A History of American Christianity

by Leonard Woolsey Bacon

The Virginia Company was a Puritan corporation.[44:1] As such, its meetings and debates were the object of popular interest and of the royal jealousy. Among its corporators were the brothers Sandys, sons of the Puritan Archbishop of York, one of whom held the manor of Scrooby. Others of the corporation were William Brewster, of Scrooby, and his son Edward. In the fleet of Sir Thomas Gates, May, 1609, were noted Puritans, one of whom, Stephen Hopkins, "who had much knowledge in the Scriptures and could reason well therein," was clerk to that "painful preacher," but not strict conformist, Master Richard Buck. The intimate and sometimes official relations of the Virginia Company not only with leading representatives of the Puritan party, but with the Pilgrims of Leyden, whom they would gladly have received into their own colony, are matter of history and of record. It admits of proof that there was a steady purpose in the Company, so far as it was not thwarted by the king and the bishops of the court party, to hold their unruly and ill-assorted colony under Puritan influences both of church and government.[45:1] The fact throws light on the remoter as well as the nearer history of Virginia. Especially it throws light on the memorable administration of Sir Thomas Dale, which followed hard upon the departure of Lord de la Warr and his body-guard in red cloaks.

The Company had picked their man with care—"a man of good conscience and knowledge in divinity," and a soldier and disciplinarian proved in the wars of the Low Countries—a very prototype of the great Cromwell. He understood what manner of task he had undertaken, and executed it without flinching. As a matter of course—it was the way in that colony—there was a conspiracy against his authority. There was no second conspiracy under him. Punishment was inflicted on the ringleaders so swift, so terrible, as to paralyze all future sedition. He put in force, in the name of the Company, a code of "Laws, Divine, Moral, and Martial," to which no parallel can be found in the severest legislation of New England. An invaluable service to the colony was the abolition of that demoralizing socialism that had been enforced on the colonists, by which all their labor was to be devoted to the common stock. He gave out land in severalty, and the laborer enjoyed the fruits of his own industry and thrift, or suffered the consequences of his laziness. The culture of tobacco gave the colony a currency and a staple of export.

With Dale was associated as chaplain Alexander Whitaker, son of the author of the Calvinistic Lambeth Articles, and brother of a Separatist preacher of London. What was his position in relation to church parties is shown by his letter to his cousin, the "arch-Puritan," William Gouge, written after three years' residence in Virginia, urging that nonconformist clergymen should come over to Virginia, where no question would be raised on the subject of subscription or the surplice. What manner of man and minister he was is proved by a noble record of faithful work. He found a true workfellow in Dale. When this statesmanlike and soldierly governor founded his new city of Henrico up the river, and laid out across the stream the suburb of Hope-in-Faith, defended by Fort Charity and Fort Patience, he built there in sight from his official residence the parsonage of the "apostle of Virginia." The course of Whitaker's ministry is described by himself in a letter to a friend: "Every Sabbath day we preach in the forenoon and catechise in the afternoon. Every Saturday, at night, I exercise in Sir Thomas Dale's house." But he and his fellow-clergymen did not labor without aid, even in word and doctrine. When Mr. John Rolfe was perplexed with questions of duty touching his love for Pocahontas, it was to the old soldier, Dale, that he brought his burden, seeking spiritual counsel. And it was this "religious and valiant governor," as Whitaker calls him, this "man of great knowledge in divinity, and of a good conscience in all things," that "labored long to ground the faith of Jesus Christ" in the Indian maiden, and wrote concerning her, "Were it but for the gaining of this one soul, I will think my time, toils, and present stay well spent."

The progress of the gospel in reclaiming the unhappy colony to Christian civilization varies with the varying fortunes of contending parties in England. Energetic efforts were made by the Company under Sandys, the friend of Brewster, to send out worthy colonists; and the delicate task of finding young women of good character to be shipped as wives to the settlers was undertaken conscientiously and successfully. Generous gifts of money and land were contributed (although little came from them) for the endowment of schools and a college for the promotion of Christ's work among the white people and the red. But the course of events on both sides of the sea may be best illustrated by a narrative of personal incidents.

In the year 1621, an East India Company's chaplain, the Rev. Patrick Copland, who perhaps deserves the title of the first English missionary in India, on his way back from India met, probably at the Canaries, with ships bound for Virginia with emigrants. Learning from these something of the needs of the plantation, he stirred up his fellow-passengers on the "Royal James," and raised the sum of seventy pounds, which was paid to the treasurer of the Virginia Company; and, being increased by other gifts to one hundred and twenty-five pounds, was, in consultation with Mr. Copland, appropriated for a free school to be called the "East India School."

The affairs of the colony were most promising. It was growing in population and in wealth and in the institutions of a Christian commonwealth. The territory was divided into parishes for the work of church and clergy. The stupid obstinacy of the king, against the remonstrances of the Company, perpetrated the crime of sending out a hundred convicts into the young community, extorting from Captain Smith the protest that this act "hath laid one of the finest countries of America under the just scandal of being a mere hell upon earth." The sweepings of the London and Bristol streets were exported for servants. Of darker portent, though men perceived it not, was the landing of the first cargo of negro slaves. But so grateful was the Company for the general prosperity of the colony that it appointed a thanksgiving sermon to be preached at Bow Church, April 17, 1622, by Mr. Copland, which was printed under the title, "Virginia's God Be Thanked." In July, 1622, the Company, proceeding to the execution of a long-cherished plan, chose Mr. Copland rector of the college to be built at Henrico from the endowments already provided, when news arrived of the massacre which, in March of that year, swept away one half of the four thousand colonists. All such enterprises were at once arrested.

In 1624 the long contest of the king and the court party against the Virginia Company was ended by a violent exercise of the prerogative dissolving the Company, but not until it had established free representative government in the colony. The revocation of the charter was one of the last acts of James's ignoble reign. In 1625 he died, and Charles I. became king. In 1628 "the most hot-headed and hard-hearted of prelates," William Laud, became Bishop of London, and in 1633 Archbishop of Canterbury. But the Puritan principles of duty and liberty already planted in Virginia were not destined to be eradicated.

From the year 1619, a settlement at Nansemond, near Norfolk, had prospered, and had been in relations of trade with New England. In 1642 Philip Bennett, of Nansemond, visiting Boston in his coasting vessel, bore with him a letter to the Boston church, signed by seventy-four names, stating the needs of their great county, now without a pastor, and offering a maintenance to three good ministers if they could be found. A little later William Durand, of the same county, wrote for himself and his neighbors to John Davenport, of New Haven, to whom some of them had listened gladly in London (perhaps it was when he preached the first annual sermon before the Virginia Company in 1621), speaking of "a revival of piety" among them, and urging the request that had been sent to the church in Boston. As result of this correspondence, three eminently learned and faithful ministers of New England came to Virginia, bringing letters of commendation from Governor Winthrop. But they found that Virginia, now become a royal colony, had no welcome for them. The newly arrived royal governor, Sir William Berkeley, a man after Laud's own heart, forbade their preaching; but the Catholic governor of Maryland sent them a free invitation, and one of them, removing to Annapolis with some of the Virginia Puritans, so labored in the gospel as to draw forth the public thanks of the legislative assembly.

The sequel of this story is a strange one. There must have been somewhat in the character and bearing of these silenced and banished ministers that touched the heart of Thomas Harrison, the governor's chaplain. He made a confession of his insincere dealings toward them: that while he had been showing them "a fair face" he had privately used his influence to have them silenced. He himself began to preach in that earnest way of righteousness, temperance, and judgment, which is fitted to make governors tremble, until Berkeley cast him out as a Puritan, saying that he did not wish so grave a chaplain; whereupon Harrison crossed the river to Nansemond, became pastor of the church, and mightily built up the cause which he had sought to destroy.