USA > Virginia > City of Williamsburg > City of Williamsburg > Site of old "James Towne," 1607-1698 : a brief historical and topographical sketch of the first American metropolis > Part 9
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12
Smith's departure from Virginia (October 5, 1609), was followed by such serious mismanagement by Captain Percy, who was chosen to conduct the government, that within eight months, " The Starving Time," about 430 out of about 490 persons suc- cumbed to famine and disease. At this juncture Gates, who had been cast away on the Bermudas, arrived with a slenderly provided party (May 20, 1610). Gates introduced the both famous and infamous laws, before mentioned, for the govern- ment of the colonists. These laws are plaintively described in a
108
THE SITE OF OLD " JAMES TOWNE."
petition drawn up by the so-called " ancient planters," modernly styled old citizens, as being "written in blood." Some of the offences which carried the death penalty were speaking im- piously of the Trinity, derisively of Holy Writ and calumniating the government officials. For minor offences they prescribed milder penalties, such as branding, whipping and thrusting a bodkin through the offender's tongue. There is record of the last named being inflicted on a man for slandering Ralph Hamor, secretary of state. The laws were to be read by minis- ters to their congregations every Sunday afternoon, and worse still, they provided for repeating a prayer by the "Captain of the watch," both morning and evening, containing fifty per cent. more words than all the prayers and chants of the morning service in the Book of Common Prayer.
About two weeks after Gates' arrival he yielded to the plead- ings of the settlers by abandoning Jamestown, being convinced that all would starve unless this were done (June 7, 1610). The ill and half-starved wretches embarked in their little ships and sailed down the river on their way home. About this time Sir Thomas West, the third Lord La Warr, the first governor of Virginia, under the London Company, arrived at Point Comfort and ordered the departing settlers to return, and by his words and example, for a time, inspired the people with new courage. Within a year La Warr was forced by ill health to leave Vir- ginia for England (March 28, 1611).
La Warr's successor, after a short term by Captain Percy, was Sir Thomas Dale, a heartless martinet, full of venom and vigor, who, about the time of La Warr's departure, arrived with " three tall ships" and three hundred men (May 19, 1611). Dale soon established settlements at Henrico, now Dutch Gap, and at Bermuda Hundred. He remained in the colony for about six years, and established a reputation of a high order, both for harshness and good management. John Smith, in a rather docile way, censures Dale's breaking on the wheel and racking his old and faithful sergeant, Jeffrey Abbott.
Captain Samuel Argall, than whom a more accomplished
109
THE SITE OF OLD "JAMES TOWNE."
scamp perhaps never lived, was Dale's lieutenant, and com- manded the expeditions sent from Jamestown against the French settlements in Nova Scotia, where he burned Port Royal, settled two years before Virginia, and brought Father Biard, a Jesuit, to Jamestown (1613). Dale would have hanged this priest, who was an eminently good man, had it not been that Argall, who was deeply indebted to him, interfered. With Father Biard and his companions as prisoners at Jamestown were two Spanish officers and a traitorous Englishman in the service of Spain, Lymbrye by name. The three last named prisoners were captured while reconnoitering ashore at Point Comfort. The prison at Jamestown during Dale's administra- tion appears to have been a vessel. Pocahontas was also at Jamestown at this time, as a quasi prisoner, but not in close confinement. After Captain Smith's departure she was resid- ing with Japazaws, Chief of the Potomacs, and his wife, by whom she was betrayed into Argall's hands for the price of a copper kettle.
Father Biard was liberated after about nine months, and Pocahontas was married shortly after to Rolfe. Of the two Spaniards, one died while a prisoner, and the other, Don Diego de Molina, a nobleman, after three years imprisonment, was carried by Dale to England when the latter left Virginia (May, 1616). Pocahontas, Rolfe and Lymbrye were also passengers with Dale, who, when times were dull at sea, hanged the last named from the yard arm. Dale's ship was named the Treas- urer, commanded by Captain Argall, and both ship and com- mander attained great notoriety as pirates.
Captain George Yeardley succeeded Sir Thomas Dale as deputy governor, referred to by Bancroft as " mild and ineffi- cient." During his term (May, 1616-May, 1617), Yeardley attacked the Chickahominy Indians on account of their refusing to furnish him with corn, according to a previous understanding with Dale, and also on account of their assuming a threatening attitude when Yeardley went to collect the corn from them. According to some accounts, Yeardley's above action was un-
110
THE SITE OF OLD "JAMES TOWNE."
justifiable, and it was stated by those who were unfriendly to him to have been a cause of the massacre of the colonists which occurred six years later.
In March, 1617, Pocahontas died at Gravesend in England, and Rolfe returned to Virginia, leaving his son Thomas with Sir Lewis Stukeley at Plymouth. After serving as governor for about a year, Captain Yeardley was relieved by Captain Samuel Argall as deputy governor to Lord La Warr. Argall left the colony clandestinely after about two years of misrule, and in less than a fortnight Yeardley, recently knighted, returned with the title of Governor and Captain General, as successor to Lord La Warr, who had died in 1618, while on his way to Virginia. Captain Nathaniel Powell was deputy governor during the ten days interval between the departure of Argall and the arrival of Yeardley.
The affairs of the Virginia colony had now been under the direction of Sir Thomas Smythe, treasurer or manager of the London Company, for about twelve years, during the greater part of which time more or less dissatisfaction was expressed with the management, on account of unremunerative results. Sir Thomas was a wealthy merchant, and took a leading part in most of the great enterprises of the day for extending commerce into distant lands. He was one of the founders of the scheme for discovering the Northwest Passage. In consequence of Argall's maladministration, despotic methods and dishonest acts while in the above office, Sir Thomas Smythe was severely censured by Sir Edwin Sandys and Sir Henry Wriothesley, Earl of South- ampton, leaders of one of the factions into which the Company had become divided on account of petty jealousies and differences of opinion as to its policies.
Both Sandys and Wriothesley were men of the highest char- acter. Sandys was one of the framers of the remonstrance addressed to King James on account of his treatment of his first Parliament. Wriothesley was a courageous man, who seldom hesitated to boldly assert his convictions. He was an intimate
THOMAS LAWARR, Third Baron Delaware First Governor of Virginia, under the London Company
111
THE SITE OF OLD "JAMES TOWNE."
of Sandys, who, it is stated, converted him to the reformed faith.
Sandys was the leader of the "independent party " in Par- liament, which opposed the Royal prerogative against "the rights of the Parliament and the liberty of the subject," and on account of his activity and zeal, in advocating this principle in Parliament, was, with other members, imprisoned. Thus did King James sow the wind of which Prince Charles was to reap the whirlwind.
At an election for treasurer of the Company held in April, 1619, Sir Thomas Smythe refused re-election, and the candi- dates placed in nomination by his faction, that of the merchants, were defeated by Sir Edwin Sandys, an advocate of a popular form of government in Virginia. The election of Sandys greatly angered the king, who recognized in it the influence in the London Company of those who in Parliament were opposed to his policies. At the election for treasurer in the following year the king forbade the nomination of Sandys, and proposed for the office the names of Smythe and three of his adherents. The company resented this invasion of its charter rights by electing by vociferous acclamation, to the office of treasurer, Sir Henry Wriothesley, "The friend of Shakespeare." On account of Wriothesley's election the king became still more in- censed against the Company, and at once set about to accom- plish its downfall. Wriothesley was re-elected treasurer during the succeeding four years of the Company's existence.
To further his plans for overthrowing the Company, the king called to his service Sir Samuel Argall, whom he knighted in June, 1622. He also summoned for the same purpose Nathaniel Butler, erstwhile governor of the Bermudas, who, on account of malfeasance in office, had fled to Virginia, where during his three months sojourn in 1622 he perpetrated several high- handed acts, among them that of stealing Dame Dale's cows. Dame Dale was the relict of Sir Thomas, and at that time re- sided in the suburbs of Jamestown.
On Butler's return to England he published, at the instance
112
THE SITE OF OLD "JAMES TOWNE."
of the king, " The Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia as it was in the Winter of 1622." In this paper Butler attacked the management of colonial affairs under Sandys and South- ampton, and defended the administration of Sir Thomas Smythe. Butler's charges were replied to in an equally quaint and curious document styled " The denial of Nathaniel Butler's the Unmasked Face," etc. It was subscribed to by twenty-four persons, including Sir Francis Wyatt, Governor, the members of Wyatt's Council and members of the Assembly. Another paper of similar import to " The Unmasked Face," bearing the title of " The Alderman's Declaration," emanating from Alderman Johnson, who had been Sir Thomas Smythe's deputy while he was treasurer, was also answered by practically the same persons who had replied to Butler's screed.
The following extracts from Stith's rendition of the answer to " The Alderman's Declaration " and from "The denial of Nathaniel Butler's 'The unmasked Face,'" furnish a pathetic epitome of the tragedy of the early settlement :
From the answer to the " Alderman's Declaration :"-" That in those twelve years of Sir Thomas Smith's government the colony for the most part remained in great want and misery & under most severe and cruel laws, which were sent over in print, and that the allowance of a man in those times was only eight ounces of meal and half a pint of pease a day, both the one and the other being moldy, rotten, full of cob webs and maggots, loathsome to man and not fit for beasts which forced many to fly to the savage Enemy in relief who being again taken were put to sundry kinds of death by hanging, shooting, breaking upon the wheel and the like. That others were forced by famine to filch for their bellies of whom one for stealing three pints of oatmeal had a bodkin thrust thro his tongue and was chained to a tree till he starved. That if a man thro' sickness had not been able to work he had no allowance at all and so perished. That many through these extremities dug holes in the Earth and there hid themselves till they famished. * * That the scarcity sometimes was so lamentable that they were constrained to eat dogs, cats,
113
THE SITE OF OLD "JAMES TOWNE."
rats, snakes, toadstools, horse-hides, and what not. That one man out of the misery he endured killed his wife and powdered her up to eat for which he was burnt, that many others fed upon the corpses of dead men and that one who through custom had got an insatiable appetite for that food could not be restrained till he was executed for it and that indeed so miserable was their state that the happiest day many ever hoped to see was when the Indians killed a mare, the people wishing as she was boiling that Sir Thomas Smith was on her back in the kettle."
From the " denial " to Nathaniel Butler's " The unmasked Face:" " His computation of 10,000 souls falleth short of 4,000 & those were in great part wasted by the more than Egyptian slavery and Scythian cruelty which was exercised on us your poore and miserable subjects by Laws written in blood and execu- ted with all kinds of Tyranny in the time of Sir Thomas Smith's government, whereof we send your Majesty the true and Tragical Relation."
It is to be inferred from these acrimonious writings that the material condition of the settlers could not have been much worse under one administration than the other; also that under the Smythe régime this condition resulted, in a large measure, from perfunctoriness, indifference and bad management, while under Sandys and Southampton the last named was the sole cause.
It is generally understood that on account of the assistance rendered by Butler in furthering the king's efforts to destroy the Company, the charges of mal-administration against him were suppressed.
In the spring of 1623 a formal complaint was lodged with the Privy Council and Lord Treasurer against the Company. This was ably answered and the charges refuted by Sandys, Cavendish and Ferrar, who, for their pains, were placed under duress. The king then appointed a commission to investigate affairs in Virginia, including Sir Samuel Argall, Captain John Harvey, John Pory, Abraham Peirsey and Samuel Matthews. The commissioners found in the local Virginia government warm supporters of the Sandys and Southampton administra- 8-J. T.
114
THE SITE OF OLD " JAMES TOWNE."
tions. In the summer of 1623 the attorney general rendered an opinion advising that the government of Virginia be transferred to the king. The company was called on to surrender its char- ter. This order Sandys and his associates declined to obey. A petition from the Company to Parliament to consider the rights of the Company was met by the king's order to forbear, and the petition was tabled. Quo warranto proceedings fol- lowed. In presenting the case for the Crown the attorney general held that the power conferred on the Company by the charter in respect to immigration was too great, and that by its exercise the depopulating of Great Britain might result, by all of its people being transferred to America. This argument was considered irrefutable by the lord chief justice, and on June 16, 1624, the Company's charter was annulled.
An attempt was made to re-establish the Company about fourteen years later, but King Charles assured the remonstrating colonists that this would not be done.
Yeardley was appointed governor towards the close of the Smythe régime, but owed his appointment to the influence of the Sandys faction. He appears to have been especially selected to succeed La Warr on account of his aptitude for carrying out the Sandys policy of a popular form of government. He served for upwards of two years (April 19, 1619-November 18, 1621). His term was made famous by three incidents, viz., the con- vening of the first legislative body in America (July 30, 1619), the arrivals of young women sent to Virginia to become wives of the settlers, and the arrival of the first African slaves (August, 1619). The Assembly met at this time in the little frame church fifty feet by twenty feet in plan, built in Argall's term. and previously referred to, and the pomp and ceremony with which the meetings were conducted must have contrasted strangely with the simplicity and rudeness of this little edifice.
Sir Francis Wyatt, Knight, succeeded Yeardley. He was a man of education, but apparently not a soldier. About this time (May 28, 1621) the opinion was expressed by a Virginia divine, Parson Stockton, that "till their [the Indian's] Priests
SIR EDWIN SANDYS Second Treasurer of the London Company
SIR HENRY WRIOTHESLEY
Third Earl of Southampton Third and last Treasurer of the London Company
115
THE SITE OF OLD " JAMES TOWNE."
and Ancients have their throats cut, there is no hope to bring them to conversion." This heroic treatment, while only sug- gested by the clergyman, in despair of bettering the spiritual condition of the savages, was adopted by the latter in the massacre on March 22 (Good Friday), 1622, of the unsuspecting and confiding settlers.
Wyatt remained in Virginia as governor for about six years, and was joined by Lady Wyatt in the second year of his term, or about a year after the first massacre.
Notwithstanding the improved condition of the colonists, com- pared with that previously existing, Lady Wyatt, writing to her sister in England, states that the ship in which she crossed the Atlantic was " so pestered with people and goods, so full of in- fection, that after a while they saw little but throwing folks overboard." On land she found little to encourage her, and would be undone unless her sister or mother could help her. Butter, bacon, cheese and malt were especially needed.
In the year of the massacre and that following, there was a great influx of immigrants, inadequately provided with sub- sistence stores. On account of the hostility of the Indians and the abandoning of farms after the massacre, very. little maize was planted and harvested. George Sandys, treasurer, uncle of Lady Wyatt, in writing home states that " the living could hardly bury the dead;" also that the beer furnished by a contractor named Dupper had " poisoned most of the passengers on ship- board, and had spread the infection all over the colony;" evi- dently referring to an epidemic of some kind unstated, possibly cholera.
During Wyatt's first term occurred one of the most important events in the colony's history, viz., the formal granting of a constitution providing for a civil form of government, of which the convening of the legislature about two years before by Yeardley was the forerunner.
On the retiring of Sir Francis Wyatt from office, Sir George Yeardley began his second term as governor (May, 1626), which was terminated in about six months by his death on Novem-
'116
THE SITE OF OLD "" JAMES TOWNE."
ber 27, 1627. His father was a merchant tailor of London. Sir George served with distinction against the Spaniards, in the Netherlands, and came to Virginia seventeen years before his death as captain of Lieutenant Governor Gates' company. He owned an estate at Flowerdew1 Hundred on James River, and another in Accomac County on the "Eastern Shore." He is criticised by one writer for making a great parade in London after he was knighted, and the poet George Sandys, in a letter to England, relates that he was " too much taken up with his own affairs." With his name are associated the most pleasing memo- ries of " James Towne."
According to Yeardley's second commission, Captain John Harvey was to succeed him in event of his death, and Captain Francis West, brother of Lord La Warr, was named as successor to Harvey. The latter being in the naval service under Buck- ingham, West was duly installed in the office, which he filled for about sixteen months. At this time the immigration to Virginia was very large.
Dr. John Pott was elected by the Council to act as governor on March 5, 1629, during Captain West's absence in England, and held the position till the arrival of the new governor and captain- general, Sir John Harvey (March 24, 1630). The hypercritical George Sandys, the poet, refers to Dr. Pott, in one of his letters from Jamestown, as " a pitiful councillor," and in another as "a cipher."
A notable act of the Assembly approved by Governor Pott provided for attacking the Indians at intervals of four months, and another restricted the quantity of tobacco to be planted by each person.
Several months after Dr. Pott was relieved by Sir John Har- vey he was convicted of appropriating other people's cattle, but sentence was withheld till the matter could be submitted to the king. In the meanwhile, the members of the Council became
1 Professor Arber suggests that the intended name was Florida Hundred.
117
THE SITE OF OLD " JAMES TOWNE."
the ex-governor's bondsmen, and Mrs Pott hurried across the Atlantic and personally appealed to King Charles I, who finding the evidence insufficient, granted the pardon.
Governor Harvey was one of the commissioners sent by King James I to Virginia, prior to the annulling of the London Com- pany's charter in 1623, to report on the condition of the colony. He at that time patented a tract of land on the south bank of the James River, about five-eighths mile below the present wharf (see map). While Sir John was governor, he lived, according to some accounts, in considerable style. A former fellow sea captain named De Vries tells of Harvey's meeting him at the wharf with an escort of halberdiers and musqueteers and of entertaining him right royally at his Jamestown home.
Sir John incurred the dislike of his Council by his friendly attitude towards the forming of Lord Baltimore's colony of Maryland out of northern Virginia. Dislike was ripened into open hostility by the governor's contumacious conduct, and cul- minated in open revolt when he intercepted the councillors' letters to the king. He was finally deposed and sent back to England (April 28, 1635). King Charles disapproved of the Council's course in deposing Harvey, and within two years sent him back to Virginia to resume the office of governor. He re- lieved Captain John West January 18, 1637, who had been elected acting governor by the Council.
About the time of Harvey's deposal occurred the famous little battle between citizens of Virginia and Maryland, whose diminu- tive navies were respectively commanded by Ratcliff Warner and Councillor Thomas Cornwallis. The question at issue was, to which of the above colonies Kent Island belonged.
The immigration to Virginia was larger during Harvey's administration than ever before. Nearly all of these immi- grants were indentured servants. The building of brick houses was begun, and the first possessor of one, Richard Kemp, wrote about this time that there was " Scarce any but hath his garden and orchard." Kemp's house, according to my investigations, was slightly east of the dwelling house built after the War
118
THE SITE OF OLD "JAMES TOWNE."
between the States on the site of the former Ambler-Jaquelin mansion, burned during that war. No more striking proof could be afforded of the simple life of the Jamestonians of that time, a full generation after the first settlement was made, than the pride which they displayed over the acquiring of the first brick house, only sixteen by twenty-four feet.
The establishment of the first free institution of learning in the New World by the bequest of Benjamin Symms in 1635, antedated the endowment by John Harvard of the university that bears his name. Symms' school was situated in Elizabeth City Parish, Virginia, not far from Point Comfort.
This was not the first effort made in Virginia in behalf of education. Fifteen years earlier fifteen hundred pounds ster- ling had been raised by the English bishops at the instance of King James the First for erecting a college for educating the Indians, and a single contribution of five hundred and fifty pounds sterling was made for the same purpose in 1622. The scheme of educating the Indians seems to have been abandoned after the massacre of 1622.
At the expiration of Harvey's second term (November, 1639), he was reduced almost to beggary by judgments obtained against him by those whom he had defrauded during his administrations.
Sir Francis Wyatt succeeded Harvey, and held the office of governor for one and one-half years (February, 1642).
Richard Kemp was secretary of state under Sir Francis Wyatt, and was accused of secretly leaving Virginia and carrying away the charter and records of the colony. He subsequently returned and filled his former office under the successor of Wyatt, Sir William Berkeley.
In Bruton Parish Churchyard near the door of the north transept of the church is a tomb placed by Philip Ludwell, bearing an epitaph to his uncle, Thomas Ludwell, Sir Thomas Lunsford, Knight, and Richard Kemp, the two last named being buried elsewhere in the churchyard.
The annals of Jamestown of the time of Sir William Berke- ley's administrations are full of interest. Sir William is prob-
119
THE SITE OF OLD " JAMES TOWNE."
ably oftener referred to than any other colonial governor. He took his degree at Oxford at the age of nineteen, and subse- quently traveled extensively on the continent. He was a versa- tile man, and among his achievements wrote a play, " The Lost Lady," which Pepys notes in his diary having seen performed in London. When he came to Virginia in 1642, he displayed great zeal in performing his duties, and manifested a deep in- terest in the welfare of the people and extreme loyalty to the sovereign. In his later years he was irascible, covetous and despotic.
Sir William was a perfervid Royalist, and a man of great ambitions. He was a staunch supporter of the State Church and enforced the laws excluding those of other sects from Virginia. His failure to amass great wealth and attain advancement after spending thirty-four years in Virginia, coupled with poor health, probably accounts, in a large measure, for the petulant and overbearing disposition for which he was noted in the closing years of a career which began so auspiciously, and terminated so ignominiously.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.