CHAPTER IV

EARLY VIRGINIA

(A PROPRIETARY COLONY, 1607-1624)

25. FOUR points demand notice in the Virginia charter of 1606 (§ 22).

Grantees. The company of stockholders was divided into two sub-companies. One of these was made up mainly of Londoners, and is known as the London Company. The other was made up of gentlemen from the west of England, and is called the Plymouth Company. These proprietary companies were to remain in England.

Territory. The name Virginia then applied to the whole region claimed by England on the Atlantic coast, between the Spaniards on the south and the French on the north. This made a tract about 800 miles long, reaching from the 34th to the 45th parallel. Within this territory, each company was to have a district 100 miles along the coast and 100 miles inland, -the London Company's tract to be located somewhere in southern Virginia, the Plymouth Company's somewhere in the north.

The exact location of these grants was to be fixed by the position of the first settlements. The Londoners were to choose anywhere between the 34th and the 41st parallel (or between Cape Fear and the Hudson). The western merchants were to place their settlement anywhere between the 38th and the 45th parallel (between the Potomac and Maine). Neither Company was to plant a colony within a hundred miles of one established by the other.

This arrangement left the middle district, from the Potomac to the Hudson, open to whichever Company should first occupy it. Probably the King's intention was to encourage rivalry; but, in fact, the dubious overlapping region was avoided by both parties. There was room for six 100-mile locations outside of it.

Settlers' rights. The charter gave the future settlers no share in governing themselves; but it did promise them “the liberties, franchises, and immunities" of Englishmen. This clause (found also in Gilbert's and in nearly all later charters) did not mean “the right to vote" or to hold office: not all Englishmen had such privileges at home. It meant such rights as jury trial, habeas corpus privileges, and free speech, so far as those rights were then understood in England.

Government. In England there was to be a Council for the double company, with general oversight. In each colony there was to be a lower Council appointed by that higher Council. These local Councils were to govern the settlers according to laws to be drawn up by the King.

The Instructions drawn up by James before the first expedition sailed (Source Book, No. 17), provided that death or mutilation could be inflicted upon no offender until after conviction by a jury, and for only a small number of crimes, for that day; but the appointed Council were to punish minor offenses (such as idling and drunkenness) at their discretion, by whipping or imprisonment. This authority seems extreme to us, but it was much like that possessed then by the justices of an English county.

26. This plan of government proved a poor one. In England it was partly royal and partly proprietary, without a clear division between authorities. In the colonies there was no single governor, but an unwieldy committee. No other English colonial charter was so imperfect an instrument of government; but, under this crude grant, was founded the first permanent English colony. In 1607, the Plymouth Company made a fruitless attempt at settlement on the coast of Maine (§ 58), and then remained inactive for twelve years. But in December of 1606 the London Company sent out, in three small vessels, a more successful expedition to "southern Virginia."

The 104 colonists reached the Chesapeake in the spring of 1607, and planted Jamestown on the banks of a pleasant river flowing into the south side of the Bay. To avoid Spanish attack from the sea, they chose a site some thirty miles up the stream. For some years this was the only regular settlement.

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A PLANTATION COLONY

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27. The colony was a great "plantation." The company of stockholders in England were proprietors. They directed the enterprise, selected settlers, appointed officers, furnished transportation and supplies and capital. The colonists were employees and servants. They did the work,-cleared forests, built rude forts and towns, and raised crops,-facing disease,

famine, and savage warfare. The managing Council at Jamestown were not so much political rulers as industrial Overseers. Their task was a kind of housekeeping on a large scale.

The products of the settlers' labor went into a common stock. Lumber, sassafras, dyestuffs, were shipped to the Company to help meet expenses. Grain was kept in colonial store houses, to be guarded and distributed by a public official. Here, too, were kept the supplies from England, - medicines,

clothing, furniture, tools, arms and ammunition, seeds, stock of all kinds for breeding, and such articles of food as meal, bread, butter, cheese, salt, meat, and preserved fruits. For many years the existence of the colony depended on the prompt arrival, every few months, of a "supply "; and the colonists measured time by dating from "the First Supply," or "the Third Supply."

The system of "industry in common" has frequently been called an experiment in communism. In reality it was no more communism than was a Virginia slave plantation in 1850. The London Company would have been the last men to approve any theory of communism. The common industry and undivided profits were simply clumsy features of management by a distant proprietary company.

JAMESTOWN IN 1622. From a Dutch print of 1707, based on an old sketch.

28. The location of Jamestown was low and unhealthy; the committee government was not suited to vigorous action; and only the stern school of experience could teach men in that day how to colonize an unknown continent. The early years were a time of cruel suffering. The first summer saw two thirds of the settlers perish, while most of the rest were helpless with fever much of the time. Said one of them: ;-

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THE STARVING TIME

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"Our men were destroyed by cruell diseases . . . and by warres, and some departed suddenly, but for the most part they died of meere famine. There were never Englishmen left in a forreigne Country in such miserie as wee were . . Our feed was but a small can of Barlie, sod in Water, to five men a day; our drinke, cold Water taken out of the River, which was at flood verie Salt, at a low tide full of slime and filth . Thus we lived for the space of five months in this miserable distresse, not having five able men to man our Bulwarkes . our men night and day groaning in every corner of the Fort most pittiful to heare. some departing out of the World, many times three or four in a night, in the morning their bodies trailed out of their Cabines, like Dogges, to be burried." (See Source Book for more of Captain Percy's Discourse.)

The First Supply, in the fall of 1607, found only 38 survivors at Jamestown. Nor was this suffering then at an end. For 20 years each new immigration lost, on an average, half its members the first season.

29. From one peril the colony was saved by its very misery. Spain watched jealously this intrusion into a region which she claimed as her own, and the government contemplated an attack upon Jamestown. In particular, the Spanish ambassador at London urged his king repeatedly to have "those insolent people in Virginia annihilated." "It will be serving God," he wrote, "to drive these villains out and hang them." But the Spanish spies in the colony reported that it must fall of itself; and the dilatory Spanish government, already slipping into decay and unwilling needlessly to make King James an enemy, failed to act (Source Book, No. 22).

30. The most interesting figure during the first three years was the burly, bustling, bragging, efficient Captain John Smith. Smith finally became President of the ineffective Council. Then he quickly usurped all the power of government, and his beneficent tyranny saved the colony from ruin. In 1609, however, he was injured by an explosion of gunpowder, and went back to England.

31. The next winter was "The Starving Time." A special effort had been made, the summer before, to reinforce the colony; and in the fall the number of settlers had risen to more