The people of Jamestown in the years from 1626 to 1640, when they saw a vessel coming up the river, must have crowded around the landing place to ask sailors and passengers for the latest news from England. Was King Charles still raising funds with which to run the government by means of forced loans? Was he still billeting his soldiers on the people? Was martial law in force? They must have been thrilled to hear of the Petition of Rights in which the House of Commons protested against Charles' arbitrary rule.
When the Burgesses came to town for a session of the Assembly, the struggle between King and Parliament must have been the chief topic of conversation around the table in each crude little tavern. Now it was the jailing of nine members of the House of Commons; now the granting of monopolies; now the collecting of ship money; now the suppression of free speech; now the proceedings of the Star Chamber; now the efforts of Archbishop Laud to enforce religious conformity.
The Virginians were fully aware that these events affected them profoundly. They had just won a degree of self-government. If the King succeeded in his efforts to make himself absolute in England, all their gains might be lost. Might he not overthrow their Assembly? If he could imprison men arbitrarily in England, he would not hesitate to do so in Virginia. If he could tax the people of England under the thin veil of loans, or the revival of ancient laws, would he hesitate to tax the colonists without their own consent? Might he not place over them another Dale or Argall to hang men or break them on the wheel?
So when Sir George Yeardley, their liberal Governor, died in November, 1627, they were filled with grief. They remembered that it was he who had brought over the Virginia Magna Carta, and had called the first Assembly. We have lost "a main pillar of this our building and thereby a support to the whole body," wrote the Council.[1]
Their concern must have been all the greater because Yeardley's commission of March 14, 1626, named John Harvey as his successor. The Virginians knew this man well. He had been one of the King's commissioners who came to the colony in 1624 to draw up a report on conditions there to be used in overthrowing the charter of the Company. Just why it was thought that he was the right man to act as Governor is not apparent, for he was a mariner by vocation and had served as captain of a ship which went to the East Indies in 1617. In November, 1625, we find him in command of a ship in the expedition against Cadiz. He may have owed his appointment as Governor to Viscount Dorchester, the Secretary of State, whom he thanked for his "wonted nobleness" to him.
But Virginia was to have a breathing space before Harvey's arrival. Yeardley's commission had specified that in the absence of Harvey the Council should elect one of their number to act in his place. They chose Captain Francis West, brother of Lord De la Warr.[2] West was a seasoned Virginian, for he had come to the colony in 1608 with Captain Newport. He had been commander of Jamestown many years, and a member of the Council since 1619. It was during his brief administration that the first legal Assembly since the dissolution of the London Company was called together, the Assembly which rejected the King's proposal for a tobacco contract.
In March, 1629, West was appointed agent for the colony and sent to England. To serve as Governor until his return or the arrival of Harvey, the Council chose Dr. John Pott. This man had been in Virginia since 1621, when he came over as "Physician to the Company" and member of the Council. He was described as "a Master of Arts ... well practiced in chirurgery and physic, and expert in distilling of waters, besides many other ingenious devices."[3] He seems to have consumed a goodly quantity of "distilled waters" himself, for he was fond of his cups and jovial company. George Sandys wrote of him that "he kept company too much with his inferiors, who hung upon him while his good liquor lasted."[4]
The most notable of Pott's "ingenious devices" was the poisoning of a large number of Indians after the massacre of 1622. In justification of this act, his friends explained that the barbarous and perfidious savages knew nothing about the rules of war, so it was fair play to resort to anything that tended to their ruin. But this did not save Pott from criticism in England. The Earl of Warwick was so shocked that at his request Pott was left out of the Council because "he was the poisoner of the savages there." But he seems to have been forgiven, for in 1626 we find him once more in his seat.
It was during Pott's administration that Lord Baltimore visited Virginia. In 1623 he had received a grant of land in Newfoundland, and had planted a colony of English Catholics there. But when four years later he visited the place, he found "the air so intolerable cold as it is hardly to be endured." He wrote King Charles that he had decided to move with some forty persons to Virginia, and petitioned for "a precinct of land there."
On October 1, 1629, he, with his wife and children, arrived at Jamestown. Here he met with a cool reception. A certain Thomas Tindall got into an altercation with him, called him a liar, and threatened to knock him down. The Virginians did not want in their midst a group of Catholics who were trying to lop off one of the most fertile parts of their territory. So to get rid of them the Governor and Council tendered my Lord the oath of supremacy, knowing that as a Catholic he could not take it, for to do so was to acknowledge the King as the supreme authority in ecclesiastical matters. When he refused they asked him to leave. This he did, but since he left his family in Virginia, it was obvious that he intended to return. So William Claiborne was sent after him as agent for the colony to oppose his designs.