal's permission. For remissness in the daily work various penalties were assigned, and could be inflicted at the discretion of a court-martial. One of the first results of this strict discipline was a conspiracy to overthrow and perhaps murder Dale. The principal leader was that Jeffrey Abbot whom we have seen accompanying Smith on his last journey to Werowocomoco. The plot was detected, and Abbot and five other ringleaders were put to death in what the narrator calls a "cruel and unusual" manner, using the same adjectives which happen to occur in our Federal Constitution in its prohibition of barbarous punishments. It seems clear that at least one of the offenders was broken on the wheel, after the French fashion; and on some other occasion a lawbreaker "had a bodkin thrust through his tongue and was chained to a tree till he perished." But these were rare and extreme cases; the ordinary capital punishments were simply hanging and shooting, and they were summarily employed. Ralph Hamor, however, one of the most intelligent and fair-minded of contemporary chroniclers, declares that Dale's severity was less than the occasion demanded, and that he could not have been more lenient without imperilling the existence of the colony.[84] So the "Apostle of Virginia," the noble Alexander Whitaker, seems to have thought, for he held the High Marshal in great esteem. "Sir Thomas Dale," said he, "is a man of great knowledge in divinity, and of a good conscience in all things, both which be rare in a martial man." In his leisure moments the stern soldier liked nothing so well as to sit and discuss abstruse points of theology with this excellent clergyman.
Communism in practice.
Effects of abolishing communism.
But Dale was something more than a strong ruler and merciless judge. With statesmanlike insight he struck at one of the deepest roots of the evils which had afflicted the colony. Nothing had done so much to discourage steady labour and to foster idleness and mischief as the communism which had prevailed from the beginning. This compulsory system of throwing all the earnings into a common stock had just suited the lazy ones. Your true communist is the man who likes to live on the fruits of other people's labour. If you look for him in these days you are pretty sure to find him in a lager beer saloon, talking over schemes for rebuilding the universe. In the early days of Virginia the creature's nature was the same, and about one fifth of the population was thus called upon to support the whole. Under such circumstances it is wonderful that the colony survived until Dale could come and put an end to the system. It would not have done so, had not Smith and Delaware been able more or less to compel the laggards to work under penalties. Dale's strong common-sense taught him that to put men under the influence of the natural incentives to labour was better than to drive them to it by whipping them and slitting their ears. Only thus could the character of the colonists be permanently improved and the need for harsh punishments relaxed. So the worthy Dale took it upon himself to reform the whole system. The colonist, from being a member of an industrial army, was at once transformed into a small landed proprietor, with three acres to cultivate for his own use and behoof, on condition of paying a tax of six bushels of corn into the public treasury, which in that primitive time was the public granary. Though the change was but partially accomplished in Dale's time, the effect was magical. Industry and thrift soon began to prevail, crimes and disorders diminished, gallows and whipping-post found less to do, and the gaunt wolf of famine never again thrust his head within the door.
The "City of Henricus."
Six months after Dale's administration had begun, a fresh supply of settlers raised the whole number to nearly 800, and a good stock of cows, oxen, and goats was added to their resources. The colony now began to expand itself beyond the immediate neighbourhood of Jamestown. Already there was a small settlement at the river's mouth, near the site of Hampton. The want of a better site than Jamestown was freely admitted, and Dale selected the Dutch Gap peninsula. He built a palisade across the neck and blockhouses in suitable positions. The population of about 300 souls were accommodated with houses arranged in three streets, and there was a church and a storehouse. This new creation Dale called the City of Henricus, after his patron Prince Henry. A city, in any admissible sense of the word, it never became, but it left its name upon Henrico County. Afterward Dale founded other communities at Bermuda and Shirley Hundreds, and left his name upon the settlement known as Dale's Gift on the eastern peninsula near Cape Charles.
Pocahontas seized by Argall, 1612.
Marriage of Pocahontas to John Rolfe, April, 1614.
This expansion of the colony made it more than ever desirable to pacify the Indians, whose attitude had been hostile ever since Smith's departure. During all this time nothing had been seen of Pocahontas, whose visits to Jamestown had been so frequent, but that can hardly be called strange, since her tribe was on the war-path against the English. The chronicler Strachey says that in 1610, being about fifteen years old, she was married to a chieftain named Kocoum. Be that as it may, it is certain that in 1612 young Captain Argall found her staying with the Potomac tribe, whose chief he bribed with a copper kettle to connive at her abduction. She was inveigled on board Argall's ship and taken to Jamestown, to be held as a hostage for her father's good behaviour.[85] It is not clear what might have come of this, for The Powhatan's conduct was so unsatisfactory that Dale had about made up his mind to use fire and sword against him, when all at once the affair took an unexpected turn. Among the passengers on the ill-fated Sea Venture were John Rolfe and his wife, of Heacham, in Norfolk. During their stay on the Bermuda Islands, a daughter was born to them and christened Bermuda. Shortly after their arrival in Virginia, Mrs. Rolfe died, and now an affection sprang up between the widower and the captive Pocahontas. Whether the Indian husband of the latter (if Strachey is to be believed) was living or dead, would make little difference according to Indian notions; for among all the Indian tribes, when first studied by white men, marriage was a contract terminable at pleasure by either party. Scruples of a different sort troubled Rolfe, who hesitated about marrying a heathen unless he could make it the occasion of saving her soul from the Devil. This was easily achieved by converting her to Christianity and baptizing her with the Bible name Rebekah. Sir Thomas Dale improved the occasion to renew the old alliance with The Powhatan, who may have welcomed such an escape from a doubtful trial of arms; and the marriage was solemnized in April, 1614, in the church at Jamestown, in the presence of an amicable company of Indians and Englishmen. One could wish that more of the details connected with this affair had been observed and recorded for us, so that modern studies of Indian law and custom might be brought to bear upon them. How much weight this alliance may have had with the Indians, one can hardly say; but at all events they made little or no trouble for the next eight years.