MOTIVES OF THE COLONISTS

21

is with us; and for as much redde copper as I can bring, Ile have thrise the waight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping pans ... are pure gould; and all the chaines with which they chaine up their streets are massie gold; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds they goe forth on holydayes and gather 'em by the seashore to hang on their childrens coates, and sticke in their childrens caps, as commonly as our children wear saffron-gilt brooches. . . . Besides, there wee shall have no more law than consceince, and not too much of eyther.

This gross caricature called forth violent denunciation from good clergymen, like Crashaw, who retorted from the pulpit that Virginia had three enemies, "the Divell, the Papists, and the Players." But it remains true that in the first colonies the expectations of sudden riches were more extravagant than in later attempts, and led for a time to disastrous neglect of the right sort of work. Still the motive was a proper one. It calls for no sneer. It was the same desire to better one's condition, which, in a later century, lured the descendants of the first settlers to people the continent from the Appalachians to the Golden Gate. Moreover, the motive was not mere greed. The youth was moved by a vision of romance and adventure. He was drawn partly by the glitter of gold, but quite as much by the mystery of new lands bosomed in the beauty of unknown seas. Best of all, these motives of gain and of Romance noble adventure were infused with a high patriot- and ism. Englishmen knew that in building their own fortunes on that distant frontier, just as truly as when they had trod the deck of Drake's ship, they were widening the power of the little home island, which they rightly believed to be the world's best hope. Marston's extravagant sarcasm was nobly answered by Michael Drayton's Ode, addressed to the 104 adventurers just setting sail, to found Jamestown the next spring:

patriotism

ran, -"Let Papists

1 A passage in Crashaw's "Daily Prayer for Virginia and Players and such other scum and dregs of the earth, let them mocke such as helpe to build the walls of Jerusalem!"

II. VIRGINIA A PROPRIETARY COLONY, 1607-1624

When James I granted the charter of 1606 (p. 17) to the enterprising merchants who wished to undertake The Charter founding colonies in America, the stockholders of 1606 were divided into two subcompanies: the London Company, made up mainly of Londoners; and the Plymouth Company, made up of gentlemen from the west of England.

The name Virginia then applied to the whole region claimed by England on the Atlantic coast, between the Territorial Spaniards on the south and the French on the grants 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 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

THE LIBERTIES OF ENGLISHMEN

23

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, naturally, the dubious overlapping region was avoided by both parties. There was room for six of the 100-mile locations outside of it.

The two proprietary Companies were expected to remain in England. To the settlers themselves the charter gave no share in their own government; but it did The promise them "the liberties, franchises, and im- "liberties munities" of Englishmen. This much misunder- of Englishstood clause (found also in Gilbert's and in nearly all later charters) did not mean "the right to vote" or

men

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.

Unsatis

factory plan

for govern

ment

The plan of government was clumsy. 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. Thus the government was partly royal and partly proprietary, without a clear division between the authorities in England; while in the colonies there was no single governor, but only unwieldy committees. The "Instructions" drawn up by James before the first expedition sailed kept loyally to the spirit of the charter. They 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, though the appointed Council were to punish minor offenses, such as idling and drunkenness, at their discretion, by whipping or imprisonment (authority much like that possessed then by the appointed justices of an English county).

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 Jamestown Maine (p. 3), 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. They chose this site some thirty miles up the stream to avoid Spanish attack from the sea. For some years this was the only regular settlement.

Jamestown was a great "plantation." The company of stockholders in England were proprietors. They directed

THE "PLANTATION

AT JAMESTOWN

25

the enterprise, selected settlers, appointed officers, furnished transportation and supplies and capital - much like a lumber company in New York or Minneapolis that sends A "plantaits woodsmen into our Northern woods. The col- tion colony' onists 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

PROCLAMATION OF A VIRGINIA LOTTERY, February 22, 1615, to raise funds for the Company's use. The original belongs to the Society of Antiquaries of London. The two sides of the Seal of Virginia are shown in the squares.

as industrial overseers.

keeping on a large scale.

Their task was a kind of house

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 Industry in in colonial storehouses, to be guarded and dis- common tributed by a public official. Here, too, were kept the supplies from England, - medicines, clothing, furniture, tools, arms and ammunition, seeds, stock cf all kinds for breeding, and such articles of food as meal, bread, butter, cheese, salt, meat, and preserved fruits. For many years the existence