USA > Virginia > History of the colony and ancient dominion of Virginia > Part 13
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Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the com- pany's council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of South- ampton, appointed Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentle- man of Ireland, whose education, family, fortune, and integrity, well qualified him for the place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and brought over a new frame of govern- ment constituted by the company, and dated July the 24th, 1621, establishing a council of State and a general assembly -vesting the governor with a negative upon the acts of the assembly; this body to be convoked by him in general once a year, and to consist of the council of State and of two burgesses from every town, hundred, or plantation; the trial by jury se- cured; no act of the assembly to be valid unless ratified by the company in England; and, on the other hand, no order of the company to be obligatory upon the colony without the consent of the assembly. This last feature displays that spirit of constitu- tional freedom which then pervaded the Virginia Company. A commission bearing the same date with the new frame of govern- ment recognized Sir Francis Wyat as the first governor under it; and this famous ordinance became the model of every subse- quent provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies .*
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* Chalmers' Introduc., i. 13-16 ; Belknap, art. SIR FRANCIS WYAT. Belknap is an excellent authority, as accurate as Stith without his diffuseness; and Hub- bard's notes are worthy of the text. The ordinance and commission may be seen in Hening's Statutes at Large, i. 110-113.
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Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the permanent guidance of the governor and council. He was to provide for the service of God in conformity with the Church of England as near as may be; to be obedient to the king, and to administer justice according to the laws of England; not to injure the natives, and to forget old quarrels now buried; to be industrious, and to suppress drunkenness, gaming, and ex- cess in clothes; not to permit any but the council and heads of hundreds to wear gold in their clothes, or to wear silk, till they make it themselves; not to offend any foreign prince; to punish pirates; to build forts; to endeavor to convert the heathen; and each town to teach some of the Indian children fit for the college which was to be built; to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals, dyes, gums, and medicinal drugs, and to draw off the people from the excessive planting of tobacco; to take a census of the colony ; to put 'prentices to trades and not let them forsake them for planting tobacco, or any such useless commo- dity; to build water-mills; to make salt, pitch, tar, soap, and ashes; to make oil of walnuts, and employ apothecaries in dis- tilling lees of beer; to make small quantity of tobacco, and that very good.
Wyat, entering on the duties of his office on the eighteenth of November, dispatched Mr. Thorpe to renew the treaties of peace and friendship with Opechancanough, who was found apparently well affected and ready to confirm the pledges of harmony. A vessel from Ireland brought in eighty immigrants, who planted themselves at Newport's News. The company sent out during this year twenty-one vessels, navigated with upwards of four hun- dred sailors, and bringing over thirteen hundred men, women, and children. The aggregate number of settlers that arrived during 1621 and 1622 was three thousand five hundred.
With Sir Francis Wyat came over George Sandys, treasurer in Virginia, brother of Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the com- pany in England. George Sandys, who was born in 1577, after passing some time at Oxford, in 1610, travelled over Europe to Turkey, and visited Palestine and Egypt. He published his travels, at Oxford, in 1615, and they were received with great
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favor. The first poetical production in Anglo-American litera- ture was composed by him, while secretary of the colony; and in the midst of the confusion which followed the massacre of 1622,- "by that imperfect light which was snatched from the hours of night and repose,"-he translated the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the First Book of Virgil's Æneid, which was published in 1626, and dedicated to King Charles the First. He also pub- lished several other works, and enjoyed the favor of the literary men of the day. Dryden pronounced Sandys the best versifier of his age. Pope declared that English poetry owed much of its beauty to his translations; and Montgomery, the poet, renders his meed of praise to the beauty of the Psalms translated by him. Having lived chiefly in retirement, he died in 1643, at the house of Sir Francis Wyat, in Bexley, Kent. A fine copy of the trans- lation of Ovid and Virgil, printed in 1632, in folio, elegantly illustrated, once the property of the Duke of Sussex, is now in the library of Mr. Grigsby. Mr. Thomas H. Wynne, of Rich- mond, also has a copy of this rare work.
CHAPTER XIV.
Use of Tobacco in England-Raleigh's Habits of Smoking-His Tobacco-box- Anecdotes of Smoking-King James, his Counterblast-Denunciations against Tobacco-Amount of Tobacco Imported.
IN 1615 twelve different commodities had been shipped from Virginia; sassafras and tobacco were now the only exports. During the year 1619 the company in England imported twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, the entire crop of the preceding year. James the First endeavored to draw a "prerogative" revenue from what he termed a pernicious weed, and against which he had published his "Counterblast;" but he was restrained from this illegal measure by a resolution of the House of Com- mons. In 1607 he sent a letter forbidding the use of tobacco at St. Mary's College, Cambridge.
Smoking was the first mode of using tobacco in England, and when Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom among people of fashion, in order to escape observation he smoked pri- vately in his house, (at Islington,) the remains of which were till of late years to be seen, as an inn, long known as the Pied Bull. This was the first house in England in which it was smoked, and Raleigh had his arms emblazoned there, with a tobacco-plant on the top. There existed also another tradition in the Parish of St. Matthew, Friday Street, London, that Raleigh was accus- tomed to sit smoking at his door in company with Sir Hugh Mid- dleton. Sir Walter's guests were entertained with pipes, a mug of ale, and a nutmeg, and on these occasions he made use of his tobacco-box, which was of cylindrical form, seven inches in diameter and thirteen inches long; the outside of gilt leather, and within a receiver of glass or metal, which held about a pound of tobacco. A kind of collar connected the receiver with the case, and on every side the box was pierced with holes for the pipes. This relic was preserved in the museum of Ralph Thoresby, of
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Leeds, in 1719, and about 1843 was added, by the late Duke of Sussex, to his collection of the smoking utensils of all nations .*
Although Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom of smoking tobacco in England, yet its use appears to have been not entirely unknown before, for one Kemble, condemned for heresy in the time of Queen Mary the Bloody, while walking to the stake smoked a pipe of tobacco. Hence the last pipe that one smokes was called the Kemble pipe.
The writer of a pamphlet, supposed to have been Milton's father, describes many of the play-books and pamphlets of that day, 1609, as "conceived over night by idle brains, impregnated with tobacco smoke and mulled sack, and brought forth by the help of midwifery of a caudle next morning." At the theatres in Shakespeare's time, the spectators were allowed to sit on the stage, and to be attended by pages, who furnished them with pipes and tobacco.
About the time of the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, the characteristics of a man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt- handled sword, and a Spanish dagger; to play at cards or dice in the chamber of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard, or at the playhouse.
The peers engaged in the trial of the Earls of Essex and Southampton smoked much while they deliberated on their ver- dict. It was alleged against Sir Walter Raleigh that he used tobacco on the occasion of the execution of the Earl of Essex, in contempt of him; and it was perhaps in allusion to this circum- stance that when Raleigh was passing through London to Win- chester, to stand his trial, he was followed by the execrations of the populace, and pelted with tobacco-pipes, stones, and mud. On the scaffold, however, he protested that during the execution of Essex he had retired far off into the armory, where Essex could not see him, although he saw Essex, and shed tears for him. Raleigh used tobacco on the morning of his own execution.
As early as the year 1610 tobacco was in general use in Eng-
* Introduction to " A Counterblast to Tobacco, by James the First, King of England," published at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1843.
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land. The manner of using it was partly to inhale the smoke and blow it out through the nostrils, and this was called "drink- ing tobacco," and this practice continued until the latter part of the reign of James the First. In 1614 the number of tobacco- houses in or near London was estimated at seven thousand. In 1620 was chartered the Society of Tobacco-pipe Makers of Lon- don; they bore on their shield a tobacco-plant in full blossom.
The "Counterblast against Tobacco," attributed to James the First, if in some parts absurd and puerile, yet is not without a good deal of just reasoning and good sense; some fair hits are made in it, and those who have ridiculed that production might find it not easy to controvert some of its views. King James, in his Counterblast, does not omit the opportunity of expressing his hatred toward Sir Walter Raleigh, in terms worthy of that des- picable monarch. He continued his opposition to tobacco as long as he lived, and in his ordinary conversation oftentimes argued and inveighed against it.
The Virginia tobacco in early times was imported into England in the leaf, in bundles, as at present; the Spanish or West Indian tobacco in balls. Molasses or other liquid preparation was used in preparing those balls. Tobacco was then, as now, adulterated in various ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots, that is, white jars. The tobacco was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for light- ing pipes, and among the rich silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes called the Ameri- can Silver Weed.
The Turkish Vizier thrust pipes through the noses of smokers; and the Shah of Persia cropped the ears and slit the noses of those who made use of the fascinating leaf. The Counterblast says of it: "And for the vanity committed in this filthy custom, is it not both great vanity and uncleanness, that at the table -- a place of respect of cleanliness, of modesty-men should not be ashamed to sit tossing of tobacco-pipes and puffing of smoke, one at another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof to exhale athwart the dishes, and infect the air, when very often men who abhor it are at their repast? Surely smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining-chamber; and yet it makes the kitchen
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oftentimes in the inward parts of man, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-takers that after their deaths were opened."
"A Counterblast to Tobacco," by James the First, King of England, was first printed in quarto, without name or date, at London, 1616. In the frontispiece was engraved the tobacco- smoker's coat of arms, consisting of a blackamoor's head, cross- pipes, cross-bones, death's-head, etc. It is not improbable that it was intended to foment the popular prejudice against Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced the use of tobacco into Eng- land, and who was put to death in the same year, 1616. King James alludes to the introduction of the use of tobacco and of Raleigh as follows: "It is not so long since the first entry of this abuse among us here, as that this present age cannot very well remember both the first author and the form of the first in- troduction of it among us. It was neither brought in by king, great conqueror, nor learned doctor of physic. With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some two or three savage men were brought in together with this savage custom; but the pity is, the poor wild barbarous men died, but that vile barbarous custom is still alive, yea, in fresh vigor; so as it seems a miracle to me how a custom springing from so vile a ground, and brought in by a father so generally hated, should be welcomed upon so slender a warrant."
The king thus reasons against the Virginia staple: "Secondly, it is, as you use or rather abuse it, a branch of the sin of drunken- ness, which is the root of all sins,* for as the only delight that drunkards love any weak or sweet drink, so are not those (I mean the strong heat and fume) the only qualities that make tobacco so delectable to all the lovers of it? And as no man loves strong heavy drinks the first day, (because nemo repente fuit turpissi- mus,) but by custom is piece and piece allured, while in the end a drunkard will have as great a thirst to be drunk as a sober man to quench his thirst with a draught when he hath need of it; so is not this the true case of all the great takers of tobacco, which therefore they themselves do attribute to a bewitching quality in
* And one from which the king himself was not free.
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it? Thirdly, is it not the greatest sin of all that you, the people of all sorts of this kingdom, who are created and ordained by God to bestow both your persons and goods for the maintenance both of the honor and safety of your king and commonwealth, should disable yourself to this shameful imbecility, that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jew's Sabbath but you must have a reeky coal brought you from the next poor-house to kindle your tobacco with? whereas he cannot be thought able for any service in the wars that cannot endure oftimes the want of meat, drink, and sleep; much more then must he endure the want of tobacco." A curious tractate on tobacco, by Dr. Tobias Venner, was published at London in 1621. The author was a graduate of Oxford, and a physician at Bath, and is mentioned in the Oxoniæe Athenienses .*
The amount of tobacco imported in 1619 into England, from Virginia, being the entire crop of the preceding year, was twenty thousand pounds. At the end of seventy years there were annu- ally imported into England more than fifteen millions of pounds of it, from which was derived a revenue of upwards of £100,000.+
In April, 1621, the House of Commons debated whether it was expedient to prohibit the importation of tobacco entirely; and they determined to exclude all save from Virginia and the Somer Isles. It was estimated that the consumption of England amounted to one thousand pounds per diem. This seductive narcotic leaf, which soothes the mind and quiets its perturba- tions, has found its way into all parts of the habitable globe, from the sunny tropics to the snowy regions of the frozen pole. Its fragrant smoke ascends alike to the blackened rafters of the lowly hut, and the gilded ceilings of luxurious wealth.
. * A copy of this rare pamphlet was lent me by N. S. Walker, Esq., of Rich- mond.
¡ Chalmers, Introduc. to Hist. of Revolt of Amer. Colonies, i. 13.
.
CHAPTER XV.
1621-1622.
Silk in Virginia-Endowment of East India School-Ministers in Virginia-Ser- mon at Bow Church-Corporation of Henrico.
IN November and December, 1621, at an assembly held at James City, acts were passed for encouraging the planting of mulberry-trees, and the making of silk; but this enterprise, so early commenced in Virginia, and so earnestly revived of late years, is still unsuccessful; and it may be concluded that the climate of Virginia is unpropitious to that sort of production.
The Rev. Mr. Copeland, Chaplain on board of the Royal James, East Indiaman, on the return voyage from the East Indies, prevailed upon the officers and crew of that ship to con- tribute seventy pounds toward the establishment of a church and school in Virginia, and Charles City County was selected as the site of it, and it was to be called the East India School, and to be dependent upon the college at Henrico. The Virginia Com- pany allotted one thousand acres of land for the maintenance of the master and usher, and presented three hundred acres to Mr. Copeland. Workmen were accordingly sent out early in 1622, to begin the building. The clergymen in Virginia at this time were Messrs. Whitaker, Mease, Wickham, Stockham, and Bargrave .*
The following is found in the early records :-
THE CORPORATION OF HENRICO.
On the northerly ridge of James River, from the falls down to Henrico, con- taining ten miles in length, are the public lands, surveyed and laid out ; whereof, ten thousand acres for the university lands, three thousand acres for the com- pany's lands, with other lands belonging to the college. The common land for that corporation, fifteen hundred acres.
On the southerly side, beginning from the falls, there are there patented, viz. :-
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ANCIENT DOMINION OF VIRGINIA.
Early in 1622 very favorable intelligence from Virginia reached England, and upon this occasion, on the seventeenth of April, the Rev. Mr. Copeland, by appointment, preached before the Vir- ginia Company, at Bow Church. He was shortly afterwards appointed a member of the Virginia Council and rector of the college established for the conversion of the Indians; but all these benevolent purposes and hopeful anticipations were sud- denly darkened and defeated by the news of a catastrophe which had, in a few hours, blasted the labors of so many years.
Acres.
Acres.
John Petterson.
100
Peter Nemenart
110
Anthony Edwards.
100
William Perry.
100
Nathaniel Norton
100
John Plower.
100
John Proctor
200
Surveyed for the use of the
Thomas Tracy
100
iron-work.
John Vithard
100
Edward Hudson 100
Francis Weston
300
Thomas Morgan .. 150
Phettiplace Close.
100
Thomas Sheffield. 150
John Price
150
Cosendale, within the Corporation of Henrico :--
Acres.
Acres.
Lieut. Edward Barckley
112
Peter Nemenart
40
Richard Poulton.
100
Thomas Tindall
100
Robert Analand
200
Thomas Reed.
100
John Griffin
50
John Laydon
200
CHAPTER XVI.
1622.
The Massacre-Its Origin, Nemattanow-Opechancanough-Security of Colo- nists-Perfidy of the Indians-Particulars of Massacre-Its Consequences- Brave Defence of some-Supplies sent from England-Captain Smith's Offer.
ON the twenty-second day of March, 1622, there occurred in the colony a memorable massacre, which originated, as was be- lieved, in the following circumstances: There was among the Indians a famous chief, named Nemattanow, or "Jack of the Feather," as he was styled by the English, from his fashion of decking his hair. He was reckoned by his own people invulner- able to the arms of the English. This Nemattenow coming to the store of one of the settlers named Morgan, persuaded him to go to Pamunkey to trade, and murdered him by the way. Nc- mattanow, in two or three days, returned to Morgan's house, and finding there two young men, Morgan's servants, who inquired for their master, answered them that he was dead. The young men, seeing their master's cap on the Indian's head, sus- pected the murder, and undertook to conduct him to Mr. Thorpe, who then lived at Berkley, on the James River, since well known as a seat of the Harrisons, and originally called "Brickley." Nemattanow so exasperated the young men on the way that they shot him, and he falling, they put him into a boat and conveyed him to the governor at Jamestown, distant seven or eight miles. The wounded chief in a short time died. Feeling the approaches of death, he entreated the young men not to disclose that he had been mortally wounded by a bullet: so strong is the desire for posthumous fame even in the breast of a wild, untutored savage !
Opechancanough, the ferocious Indian chief, agitated with min- gled emotions of grief and indignation at the loss of his favorite Nemattanow, at first muttered threats of revenge; but the re- torted defiance of the English made him for a time smother his resentment and dissemble his dark designs under the guise of
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friendship. Accordingly, upon Sir Francis Wyat's arrival, all suspicion of Indian treachery had died away; the colonists, in delusive security, were in general destitute of arms; the planta- tions lay dispersed, as caprice suggested, or a rich vein of land allured, as far as the Potomac River ;* their houses everywhere open to the Indians, who fed at their tables and lodged under their roofs. About the middle of March, a messenger being sent upon some occasion to Opechancanough, he entertained him kindly, and protested that he held the peace so firm that "the sky should fall before he broke it." On the twentieth of the same month, the Indians guided some of the English safely through the forest, and the more completely to lull all suspicion, they sent one Brown, who was sojourning among them for the purpose of learning their language, back home to his master. They even borrowed boats from the whites to cross the river when about holding a council on the meditated attack. The massacre took place on Friday, the twenty-second of March, 1622. On the evening before, and on that very morning, the Indians, as usual, came unarmed into the houses of the unsuspecting colo- nists, with fruits, fish, turkeys, and venison for sale : in some places they actually sate down to breakfast with the English. At about the hour of noon the savages, rising suddenly and everywhere at the same time, butchered the colonists with their own implements, sparing neither age, nor sex, nor condition; and thus fell in a few hours three hundred and forty-nine men, women, and children. The infuriated savages wreaked their vengeance even on the dead, dragging and mangling the lifeless bodies, smearing their hands in blood, and bearing off the torn and yet palpitating limbs as trophies of a brutal triumph.
Among their victims was Mr. George Thorpe, (a kinsman of Sir Thomas Dale,) who had been of the king's bedchamber, deputy to the college lands, and one of the principal men of the colony -a pious gentleman, who had labored zealously for the conver- sion of the Indians, and had treated them with uniform kindness. As an instance of this, they having at one time expressed their fears of the English mastiff dogs, he had caused some of them
* Beverley, 39.
11
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to be put to death, to the great displeasure of their owners. Opechancanough inhabiting a paltry cabin, Mr. Thorpe had built him a handsome house after the English manner .* But the savage miscreants, equally deaf to the voice of humanity and the emotions of gratitude, murdered their benefactor with every cir- cumstance of remorseless cruelty. He had been forewarned of his danger by a servant, but making no effort to escape, fell a victim to his misplaced confidence. With him ten other persons were slain at Berkley.
Another of the victims was Captain Nathaniel Powell, one of the first settlers, a brave soldier, and who had for a brief interval filled the place of governor of the colony. His family fell with him. Nathaniel Causie, another of Captain Smith's old soldiers, when severely wounded and surrounded by the Indians, slew one of them with an axe, and put the rest to flight. At Warras- queake a colonist named Baldwin, by repeatedly firing his gun, saved himself and family, and divers others. The savages at the same time made an attempt upon the house of a planter named Harrison, (near Baldwin's,) where were Thomas Hamor with some men, and a number of women and children. The Indians tried to inveigle Hamor out of the house, by pretending that Opechancanough was hunting in the neighboring woods and de- sired to have his company; but he not coming out, they set fire to a tobacco-house ; the men ran toward the fire, and were pursued by the Indians, who pierced them with arrows and beat out their brains. Hamor having finished a letter that he was writing, and suspecting no treachery, went out to see what was the matter, when, being wounded in the back with an arrow, he returned to the house and barricaded it. . Meanwhile Harrison's boy, find- ing his master's gun loaded, fired it at random, and the Indians fled. Baldwin still continuing to discharge his gun, Hamor, with twenty-two others, withdrew to his house, leaving their own in flames. Hamor next retired to a new house that he was building, and there defending himself with spades, axes, and brickbats, escaped the fury of the savages. The master of a vessel lying
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