as to the houses, and their situations.
"5. Their houses are generally the worst that ever I saw, the meanest cottages in England being every way equal (if not superior) with the most of the best. And besides, so improvidently and scatteringly are they seated one from another as partly by their distance but especially by the interposition of creeks and swamps ... they offer all advantages to their savage enemies....
"Answer: The houses ... were ... built for use and not for ornament, and are so far from being so mean as they are reported that throughout [England] labouring men's houses ... are in no wise generally for goodness to be compared unto them. And for the houses of men of better rank and quality, they are so much better and [so] convenient that no man of quality without blushing can make exception against them. [As] for the creeks and swamps, every man ... that cannot go by land hath either a boat or a canoe for the conveying and speedy passage to his neighbour's house...."[106]
Object of the charges.
So go the charges and the answers. It is unnecessary to cite any further. The animus of Captain Butler's pamphlet is sufficiently apparent. He wished to make it appear that things were wretchedly managed in Virginia, and that there was but a meagre and contemptible result to show for all the treasure that had been spent and all the lives that had been lost. Whatever could weaken people's faith in the colony, check emigration, deter subscriptions, and in any way embarrass the Company, he did not fail to bring forward. Not only were the sites unhealthy and the houses mean, but the fortifications were neglected, plantations were abandoned, the kine and poultry were destroyed by Indians, the assembly enacted laws wilfully divergent from the laws of England, and speculators kept engrossing wheat and maize and selling them at famine prices; so said Butler, and knowing how effective a bold sweeping lie is sure to be, in spite of prompt and abundant refutation, he ended by declaring that not less than 10,000 persons had been sent out to Virginia, of whom "through the aforenamed abuses and neglects" not more than 2,000 still remained alive. Therefore, he added, unless the dishonest practices of the Company in London and the wretched bungling of its officials in Virginia be speedily redressed "by some divine and supreme hand, ... instead of a Plantation it will shortly get the name of a slaughter house, and [will] justly become both odious to ourselves and contemptible to all the world."
The assembly denies the allegations.
All these allegations were either denied or satisfactorily explained by the sixteen settlers then in London, and their sixteen affidavits were duly sworn to before a notary public. Some months afterward, Captain Butler's pamphlet was laid before the assembly of Virginia and elaborately refuted. Nothing can be clearer than the fact that the sympathies of the people in Virginia were entirely on the side of the Company under its present management, and no fact could be more honourable to the Company. From first to last the proceedings now to be related were watched in Virginia with intense anxiety and fierce indignation.
An answer demanded of Ferrar.
On Thursday of Holy Week, 1623, a formal complaint against the Company, embodying such charges as those I have here recounted, was laid before the Privy Council, and the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, better known as Earl of Middlesex, sent notice of it to Nicholas Ferrar, with the demand that a complete answer to every particular should be returned by the next Monday afternoon. Ferrar protested against such unseemly haste, but the Lord Treasurer was inexorable. Then the young man called together as many of the Company as he could find at an hour's notice that afternoon; they met in his mother's parlour, and he read aloud the complaint, which took three hours. Then Lord Cavendish, Sir Edwin Sandys, and Nicholas Ferrar were appointed a committee to prepare the answer. "These three," says our chronicle, "made it midnight ere they parted; they ate no set meals; they slept not two hours all Thursday and Friday nights; they met to admire each other's labours on Saturday night, and sat in judgment on the whole till five o'clock on Sunday morning; then they divided it equally among six nimble scribes, and went to bed themselves, as it was high time for them. The transcribers finished by five o'clock Monday morning; the Company met at six to review their labours, and by two in the afternoon the answer was presented at the Council Board."[107]