PIONEERS OF THE OLD SOUTH

A CHRONICLE OF ENGLISH COLONIAL BEGINNINGS

By Mary Johnston

CONTENTS

 I. THE THREE SHIPS SAIL II. THE ADVENTURERS III. JAMESTOWN IV. JOHN SMITH V. THE SEA ADVENTURE VI. SIR THOMAS DALE VII. YOUNG VIRGINIA VIII. ROYAL GOVERNMENT IX. MARYLAND X. CHURCH AND KINGDOM XI. COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION XII. NATHANIEL BACON XIII. REBELLION AND CHANGE XIV. THE CAROLINAS XV. ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD XVI. GEORGIA

 THE NAVIGATION LAWS

 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

PIONEERS OF THE OLD SOUTH

CHAPTER I. THE THREE SHIPS SAIL

Elizabeth of England died in 1603. There came to the English throneJames Stuart, King of Scotland, King now of England and Scotland. In1604 a treaty of peace ended the long war with Spain. Gone was thesixteenth century; here, though in childhood, was the seventeenthcentury. 

Now that the wars were over, old colonization schemes were revivedin the English mind. Of the motives, which in the first instance hadprompted these schemes, some with the passing of time had become weaker, some remained quite as strong as before. Most Englishmen and women knewnow that Spain had clay feet; and that Rome, though she might threaten, could not always perform what she threatened. To abase the pride ofSpain, to make harbors of refuge for the angel of the Reformation--thesewishes, though they had not vanished, though no man could know how longthe peace with Spain would last, were less fervid than they had been inthe days of Drake. But the old desire for trade remained as strong asever. It would be a great boon to have English markets in the New World, as well as in the Old, to which merchants might send their wares, andfrom which might be drawn in bulk, the raw stuffs that were neededat home. The idea of a surplus population persisted; England of fivemillion souls still thought that she was crowded and that it wouldbe well to have a land of younger sons, a land of promise for all notabundantly provided for at home. It were surely well, for mere pride'ssake, to have due lot and part in the great New World! And wealth likethat which Spain had found was a dazzle and a lure. "Why, man, all theirdripping-pans are pure gold, and all the chains with which they chain uptheir streets are massy gold; all the prisoners they take are fetteredin gold; and for rubies and diamonds they go forth on holidays andgather 'em by the seashore!" So the comedy of "Eastward Ho!" seen on theLondon stage in 1605--"Eastward Ho!" because yet they thought of Americaas on the road around to China. 

In this year Captain George Weymouth sailed across the sea and spenta summer month in North Virginia--later, New England. Weymouth hadpowerful backers, and with him sailed old adventurers who had beenwith Raleigh. Coming home to England with five Indians in his company, Weymouth and his voyage gave to public interest the needed filliptowards action. Here was the peace with Spain, and here was the newinterest in Virginia. "Go to!" said Mother England. "It is time to placeour children in the world!"

The old adventurers of the day of Sir Humphrey Gilbert had acted asindividuals. Soon was to come in the idea of cooperative action--theidea of the joint-stock company, acting under the open permission of theCrown, attended by the interest and favor of numbers of the people, andgiving to private initiative and personal ambition, a public tone. Some men of foresight would have had Crown and Country themselves theadventurers, superseding any smaller bodies. But for the moment thefortunes of Virginia were furthered by a group within the great group, by a joint-stock company, a corporation. 

In 1600 had come into being the East India Company, prototype of manycompanies to follow. Now, six years later, there arose under one royalcharter two companies, generally known as the London and the Plymouth. The first colony planted by the latter was short-lived. Its letterspatent were for North Virginia. Two ships, the Mary and John and theGift of God, sailed with over a hundred settlers. These men, reachingthe coast of what is now Maine, built a fort and a church on the banksof the Kennebec. Then followed the usual miseries typical of colonialventure--sickness, starvation, and a freezing winter. With the return ofsummer the enterprise was abandoned. The foundation of New England wasdelayed awhile, her Pilgrims yet in England, though meditating thatfirst remove to Holland, her Mayflower only a ship of London port, staunch, but with no fame above another. 

The London Company, soon to become the Virginia Company, thereforeengages our attention. The charter recites that Sir Thomas Gates andSir George Somers, Knights, Richard Hakluyt, clerk, Prebendary ofWestminster, Edward-Maria Wingfield, and other knights, gentlemen, merchants, and adventurers, wish "to make habitation, plantation, andto deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of Americacommonly called Virginia. " It covenants with them and gives them fora heritage all America between the thirty-fourth and the forty-firstparallels of latitude. 

The thirty-fourth parallel passes through the middle of what is nowSouth Carolina; the forty-first grazes New York, crosses the northerntip of New Jersey, divides Pennsylvania, and so westward across to thatPacific or South Sea that the age thought so near to the Atlantic. AllEngland might have been placed many times over in what was given tothose knights, gentlemen, merchants, and others. 

The King's charter created a great Council of Virginia, sitting inLondon, governing from overhead. In the new land itself there shouldexist a second and lesser council. The two councils had authority withinthe range of Virginian matters, but the Crown retained the power ofveto. The Council in Virginia might coin money for trade with theIndians, expel invaders, import settlers, punish ill-doers, levy andcollect taxes--should have, in short, dignity and power enough for anycolony. Likewise, acting for the whole, it might give and take orders"to dig, mine and search for all manner of mines of gold, silver andcopper. . . To have and enjoy. . . Yielding to us, our heirs and successors, the fifth part only of all the same gold and silver, and the fifteenthpart of all the same copper. "

Now are we ready--it being Christmas-tide of the year 1606--to go toVirginia. Riding on the Thames, before Blackwall, are three ships, smallenough in all conscience' sake, the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, andthe Discovery. The Admiral of this fleet is Christopher Newport, an oldseaman of Raleigh's. Bartholomew Gosnold captains the Goodspeed, andJohn Ratcliffe the Discovery. The three ships have aboard their crewsand one hundred and twenty colonists, all men. The Council in Virginiais on board, but it does not yet know itself as such, for the names ofits members have been deposited by the superior home council in a sealedbox, to be opened only on Virginia soil. 

The colonists have their paper of instructions. They shall find out asafe port in the entrance of a navigable river. They shall be preparedagainst surprise and attack. They shall observe "whether the river onwhich you plant doth spring out of mountains or out of lakes. If it beout of any lake the passage to the other sea will be the more easy, andlike enough. . . You shall find some spring which runs the contraryway toward the East India sea. " They must avoid giving offense to the"naturals"--must choose a healthful place for their houses--mustguard their shipping. They are to set down in black and white for theinformation of the Council at home all such matters as directions anddistances, the nature of soils and forests and the various commoditiesthat they may find. And no man is to return from Virginia without leavefrom the Council, and none is to write home any discouraging letter. Theinstructions end, "Lastly and chiefly, the way to prosper and to achievegood success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good ofyour country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the Giver ofall Goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath notplanted shall be rooted out. "

Nor did they lack verses to go by, as their enterprise itself did notlack poetry. Michael Drayton wrote for them:--

 Britons, you stay too long, Quickly aboard bestow you, And with a merry gale, Swell your stretched sail, With vows as strong As the winds that blow you. 

 Your course securely steer, West and by South forth keep; Rocks, lee shores nor shoals, Where Eolus scowls, You need not fear, So absolute the deep. And cheerfully at sea Success you still entice, To get the pearl and gold, And ours to hold VIRGINIA, Earth's only paradise!. . . 

 And in regions far Such heroes bring ye forth As those from whom we came; And plant our name Under that star Not known unto our north. 

See the parting upon Thames's side, Englishmen going, English kindred, friends, and neighbors calling farewell, waving hat and scarf, standingbare-headed in the gray winter weather! To Virginia--they are going toVirginia! The sails are made upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, andthe Discovery. The last wherry carries aboard the last adventurer. Theanchors are weighed. Down the river the wind bears the ships toward thesea. Weather turning against them, they taste long delay in the Downs, but at last are forth upon the Atlantic. Hourly the distance growsbetween London town and the outgoing folk, between English shores andwhere the surf breaks on the pale Virginian beaches. Far away--far awayand long ago--yet the unseen, actual cables hold, and yesterday andtoday stand embraced, the lips of the Thames meet the lips of the James, and the breath of England mingles with the breath of America. 

CHAPTER II. THE ADVENTURERS

What was this Virginia to which they were bound? In the sixteenthand early seventeenth centuries the name stood for a huge stretch oflittoral, running southward from lands of long winters and fur-bearinganimals to lands of the canebrake, the fig, the magnolia, the chameleon, and the mockingbird. The world had been circumnavigated; Drake hadpassed up the western coast--and yet cartographers, the learned, andthose who took the word from the learned, strangely visualized the NorthAmerican mainland as narrow indeed. Apparently, they conceived it as akind of extended Central America. The huge rivers puzzled them. Thereexisted a notion that these might be estuaries, curling and curvingthrough the land from sea to sea. India--Cathay--spices and wonders andOrient wealth--lay beyond the South Sea, and the South Sea was but a fewdays' march from Hatteras or Chesapeake. The Virginia familiar to themind of the time lay extended, and she was very slender. Her right handtouched the eastern ocean, and her left hand touched the western. 

Contact and experience soon modified this general notion. Widerknowledge, political and economic considerations, practical reasons ofall kinds, drew a different physical form for old Virginia. Before theseventeenth century had passed away, they had given to her northernend a baptism of other names. To the south she was lopped to make theCarolinas. Only to the west, for a long time, she seemed to grow, whilelike a mirage the South Sea and Cathay receded into the distance. 

This narrative, moving with the three ships from England, and through atime span of less than a hundred and fifty years, deals with a regionof the western hemisphere a thousand miles in length, several hundredin breadth, stretching from the Florida line to the northern edge ofChesapeake Bay, and from the Atlantic to the Appalachians. Out of thisVirginia there grow in succession the ancient colonies and the modernStates of Virginia, Maryland, South and North Carolina, and Georgia. 

But for many a year Virginia itself was the only settlement and the onlyname. This Virginia was a country favored by nature. Neither too hot nortoo cold, it was rich-soiled and capable of every temperate growth inits sunniest aspect. Great rivers drained it, flowing into a greatbay, almost a sea, many-armed as Briareus, affording safe and shelteredharbors. Slowly, with beauty, the land mounted to the west. The sun setbehind wooded mountains, long wave-lines raised far back in geologictime. The valleys were many and beautiful, watered by sliding streams. Back to the east again, below the rolling land, were found theshimmering levels, the jewel-green marshes, the wide, slow waters, andat last upon the Atlantic shore the thunder of the rainbow-tinted surf. Various and pleasing was the country. Springs and autumns were long andbalmy, the sun shone bright, there was much blue sky, a rich flora andfauna. There were mineral wealth and water power, and breadth and depthfor agriculture. Such was the Virginia between the Potomac and the Dan, the Chesapeake and the Alleghanies. 

This, and not the gold-bedight slim neighbor of Cathay, was now thelure of the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. But thoseaboard, obsessed by Spanish America, imperfectly knowing the featuresand distances of the orb, yet clung to their first vision. But they knewthere would be forest and Indians. Tales enough had been told of both!

What has to be imaged is a forest the size of Virginia. Here and there, chiefly upon river banks, show small Indian clearings. Here and thereare natural meadows, and toward the salt water great marshes, the homeof waterfowl. But all these are little or naught in the whole, faintadornments sewed upon a shaggy garment, green in summer, flame-hued inautumn, brown in winter, green and flower-colored in the spring. Norwas the forest to any appreciable extent like much Virginian forest oftoday, second growth, invaded, hewed down, and renewed, to hear againthe sound of the axe, set afire by a thousand accidents, burning uponits own funeral pyres, all its primeval glory withered. The forest ofold Virginia was jocund and powerful, eternally young and eternally old. The forest was Despot in the land--was Emperor and Pope. 

With the forest went the Indian. They had a pact together. The Indianshacked out space for their villages of twenty or thirty huts, theirmaize and bean fields and tobacco patches. They took saplings for polesand bark to cover the huts and wood for fires. The forest gave canoe andbow and arrow, household bowls and platters, the sides of the drum thatwas beaten at feasts. It furnished trees serviceable for shelter whenthe foe was stalked. It was their wall and roof, their habitat. It wasone of the Four Friends of the Indians--the Ground, the Waters, the Sky, the Forest. The forest was everywhere, and the Indians dwelled in theforest. Not unnaturally, they held that this world was theirs. 

Upon the three ships, sailing, sailing, moved a few men who could speakwith authority of the forest and of Indians. Christopher Newport wasupon his first voyage to Virginia, but he knew the Indies and the SouthAmerican coast. He had sailed and had fought under Francis Drake. AndBartholomew Gosnold had explored both for himself and for Raleigh. Thesetwo could tell others what to look for. In their company there was alsoJohn Smith. This gentleman, it is true, had not wandered, fought, andcompanioned with romance in America, but he had done so everywhere else. He had as yet no experience with Indians, but he could conceive thatrough experiences were rough experiences, whether in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America. And as he knew there was a family likeness amongdangerous happenings, so also he found one among remedies, and he had abag full of stories of strange happenings and how they should be met. 

They were going the old, long West Indies sea road. There was timeenough for talking, wondering, considering the past, fantasticallybuilding up the future. Meeting in the ships' cabins over ale tankards, pacing up and down the small high-raised poop-decks, leaning idle overthe side, watching the swirling dark-blue waters or the stars of night, lying idle upon the deck, propped by the mast while the trade-windsblew and up beyond sail and rigging curved the sky--they had time enoughindeed to plan for marvels! If they could have seen ahead, what picturesof things to come they might have beheld rising, falling, melting oneinto another!

Certain of the men upon the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and theDiscovery stand out clearly, etched against the sky. 

Christopher Newport might be forty years old. He had been of Raleigh'scaptains and was chosen, a very young man, to bring to England from theIndies the captured great carrack, Madre de Dios, laden with fabuloustreasure. In all, Newport was destined to make five voyages to Virginia, carrying supply and aid. After that, he would pass into the service ofthe East India Company, know India, Java, and the Persian Gulf; would bepraised by that great company for sagacity, energy, and good care of hismen. Ten years' time from this first Virginia voyage, and he would dieupon his ship, the Hope, before Bantam in Java. 

Bartholomew Gosnold, the captain of the Goodspeed, had sailed withthirty others, five years before, from Dartmouth in a bark named theConcord. He had not made the usual long sweep southward into tropicwaters, there to turn and come northward, but had gone, arrow-straight, across the north Atlantic--one of the first English sailors to make thedirect passage and save many a weary sea league. Gosnold and his menhad seen Cape Ann and Cape Cod, and had built upon Cuttyhunk, among theElizabeth Islands, a little fort thatched with rushes. Then, hardshipsthronging and quarrels developing, they had filled their ship withsassafras and cedar, and sailed for home over the summer Atlantic, reaching England, with "not one cake of bread" left but only "a littlevinegar. " Gosnold, guiding the Goodspeed, is now making his last voyage, for he is to die in Virginia within the year. 

George Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland, has fought bravelyin the Low Countries. He is to stay five years in Virginia, to servethere a short time as Governor, and then, returning to England, is towrite "A Trewe Relacyion", in which he begs to differ from John Smith's"Generall Historie. " Finally, he goes again to the wars in the LowCountries, serves with distinction, and dies, unmarried, at the ageof fifty-two. His portrait shows a long, rather melancholy face, setbetween a lace collar and thick, dark hair. 

A Queen and a Cardinal--Mary Tudor and Reginald Pole--had stood sponsorsfor the father of Edward-Maria Wingfield. This man, of an ancient andhonorable stock, was older than most of his fellow adventurers toVirginia. He had fought in Ireland, fought in the Low Countries, hadbeen a prisoner of war. Now he was presently to become "the firstpresident of the first council in the first English colony in America. "And then, miseries increasing and wretched men being quick to imputeevil, it was to be held with other assertions against him that he was ofa Catholic family, that he traveled without a Bible, and probablymeant to betray Virginia to the Spaniard. He was to be deposed from hispresidency, return to England, and there write a vindication. "I neverturned my face from daunger, or hidd my handes from labour; so watchfula sentinel stood myself to myself. " With John Smith he had a bitterquarrel. 

Upon the Discovery is one who signed himself "John Radclyffe, comenlycalled, " and who is named in the London Company's list as "Captain JohnSicklemore, alias Ratcliffe. " He will have a short and stormy Virginianlife, and in two years be done to death by Indians. John Smith quarreledwith him also. "A poor counterfeited Imposture!" said Smith. GabrielArcher is a lawyer, and first secretary or recorder of the colony. Short, too, is his life. His name lives in Archer's Hope on the JamesRiver in Virginia. John Smith will have none of him! George Kendall'slife is more nearly spun than Ratcliffe's or Archer's. He will be shotfor treason and rebellion. Robert Hunt is the chaplain. Besides thosewhom the time dubbed "gentlemen, " there are upon the three shipsEnglish sailors, English laborers, six carpenters, two bricklayers, a blacksmith, a tailor, a barber, a drummer, other craftsmen, andnondescripts. Up and down and to and fro they pass in their narrowquarters, microscopic upon the bosom of the ocean. 

John Smith looms large among them. John Smith has a mantle of marvelousadventure. It seems that he began to make it when he was a boy, and formany years worked upon it steadily until it was stiff as cloth of goldand voluminous as a puffed-out summer cloud. Some think that much of itwas such stuff as dreams are made of. Probably some breadths were thefabric of vision. Still it seems certain that he did have some kindof an extraordinary coat or mantle. The adventures which he relates ofhimself are those of a paladin. Born in 1579 or 1580, he was at thistime still a young man. But already he had fought in France and inthe Netherlands, and in Transylvania against the Turks. He had knownsea-fights and shipwrecks and had journeyed, with adventures galore, inItaly. Before Regal, in Transylvania, he had challenged three Turks insuccession, unhorsed them, and cut off their heads, for which doughtydeed Sigismund, a Prince of Transylvania, had given him a coat of armsshowing three Turks' heads in a shield. Later he had been taken inbattle and sold into slavery, whereupon a Turkish lady, his master'ssister, had looked upon him with favor. But at last he slew the Turkand escaped, and after wandering many days in misery came into Russia. "Here, too, I found, as I have always done when in misfortune, kindlyhelp from a woman. " He wandered on into Germany and thence into Franceand Spain. Hearing of wars in Barbary, he crossed from Gibraltar. Herehe met the captain of a French man-of-war. One day while he was withthis man there arose a great storm which drove the ship out to sea. Theywent before the wind to the Canaries, and there put themselves to rightsand began to chase Spanish barks. Presently they had a great fight withtwo Spanish men-of-war, in which the French ship and Smith came offvictors. Returning to Morocco, Smith bade the French captain good-byeand took ship for England, and so reached home in 1604. Here he soughtthe company of like-minded men, and so came upon those who had been tothe New World--"and all their talk was of its wonders. " So Smithjoined the Virginia undertaking, and so we find him headed toward newadventures in the western world. 

On sailed the three ships--little ships--sailing-ships with a long wayto go. 

"The twelfth day of February at night we saw a blazing starre andpresently a storme. . . . The three and twentieth day [of March] we fellwith the Iland of Mattanenio in the West Indies. The foure and twentiethday we anchored at Dominico, within fourteene degrees of the Line, a very faire Iland, full of sweet and good smells, inhabited bymany Savage Indians. . . . The six and twentieth day we had sight ofMarigalanta, and the next day wee sailed with a slacke sail alongst theIle of Guadalupa. . . . We sailed by many Ilands, as Mounserot and an Ilandcalled Saint Christopher, both uninhabited; about two a clocke in theafternoone wee anchored at the Ile of Mevis. There the Captaine landedall his men. . . . We incamped ourselves on this Ile six days. . . . The tenthday [April] we set saile and disimboged out of the West Indies and bareour course Northerly. . . . The six and twentieth day of Aprill, aboutfoure a clocke in the morning, wee descried the Land of Virginia. "*

 * Percy's "Discourse in Purchas, His Pilgrims, " vol. IV, p. 1684. Also given in Brown's "Genesis of the United States", vol. I, p. 152. 

During the long months of this voyage, cramped in the three ships, thesemen, most of them young and of the hot-blooded, physically adventuroussort, had time to develop strong likings and dislikings. The hundred andtwenty split into opposed camps. The several groups nursed all manner ofjealousies. Accusations flew between like shuttlecocks. The sealed boxthat they carried proved a manner of Eve's apple. All knew that seven onboard were councilors and rulers, with one of the number President, butthey knew not which were the seven. Smith says that this uncertaintywrought much mischief, each man of note suggesting to himself, "I shallbe President--or, at least, Councilor!" The ships became cursed witha pest of factions. A prime quarrel arose between John Smith andEdward-Maria Wingfield, two whose temperaments seem to have been polesapart. There arose a "scandalous report, that Smith meant to reachVirginia only to usurp the Government, murder the Council, and proclaimhimself King. " The bickering deepened into forthright quarrel, with atlast the expected explosion. Smith was arrested, was put in irons, andfirst saw Virginia as a prisoner. 

On the twenty-sixth day of April, 1607, the Susan Constant, theGoodspeed, and the Discovery entered Chesapeake Bay. They came inbetween two capes, and one they named Cape Henry after the then Princeof Wales, and the other Cape Charles for that brother of short-livedHenry who was to become Charles the First. By Cape Henry they anchored, and numbers from the ships went ashore. "But, " says George Percy'sDiscourse, "we could find nothing worth the speaking of, but fairemeadows and goodly tall Trees, with such Fresh-waters running throughthe woods as I was almost ravished at the first sight thereof. At night, when wee were going aboard, there came the Savages creeping upon allfoure from the Hills like Beares, with their Bowes in their mouths, charged us very desperately in the faces, hurt Captaine GabrielArcher in both his hands, and a sayler in two places of the body verydangerous. After they had spent their Arrowes and felt the sharpnesseof our shot, they retired into the Woods with a great noise, and so leftus. "

That very night, by the ships' lanterns, Newport, Gosnold, and Ratcliffeopened the sealed box. The names of the councilors were found to beChristopher Newport, Bartholomew Gosnold, John Ratcliffe, Edward-MariaWingfield, John Martin, John Smith, and George Kendall, with GabrielArcher for recorder. From its own number, at the first convenient time, this Council was to choose its President. All this was now declared andpublished to all the company upon the ships. John Smith was given hisfreedom but was not yet allowed place in the Council. So closed anexciting day. In the morning they pressed in parties yet further intothe land, but met no Indians--only came to a place where these savageshad been roasting oysters. The next day saw further exploring. "Wemarched some three or foure miles further into the Woods where we sawgreat smoakes of fire. Wee marched to those smoakes and found that theSavages had beene there burning downe the grasse. . . . We passed throughexcellent ground full of Flowers of divers kinds and colours, anal asgoodly trees as I have seene, as cedar, cipresse and other kindes; goinga little further we came into a little plat of ground full of fine andbeautifull strawberries, foure times bigger and better than ours inEngland. All this march we could neither see Savage nor Towne. "*

 * Percy's "Discourse. "

The ships now stood into those waters which we call Hampton Roads. Finding a good channel and taking heart therefrom, they named a hornof land Point Comfort. Now we call it Old Point Comfort. Presently theybegan to go up a great river which they christened the James. To Englisheyes it was a river hugely wide. They went slowly, with pauses andwaitings and adventures. They consulted their paper of instructions;they scanned the shore for good places for their fort, for theirtown. It was May, and all the rich banks were in bloom. It seemed asweet-scented world of promise. They saw Indians, but had with theseno untoward encounters. Upon the twelfth of May they came to a pointof land which they named Archer's Hope. Landing here, they saw "manysquirels, conies, Black Birds with crimson wings, and divers otherFowles and Birds of divers and sundrie colours of crimson, watchet, Yellow, Greene, Murry, and of divers other hewes naturally without anyart using. . . Store of Turkie nests and many Egges. " They liked thisplace, but for shoal water the ships could not come near to land. So onthey went, eight miles up the river. 

Here, upon the north side, thirty-odd miles from the mouth, they came toa certain peninsula, an island at high water. Two or three miles long, less than a mile and a half in breadth, at its widest place composed ofmarsh and woodland, it ran into the river, into six fathom water, wherethe ships might be moored to the trees. It was this convenient deepwater that determined matters. Here came to anchor the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery. Here the colonists went ashore. Herethe members of the Council were sworn, and for the first President waschosen Edward-Maria Wingfield. Here, the first roaming and excitementabated, they began to unlade the ships, and to build the fort and alsobooths for their present sleeping. A church, too, they must have atonce, and forthwith made it with a stretched sail for roof and a boardbetween two trees whereon to rest Bible and Book of Prayer. Here, forthe first time in all this wilderness, rang English axe in Americanforest, here was English law and an English town, here sounded Englishspeech. Here was placed the germ of that physical, mental, and, spiritual power which is called the United States of America. 

CHAPTER III. JAMESTOWN

In historians' accounts of the first months at Jamestown, too much, perhaps, has been made of faction and quarrel. All this was there. Menset down in a wilderness, amid Virginian heat, men, mostly young, of theactive rather than the reflective type, men uncompanioned by women andchildren, men beset with dangers and sufferings that were soon to tagheavily their courage and patience--such men naturally quarreled andmade up, quarreled again and again made up, darkly suspected each theother, as they darkly suspected the forest and the Indian; then, need offriendship dominating, embraced each the other, felt the fascinationof the forest, and trusted the Indian. However much they suspectedrebellion, treacheries, and desertions, they practiced fidelities, though to varying degrees, and there was in each man's breast more orless of courage and good intent. They were prone to call one anothervillain, but actual villainy--save as jealousy, suspicion, and hatredare villainy--seems rarely to have been present. Even one who was judgeda villain and shot for his villainy seems hardly to have deserved suchfate. Jamestown peninsula turned out to be feverous; fantastichopes were matched by strange fears; there were homesickness, incompatibilities, unfamiliar food and water and air, class differencesin small space, some petty tyrannies, and very certain dangers. Theworst summer heat was not yet, and the fort was building. Trees must befelled, cabins raised, a field cleared for planting, fishing and huntingcarried on. And some lading, some first fruits, must go back in theships. No gold or rubies being as yet found, they would send insteadcedar and sassafras--hard work enough, there at Jamestown, in theVirginian low-country, with May warm as northern midsummer, and all theair charged with vapor from the heated river, with exhalations from therank forest, from the many marshes. 

"The first night of our landing, about midnight, " says George Percy inhis "Discourse", "there came some Savages sayling close to our quarter;presently there was an alarm given; upon that the savages ran away. . . . Not long after there came two Savages that seemed to be Commanders, bravely dressed, with Crownes of coloured haire upon their heads, whichcame as Messengers from the Werowance of Paspihe, telling us that theirWerowance was comming and would be merry with us with a fat Deere. Theeighteenth day the Werowance of Paspihe came himselfe to our quarter, with one hundred Savages armed which guarded him in very warlike mannerwith Bowes and Arrowes. " Some misunderstanding arose. "The Werowance, [seeing] us take to our armes, went suddenly away with all his companyin great anger. " The nineteenth day Percy with several others going intothe woods back of the peninsula met with a narrow path traced throughthe forest. Pursuing it, they came to an Indian village. "We Stayedthere a while and had of them strawberries and other thinges. . . . Oneof the Savages brought us on the way to the Woodside where there was aGarden of Tobacco and other fruits and herbes; he gathered Tobacco anddistributed to every one of us, so wee departed. "

It is evident that neither race yet knew if it was to be war or peace. What the white man thought and came to think of the red man has been setdown often enough; there is scantier testimony as to what was the redman's opinion of the white man. Here imagination must be called upon. 

Newport's instructions from the London Council included explorationbefore he should leave the colonists and bring the three ships back toEngland. Now, with the pinnace and a score of men, among whom was JohnSmith, he went sixty miles up the river to where the flow is broken bya world of boulders and islets, to the hills crowned today by Richmond, capital of Virginia. The first adventurers called these rapid andwhirling waters the Falls of the Farre West. To their notion they mustlie at least half-way across the breadth of America. Misled by Indianstories, they believed and wrote that five or six days' march from theFalls of the Farre West, even through the thick forest, would bring themto the South Sea. The Falls of the Farre West, where at Richmond theJames goes with a roaring sound around tree-crowned islet--it is strangeto think that they once marked our frontier! How that frontier has beenpushed westward is a romance indeed. And still, today, it is but a fiveor six days' journey to that South Sea sought by those early Virginians. The only condition for us is that we shall board a train. Tomorrow, withthe airship, the South Sea may come nearer yet!

The Indians of this part of the earth were of the great Algonquinfamily, and the tribes with which the colonists had now to dowere drawn, probably by a polity based on blood ties, into a looseconfederation within the larger mass. Newport was "told that the name ofthe river was Powhatan, the name of the chief Powhatan, and the name ofthe people Powhatans. " But it seemed that the chief Powhatan was not atthis village but at another and a larger place named Werowocomoco, ona second great river in the back country to the north and east ofJamestown. Newport and his men were "well entreated" by the Indians. "But yet, " says Percy, "the Savages murmured at our planting in theCountrie. "

The party did not tarry up the river. Back came their boat through thebright weather, between the verdurous banks, all green and flower-tintedsave where might be seen the brown of Indian clearings with bark-coveredhuts and thin, up-curling blue smoke. Before them once more roseJamestown, palisaded now, and riding before it the three ships. Andhere there barked an English dog, and here were Englishmen to welcomeEnglishmen. Both parties had news to tell, but the town had most. On the26th of May, Indians had made an attack four hundred of them with theWerowance of Paspihe. One Englishman had been killed, a number wounded. Four of the Council had each man his wound. 

Newport must now lift anchor and sail away to England. He left atJamestown a fort "having three Bulwarkes at every corner like a halfeMoone, and foure or five pieces of Artillerie mounted in them, " a streetor two of reed-thatched cabins, a church to match, a storehouse, amarket-place and drill ground, and about all a stout palisade with agate upon the river side. He left corn sown and springing high, and somefood in the storehouse. And he left a hundred Englishmen who had nowtasted of the country fare and might reasonably fear no worse chancethan had yet befallen. Newport promised to return in twenty weeks withfull supplies. 

John Smith says that his enemies, chief amongst whom was Wingfield, would have sent him with Newport to England, there to stand trial forattempted mutiny, whereupon he demanded a trial in Virginia, and got itand was fully cleared. He now takes his place in the Council, beforetimedenied him. He has good words only for Robert Hunt, the chaplain, who, he says, went from one to the other with the best of counsel. Were theynot all here in the wilderness together, with the savages hovering aboutthem like the Philistines about the Jews of old? How should the Englishlive, unless among themselves they lived in amity? So for the momentfactions were reconciled, and all went to church to partake of the HolyCommunion. 

Newport sailed, having in the holds of his ships sassafras and valuablewoods but no gold to meet the London Council's hopes, nor any certainnews of the South Sea. In due time he reached England, and in due timehe turned and came again to Virginia. But long was the sailing to andfro between the daughter country and the mother country and the ladingand unlading at either shore. It was seven months before Newport cameagain. 

While he sails, and while England-in-America watches for him longingly, look for a moment at the attitude of Spain, falling old in theprocession of world-powers, but yet with grip and cunning left. Spainmisliked that English New World venture. She wished to keep these seasfor her own; only, with waning energies, she could not always enforcewhat she conceived to be her right. By now there was seen to be muchclay indeed in the image. Philip the Second was dead; and Philip theThird, an indolent king, lived in the Escurial. 

Pedro de Zuniga is the Spanish Ambassador to the English Court. He hasorders from Philip to keep him informed, and this he does, and from timeto time suggests remedies. He writes of Newport and the First Supply. "Sire. . . . Captain Newport makes haste to return with some people--andthere have combined merchants and other persons who desire to establishthemselves there; because it appears to them the most suitable placethat they have discovered for privateering and making attacks uponthe merchant fleets of Your Majesty. Your Majesty will command to seewhether they will be allowed to remain there. . . . They are in a greatstate of excitement about that place, and very much afraid lest YourMajesty should drive them out of it. . . . And there are so many. . . Whospeak already of sending people to that country, that it is advisablenot to be too slow; because they will soon be found there with largenumbers of people. "* In Spain the Council of State takes action uponZuniga's communications and closes a report to the King with thesewords: "The actual taking possession will be to drive out of Virginiaall who are there now, before they are reenforced, and. . . . It will bewell to issue orders that the small fleet stationed to the windward, which for so many years has been in state of preparation, should beinstantly made ready and forthwith proceed to drive out all who are nowin Virginia, since their small numbers will make this an easy task, andthis will suffice to prevent them from again coming to that place. " Uponthis is made a Royal note: "Let such measures be taken in this businessas may now and hereafter appear proper. "

 * Brown's "Genesis of the United States", vol. 1, pp. 116-118. 

It would seem that there was cause indeed for watching down the riverby that small, small town that was all of the United States! But therefollows a Spanish memorandum. "The driving out. . . By the fleet stationedto the windward will be postponed for a long time because delay willbe caused by getting it ready. "* Delay followed delay, and oldSpain--conquistador Spain--grew older, and the speech on JamestownIsland is still English. 

 * Op. Cit. , vol. 1, p. 127. 

Christopher Newport was gone; no ships--the last refuges, the lastpossibilities for home-turning, should the earth grow too hard and thesky too black--rode upon the river before the fort. Here was the summerheat. A heavy breath rose from immemorial marshes, from the ancientfloor of the forest. When clouds gathered and storms burst, they amazedthe heart with their fearful thunderings and lightnings. The colonistshad no well, but drank from the river, and at neither high nor low tidefound the water wholesome. While the ships were here they had help ofship stores, but now they must subsist upon the grain that they had inthe storehouse, now scant and poor enough. They might fish and hunt, butagainst such resources stood fever and inexperience and weakness, and inthe woods the lurking savages. The heat grew greater, the waterworse, the food less. Sickness began. Work became toil. Men pined fromhomesickness, then, coming together, quarreled with a weak violence, then dropped away again into corners and sat listlessly with hangingheads. 

"The sixth of August there died John Asbie of the bloodie Flixe. Theninth day died George Flowre of the swelling. The tenth day died WilliamBruster gentleman, of a wound given by the Savages. . . . The fourteenthday Jerome Alikock, Ancient, died of a wound, the same day FrancisMid-winter, Edward Moris, Corporall, died suddenly. The fifteenth daytheir died Edward Browne and Stephen Galthrope. The sixteenth day theirdied Thomas Gower gentleman. The seventeenth day their died ThomasMounslie. The eighteenth day theer died Robert Pennington and JohnMartine gentlemen. The nineteenth day died Drue Piggase gentleman. 

"The two and twentieth day of August there died Captain BartholomewGosnold one of our Councell, he was honourably buried having all theOrdnance in the Fort shot off, with many vollies of small shot. . . . 

"The foure and twentieth day died Edward Harrington and George Walkerand were buried the same day. The six and twentieth day died KenelmeThrogmortine. The seven and twentieth day died William Roods. The eightand twentieth day died Thomas Stoodie, Cape Merchant. The fourth day ofSeptember died Thomas Jacob, Sergeant. The fifth day there died BenjaminBeast. . . . "*

 * Percy's "Discourse. "

Extreme misery makes men blind, unjust, and weak of judgment. Here wasgross wretchedness, and the colonists proceeded to blame A and B andC, lost all together in the wilderness. It was this councilor or thatcouncilor, this ambitious one or that one, this or that almost certainlyascertained traitor! Wanting to steal the pinnace, the one craft left byNewport, wanting to steal away in the pinnace and leave the mass--smallenough mass now!--without boat or raft or straw to cling to, made thefavorite accusation. Upon this count, early in September, Wingfieldwas deposed from the presidency. Ratcliffe succeeded him, but presentlyRatcliffe fared no better. One councilor fared worse, for GeorgeKendall, accused of plotting mutiny and pinnace stealing, was giventrial, found guilty, and shot. 

"The eighteenth day [of September] died one Ellis Kinistone. . . . The sameday at night died one Richard Simmons. The nineteenth day there died oneThomas Mouton. . . . "

What went on, in Virginia, in the Indian mind, can only be conjectured. As little as the white mind could it foresee the trend of events orthe ultimate outcome of present policy. There was exhibited a see-sawpolicy, or perhaps no policy at all, only the emotional fit as it camehot or cold. The friendly act trod upon the hostile, the hostile uponthe friendly. Through the miserable summer the hostile was uppermost;then with the autumn appeared the friendly mood, fortunate enough for"the most feeble wretches" at Jamestown. Indians came laden with maizeand venison. The heat was a thing of the past; cool and bracing weatherappeared; and with it great flocks of wild fowl, "swans, geese, ducksand cranes. " Famine vanished, sickness decreased. The dead were dead. Of the hundred and four persons left by Newport less than fifty hadsurvived. But these may be thought of as indeed seasoned. 

CHAPTER IV. JOHN SMITH

With the cool weather began active exploration, the object in chief thegathering from the Indians, by persuasion or trade or show of force, food for the approaching winter. Here John Smith steps forward asleader. 

There begins a string of adventures of that hardy and romanticindividual. How much in Smith's extant narrations is exaggeration, how much is dispossession of others' merits in favor of his own, it isdifficult now to say. * A thing that one little likes is his persistentdepreciation of his fellows. There is but one Noble Adventurer, and thatone is John Smith. On the other hand evident enough are his courage andinitiative, his ingenuity, and his rough, practical sagacity. Let ustake him at something less than his own valuation, but yet as valuableenough. As for his adventures, real or fictitious, one may see inthem epitomized the adventures of many and many men, English, French, Spanish, Dutch, blazers of the material path for the presentcivilization. 

 * Those who would strike John Smith from the list of historians will commend the author's caution to the reader before she lets the Captain tell his own tale. Whatever Smith may not have been, he was certainly a consummate raconteur. He belongs with the renowned story-tellers of the world, if not with the veracious chroniclers. --Editor. 

In December, rather autumn than winter in this region, he starts withthe shallop and a handful of men up a tributary river that they havelearned to call the Chickahominy. He is going for corn, but there isalso an idea that he may hear news of that wished-for South Sea. 

The Chickahominy proved itself a wonderland of swamp and tree-chokedstreams. Somewhere up its chequered reaches Smith left the shallop withmen to guard it, and, taking two of the party with two Indian guides, went on in a canoe up a narrower way. Presently those left with theboat incautiously go ashore and are attacked by Indians. One is taken, tortured, and slain. The others get back to their boat and so away, downthe Chickahominy and into the now somewhat familiar James. But Smithwith his two men, Robinson and Emry, are now alone in the wilderness, upamong narrow waters, brown marshes, fallen and obstructing tree trunks. Now come the men-hunting Indians--the King of Pamaunck, says Smith, withtwo hundred bowmen. Robinson and Emry are shot full of arrows. Smithis wounded, but with his musket deters the foe, killing several of thesavages. His eyes upon them, he steps backward, hoping he may beat themoff till he shall recover the shallop, but meets with the ill chance ofa boggy and icy stream into which he stumbles, and here is taken. 

See him now before "Opechancanough, King of Pamaunck!" Savages andprocedures of the more civilized with savages have, the world over, afamily resemblance. Like many a man before him and after, Smith castsabout for a propitiatory wonder. He has with him, so fortunately, "around ivory double-compass dial. " This, with a genial manner, he wouldpresent to Opechancanough. The savages gaze, cannot touch through theglass the moving needle, grunt their admiration. Smith proceeds, with gestures and what Indian words he knows, to deliver a scientificlecture. Talking is best anyhow, will give them less time in which tothink of those men he shot. He tells them that the world is round, anddiscourses about the sun and moon and stars and the alternation of dayand night. He speaks with eloquence of the nations of the earth, ofwhite men, yellow men, black men, and red men, of his own country andits grandeurs, and would explain antipodes. 

Apparently all is waste breath and of no avail, for in an hour see himbound to a tree, a sturdy figure of a man, bearded and moustached, witha high forehead, clad in shirt and jerkin and breeches and hosen andshoon, all by this time, we may be sure, profoundly in need of repair. The tree and Smith are ringed by Indians, each of whom has an arrowfitted to his bow. Almost one can hear a knell ringing in the forest!But Opechancanough, moved by the compass, or willing to hear more ofseventeenth-century science, raises his arm and stops the execution. Unbinding Smith, they take him with them as a trophy. Presently allreach their town of Orapaks. 

Here he was kindly treated. He saw Indian dances, heard Indian orations. The women and children pressed about him and admired him greatly. Breadand venison were given him in such quantity that he feared that theymeant to fatten and eat him. It is, moreover, dangerous to be consideredpowerful where one is scarcely so. A young Indian lay mortally ill, andthey took Smith to him and demanded that forthwith he be cured. If thewhite man could kill--how they were not able to see--he could likewisedoubtless restore life. But the Indian presently died. His father, crying out in fury, fell upon the stranger who could have done so muchand would not! Here also coolness saved the white man. 

Smith was now led in triumph from town to town through the winter woods. The James was behind him, the Chickahominy also; he was upon new greatrivers, the Pamunkey and the Rappahannock. All the villages were muchalike, alike the still woods, the sere patches from which the corn hadbeen taken, the bear, the deer, the foxes, the turkeys that weremet with, the countless wild fowl. Everywhere were the same curious, crowding savages, the fires, the rustic cookery, the covering skinsof deer and fox and otter, the oratory, the ceremonial dances, themanipulations of medicine men or priests--these last, to the Englishmen, pure "devils with antique tricks. " Days were consumed in this going fromplace to place. At one point was produced a bag of gunpowder, gainedin some way from Jamestown. It was being kept with care to go into theearth in the spring and produce, when summer came, some wonderful crop. 

Opechancanough was a great chief, but higher than he moved Powhatan, chief of chiefs. This Indian was yet a stranger to the English inVirginia. Now John Smith was to make his acquaintance. 

Werowocomoco stood upon a bluff on the north side of York River. Herecame Smith and his captors, around them the winter woods, before themthe broad blue river. Again the gathered Indians, men and women, againthe staring, the handling, the more or less uncomplimentary remarks;then into the Indian ceremonial lodge he was pushed. Here sat the chiefof chiefs, Powhatan, and he had on a robe of raccoon skins with allthe tails hanging. About him sat his chief men, and behind these weregathered women. All were painted, head and shoulders; all wore, boundabout the head, adornments meant to strike with beauty or with terror;all had chains of beads. Smith does not report what he said to Powhatan, or Powhatan to him. He says that the Queen of Appamatuck brought himwater for his hands, and that there was made a great feast. When thiswas over, the Indians held a council. It ended in a death decree. Incontinently Smith was seized, dragged to a great stone lying beforePowhatan, forced down and bound. The Indians made ready their clubs;meaning to batter his brains out. Then, says Smith, occurred themiracle. 

A child of Powhatan's, a very young girl called Pocahontas, sprang fromamong the women, ran to the stone, and with her own body sheltered thatof the Englishman. . . . *

 * A vast amount of erudition has been expended by historical students to establish the truth or falsity of this Pocahontas story. The author has refrained from entering the controversy, preferring to let the story stand as it was told by Captain Smith in his "General History" (1624). -- Editor. 

What, in Powhatan's mind, of hesitation, wiliness, or good nature backedhis daughter's plea is not known. But Smith did not have his brainsbeaten out. He was released, taken by some form of adoption into thetribe, and set to using those same brains in the making of hatchets andornaments. A few days passed and he was yet further enlarged. Powhatanlonged for two of the great guns possessed by the white men and for agrindstone. He would send Smith back to Jamestown if in return hewas sure of getting those treasures. It is to be supposed that Smithpromised him guns and grindstones as many as could be borne away. 

So Werowocomoco saw him depart, twelve Indians for escort. He hadleagues to go, a night or two to spend upon the march. Lying in thehuge winter woods, he expected, on the whole, death before morning. But "Almighty God mollified the hearts of those sterne barbarians withcompassion. " And so he was restored to Jamestown, where he found moredead than when he left. Some there undoubtedly welcomed him as a strongman restored when there was need of strong men. Others, it seems, wouldas lief that Pocahontas had not interfered. 

The Indians did not get their guns and grindstones. But Smith loaded ademi-culverin with stones and fired upon a great tree, icicle-hung. Thegun roared, the boughs broke, the ice fell rattling, the smoke spread, the Indians cried out and cowered away. Guns and grindstone, Smith toldthem, were too violent and heavy devils for them to carry from river toriver. Instead he gave them, from the trading store, gifts enticing tothe savage eye, and not susceptible of being turned against the donors. 

Here at Jamestown in midwinter were more food and less mortal sicknessthan in the previous fearful summer, yet no great amount of food, andnow suffering, too, from bitter cold. Nor had the sickness ended, nordissensions. Less than fifty men were all that held together Englandand America--a frayed cord, the last strands of which might presentlypart. . . . 

Then up the river comes Christopher Newport in the Francis and John, tobe followed some weeks later by the Phoenix. Here is new life--storesfor the settlers and a hundred new Virginians! How certain, at anyrate, is the exchange of talk of home and hair-raising stories of thiswilderness between the old colonists and the new! And certain isthe relief and the renewed hopes. Mourning turns to joy. Even aconflagration that presently destroys the major part of the town can notblast that felicity. 

Again Newport and Smith and others went out to explore the country. Theywent over to Werowocomoco and talked with Powhatan. He told them thingswhich they construed to mean that the South Sea was near at hand, andthey marked this down as good news for the home Council--still impatientfor gold and Cathay. On their return to Jamestown they found under waynew and stouter houses. The Indians were again friendly; they broughtvenison and turkeys and corn. Smith says that every few days camePocahontas and attendant women bringing food. 

Spring came again with the dogwood and the honeysuckle and thestrawberries, the gay, returning birds, the barred and striped andmottled serpents. The colony was one year old. Back to England sailedthe Francis and John and the Phoenix, carrying home Edward-MariaWingfield, who has wearied of Virginia and will return no more. 

What rests certain and praiseworthy in Smith is his thoroughness anddaring in exploration. This summer he went with fourteen others down theriver in an open boat, and so across the great bay, wide as a sea, towhat is yet called the Eastern Shore, the counties now of Accomac andNorthampton. Rounding Cape Charles these indefatigable explorers cameupon islets beaten by the Atlantic surf. These they named Smith'sIslands. Landing upon the main shore, they met "grimme and stout"savages, who took them to the King of Accomac, and him they found civilenough. This side of the great bay, with every creek and inlet, Smithexamined and set down upon the map he was making. Even if he could findno gold for the Council at home, at least he would know what places weresuited for "harbours and habitations. " Soon a great storm came up, andthey landed again, met yet other Indians, went farther, and were instraits for fresh water. The weather became worse; they were in dangerof shipwreck--had to bail the boat continually. Indians gathered uponthe shore and discharged flights of arrows, but were dispersed by avolley from the muskets. The bread the English had with them went bad. Wind and weather were adverse; three or four of the fifteen fell ill, but recovered. The weather improved; they came to the seven-mile-widemouth of "Patawomeck"--the Potomac. They turned their boat up this vaststream. For a long time they saw upon the woody banks no savages. Thenwithout warning they came upon ambuscades of great numbers "so strangelypainted, grimed and disguised, shouting, yelling and crying, as werather supposed them so many divils. " Smith, in midstream, orderedmusket-fire, and the balls went grazing over the water, and the terriblesound echoed through the woods. The savages threw down their bows andarrows and made signs of friendliness. The English went ashore, hostageswere exchanged, and a kind of amicableness ensued. After such sylvanentertainment Smith and his men returned to the boat. The oars dippedand rose, the bright water broke from them; and these Englishmen in OldVirginia proceeded up the Potomac. Could they have seen--could they buthave seen before them, on the north bank, rising, like the unsubstantialfabric of a dream, there above the trees, a vast, white Capitol shiningin the sunlight!

Far up the river, they noticed that the sand on the shore gleamed withyellow spangles. They looked and saw high rocks, and they thought thatfrom these the rain had washed the glittering dust. Gold? Harbors theyhad found--but what of gold? What, even, of Cathay?

Going down stream, they sought again those friendly Indians. Did theyknow gold or silver? The Indians looked wise, nodded heads, and tookthe visitors up a little tributary river to a rocky hill in which"with shells and hatchets" they had opened as it were a mine. Here theygathered a mineral which, when powdered, they sprinkled over themselvesand their idols "making them, " says the relation, "like blackamoorsdusted over with silver. " The white men filled their boat with as muchof this ore as they could carry. High were their hopes over it, butwhen it was subsequently sent to London and assayed, it was found to beworthless. 

The fifteen now started homeward, out of Potomac and down the westwardside of Chesapeake. In their travels they saw, besides the Indians, allmanner of four-footed Virginians. Bears rolled their bulk through theseforests; deer went whither they would. The explorers might meet foxesand catamounts, otter, beaver and marten, raccoon and opossum, wolf andIndian dog. Winged Virginians made the forests vocal. The owl hootedat night, and the whippoorwill called in the twilight. The streamswere filled with fish. Coming to the mouth of the Rappahannock, thetravelers' boat grounded upon sand, with the tide at ebb. Awaiting thewater that should lift them off, the fifteen began with their swords tospear the fish among the reeds. Smith had the ill luck to encounter asting-ray, and received its barbed weapon through his wrist. There setin a great swelling and torment which made him fear that death was athand. He ordered his funeral and a grave to be dug on a neighboringislet. Yet by degrees he grew better and so out of torment, and withalso hungry that he longed for supper, whereupon, with a light heart, hehad his late enemy the sting-ray cooked and ate him. They then named theplace Sting-ray Island and, the tide serving, got off the sand-bar anddown the bay, and so came home to Jamestown, having been gone sevenweeks. 

Like Ulysses, Smith refuses to rust in inaction. A few days, and awayhe is again, first up to Rappahannock, and then across the bay. On thisjourney he and his men come up with the giant Susquehannocks, who arenot Algonquins but Iroquois. After many hazards in which the forestand the savage play their part, Smith and his band again return toJamestown. In all this adventuring they have gained much knowledge ofthe country and its inhabitants--but yet no gold, and no further news ofthe South Sea or of far Cathay. 

It was now September and the second summer with its toll of fevervictims was well-nigh over. Autumn and renewed energy were at hand. Allthe land turned crimson and gold. At Jamestown building went forward, together with the gathering of ripened crops, the felling of trees, fishing and fowling, and trading for Indian corn and turkeys. 

One day George Percy, heading a trading party down the river, saw comingtoward him a white sailed ship, the Mary and Margaret-it was ChristopherNewport again, with the second supply. Seventy colonists came over onthe Mary and Margaret, among them a fair number of men of note. Herewere Captain Peter Wynne and Richard Waldo, "old soldiers and valiantgentlemen, " Francis West, young brother of the Lord De La Warr, RawleyCrashaw, John Codrington, Daniel Tucker, and others. This is indeed animportant ship. Among the laborers, the London Council had sent eightPoles and Germans, skilled in their own country in the production ofpitch, tar, glass, and soap-ashes. Here, then, begin in Virginia otherblood strains than the English. And in the Mary and Margaret comes withMaster Thomas Forest his wife, Mistress Forest, and her maid, by nameAnne Burras. Apart from those lost ones of Raleigh's colony at Roanoke, these are the first Englishwomen in Virginia. There may be guessed whatwelcome they got, how much was made of them. 

Christopher Newport had from that impatient London Council somewhatstrange orders. He was not to return without a lump of gold, or acertain discovery of waters pouring into the South Sea, or some notiongained of the fate of the lost colony of Roanoke. He had been given abarge which could be taken to pieces and so borne around those Falls ofthe Far West, then put together, and the voyage to the Pacific resumed. Moreover, he had for Powhatan, whom the minds at home figured as a sortof Asiatic Despot, a gilt crown and a fine ewer and basin, a bedstead, and a gorgeous robe. 

The easiest task, that of delivering Powhatan's present and placingan idle crown upon that Indian's head who, among his own people, wasalready sufficiently supreme, might be and was performed. And Newportwith a large party went again to the Falls of the Far West and milesdeep into the country beyond. Here they found Indians outside thePowhatan Confederacy, but no South Sea, nor mines of gold and silver, nor any news of the lost colony of Roanoke. In December Newport leftVirginia in the Mary and Margaret, and with him sailed Ratcliffe. Smithsucceeded to the presidency. 

About this time John Laydon, a laborer, and Anne Burras, that maid ofMistress Forest's, fell in love and would marry. So came about the firstEnglish wedding in Virginia. 

Winter followed with snow and ice, nigh two hundred people to feed, andnot overmuch in the larder with which to do it. Smith with GeorgePercy and Francis West and others went again to the Indians forcorn. Christmas found them weather-bound at Kecoughtan. "Wherever anEnglishman may be, and in whatever part of the world, he must keepChristmas with feasting and merriment! And, indeed, we were never moremerrie, nor fedde on more plentie of good oysters, fish, flesh, wildfowle and good bread; nor never had better fires in England than in thedrie, smokie houses of Kecoughtan!"

But despite this Christmas fare, there soon began quarrels, many andintricate, with Powhatan and his brother Opechancanough. 

CHAPTER V. THE "SEA ADVENTURE"

Experience is a great teacher. That London Company with Virginia tocolonize had now come to see how inadequate to the attempt were itsmeans and strength. Evidently it might be long before either gold minesor the South Sea could be found. The company's ships were too slight andfew; colonists were going by the single handful when they should go bythe double. Something was at fault in the management of the enterprise. The quarrels in Virginia were too constant, the disasters too frequent. More money, more persons interested with purse and mind, a greatcompany instead of a small, a national cast to the enterprise these wereimperative needs. In the press of such demands the London Company passedaway. In 1609 under new letters patent was born the Virginia Company. 

The members and shareholders in this corporation touch through andthrough the body of England at that day. First names upon the roll comeRobert Cecil, Thomas Howard, Henry Wriothesley, William Herbert, HenryClinton, Richard Sackville, Thomas Cecil, Philip Herbert--Earls ofSalisbury, Suffolk, Southampton, Pembroke, Lincoln, Dorset, Exeter, and Montgomery. Then follow a dozen peers, the Lord Bishop of Bath andWells, a hundred knights, many gentlemen, one hundred and ten merchants, certain physicians and clergymen, old soldiers of the Continental wars, sea-captains and mariners, and a small host of the unclassified. Inaddition shares were taken by fifty-six London guilds or industrialcompanies. Here are the Companies of the Tallow and Wax Chandlers, theArmorers and Girdlers, Cordwayners and Carpenters, Masons, Plumbers, Founders, Poulterers, Cooks, Coopers, Tylers and Brick Layers, Bowyersand Vinters, Merchant Taylors, Blacksmiths and Weavers, Mercers, Grocers, Turners, Gardeners, Dyers, Scriveners, Fruiterers, Plaisterers, Brown Bakers, Imbroiderers, Musicians, and many more. 

The first Council appointed by the new charter had fifty-two members, fourteen of whom sat in the English House of Lords, and twice thatnumber in the Commons. Thus was Virginia well linked to Crown andParliament. 

This great commercial company had sovereign powers within Virginia. TheKing should have his fifth part of all ore of gold and silver; the lawsand religion of England should be upheld, and no man let go to Virginiawho had not first taken the oath of supremacy. But in the wide fieldbeside all this the President--called the Treasurer--and the Council, henceforth to be chosen out of and by the whole body of subscribers, had full sway. No longer should there be a second Council sitting inVirginia, but a Governor with power, answerable only to the Company athome. That Company might tax and legislate within the Virginian field, punish the ill-doer or "rebel, " and wage war, if need be, against Indianor Spaniard:

One of the first actions of the newly constituted body was to seekremedy for the customary passage by way of the West Indies--so long andso beset by dangers. They sent forth a small ship under Captain SamuelArgall, with instructions "to attempt a direct and cleare passage, byleaving the Canaries to the East, and from thence to run a straightwesterne course. . . . And so to make an experience of the Winds andCurrents which have affrighted all undertakers by the North. "

This Argall, a young man with a stirring and adventurous life behind himand before him, took his ship the indicated way. He made the voyagein nine weeks, of which two were spent becalmed, and upon his returnreported that it might be made in seven, "and no apparent inconveniencein the way. " He brought to the great Council of the Company a story ofnecessity and distress at Jamestown, and the Council lays much of theblame for that upon "the misgovernment of the Commanders, by dissentionand ambition among themselves, " and upon the idleness of the generalrun, "active in nothing but adhearing to factions and parts. " TheCouncil, sitting afar from a savage land, is probably much too severe. But the "factions and parts" cannot easily be denied. 

Before Argall's return, the Company had commissioned as Governor ofVirginia Sir Thomas Gates, and had gathered a fleet of seven ships andtwo pinnaces with Sir George Somers as Admiral, in the ship called theSea Adventure, and Christopher Newport as Vice-Admiral. All weighedanchor from Falmouth early in June and sailed by the newly tried course, south to the Canaries and then across. These seven ships carried fivehundred colonists, men, women, and children. 

On St. James's day there rose and broke a fearsome storm. Two days andnights it raged, and it scattered that fleet of seven. Gates, Somers, and Newport with others of "rancke and quality" were upon the SeaAdventure. How fared this ship with one attendant pinnace we shall cometo see presently. But the other ships, driven to and fro, at last founda favorable wind, and in August they sighted Virginia. On the eleventhof that month they came, storm-beaten and without Governor or Admiralor Sea Adventure, into "our Bay" and at last to "the King's River andTown. " Here there swarmed from these ships nigh three hundred persons, meeting and met by the hundred dwelling at Jamestown. This was the thirdsupply, but it lacked the hundred or so upon the Sea Adventure and thepinnace, and it lacked a head. "Being put ashore without their Governoror any order from him (all the Commissioners and principal persons beingaboard him) no man would acknowledge a superior. "

With this multitude appeared once more in Virginia the three ancientcouncilors--Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin. Apparently here came freshfuel for factions. Who should rule, and who should be ruled? Here isan extremely old and important question, settled in history only to beunsettled again. Everywhere it rises, dust on Time's road, and is laidonly to rise again. 

Smith was still President. Who was in the right and who in the wrong inthese ancient quarrels, the recital of which fills the pages of Smithand of other men, is hard now to be determined. But Jamestown became aplace of turbulence. Francis West was sent with a considerable number tothe Falls of the Far West to make there some kind of settlement. For alike purpose Martin and Percy were dispatched to the Nansemond River. All along the line there was bitter falling out. The Indians becamemarkedly hostile. Smith was up the river, quarreling with West and hismen. At last he called them "wrongheaded asses, " flung himself intohis boat, and made down the river to Jamestown. Yet even so he found nopeace, for, while he was asleep in the boat, by some accident or othera spark found its way to his powder pouch. The powder exploded. Terriblyhurt, he leaped overboard into the river, whence he was with difficultyrescued. 

Smith was now deposed by Ratcliffe, Archer, and Martin, because, "beingan ambityous, onworthy, and vayneglorious fellowe, " say his detractors, "he wolde rule all and ingrose all authority into his own hands. " Bethis as it may, Smith was put on board one of the ships which were aboutto sail for England. Wounded, and with none at Jamestown able to healhis hurt, he was no unwilling passenger. Thus he departed, and Virginiaknew Captain John Smith no more. Some liked him and his ways, some likedhim not nor his ways either. He wrote of his own deeds and praised themhighly, and saw little good in other mankind, though here and there hemade an exception. Evident enough are faults of temper. But he had greatcourage and energy and at times a lofty disinterestedness. 

Again winter drew on at Jamestown, and with it misery on misery. GeorgePercy, now President, lay ill and unable to keep order. The multitude, "unbridled and heedless, " pulled this way and that. Before the cold hadwell begun, what provision there was in the storehouse became exhausted. That stream of corn from the Indians in which the colonists had putdependence failed to flow. The Indians themselves began systematicallyto spoil and murder. Ratcliffe and fourteen with him met death whileloading his barge with corn upon the Pamunkey. The cold grew worse. By midwinter there was famine. The four hundred--already noticeablydwindled--dwindled fast and faster. The cold was severe; the Indianswere in the woods; the weakened bodies of the white men pined andshivered. They broke up the empty houses to make fires to warmthemselves. They began to die of hunger as well as by Indian arrows. On went the winter, and every day some died. Tales of cannibalism aretold. . . . This was the Starving Time. 

When the leaves were red and gold, England-in-America had a populationof four hundred and more. When the dogwood and the strawberry bloomed, England-in-America had a population of but sixty. 

Somewhat later than this time there came from the pen of Shakespeare aplay dealing with a tempest and shipwreck and a magical isle and rescuethereon. The bright spirit Ariel speaks of "the still-vex'd Bermoothes. "These were islands "two hundred leagues from any continent, " named aftera Spanish Captain Bermudez who had landed there. Once there had beenIndians, but these the Spaniards had slain or taken as slaves. Now theislands were desolate, uninhabited, "forlorn and unfortunate. " Chancevessels might touch, but the approach was dangerous. There grew rumorsof pirates, and then of demons. "The Isles of Demons, " was the namegiven to them. "The most forlorn and unfortunate place in the world" wasthe description that fitted them in those distant days:

All torment, trouble, wonder and amazement Inhabits here: some heavenlypower guide us Out of this fearful country. 

When Shakespeare so wrote, there was news in England and talk went toand fro of the shipwreck of the Sea Adventure upon the rocky teeth ofthe Bermoothes, "uninhabitable and almost inaccessible, " and of theescape and dwelling there for months of Gates and Somers and thecolonists in that ship. It is generally assumed that this incidentfurnished timber for the framework of The Tempest. 

The storm that broke on St. James's Day, scattering the ships of thethird supply, drove the Sea Adventure here and there at will. Upon herwatched Gates and Somers and Newport, above a hundred men, and a fewwomen and children. There sprang a leak; all thought of death. Thenrose a cry "Land ho!" The storm abated, but the wind carried the SeaAdventure upon this shore and grounded her upon a reef. A certain R. Rich, gentleman, one of the voyagers, made and published a ballad uponthe whole event. If it is hardly Shakespearean music, yet it is notdevoid of interest. 

. . . The Seas did rage, the windes did blowe, Distressed were they then; Their shippe did leake, her tacklings breake, In daunger were her men; But heaven was pylotte in this storme, And to an Iland neare, Bermoothawes called, conducted them, Which did abate their feare. 

Using the ship's boats they got to shore, though with toil and danger. Here they found no sprites nor demons, nor even men, but a fair, half-tropical verdure and, running wild, great numbers of swine. 

 And then on shoare the iland came Inhabited by hogges, Some Foule and tortoyses there were, They only had one dogge, To kill these swyne, to yield them foode, That little had to eate. Their store was spent and all things scant, Alas! they wanted meate. 

 They did not, however, starve. 

 A thousand hogges that dogge did kill Their hunger to sustaine. 

Ten months the Virginia colonists lived among the "still-vex'dBermoothes. " The Sea Adventure was but a wreck pinned between the reefs. No sail was seen upon the blue water. Where they were thrown, thereGates and Somers and Newport and all must stay for a time and make thebest of it. They builded huts and thatched them, and they brought fromthe wrecked ship, pinned but half a mile from land, stores of manykinds. The clime proved of the blandest, fairest; with fishing andhunting they maintained themselves. Days, weeks, and months went by. They had a minister, Master Buck. They brought from the ship a bell andraised it for a church-bell. A marriage, a few deaths, the birth of twochildren these were events on the island. One of these children, thedaughter of John Rolfe, gentleman, and his wife, was christened Bermuda. Gates and Somers held kindly sway. The colonists lived in plenty, peace, and ease. But for all that, they were shipwrecked folk, and far, far outof the world, and they longed for the old ways and their own kin. Dayfollowed day, but no sail would show to bear them thence; and so atlast, taking what they could from the forests of the island, and fromthe Sea Adventure, they set about to become shipwrights. 

 And there two gallant pynases, Did build of Seader-tree, The brave Deliverance one was call'd, Of seaventy tonne was shee, The other Patience had to name, Her burthen thirty tonne. . . . 

. . . The two and forty weekes being past They hoyst sayle and away; Their shippes with hogges well freighted were, Their harts with mickle joy. 

And so to Virginia came. . . 

What they found when they came to Virginia was dolor enough. OnJamestown strand they beheld sixty skeletons "who had eaten all thequick things that weare there, and some of them had eaten snakes andadders. " Somers, Gates, and Newport, on entering the town, found it"rather as the ruins of some auntient fortification than that any peopleliving might now inhabit it. "

A pitiable outcome, this, of all the hopes of fair "harbours andhabitations, " of golden dreams, and farflung dominion. All those whomRaleigh had sent to Roanoke were lost or had perished. Those who hadnamed and had first dwelled in Jamestown were in number about a hundred. To these had been added, during the first year or so, perhaps twohundred more. And the ships that had parted from the Sea Adventure hadbrought in three hundred. First and last, not far from seven hundredEnglish folk had come to live in Virginia. And these skeletons eatingsnakes and adders were all that remained of that company; all thoseothers had died miserably and their hopes were ashes with them. 

What might Sir Thomas Gates, the Governor, do? "That which added most tohis sorowe, and not a little startled him, was the impossibilitie. . Howto amend one whitt of this. His forces were not of habilitie to revengeupon the Indian, nor his owne supply (now brought from the Bermudas)sufficient to relieve his people. " So he called a Council and listenedin turn to Sir George Somers, to Christopher Newport, and to "thegentlemen and Counsaile of the former Government. " The end and upshotwas that none could see other course than to abandon the country. England-in-America had tried and failed, and had tried again and failed. God, or the course of Nature, or the current of History was against her. Perhaps in time stronger forces and other attempts might yet issue fromEngland. But now the hour had come to say farewell!

Upon the bosom of the river swung two pinnaces, the Discovery and theVirginia, left by the departing ships months before, and the Deliveranceand the Patience, the Bermuda pinnaces. Thus the English abandoned thelittle town that was but three years old. Aboard the four small shipsthey went, and down the broad river, between the flowery shores, theysailed away. Doubtless under the trees on either hand were Indianswatching this retreat of the invaders of their forests. The plan of thedeparting colonists was to turn north, when they had reached the sea, and make for Newfoundland, where they might perhaps meet with Englishfishing ships. So they sailed down the river, and doubtless manyhearts were heavy and sad, but others doubtless were full of joy andthankfulness to be going back to an older home than Virginia. 

The river broadened toward Chesapeake--and then, before them, what didthey see? What deliverance for those who had held on to the uttermost?They saw the long boat of an English ship coming toward them withflashing oars, bringing news of comfort and relief. There, indeed, offPoint Comfort lay three ships, the De La Warr, the Blessing, and theHercules, and they brought, with a good company and good stores, SirThomas West, Lord De La Warr, appointed, over Gates, Lord Governor andCaptain General, by land and sea, of the Colony of Virginia. 

The Discovery, the Virginia, the Patience, and the Deliverance thereuponput back to that shore they thought to have left forever. Two dayslater, on Sunday the 10th of June, 1610, there anchored before Jamestownthe De La Warr, the Blessing, and the Hercules; and it was thus that thenew Lord Governor wrote home: "I. . . In the afternoon went ashore, whereafter a sermon made by Mr. Buck. . . I caused my commission to be read, upon which Sir Thomas Gates delivered up. . . Unto me his owne commission, both patents, and the counsell seale; and then I delivered some fewwordes unto the Company. . . . And after. . . Did constitute and give placeof office and chardge to divers Captaines and gentlemen and elected untome a counsaile. "

 The dead was alive again. Saith Rich's ballad:

 And to the adventurers* thus he writes, "Be not dismayed at all, For scandall cannot doe us wrong, God will not let us fall. Let England knowe our willingnesse, For that our worke is good, WE HOPE TO PLANT A NATION WHERE NONE BEFORE HATH STOOD. "

 * The Virginia Company. 

CHAPTER VI. SIR THOMAS DALE

In a rebuilded Jamestown, Lord De La Warr, of "approved courage, temperand experience, " held for a short interval dignified, seigneurial sway, while his restless associates adventured far and wide. Sir George Somerssailed back to the Bermudas to gather a cargo of the wild swine of thosewoods, but illness seized him there, and he died among the beautifulislands. That Captain Samuel Argall who had traversed for the Companythe short road from the Canaries took up Smith's fallen mantle andcarried on the work of exploration. It was he who found, and named forthe Lord Governor, Delaware Bay. He went up the Potomac and traded forcorn; rescued an English boy from the Indians; had brushes with thesavages. In the autumn back to England with a string of ships went thattried and tested seafarer Christopher Newport. Virginia wanted manythings, and chiefly that the Virginia Company should excuse defect andremember promise. So Gates sailed with Newport to make true report andguide exertion. Six months passed, and the Lord Governor himself fellill and must home to England. So away he, too, went and for seven yearsuntil his death ruled from that distance through a deputy governor. DeLa Warr was a man of note and worth, old privy councilor of Elizabethand of James, soldier in the Low Countries, strong Protestant andbeliever in England-in-America. Today his name is borne by a greatriver, a great bay, and by one of the United States. 

In London, the Virginia Company, having listened to Gates, projecteda fourth supply for the colony. Of those hundreds who had perished inVirginia, many had been true and intelligent men, and again many perhapshad been hardly that. But the Virginia Company was now determined toexercise for the future a discrimination. It issued a broadside, making known that it was sending a new supply of men and all necessaryprovision in a fleet of good ships, under the conduct of Sir ThomasGates and Sir Thomas Dale, and that it was not intended any more toburden the action with "vagrant and unnecessary persons. . . But honestand industrious men, as Carpenters, Smiths, Coopers, Fishermen, Tanners, Shoemakers, Shipwrights, Brickmen, Gardeners, Husbandmen, and laboringmen of all sorts that. . . Shall be entertained for the Voyage upon suchtermes as their qualitie and fitnesse shall deserve. " Yet, in spite ofprecautions, some of the other sort continued to creep in with the soberand industrious. Master William Crashaw, in a sermon upon the Virginiaventure, remarks that "they who goe. . . Be like for aught I see to thosewho are left behind, even of all sorts better and worse!" This probablyhits the mark. 

The Virginia Company meant at last to have order in Virginia. To thiseffect, a new office was created and a strong man was found to fill it. Gates remained De La Warr's deputy governor, but Sir Thomas Dale wentas Marshal of Virginia. The latter sailed in March, 1611, with "threeships, three hundred people, twelve kine, twenty goats, and all thingsneedful for the colony. " Gates followed in May with other ships, threehundred colonists, and much cattle. 

For the next few years Dale becomes, in effect, ruler of Virginia. Hedid much for the colony, and therefore, in that far past that is notso distant either, much for the United States--a man of note, and worthconsidering. 

Dale had seen many years of service in the Low Countries. He was stillin Holland when the summons came to cross the ocean in the service ofthe Virginia Company. On the recommendation of Henry, Prince of Wales, the States-General of the United Netherlands consented "that CaptainThomas Dale (destined by the King of Great Britain to be employed inVirginia in his Majesty's service) may absent himself from his companyfor the space of three years, and that his said company shall remainmeanwhile vacant, to be resumed by him if he think proper. "

This man had a soldier's way with him and an iron will. For five yearsin Virginia he exhibited a certain stern efficiency which was perhapsthe best support and medicine that could have been devised. At the endof that time, leaving Virginia, he did not return to the Dutch service, but became Admiral of the fleet of the English East India Company, thuspassing from one huge historic mercantile company to another. With sixships he sailed for India. Near Java, the English and the Dutch havingchosen to quarrel, he had with a Dutch fleet "a cruel, bloody fight. "Later, when peace was restored, the East India Company would have givenhim command of an allied fleet of English and Dutch ships, the objectivebeing trade along the coast of Malabar and an attempt to open commercewith the Chinese. But Sir Thomas Dale was opening commerce with avaster, hidden land, for at Masulipatam he died. "Whose valor, " says hisepitaph, "having shined in the Westerne, was set in the Easterne India. "

But now in Maytime of 1611 Dale was in Virginian waters. By this day, beside the main settlement of Jamestown, there were at Cape Henry andPoint Comfort small forts garrisoned with meager companies of men. Dalemade pause at these, setting matters in order, and then, proceeding upthe river, he came to Jamestown and found the people gathered to receivehim. Presently he writes home to the Company a letter that gives a viewof the place and its needs. Any number of things must be done, requiringcontinuous and hard work, "as, namely, the reparation of the fallingChurch and so of the Store-house, a stable for our horses, a munitionhouse, a Powder house, a new well for the amending of the mostunwholesome water which the old afforded. Brick to be made, a sturgionhouse. . . A Block house to be raised on the North side of our back riverto prevent the Indians from killing our cattle, a house to be set up tolodge our cattle in the winter, and hay to be appointed in his due timeto be made, a smith's forge to be perfected, caske for our Sturgionsto be made, and besides private gardens for each man common gardensfor hemp and flax and such other seeds, and lastly a bridge to land ourgoods dry and safe upon, for most of which I take present order. "

Dale would have agreed with Dr. Watts that

 Satan finds some mischief still For idle hands to do!

If we of the United States today will call to mind certain Western smalltowns of some decades ago--if we will review them as they are picturedin poem and novel and play--we may receive, as it were out of the tailof the eye, an impression of some aspects of these western plantings ofthe seventeenth century. The dare-devil, the bully, the tenderfoot, thegambler, the gentleman-desperado had their counterparts in Virginia. Sohad the cool, indomitable sheriff and his dependable posse, the friendsgenerally of law and order. Dale may be viewed as the picturesquesheriff of this earlier age. 

But it must be remembered that this Virginia was of the seventeenth, notof the nineteenth century. And law had cruel and idiot faces as well asfaces just and wise. Hitherto the colony possessed no written statutes. The Company now resolved to impose upon the wayward an iron restraint. It fell to Dale to enforce the regulations known as "Lawes and Orders, dyvine, politique, and martiall for the Colonye of Virginia"--notEnglish civil law simply, but laws "chiefly extracted out of the Lawesfor governing the army in the Low Countreys. " The first part of thiscode was compiled by William Strachey; the latter part is thought tohave been the work of Sir Edward Cecil, Sir Thomas Gates, and Dalehimself, approved and accepted by the Virginia Company. Ten yearsafterwards, defending itself before a Committee of Parliament, theCompany through its Treasurer declared "the necessity of such laws, insome cases ad terrorem, and in some to be truly executed. "

Seventeenth-century English law herself was terrible enough in allconscience, but "Dale's Laws" went beyond. Offences ranged from failureto attend church and idleness to lese majeste. The penalties weregross--cruel whippings, imprisonments, barbarous puttings to death. TheHigh Marshal held the unruly down with a high hand. 

But other factors than this Draconian code worked at last toward orderin this English West. Dale was no small statesman, and he played fermentagainst ferment. Into Virginia now first came private ownership of land. So much was given to each colonist, and care of this booty becameto each a preoccupation. The Company at home sent out more and moresettlers, and more and more of the industrious, peace-loving sort. By1612 the English in America numbered about eight hundred. Dale projectedanother town, and chose for its site the great horseshoe bend in theriver a few miles below the Falls of the Far West, at a spot we now callDutch Gap. Here Dale laid out a town which he named Henricus after thePrince of Wales, and for its citizens he drafted from Jamestown threehundred persons. To him also are due Bermuda and Shirley Hundreds andDale's Gift over on the Eastern Shore. As the Company sent over morecolonists, there began to show, up and down the James though at farintervals, cabins and clearings made by white men, set about with astockade, and at the river edge a rude landing and a fastened boat. Therestless search for mines of gold and silver now slackened. Instead eyesturned for wealth to the kingdom of the plant and tree, and to fur tradeand fisheries. 

 * Hitherto there had been no trading or landholding by individuals. All the colonists contributed the products of their toil to the common store and received their supplies from the Company. The adventurers (stockholders) contributed money to the enterprise; the colonists, themselves and their labor. 

Those ships that brought colonists were in every instance expectedto return to England laden with the commodities of Virginia. At firstcargoes of precious ores were looked for. These failing, the Companymust take from Virginia what lay at hand and what might be suited toEnglish needs. In 1610 the Company issued a paper of instructions uponthis subject of Virginia commodities. The daughter was expected tosend to the mother country sassafras root, bay berries, puccoon, sarsaparilla, walnut, chestnut, and chinquapin oil, wine, silk grass, beaver cod, beaver and otter skins, clapboard of oak and walnut, tar, pitch, turpentine, and powdered sturgeon. 

It might seem that Virginia was headed to become a land of fishers, offoresters, and vine dressers, perhaps even, when the gold should beat last discovered, of miners. At home, the colonizing merchants andstatesmen looked for some such thing. In return for what she laded intoships, Virginia was to receive English-made goods, and to an especialdegree woolen goods, "a very liberall utterance of our English clothsinto a maine country described to be bigger than all Europe. " There wasto be direct trade, country kind for country kind, and no specie to betaken out of England. The promoters at home doubtless conceived a hardyand simple trans-Atlantic folk of their own kindred, planters for theirown needs, steady consumers of the plainer sort of English wares, steadygatherers, in return, of necessaries for which England otherwise musttrade after a costly fashion with lands which were not always friendly. A simple, sturdy, laborious Virginia, white men and Indians. If this wastheir dream, reality was soon to modify it. 

A new commodity of unsuspected commercial value began now to be grown ingarden-plots along the James--the "weed" par excellence, tobacco. ThatJohn Rolfe who had been shipwrecked on the Sea Adventure was now aplanter in Virginia. His child Bermuda had died in infancy, and his wifesoon after their coming to Jamestown. Rolfe remained, a young man, agood citizen, and a Christian. And he loved tobacco. On that trivialfact hinges an important chapter in the economic history of America. In 1612 Rolfe planted tobacco in his own garden, experimented with itsculture, and prophesied that the Virginian weed would rank with thebest Spanish. It was now a shorter plant, smaller-leafed andsmaller-flowered, but time and skilful gardening would improve it. 

England had known tobacco for thirty years, owing its introduction toRaleigh. At first merely amused by the New World rarity, England wasnow by general use turning a luxury into a necessity. More and more shereceived through Dutch and Spanish ships tobacco from the Indies. Amongthe English adventurers to Virginia some already knew the uses of theweed; others soon learned from the Indians. Tobacco was perhaps notindigenous to Virginia, but had probably come through southern tribeswho in turn had gained it from those who knew it in its tropic habitat. Now, however, tobacco was grown by all Virginia Indians, andwas regarded as the Great Spirit's best gift. In the final happyhunting-ground, kings, werowances, and priests enjoyed it forever. When, in the time after the first landing, the Indians brought gifts to theadventurers as to beings from a superior sphere, they offered tobacco aswell as comestibles like deer-meat and mulberries. Later, in England andin Virginia, there was some suggestion that it might be cultivated amongother commodities. But the Company, not to be diverted from the pathto profits, demanded from Virginia necessities and not new-fangledluxuries. Nevertheless, a little tobacco was sent over to England, andthen a little more, and then a larger quantity. In less than five yearsit had become a main export; and from that time to this profoundly hasit affected the life of Virginia and, indeed, of the United States. 

This then is the wide and general event with which John Rolfe isconnected. But there is also a narrower, personal happening that haspleased all these centuries. Indian difficulties yet abounded, but Dale, administrator as well as man of Mars, wound his way skilfully throughthem all. Powhatan brooded to one side, over there at Werowocomoco. Captain Samuel Argall was again in Virginia, having brought oversixty-two colonists in his ship, the Treasurer. A bold and restless man, explorer no less than mariner, he again went trading up the Potomac, and visited upon its banks the village of Japazaws, kinsman of Powhatan. Here he found no less a personage than Powhatan's daughter Pocahontas. An idea came into Argall's active and somewhat unscrupulous brain. He bribed Japazaws with a mighty gleaming copper kettle, and by thatchief's connivance took Pocahontas from the village above the Potomac. He brought her captive in his boat down the Chesapeake to the mouth ofthe James and so up the river to Jamestown, here to be held hostage foran Indian peace. This was in 1613. 

Pocahontas stayed by the James, in the rude settlers' town, which mayhave seemed to the Indian girl stately and wonderful enough. Here Rolfemade her acquaintance, here they talked together, and here, after somescruples on his part as to "heathennesse, " they were married. He writesof "her desire to be taught and instructed in the knowledge of God; hercapableness of understanding; her aptnesse and willingnesse torecieve anie good impression, and also the spiritual, besides her owneincitements stirring me up hereunto. " First she was baptized, receivingthe name Rebecca, and then she was married to Rolfe in the flower-deckedchurch at Jamestown. Powhatan was not there, but he sent young chiefs, her brothers, in his place. Rolfe had lands and cabins thereupon upthe river near Henricus. He called this place Varina, the best Spanishtobacco being Varinas. Here he and Pocahontas dwelled together "civillyand lovingly. " When two years had passed the couple went with theirinfant son upon a visit to England. There court and town and countryflocked to see the Indian "princess. " After a time she and Rolfe wouldgo back to Virginia. But at Gravesend, before their ship sailed, she wasstricken with smallpox and died, making "a religious and godly end, " andthere at Gravesend she is buried. Her son, Thomas Rolfe, who was broughtup in England, returned at last to Virginia and lived out his life therewith his wife and children. Today no small host of Americans have forancestress the daughter of Powhatan. In England-in-America the immediateeffect of the marriage was really to procure an Indian peace outlastingPocahontas's brief life. 

In Dale's years there rises above the English horizon the cloud of NewFrance. The old, disaster-haunted Huguenot colony in Florida was a thingof the past, to be mourned for when the Spaniard wiped it out--forat that time England herself was not in America. But now that shewas established there, with some hundreds of men in a Virginia thatstretched from Spanish Florida to Nova Scotia, the French shadow seemedominous. And just in this farther region, amid fir-trees and snow, uponthe desolate Bay of Fundy, the French for some years had been keepingthe breath of life in a huddle of cabins named Port Royal. More thanthis, and later than the Port Royal building, Frenchmen--Jesuitsthat!--were trying a settlement on an island now called Mount Desert, off a coast now named Maine. The Virginia Company-doubtless with somereference back to the King and Privy Council--De La Warr, Gates, thedeputy governor, and Dale, the High Marshal, appear to have been ofone mind as to these French settlements. Up north there was stillVirginia--in effect, England! Hands off, therefore, all European peoplesspeaking with an un-English tongue!

Now it happened about this time that Captain Samuel Argall received acommission "to go fishing, " and that he fished off that coast that isnow the coast of Maine, and brought his ship to anchor by Mount Desert. Argall, a swift and high-handed person, fished on dry land. He sweptinto his net the Jesuits on Mount Desert, set half of them in an openboat to meet with what ship they might, and brought the other halfcaptive to Jamestown. Later, he appeared before Port Royal, wherehe burned the cabins, slew the cattle, and drove into the forest thesettler Frenchmen. But Port Royal and the land about it called Acadia, though much hurt, survived Argall's fishing. *

 * Argall, on his fishing trip, has been credited with attacking not only the French in Acadia but the Dutch traders on Manhattan. But there are grounds for doubt if he did the latter. 

There was also on Virginia in these days the shadow of Spain. In 1611the English had found upon the beach near Point Comfort three Spaniardsfrom a Spanish caravel which, as the Englishmen had learned with alarm, "was fitted with a shallop necessarie and propper to discover freshetts, rivers, and creekes. " They took the three prisoner and applied forinstructions to Dale, who held them to be spies and clapped them intoprison at Point Comfort. 

That Dale's suspicions were correct, is proved by a letter which theKing of Spain wrote in cipher to the Spanish Ambassador in Londonordering him to confer with the King as to the liberty of threeprisoners whom Englishmen in Virginia have captured. The three are "theAlcayde Don Diego de Molino, Ensign Marco Antonio Perez, and FranciscoLembri an English pilot, who by my orders went to reconnoitre thoseports. " Small wonder that Dale was apprehensive. "What may be thedaunger of this unto us, " he wrote home, "who are here so few, so weake, and unfortified, . . . I refer me to your owne honorable knowledg. "

Months pass, and the English Ambassador to Spain writes from Madrid thathe "is not hasty to advertise anything upon bare rumours, which hathmade me hitherto forbeare to write what I had generally heard of theirintents against Virginia, but now I have been. . . Advertised that withoutquestion they will speedily attempt against our plantation there. Andthat it is a thing resolved of, that ye King of Spain must runany hazard with England rather than permit ye English to settlethere. . . . Whatsoever is attempted, I conceive will be from ye Havana. "

Rumors fly back and forth. The next year 1613--the Ambassador writesfrom Madrid: "They have latelie had severall Consultations about ourPlantation in Virginia. The resolution is--That it must be removed, butthey thinke it fitt to suspend the execution of it, . . . For that they arein hope that it will fall of itselfe. "

The Spanish hope seemed, at this time, not at all without foundation. Members of the Virginia Company had formed the Somers Islands Companynamed for Somers the Admiral--and had planted a small colony in Bermudawhere the Sea Adventure had been wrecked. Here were fair, fertileislands without Indians, and without the diseases that seemed to rise, no man knew how, from the marshes along those lower reaches of thegreat river James in Virginia. Young though it was, the new plantation"prospereth better than that of Virginia, and giveth greaterincouragement to prosecute yt. " In England there arose, from someconcerned, the cry to Give up Virginia that has proved a project awry!As Gates was once about to remove thence every living man, so trulythey might "now removed to these more hopeful islands!" The SpanishAmbassador is found writing to the Spanish King: "Thus they are herediscouraged. . . On account of the heavy expenses they have incurred, andthe disappointment, that there is no passage from there to the SouthSea. . . Nor mines of gold or silver. " This, be it noted, was beforetobacco was discovered to be an economic treasure. 

The Elizabeth from London reached Virginia in May, 1613. It brought tothe colony news of Bermuda, and incidentally of that new notion brewingin the mind of some of the Company. When the Elizabeth, after a month inVirginia, turned homeward, she carried a vigorous letter from Dale, theHigh Marshal, to Sir Thomas Smith, Treasurer of the Company. 

"Let me tell you all at home [writes Dale] this one thing, and I prayremember it; if you give over this country and loose it, you, with yourwisdoms, will leap such a gudgeon as our state hath not done the likesince they lost the Kingdom of France; be not gulled with the clamorousreport of base people; believe Caleb and Joshua; if the glory of Godhave no power with them and the conversion of these poor infidels, yetlet the rich mammons' desire egge them on to inhabit these countries. I protest to you, by the faith of an honest man, the more I range thecountry the more I admire it. I have seen the best countries in Europe;I protest to you, before the Living God, put them all together, thiscountry will be equivalent unto them if it be inhabited with goodpeople. "

If ever Mother England seriously thought of moving Virginia intoBermuda, the idea was now given over. Spain, suspending the sword untilVirginia "will fall of itselfe, " saw that sword rust away. 

Five years in all Dale ruled Virginia. Then, personal and family matterscalling, he sailed away home to England, to return no more. Soon hisstar "having shined in the Westerne, was set in the Easterne India. " Atthe helm in Virginia he left George Yeardley, an honest, able man. Butin England, what was known as the "court party" in the Company managedto have chosen instead for De La Warr's deputy governor, Captain SamuelArgall. It proved an unfortunate choice. Argall, a capable and daringbuccaneer, fastened on Virginia as on a Spanish galleon. For a yearhe ruled in his own interest, plundering and terrorizing. At last theoutcry against him grew so loud that it had to be listened to across theAtlantic. Lord De La Warr was sent out in person to deal with mattersbut died on the way; and Captain Yeardley, now knighted and appointedGovernor, was instructed to proceed against the incorrigible Argall. ButArgall had already departed to face his accusers in England. 

CHAPTER VII. YOUNG VIRGINIA

The choice of Sir Edwyn Sandys as Treasurer of the Virginia Company in1619 marks a turning-point in the history of both Company and colony. Ata moment when James I was aiming at absolute monarchy and was menacingParliament, Sandys and his party--the Liberals of the day--turned thesessions of the Company into a parliament where momentous questions ofstate and colonial policy were freely debated. The liberal spirit ofSandys cast a beam of light, too, across the Atlantic. When GovernorYeardley stepped ashore at Jamestown in mid-April, he brought with him, as the first fruits of the new regime, no less a boon than the grant ofa representative assembly. 

There were to be in Virginia, subject to the Company, subject in itsturn to the Crown, two "Supreme Councils, " one of which was to consistof the Governor and his councilors chosen by the Company in England. The other was to be elected by the colonists, two representatives orburgesses from each distinct settlement. Council and House of Burgesseswere to constitute the upper and lower houses of the General Assembly. The whole had power to legislate upon Virginian affairs within thebounds of the colony, but the Governor in Virginia and the Company inEngland must approve its acts. 

A mighty hope in small was here! Hedged about with provisions, curtailedand limited, here nevertheless was an acorn out of which, by naturalgrowth and some mutation, was to come popular government wide and deep. The planting of this small seed of freedom here, in 1619, upon the banksof the James in Virginia, is an event of prime importance. 

On the 30th of July, 1619, there was convened in the log church inJamestown the first true Parliament or Legislative Assembly in America. Twenty-two burgesses sat, hat on head, in the body of the church, withthe Governor and the Council in the best seats. Master John Pory, thespeaker, faced the Assembly; clerk and sergeant-at-arms were at hand;Master Buck, the Jamestown minister, made the solemn opening prayer. The political divisions of this Virginia were Cities, Plantations, and Hundreds, the English population numbering now at least a thousandsouls. Boroughs sending burgesses were James City, Charles City, theCity of Henricus, Kecoughtan, Smith's Hundred, Flowerdieu Hundred, Martin's Hundred, Martin Brandon, Ward's Plantation, Lawne's Plantation, and Argall's Gift. This first Assembly attended to Indian questions, agriculture, and religion. 

Most notable is this year 1619, a year wrought of gold and iron. JohnRolfe, back in Virginia, though without his Indian princess, who nowlies in English earth, jots down and makes no comment upon what he haswritten: "About the last of August came in a Dutch man of warre thatsold us twenty Negars. "

No European state of that day, few individuals, disapproved of theAfrican slave trade. That dark continent made a general hunting-ground. England, Spain, France, the Netherlands, captured, bought, and soldslaves. Englishmen in Virginia bought without qualm, as Englishmenin England bought without qualm. The cargo of the Dutch ship was acommonplace. The only novelty was that it was the first shipload ofAfricans brought to English-America. Here, by the same waters, were thebeginnings of popular government and the young upas-tree of slavery. Acontradiction in terms was set to resolve itself, a riddle for unborngenerations of Americans. 

Presently there happened another importation. Virginia, under the newmanagement, had strongly revived. Ships bringing colonists were comingin; hamlets were building; fields were being planted; up and down wereto be found churches; a college at Henricus was projected so that Indianchildren might be taught and converted from "heathennesse. " Yet was thepopulation almost wholly a doublet--and--breeches--wearing population. The children for whom the school was building were Indian children. The men sailing to Virginia dreamed of a few years there and gatheredwealth, and then return to England. 

Apparently it was the new Treasurer, Sir Edwyn Sandys, who first graspedthe essential principle of successful colonization: Virginia must beHOME to those we send! Wife and children made home. Sandys gatheredninety women, poor maidens and widows, "young, handsome, and chaste, "who were willing to emigrate and in Virginia become wives of settlers. They sailed; their passage money was paid by the men of their choice;they married--and home life began in Virginia. In due course of timeappeared fair-haired children, blue or gray of eye, with all Englandbehind them, yet native-born, Virginians from the cradle. 

Colonists in number sailed now from England. Most ranks of societyand most professions were represented. Many brought education, means, independent position. Other honest men, chiefly young men with littlein the purse, came over under indentures, bound for a specified term ofyears to settlers of larger means. These indentured men are numerous;and when they have worked out their indebtedness they will take up landof their own. 

An old suggestion of Dale's now for the first time bore fruit. Over theprotest of the "country party" in the Company, there began to be senteach year out of the King's gaols a number, though not at any time alarge number, of men under conviction for various crimes. This practicecontinued, or at intervals was resumed, for years, but its consequenceswere not so dire, perhaps, as we might imagine. The penal laws wereexecrably brutal, and in the drag-net of the law might be found manymerely unfortunate, many perhaps finer than the law. 

Virginia thus was founded and established. An English people movedthrough her forests, crossed in boats her shining waters, trod thelanes of hamlets builded of wood but after English fashions. Climate, surrounding nature, differed from old England, and these andcircumstance would work for variation. But the stock was Middlesex, Surrey, Devon, and all the other shires of England. Scotchmen came also, Welshmen, and, perhaps as early as this, a few Irish. And there were DeLa Warr's handful of Poles and Germans, and several French vinedressers. 

Political and economic life was taking form. That huge, luxurious, thick-leafed, yellow-flowered crop, alike comforting and extravagant, that tobacco that was in much to mould manners and customs and waysof looking at things, was beginning to grow abundantly. In 1620, fortythousand pounds of tobacco went from Virginia to England; two yearslater went sixty thousand pounds. The best sold at two shillings thepound, the inferior for eighteen pence. The Virginians dropped allthought of sassafras and clapboard. Tobacco only had any flavor ofGolconda. 

At this time the rich soil, composed of layer on layer of the decay offorests that had lived from old time, was incredibly fertile. As fast astrees could be felled and dragged away, in went the tobacco. Fields musthave laborers, nor did these need to be especially intelligent. Bring inindentured men to work. Presently dream that ships, English as well asDutch, might oftener load in Africa and sell in Virginia, to furnish thedark fields with dark workers! In Dale's time had begun the making overof land in fee simple; in Yeardley's time every "ancient" colonist--thatis every man who had come to Virginia before 1616--was given a goodlynumber of acres subject to a quit-rent. Men of means and influenceobtained great holdings; ownership, rental, sale, and purchase of theland began in Virginia much as in older times it had begun in England. Only here, in America, where it seemed that the land could never beexhausted, individual holdings were often of great acreage. Thus arosethe Virginia Planter. 

In Yeardley's time John Berkeley established at Falling Creek the firstiron works ever set up in English-America. There were by this time inVirginia, glass works, a windmill, iron works. To till the soil remainedthe chief industry, but the tobacco culture grew until it overshadowedthe maize and wheat, the pease and beans. There were cattle and swine, not a few horses, poultry, pigeons, and peacocks. 

In 1621 Yeardley, desiring to be relieved, was succeeded by Sir FrancisWyatt. In October the new Governor came from England in the George, andwith him a goodly company. Among others is found George Sandys, brotherof Sir Edwyn. This gentleman and scholar, beneath Virginia skiesand with Virginia trees and blossoms about him, translated the"Metamorphoses" of Ovid and the First Book of the "Aeneid", both ofwhich were published in London in 1626. He stands as the first purelyliterary man of the English New World. But vigorous enough literature, though the writers thereof regarded it as information only, had, fromthe first years, emanated from Virginia. Smith's "True Relation", George Percy's "Discourse", Strachey's "True Repertory of the Wrackeand Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates", and his "Historie of Travaileinto Virginia Brittannia", Hamor's "True Discourse", Whitaker's "GoodNews"--other letters and reports--had already flowered, all withsomething of the strength and fragrance of Elizabethan and earlyJacobean work. 

For some years there had seemed peace with the Indians. Doubtlessmembers of the one race may have marauded, and members of the othershowed themselves highhanded, impatient, and unjust, but the majorityon each side appeared to have settled into a kind of amity. Indians camesingly or in parties from their villages to the white men's settlements, where they traded corn and venison and what not for the magic thingsthe white man owned. A number had obtained the white man's firearms, unwisely sold or given. The red seemed reconciled to the white'spresence in the land; the Indian village and the Indian tribal economyrested beside the English settlement, church, and laws. Doubtless afragment of the population of England and a fragment of the English inVirginia saw in a pearly dream the red man baptized, clothed, becomeChristian and English. At the least, it seemed that friendliness andpeace might continue. 

In the spring of 1622 a concerted Indian attack and massacre fell likea bolt from the blue. Up and down the James and upon the Chesapeake, everywhere on the same day, Indians, bursting from the dark forest thatwas so close behind every cluster of log houses, attacked the colonists. Three hundred and forty-seven English men, women, and children wereslain. But Jamestown and the plantations in its neighborhood were warnedin time. The English rallied, gathered force, turned upon and beat backto the forest the Indian, who was now and for a long time to come theiropen foe. 

There followed upon this horror not a day or a month but years oforganized retaliation and systematic harrying. In the end the greatmajority of the Indians either fell or were pushed back toward the upperPamunkey, the Rappahannock, the Potomac, and westward upon the greatshelf or terrace of the earth that climbed to the fabled mountains. Andwith this westward move there passed away that old vision of wholesaleChristianizing. 

CHAPTER VIII. ROYAL GOVERNMENT

In November, 1620, there sailed into a quiet harbor on the coast of whatis now Massachusetts a ship named the Mayflower, having on board onehundred and two English Non-conformists, men and women and with thema few children. These latest colonists held a patent from the VirginiaCompany and have left in writing a statement of their object: "We. . . Having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christianfaith, and honor of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the firstcolony in the northern parts of Virginia--". The mental reservation is, of course, "where perchance we may serve God as we will!" In Englandthere obtained in some quarters a suspicion that "they meant to make afree, popular State there. " Free--Popular--Public Good! These are wordsthat began, in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, to shineand ring. King and people had reached the verge of a great struggle. TheVirginia Company was divided, as were other groups, into factions. Thecourt party and the country party found themselves distinctly opposed. The great, crowded meetings of the Company Sessions rang withtheir divisions upon policies small and large. Words and phrases, comprehensive, sonorous, heavy with the future, rose and rolled beneaththe roof of their great hall. There were heard amid warm discussion:Kingdom and Colony--Spain--Netherlands--France--Church andState--Papists and Schismatics--Duties, Tithes, Excise Petitions ofGrievances--Representation--Right of Assembly. Several years earlierthe King had cried, "Choose the Devil, but not Sir Edwyn Sandys!" Nowhe declared the Company "just a seminary to a seditious parliament!" AllLondon resounded with the clash of parties and opinions. * "Last weekthe Earl of Warwick and the Lord Cavendish fell so foul at a Virginia. . . Court that the lie passed and repassed. . . . The factions. . . Are grown soviolent that Guelfs and Ghibellines were not more animated one againstanother!"

 * In his work on "Joint-stock Companion", vol. II, pp. 266 ff. , W. R. Scott traces the history of these acute dissensions in the Virginia Company and draws conclusions distinctly unfavorable to the management of Sandys and his party. --Editor. 

Believing that the Company's sessions foreshadowed a "seditiousparliament, " James Stuart set himself with obstinacy and some cunningto the Company's undoing. The court party gave the King aid, andcircumstances favored the attempt. Captain Nathaniel Butler, who hadonce been Governor of the Somers Islands and had now returned to Englandby way of Virginia, published in London "The Unmasked Face of Our Colonyin Virginia", containing a savage attack upon every item of Virginianadministration. 

The King's Privy Council summoned the Company, or rather the "country"party, to answer these and other allegations. Southampton, Sandys, andFerrar answered with strength and cogency. But the tide was runningagainst them. James appointed commissioners to search out what was wrongwith Virginia. Certain men were shipped to Virginia to get evidencethere, as well as support from the Virginia Assembly. In this attemptthey signally failed. Then to England came a Virginia member of theVirginia Council, with long letters to King and Privy Council: theSandys-Southampton administration had done more than well for Virginia. The letters were letters of appeal. The colony hoped that "the Governorssent over might not have absolute authority, but might be restrainedto the consent of the Council. . . . But above all they made it their mosthumble request that they might still retain the liberty of theirGeneral Assemblies; than which nothing could more conduce to the publickSatisfaction and publick Liberty. "

In London another paper, drawn by Cavendish, was given to King and PrivyCouncil. It answered many accusations, and among others the statementthat "the Government of the companies as it then stood was democraticaland tumultuous, and ought therefore to be altered, and reduced into theHands of a few. " It is of interest to hear these men speak, in the year1623, in an England that was close to absolute monarchy, to a King whowith all his house stood out for personal rule. "However, they ownedthat, according to his Majesty's Institution, their Government had someShow of a democratical Form; which was nevertheless, in that Case, themost just and profitable, and most conducive to the Ends and Effectsaimed at thereby. . . . Lastly, they observed that the opposite Factioncried out loudly against Democracy, and yet called for Oligarchy; whichwould, as they conceived, make the Government neither of better Form, nor more monarchical. "

But the dissolution of the Virginia Company was at hand. In October, 1623, the Privy Council stated that the King had "taken into hisprincely Consideration the distressed State of the Colony of Virginia, occasioned, as it seemed, by the Ill Government of the Company. " Theremedy for the ill-management lay in the reduction of the Governmentinto fewer hands. His Majesty had resolved therefore upon the withdrawalof the Company's charter and the substitution, "with due regard forcontinuing and preserving the Interest of all Adventurers and privatepersons whatsoever, " of a new order of things. The new order proved, onexamination, to be the old order of rule by the Crown. Would the Companysurrender the old charter and accept a new one so modeled?

The Company, through the country party, strove to gain time. They metwith a succession of arbitrary measures and were finally forced to adecision. They would not surrender their charter. Then a writ ofquo warranto was issued; trial before the King's Bench followed; andjudgment was rendered against the Company in the spring term of 1624. Thus with clangor fell the famous Virginia Company. 

That was one year. The March of the next year James Stuart, King ofEngland, died. That young Henry who was Prince of Wales when the SusanConstant, the Goodspeed, and the Discovery sailed past a cape and namedit for him Cape Henry, also had died. His younger brother Charles, forwhom was named that other and opposite cape, now ascended the throne asKing Charles the First of England. 

In Virginia no more General Assemblies are held for four years. King Charles embarks upon "personal rule. " Sir Francis Wyatt, a goodGovernor, is retained by commission and a Council is appointed bythe King. No longer are affairs to be conducted after a fashion"democratical and tumultuous. " Orders are transmitted from England;the Governor, assisted by the Council, will take into cognizance purelylocal needs; and when he sees some occasion he will issue a proclamation. 

Wyatt, recalled finally to England; George Yeardley again, who died ina year's time; Francis West, that brother of Lord De La Warr and anancient planter--these in quick succession sit in the Governor's chair. Following them John Pott, doctor of medicine, has his short term. Then the King sends out Sir John Harvey, avaricious and arbitrary, "so haughty and furious to the Council and the best gentlemen of thecountry, " says Beverley, "that his tyranny grew at last insupportable. "

The Company previously, and now the King, had urged upon the Virginiansa diversified industry and agriculture. But Englishmen in Virginiahad the familiar emigrant idea of making their fortunes. They had leftEngland; they had taken their lives in their hands; they had sufferedfevers, Indian attacks, homesickness, deprivation. They had come toVirginia to get rich. Now clapboards and sassafras, pitch, tar, and pinetrees for masts, were making no fortune for Virginia shippers. How couldthey, these few folk far off in America, compete in products of theforest with northern Europe? As to mines of gold and silver, that firstrich vision had proved a disheartening mirage. "They have great hopesthat the mountains are very rich, from the discovery of a silver minemade nineteen years ago, at a place about four days' journey from thefalls of James river; but they have not the means of transporting theore. " So, dissatisfied with some means of livelihood and disappointed inothers, the Virginians turned to tobacco. 

Every year each planter grew more tobacco; every year more ships wereladen. In 1628 more than five hundred thousand pounds were sent toEngland, for to England it must go, and not elsewhere. There it muststruggle with the best Spanish, for a long time valued above the bestVirginian. Finally, however, James and after him Charles, agreed toexclude the Spanish. Virginia and the Somers Islands alone might importtobacco into England. But offsetting this, customs went up ruinously; agreat lump sum must go annually to the King; the leaf must enter onlyat the port of London; so forth and so on. Finally Charles put forth hisproposal to monopolize the industry, giving Virginia tobacco the Englishmarket but limiting its production to the amount which the Governmentcould sell advantageously. Such a policy required cooperation from thecolonists. The King therefore ordered the Governor to grant a VirginiaAssembly, which in turn should dutifully enter into partnership withhim--upon his terms. So the Virginia Assembly thus came back intohistory. It made a "Humble Answere" in which, for all its humility, theKing's proposal was declined. The idea of the royal monopoly faded out, and Virginia continued on its own way. 

The General Assembly, having once met, seems of its own motion to havecontinued meeting. The next year we find it in session at Jamestown, andresolving "that we should go three severall marches upon the Indians, atthree severall times of the yeare, " and also "that there be an especiallcare taken by all commanders and others that the people doe repaire totheir churches on the Saboth day, and to see that the penalty of onepound of tobacco for every time of absence, and 50 pounds for everymonth's absence. . . Be levyed, and the delinquents to pay the same. "About this time we read: "Dr. John Pott, late Governor, indicted, arraigned, and found guilty of stealing cattle, 13 jurors, 3 whereofcouncellors. This day wholly spent in pleading; next day, in unnecessarydisputation. "

These were moving times in the little colony whose population may by nowhave been five thousand. Harvey, the Governor, was rapacious; the Kingat home, autocratic. Meanwhile, signs of change and of unrest were notwanting in Europe. England was hastening toward revolution; in Germanythe Thirty Years' War was in mid-career; France and Italy were rackedby strife; over the world the peoples groaned under the strainof oppression. In science, too, there was promise of revolution. Harvey--not that Governor Harvey of Virginia, but a greater in Englandwas writing upon the circulation of the blood. Galileo brooded overideas of the movement of the earth; Kepler, over celestial harmonies andsolar rule. Descartes was laying the foundation of a new philosophy. 

In the meantime, far across the Atlantic, bands of Virginians went outagainst the Indians--who might, or might not, God knows! have put in aclaim to be considered among the oppressed peoples. In Virginia thefat, black, tobacco-fields, steaming under a sun like the sun of Spain, called for and got more labor and still more labor. Every little sailingship brought white workmen--called servants--consigned, indentured, apprenticed to many-acred planters. These, in return for their passagemoney, must serve Laban for a term of years, but then would receiveRachel, or at least Leah, in the shape of freedom and a small holdingand provision with which to begin again their individual life. If theywere ambitious and energetic they might presently be able, in turn, toimport labor for their own acres. As yet, in Virginia, there were fewAfrican slaves--not more perhaps than a couple of hundred. But wheneverships brought them they were readily purchased. 

In Virginia, as everywhere in time of change, there arose anomalies. Side by side persisted a romantic devotion to the King and adetermination to have popular assemblies; a great sense of the rightsof the white individual together with African slavery; a practical, easy-going, debonair naturalism side by side with an Established Churchpenalizing alike Papist, Puritan, and atheist. Even so early as this, the social tone was set that was to hold for many and many a year. Thesuave climate was somehow to foster alike a sense of caste and goodneighborliness--class distinctions and republican ideas. 

The "towns" were of the fewest and rudest--little more than smallpalisaded hamlets, built of frame or log, poised near the water of theriver James. The genius of the land was for the plantation rather thanthe town. The fair and large brick or frame planter's house of a latertime had not yet risen, but the system was well inaugurated that set amain or "big" house upon some fair site, with cabins clustered near it, and all surrounded, save on the river front, with far-flung acres, someplanted with grain and the rest with tobacco. Up and down the riverthese estates were strung together by the rudest roads, mere tracksthrough field and wood. The cart was as yet the sole wheeled vehicle. But the Virginia planter--a horseman in England--brought over horses, bred horses, and early placed horsemanship in the catalogue of thenecessary colonial virtues. At this point, however, in a land of greatand lesser rivers, with a network of creeks, the boat provided the chiefmeans of communication. Behind all, enveloping all, still spread theillimitable forest, the haunt of Indians and innumerable game. 

Virginians were already preparing for an expansion to the north. Therewas a man in Virginia named William Claiborne. This individual--able, determined, self-reliant, energetic--had come in as a young man, withthe title of surveyor-general for the Company, in the ship that broughtSir Francis Wyatt, just before the massacre of 1622. He had prosperedand was now Secretary of the Province. He held lands, and was endowedwith a bold, adventurous temper and a genius for business. In a fewyears he had established widespread trading relations with the Indians. He and the men whom he employed penetrated to the upper shores ofChesapeake, into the forest bordering Potomac and Susquehanna: Knivesand hatchets, beads, trinkets, and colored cloth were changed for richfurs and various articles that the Indians could furnish. The skins thusgathered Claiborne shipped to London merchants, and was like to growwealthy from what his trading brought. 

Looking upon the future and contemplating barter on a princely scale, he set to work and obtained exhaustive licenses from the immediateVirginian authorities, and at last from the King himself. Under thesegrants, Claiborne began to provide settlements for his numerous traders. Far up the Chesapeake, a hundred miles or so from Point Comfort, hefound an island that he liked, and named it Kent Island. Here for hismen he built cabins with gardens around them, a mill and a church. He was far from the river James and the mass of his fellows, but heesteemed himself to be in Virginia and upon his own land. What came ofClaiborne's enterprise the sequel has to show. 

CHAPTER IX. MARYLAND

There now enters upon the scene in Virginia a man of middle age, notwithout experience in planting colonies, by name George Calvert, firstLord Baltimore. Of Flemish ancestry, born in Yorkshire, scholar atOxford, traveler, clerk of the Privy Council, a Secretary of State underJames, member of the House of Commons, member of the Virginia Company, he knew many of the ramifications of life. A man of worth and weight, hewas placed by temperament and education upon the side of the court partyand the Crown in the growing contest over rights. About the year 1625, under what influence is not known, he had openly professed the RomanCatholic faith--and that took courage in the seventeenth century, inEngland!

Some years before, Calvert had obtained from the Crown a grant of a partof Newfoundland, had named it Avalon, and had built great hopes upon itssettlement. But the northern winter had worked against him. He knew, forhe had resided there himself with his family in that harsh clime. "Fromthe middle of October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winteron all this land. " He is writing to King Charles, and he goes on tosay "I have had strong temptations to leave all proceedings inplantations. . . But my inclination carrying me naturally to these kind ofworks. . . I am determined to commit this place to fishermen that are ableto encounter storms and hard weather, and to remove myself with someforty persons to your Majesty's dominion of Virginia where, if yourMajesty will please to grant me a precinct of land. . . I shall endeavourto the utmost of my power, to deserve it. "

With his immediate following he thereupon does sail far southward. InOctober, 1629, he comes in between the capes, past Point Comfort and soup to Jamestown--to the embarrassment of that capital, as will soon beevident. 

Here in Church of England Virginia was a "popish recusant!" Here was anold "court party" man, one of James's commissioners, a person of rankand prestige, known, for all his recusancy, to be in favor withthe present King. Here was the Proprietary of Avalon, guessed to bedissatisfied with his chilly holding, on the scent perhaps of balmier, easier things!

The Assembly was in session when Lord Baltimore came to Jamestown. All arrivers in Virginia must take the oath of supremacy. The Assemblyproposed this to the visitor who, as Roman Catholic, could not take it, and said as much, but offered his own declaration of friendliness tothe powers that were. This was declined. Debate followed, ending witha request from the Assembly that the visitor depart from Virginia. Someharshness of speech ensued, but hospitality and the amenities fairlysaved the situation. One Thomas Tindall was pilloried for "giving mylord Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him down. " Baltimorethereupon set sail, but not, perhaps, until he had gained that knowledgeof conditions which he desired. 

In England he found the King willing to make him a large grant, with noless powers than had clothed him in Avalon. Territory should be takenfrom the old Virginia; it must be of unsettled land--Indians of coursenot counting. Baltimore first thought of the stretch south of the riverJames between Virginia and Spanish Florida--a fair land of woods andstreams, of good harbors, and summer weather. But suddenly WilliamClaiborne was found to be in London, sent there by the Virginians, withrepresentations in his pocket. Virginia was already settled and had theintention herself of expanding to the south. 

Baltimore, the King, and the Privy Council weighed the matter. Westward, the blue mountains closed the prospect. Was the South Sea just beyondtheir sunset slopes, or was it much farther away, over unknown lands, than the first adventurers had guessed? Either way, too rugged hardshipmarked the west! East rolled the ocean. North, then? It were well tostep in before those Hollanders about the mouth of the Hudson shouldcast nets to the south. Baltimore accordingly asked for a grant north ofthe Potomac. 

He received a huge territory, stretching over what is now Maryland, Delaware, and a part of Pennsylvania. The Potomac, from source to mouth, with a line across Chesapeake and the Eastern Shore to the ocean formedhis southern frontier; his northern was the fortieth parallel, from theocean across country to the due point above the springs of thePotomac. Over this great expanse he became "true and absolute lord andproprietary, " holding fealty to England, but otherwise at liberty torule in his own domain with every power of feudal duke or prince. TheKing had his allegiance, likewise a fifth part of gold or silver foundwithin his lands. All persons going to dwell in his palatinate were tohave "rights and liberties of Englishmen. " But, this aside, he was lordparamount. The new country received the name Terra Mariae--Maryland--forHenrietta Maria, then Queen of England. 

Here was a new land and a Lord Proprietor with kingly powers. Virginiansseated on the James promptly petitioned King Charles not to do themwrong by so dividing their portion of the earth. But King and PrivyCouncil answered only that Virginia and Maryland must "assist eachother on all occasions as becometh fellow-subjects. " William Claiborne, indeed, continued with a determined voice to cry out that lands givento Baltimore were not, as had been claimed, unsettled, seeing that hehimself had under patent a town on Kent Island and another at the mouthof the Susquehanna. 

Baltimore was a reflective man, a dreamer in the good sense of the term, and religiously minded. At the height of seeming good fortune he couldwrite:

"All things, my lord, in this world pass away. . . . They are but lentus till God please to call for them back again, that we may not esteemanything our own, or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone, whoonly remains forever. " Like his King, Baltimore could carry far hisprerogative and privilege, maintaining the while not a few degrees ofinner freedom. Like all men, here he was bound, and here he was free. 

Baltimore's desire was for "enlarging his Majesty's Empire, " and atthe same time to provide in Maryland a refuge for his fellow Catholics. These were now in England so disabled and limited that their statusmight fairly be called that of a persecuted people. The mountingPuritanism promised no improvement. The King himself had no fierceantagonism to the old religion, but it was beginning to be seen thatCharles and Charles's realm were two different things. A haven should beprovided before the storm blackened further. Baltimore thus saw put intohis hands a high and holy opportunity, and made no doubt that it wasGod-given. His charter, indeed, seemed to contemplate an establishedchurch, for it gave to Baltimore the patronage of all churches andchapels which were to be "consecrated according to the ecclesiasticallaws of our kingdom of England"; nevertheless, no interpretation of thecharter was to be made prejudicial to "God's holy and true Christianreligion. " What was Christian and what was prejudicial was, fortunatelyfor him, left undefined. No obstacles were placed before a Catholicemigration. 

Baltimore had this idea and perhaps a still wider one: a land--Mary'sland--where all Christians might foregather, brothers and sisters inone home! Religious tolerance--practical separation of Church andState--that was a broad idea for his age, a generous idea for a RomanCatholic of a time not so far removed from the mediaeval. True, whereverhe went and whatever might be his own thought and feeling, he wouldstill have for overlord a Protestant sovereign, and the words of hischarter forbade him to make laws repugnant to the laws of England. ButMaryland was distant, and wise management might do much. Catholics, Anglicans, Puritans, Dissidents, and Nonconformists of almost anyphysiognomy, might come and be at home, unpunished for variations inbelief. 

Only the personal friendship of England's King and the tact and suavesagacity of the Proprietary himself could have procured the signing ofthis charter, since it was known--as it was to all who cared to busythemselves with the matter--that here was a Catholic meaning to takeother Catholics, together with other scarcely less abominable sectaries, out of the reach of Recusancy Acts and religious pains and penalties, toset them free in England-in-America; and, raising there a state on thenovel basis of free religion, perhaps to convert the heathen to allmanner of errors, and embark on mischiefs far too large for definition. Taking things as they were in the world, remembering acts of theCatholic Church in the not distant past, the ill-disposed might findsome color for the agitation which presently did arise. Baltimore wasknown to be in correspondence with English Jesuits, and it soon appearedthat Jesuit priests were to accompany the first colonists. At that timethe Society of Jesus loomed large both politically and educationally. Many may have thought that there threatened a Rome in America. But, however that may have been, there was small chance for any successfulopposition to the charter, since Parliament had been dissolved by theKing, not to be summoned again for eleven years. The Privy Council wassubservient, and, as the Sovereign was his friend, Baltimore saw thesigning of the charter assured and began to gather together his firstcolonists. Then, somewhat suddenly, in April, 1632, he sickened, anddied at the age of fifty-three. 

His son, Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, took up his father'swork. This young man, likewise able and sagacious, and at every step inhis father's confidence, could and did proceed even in detail accordingto what had been planned. All his father's rights had descended tohim; in Maryland he was Proprietary with as ample power as ever a CountPalatine had enjoyed. He took up the advantage and the burden. 

The father's idea had been to go with his colonists to Maryland, andthis it seems that the son also meant to do. But now, in London, theredeepened a clamor against such Catholic enterprise. Once he were away, lips would be at the King's ear. And with England so restless, in aturmoil of new thought, it might even arise that King and Privy Councilwould find trouble in acting after their will, good though that mightbe. The second Baltimore therefore remained in England to safeguard hischarter and his interests. 

The family of Baltimore was an able one. Cecil Calvert had two brothers, Leonard and George, and these would go to Maryland in his place. Leonardhe made Governor and Lieutenant-general, and appointed him councilor. Ships were made ready--the Ark of three hundred tons and the Dove offifty. The colonists went aboard at Gravesend, where these ships rode atanchor. Of the company a great number were Protestants, willing to takeland, if their condition were bettered so, with Catholics. Difficultiesof many kinds kept them all long at the mouth of the Thames, but atlast, late in November, 1633, the Ark and the Dove set sail. Touching atthe Isle of Wight, they took aboard two Jesuit priests, Father White andFather Altham, and a number of other colonists. Baltimore reported thatthe expedition consisted of "two of my brothers with very near twentyother gentlemen of very good fashion, and three hundred labouring menwell provided in all things. "

These ships, with the first Marylanders, went by the old West Indies searoute. We find them resting at Barbados; then they swung to the northand, in February, 1634, came to Point Comfort in Virginia. Here theytook supplies, being treated by Sir John Harvey (who had receiveda letter from the King) with "courtesy and humanity. " Without longtarrying, for they were sick now for land of their own, they sailed onup the great bay, the Chesapeake. 

Soon they reached the mouth of the Potomac--a river much greater thanany of them, save shipmasters and mariners, had ever seen--and into thisturned the Ark and the Dove. After a few leagues of sailing up the widestream, they came upon an islet covered with trees, leafless, for springhad hardly broken. The ships dropped anchor; the boats were lowered; thepeople went ashore. Here the Calverts claimed Maryland "for our Saviorand for our Sovereign Lord the King of England, " and here they heardMass. St. Clement's they called the island. 

But it was too small for a home. The Ark was left at anchor, whileLeonard Calvert went exploring with the Dove. Up the Potomac somedistance he went, but at the last he wisely determined to choose fortheir first town a site nearer the sea. The Dove turned and came backto the Ark, and both sailed on down the stream from St. Clement's Isle. Before long they came to the mouth of a tributary stream flowing infrom the north. The Dove, going forth again, entered this river, whichpresently the party named the River St. George. Soon they came to a highbank with trees tinged with the foliage of advancing spring. Here uponthis bank the English found an Indian village and a small Algonquingroup, in the course of extinction by their formidable Iroquoisneighbors, the giant Susquehannocks. The white men landed, bearing astore of hatchets, gewgaws, and colored cloth. The first Lord Baltimore, having had opportunity enough for observing savages, had probably handedon to his sagacious sons his conclusions as to ways of dealing with thenatives of the forest. And the undeniable logic of events was at lastteaching the English how to colonize. Englishmen on Roanoke Island, Englishmen on the banks of the James, Englishmen in that first NewEngland colony, had borne the weight of early inexperience and all thecatalogue of woes that follow ignorance. All these early colonists alikehad been quickly entangled in strife with the people whom they found inthe land. 

 First they fell on their knees, And then on the Aborigines. 

But by now much water had passed the mill. The thinking kind, the wisersort, might perceive more things than one, and among these the fact thatsavages had a sense of justice and would even fight against injustice, real or fancied. 

The Calverts, through their interpreter, conferred with the inhabitantsof this Indian village. Would they sell lands where the white men mightpeaceably settle, under their given word to deal in friendly wise withthe red men? Many hatchets and axes and much cloth would be given inreturn. 

To a sylvan people store of hatchets and axes had a value beyond manyfields of the boundless earth. The Dove appeared before them, too, atthe psychological moment. They had just discussed removing, bag andbaggage, from the proximity of the Iroquois. In the end, these Indianssold to the English their village huts, their cleared and plantedfields, and miles of surrounding forest. Moreover they stayed longenough in friendship with the newcomers to teach them many things ofvalue. Then they departed, leaving with the English a clear title to asmuch land as they could handle, at least for some time to come. Later, with other Indians, as with these, the Calverts pursued a conciliatorypolicy. They were aided by the fact that the Susquehannocks to thenorth, who might have given trouble, were involved in war with yet morenortherly tribes, and could pay scant attention to the incoming whitemen. But even so, the Calverts proved, as William Penn proved later, that men may live at peace with men, honestly and honorably, even thoughhue of skin and plane of development differ. 

Now the Ark joins the Dove in the River St. George. The pieces ofordnance are fired; the colonists disembark; and on the 27th of March, 1634, the Indian village, now English, becomes St. Mary's. 

On the whole how advantageously are they placed! There is peace withthe Indians. Huts, lodges, are already built, fields already clearedor planted. The site is high and healthful. They have at first fewdissensions among themselves. Nor are they entirely alone or isolatedin the New World. There is a New England to the north of them and aVirginia to the south. From the one they get in the autumn salted fish, from the other store of swine and cattle. Famine and pestilence are farfrom them. They build a "fort" and perhaps a stockade, but there arenone of the stealthy deaths given by arrow and tomahawk in the north, nor are there any of the Spanish alarms that terrified the south. Fromthe first they have with them women and children. They know that theirsettlement is "home. " Soon other ships and colonists follow the Ark andthe Dove to St. Mary's, and the history of this middle colony is wellbegun. 

In Virginia, meantime, there was jealousy enough of the new colony, taking as it did territory held to be Virginian and renaming it, notfor the old, independent, Protestant, virgin queen, but for a French, Catholic, queen consort--even settling it with believers in the Massand bringing in Jesuits! It was, says a Jamestown settler, "accounted acrime almost as heinous as treason to favour, nay to speak well of thatcolony. " Beside the Virginian folk as a whole, one man, in particular, William Claiborne, nursed an individual grievance. He had it fromGovernor Calvert that he might dwell on in Kent Island, trading fromthere, but only under license from the Lord Proprietor and as aninhabitant of Maryland, not of Virginia. Claiborne, with the Assemblyat Jamestown secretly on his side, resisted this interference with hisrights, and, as he continued to trade with a high hand, he soon fellunder suspicion of stirring up the Indians against the Marylanders. 

At the time, this quarrel rang loud through Maryland and Virginia, andeven echoed across the Atlantic. Leonard Calvert had a trading-boat ofClaiborne's seized in the Patuxent River. Thereupon Claiborne's men, with the shallop Cockatrice, in retaliation attacked Maryland pinnacesand lost both their lives and their boat. For several years Maryland andKent Island continued intermittently to make petty war on each other. At last, in 1638, Calvert took the island by main force and hangedfor piracy a captain of Claiborne's. The Maryland Assembly brought thetrader under a Bill of Attainder; and a little later, in England, theLords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations formally awarded Kent Islandto the Lord Proprietor. Thus defeated, Claiborne, nursing his wrath, moved down the bay to Virginia. 

CHAPTER X. CHURCH AND KINGDOM

Virginia, all this time, with Maryland a thorn in her side, waswrestling with an autocratic governor, John Harvey. This avaricioustyrant sowed the wind until in 1635 he was like to reap the whirlwind. Though he was the King's Governor and in good odor in England, whererested the overpower to which Virginia must bow, yet in this yearVirginia blew upon her courage until it was glowing and laid rude handsupon him. We read: "An Assembly to be called to receive complaintsagainst Sr. John Harvey, on the petition of many inhabitants, to meet7th of May. " But, before that month was come, the Council, seizingopportunity, acted for the whole. Immediately below the entry abovequoted appears: "On the 28th of April, 1635, Sr. John Harvey thrust outof his government, and Capt. John West acts as Governor till the King'spleasure known. "*

 * Hening's "Statutes" vol. I p. 223. 

So Virginia began her course as rebel against political evils! It isof interest to note that Nicholas Martian, one of the men found activeagainst the Governor, was an ancestor of George Washington. 

Harvey, thrust out, took first ship for England, and there also sailedcommissioners from the Virginia Assembly with a declaration of wrongsfor the King's ear. But when they came to England, they found that theKing's ear was for the Governor whom he had given to the Virginians andwhom they, with audacious disobedience, had deposed. Back should goSir John Harvey, still governing Virginia; back without audience theso-called commissioners, happy to escape a merited hanging! Again toJamestown sailed Harvey. In silence Virginia received him, and while heremained Governor no Assembly sat. 

But having asserted his authority, the King in a few years' time waswilling to recall his unwelcome representative. So in 1639 GovernorHarvey vanishes from the scene, and in comes the well-liked Sir FrancisWyatt as Governor for the second time. For two years he remains, and isthen superseded by Sir William Berkeley, a notable figure in Virginiafor many years to come. The population was now perhaps ten thousand, both English born and Virginians born of English parents. A few hundrednegroes moved in the tobacco fields. More would be brought in and yetmore. And now above a million pounds of tobacco were going annually toEngland. 

The century was predominantly one of inner and outer religious conflict. What went on at home in England reechoed in Virginia. The new Governorwas a dyed-in-the-wool Cavalier, utterly stubborn for King and Church. The Assemblies likewise leaned that way, as presumably did the massof the people. It was ordered in 1631: "That there bee a uniformitiethroughout this colony both in substance and circumstance to the cannonsand constitutions of the church of England as neere as may bee, andthat every person yeald readie obedience unto them uppon penaltie of thepaynes and forfeitures in that case appoynted. " And, indeed, the painsand forfeitures threatened were savage enough. 

Official Virginia, loyal to the Established Church, was jealous andfearful of Papistry and looked askance at Puritanism. It frowned uponthese and upon agnosticisms, atheisms, pantheisms, religious doubts, andalterations in judgment--upon anything, in short, that seemed to push afinger against Church and Kingdom. Yet in this Virginia, governed bySir William Berkeley, a gentleman more cavalier than the Cavaliers, moreroyalist than the King, more churchly than the Church, there lived nota few Puritans and Dissidents, going on as best they might withEstablished Church and fiery King's men. Certain parishes werepredominantly Puritan; certain ministers were known to have leaningsaway from surplices and genuflections and to hold that Archbishop Laudwas some kin to the Pope. In 1642, to reenforce these ministers, camethree more from New England, actively averse to conformity. But Governorand Council and the majority of the Burgesses will have none of that. The Assembly of 1643 takes sharp action. 

For the preservation of the puritie of doctrine and unitie of thechurch, IT IS ENACTED that all ministers whatsoever which shall residein the collony are to be conformable to the orders and constitutionsof the church of England, and the laws therein established, and nototherwise to be admitted to teach or preach publickly or privately. And that the Gov. And Counsel do take care that all nonconformistsupon notice of them shall be compelled to depart the collony with allconveniencie. And so in consequence out of Virginia, to New Englandwhere Independents were welcome, or to Maryland where any Christianmight dwell, went these tainted ministers. But there stayed behindPuritan and nonconforming minds in the bodies of many parishioners. Theymust hold their tongues, indeed, and outwardly conform--but they watchedlynx-eyed for their opportunity and a more favorable fortune. 

Having launched thunderbolts against schismatics of this sort, Berkeley, himself active and powerful, with the Council almost wholly of hisparty and the House of Burgesses dominantly so, turned his attentionto "popish recusants. " Of these there were few or none dwelling inVirginia. Let them then not attempt to come from Maryland! The rulers ofthe colony legislated with vigor: papists may not hold any public place;all statutes against them shall be duly executed; popish priests bychance or intent arriving within the bounds of Virginia shall be givenfive days' warning, and, if at the end of this time they are yet uponVirginian soil, action shall be brought against them. Berkeley sweepswith an impatient broom. 

The Kingdom is cared for not less than the Church in Virginia. Anyand all persons coming into the colony by land and by sea shall haveadministered to them the Oath of Supremacy and Allegiance. "Which if anyshall refuse to take, " the commander of the fort at Point Comfortshall "committ him or them to prison. " Foreigners in birth and tongue, foreigners in thought, must have found the place and time narrow indeed. 

On the eve of civil war there arose on the part of some in England aproject to revive and restore the old Virginia Company by procuring fromCharles, now deep in troubles of his own, a renewal of the old letterspatent and the transference of the direct government of the colony intothe hands of a reorganized and vast corporation. Virginia, which a scoreof years before had defended the Company, now protested vigorously, and, with regard to the long view of things, it may be thought wisely. Theproject died a natural death. The petition sent from Virginia showsplainly enough the pen of Berkeley. There are a multitude of reasonswhy Virginia should not pass from King to Company, among which theseare worthy of note: "We may not admit of so unnatural a distance as aCompany will interpose between his sacred majesty and us his subjectsfrom whose immediate protection we have received so many royal favoursand gracious blessings. For, by such admissions, we shall degeneratefrom the condition of our birth, being naturalized under a monarchicalgovernment and not a popular and tumultuary government dependingupon the greatest number of votes of persons of several humours anddispositions. "

When this paper reached England, it came to a country at civil war. TheLong Parliament was in session. Stafford had been beheaded, the StarChamber swept away, the Grand Remonstrance presented. On Edgehillbloomed flowers that would soon be trampled by Rupert's cavalry. InVirginia the Assembly took notice of these "unkind differences nowin England, " and provided by tithing for the Governor's pension andallowance, which were for the present suspended and endangered by thetroubles at home. That the forces banded against the Lord's anointedwould prove victorious must at this time have appeared preposterouslyunlikely to the fiery Governor and the ultra-loyal Virginia whom he led. The Puritans and Independents in Virginia--estimated a little earlierat "a thousand strong" and now, for all the acts against them, probablystronger yet--were to be found chiefly in the parishes of Isle of Wightand Nansemond, but had representatives from the Falls to the EasternShore. What these Virginians thought of the "unkind differences" doesnot appear in the record, but probably there was thought enough andsecret hopes. 

In 1644, the year of Marston Moor, Virginia, too, saw battle and suddenand bloody death. That Opechancanough who had succeeded Powhatan wasnow one hundred years old, hardly able to walk or to see, dwellingharmlessly in a village upon the upper Pamunkey. All the Indians werebroken and dispersed; serious danger was not to be thought of. Then, of a sudden, the flame leaped again. There fell from the blue sky amassacre directed against the outlying plantations. Three hundred men, women, and children were killed by the Indians. With fury the white menattacked in return. They sent bodies of horse into the untouched westernforests. They chased and slew without mercy. In 1646 Opechancanough, brought a prisoner to Jamestown, ended his long tale of years by a shotfrom one of his keepers. The Indians were beaten, and, lacking suchanother leader, made no more organized and general attacks. But for longyears a kind of border warfare still went on. 

Even Maryland, tolerant and just as was the Calvert policy, did notaltogether escape Indian troubles. She had to contend with no such ablechief as Opechancanough, and she suffered no sweeping massacres. Butafter the first idyllic year or so there set in a small, constantfriction. So fast did the Maryland colonists arrive that soon there waspressure of population beyond those first purchased bounds. The morethoughtful among the Indians may well have taken alarm lest theirvillages and hunting-grounds might not endure these inroads. Ere longthe English in Maryland were placing "centinells" over fields where menworked, and providing penalties for those who sold the savages firearms. But at no time did young Maryland suffer the Indian woes that had vexedyoung Virginia. 

Nor did Maryland escape the clash of interests which beset thebeginnings of representative assemblies in all proprietary provinces. The second, like the first, Lord Baltimore, was a believer in kings andaristocracies, in a natural division of human society into masters andmen. His effort was to plant intact in Maryland a feudal order. He wouldbe Palatine, the King his suzerain. In Maryland the great planters, ineffect his barons, should live upon estates, manorial in size and withmanorial rights. The laboring men--the impecunious adventurers whomthese greater adventurers brought out--would form a tenantry, theLord Proprietary's men's men. It is true that, according to charter, provision was made for an Assembly. Here were to sit "freemen of theprovince, " that is to say, all white males who were not in the positionof indentured servants. But with the Proprietary, and not with theAssembly, would rest primarily the lawmaking power. The Lord Proprietarywould propose legislation, and the freemen of the country would debate, in a measure advise, represent, act as consultants, and finally confirm. Baltimore was prepared to be a benevolent lord, wise, fatherly. 

In 1635 met the first Assembly, Leonard Calvert and his Councilsitting with the burgesses, and this gathering of freemen proceeded toinaugurate legislation. There was passed a string of enactments whichpresumably dealt with immediate wants at St. Mary's, and which, theAssembly recognized, must have the Lord Proprietary's assent. A copy wastherefore sent by the first ship to leave. So long were the voyages andso slow the procedure in England that it was 1637 before Baltimore'sveto upon the Assembly's laws reached Maryland. It would seem thathe did not disapprove so much of the laws themselves as of the boldinitiative of the Assembly, for he at once sent over twelve bills ofhis own drafting. Leonard Calvert was instructed to bring all freementogether in Assembly and present for their acceptance the substitutedlegislation. 

Early in 1638 this Maryland Assembly met. The Governor put before it foradoption the Proprietary's laws. The vote was taken. Governor and someothers were for, the remainder of the Assembly unanimously against, theproposed legislation. There followed a year or two of struggle over thisquestion, but in the end the Proprietary in effect acknowledged defeat. The colonists, through their Assembly, might thereafter propose lawsto meet their exigencies, and Governor Calvert, acting for his brother, should approve or veto according to need. 

When civil war between King and Parliament broke out in England, sentiment in Maryland as in Virginia inclined toward the King. Butthat Puritan, Non-conformist, and republican element that was inboth colonies might be expected to gain if, at home in England, theParliamentary party gained. A Royal Governor or a Lord Proprietary'sGovernor might alike be perplexed by the political turmoil in the mothercountry. Leonard Calvert felt the need of first-hand consultation withhis brother. Leaving Giles Brent in his place, he sailed for England, talked there with Baltimore himself, perplexed and filled withforeboding, and returned to Maryland not greatly wiser than when hewent. 

Maryland was soon convulsed by disorders which in many ways reflectedthe unsettled conditions in England. A London ship, commanded by RichardIngle, a Puritan and a staunch upholder of the cause of Parliament, arrived before St. Mary's, where he gave great offense by his blatantremarks about the King and Rupert, "that Prince Rogue. " Though he waspromptly arrested on the charge of treason, he managed to escape andsoon left the loyal colony far astern. 

In the meantime Leonard Calvert had come back to Maryland, where hefound confusion and a growing heat and faction and side-taking of abitter sort. To add to the turmoil, William Claiborne, among whosedominant traits was an inability to recognize defeat, was makingattempts upon Kent Island. Calvert was not long at St. Mary's ere Inglesailed in again with letters-of-marque from the Long Parliament. Ingleand his men landed and quickly found out the Protestant moiety ofthe colonists. There followed an actual insurrection, the Marylandersjoining with Ingle and much aided by Claiborne, who now retook KentIsland. The insurgents then captured St. Mary's and forced theGovernor to flee to Virginia. For two years Ingle ruled and plundered, sequestrating goods of the Proprietary's adherents, and deporting inirons Jesuit priests. At the end of this time Calvert reappeared, andbehind him a troop gathered in Virginia. Now it was Ingle's turn toflee. Regaining his ship, he made sail for England, and Maryland settleddown again to the ancient order. The Governor then reduced Kent Island. Claiborne, again defeated, retired to Virginia, whence he sailed forEngland. 

In 1647 Leonard Calvert died. Until the Proprietary's will should beknown, Thomas Greene acted as Governor. Over in England, Lord Baltimorestood at the parting of the ways. The King's cause had a hopeless look. Roundhead and Parliament were making way in a mighty tide. Baltimore wasmarked for a royalist and a Catholic. If the tide rose farther, he mightlose Maryland. A sagacious mind, he proceeded to do all that he could, short of denying his every belief, to placate his enemies. He appointedas Governor of Maryland William Stone, a Puritan, and into the Council, numbering five members, he put three Puritans. On the other hand theinterests of his Maryland Catholics must not be endangered. He requiredof the new Governor not to molest any person "professing to believein Jesus Christ, and in particular any Roman Catholic. " In this way hethought that, right and left, he might provide against persecution. 

Under these complex influences the Maryland Assembly passed in 1649 anAct concerning Religion. It reveals, upon the one hand, Christendom'smercilessness toward the freethinker--in which mercilessness, whetherthrough conviction or policy, Baltimore acquiesced--and, on the otherhand, that aspiration toward friendship within the Christian fold whichis even yet hardly more than a pious wish, and which in the seventeenthcentury could have been felt by very few. To Baltimore and the Assemblyof Maryland belongs, not the glory of inaugurating an era of widetoleration for men and women of all beliefs or disbeliefs, whetherChristian or not, but the real though lesser glory of establishingentire toleration among the divisions within the Christian circleitself. According to the Act, *

"Whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islandsthereunto belonging, shall from henceforth blaspheme God, that is cursehim, or deny our Saviour Jesus Christ to bee the sonne of God, orshall deny the holy Trinity, . . . Or the Godhead of any of the said threepersons of the Trinity, or the unity of the Godhead, or shall use orutter any reproachful speeches, words or language concerning thesaid Holy Trinity, or any of the said three persons thereof, shall bepunished with death and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or herlands and goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heires. . . . Whatsoeverperson or persons shall from henceforth use or utter any reproachfullwords, or speeches, concerning the blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother ofour Saviour, or the holy Apostles or Evangelists, or any of them, shallin such case for the first offence forfeit to the said Lord Proprietaryand his heires the sum of five pound sterling. . . . Whatsoever personshall henceforth upon any occasion. . . Declare, call, or denominate anyperson or persons whatsoever inhabiting, residing, traffiqueing, tradingor comerceing within this Province, or within any of the Ports, Harbors, Creeks or Havens to the same belonging, an heritick, Scismatick, Idolator, puritan, Independant, Presbiterian, popish priest, Jesuite, Jesuited papist, Lutheran, Calvenist, Anabaptist, Brownist, Antinomian, Barrowist, Roundhead, Separtist, or any other name or term in areproachful manner relating to matter of Religion, shall for every suchOffence forfeit. . . The sum of tenne shillings sterling. . . . 

"Whereas the inforceing of the conscience in matters of Religionhath frequently fallen out to be of dangerous Consequence in thosecommonwealths where it hath been practised, . . . Be it therefore alsoby the Lord Proprietary with the advice and consent of this Assembly, ordeyned and enacted. . . That no person or persons whatsoever within thisProvince. . . Professing to beleive in Jesus Christ, shall from henceforthbee any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respectof his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof. . . Nor anywaycompelled to the beleif or exercise of any other Religion against his orher consent, soe as they be not unfaithfull to the Lord Proprietary ormolest or conspire against the civill Government. . . "

 * "Archives of Maryland, Proceedings and Acts of the General Assembly", vol. I, pp. 244-247. 

CHAPTER XI. COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION

On the 30th of January, 1649, before the palace of Whitehall, Charlesthe First of England was beheaded. In Virginia the event fell with ashock. Even those within the colony who were Cromwell's men rather thanCharles's men seem to have recoiled from this act. Presently, too, camefleeing royalists from overseas, to add their passionate voices to thoseof the royalists in Virginia. Many came, "nobility, clergy and gentry, men of the first rate. " A thousand are said to have arrived in the yearafter the King's death. 

In October the Virginia Assembly met. Parliament men--and now these werewalking with head in the air--might regret the execution of the pastJanuary, and yet be prepared to assert that with the fall of the kingdomfell all powers and offices named and decreed by the hapless monarch. What was a passionate royalist government doing in Virginia now thatEngland was a Commonwealth? The passionate government answered foritself in acts passed by this Assembly. With swelling words, with atragic accent, it denounced the late happenings in England and all theRoundhead wickedness that led up to them. It proclaimed loyalty to "hissacred Majesty that now is"--that is, to Charles Stuart, afterwardsCharles the Second, then a refugee on the Continent. Finally it enactedthat any who defended the late proceedings, or in the least affected toquestion "the undoubted and inherent right of his Majesty that now is tothe Collony of Virginia" should be held guilty of high treason; andthat "reporters and divulgers" of rumors tending to change of governmentshould be punished "even to severity. "

Berkeley's words may be detected in these acts of the Assembly. In nogreat time the Cavalier Governor conferred with Colonel Henry Norwood, one of the royalist refugees to Virginia. Norwood thereupon sailed awayupon a Dutch ship and came to Holland, where he found "his Majestythat now is. " Here he knelt, and invited that same Majesty to visit hisdominion of Virginia, and, if he liked it, there to rest, sovereign ofthe Virginian people. But Charles still hoped to be sovereign in Englandand would not cross the seas. He sent, however, to Sir William Berkeleya renewal of his Governor's commission, and appointed Norwood Treasurerof Virginia, and said, doubtless, many gay and pleasant things. 

In Virginia there continued to appear from England adherents of theancient regime. Men, women, and children came until to a considerabledegree the tone of society rang Cavalier. This immigration, now lighter, now heavier, continued through a rather prolonged period. There came nowto Virginia families whose names are often met in the later historyof the land. Now Washingtons appear, with Randolphs, Carys, Skipwiths, Brodnaxes, Tylers, Masons, Madisons, Monroes, and many more. Thesepersons are not without means; they bring with them servants; they arein high favor with Governor and Council; they acquire large tractsof virgin land; they bring in indentured labor; they purchase Africanslaves; they cultivate tobacco. From being English country gentlementhey turn easily to become Virginia planters. 

But the Virginia Assembly had thrown a gauntlet before the victoriousCommonwealth; and the Long Parliament now declared the colony to bein contumacy, assembled and dispatched ships against her, and laid anembargo upon trade with the rebellious daughter. In January of 1652English ships appeared off Point Comfort. Four Commissioners of theCommonwealth were aboard, of whom that strong man Claiborne was one. After issuing a proclamation to quiet the fears of the people, the Commissioners made their way to Jamestown. Here was found theindomitable Berkeley and his Council in a state of active preparation, cannon trained. But, when all was said, the Commissioners had broughtwisely moderate terms: submit because submit they must, acknowledge theCommonwealth, and, that done, rest unmolested! If resistance continued, there were enough Parliament men in Virginia to make an army. Indenturedservants and slaves should receive freedom in exchange for support tothe Commonwealth. The ships would come up from Point Comfort, and adetermined war would be on. What Sir William Berkeley personally saidhas not survived. But after consultation upon consultation Virginiasurrendered to the commonwealth. 

Berkeley stepped from the Governor's chair, retiring in wrath andbitterness of heart to his house at Greenspring. In his place satRichard Bennett, one of the Commissioners. Claiborne was made Secretary. King's men went out of office; Parliament men came in. But there wasno persecution. In the bland and wide Virginia air minds failed to comeinto hard and frequent collision. For all the ferocities of the statutebooks, acute suffering for difference of opinion, whether political orreligious, did not bulk large in the life of early Virginia. 

The Commissioners, after the reduction of Virginia, had a like part toplay with Maryland. At St. Mary's, as at Jamestown, they demanded and atlength received submission to the Commonwealth. There was here the lesstrouble owing to Baltimore's foresight in appointing to the officeof Governor William Stone, whose opinions, political and religious, accorded with those of revolutionary England. Yet the Governor couldnot bring himself to forget his oath to Lord Baltimore and agree to thedemand of the Commissioners that he should administer the Governmentin the name of "the Keepers of the Liberties of England. " After somehesitation the Commissioners decided to respect his scruples and allowhim to govern in the name of the Lord Proprietary, as he had solemnlypromised. 

In Virginia and in Maryland the Commonwealth and the Lord Protectorstand where stood the Kingdom and the King. Many are far bettersatisfied than they were before; and the confirmed royalist consumes hisgrumbling in his own circle. The old, exhausting quarrel seems laidto rest. But within this wider peace breaks out suddenly an interiorstrife. Virginia would, if she could, have back all her old northwardterritory. In 1652 Bennett's Government goes so far as to petitionParliament to unseat the Catholic Proprietary of Maryland and make wholeagain the ancient Virginia. The hand of Claiborne, that remarkable andpersistent man, may be seen in this. 

In Maryland, Puritans and Independents were settled chiefly aboutthe rivers Severn and Patuxent and in a village called Providence, afterwards Annapolis. These now saw their chance to throw off theProprietary's rule and to come directly under that of the Commonwealth. So thinking, they put themselves into communication with Bennett andClaiborne. In 1654 Stone charged the Commissioners with having promoted"faction, sedition, and rebellion against the Lord Baltimore. " Thecharge was well founded. Claiborne and Bennett assumed that they wereyet Parliament Commissioners, empowered to bring "all plantations withinthe Bay of Chesapeake to their due obedience to the Parliament andCommonwealth of England. " And they were indeed set against the LordBaltimore. Claiborne would head the Puritans of Providence; and a troopshould be raised in Virginia and march northward. The Commissionersactually advanced upon St. Mary's, and with so superior a force thatStone surrendered, and a Puritan Government was inaugurated. A PuritanAssembly met, debarring any Catholics. Presently it passed an actannulling the Proprietary's Act of Toleration. Professors of thereligion of Rome should "be restrained from the exercise thereof. "The hand of the law was to fall heavily upon "popery, prelacy, orlicentiousness of opinion. " Thus was intolerance alive again in the onlyland where she had seemed to die!

In England now there was hardly a Parliament, but only the LordProtector, Oliver Cromwell. Content with Baltimore's recognition of theProtectorate, Cromwell was not prepared to back, in their independentaction, the Commissioners of that now dissolved Parliament. Baltimoremade sure of this, and then dispatched messengers overseas to Stone, bidding him do all that lay in him to retake Maryland. Stone thereupongathered several hundred men and a fleet of small sailing craft, withwhich he pushed up the bay to the Severn. In the meantime the Puritanshad not been idle, but had themselves raised a body of men and had takenover the Golden Lyon, an armed merchantman lying before their town. Onthe 24th of March, 1655, the two forces met in the Battle of the Severn. "In the name of God, fall on!" cried the men of Providence, and "Hey forSt. Mary's!" cried the others. The battle was won by the Providence men. They slew or wounded fifty of the St. Mary's men and desperately woundedStone himself and took many prisoners, ten of whom were afterwardscondemned to death and four were actually executed. 

Now followed a period of up and down, the Commissioners and theProprietary alike appealing to the Lord Protector for some expression ofhis "determinate will. " Both sides received encouragement inasmuch as hedecided for neither. His own authority being denied by neither, Cromwellmay have preferred to hold these distant factions in a canceling, neutralizing posture. But far weightier matters, in fact, were occupyinghis mind. In 1657, weary of her "very sad, distracted, and unsettledcondition, " Maryland herself proceeded--Puritan, Prelatist, andCatholic together--to agree henceforth to disagree. Toleration viewedin retrospect appears dimly to have been seen for the angel that it was. Maryland would return to the Proprietary's rule, provided there shouldbe complete indemnity for political offenses and a solemn promise thatthe Toleration Act of 1649 should never be repealed. This without asmile Baltimore promised. Articles were signed; a new Assembly composedof all manner of Christians was called; and Maryland returned for a timeto her first allegiance. 

Quiet years, on the whole, follow in Virginia under the Commonwealth. The three Governors of this period--Bennett, Digges, and Mathews areall chosen by the Assembly, which, but for the Navigation Laws, * mightalmost forget the Home Government. Then Oliver Cromwell dies; and, afteran interval, back to England come the Stuarts. Charles II is proclaimedKing. And back into office in Virginia is brought that staunch oldmonarchist, Sir William Berkeley--first by a royalist Assembly andpresently by commission from the new King. 

 * See Editor's Note on the Navigation Laws at the end of this volume. 

Then Virginia had her Long Parliament or Assembly. In 1661, in thefirst gush of the Restoration, there was elected a House of Burgesses socongenial to Berkeley's mind that he wished to see it perpetuated. Forfifteen years therefore he held it in being, with adjournments from oneyear into another and with sharp refusals to listen to any demand fornew elections. Yet this demand grew, and still the Governor shut thedoor in the face of the people and looked imperiously forth from thewindow. His temper, always fiery, now burned vindictive; his zeal forKing and Church and the high prerogatives of the Governor of Virginiabecame a consuming passion. 

When Berkeley first came to Virginia, and again for a moment in theflare of the Restoration, his popularity had been real, but for long nowit had dwindled. He belonged to an earlier time, and he held fast to oldideas that were decaying at the heart. A bigot for the royal power, a man of class with a contempt for the generality and its clumsilyexpressed needs, he grew in narrowness as he grew in years. Berkeleycould in these later times write home, though with some exaggeration:"I thank God there are no free schools nor printing, and I hope we shallnot have these hundred years; for learning has brought disobedience intothe world and printing has divulged them, and libels against the bestgovernments! God keep us from both!" But that was the soured zealotfor absolutism--William Berkeley the man was fond enough of books andhimself had written plays. 

The spirit of the time was reactionary in Virginia as it was reactionaryin England. Harsh servant and slave laws were passed. A prison was tobe erected in each county; provision was made for pillory and stocks andduckingstool; the Quakers were to be proceeded against; the Baptistswho refused to bring children to baptism were to suffer. Then at last in1670 came restriction of the franchise:

"Act III. ELECTION OF BURGESSES BY WHOM. WHEREAS the usuall way ofchuseing burgesses by the votes of all persons who having served theirtyme are freemen of this country who haveing little interest in thecountry doe oftener make tumults at the election to the disturbance ofhis Majestie's peace, than by their discretions in their votes providefor the conservation thereof, by makeing choyce of persons fitlyqualifyed for the discharge of soe greate a trust, And whereas thelawes of England grant a voyce in such election only to such as bytheir estates real or personall have interest enough to tye them tothe endeavour of the publique good; IT IS HEREBY ENACTED, that none butfreeholders and housekeepers who only are answerable to the publique forthe levies shall hereafter have a voice in the election of any burgessesin this country. "

 *Hening's "Statutes", vol. II, p. 280. 

Three years later another woe befell the colony. That same CharlesII--to whom in misfortune Virginia had so adhered that for her loyaltyshe had received the name of the Old Dominion--now granted "all thatentire tract, territory, region, and dominion of land and water commonlycalled Virginia, together with the territory of Accomack, " to LordCulpeper and the Earl of Arlington. For thirty-one years they were tohold it, paying to the King the slight annual rent of forty shillings. They were not to disturb the colonists in any guaranteed right of lifeor land or goods, but for the rest they might farm Virginia. The countrycried out in anger. The Assembly hurried commissioners on board a shipin port and sent them to England to besiege the ear of the King. 

Distress and discontent increased, with good reason, among the mass ofthe Virginians. The King in England, his councilors, and Parliament, played an unfatherly role, while in Virginia economic hardships pressedever harder and the administration became more and more oppressive. By 1676 the gunpowder of popular indignation was laid right and left, awaiting the match. 

CHAPTER XII. NATHANIEL BACON

To add to the uncertainty of life in Virginia, Indian troubles flared upagain. In and around the main settlements the white man was safe enoughfrom savage attack. But it was not so on the edge of the English world, where the white hue ran thin, where small clusters of folk and evensingle families built cabins of logs and made lonely clearings in thewilderness. 

Not far from where now rises Washington the Susquehannocks had takenpossession of an old fort. These Indians, once in league with theIroquois but now quarreling violently with that confederacy, hadbeen defeated and were in a mood of undiscriminating bitterness andvengeance. They began to waylay and butcher white men and women andchildren. In self protection Maryland and Virginia organized in commonan expedition against the Indian stronghold. In the deep woods beyondthe Potomac, red men and white came to a parley. The Susquehannocks sentenvoys. There was wrong on both sides. A dispute arose. The white men, waxing angry, slew the envoys--an evil deed which their own color inMaryland and in Virginia reprehended and repudiated. But the harmwas done. From the Potomac to the James Indians listened to Indianeloquence, reciting the evils that from the first the white man hadbrought. Then the red man, in increasing numbers, fell upon the outlyingsettlements of the pioneers. 

In Virginia there soon arose a popular clamor for effective action. Callout the militia of every county! March against the Indians! Act! But theGovernor was old, of an ill temper now, and most suspicious of populargatherings for any purpose whatsoever. He temporized, delayed, refusedall appeals until the Assembly should meet. 

Dislike of Berkeley and his ways and a growing sense of injury andoppression began to quiver hard in the Virginian frame. The King wasno longer popular, nor Sir William Berkeley, nor were the most of theCouncil, nor many of the burgesses of that Long Assembly. There arose aloud demand for a new election and for changes in public policy. 

Where a part of Richmond now stands, there stretched at that time atract of fields and hills and a clear winding creek, held by a youngplanter named Nathaniel Bacon, an Englishman of that family whichproduced "the wisest, greatest, meanest of mankind. " The planter himselflived farther down the river. But he had at this place an overseerand some indentured laborers. This Nathaniel Bacon was a newcomerin Virginia--young man who had been entered in Gray's Inn, who hadtraveled, who was rumored to have run through much of his own estate. He had a cousin, also named Nathaniel Bacon, who had come fifteen yearsearlier to Virginia "a very rich, politic man and childless, " and whoserepresentations had perhaps drawn the younger Bacon to Virginia. At anyrate he was here, and at the age of twenty-eight the owner of much landand the possessor of a seat in the Council. But, though he sat inthe Council, he was hardly of the mind of the Governor and those whosupported him. 

It was in the spring of 1676 that there began a series of Indian attacksdirected against the plantations and the outlying cabins of the regionabove the Falls of the Far West. Among the victims were men of Bacon'splantation, for his overseer and several of his servants were slain. Thenews of this massacre of his men set their young master afire. Even aless hideous tale might have done it, for he was of a bold and ardentnature. 

Riding up the forest tracks, a company of planters from the threatenedneighborhood gathered together. "Let us make a troop and take fire andsword among them!" There lacked a commander. "Mr. Bacon, you command!"Very good; and Mr. Bacon, who is a born orator, made a speech dealingwith the "grievances of the times. " Very good indeed; but still therelacked the Governor's commission. "Send a swift messenger to Jamestownfor it!"

The messenger went and returned. No commission. Mr. Bacon had made anunpleasant impression upon Sir William Berkeley. This young man, the Governor said, was "popularly inclined"--had "a constitution notconsistent with" all that Berkeley stood for. Bacon and his neighborslistened with bent brows to their envoy's report. Murmurs began anddeepened. "Shall we stand idly here considering formalities, while theredskins murder?" Commission or no commission, they would march; and inthe end, march they did--a considerable troop--to the up-river country, with the tall, young, eloquent man at their head. 

News reached the Governor at Jamestown that they were marching. In atight-lipped rage he issued a proclamation and sent it after them. Theyand their leader were acting illegally, usurping military powers thatbelonged elsewhere! Let them disband, disperse to their dwellings, orbeware action of the rightful powers! Troubled in mind, some disbandedand dispersed, but threescore at least would by no means do so. Norwould the young man "of precipitate disposition" who headed the troop. He rode on into the forest after the Indians, and the others followedhim. Here were the Falls of the Far West, and here on a hill the Indianshad a "fort. " This the Virginia planters attacked. The hills above theJames echoed to the sound of the small, desperate fray. In the end thered men were routed. Some were slain; some were taken prisoner; othersescaped into the deep woods stretching westward. 

In the meantime another force of horsemen had been gathered. It washeaded by Berkeley and was addressed to the pursuit and apprehensionof Nathaniel Bacon, who had thus defied authority. But before Berkeleycould move far, fire broke out around him. The grievances of the peoplewere many and just, and not without a family resemblance to those thatprecipitated the Revolution a hundred years later. Not Bacon alone, butmany others who were in despair of any good under their present masterswere ready for heroic measures. Berkeley found himself ringed about bya genuine popular revolt. He therefore lacked the time now to pursueNathaniel Bacon, but spurred back to Jamestown there to deal as besthe might with dangerous affairs. At Jamestown, willy-nilly, the oldGovernor was forced to promise reforms. The Long Assembly should bedissolved and a new Assembly, more conformable to the wishes of thepeople, should come into being ready to consider all their troubles. So writs went out; and there presently followed a hot and turbulentelection, in which that "restricted franchise" of the Long Assemblywas often defied and in part set aside. Men without property presentedthemselves, gave their voices, and were counted. Bacon, who had by nowachieved an immense popularity, was chosen burgess for Henricus County. 

In the June weather Bacon sailed down to Jamestown, with a number ofthose who had backed him in that assumption of power to raise troopsand go against the Indians. When he came to Jamestown it was to find thehigh sheriff waiting for him by the Governor's orders. He was put underarrest. Hot discussion followed. But the people were for the momentin the ascendent, and Bacon should not be sacrificed. A compromisewas reached. Bacon was technically guilty of "unlawful, mutinous andrebellious practises. " If, on his knees before Governor, Council, andBurgesses, he would acknowledge as much and promise henceforth to be hisMajesty's obedient servant, he and those implicated with him shouldbe pardoned. He himself might be readmitted to the Council, and all inVirginia should be as it had been. He should even have the commission hehad acted without to go and fight against the Indians. 

Bacon thereupon made his submission upon his knees, promising thathenceforth he would "demean himself dutifully, faithfully, andpeaceably. " Formally forgiven, he was restored to his place in theVirginia Council. An eyewitness reports that presently he saw "Mr. Bacon on his quondam seat with the Governor and Council, which seemeda marvellous indulgence to one whom he had so lately proscribed as arebel. " The Assembly of 1676 was of a different temper and opinion fromthat of the Long Assembly. It was an insurgent body, composed to a largedegree of mere freemen and small planters, with a few of the richer, more influential sort who nevertheless queried that old divine right ofrule. Berkeley thought that he had good reason to doubt this Assembly'sintentions, once it gave itself rein. He directs it therefore to confineits attention to Indian troubles. It did, indeed, legislate on Indianaffairs by passing an elaborate act for the prosecution of the war. An army of a thousand white men was to be raised. Bacon was to becommander-in-chief. All manner of precautions were to be taken. But thismatter disposed of, the Assembly thereupon turned to "the redressingseveral grievances the country was then labouring under; and motionswere made for inspecting the public revenues, the collectors' accounts, "and so forth. The Governor thundered; friends of the old orderobstructed; but the Assembly went on its way, reforming here andreforming there. It even went so far as to repeal the precedingAssembly's legislation regarding the franchise. All white males who arefreemen were now privileged to vote, "together with the freeholders andhousekeepers. "

A certain member wanted some detail of procedure retained because it wascustomary. "Tis true it has been customary, " answered another, "butif we have any bad customs amongst us, we are come here to mend 'em!""Whereupon, " says the contemporary narrator, "the house was set ina laughter. " But after so considerable an amount of mending therethreatened a standstill. What was to come next? Could men go further--asthey had gone further in England not so many years ago? Reform had cometo an apparent impasse. While it thus hesitated, the old party gained inlife. 

Bacon, now petitioning for his promised commission against the Indians, seems to have reached the conclusion that the Governor might promise butmeant not to perform, and not only so, but that in Jamestown his verylife was in danger. He had "intimation that the Governor's generosityin pardoning him and restoring him to his place in the Council were noother than previous wheedles to amuse him. "

In Jamestown lived one whom a chronicler paints for us as "thoughtfulMr. Lawrence. " This gentleman was an Oxford scholar, noted for "wit, learning, and sobriety. . . Nicely honest, affable, and without blemish inhis conversation and dealings. " Thus friends declared, though foes saidof him quite other things. At any rate, having emigrated to Virginia andmarried there, he had presently acquired, because of a lawsuit over landin which he held himself to be unjustly and shabbily treated throughinfluences of the Governor, an inveterate prejudice against that ruler. He calls him in short "an old, treacherous villain. " Lawrence andhis wife, not being rich, kept a tavern at Jamestown, and there Baconlodged, probably having been thrown with Lawrence before this. Personsare found who hold that Lawrence was the brain, Bacon the arm, of thediscontent in Virginia. There was also Mr. William Drummond, who will bemet with in the account of Carolina. He was a "sober Scotch gentleman ofgood repute"--but no more than Lawrence on good terms with the Governorof Virginia. 

On a morning in June, when the Assembly met, it was observed thatNathaniel Bacon was not in his place in the Council--nor was he to befound in the building, nor even in Jamestown itself, though Berkeley hadLawrence's inn searched for him. He had left the town--gone up the riverin his sloop to his plantation at Curles Neck "to visit his wife, who, as she informed him, was indisposed. " In truth it appears that Baconhad gone for the purpose of gathering together some six hundred up-rivermen. Or perhaps they themselves had come together and, needing a leader, had turned naturally to the man who was under the frown of an unpopularGovernor and all the Governor's supporters in Virginia. At any rateBacon was presently seen at the head of no inconsiderable army fora colony of less than fifty thousand souls. Those with him were onlyup-river men; but he must have known that he could gather besides fromevery part of the country. Given some initial success, he might even setall Virginia ablaze. Down the river he marched, he and his six hundred, and in the summer heat entered Jamestown and drew up before the Capitol. The space in front of this building was packed with the Jamestown folkand with the six hundred. Bacon, a guard behind him, advanced to thecentral door, to find William Berkeley standing there shaking with rage. The old royalist has courage. He tears open his silken vest and fineshirt and faces the young man who, though trained in the law of therealm, is now filling that law with a hundred wounds. He raises apassionate voice. "Here! Shoot me! 'Fore God, a fair mark--a fair mark!Shoot!"

Bacon will not shoot him, but will have that promised commission to goagainst the Indians. Those behind him lift and shake their guns. "Wewill have it! We will have it!" Governor and Council retire to considerthe demand. If Berkeley is passionate and at times violent, so isBacon in his own way, for an eye-witness has to say that "he displayedoutrageous postures of his head, arms, body and legs, often tossing hishand from his sword to his hat, " and that outside the door he had cried:"Damn my blood! I'll kill Governor, Council, Assembly and all, andthen I'll sheathe my sword in my own heart's blood!" He is no dour, determined, unwordy revolutionist like the Scotch Drummond, nor stilland subtle like "the thoughtful Mr. Lawrence. " He is young and hot, aman of oratory and outward acts. Yet is he a patriot and intelligentupon broad public needs. When presently he makes a speech to the excitedAssembly, it has for subject-matter "preserving our lives from theIndians, inspecting the public revenues, the exorbitant taxes, andredressing the grievances and calamities of that deplorable country. " Ithas quite the ring of young men's speeches in British colonies a centurylater!

The Governor and his party gave in perforce. Bacon got his commissionand an Act of Indemnity for all chance political offenses. General andCommander-in-chief against the Indians--so was he styled. Moreover, the Burgesses, with an alarmed thought toward England, drew up anexplanatory memorial for Charles II's perusal. This paper journeyedforth upon the first ship to sail, but it had for traveling companiona letter secretly sent from the Governor to the King. The twocommunications were painted in opposite colors. "I have, " says Berkeley, "for above thirty years governed the most flourishing country the sunever shone over, but am now encompassed with rebellion like waters. "

CHAPTER XIII. REBELLION AND CHANGE

Bacon with an increased army now rode out once more against the Indians. He made a rendezvous on the upper York--the old Pamunkey--and to thiscenter he gathered horsemen until there may have been with him not farfrom a thousand mounted men. From here he sent detachments against thered men's villages in all the upper troubled country, and afar intothe sunset woods where the pioneer's cabin had not yet been builded. Heacted with vigor. The Indians could not stand against his horsemen andconcerted measures, and back they fell before the white men, westwardagain; or, if they stayed in the ever dwindling villages, they gavehostages and oaths of peace. Quiet seemed to descend once more upon theborder. 

But, if the frontier seemed peaceful, Virginia behind the border wasa bubbling cauldron. Bacon had now become a hero of the people, aSiegfried capable of slaying the dragon. Nor were Lawrence and Drummondidle, nor others of their way of thinking. The Indian troubles mightsoon be settled, but why not go further, marching against othertroubles, more subtle and long-continuing, and threatening all thefuture?

In the midst of this speculation and promise of change, the Governor, feeling the storm, dissolved the Assembly, proclaimed Bacon and hisadherents rebels and traitors, and made a desperate attempt to raise anarmy for use against the new-fangledness of the time. This last he couldnot do. Private interest led many planters to side with him, and therewas a fair amount of passionate conviction matching his own, that hisMajesty the King and the forces of law and order were being withstood, and without just cause. But the mass of the people cried out to hisspeeches, "Bacon! Bacon!" As the popular leader had been warned fromJamestown by news of personal danger, so in his turn Berkeley seems tohave believed that his own liberty was threatened. With suddenness hedeparted the place, boarded a sloop, and was "wafted over Chesapeake Baythirty miles to Accomac. " The news of the Governor's flight, producingboth alarm in one party and enthusiasm in the other, tended toprecipitate the crisis. Though the Indian trouble might by now be calledadjusted, Bacon, far up the York, did not disband his men. He turned andwith them marched down country, not to Jamestown, but to a hamlet calledMiddle Plantation, where later was to grow the town of Williamsburg. Here he camped, and here took counsel with Lawrence and Drummond andothers, and here addressed, with a curious, lofty eloquence, the throngthat began to gather. Hence, too, he issued a "Declaration, " recountingthe misdeeds of those lately in power, protesting against the termsrebel and traitor as applied to himself and his followers, who are onlyin arms to protect his Majesty's demesne and subjects, and calling onthose who are well disposed to reform to join him at Middle Plantation, there to consider the state of the country which had been brought into abad way by "Sir William's doting and irregular actings. "

Upon his proclamation many did come to Middle Plantation, great plantersand small, men just freed from indentured service, holders of noland and little land and much land, men of all grades of weight andconsideration and all degrees of revolutionary will, from Drummond--witha reported speech, "I am in overshoes; I will be in overboots!" and awife Sarah who snapped a stick in two with the cry, "I care no more forthe power of England than for this broken straw!"--to those who would berevolutionary as long as, and only when, it seemed safe to be so. 

How much of revolution, despite that speech about his Majesty's demesneand subjects, was in Bacon's mind, or in Richard Lawrence's mind andWilliam Drummond's mind, or in the mind of their staunchest supporters, may hardly now be resolved. Perhaps as much as was in the mind ofPatrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, and George Mason a century later. 

The Governor was in Accomac, breathing fire and slaughter, though asyet without brand or sword with which to put his ardent desires intoexecution. But he and the constituted order were not without friendsand supporters. He had, as his opponents saw, a number of "wicked andpernicious counsellors, aides and assistants against the commonalty inthese our cruel commotions. " Moreover--and a great moreover is that!--itwas everywhere bruited that he had sent to England, to the King, "fortwo thousand Red Coates. " Perhaps the King--perhaps England--will takehis view, and, not consulting the good of Virginia, send the Red Coats!What then?

Bacon, as a measure of opposition, proposed "a test or recognition, " tobe signed by those here at Middle Plantation who earnestly do wish thegood of Virginia. It was a bold test! Not only should they covenant togive no aid to the whilom?? Governor against this new general and army, but if ships should bring the Red Coats they were to withstand them. There is little wonder that "this bugbear did marvellously startle" thatbody of Virginia horsemen, those progressive gentlemen planters, andothers. Yet in the end, after violent contentions, the assembly atMiddle Plantation drew up and signed a remarkable paper, the "Oath atMiddle Plantation. " Historically, it is linked on the one hand withthat "thrusting out of his government" of Sir John Harvey in Charles I'stime, and on the other with Virginian proceedings a hundred years laterunder the third George. If his Majesty had been, as it was rumored, wrongly informed that Virginia was in rebellion; if, acting upon thatmisinformation, he sent troops against his loyal Virginians--who werearmed only against an evil Governor and intolerable woes then these samegood loyalists would "oppose and suppress all forces whatsoever of thatnature, until such time as the King be fully informed of the stateof the case. " What was to happen if the King, being informed, stillsupported Berkeley and sent other Red Coats was not taken intoconsideration. 

This paper, being drawn, was the more quickly signed because therearrived, in the midst of the debate, a fresh Indian alarm. Attackthreatened a fort upon the York--whence the Governor had seen fit toremove arms and ammunition! The news came most opportunely for Bacon. "There were no more discourses. " The major portion of the largeassemblage signed. 

The old Government in Virginia was thus denied. But it was held thatgovernment there must be, and that the people of Virginia throughrepresentatives must arrange for it. Writs of election, made as usual inthe King's name, and signed by Bacon and by those members of the Councilwho were of the revolt, went forth to all counties. The Assembly thusprovided was to meet at Jamestown in September. 

So much business done, off rode Bacon and his men to put down thislatest rising of the Indians. Not only these but red men in a newquarter, tribes south of the James, kept them employed for weeksto come. Nor were they unmindful of that proud old man, Sir WilliamBerkeley, over on the Eastern Shore, a well-peopled region wheretraveling by boat and by sandy road was sufficiently easy. Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond finally decided to take Sir William captive andto bring him back to Jamestown. For this purpose they dispatched a shipacross the Bay, with two hundred and fifty men, under the command ofGiles Bland, "a man of courage and haughty bearing, " and "no greatadmirer of Sir William's goodness. " The ship proceeded to the Accomacshore, anchored in some bight, and sent ashore men to treat with theGovernor. But the Governor turned the tables on them. He made himselfcaptor, instead of being made captive. Bland and his lieutenants weretaken, whereupon their following surrendered into Berkeley's hands. Bland's second in command was hanged; Bland himself was held in irons. 

Now Berkeley's star was climbing. In Accomac he gathered so many that, with those who had fled with him and later recruits who crossed theBay, he had perhaps a thousand men. He stowed these upon the ship of theill-fated Bland and upon a number of sloops. With seventeen sail in all, the old Governor set his face west and south towards the mouth of theJames. 

In that river, on the 7th of September, 1676, there appeared this fleetof the King's Governor, set on retaking Virginia. Jamestown had notice. The Bacon faction held the place with perhaps eight hundred men, ColonelHansford at their head. Summoned by Berkeley to surrender, Hansfordrefused, but that same night, by advice of Lawrence and Drummond, evacuated the place, drawing his force off toward the York. The nextday, emptied of all but a few citizens, Jamestown received the oldGovernor and his army. 

The tidings found Bacon on the upper York. Acting with his accustomedenergy, he sent out, far and wide, ringing appeals to the country torouse itself, for men to join him and march to the defeat of the oldtyrant. Numbers did come in. He moved with "marvelous celerity. " Whenhe had, for the time and place, a large force of rebels, he marched, bystream and plantation, tobacco field and forest, forge and mill, throughthe early autumn country to Jamestown. Civil war was on. 

Across the narrow neck of the Jamestown peninsula had been thrown a sortof fortification with ditch, earthwork, and palisade. Before thisBacon now sounded trumpets. No answer coming, but the mouths of cannonappearing at intervals above the breastwork, the "rebel" general halted, encamped his men, and proceeded to construct siege lines of his own. Thework must be done exposed to Sir William's iron shot. 

Now comes a strange and discreditable incident. Patriots, revolutionists, who on the whole would serve human progress, have yet, as have we all, dark spots and seamy sides. Bacon's parties of workmenwere threatened, hindered, driven from their task by Berkeley's guns. Bacon had a curious, unadmirable idea. He sent horsemen to neighboringloyalist plantations to gather up and bring to camp, not theplanters--for they are with Berkeley in Jamestown--but the planters'wives. Here are Mistress Bacon (wife of the elder Nathaniel Bacon), Mistress Bray; Mistress Ballard, Mistress Page, and others. Protesting, these ladies enter Bacon's camp, who sends one as envoy into the townwith the message that, if Berkeley attacks, the whole number of womenshall be placed as shield to Bacon's men who build earthworks. 

He was as good--or as bad--as his word. At the first show of actionagainst his workmen these royalist women were placed in the front andwere kept there until Bacon had made his counter-line of defense. Sir William Berkeley had great faults, but at times--not always--hedisplayed chivalry. For that day "the ladies' white aprons" guardedGeneral Bacon and all his works. The next day, the defenses completed, this "white garde" was withdrawn. 

Berkeley waited no longer but, though now at a disadvantage, opened fireand charged with his men through gate and over earthworks. The battlethat followed was short and decisive. Berkeley's chance-gathered armywas no match for Bacon's seasoned Indian fighters and for desperate menwho knew that they must win or be hanged for traitors. The Governor'sforce wavered and, unable to stand its ground, turned and fled, leavingbehind some dead and wounded. Then Bacon, who also had cannon, openedupon the town and the ships that rode before it. In the night the King'sGovernor embarked for the second time and with him, in that armada fromthe Eastern Shore, the greater part of the force he had gathered. Whendawn came, Bacon saw that the ships, large and small, were gone, sailingback to Accomac. Bacon and his following thus came peaceably intoJamestown, but with the somewhat fell determination to burn the place. It should "harbor no more rogues. " What Bacon, Lawrence, Drummond, Hansford, and others really hoped--whether they forecasted a republicanVirginia finally at peace and prosperous--whether they saw in a visiona new capital, perhaps at Middle Plantation, perhaps at the Falls ofthe Far West, a capital that should be without old, tyrannicmemories--cannot now be said. However it all may be, they put torchto the old capital town and soon saw it consumed, for it was no greatplace, and not hard to burn. 

Jamestown had hardly ceased to smoke when news came that loyalists underColonel Brent were gathering in northern counties. Bacon, now ill butenergetic to the end, turned with promptness to meet this new alarm. Hecrossed the York and marched northward through Gloucester County. Butthe rival forces did not come to a fight. Brent's men deserted bythe double handful. They came into Bacon's ranks "resolving with thePersians to go and worship the rising sun. " Or, hanging fire, reluctantto commit themselves either way, they melted from Brent, runninghomeward by every road. Bacon, with an enlarged, not lessened army, drewback into Gloucester. Revolutionary fortunes shone fair in prospect. Yetit was but the moment of brief, deceptive bloom before decay and fall. 

At this critical moment Bacon fell sick and died. Some said that he waspoisoned, but that has never been proved. The illness that had attackedhim during his siege of Jamestown and that held on after his victoryseems to have sufficed for his taking off. In Gloucester County he"surrendered up that fort he was no longer able to keep, into the handsof that grim and all-conquering Captaine Death. " His body was buried, says the old account, "but where deposited till the Generall day notknowne, only to those who are resolutely silent in that particular. "

With Bacon's death there fell to pieces all this hopeful or unhopefulmovement. Lawrence might have a subtle head and Drummond the courageto persevere; Hansford, Cheeseman, Bland, and others might have variedabilities. But the passionate and determined Bacon had been the organof action; Bacon's the eloquence that could bring to the cause men withproperty to give as well as men with life to lose. It is a question howsoon, had Bacon not died, must have failed his attempt at revolution, desperate because so premature. 

Back came Berkeley from Accomac, his turbulent enemy thus removed. All who from the first had held with the King's Governor now rodeemboldened. Many who had shouted more or less loudly for the risingstar, now that it was so untimely set, made easy obeisance to the oldsun. A great number who had wavered in the wind now declared that theyhad done no such thing, but had always stood steadfast for the ancientpowers. 

The old Governor, who might once have been magnanimous, was changed forthe worse. He had been withstood; he would punish. He now gave full reinto his passionate temper, his bigotry for the throne, and his feeling ofpersonal wrong. He began in Virginia to outlaw and arrest rebels, and todoom them to hasty trials and executions. There was no longer a unitedarmy to meet, but only groups and individuals striving for safetyin flight or hiding. Hansford was early taken and hanged with twolieutenants of Bacon, Wilford and Farlow. Cheeseman died in prison. Drummond was taken in the swamps of the Chickahominy and carried beforethe Governor. Berkeley brought his hands together. "Mr. Drummond, youare very welcome! I am more glad to see you than any man in Virginia!Mr. Drummond you shall be hanged in half an hour!" Not in half an hour, but on the same day he was hanged, imperturbable Scot to the last. Lawrence, held by many to have been more than Bacon the true author ofthe attempt, either put an end to himself or escaped northward, for hedisappears from history. "The last account of Mr. Lawrence was from anuppermost plantation whence he and four other desperadoes with horses, pistols, etc. , marched away in a snow ankle deep. " They "were thoughtto have cast themselves into a branch of some river, rather than tobe treated like Drummond. " Thus came to early and untimely end theringleaders of Bacon's Rebellion. In all, by the Governor's command, thirty-seven men suffered death by hanging. 

There comes to us, down the centuries, the comment of that King for whomBerkeley was so zealous, a man who fell behind his colonial Governor insingleness of interest but excelled him in good nature. "That old fool, "said the second Charles, "has hanged more men in that naked country thanI have done for the murder of my father!"

That letter which Berkeley had written some months before to hissovereign about the "waters of rebellion" was now seen to have bornefruit. In January, while the Governor was yet running down fugitives, confiscating lands, and hanging "traitors, " a small fleet from Englandsailed in, bringing a regiment of "Red Coates, " and with them threecommissioners charged with the duty of bringing order out of confusion. These commissioners, bearing the King's proclamation of pardon to allupon submission, were kinder than the irascible and vindictive Governorof Virginia, and they succeeded at last in restraining his fury. Theymade their report to England, and after some months obtained a secondroyal proclamation censuring Berkeley's vengeful course, "so derogatoryto our princely clemency, " abrogating the Assembly's more violent acts, and extending full pardon to all concerned in the late "rebellion, "saving only the arch-rebel Bacon--to whom perhaps it now made littledifference if they pardoned him or not. 

But with this piece of good nature, so characteristic of the secondCharles, there came neither to the King in person nor to England as awhole any appreciation of the true ills behind the Virginian revolt, norany attempt to relieve them. Along with the King's first proclamationcame instructions for the Governor. "You shall be no more obliged tocall an Assembly once every year, but only once in two years. . . . Alsowhensoever the Assembly is called fourteen days shall be the timeprefixed for their sitting and no longer. " And the narrowed franchisethat Bacon's Assembly had widened is narrowed again. "You shall takecare that the members of the Assembly be elected only by freeholders, as being more agreeable to the custom of England. " Nor is the grantto Culpeper and Arlington revoked. Nor, wider and deeper, are theNavigation Laws in any wise bettered. No more than before, no moreindeed than a century later, is there any conception that the childexists no more for the parent than the parent for the child. 

Sir William Berkeley's loyalty had in the end overshot itself. His zealfatigued the King, and in 1677 he was recalled to England. As Governorof Virginia he had been long popular at first but in his old agedetested. He had great personal courage, fidelity, and generosity forthose things that ran with the current of a deep and narrow soul. Hepasses from the New World stage, a marked and tragic figure. Behind himhis vengeances displeased even loyalist Virginia, willing on the wholeto let bygones be bygones among neighbors and kindred. It is said that;when his ship went down the river, bonfires were lighted and cannon andmuskets fired for joy. And so beyond the eastward horizon fades the oldreactionary. 

Herbert Jeffreys and then Sir Henry Chicheley follow Berkeley asGovernors of Virginia; they are succeeded by Lord Culpeper and he byLord Howard of Effingham. King Charles dies and James the Second rulesin England. Culpeper and Effingham play the Governor merely for whatthey can get for themselves out of Virginia. * The price of tobacco goesdown, down. The crops are too large; the old poor remedies of lettingmuch acreage go unplanted, or destroying and burning where the measureof production is exceeded, and of petitions to the King, are allresorted to, but they procure little relief. Virginia cannot be calledprosperous. England hears that the people are still disaffected andunquiet and England stolidly wonders why. 

 * In 1684 the Crown purchased from Culpeper all his rights except in the Northern Neck. 

During the reign of the second Charles, Maryland had suffered frompolitical unrest somewhat less than Virginia. The autocracy of Marylandwas more benevolent and more temperate than that of her southernneighbor. The name of Calvert is a better symbol of wisdom than the nameof Berkeley. Cecil Calvert, second Lord Baltimore, dying in 1675, hasa fair niche in the temple of human enlightenment. His son Charlessucceeded, third Lord Baltimore and Lord Proprietary of Maryland. Well-intentioned, this Calvert lacked something of the ability of eitherhis father or his grandfather. Though he lived in Maryland while hisfather had lived in England, his government was not as wise as hisfather's had been. 

But in Maryland, even before the death of Cecil Calvert, inherent evilswere beginning to form of themselves a visible body. In Maryland, as inVirginia, there set in after the Restoration a period of reaction, of callous rule in the interests of an oligarchy. In 1669 a "packed"Council and an "aristocratic" Assembly procured a restriction of thefranchise similar to that introduced into Virginia. As in Virginia, an Assembly deemed of the right political hue was kept in being by thedevice of adjournment from year to year. In Maryland, as in Virginia, public officials were guilty of corruption and graft. In 1676 thereseems to have lacked for revolt, in Maryland, only the immediateprovocative of acute Indian troubles and such leaders as Bacon, Lawrence, and Drummond. The new Lord Baltimore being for the time inEngland, his deputy writes him that never were any "more replete withmalignancy and frenzy than our people were about August last, and theywanted but a monstrous head to their monstrous body. " Two leaders indeedappeared, Davis and Pate by name, but having neither the standing northe strength of the Virginia rebels, they were finally taken andhanged. What supporters they had dispersed, and the specter of armedinsurrection passed away. 

The third Lord Baltimore, like his father, found difficulty inpreserving the integrity of his domain. His father had been involved ina long wrangle over the alleged invasion of Maryland by the Dutch. Sincethen, New Netherland had passed into English hands. Now there occurredanother encroachment on the territory of Maryland. This time the invaderwas an Englishman named William Penn. Just as the idea of a New Worldfreedom for Catholics had appealed to the first Lord Baltimore, so nowto William Penn, the Quaker, came the thought of freedom there forthe Society of Friends. The second Charles owed an old debt to Penn'sfather. He paid it in 1681 by giving to the son, whom he liked, aprovince in America. Little by little, in order to gain for Penn accessto the sea, the terms of his grant were widened until it included, beside the huge Pennsylvanian region, the tract that is now Delaware, which was then claimed by Baltimore. Maryland protested againstthe grant to Penn, as Virginia had protested against the grant toBaltimore--and equally in vain. England was early set upon the road tomany colonies in America, destined later to become many States. One byone they were carved out of the first great unity. 

In 1685 the tolerant Charles the Second died. James the Second, aCatholic, ruled England for about three years, and then fled beforethe Revolution of 1688. William and Mary, sovereigns of a ProtestantEngland, came to the throne. We have seen that the Proprietary ofMaryland and his numerous kinsmen and personal adherents were Catholics. Approximately one in eight of other Marylanders were fellows in thatfaith. Another eighth of the people held with the Church of England. Therest, the mass of the folk, were dissenters from that Church. And nowall the Protestant elements together--the Quakers excepted--solidifiedinto political and religious opposition to the Proprietary's rule. Baltimore, still in England, had immediately, upon the accession ofWilliam and Mary, dispatched orders to the Maryland Council to proclaimthem King and Queen. But his messenger died at sea, and there was delayin sending another. In Maryland the Council would not proclaim the newsovereigns without instructions, and it was even rumored that CatholicMaryland meant to withstand the new order. 

In effect the old days were over. The Protestants, Churchmen andDissenters alike, proceeded to organize under a new leader, one JohnCoode. They formed "An Association in arms for the defense of theProtestant religion, and for asserting the right of King William andQueen Mary to the Province of Maryland and all the English Dominions. "Now followed a confused time of accusations and counter-accusations, with assertions that Maryland Catholics were conspiring with the Indiansto perpetrate a new St. Bartholomew massacre of Protestants, and hotcounter-assertions that this is "a sleveless fear and imaginationfomented by the artifice of some ill-minded persons. " In the end Coodeassembled a force of something less than a thousand men and marchedagainst St. Mary's. The Council, which had gathered there, surrendered, and the Association for the Defense found itself in power. It proceededto call a convention and to memorialize the King and Queen, who in theend approved its course. Maryland passed under the immediate governmentof the Crown. Lord Baltimore might still receive quit-rents and customs, but his governmental rights were absorbed into the monarchy. Sir LionelCopley came out as Royal Governor, and a new order began in Maryland. 

The heyday of Catholic freedom was past. England would have a ProtestantAmerica. Episcopalians were greatly in the minority, but their Churchnow became dominant over both Catholic and Dissenter, and where thefreethinker raised his head he was smitten down. Catholic and Dissenterand all alike were taxed to keep stable the Established Church. The oldtolerance, such as it was, was over. Maryland paced even with the restof the world. 

Presently the old capital of St. Mary's was abandoned. The governmentremoved to the banks of the Severn, to Providence--soon, when Anneshould be Queen, to be renamed Annapolis. In vain the inhabitants ofSt. Mary's remonstrated. The center of political gravity in Maryland hadshifted. 

The third Lord Baltimore died in 1715. His son Benedict, fourth lord, turned from the Catholic Church and became a member of the Church ofEngland. Dying presently, he left a young son, Charles, fifth LordBaltimore, to be brought up in the fold of the Established Church. Reconciled now to the dominant creed, with a Maryland where Catholicswere heavily penalized, Baltimore resumed the government under favor ofthe Crown. But it was a government with a difference. In Maryland, aseverywhere, the people were beginning to hold the reins. Not again theold lord and the old underling! For years to come the lords would saythat they governed, but strong life arose beneath, around, and abovetheir governing. 

Maryland had by 1715 within her bounds more than forty thousand whitemen and nearly ten thousand black men. She still planted and shippedtobacco, but presently found how well she might raise wheat, andthat it, too, was valuable to send away in exchange for all kinds ofmanufactured things. Thus Maryland began to be a land of wheat stillmore than a land of tobacco. 

For the rest, conditions of life in Maryland paralleled pretty closelythose in Virginia. Maryland was almost wholly rural; her plantationsand farms were reached with difficulty by roads hardly more thanbridle-paths, or with ease by sailboat and rowboat along the innumerablewaterways. Though here and there manors--large, easygoing, patriarchalplaces, with vague, feudal ways and customs--were to be found, themoderate sized plantation was the rule. Here stood, in sight usually ofblue water, the planter's dwelling of brick or wood. Around it grew upthe typical outhouses, household offices, and storerooms; farther awayyet clustered the cabin quarters alike of slaves and indentured labor. Then stretched the fields of corn and wheat, the fields of tobacco. Here, at river or bay side, was the home wharf or landing. Here thetobacco was rolled in casks; here rattled the anchor of the shipthat was to take it to England and bring in return a thousand and onemanufactured articles. There were no factories in Maryland or Virginia. Yet artisans were found among the plantation laborers--"carpenters, coopers, sawyers, blacksmiths, tanners, curriers, shoemakers, spinners, weavers, and knitters. " Throughout the colonies, as in every newcountry, men and women, besides being agriculturists, produced homemademuch that men, women, and children needed. But many other articles andall luxuries came in the ships from overseas, and the harvest of thefields paid the account. 

CHAPTER XIV. THE CAROLINAS

The first settlers on the banks of the James River, looking from beneaththeir hands southward over plain land and a haze of endless forests, called that unexplored country South Virginia. It stretched away tothose rivers and bays, to that island of Roanoke, whence had fledRaleigh's settlers. Beyond that, said the James River men, was Florida. Time passed, and the region of South Virginia was occasionally spoken ofas Carolina, though whether that name was drawn from Charles the Firstof England, or whether those old unfortunate Huguenots in Florida hadused it with reference to Charles the Ninth of France, is not certainlyknown. 

South Virginia lay huge, unknown, unsettled. The only exception was thecountry immediately below the southern banks of the lower James with thepromontory that partially closed in Chesapeake Bay. Virginia, growingfast, at last sent her children into this region. In 1653 the Assemblyenacted: "Upon the petition of Roger Green, clarke, on the behalfeof himselfe and inhabitants of Nansemund river, It is ordered by thispresent Grand Assembly that tenn thousand acres of land be granted untoone hundred such persons who shall first seate on Moratuck or Roanokeriver and the land lying upon the south side of Choan river and theranches thereof, Provided that such seaters settle advantageously forsecurity and be sufficiently furnished with amunition and strength. . . . "

Green and his men, well furnished presumably with firelocks, bullets, and powder-horns, went into this hinterland. At intervals there followedother hardy folk. Quakers, subject to persecution in old Virginia, fled into these wilds. The name Carolina grew to mean backwoods, frontiersman's land. Here were forest and stream, Indian and bear andwolf, blue waters of sound and sea, long outward lying reefs and shoalsand islets, fertile soil and a clime neither hot nor cold. Slowly thepeople increased in number. Families left settled Virginia for thewilderness; men without families came there for reasons good and bad. Their cabins, their tiny hamlets were far apart; they practised ahazardous agriculture; they hunted, fished, and traded with the Indians. The isolation of these settlers bred or increased their personalindependence, while it robbed them of that smoothness to be gained wherethe social particles rub together. This part of South Virginia was soonto be called North Carolina. 

Far down the coast was Cape Fear. In the year of the Restoration ahandful of New England men came here in a ship and made a settlementwhich, not prospering, was ere long abandoned. But New Englanders tradedstill in South Virginia as along other coasts. Seafarers, they enteredat this inlet and at that, crossed the wide blue sounds, and, anchoring in mouths of rivers, purchased from the settlers their forestcommodities. Then over they ran to the West Indies, and got in exchangesugar and rum and molasses, with which again they traded for tobacco inCarolina, in Virginia, and in Maryland. These ships went often to NewProvidence in the Bahamas and to Barbados. There began, through tradeand other circumstances, a special connection between the long coastline and these islands that were peopled by the English. The restoredKingdom of England had many adherents to reward. Land in America, islands and main, formed the obvious Fortunatus's purse. As the secondCharles had divided Virginia for the benefit of Arlington and Culpeper, so now, in 1663, to "our right trusty and right well-beloved cousins andcounsellors, Edward, Earl of Clarendon, our High Chancellor of England, and George, Duke of Albemarle, Master of our Horse and CaptainGeneral ofall our Forces, our right trusty and well-beloved William, Lord Craven, John, Lord Berkeley, our right trusty and well-beloved counsellor, Anthony, Lord Ashley, Chancellor of our Exchequer, Sir George Carteret, Knight and Baronet, Vice-Chamberlain of our Household, and our trusty andwell-beloved Sir William Berkeley, Knight, and Sir John Colleton, Knightand Baronet, " he gave South Virginia, henceforth called the Carolinas, a region occupying five degrees of latitude, and stretching indefinitelyfrom the seacoast toward the setting sun. 

This huge territory became, like Maryland, a province or palatinate. InMaryland was one Proprietary; in Carolina there were eight, thoughfor distinction the senior of the eight was called the Palatine. As inMaryland, the Proprietaries had princely rights. They owed allegiance toEngland, and a small quit-rent went to the King. They were supposedto govern, in the main, by English law and to uphold the religion ofEngland. They were to make laws at their discretion, with "the advice, assent, and approbation of the freemen, or of their deputies, who wereto be assembled from time to time as seemed best. "

John Locke, who wrote the "Essay Concerning Human Understanding", wrote also, with Ashley at his side, "The Fundamental Constitutions ofCarolina, in number a Hundred and Twenty, agreed upon by the Palatineand Lords Proprietors, to remain the sacred and unalterable form andRule of government of Carolina forever. "

"Forever" is a long word with ofttimes a short history. The LordsProprietors have left their names upon the maps of North and SouthCarolina. There are Albemarle Sound and the Ashley and Cooper rivers, Clarendon, Hyde, Carteret, Craven, and Colleton Counties. But theirFundamental Constitutions, "in number a hundred and twenty, " writtenby Locke in 1669, are almost all as dead as the leaves of the Carolinaforest falling in the autumn of that year. 

The grant included that territory settled by Roger Green and his men. Among the Proprietors sat Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia, the only lord of Carolina actually upon American ground. Followinginstructions from his seven fellows Berkeley now declared this regionseparated from Virginia and attached to Carolina. He christened itAlbemarle. Strangely enough, he sent as Governor that Scotchman, WilliamDrummond, whom some years later he would hang. Drummond should havea Council of six and an Assembly of freemen that might inauguratelegislation having to do with local matters but must submit its actsto the Proprietaries for veto or approval. This was the settlement inCarolina of Albemarle, back country to Virginia, gatherer thence of manythat were hardy and sound, many that were unfortunate, and many thatwere shiftless and untamed. An uncouth nurse of a turbulent democracywas Albemarle. 

Cape Fear, far down the deeply frayed coast, seemed a proper place towhich to send a colony. The intrusive Massachusetts men were gone. But"gentlemen and merchants" of Barbados were interested. It is a farcry from Barbados to the Carolina shore, but so is it a far cry fromEngland. Many royalists had fled to Barbados during the old troubles, sothat its English population was considerable. A number may have welcomedthe chance to leave their small island for the immense continent; and anEnglish trading port as far south as Cape Fear must have had a generalappeal. So, in 1665, came Englishmen from Barbados and made, up the CapeFear River, a settlement which they named Clarendon, with John Yeamansof Barbados as Governor. But the colony did not prosper. There arose thetypical colonial troubles--sickness, dissensions, improvidence, quarrelswith the aborigines. Nor was the site the best obtainable. The settlersfinally abandoned the place and scattered to various points along thenorthern coast. 

In 1669 the Lords Proprietaries sent out from England three ships, the Carolina, the Port Royal, and the Albemarle, with about a hundredcolonists aboard. Taking the old sea road, they came at last toBarbados, and here the Albemarle, seized by a storm, was wrecked. Thetwo other ships, with a Barbados sloop, sailed on anal were approachingthe Bahamas when another hurricane destroyed the Port Royal. TheCarolina, however, pushed on with the sloop, reached Bermuda, and restedthere; then, together with a small ship purchased in these islands, sheturned west by south and came in March of 1670 to the good harbor ofPort Royal, South Carolina. 

Southward from the harbor where the ships rode, stretched old Florida, held by the Spaniards. There was the Spanish town, St. Augustine. ThenceSpanish ships might put forth and descend upon the English newcomers. The colonists after debate concluded to set some further space betweenthem and lands of Spain. The ships put again to sea, beat northward afew leagues, and at last entered a harbor into which emptied two rivers, presently to be called the Ashley and the Cooper. Up the Ashley theywent a little way, anchored, and the colonists going ashore began tobuild upon the west bank of the river a town which for the King theynamed Charles Town. Ten years later this place was abandoned in favor ofthe more convenient point of land between the two rivers. Here then wasbuilded the second and more enduring Charles Town--Charleston, as wecall it now, in South Carolina. 

Colonists came fast to this Carolina lying south. Barbados sent many;England, Scotland, and Ireland contributed a share; there came Huguenotsfrom France, and a certain number of Germans. In ten years afterthe first settling the population numbered twelve hundred, and thispresently doubled and went on to increase. The early times were taken upwith the wrestle with the forest, with the Indians, with Spanish alarms, with incompetent governors, with the Lords Proprietaries' FundamentalConstitutions, and with the restrictions which English Navigation Lawsimposed upon English colonies. What grains and vegetables and tobaccothey could grow, what cattle and swine they could breed and export, preoccupied the minds of these pioneer farmers. There were strugglingfor growth a rough agriculture and a hampered trade with Barbados, Virginia, and New England--trade likewise with the buccaneers whoswarmed in the West Indian waters. 

Five hundred good reasons allowed, and had long allowed, free bootery toflourish in American seas. Gross governmental faults, NavigationActs, and a hundred petty and great oppressions, general poverty, adventurousness, lawlessness, and sympathy of mishandled folk withlawlessness, all combined to keep Brother of the Coast, Buccaneer, andFilibuster alive, and their ships upon all seas. Many were no worse thansmugglers; others were robbers with violence; and a few had a dash ofthe fiend. All nations had sons in the business. England to the south inAmerica had just the ragged coast line, with its off-lying islands andislets, liked by all this gentry, whether smuggler or pirate outright. Through much of the seventeenth century the settlers on these shoresnever violently disapproved of the pirate. He was often a "good fellow. "He brought in needed articles without dues, and had Spanish gold in hispouch. He was shrugged over and traded with. 

He came ashore to Charles Town, and they traded with him there. At onetime Charles Town got the name of "Rogue's Harbor. " But that was notforever, nor indeed, as years are counted, for long. Better and betteremigrants arrived, to add to the good already there. The better typeprevailed, and gave its tone to the place. There set in, on the Ashleyand Cooper rivers, a fair urban life that yet persists. 

South Carolina was trying tobacco and wheat. But in the last years ofthe seventeenth century a ship touching at Charleston left there a bagof Madagascar rice. Planted, it gave increase that was planted again. Suddenly it was found that this was the crop for low-lying Carolina. Rice became her staple, as was tobacco of Virginia. 

For the rice-fields South Carolina soon wanted African slaves, and theywere consequently brought in numbers, in English ships. There began, inthis part of the world, even more than in Virginia, the system of largeplantations and the accompanying aristocratic structure of society. Butin Virginia the planter families lived broadcast over the land, eachupon its own plantation. In South Carolina, to escape heat and sickness, the planters of rice and indigo gave over to employees the care oftheir great holdings and lived themselves in pleasant Charleston. Theseplantations, with their great gangs of slaves under overseers, differedat many points from the more kindly, semi-patriarchal life of theVirginian plantation. To South Carolina came also the indentured whitelaborer, but the black was imported in increasing numbers. 

From the first in the Carolinas there had been promised fair freedomfor the unorthodox. The charters provided, says an early Governor, "anoverplus power to grant liberty of conscience, although at home was ahot persecuting time. " Huguenots, Independents, Quakers, dissenters ofmany kinds, found on the whole refuge and harbor. In every colony soonbegan the struggle by the dominant color and caste toward politicalliberty. King, Company, Lords Proprietaries, might strive to rule fromover the seas. But the new land fast bred a practical rough freedom. TheEnglish settlers came out from a land where political change was in theair. The stream was set toward the crumbling of feudalism, the rise ofdemocracy. In the New World, circumstances favoring, the stream becamea tidal river. Governors, councils, assemblies, might use a misleadingphraseology of a quaint servility toward the constituted powers inEngland. Tory parties might at times seem to color the land their ownhue. But there always ran, though often roughly and with turbulence, aset of the stream against autocracy. 

In Carolina, South and North, by the Ashley and Cooper rivers, and inthat region called Albemarle, just back of Virginia, there arose andwent on, through the remainder of the seventeenth century and in theeighteenth, struggles with the Lords Proprietaries and the Governorsthat these named, and behind this a more covert struggle with the Crown. The details differed, but the issues involved were much the same inNorth and South Carolina. The struggle lasted for the threescore andodd years of the proprietary government and renewed itself upon occasionafter 1729 when the Carolinas became royal colonies. Later, it wasswept, a strong affluent, into the great general stream of colonialrevolt, culminating in the Revolution. 

Into North Carolina, beside the border population entering throughVirginia and containing much of a backwoods and derelict nature, camemany Huguenots, the best of folk, and industrious Swiss, and Germansfrom the Rhine. Then the Scotch began to come in numbers, and familiesof Scotch descent from the north of Ireland. The tone of societyconsequently changed from that of the early days. The ruffian and theshiftless sank to the bottom. There grew up in North Carolina apeople, agricultural but without great plantations, hardworking andfreedom-loving. 

South Carolina, on the other hand, had great plantations, a townsociety, suave and polished, a learned clergy, an aristocratic cast tolife. For long, both North and South clung to the sea-line and to thelower stretches of rivers where the ships could come in. Only by degreesdid English colonial life push back into the forests away from the sea, to the hills, and finally across the mountains. 

CHAPTER XV. ALEXANDER SPOTSWOOD

In the spring of 1689, Virginians flocked to Jamestown to hear Williamand Mary proclaimed Lord and Lady of Virginia. The next year thereentered, as Lieutenant-Governor, Francis Nicholson, an odd characterin whom an immediate violence of temper went with a statesmanlikeconception of things to be. Two years he governed here, then wastransferred to Maryland, and then in seven years came back to the James. He had not been liked there, but while he was gone Virginia had enduredin his stead Sir Edmund Andros. That had been swapping the witch for thedevil. Virginia in 1698 seems to have welcomed the returning Nicholson. 

Jamestown had been hastily rebuilt, after Bacon's burning, and then byaccident burned again. The word malaria was not in use, but all knewthat there had always been sickness on that low spit running out fromthe marshes. The place might well seem haunted, so many had sufferedthere and died there. Poetical imagination might have evoked a piece ofsad pageantry--starving times, massacres, quarrels, executions, crueland unusual punishments, gliding Indians. A practical question, however, faced the inhabitants, and all were willing to make elsewhere a newcapital city. 

Seven miles back from the James, about halfway over to the blue York, stood that cluster of houses called Middle Plantation, where Bacon's menhad taken his Oath. There was planned and builded Williamsburg, whichwas to be for nearly a hundred years the capital of Virginia. Itwas named for King William, and there was in the minds of some loyalcolonists the notion, eventually abandoned, of running the streets inthe lines of a huge W and M. The long main street was called Duke ofGloucester Street, for the short-lived son of that Anne who was soonto become Queen. At one end of this thoroughfare stood a fair brickcapitol. At the other end nearly a mile away rose the brick William andMary College. Its story is worth the telling. 

The formal acquisition of knowledge had long been a problem in Virginia. Adult colonists came with their education, much or little, gainedalready in the mother country. In most cases, doubtless, it waslittle, but in many cases it was much. Books were brought in with otherhousehold furnishing. When there began to be native-born Virginians, these children received from parents and kindred some manner oftraining. Ministers were supposed to catechise and teach. Well-to-doand educated parents brought over tutors. Promising sons were sent toEngland to school and university. But the lack of means to knowledge forthe mass of the colony began to be painfully apparent. 

In the time of Charles the First one Benjamin Symms had left his meansfor the founding of a free school in Elizabeth County, and his actionhad been solemnly approved by the Assembly. By degrees there appearedother similar free schools, though they were never many nor adequate. But the first Assembly after the Restoration had made provision for acollege. Land was to have been purchased and the building completed asspeedily as might be. The intent had been good, but nothing more hadbeen done. 

There was in Virginia, sent as Commissioner of the Established Church, a Scotch ecclesiastic, Dr. James Blair. In virtue of his office he had aseat in, the Council, and his integrity and force soon made him aleader in the colony. A college in Virginia became Blair's dream. Hewas supported by Virginia planters with sons to educate--daughters'education being purely a domestic affair. Before long Blair had raisedin promised subscriptions what was for the time a large sum. With thisfor a nucleus he sailed to England and there collected more. Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Stillingfleet, Bishop of Worcester, helpedhim much. The King and Queen inclined a favorable ear, and, though hemet with opposition in certain quarters, Blair at last obtained hischarter. There was to be built in Virginia and to be sustained bytaxation a great school, "a seminary of ministers of the gospel whereyouths may be piously educated in good letters and manners; a certainplace of universal study, or perpetual college of divinity, philosophy, languages and other good arts and sciences. " Blair sailed back toVirginia with the charter of the college, some money, a plan for themain building drawn by Christopher Wren, and for himself the office ofPresident. 

The Assembly, for the benefit of the college, taxed raw and tannedhides, dressed buckskin, skins of doe and elk, muskrat and raccoon. Theconstruction of the new seat of learning was begun at Williamsburg. Whenit was completed and opened to students, it was named William and Mary. Its name and record shine fair in old Virginia. Colonial worthiesin goodly number were educated at William and Mary, as were laterrevolutionary soldiers and statesmen, and men of name and fame inthe United States. Three American Presidents--Jefferson, Monroe, andTyler--were trained there, as well as Marshall, the Chief Justice, foursigners of the Declaration of Independence, and many another man ofmark. 

The seventeenth century is about to pass. France and England are at war. The colonial air vibrates with the struggle. There is to be a brief lullafter 1697, but the conflict will soon be resumed. The more northerlycolonies, the nearer to New France, feel the stronger pulsation, butVirginia, too, is shaken. England and France alike play for the supportof the red man. All the western side of America lies open to incursionfrom that pressed-back Indian sea of unknown extent and volume. Up anddown, the people, who have had no part in making that European war, are sensitive to the menace of its dangers. In Virginia they buildblockhouses and they keep rangers on guard far up the great rivers. 

All the world is changing, and the changes are fraught with significancefor America. Feudalism has passed; scholasticism has gone; politics, commerce, philosophy, religion, science, invention, music, art, andliterature are rapidly altering. In England William and Mary pass away. Queen Anne begins her reign of twelve years. Then, in 1714, enters theHouse of Hanover with George the First. It is the day of Newton andLocke and Berkeley, of Hume, of Swift, Addison, Steele, Pope, Prior, andDefoe. The great romantic sixteenth century, Elizabeth's spacious time, is gone. The deep and narrow, the intense, religious, individualisticseventeenth century is gone. The eighteenth century, immediate parent ofthe nineteenth, grandparent of the twentieth, occupies the stage. 

In the year 1704, just over a decade since Dr. Blair had obtained thecharter for his College, the erratic and able Governor of Virginia, Francis Nicholson, was recalled. For all that he was a wild talker, hehad on the whole done well for Virginia. He was, as far as is known, the first person actually to propose a federation or union of allthose English-speaking political divisions, royal provinces, dominions, palatinates, or what not, that had been hewed away from the vastoriginal Virginia. He did what he could to forward the movement foreducation and the fortunes of the William and Mary College. But he isquoted as having on one occasion informed the body of the people that"the gentlemen imposed upon them. " Again, he is said to have remarked ofthe servant population that they had all been kidnapped and had a lawfulaction against their masters. "Sir, " he stated to President Blair, whowould have given him advice from the Bishop of London, "Sir, I know howto govern Virginia and Maryland better than all the bishops in England!If I had not hampered them in Maryland and kept them under, I shouldnever have been able to govern them!" To which Blair had to say, "Sir, if I know anything of Virginia, they are a good-natured, tractablepeople as any in the world, and you may do anything with them by wayof civility, but you will never be able to manage them in that way youspeak of, by hampering and keeping them under!"*

 * William and Mary College Quarterly, vol. I, p. 66. 

About this time arrived Claude de Richebourg with a number of Huguenotswho settled above the Falls. First and last, Virginia received many ofthis good French strain. The Old Dominion had now a population ofover eighty thousand persons--whites, Indians in no great number, andnegroes. The red men are mere scattered dwellers in the land east of themountains. There are Indian villages, but they are far apart. Save uponthe frontier fringe, the Indian attacks no more. But the African is hereto stay. 

"The Negroes live in small Cottages called Quarters. . . Under thedirection of an Overseer or Bailiff; who takes care that they tend suchLand as the Owner allots and orders, upon which they raise Hogsand Cattle and plant Indian Corn, and Tobacco for the Use of theirMaster. . . . The Negroes are very numerous, some Gentlemen having Hundredsof them of all Sorts, to whom they bring great Profitt; for the Sake ofwhich they are obliged to keep them well, and not over-work, starve orfamish them, besides other Inducements to favour them; which is donein a great Degree, to such especially that are laborious, careful andhonest; tho' indeed some Masters, careless of their own Interest ordeputation, are too cruel and negligent. The Negroes are not onlyencreased by fresh supplies from Africa and the West India Islands, butalso are very prolific among themselves; and they that are born heretalk good English and affect our Language, Habits and Customs. . . . Theirwork or Chimerical (hard Slavery) is not very laborious; their greatestHardship consisting in that they and their Posterity are not at theirown Liberty or Disposal, but are the Property of their Owners; andwhen they are free they know not how to provide so well for themselvesgenerally; neither did they live so plentifully nor (many of them) soeasily in their own Country where they are made Slaves to one another, or taken Captive by their Ennemies. "*

 * It is an English clergyman, the Reverend Hugh Jones, who is writing ("The Present State of Virginia") in the year 1724. He writes and never sees that, though every amelioration be true, yet there is here old Inequity. 

The white Virginians lived both after the fashion of England and afterfashions made by their New World environment. They are said to havebeen in general a handsome folk, tall, well-formed, and with a ready andcourteous manner. They were great lovers of riding, and of all countrylife, and few folk in the world might overpass them in hospitality. Theywere genial, they liked a good laugh, and they danced to good music. They had by nature an excellent understanding. Yet, thinks at leastthe Reverend Hugh Jones, they "are generally diverted by Businessor Inclination from profound Study, and prying into the Depth ofThings. . . . They are more inclinable to read Men by Business andConversation, than to dive into Books. . . They are apt to learn, yet theyare fond of and will follow their own Ways, Humours and Notions, beingnot easily brought to new Projects and Schemes. "

It was as Governor of these people that, in succession to Nicholson, Edward Nott came to Virginia, the deputy of my Lord Orkney. Nottdied soon afterward, and in 1710 Orkney sent to Virginia in his steadAlexander Spotswood. This man stands in Virginia history a manly, honorable, popular figure. Of Scotch parentage, born in Morocco, soldierunder Marlborough, wounded at Blenheim, he was yet in his thirties whenhe sailed across the Atlantic to the river James. Virginia liked him, and he liked Virginia. A man of energy and vision, he first made himselfat home with all, and then after his own impulses and upon his own lineswent about to develop and to better the colony. He had his projects andhis hobbies, mostly useful, and many sounding with a strong modern tone. Now and again he quarreled with the Assembly, and he made it many acutting speech. But it, too, and all Virginia and the world were growingmodern. Issues were disengaging themselves and were becoming distinct. In these early years of the eighteenth century, Whig and Tory in Englanddrew sharply over against each other. In Virginia, too, as in Maryland, the Carolinas, and all the rest of England-in-America, parties wereemerging. The Virginian flair for political life was thus early inevidence. To the careless eye the colony might seem overwhelmingly forKing and Church. "If New England be called a Receptacle of Dissenters, and an Amsterdam of Religion, Pennsylvania the Nursery of Quakers;Maryland the Retirement of Roman Catholicks, North Carolina the Refugeof Runaways and South Carolina the Delight of Buccaneers and Pyrates, Virginia may be justly esteemed the happy Retreat of true Britons andtrue Churchmen for the most Part. " This "for the most part" paints thesituation, for there existed an opposition, a minority, which might growto balance, and overbalance. In the meantime the House of Burgesses atWilliamsburg provided a School for Discussion. 

At the time when Parson Jones with his shrewd eyes was observing societyin the Old Dominion, Williamsburg was still a small village, even thoughit was the capital. Towns indeed, in any true sense, were nowhere to befound in Virginia. Yet Williamsburg had a certain distinction. Withinit there arose, beneath and between old forest trees, the college, anadmirable church--Bruton Church--the capitol, the Governor's house or"palace, " and many very tolerable dwelling-houses of frame and brick. There were also taverns, a marketplace, a bowling-green, an arsenal, andpresently a playhouse. The capitol at Williamsburg was a commodiousone, able to house most of the machinery of state. Here were the CouncilChamber, "where the Governor and Council sit in very great state, inimitation of the King and Council, or the Lord Chancellor and House ofLords, " and the great room of the House of Burgesses, "not unlike theHouse of Commons. " Here, at the capitol, met the General Courts in Apriland October, the Governor and Council acting as judges. There were alsoOyer and Terminer and Admiralty Courts. There were offices and committeerooms, and on the cupola a great clock, and near the capitol was "astrong, sweet Prison for Criminals; and on the other side of an openCourt another for Debtors. . . But such Prisoners are very rare, theCreditors being generally very merciful. . . . At the Capitol, at publickTimes, may be seen a great Number of handsome, well-dressed, compleatGentlemen. And at the Governor's House upon Birth-Nights, and at Ballsand Assemblies, I have seen as fine an Appearance, as good Diversion, and as splendid Entertainments, in Governor Spotswood's Time, as I haveseen anywhere else. "

It is a far cry from the Susan Constant, the Goodspeed, and theDiscovery, from those first booths at Jamestown, from the Starving Time, from Christopher Newport and Edward-Maria Wingfield and Captain JohnSmith to these days of Governor Spotswood. And yet, considering thechanges still to come, a century seems but a little time and the far crynot so very far. 

Though the Virginians were in the mass country folk, yet villages orhamlets arose, clusters of houses pressing about the Court House of eachcounty. There were now in the colony over a score of settled counties. The westernmost of these, the frontier counties, were so huge that theyran at least to the mountains, and, for all one knew to the contrary, presumably beyond. But "beyond" was a mysterious word of unknowncontent, for no Virginian of that day had gone beyond. All the way fromCanada into South Carolina and the Florida of that time stretched themighty system of the Appalachians, fifteen hundred miles in length andthree hundred in breadth. Here was a barrier long and thick, withridge after ridge of lifted and forested earth, with knife-bladevales between, and only here and there a break away and an encompassedtreasure of broad and fertile valley. The Appalachians made a trueChinese Wall, shutting all England-in-America, in those early days, outfrom the vast inland plateau of the continent, keeping upon the seaboardall England-in-America, from the north to the south. To Virginia thesewere the mysterious mountains just beyond which, at first, were heldto be the South Sea and Cathay. Now, men's knowledge being larger by ahundred years, it was known that the South Sea could not be so near. The French from Canada, going by way of the St. Lawrence and the GreatLakes, had penetrated very far beyond and had found not the South Seabut a mighty river flowing into the Gulf of Mexico. What was the realnature of this world which had been found to lie over the mountains?More and more Virginians were inclined to find out, foreseeing that theywould need room for their growing population. Continuously came in folkfrom the Old Country, and continuously Virginians were born. Marylanddwelt to the north, Carolina to the south. Virginia, seeking space, mustbegin to grow westward. 

There were settlements from the sea to the Falls of the James, andupon the York, the Rappahannock, and the Potomac. Beyond these, in thewilderness, might be found a few lonely cabins, a scattered handful ofpioneer folk, small blockhouses, and small companies of rangers chargedwith protecting all from Indian foray. All this country was rolling andhilly, but beyond it stood the mountains, a wall of enchantment, againstthe west. 

Alexander Spotswood, hardy Scot, endowed with a good temperamental blendof the imaginative and the active, was just the man, the time beingripe, to encounter and surmount that wall. Fortunately, too, theVirginians were horsemen, man and horse one piece almost, New Worldcentaurs. They would follow the bridle-tracks that pierced to the hillycountry, and beyond that they might yet make way through the primevalforest. They would encounter dangers, but hardly the old perils ofseacoast and foothills. Different, indeed, is this adventure of theGovernor of Virginia and his chosen band from the old push afoot intofrowning hostile woods by the men of a hundred and odd years before!

Spotswood rode westward with a company drawn largely from the colonialgentry, men young in body or in spirit, gay and adventurous. Thewhole expedition was conceived and executed in a key both humorous andknightly. These "Knights"* set face toward the mountains in August, 1716. They had guides who knew the upcountry, a certain number ofrangers used to Indian ways, and servants with food and much wine intheir charge. So out of settled Virginia they rode, and up the long, gradual lift of earth above sea-level into a mountainous wilderness, where before them the Aryan had not come. By day they traveled, andbivouacked at night. 

 * On the sandy roads of settled Virginia horses went unshod, but for the stony hills and the ultimate cliffs they must have iron shoes. After the adventure and when the party had returned to civilization, the Governor, bethinking himself that there should be some token and memento of the exploit, had made in London a number of small golden horseshoes, set as pins to be worn in the lace cravats of the period. Each adventurer to the mountains received one, and the band has kept, in Virginian lore, the title of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe. 

Higher and more rugged grew the mountains. Some trick of the light madethem show blue, so that they presently came to be called the Blue Ridge, in contradistinction to the westward lying, gray Alleghanies. They werelike very long ocean combers, with at intervals an abrupt break, a gap, cliff-guarded, boulder-strewn, with a narrow rushing stream making waybetween hemlocks and pines, sycamore, ash and beech, walnut and linden. 

Towards these blue mountains Spotswood and his knights rode day afterday and came at last to the foot of the steep slope. The long ridgeswere high, but not so high but that horse and man might make shift toscramble to the crest. Up they climbed and from the heights they lookedacross and down into the Valley of Virginia, twenty miles wide, ahundred and twenty long--a fertile garden spot. Across the shimmeringdistances they saw the gray Alleghanies, fresh barrier to a fresh west. Below them ran a clear river, afterwards to be called the Shenandoah. They gazed--they predicted colonists, future plantations, future towns, for that great valley, large indeed as are some Old World kingdoms. They drank the health of England's King, and named two outstandingpeaks Mount George and Mount Alexander; then, because their senses wereravished by the Eden before them, they dubbed the river Euphrates. Theyplunged and scrambled down the mountain side to the Euphrates, drankof it, bathed in it, rested, ate, and drank again. The deep green woodswere around them; above them they could see the hawk, the eagle, and thebuzzard, and at their feet the bright fish of the river. 

At last they reclimbed the Blue Ridge, descended its eastern face, and, leaving the great wave of it behind them, rode homeward to Williamsburgin triumph. 

We are thus, with Spotswood and his band, on the threshold of expandingAmerican vistas. This Valley of Virginia, first a distant Beulah landfor the eye of the imagination only, presently became a land of pioneercabins, far apart--very far apart--then a settled land, of farms, hamlets, and market towns. Nor did the folk come only from that elderVirginia of tidal waters and much tobacco, of "compleat gentlemen" atthe capital, and of many slaves in the fields. But downward fromthe Potomac, they came south into this valley, from Pennsylvania andMaryland, many of them Ulster Scots who had sailed to the westernworld. In America they are called the Scotch Irish, and in the mainthey brought stout hearts, long arms, and level heads. With these theybrought in as luggage the dogmas of Calvin. They permeated the Valleyof Virginia; many moved on south into Carolina; finally, in largepart, they made Kentucky and Tennessee. Germans, too, came into thevalley--down from Pennsylvania--quiet, thrifty folk, driven thus farwestward from a war-ravished Rhine. 

Shrewd practicality trod hard upon the heels of romantic fancy in themind of Spotswood. His Order of the Knights of the Horseshoe had afleeting existence, but the Vision of the West lived on. Frontier folkin growing numbers were encouraged to make their way from tidewaterto the foot of the Blue Ridge. Spotsylvania and King George were namesgiven to new counties in the Piedmont in honor of the Governor andthe sovereign. German craftsmen, who had been sent over by QueenAnne--vine-dressers and ironworkers--were settled on Spotswood's ownestate above the falls of the Rapidan. The little town of Germannasprang up, famous for its smelting furnaces. 

To his country seat in Spotsylvania, Alexander Spotswood retired whenhe laid down the office of Governor in 1722. But his talents were toovaluable to be allowed to rust in inactivity. He was appointed deputyPostmaster-General for the English colonies, and in the course of hisadministration made one Benjamin Franklin Postmaster for Philadelphia. He was on the point of sailing with Admiral Vernon on the expeditionagainst Cartagena in 1740, when he was suddenly stricken and died. Hewas buried at Temple Farm by Yorktown. On the expedition to Cartagenawent one Lawrence Washington, who named his country seat after theAdmiral and whose brother George many years later was to receive thesurrender of Cornwallis and his army hard by the resting-place ofAlexander Spotswood. Colonial Virginia lies behind us. The era ofrevolution and statehood beckons us on. 

CHAPTER XVI. GEORGIA

Below Charleston in South Carolina, below Cape Fear, below Port Royal, agreat river called the Savannah poured into the sea. Below the Savannah, past the Ogeechee, sailing south between the sandy islands and the main, ships came to the mouth of the river Altamaha. Thus far was Carolina. But below Altamaha the coast and the country inland became debatable, probably Florida and Spanish, liable at any rate to be claimed as such, and certainly open to attack from Spanish St. Augustine. 

Here lay a stretch of seacoast and country within hailing distance ofsemi-tropical lands. It was low and sandy, with innumerable slow-flowingwatercourses, creeks, and inlets from the sea. The back country, runningup to hills and even mountains stuffed with ores, was not known--thoughindeed Spanish adventurers had wandered there and mined for gold. Butthe lowlands were warm and dense with trees and wild life. The HuguenotRibault, making report of this region years and years before, called it"a fayre coast stretching of a great length, covered with an infinitenumber of high and fayre trees, " and he described the land as the"fairest, fruitfullest, and pleasantest of all the world, abounding inhony, venison, wilde fowle, forests, woods of all sorts, Palm-trees, Cypresse and Cedars, Bayes ye highest and greatest; with also thefayrest vines in all the world. . . . And the sight of the faire medowsis a pleasure not able to be expressed with tongue; full of Hernes, Curlues, Bitters, Mallards, Egrepths, Woodcocks, and all other kindof small birds; with Harts, Hindes, Buckes, wilde Swine, and all otherkindes of wilde beastes, as we perceived well, both by their footingthere and. . . Their crie and roaring in the night. "* This is the countryof the liveoak and the magnolia, the gray, swinging moss and the yellowjessamine, the chameleon and the mockingbird. 

 * Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America", vol. V, p. 357. 

The Savannah and Altamaha rivers and the wide and deep lands betweenfell in that grant of Charles II's to the eight Lords Proprietors ofCarolina--Albemarle, Clarendon, and the rest. But this region remainedas yet unpeopled save by copper-hued folk. True, after the "AmericanTreaty" of 1670 between England and Spain, the English built a smallfort upon Cumberland Island, south of the Altamaha, and presentlyanother Fort George--to the northwest of the first, at the confluence ofthe rivers Oconee and Oemulgee. There were, however, no true colonistsbetween the Savannah and the Altamaha. 

In the year 1717--the year after Spotswood's Expedition--the CarolinaProprietaries granted to one Sir Robert Mountgomery all the landbetween the rivers Savannah and Altamaha, "with proper jurisdictions, privileges, prerogatives, and franchises. " The arrangement was feudalenough. The new province was to be called the Margravate of Azilia. Mountgomery, as Margrave, was to render to the Lords of Carolina anannual quitrent and one-fourth part of all gold and silver found inAzilia. He must govern in accordance with the laws of England, mustuphold the established religion of England, and provide by taxation forthe maintenance of the clergy. In three years' time the new Margravemust colonize his Margravate, and if he failed to do so, all his rightswould disappear and Azilia would again dissolve into Carolina. 

This was what happened. For whatever reason, Mountgomery could notobtain his colonists. Azilia remained a paper land. The years wentby. The country, unsettled yet, lapsed into the Carolina from which sotentatively it had been parted. Over its spaces the Indian still roved, the tall forests still lifted their green crowns, and no axe was heardnor any English voice. 

In the decade that followed, the Lords Proprietors of Carolina ceasedto be Lords Proprietors. Their government had been, save at exceptionalmoments, confused, oppressive, now absent-minded, and now mistaken andarbitrary. They had meant very well, but their knowledge was not exact, and now virtual revolution in South Carolina assisted their demise. After lengthy negotiations, at last, in 1729, all except Lord Granvillesurrendered to the Crown, for a considerable sum, their rights andinterests. Carolina, South and North, thereupon became royal colonies. 

In England there dwelled a man named James Edward Oglethorpe, son of SirTheophilus Oglethorpe of Godalming in Surrey. Though entered at Oxford, he soon left his books for the army and was present at the siege andtaking of Belgrade in 1717. Peace descending, the young man returned toEngland, and on the death of his elder brother came into the estate, andwas presently made Member of Parliament for Haslemere in Surrey. 

His character was a firm and generous one; his bent, markedly humane. "Strong benevolence of soul, " Pope says he had. His century, too, wasbecoming humane, was inquiring into ancient wrongs. There arose, amongother things, a belated notion of prison reform. The English Parliamentundertook an investigation, and Oglethorpe was of those named toexamine conditions and to make a report. He came into contact with theincarcerated--not alone with the law-breaker, hardened or yet to behardened, but with the wrongfully imprisoned and with the debtor. Themisery of the debtor seems to have struck with insistent hand upon hisheart's door. The parliamentary inquiry was doubtless productive of somegood, albeit evidently not of great good. But though the inquiry wasover, Oglethorpe's concern was not over. It brooded, and, in the innerclear light where ideas grow, eventually brought forth results. 

Numbers of debtors lay in crowded and noisome English prisons, thereoften from no true fault at all, at times even because of a virtuousaction, oftenest from mere misfortune. If they might but start again, ina new land, free from entanglements! Others, too, were in prison, whosecrimes were negligible, mere mistaken moves with no evil will behindthem--or, if not so negligible, then happening often through that miseryand ignorance for which the whole world was at fault. There was also thebroad and well-filled prison of poverty, and many of the prisoners thereneeded only a better start. James Edward Oglethorpe conceived anothersettlement in America, and for colonists he would have all thesedown-trodden and oppressed. He would gather, if he might, only those whowhen helped would help themselves--who when given opportunity would riseout of old slough and briar. He was personally open to the appeal ofstill another class of unfortunate men. He had seen upon the Continentthe distress of the poor and humble Protestants in Catholic countries. Folk of this kind--from France, from Germany--had been going in a thinstream for years to the New World. But by his plan more might be enabledto escape petty tyranny or persecution. He had influence, and hisscheme appealed to the humane thought of his day--appealed, too, to thepolitical thought. In America there was that debatable and unoccupiedland south of Charles Town in South Carolina. It would be very good tosettle it, and none had taken up the idea with seriousness since Aziliahad failed. Such a colony as was now contemplated would dispose ofSpanish claims, serve as a buffer colony between Florida and SouthCarolina, and establish another place of trade. The upshot was that theCrown granted to Oglethorpe and twenty associates the unsettled landbetween the Savannah and the Altamaha, with a westward depth thatwas left quite indefinite. This territory, which was now severed fromCarolina, was named Georgia after his Majesty King George II, andOglethorpe and a number of prominent men became the trustees of the newcolony. They were to act as such for twenty-one years, at the end ofwhich time Georgia should pass under the direct government of the Crown. Parliament gave to the starting of things ten thousand pounds, andwealthy philanthropic individuals followed suit with considerabledonations. The trustees assembled, organized, set to work. Aphilanthropic body, they drew from the like minded far and near. Variousagencies worked toward getting together and sifting the colonists forGeorgia. Men visited the prisons for debtors and others. They didnot choose at random, but when they found the truly unfortunate andundepraved in prison they drew them forth, compounded with theircreditors, set the prisoners free, and enrolled them among theemigrants. Likewise they drew together those who, from sheer poverty, welcomed this opportunity. And they began a correspondence withdistressed Protestants on the Continent. They also devised and used allmanner of safeguards against imposition and the inclusion of any whowould be wholly burdens, moral or physical. So it happened that, thoughmisfortune had laid on almost all a heavy hand, the early colonists toGeorgia were by no means undesirable flotsam and jetsam. The plansfor the colony, the hopes for its well-being, wear a tranquil and faircountenance. 

Oglethorpe himself would go with the first colonists. His ship was theAnne of two hundred tons burden--the last English colonizing ship withwhich this narrative has to do--and to her weathered sails there stillclings a fascination. On board the Anne, beside the crew and master, areOglethorpe himself and more than a hundred and twenty Georgiasettlers, men, women, and children. The Anne shook forth her sails inmid-November, 1732, upon the old West Indies sea road, and after twomonths of prosperous faring, came to anchor in Charles Town harbor. 

South Carolina, approving this Georgia settlement which was to open thecountry southward and be a wall against Spain, received the colonistswith hospitality. Oglethorpe and the weary colonists rested from longtravel, then hoisted sail again and proceeded on their way to PortRoyal, and southward yet to the mouth of the Savannah. Here there wasfurther tarrying while Oglethorpe and picked men went in a small boat upthe river to choose the site where they should build their town. 

Here, upon the lower reaches, there lay a fair plateau, a milelong, rising forty feet above the stream. Near by stood a village ofwell-inclined Indians--the Yamacraws. Ships might float upon theriver, close beneath the tree-crowned bluff. It was springtime now andbeautiful in the southern land--the sky azure, the air delicate, theearth garbed in flowers. Little wonder then that Oglethorpe choseYamacraw Bluff for his town. 

A trader from Carolina was found here, and the trader's wife, ahalf-breed, Mary Musgrove by name, did the English good service. Shemade her Indian kindred friends with the newcomers. From the firstOglethorpe dealt wisely with the red men. In return for many covetedgoods, he procured within the year a formal cession of the land betweenthe two rivers and the islands off the coast. He swore friendship andpromised to treat the Indians justly, and he kept his oath. The sitechosen, he now returned to the Anne and presently brought his colonistsup the river to that fair place. As soon as they landed, these firstGeorgians began immediately to build a town which they named Savannah. 

Ere long other emigrants arrived. In 1734 came seventy-eight GermanProtestants from Salzburg, with Baron von Reck and two pastors forleaders. The next year saw fifty-seven others added to these. Then cameMoravians with their pastor. All these strong, industrious, religiousfolk made settlements upon the river above Savannah. Italians came, Piedmontese sent by the trustees to teach the coveted silk-culture. Oglethorpe, when he sailed to England in 1734, took with himTomochi-chi, chief of the Yamacraws, and other Indians. English interestin Georgia increased. Parliament gave more money--26, 000 pounds. Oglethorpe and the trustees gathered more colonists. The Spanish cloudseemed to be rolling up in the south, and it was desirable to have inGeorgia a number of men who were by inheritance used to war. ScotchHighlanders--there would be the right folk! No sooner said thangathered. Something under two hundred, courageous and hardy, wereenrolled from the Highlands. The majority were men, but there were fiftywomen and children with them. All went to Georgia, where they settledto the south of Savannah, on the Altamaha, near the island of St. Simon. Other Highlanders followed. They had a fort and a town which they namedNew Inverness, and the region that they peopled they called Darien. 

Oglethorpe himself left England late in 1735, with two ships, the Symondand the London Merchant, and several hundred colonists aboard. Of thesefolk doubtless a number were of the type the whole enterprise had beenplanned to benefit. Others were Protestants from the Continent. Yetothers--notably Sir Francis Bathurst and his family--went at their owncharges. After Oglethorpe himself, most remarkable perhaps of thosegoing to Georgia were the brothers John and Charles Wesley. Notprecisely colonists are the Wesleys, but prospectors for the souls ofthe colonists, and the souls of the Indians--Yamacraws, Uchees, andCreeks. 

They all landed at Savannah, and now planned to make a settlement southof their capital city, by the mouth of Altamaha. Oglethorpe chose St. Simon's Island, and here they built, and called their town Frederica. 

"Each Freeholder had 60 Feet in Front by 90 Feet in depth upon the highStreet for House and Garden; but those which fronted the River had but30 in Front, by 60 Feet in depth. Each Family had a Bower of PalmettoLeaves finished upon the back Street in their own Lands. The side towardthe front Street was set out for their Houses. These Palmetto Bowerswere very convenient shelters, being tight in the hardest Rains; theywere about 20 Feet long and 14 Feet wide, and in regular Rows lookedvery pretty, the Palmetto Leaves lying smooth and handsome, and of agood Colour. The whole appeared something like a Camp; for the Bowerslooked like Tents, only being larger and covered with Palmetto Leaves. "*

 * Moore's "Voyage to Georgia". Quoted in Winsor's "Narrative and Critical History of America", vol. V, p. 378. 

Their life sounds idyllic, but it will not always be so. Thunders willarise; serpents be found in Eden. But here now we leave them--in infantSavannah--in the Salzburgers' village of Ebenezer and in the Moravianvillage nearby--in Darien of the Highlanders--and in Frederica, whereuntil houses are built they will live in palmetto bowers. 

Virginia, Maryland, the two Carolinas, Georgia--the southern sweep ofEngland-in-America--are colonized. They have communication with oneanother and with middle and northern England-in-America. They also havecommunication with the motherland over the sea. The greetings of kindredand the fruits of labor travel to and fro: over the salt, tumblingwaves. But also go mutual criticism and complaint. "Each man, " saysGoethe, "is led and misled after a fashion peculiar to himself. " So withthose mass persons called countries. Tension would come about, tensionwould relax, tension would return and increase between Mother Englandand Daughter America. In all these colonies, in the year with which thisnarrative closes, there were living children and young persons whowould see the cord between broken, would hear read the Declaration ofIndependence. So--but the true bond could never be broken, for motherand daughter after all are one. 

THE NAVIGATION LAWS

Three acts of Parliament--the Navigation Act of 1660, the Staple Actof 1663, and the Act of 1673 imposing Plantation Duties--laid thefoundation of the old colonial system of Great Britain. Contrary tothe somewhat passionate contentions of older historians, they were notdesigned in any tyrannical spirit, though they embodied a theory ofcolonization and trade which has long since been discarded. In theseventeenth century colonies were regarded as plantations existingsolely for the benefit of the mother country. Therefore their trade andindustry must be regulated so as to contribute most to the sea power, the commerce, and the industry of the home country which gave themprotection. Sir Josiah Child was only expressing a commonplaceobservation of the mercantilists when he wrote "That all colonies orplantations do endamage their Mother-Kingdoms, whereof the trades ofsuch Plantations are not confined by severe Laws, and good execution ofthose Laws, to the Mother-Kingdom. "

The Navigation Act of 1660, following the policy laid down in thestatute of 1651 enacted under the Commonwealth, was a direct blow aimedat the Dutch, who were fast monopolizing the carrying trade. It forbadeany goods to be imported into or exported from His Majesty's plantationsexcept in English, Irish, or colonial vessels of which the masterand three fourths of the crew must be English; and it forbade theimportation into England of any goods produced in the plantations unlesscarried in English bottoms. Contemporary Englishmen hailed this actas the Magna Charta of the Sea. There was no attempt to disguise itspurpose. "The Bent and Design, " wrote Charles Davenant, "was to makethose colonies as much dependant as possible upon their Mother-Country, "by preventing them from trading independently and so diverting theirwealth. The effect would be to give English, Irish, and colonialshipping a monopoly of the carrying trade within the Empire. The actalso aided English merchants by the requirement that goods of foreignorigin should be imported directly from the place of production; andthat certain enumerated commodities of the plantations should be carriedonly to English ports. These enumerated commodities were products of thesouthern and semitropical plantations: "Sugars, Tobacco, Cotton-wool, Indicoes, Ginger, Fustick or other dyeing wood. "

To benefit British merchants still more directly by making England thestaple not only of plantation products but also of all commodities ofall countries, the Act of 1663 was passed by Parliament. "No Commoditieof the Growth Production or Manufacture of Europe shall be imported intoany Land Island Plantation Colony Territory or Place to His Majestiebelonging. . . But what shall be bona fide and without fraude laden andshipped in England Wales [and] the Towne of Berwicke upon Tweede andin English built Shipping. " The preamble to this famous act breathed nohostile intent. The design was to maintain "a greater correspondence andkindnesse" between the plantations and the mother country; to encourageshipping; to render navigation cheaper and safer; to make "this Kingdomea Staple not only of the Commodities of those Plantations but alsoof the Commodities of other Countries and places for the supplyingof them--" it "being the usage of other nations to keepe their[Plantations] Trade to themselves. "

The Act of 1673 was passed to meet certain difficulties which arosein the administration of the Act of 1660. The earlier act permittedcolonial vessels to carry enumerated commodities from the place ofproduction to another plantation without paying duties. Under cover ofthis provision, it was assumed that enumerated commodities, after beingtaken to a plantation, could then be sent directly to continental portsfree of duty. The new act provided that, before vessels left a colonialport, bonds should be given that the enumerated commodities would becarried only to England. If bonds were not given and the commoditieswere taken to another colonial port, plantation duties were collectedaccording to a prescribed schedule. 

These acts were not rigorously enforced until after the passage of theadministrative act of 1696 and the establishment of admiralty courts. Even then it does not appear that they bore heavily on the colonies, or occasioned serious protest. The trade acts of 1764 and 1765 aredescribed in "The Eve of the Revolution". --EDITOR. 

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The literature of the Colonial South is like the leaves of Vallombrosafor multitude. Here may be indicated some volumes useful in any generalsurvey. 

VIRGINIA

Hakluyt's "Principal Voyages. " 12 vols. (Hakluyt Society. Extra Series, 1905-1907. ) "The Prose Epic of the modern English nation. "

"Purchas, His Pilgrims. " 20 vols. (Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, 1905-1907. )

Hening's "Statutes at Large, " published in 1823, is an eminentlyvaluable collection of the laws of colonial Virginia, beginning with theAssembly of 1619. Hening's own quotation from Priestley, "The Laws ofa country are necessarily connected with everything belonging to thepeople of it: so that a thorough knowledge of them and of their progresswould inform us of everything that was most useful to be known, "indicates the range and weight of his thirteen volumes. 

William Stith's "The History of the Discovery and First Settlement ofVirginia" (1747) gives some valuable documents and a picture of thefirst years at Jamestown. 

Alexander Brown's "Genesis of the United States", 2 vols. (1890), isa very valuable work, giving historical manuscripts and tracts. Lessvaluable is his "First Republic in America" (1898), in which the authorattempts to weave his material into a historical narrative. 

Philip A. Bruce's "Economic History of Virginia in the SeventeenthCentury", 2 vols. (1896), is a highly interesting and exhaustive survey. The same author has written "Social Life of Virginia in the SeventeenthCentury" (1907) and "Institutional History of Virginia in theSeventeenth Century", 2 vols. (1910). 

John Fiske's "Virginia and Her Neighbors, " 2 vols. (1897), and John E. Cooke's Virginia (American Commonwealth Series, 1883) are written inlighter vein than the foregoing histories and possess much literarydistinction. 

On Captain John Smith there are writings innumerable. Some writers givecredence to Smith's own narratives, while others do not. John Fiskeaccepts the narratives as history, and Edward Arber, who has editedthem (2 vols. , 1884), holds that the "General History" (1624) is morereliable than the "True Relation" (1608). On the other side, as doubtersof Smith's credibility, are ranged such weighty authorities as CharlesDeane, Henry Adams, and Alexander Brown. 

Thomas J. Wertenbaker's "Virginia under the Stuarts" (1914) is apainstaking effort to set forth the political history of the colony inthe light of recent historical investigation, but the book is devoid ofliterary attractiveness. 

MARYLAND

"The Archives of Maryland", 37 vols. (1883-) contain the officialdocuments of the province. John L. Bozman's "History of Maryland", 2vols. (1837), contains much valuable material for the years 1634-1658. 

J. T. Scharf's "History of Maryland", 3 vols. (1879), is a solid pieceof work; but the reader will turn by preference to the more readablebooks by John Fiske, "Virginia and Her Neighbors", and William H. Browne, "Maryland, The History of a Palatinate" ("American CommonwealthSeries, " 1884). Browne has also written "George and Cecilius Calvert"(1890). 

THE CAROLINAS

"The Colonial Records of North Carolina", 10 vols. (1886-1890), are amine of information about both North and South Carolina. 

Francis L. Hawks's "History of North Carolina", 2 vols. (1857-8), remains the most substantial work on the colony to the year 1729. 

Samuel A. Ashe's "History of North Carolina" (1908) carries thepolitical history down to 1783. 

Edward McCrady's "History of South Carolina under the ProprietaryGovernment" (1897) and "South Carolina under the Royal Government"(1899) have superseded the older histories by Ramsay and Hewitt. 

GEORGIA

The best histories of Georgia are those by William B. Stevens, 2 vols. (1847, 1859), and Charles C. Jones, 2 vols. (1883). Robert Wright's"Memoir of General James Oglethorpe" (1867) is still the best life ofthe founder of Georgia. 

In the "American Nation Series" and in Winsor's "Narrative and CriticalHistory of America", the reader will find accounts of the Southerncolonies written by specialists and accompanied by much criticalapparatus. Further lists will be found appended to the articles on theseveral States in "The Encyclopaedia Britannica", 11th edition.