"And worthy George, by industry and use
Let's see what lines Virginia will produce;
Entice the Muses thither to repair,
Entreat them gently, train them to that air;
For they from hence may thither hap to fly."
On the bank of James River the worthy George entreated the Muses with success and wrote the greater part of his poetical version, which was published at London in 1626.
Education.
Project for a university.
But the Muses could not be enticed to stay long in Virginia without some provision for higher education there, and this was well understood by Sir Edwin Sandys and the enlightened gentlemen who supported him. In 1621 the Company resolved that funds should be appropriated "for the erecting of a public free school ... for the education of children and grounding of them in the principles of religion. Civility of life and humane learning," said the committee's report, "seemed to carry with it the greatest weight and highest consequence unto the plantations as that whereof both Church and Commonwealth take their original foundation and happy estate, this being also like[ly] to prove a work most acceptable unto the planters, through want whereof they have been hitherto constrained to their great costs to send their children from thence hither to be taught." Rev. Patrick Copeland, a missionary returning from the East Indies, raised £70 toward the endowment of this school, and was busily engaged in doing more for it. It was accordingly called the East India School, it was to be established in Charles City, and its courses of study were to be preparatory to those of a university which was to be set up in the city of Henricus. Great interest was felt in this university. Like Harvard College, founded somewhat later, it was designed not only for the education of white youths but also for civilizing and missionary work among the Indians. The Bishop of London raised by subscription £1,000 for the enterprise; one anonymous benefactor gave a silver communion service; another, who signed himself "Dust and Ashes," sent £550, and promised, after certain progress should have been made, to add £450 more; this man was afterward discovered to be a member of the Company, named Gabriel Barber. The elder Nicholas Ferrar left £300 in his will, and various contributions were added by his sons. A tract of land in Henricus was appropriated for the site of the college, and George Thorpe was sent out to be its rector, or, as we should say, its president. But Thorpe, as well as others who were interested in the enterprise, perished in the Indian massacre of 1622. It seems that Copeland was about to be sent to take his place, and the enterprise was about to be vigorously pushed on by Ferrar and his friends, when the overthrow of the Company took away all control over Virginian affairs from the people most interested in this work. So the scheme for a college remained in a state of suspended vitality for seventy years, until Dr. Blair revived it in 1692, and established it in the town of Williamsburg.
Puritans and Liberal Churchmen.
Everybody knows that the college of William and Mary is the oldest in the United States, after Harvard. It is not so generally known that the former was planned and all but established in 1622, eight years before Winthrop and his followers came to Massachusetts Bay. It is a just and wholesome pride that New England people feel in recalling the circumstances under which Harvard College was founded, in a little colony but six years of age, still struggling against the perils of the wilderness and the enmity of its sovereign. Such an event is quite properly cited in illustration of the lofty aims and intelligent foresight of the founders of Massachusetts. But it should not be forgotten that aims equally lofty and foresight equally intelligent were shown by the men who from 1619 to 1624 controlled the affairs of Virginia. One of the noblest features in the great Puritan movement was its zeal for education, elementary education for everybody and higher education for all who could avail themselves of it. It is important to remember that this zeal for education, as well as the zeal for political liberty, was not confined to the Puritans. Within the established Church of England and never feeling a desire to leave it, were eminent men who to the political principles of Pym joined a faith in education as strong as Locke's. The general temper of these men, of whom Richard Hooker was the illustrious master, was broadly tolerant. Sir Edwin Sandys was friendly to the Leyden Pilgrims, and it was under his administration that the Virginia Company granted them the patent under which they would have founded their colony on the coast of New Jersey or Delaware, had not foul weather driven the Mayflower to Cape Cod. It was Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar that were most energetic in the attempt to found a college in Virginia, and there were some curious points of resemblance between their situation in 1622 and the situation of Winthrop and his friends while they were laying the foundations of Harvard College. In 1622, while James I. was plotting the overthrow of the London Company, the horrors of Indian massacre, as sudden as lightning from a cloudless sky, fell upon the people of Virginia. In 1637 the people of Massachusetts had the Pequot war on their hands, and Charles I. was plotting the overthrow of the Company of Massachusetts Bay, against whose charter he was on the point of issuing a writ of quo warranto, when in St. Giles's church at Edinburgh one Sunday old Jenny Geddes threw her camp-stool at the bishop's head, and in the ensuing turmoil American affairs were quite forgotten.
Massachusetts and Virginia.
The comparison reminds us that the Company of Massachusetts Bay knew how to profit by the fate of its great predecessor, the London Company for Virginia. In the summer of 1629, when things were looking very dark in England, the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company held a meeting at Cambridge and decided to carry their company, with its charter, across the ocean to New England, where they might work out their purposes without so much danger from royal interference. This transfer of the Company to America was the most fundamental circumstance in the early history of New England. The mere physical fact of distance transformed the commercial company into a self-governing republic, which for more than fifty years managed its own affairs in almost entire independence of the British government. Difficulty of access and infrequency of communication were the safeguards of the Massachusetts Bay Company. If it had held its meetings and promulgated its measures in London, its life would not have been worth a five years purchase. It had the fate of the Virginia Company for a warning, and most adroitly did it profit by the lesson. If the Virginia Company could have been transferred bodily to America in 1620, it might perhaps have become similarly changed into a self-governing semi-independent republic; the interests of the Company would have been permanently identified with those of the colony, and the course of Virginian history might have been profoundly affected. As it was, Virginia attained through the fall of the Company to such measure of self-government as it had throughout the colonial period, a self-government much like that of Massachusetts after 1692, but far less complete than that of Massachusetts before 1684.
Death of James I.