USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 12
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¡ A Welsh name.
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Powell, John Rolfe, William Wickham, and Samuel Macock .* John Rolfe, who had been secretary, now lost his place, probably owing to his connivance at Argall's malepractices, and was suc- ceeded by John Pory. He was educated at Cambridge, where he took the degree of Master of Arts, in April, 1610. It is sup- posed that he was a member of the House of Commons. He was much of a traveller, and was at Venice in 1613, at Amsterdam in 1617, and shortly after at Paris. By the Earl of Warwick's influence he now procured the place of Secretary for the Colony of Virginia, having come over in April, 1619, with Sir George Yeardley, who appointed him one of his council.
In June, Governor Yeardley summoned the first legislative assembly that ever met in America. It assembled at James City or Jamestown, on Friday, the 30th of July, 1619, upwards of a year before the Mayflower left England with the Pilgrims. A record of the proceedings is preserved in the London State Paper Office, in the form of a Report from the Speaker, John Pory.t
John Pory, Secretary of the Colony, was chosen Speaker, and John Twine, Clerk. The Assembly sate in the choir of the church, the members of the council sitting on either side of the Governor, and the Speaker right before him, the Clerk next the Speaker, and Thomas Pierse, the Sergeant, standing at the bar.
* Macocks, the seat on James River, opposite to Berkley, was called after this planter, who was the first proprietor.
¡ This interesting document, discovered by Mr. Bancroft, was published by the New York Historical Society in 1857, and a number of copies were sent to Rich- mond by George Henry Moore, Esq., Secretary of that Society, for distribution among the members of the Assembly. The attention of Virginians was first drawn to the existence of this document by Conway Robinson, Esq., Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Virginia Historical Society.
The number of burgesses was twenty-two. For James City, Captain William Powell, Ensign William Spense; for Charles City, Samuel Sharpe and Samuel Jordan; for the City of Henricus, Thomas Dowse, John Polentine; for Kiccow- tan, Captain William Tucker, William Capp; for Martin-Brandon, Captain John Martin's Plantation, Mr. Thomas Davis, Mr. Robert Stacy; for Smythe's Hun- dred, Captain Thomas Graves, Mr. Walter Shelley; for Martin's Hundred, Mr. John Boys, John Jackson; for Argall's Gift, Mr. Pawlett, Mr. Gourgainy; for Flowerdieu Hundred, Ensign Rossingham, Mr. Jefferson; for Captain Lawne's Plantation, Captain Christopher Lawne, Ensign Washer; for Captain Ward's Plantation, Captain Ward, Lieutenant Gibbes.
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Before commencing business, prayer was said by Mr. Bucke, the minister. Each burgess then, as called on, took the oath of supremacy. When the name of Captain Ward was called, the Speaker objected to him as having seated himself on land without authority. Objection was also made to the burgesses appearing to represent Captain Martin's patent, because they were, by its terms, exempted from any obligation to obey the laws of the co- lony. Complaint was made by Opochancano, that corn had been forcibly taken from some of his people in the Chesapeake, by Ensign Harrison, commanding a shallop belonging to this Captain John Martin, "Master of the Ordinance." The Speaker read the commission for establishing the Council of State and the General Assembly, and also the charter brought out by Sir Thomas Yeardley. This last was referred to several committees for examination, so that if they should find anything "not perfectly squaring with the state of the colony, or any law pressing or binding too hard," they might by petition seek to have it re- dressed, "especially because this great charter is to bind us and our heirs forever." Mr. Abraham Persey was the Cape-mer- chant. The price at which he was to receive tobacco, "either for' commodities or upon bills," was fixed at three shillings for the best and eighteen pence for the second rate. After inquiry the burgesses from Martin's patent were excluded, and the Assembly "humbly demanded" of the Virginia Company an explanation of that clause in his patent entitling him to enjoy his lands as amply as any lord of a manor in England, adding, "the least the Assembly can allege against this clause is, that it is obscure, and that it is a thing impossible for us here to know the prerogatives of all the manors in England." And they prayed that the clause in the charter guaranteeing equal liberties and immunities to grantees, might not be violated, so as to "divert out of the true course the free and public current of justice." Thus did the first Assembly of Virginia insist upon the principle of the De- claration of Rights of 1776, that "no man or set of men are entitled to exclusive or separate emoluments or privileges from the community, but in consideration of public services." Certain of the instructions sent out from England were "drawn into laws" for protection of the Indians from injury, and regulating
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intercourse with them, and educating their children, and prepar- ing some of the most promising boys "for the college intended for them; that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion;" for regulating agriculture, tobacco, and sassafras, then the chief merchantable commodities raised. Upon Cap- tain Powell's petition, "a lewd and treacherous servant of his" was sentenced to stand for four days with his ears nailed to the pillory, and be whipped each day. John Rolfe complained that Captain Martin had made unjust charges against him, and cast "some aspersion upon the present government, which is the most temperate and just that ever was in this country-too mild, indeed, for many of this colony, whom unwonted liberty hath made insolent, and not to know themselves." On the last day of the session were enacted such laws as issued "out of every man's private conceit." "It shall be free for every man to trade with the Indians, servants only excepted upon pain of whipping, unless the master will redeem it off with the payment of an angel." "No man to sell or give any of the greater hoes to the Indians, or any English dog of quality, as a mastiff, greyhound, bloodhound, land or water spaniel." Any man selling arms or ammunition to the Indians, to be hanged so soon as the fact is proved. All ministers shall duly "read divine service, and exercise their ministerial function according to the ecclesiastical laws and orders of the Church of England, and every Sunday, in the afternoon, shall catechise such as are not ripe to come to the communion." All persons going up or down the James River were to touch at James City, "to know whether the governor will command them any service." "All persons whatsoever, upon the Sabbath days, shall frequent divine service and sermons, both forenoon and afternoon; and all such as bear arms shall bring their pieces, swords, powder, and shot."
Captain Henry Spellman, charged by Robert Poole, inter- preter, with speaking ill of the governor "at Opochancano's court," was degraded from his rank of captain, and condemned to serve the colony for seven years as interpreter to the governor. Paspaheigh, embracing three hundred acres of land, was also called Argallstown, and was part of the tract appropriated to the governor. To compensate the speaker, clerk, sergeant, and pro-
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vost marshal, a pound of the best tobacco was levied from every male above sixteen years of age. The Assembly prayed that the treasurer, council, and company would not "take it in ill part if these laws, which we have now brought to light, do pass current, and be of force till such time as we may know their further plea- sure out of England; for otherwise this people (who now at length have got their reins of former servitude into their own swindge) would, in short time, grow so insolent as they would shake off all government, and there would be no living among them." They also prayed the company to "give us power to allow or disallow of their orders of court, as his majesty hath given them power to allow or reject our laws." So early did it appear, that from the necessity of the case, the colony must in large part legislate for itself, and so early did a spirit of independence manifest itself. Owing to the heat of the weather, several of the burgesses fell sick, and one died, and thus the governor was obliged abruptly, on the fourth of August, to prorogue the Assembly till the first of March .* There being as yet no counties laid off, the repre- sentatives were elected from the several towns, plantations, and hundreds, styled boroughs, and hence they were called burgesses.
* Proceedings of the First Assembly of Virginia, in 1619.
CHAPTER XII.
1619-1621.
The New Laws-Yeardley, Governor-Affairs of the Colony-Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth-Negroes Imported into Virginia-Supplies sent out from England-Wives for the Colonists-The Bishops directed to take up Col- lections for aid of the Colony in erecting Churches and Schools-England claims a Monopoly of Virginia Tobacco-Charitable Donations.
THUS after eleven years of suffering, peril, discord, and tyranny, intermingled with romantic adventure, bold enterprise, the dignity of danger, virtuous fortitude, and generous heroism, were at length established a local legislature and a regular administration of right. The Virginia planters expressed their gratitude to the company, and begged them to reduce into a compend, with his majesty's approbation, such of the laws of England as were ap- plicable to Virginia, with suitable additions, "because it was not fit that his subjects should be governed by any other rules than such as received their influence from him." The acts of the As- sembly were transmitted to England for the approval of the treasurer and company. They were thought to have been very judiciously framed, but the company's committee found them "exceeding intricate and full of labor." There was granted to the old planters an exemption from all compulsive service to the colony, with a confirmation of their estates, which were to be holden as by English subjects.
It is remarkable, that from about 1614, for some seven years, James the First had governed England without a parliament; and the Virginia Company was during this period a rallying point for the friends of civil and religious freedom, and the colony en- joyed the privilege, denied to the mother country, of holding a legislative assembly.
Yeardley finding a scarcity of corn, undertook to promote the cultivation of it, and this year was blessed with abundant crops of grain. But an extraordinary mortality carried off not less
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than three hundred of the people. Three thousand acres of land were allotted to the governor, and twelve thousand to the com- pany. The Margaret, of Bristol, arrived with some settlers, and "also many devout gifts." The Trial brought a cargo of corn and cattle. The expenditure of the Virginia Company at this period, on account of the colony, was estimated at between four and five thousand pounds a year.
A body of English Puritans, persecuted on account of their nonconformity, had, in 1608, sought an asylum in Holland. In 1617 they conceived the design of removing to America, and in 1619 they obtained from the Virginia Company, by the influence of Sir Edward Sandys, the treasurer, "a large patent," author- izing them to settle in Virginia. They embarked in the latter part of the year 1620, in the Mayflower, intending to settle some- where near the Hudson River, which lay within the Virginia Company's territory. The Pilgrims were, however, conducted to the bleak and barren coast of Massachusetts, where they landed on the twenty-second day of December, (new style,) 1620, on the rock of Plymouth. Thus, thirteen years after the settlement of Jamestown, was laid the foundation of the New England States. The place of their landing was beyond the limits of the Virginia Company.
In the month of August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war visited Jamestown and sold the settlers twenty negroes, the first intro- duced into Virginia. Some time before this, Captain Argall sent out, at the expense of the Earl of Warwick, on a "filibustering" cruise to the West Indies, a ship called the Treasurer, manned "with the ablest men in the colony," under an old commission from the Duke of Savoy against the Spanish dominions in the western hemisphere. She returned to Virginia after some ten months, with her booty, which consisted of captured negroes, who were not left in Virginia, because Captain Argall had gone back to England, but were put on the Earl of Warwick's plantation in the Somer Islands .*
* Belknap, art. Argall, citing Declaration of Va. Council, 1623, and Burk's Hist. of Va., i. 319; Smith, ii. 39, where Rolfe gives the true date, 1619; Stith, 171; Beverley, B. i. 37; Chalmers' Annals, 49; Burk, i. 211, and Hening, i.
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It is probable that the planters who purchased the negroes from the Dutch man-of-war reasoned but little on the morality of the act, or if any scruples of conscience presented themselves, they could be readily silenced by reflecting that the negroes were heathens, descendants of Ham, and consigned by Divine appoint- ment to perpetual bondage .* The planters may, if they reasoned at all on the subject, have supposed that they were even perform- ing a humane act in releasing these Africans from the noisome hold of the ship. They might well believe that the condition of the negro slave would be less degraded and wretched in Virginia than it had been in their native country. This first purchase was probably not looked upon as a matter of much consequence, and for several ages the increase of the blacks in Virginia was so inconsiderable as not to attract any special attention. The con- dition of the white servants of the colony, many of them convicts, was so abject, that men, accustomed to see their own race in bondage, could look with more indifference at the worse condition of the slaves.
The negroes purchased by the slavers on the coast of Africa were brought from the interior, convicts sold into slavery, chil- dren sold by heathen parents destitute of natural affection, kid- napped villagers, and captives taken in war, the greater part of them born in hereditary bondage. The circumstances under which they were consigned to the slave-ship evince the wretched- ness of their condition in their native country, where they were the victims of idolatry, barbarism, and war. The negroes im- ported were usually between the ages of fourteen and thirty, two- thirds of them being males. The new negro, just transferred from the wilds of a distant continent, was indolent, ignorant of the modes and implements of labor, and of the language of his master, and perhaps of his fellow-laborers.t To tame and domes- ticate, to instruct in the modes of industry, and to reduce to
146, all (as Bancroft, i. 177, remarks, ) rely on Beverley. It may be added, that they were all misled by him in making the date 1620. I was enabled to rectify this date by an intimation from the Rev. Dr. Wm. H. Foote, author of "Sketches of Virginia."
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* Burk, i. 211.
¡ Bancroft, iii. 402.
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subordination and usefulness a barbarian, gross, obtuse, perverse, must have demanded persevering efforts and severe discipline.
While the cruel slave-trade was prompted by a remorseless cupidity, an inscrutable Providence turned the wickedness of men into the means of bringing about beneficent results. The system of slavery, doubtless, entailed many evils on slave and slave-holder, and, perhaps, the greater on the latter. These evils are the tax paid for the elevation of the negro from his aboriginal condition.
Among the vessels that came over to Virginia from England, about this time, is mentioned a bark of five tons. A fleet sent out by the Virginia Company brought over, in 1619, more than twelve hundred settlers .* The planters at length enjoyed the blessings of property in the soil, and the society of women. The wives were sold to the colonists for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, and it was ordered that this debt should have precedence of all others. The price of a wife afterwards became higher. The bishops in England, by the king's orders, collected nearly fifteen hundred pounds to build a college or university at Henrico, intended in part for the education of Indian children.t
* They were disposed of in the following way : eighty tenants for the gover- nor's land, one hundred and thirty for the company's land, one hundred for the college, fifty for the glebe, ninety young women of good character for wives, fifty servants, fifty whose labors were to support thirty Indian children ; the rest were distributed among private plantations.
+ The following is a copy of the letter addressed by the king on this occasion to the archbishops, authorizing them to invite the members of the church throughout the kingdom to assist in the establishment of the college, and such works of piety. The exact date of the letter has not been ascertained; but it was about the year 1620. It has never been published until recently, and is the first document of the kind ever issued in England for the benefit of the colonies. "It is as follows :-
"Most reverend father in God, right, trusty, and well-beloved counsellor, we greet you well. You have heard ere this time of the attempt of divers worthy men, our subjects, to plant in Virginia, (under the warrant of our letters pa- tents, ) people of this kingdom as well as for the enlarging of our dominions, as for the propagation of the gospel amongst infidels: wherein there is good pro- gress made and hope of further increase; so as the undertakers of that planta- tion are now in hand with the erecting of some churches and schools for the education of the children of those barbarians, which cannot but be to them a very great charge and above the expense which, for the civil plantation, doth
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In July, 1620, the population of the colony was estimated at four thousand. One hundred "disorderly persons" or convicts, sent over during the previous year by the king's order, were employed as servants .* For a brief interval the Virginia Company had enjoyed freedom of trade with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco; but in October, 1621, this was prohibited by an order in council; and from this time England claimed a mono- poly of the trade of her plantations, and this principle was gra- dually adopted by all the European powers as they acquired transatlantic settlements.t
come to them. In which we doubt not but that you and all others who wish well to the increase of Christian religion, will be willing to give all assistance and furtherance, you may, and therein to make experience of the zeal and devotion of our well-minded subjects, especially those of the clergy. Wherefore we do require you, and hereby authorize you to write your letters to the several bishops of the dioceses in your province, that they do give order to the ministers and other zealous men of their dioceses, both by their own example in contribution and by exhortation to others to move our people within their several charges to contribute to so good a work, in as liberal a manner as they may; for the better advancing whereof our pleasure is, that those collections be made in all the parti- cular parishes, four several times within these two years next coming; and that the several accounts of each parish, together with the moneys collected, be returned from time to time to the bishops of the dioceses, and by them be transmitted half yearly to you; and so to be delivered to the treasurer of that plantation to be employed for the godly purposes intended, and no other." (Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 315; Stith's Hist. of Va., 159.)
* Mr. Jefferson appears to have fallen into a mistake as to the period of time when malefactors were first shipped over to this country from England, for hc says: "It was at a late period of their history that the practice began." ( Writ- ings of Jefferson, i. 405.)
¡ Chalmers' Introduc., i. 15. The following letter accompanied a shipment of marriageable females sent out from England to Virginia :-
"LONDON, August 21, 1621.
"We send you a shipment, one widow and eleven maids, for wives of the people . of Virginia : there hath been especial care had in the choice of them, for there hath not one of them been received but upon good commendations.
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"In case they cannot be presently married, we desire that they may be put with several householders that have wives, until they can be provided with hus- bands. There are nearly fifty more that are shortly to come, and are sent by our honorable lord and treasurer, the Earl of Southampton, and certain worthy gentlemen, who, taking into consideration that the plantation can never flourish till families be planted, and the respect of wives and children for their people on the soil, therefore having given this fair beginning; reimbursing of whose
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Two persons unknown presented plate and ornaments for the communion-table at the college, and at Mrs. Mary Robinson's Church, so called because she had contributed two hundred pounds toward the founding of it. Another person unknown gave five hundred and fifty pounds for the education of Indian children in Christianity ; he subscribed himself "Dust and Ashes;" and was afterwards discovered to be Mr. Gabriel Barber, a member of the company.
charges it is ordered that every man that marries them, give one hundred and twenty pounds of best leaf tobacco for each of them.
"We desire that the marriage be free according to nature, and we would not have those maids deceived and married to servants, but only to such freemen or tenants as have means to maintain them. We pray you, therefore, to be fathers of them in this business, not enforcing them to marry against their wills." (Hubbard's note in Belknap, art. ARGALL.)
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CHAPTER XIII.
Proceedings in London of Virginia Company-Lord Southampton elected Trea- surer-Sir Francis Wyat appointed Governor-New frame of Government- Instructions for Governor and Council-George Sandys, Treasurer in Virginia -Notice of his Life and published Works-Productions of the Colony.
SIR EDWIN SANDYS held the office of treasurer of the com- pany but for one year, being excluded from a re-election by the arbitrary interference of the king. The election was by ballot. The day for it having arrived, the company met, con- sisting of twenty peers of the realm, near one hundred knights, together with as many more of gallant officers and grave lawyers, and a large number of worthy citizens-an imposing array of rank, and wealth, and talents, and influence. Sir Edwin Sandys being first nominated as a candidate, a lord of the bedchamber and another courtier announced that it was the king's pleasure not to have Sir Edwin Sandys chosen; and because he was un- willing to infringe their right of election, he (the king) would nominate three persons, and permit the company to choose one of them. The company, nevertheless, voted to proceed to an election, as they had a right to do under the charter. Sir Edwin Sandys withdrew his name from nomination, and, at his sugges- tion it was finally agreed that the king's messengers should name two candidates, and the company one. Upon counting the bal- lots, it was ascertained that one of the royal candidates received only one vote, and the other only two. The Earl of Southampton received all the rest.
The Virginia Company was divided into two parties, the mi- nority enjoying the favor of the king, and headed by the Earl of Warwick; the other, the liberal, or opposition, or reform party, headed by the Earl of Southampton. The Warwick faction were greatly embittered against Yeardley, and their virulence was increased by his having intercepted a packet from his own secre- tary, Pory, containing proofs of Argall's misconduct, to be used
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against him at his trial, which the secretary had been bribed by his friend, the Earl of Warwick, to convey to him. The mild and gentle Yeardley, overcome by these annoyances, at length re- quested leave to retire from the cares of office. His commission expired in November, 1621; but he continued in the colony, was a member of the council, and enjoyed the respect and esteem of the people. During his short administration, many new settle- ments were made on the James and York rivers; and the planters, being now supplied with wives and servants, began to be more content, and to take more pleasure in cultivating their lands. The brief interval of free trade with Holland had enlarged the demand for tobacco, and it was cultivated more extensively.
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