Old Virginia and Her Neighbours, Vol. 1 (of 2)

by John Fiske

A cogent answer is returned.

Attempts to corrupt Ferrar.

This answer was a masterpiece of cogency. It proved the baselessness of the charges. Either they were complete falsehoods, or they related to disasters directly connected with the Indian massacre, which was not due to any provocation on the part of the whites, or else they showed the effects of mismanagement in Sir Thomas Smith's time, especially under the tyrannical administration of Argall from which the colony had not yet fully recovered. In short, such of the charges as really bore against the Company were successfully shown up as affecting its old government under Smith and Warwick, and not its new government under Sandys and Southampton. The latter was cleared of every calumny, and its absolute integrity and vast efficiency were fully established. Such, at least, is the decisive verdict of history, but the lords of the Privy Council were not willing to accept such a result. It amounted almost to an impeachment of the court party, and it made them angry. So the Earl of Warwick succeeded in obtaining an order that Lord Cavendish, Sir Edwin Sandys, and Rev. Nicholas Ferrar,—as "chief actors in inditing and penning ... an impertinent declaration containing bitter invectives and aspersions" should be confined to their own houses until further notice.[108] The object of this was to prevent them from conferring with each other. Further hostile inquiries were prosecuted, and an attempt was made to detach Ferrar from his associates. One day, as he was answering some queries before the Privy Council, one of the lords handed him an important official letter to the governor of Virginia. "Who draws up such papers?" asked the lord. "The Company," replied Ferrar modestly. "No, no!" interrupted another lord, "we know your style; these papers are all yours, and they are masterpieces." The letter was shown to the king, who was pleased to observe, "Verily, the young man hath much worth in him." To detach him from the Company the king offered to make him clerk of the Privy Council or ambassador to the court of Savoy. Both were fine offers for a man only in his thirtieth year, but Ferrar was not to be tempted. Then an effort was made to induce him to advise the Company to surrender its charter, but he refused with some scorn. A great number of the nobility and gentry, he said, besides merchants and artisans of the city of London, relying upon the royal charter, had engaged in a noble enterprise, one of the most honourable that England had ever undertaken; many planters in Virginia had risked their estates and lives in it; the Lord had prospered their endeavours, and now no danger threatened the colony save the malice of its enemies; as for himself he was not going to abuse his trust by deserting it.

A board of commissioners.

While these things were going on, the king appointed a board of commissioners to investigate the affairs of Virginia, and the spirit in which they were appointed is sufficiently revealed by the fact that they all belonged to the disaffected faction in the Company and held their meetings at the house of Sir Thomas Smith. One of their number was the vindictive and unscrupulous ex-governor, Sir Samuel Argall,—which was much like setting the wolf to investigate the dogs. Some of these commissioners went out to Virginia and tried to entrap the assembly into asking for a new charter. It was all in vain. Governor, council, and House of Burgesses agreed that they were perfectly satisfied with the present state of things and only wanted to be let alone. Not a morsel of evidence adverse to the present management of the Company could be obtained from any quarter. On the contrary, the assembly sent to England an eloquent appeal, afterward entitled "The Tragical Declaration of the Virginia Assembly," in which the early sufferings of the colony and its recent prosperity were passed in review; the document concluded with an expression rather more forcible than one is accustomed to find in decorous and formal state papers. After describing the kind of management under which such creatures as Argall could flourish, the document goes on to say, "Rather [than] be reduced to live under the like government, we desire his Majesty that commissioners may be sent over with authority to hang us."

Attorney-general's opinion; a quo warranto served.

Long before this appeal reached England, the final assault upon the Company had begun. In July, 1623, the attorney-general reported his opinion that it was advisable for the king to take the government of Virginia into his own hands. In October an order of the Privy Council announced that this was to be done. The Company's charter was to be rescinded, and its deputed powers of sovereignty were to be resumed by the king. This meant that the king would thereafter appoint the council for Virginia sitting in London. He would also appoint the governor of Virginia with his colonial council. Such a transformation would leave the joint-stock company in existence, but only as a body of traders without ascertained rights or privileges and entirely dependent upon royal favour. No settled policy could thereafter be pursued, and under the circumstances the change was a deathblow to the Company. Southampton and Ferrar refused to surrender, and referred the question to their next quarter-sessions to be held in November. Then the king brought suit against the Company in the court of King's Bench, and a writ of quo warranto was served.

Appeal to Parliament.

The king refuses to allow the appeal.

Then came the most interesting moment of all. The only hope of the Company lay in an appeal to Parliament, and that last card was boldly played. Early in 1624 the Spanish match, to secure which the miserable king had for ten years basely truckled and licked the hand of England's bitterest enemies, was finally broken off. War with Spain was at hand; a new policy, of helping the German Protestants, and marrying Baby Charles to a French princess, was to be considered; and much money was needed. So James reluctantly issued writs for an election, and the new Parliament, containing Sandys and Ferrar, with many other members of the Virginia Company, met in February. In April a petition was presented in behalf of the Virginia Company, and a committee had been appointed to consider it, when the Speaker read a message from the king, forbidding Parliament to meddle with the matter. He distinctly announced the doctrine that the government of colonies was the business of king and his Privy Council, and that Parliament had nothing to do with it. This memorable doctrine was just that which afterwards found favour with the American colonists for very different reasons from those which recommended it to King James. The Americans took this view because they were not represented in Parliament, and intended with their colonial assemblies to hold the crown officials, the royal governors, in check just as Parliament curbed the Crown. By the middle of the eighteenth century this had come to be the generally accepted American doctrine; it is interesting to see it asserted early in the seventeenth by the Crown itself, and in the interests of absolutism.