USA > Virginia > Virginia, a history of the people > Part 3
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At the end of the century this long period of fierce
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
struggle ended - the foes seemed to have exhausted themselves. But the enterprise of the time was still unsated and demanded new fields. In spite of the dis- astrous ending of the Roanoke experiment, longing eyes had continued to be fixed on America, and the same glamour surrounded " Virginia" for the new generation as for the old. Beyond the Atlantic was the virgin Continent, unexplored by Englishmen, awaiting brave hearts and strong hands. To a people so ardent and restless the prospect was full of attraction. Virginia was the promised land, and they had only to go and occupy it. There the fretting cares and poverty of the Old World would be forgotten, and stirring action would replace the dull inaction of peace at the end of so much fighting. For the daring there was the charm of ad- venture in an unexplored world; for the selfish the hope of profit, and for the pious the great work of converting the Indian "heathen." The first charter expressed this longing - " that so noble a work may by the providence of God hereafter tend to the glory of His Divine Majesty in propagating of the Christian religion to such people as sit in darkness and miser- able ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God."-" This is the work that we first intended," says a writer of the time, "and have published to the world to be chief in our thoughts, to bring the infidel people from the worship of Devils to the service of God." And worthy Mr. Crashaw exhorted the adven- turers, about to embark for Virginia, to " remember that the end of this voyage is the destruction of the Devil's kingdom."
These were some of the causes which led to the set- tlement of America by the English.
13
THE OLDEST AMERICAN CHARTER.
III.
THE OLDEST AMERICAN CHARTER.
AT last, in 1606, the ardent desire of the Englishmen of the time to settle Virginia began to take shape. A brave sea-captain, Bartholomew Gosnold, was the main- spring of the enterprise. He had made the first direct voyage across the Atlantic to New England, and meant now to establish a colony, if possible in the milder south. He found sympathizers in Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers, two brave and pious gentle- men, Richard Hakluyt, prebendary of Westminster, Robert Hunt, an exemplary clergyman, Edward Maria Wingfield, a London merchant, and John Smith, an English soldier.
This famous chevalier, who was to become the soul of the enterprise and the founder of Virginia, was born in Willoughby, England, in January, 1579. His family were connected with the Lancashire gentry, but he was left a poor orphan, and before he had grown to manhood had served as a private soldier in the Flanders wars. He then wandered away like a knight-errant in search of adventures; joined the forces of Sigismund Bathori, who was making war on the Turks in Transylvania ; slew three Turkish " champions " in single combat, for which he was knighted; was captured and reduced. to slavery by the Turks, but escaped to Russia; and thence returned by way of Germany, France, Spain, and Morocco, to England, which he reached in 1604, when he was twenty-five. He had left home an unknown youth, and returned a famous man. He was young in years, but old in experience, in suffering, and in those elements which lie at the foundation of greatness. His
..
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
portrait, with sweeping mustache and frank glance, is the portrait of a fighting man ; but under it may be discerned the administrator and ruler.
When Smith came back to England, Elizabeth was dead and the reign of James I. had just begun. The city of London was full of soldiers returned from the Continental wars, and this restless social element gladly welcomed the Virginia enterprise. They were men of every character - brave soldiers and the scum of war ; frequented the "Mermaid " and other taverns ; jostled the citizens ; and flocked to the tlieatres, where Shake- speare's plays were the great attraction. The dramatist had not yet retired to Stratford, and it is probable that Smith made his acquaintance then or afterward, as he wrote "they have acted my fatal tragedies on the stage." The stage in London meant the Globe or Blackfriars, in which Shakespeare was a stockholder ; and Smith made his complaint to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, the " W. H." of the Shakespearean son- nets. This personal acquaintance of the soldier and the writer is merely conjectural, but it is interesting to fancy them together at the "Mermaid," talking, per- haps, of the Virginia enterprise and the strange stage of the "Tempest," written a few years afterwards. Smith and Gosnold became friends, and the wandering soldier caught the fever of exploration and adventure in Amer- ica. When the scheme at last took form, he had be- come a prominent advocate of the enterprise, and was appointed by the King one of the first counsellors.
James I. had authorized the undertaking, and it was now launched. He busied himself in drawing up his royal charter for the government of the colony, and April 10, 1606, the paper was ready.
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THE OLDEST AMERICAN CHARTER.
By this oldest of American charters two colonies were directed to be established in the great empire of Virginia. The southern colony was intrusted to Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and others, and was to be "planted " anywhere between thirty-four and forty-one degrees of north latitude, corresponding to the southern limits of North Carolina, and the mouth of the Hudson River. It was to extend fifty miles north and fifty miles south of the spot selected for the settle- ment ; one hundred miles into the land; and to embrace any islands within the same distance of the coast.
The association governing the southern colony was styled the London Company ; the northern colony was intrusted to the Plymouth Company ; and a strip of territory one hundred miles broad was to intervene be- tween the two. Three years afterwards (1609) the boundaries of the southern colony were enlarged and exactly defined. It was to embrace the territory two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of Old Point Comfort, the mouth of James River, and to reach " up into the land from sea to sea." This was the original charter under which Virginia held at the time of the formation of the Federal Constitution in 1788.
The plan of government for the colony was simple. Everything began and ended with the King. A great council of thirteen in London, appointed by himself, was to govern. A subordinate council in Virginia, ap- pointed by the greater, was to follow his instructions. Thus the colony of Virginia was to be ruled and directed in all its proceedings by the royal will, since the King appointed its rulers, and directed under his sign-manual in what manner they were to rule. The details were generally judicious. The Christian religion was to be
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
preached to the Indians; lands were to descend as in England ; trial by jury was secured to all persons charged with crime ; the subordinate council was to try civil causes ; and the products of the colonists were to be brought to a public storehouse, where a Cape mer- chant or treasurer was to control and apportion them as they were needed. This early development of the so- cialistic and cooperative idea resulted unfortunately ; but for the moment it had a plausible appearance on paper. What was plain about the charter was, that the colony of Virginia would have no rights other than those which King James I. chose to allow it. His " instruc- tions " were to be the law, and he held to that theory with all the obstinacy of a narrow mind to the end of his life.
Having secured this charter the friends of the enter- prise made every preparation for the voyage. About one hundred colonists were secured, apparently without · difficulty, and at the end of the year 1606 all was ready for the expedition. The little fleet consisted of three vessels, one of twenty tons, one of forty, and one of a hundred, the names of which were the Discovery, the Good Speed, and the Susan Constant.
On the 19th of December, 1606, these three ships set sail down the Thames for Virginia.
IV.
JAMESTOWN.
THE sailing of the ships excited general interest even in so busy a city as London. Prayers were offered up in the churches for the welfare of the expedition, and
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JAMESTOWN.
the poet Drayton wished his countrymen good fortune in a glowing lyric : -
" You brave heroic minds Worthy your country's name, That honor still pursue Whilst loitering hinds Lurk here at home with shame, Go and subdue!
" Britons! you stay too long, Quickly aboard bestow you, And with a merry gale Swell your stretch'd sail With vows as strong As the winds that blow you !
" And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice To get the pearls and gold, And ours to hold Virginia Earth's only paradise."
The character and motives of these first Virginia ad- venturers have been the subject of discussion. There is really nothing to discuss. They were men of every rank, from George Percy, brother of the Earl of North- umberland, to Samuel Collier, "boy ;" and in the lists were classed as "gentlemen, carpenters, laborers," and others. Unfortunately more than half the whole num- ber were "gentlemen," and a gentleman at the time signified a person unused to manual labor. As to the motives of the adventurers, these lay on the surface. To get the pearls and gold was no doubt the thought in the minds of the majority, but this was not the only aim. Many had it warmly at heart to convert the Indians to Christianity, and others looked to the extension of Eng- lish empire. The dissensions of the first years were due 2
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
to causes which will be stated; but a radical defect was the unfitness of the original colonists for their work. More than half their number had never used an axe, and "jewellers, gold refiners, and a perfumer," were among the people sent to fight the American wilder- ness.
The three small ships sailed down the Thames, fol- lowed by prayers and good wishes, and, after tossing in the Channel for some weeks, went out to sea. For reasons unexplained they were not in charge of Bartholo- mew Gosnold, but of Captain Christopher Newport ; and, following the old southern route by way of the Azores, safely reached the West Indies toward the spring. A curious incident of the voyage was the arrest of Smith by the other leaders. He was charged with a design to murder them and make himself "King of Virginia ; " and he afterwards stated that a gallows was erected to execute him. Nothing more is known of this singular occurrence. Smith remained under arrest until after the arrival in Virginia, when the first American jury tried and acquitted him.
It was the intention to found the colony on the old site, Roanoke Island, but a violent storm drove the ships northward quite past the shores of Wingandacoa, and they reached the mouth of Chesapeake Bay. In this they took shelter toward the end of April 1607, and the beauty of the country induced the commanders of the expedition to settle there instead of at Roanoke. The low shores were covered with " flowers of divers colors; " the " goodly trees " were in full foliage; and all around was inviting. A party landed to look at the country, and had their first experience with the Indians. They were received with a flight of arrows from the
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JAMESTOWN.
lurking people hidden in the tall grass, but they fled at a volley from the English guns, and the party returned to the ships, which continued their way. Before them was the great expanse of Chesapeake Bay, the " Mother of Waters " as the Indian name signified, and in the distance the broad mouth of a great river, the Pow- hatan. As the ships approached the western shore of the bay the storm had spent its force, and they called the place Point Comfort. A little further, - at the present Hampton, - they landed and were hospitably received by a tribe of Indians. The ships then sailed on up the river, which was new-named James River, and parties landed here and there, looking for a good site for the colony. A very bad one was finally se- lected, - a low peninsula half buried in the tide at high water. Here the adventurers landed on May 13, 1607, and gave the place the name of Jamestown, in honor of the King.
Nothing remains of this famous settlement but the ruins of a church tower covered with ivy, and some old tombstones. The tower is crumbling year by year, and the roots of trees have cracked the slabs, making great rifts across the names of the old Armigers and Honour- ables. The place is desolate, with its washing waves and flitting sea-fowl, but possesses a singular attraction. It is one of the few localities which recall the first years of American history ; but it will not recall them much longer. Every distinctive feature of the spot is slowly disappearing. The river encroaches year by year, and the ground occupied by the original huts is already sub- merged.
The English landed and pitched tents, but soon found it more agreeable to lodge "under boughs of trees "
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
.
in the pleasant May weather, until they built cabins. These were erected on the neck of the peninsula, and before the summer they had settled into something like a community. From the moment of landing they had paid sedulous attention to the exercises of religion. An " old rotten tent " was the first church in the American wilderness. The next step was to stretch an awning between the trunks of trees ; to nail a bar between two of these to serve as a reading-desk - and here " the re- ligious and courageous divine," Mr. Hunt, read the ser- vice morning and evening, preached twice every Sun- day, and celebrated the Holy Communion at intervals of three months. After a while the settlers busied them- selves in constructing a regular church. It was not an imposing structure, since the chronicle describes it as a log building " covered with rafts, sedge, and dirt," but soon they did better. When Lord Delaware came, in 1610, he found at Jamestown a church sixty feet long and twenty-four broad, the first permanent religious edi- fice erected by Englishmen in North America.
The Virginians had thus made a good beginning. They had felled trees, built houses, erected a church, and were saying their prayers in it, like honest people who were bent on doing their duty in that state of life in which it had pleased Heaven to place them. But the whole cheerful prospect was overclouded by a simple circumstance. Their leaders were worthless. The names of the Council had not been announced in Eng- land by King James. He had had the eccentric fancy of sealing them up in a box, which was not to be opened until the expedition reached Virginia. The box had then been opened and the Councillors were found to be Bartholomew Gosnold, John Smith, Edward Maria
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JAMESTOWN.
Wingfield, Christopher Newport, John Ratcliffe, John Martin, and George Kendall. One and all of these men, with the exception of Smith and Gosnold, were grossly incompetent ; and Gosnold died soon afterwards, and Smith was still under arrest and excluded from the Council. Wingfield had been elected President, but it was soon seen that he was a man of no capacity. He was indolent, self-indulgent, wanting in every faculty which should characterize a ruler, and his mind was haunted by the idea that Smith was secretly plotting to murder him and usurp his authority. The rest of the Council were no better, and the promise of the future was gloomy. The little band of Englishmen were in a new country, surrounded by enemies, and those who ruled over them seemed unconscious of their perilous situation.
Soon the Indian peril revealed itself. A party of men sailed up James River and paid a visit to Pow- hatan, Emperor of the country, near the present site of Richmond. They found him in his royal wigwam, - a "sour " old man of whom more will be said hereafter, - and after a brief interview returned to Jamestown. Exciting intelligence awaited them. In their absence, a band of Indians had attacked the colonists while plant- ing corn, and a flight of arrows had killed one man and wounded seventeen others, but a cannon shot fired from the ships had put the dusky people to rout. It was more than probable that the sour old emperor had di- rected this onslaught, and the palisade was mounted with cannon and a guard established.
It was plain from this dangerous incident, that the Virginia colony required a military ruler. Wingfield . was a merchant and fainéant, utterly unfitted for his
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
position. Smith was still under arrest, but all at once he demanded a trial. This, Wingfield strove to evade ; he would send him home to England to be tried by the authorities, he said. But the restive soldier suddenly flamed out. He would be tried in Virginia as was his right - there was the charter ! and the trial took place. The result was a ruinous commentary on the characters of Wingfield and the Council. The testimony of their own witnesses convicted them of subornation of perjury to destroy Smith ; he was acquitted by the jury of all the charges against him; and Kendall, who had con- ducted the prosecution, was condemned to pay him £200 damages. This sum was presented by Smith to the colony for the general use, and then the foes partook of the Communion, and the soldier was admitted to his seat in the Council.
Such was the first open trial of strength between Smith and the factionists. He was destined to have more, involving the very life of the colony. For the moment all was quiet, however, and Newport sailed for England to report and obtain supplies, leaving one of the barks, the Pinnace, for the use of the colony. From this, were to spring woes unnumbered.
V.
THE TERRIBLE SUMMER OF 1607.
THE colony now seemed prosperous. The skies were blue and the corn was growing ; the supply of provisions was sufficient for three months, and the settlers, in their " Monmouth caps, Irish stockings, and coats of mail," went in and out about their occupations, with a sense
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THE TERRIBLE SUMMER OF 1607.
of security. The reed-thatched huts were defended by cannon, but Powhatan had " sued for peace," and the men met and ate their food from the " common kettle " without fear.
But under this fair outside was the canker of incapac- ity and misrule. In the bright days all went well, but discerning eyes might have seen that in the hour of trial the leaders would be found wanting. The old chronicle paints the men with pitiless accuracy. They had neither brains, courage, nor morals, nor anything good about them. Wingfield, the President, had corrupted his easily- corrupted associates, and the whole bad crew spent their time in idleness and gluttony. The enterprise had grievously disappointed them, and, seeing no further profit in it, they were looking for an opportunity to abandon it. The true men looked sidewise at them since Smith's trial, and shook their heads. It was the next thing to a certainty that when the dark hour came they would desert their comrades and leave them to de- struction.
Soon the dark hour arrived. A worse enemy than the Indians assailed the colony. With July came the sul- try " dog days " of the southern summer, and the marshy banks of the river, sweltering in the sun, sweated a poi- sonous malaria which entered into the blood of the Eng- lish. The whole colony was prostrated by a virulent epidemic. All thought of guarding against the Indians was abandoned. The supply of food was soon exhausted, and destruction stared them in the face. The men lay wasting away in the sultry cabins. Those who were not attacked were too few to wait on the sick, scarcely enough to drag them out and bury them when they died. " Burning fevers destroyed them," says George Percy,
-
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
writing of this terrible time, " some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of mere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a foreign country in such misery as we were, in this new discovered Virginia." Night and day men were heard " groaning in every cor- ner of the fort, most pitiful to hear." The writer seems to groan himself as he remembers the fearful scene. " If there were any conscience in men," he exclaims, " it would make their hearts to bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and outcries . . . some departing out of the world, sometimes three and four in a night ; in the morning their bodies trailed out of the cabins like dogs to be buried."
By the month of September famine and fever had swept off fifty men, one half the colony, and among the dead were Bartholomew Gosnold and Thomas Studley, the treasurer. Smith was left to contend single-handed with Wingfield and his followers. These people now showed their true characters, and added cowardice to in- capacity. Wingfield and Kendall made an effort to seize the Pinnace and escape to England ; but the col- onists rose in their wrath and dealt promptly with them. They deposed them from the Council and elected Rat- cliffe President in Wingfield's place ; but Ratcliffe was little better than his predecessor, and did nothing to suc- cor them. The only hope was Smith, and the settlers compelled him by popular uprising to assume the con- trol of the colony.
Smith acted with energy, for the poor people were nearly starving. By an interposition of Providence, the Indians had voluntarily brought them a small sup- ply of corn ; but this was soon exhausted, and Smith went down James River to obtain more. The tribe at
.
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THE TERRIBLE SUMMER OF 1607.
Hampton refused it, when he fired a volley into the crowd, captured their idol, seized the supplies, and re- turned to Jamestown. Another expedition followed, from which Smith returned at a critical moment. Wingfield and Kendall had again seized the Pinnace and were on the point of escaping, but Smith opened on them with cannon and they were compelled to sur- render. Short work was made of Kendall, the ring- leader of the conspiracy. He was tried by a jury, found guilty, and shot. The life of Wingfield was spared, but he was deprived of all authority. He remained in the colony "living in disgrace," and anxiously looking for an opportunity to return to England.
Thus with famine and disease, hot turmoil and con- spiracy, the groans of the dying in the huts, and the sudden thunder of Smith's cannon summoning the mu- tineers to surrender, passed this terrible summer of 1607. It tried the stoutest hearts, but had this much of good in it, that it showed the adventurers who was their true leader. In the midst of the general despondency one man at least had refused to give way to despair. Though sick himself of the fever, Smith had labored unceasingly for the rest. When " ten men could neither go nor stand," he had fed the sick and dying, infused hope into the survivors, and had the right to say of him- self what he said of Pocahontas, that he " next under God was still the instrument to preserve this colony from death, famine, and utter confusion."
At last the dawn appeared ; the long night of suffer- ing was at an end. The fall came with its fresh winds, driving away the malaria. The healthful airs restored the sick. The rivers were full of fish and wild fowl, and the corn was fit for bread. There was no longer
G
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VIRGINIA: A HISTORY OF THE PEOPLE.
any danger that the colony would be destroyed by dis- ease or want. A kind Providence, watching over the weak and suffering, had preserved the remnant, and the Virginia plantation had risen as it were from the very brink of the grave. A bitter winter followed - " an ex- traordinary frost in most parts of Europe and as ex- treme in Virginia " - but this banished every remnant of fever, as the coming of winter destroys to-day the epidemic which scourges the lower Mississippi. The long agony was over, and what was left of the James- town colony was safe at last.
Men soon forget trouble. The fearful summer which they had passed through was lost sight of, and the dissensions again began. Smith had retired from his place as acting President, and the old incompetent peo- ple regained the sway. Complaints were made that nothing had been effected ; that the royal order to go in search of the " South Sea " had not been complied with ; that the whole enterprise was a failure. Smith replied to these "murmurs," which we are informed "arose in the Council," by offering to lead an expedition of dis- covery in the direction of the mountains. This was de- termined upon, and in a severe spell of weather (Decem- ber 10, 1607) he set out in a barge with a small party of men, ostensibly to make the famous discovery of the great "South Sea."
VI.
THE ANCIENT VIRGINIANS.
THIS voyage toward the unknown was an important event in the history of the colony, and Smith's adven- tures, during the month which followed, threw him for
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