History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia Part 12

One effect of the ma.s.sacre was the ruin of the iron-works at Falling Creek, on the south side of the James River, (near Ampthill in the present County of Chesterfield,) where, of twenty-four people, only a boy and girl escaped by hiding themselves.[165:B] Lead was found near these iron-works. King James promised to send over four hundred soldiers for the protection of the colony; but he never could be induced to fulfil his promise. Captain John Smith offered, if the company would send him to Virginia, with a small force, to reduce the savages to subjection, and protect the colony from future a.s.saults. His project failed on account of the dissensions of the company, and the n.i.g.g.ardly terms proposed by the few members that were found to act on the matter.

The Rev. Jonas Stockham, in May, 1621, previous to the ma.s.sacre, had expressed the opinion that it was utterly in vain to undertake the conversion of the savages, until their priests and "ancients" were put to the sword. Captain Smith held the same opinion, and he states that the ma.s.sacre drove all to believe that Mr. Stockham was right in his view on this point.[165:C] The event justified the policy of Argall in prohibiting intercourse with the natives, and had that measure been enforced, the ma.s.sacre would probably have been prevented. The violence and corruption of such rulers as Argall serve to disgrace and defeat even good measures; while the virtues of the good are sometimes perverted to canonize the most pernicious.

FOOTNOTES:

[161:A] Beverley, 39.

[162:A] The chief was so charmed with it, especially with the lock and key, that he locked and unlocked the door a hundred times a day.

[163:A] Purchas, his Pilgrim, iv. 1788; Smith, ii. 65: a list of the slain may be found on page 70.

[164:A] ARMS. Quarterly: First, gules, a chevron ermine between three c.o.c.ks or, two in chief, one in base, Gookin. Second and third, sable, a cross crosslet, ermine. Fourth, or, a lion rampant, gules between six crosses fitchee. CREST. On a mural crown, gules, a c.o.c.k or, beaked and legged azure, combed and wattled gu.

[164:B] Article by J. Wingate Thornton, Esq., of Boston, in Ma.s.s. Gen.

and Antiq. Register, vol. for 1847, page 345, referring, among other authorities, to Records of General Court of Virginia.

[164:C] Afterwards called and still known as Jordan's Point, in the County of Prince George, the seat of the revolutionary patriot Richard Bland. Beggar's Bush, as already mentioned, was the t.i.tle of one of Fletcher's comedies then in vogue in England. (_Hallam's Hist. of Literature_, ii. 210.)

[164:D] Martin's Hist. of North Carolina, i. 87.

[165:A] Smith, ii. 79; Chalmers' Introduction, i. 19; Belknap, art.

WYAT.

[165:B] Beverley, 43.

[165:C] Anderson's Hist. of Col. Church, i. 343; Smith, 139; St.i.th, 233.

CHAPTER XVII.

1622.

Crashaw and Opechancanough--Captain Madison ma.s.sacres a Party of the Natives--Yeardley invades the Nansemonds and the Pamunkies--They are driven back--Reflections on their Extermination.

DURING these calamitous events that had befallen the colony, Captain Raleigh Crashaw had been engaged in a trading cruise up the Potomac.

While he was there, Opechancanough sent two baskets of beads to j.a.pazaws, the chief of the Potomacs, to bribe him to slay Crashaw and his party, giving at the same time tidings of the ma.s.sacre, with an a.s.surance that "before the end of two moons" there should not be an Englishman left in all the country. j.a.pazaws communicated the message to Crashaw, and he thereupon sent Opechancanough word "that he would nakedly fight him, or any of his, with their own swords." The challenge was declined. Not long afterwards Captain Madison, who occupied a fort on the Potomac River, suspecting treachery on the part of the tribe there, rashly killed thirty or forty men, women, and children, and carried off the werowance and his son, and two of his people, prisoners to Jamestown. The captives were in a short time ransomed.

When the corn was ripe, Sir George Yeardley, with three hundred men, invaded the country of the Nansemonds, who, setting fire to their cabins, and destroying whatever they could not carry away, fled; whereupon the English seized their corn, and completed the work of devastation. Sailing next to Opechancanough's seat, at the head of York River, Yeardley inflicted the same chastis.e.m.e.nt on the Pamunkies. In New England it was said: "Since the news of the ma.s.sacre in Virginia, though the Indians continue their wonted friends.h.i.+p, yet are we more wary of them than before, for their hands have been embrued in much English blood, only by too much confidence, but not by force."[166:A]

The red men of Virginia were driven back, like hunted wolves, from their ancient haunts. While their fate cannot fail to excite commiseration, it may reasonably be concluded that the perpetual possession of this country by the aborigines would have been incompatible with the designs of Providence in promoting the welfare of mankind. A productive soil could make little return to a people so dest.i.tute of the art and of the implements of agriculture, and habitually indolent. Navigable rivers, the natural channels of commerce, would have failed in their purpose had they borne no freight but that of the rude canoe; primeval forests would have slept in gloomy inutility, where the axe was unknown; and the mineral and metallic treasures of the earth would have remained forever entombed. In Virginia, since the aboriginal population was only about one to the square mile, they could not be justly held occupants of the soil. However well-founded their t.i.tle to those narrow portions which they actually occupied, yet it was found impossible to take possession of the open country, to which the savages had no just claim, without also exterminating them from those particular spots that rightfully belonged to them. This inevitable necessity actuated the pious Puritans of Plymouth as well as the less scrupulous settlers of Jamestown; and force was resorted to in all the Anglo-American settlements except in that effected, at a later day, by the gentle and sagacious Penn. The unrelenting hostility of the savages, their perfidy and vindictive implacability, made sanguinary measures necessary. In Virginia, the first settlers, a small company, in an unknown wilderness, were repeatedly a.s.saulted, so that resistance and retaliation were demanded by the natural law of self-defence. Nor were these settlers voluntary immigrants; the bulk of them had been sent over, without regard to their choice, by the king or the Virginia Company. Nor did the king or the company authorize any injustice or cruelty to be exercised toward the natives; on the contrary, the colonists, however unfit, were enjoined to introduce the Christian religion among them, and to propitiate their good will by a humane and lenient treatment. Smith and his comrades, so far from being encouraged to maltreat the Indians, were often hampered in making a necessary self-defence, by a fear of offending an arbitrary government at home.

It has been remarked by Mr. Jefferson,[168:A] that it is not so general a truth, as has been supposed, that the lands of Virginia were taken from the natives by conquest, far the greater portion having been purchased by treaty. It may be objected, that the consideration was often inadequate; but a small consideration may have been sufficient to compensate for a t.i.tle which, for the most part, had but little validity; besides, a larger compensation would oftentimes have been thrown away upon men so ignorant and indolent. Groping in the dim twilight of nature, and slaves of a gross idolatry, their lives were circ.u.mscribed within a narrow uniform circle of animal instincts and the necessities of a precarious subsistence. Cunning, b.l.o.o.d.y, and revengeful, engaged in frequent wars, they were strangers to that Arcadian innocence and the Elysian scenes of a golden age of which youthful poets so fondly dream. If an occasional exception occurs, it is but a solitary ray of light shooting across the surrounding gloom. Yet we cannot be insensible to the many injuries they have suffered, and cannot but regret that their race could not be united with our own. The Indian has long since disappeared from Virginia; his cry no longer echoes in the woods, nor is the dip of his paddle heard on the water.

The exterminating wave still urges them onward to the setting sun, and their tribes are fading one by one forever from the map of existence.

Geology shows that in the scale of animal life, left impressed on the earth's strata, the inferior species has still given place to the superior: so likewise is it with the races of men.

FOOTNOTES:

[166:A] Purchas, iv. 1840.

[168:A] Notes on Va., 102.

CHAPTER XVIII.

1622-1625.

James the First jealous of Virginia Company--Gondomar--The King takes Measures to annul the Charter--Commissioners appointed--a.s.sembly Pet.i.tions the King--Disputes between Commissioners and a.s.sembly--Butler's Account of the Colony-- Nicholas Ferrar--Treachery of Sharpless, and his Punishment-- The Charter of Virginia Company dissolved--Causes of this Proceeding--Character of the Company--Records of the Company-- Death of James the First--Charles the First succeeds him--The Virginia Company--Earl of Southampton--Sir Edwin Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar--The Rev. Jonas Stockham's Letter--Injustice of the Dissolution of the Charter--Beneficial Results-- a.s.sembly of 1624.

THE Court of James the First, already jealous of the growing power and republican spirit of the Virginia Company, was rendered still more inimical by the malign influence of Count Gondomar, the Spanish amba.s.sador, who was jealous of any encroachment on the Spanish colony of Florida. He remarked to King James, of the Virginia Company, that "they were deep politicians, and had further designs than a tobacco-plantation; that as soon as they should get to be more numerous, they intended to step beyond their limits, and, for aught he knew, they might visit his master's mines." The ma.s.sacre afforded an occasion to the enemies of the company to attribute all the calamities of the colony to its mismanagement and neglect, and thus to frame a plausible pretext for dissolving the charter.

Captain Nathaniel Butler, a dependent of the Earl of Warwick, had, by his influence, been sent out Governor of Bermudas for three years, where he exercised the same oppression and extortion as Argall had exhibited in Virginia. Upon finding himself compelled to leave those islands, he came to Virginia, in the midst of the winter succeeding the ma.s.sacre. He was hospitably entertained by Governor Wyat, which kindness he proved himself wholly unworthy of, his conduct being profligate and disorderly.

He demanded a seat in the council, to which he was in no way ent.i.tled.

He went up the James as far as to the mouth of the Chickahominy, where "he plundered Lady Dale's cattle;" and after a three months' stay, he set sail for England. Upon his return, Butler was introduced to the king, and published "The Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia, as it was in the Winter of 1622," in which he took advantage of the misfortunes of the colony, and exaggerated its deplorable condition. The Rev. William Mease, (who had been for ten years resident in the colony,) with several others, replied to this defamatory pamphlet.[170:A]

The company was divided into two parties, the one headed by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Cavendish, Sir Edward Sackville, Sir John Ogle, Sir Edwin Sandys, with several others of less note; on the other side, the leaders were the Earl of Warwick, Sir Thomas Smith, Sir Nathaniel Rich, Sir Henry Mildmay, Alderman Johnson, etc. They appeared before the king, the Earl of Warwick's faction presenting their accusations against the company, and the other side defending it; and Sir Edward Sackville used such freedom of language that "the king was fain to take him down soundly and roundly." However, by the lord treasurer's intervention, the matter was reconciled on the next day.[170:B]

In May, 1623, a commission was issued authorizing Sir William Jones, a justice of the common pleas, Sir Nicholas Fortescue, Sir Francis Goston, Sir Richard Sutton, Sir William Pitt, Sir Henry Bourchier, and Sir Henry Spilman,[170:C] to inquire into the affairs of the colony. By an order of the privy council the records of the company were seized, and the deputy treasurer, Nicholas Ferrar, imprisoned, and on the arrival of a s.h.i.+p from Virginia, her packets were seized and laid before the privy council.

Nicholas Ferrar, Jr., was born in London in 1592, educated at Cambridge, where he was noted for his talents, acquirements, and piety.[171:A]

Upon leaving the university he made the tour of Europe, winning the esteem of the learned, pa.s.sing through many adventures and perils with Christian heroism, and maintaining everywhere an unsullied character.

Upon his return to England, in 1618, he was appointed king's counsel for the Virginia Plantation. In the year 1622 he was chosen deputy treasurer of the Virginia Company, (which office his brother John also filled for some years,) and so remained till its dissolution. In the House of Commons he distinguished himself by his opposition to the political corruption of that day, and abandoned public life when little upwards of thirty years of age, "in obedience to a religious fancy he had long entertained," and formed of his family and relations a sort of little half-popish convent, in which he pa.s.sed the remainder of his life.[171:B]

Carlyle[171:C] thus describes this singular place of retirement: "Crossing Huntingdons.h.i.+re in his way northward, his majesty[171:D] had visited the establishment of Nicholas Ferrar, at Little Gidding, on the western border of that county. A surprising establishment now in full flower, wherein above fourscore persons, including domestics, with Ferrar and his brother, and aged mother at the head of them, had devoted themselves to a kind of Protestant monachism, and were getting much talked of in those times. They followed celibacy and merely religious duties; employed themselves in binding of prayer-books, embroidering of ha.s.socks, in almsgiving also, and what charitable work was possible in that desert region; above all, they kept up, night and day, a continual repet.i.tion of the English liturgy, being divided into relays and watches, one watch relieving another, as on s.h.i.+pboard, and never allowing at any hour the sacred fire to go out."

In October, 1623, the king declared his intention to grant a new charter modelled after that of 1606. This astounding order was read three times, at a meeting of the company, before they could credit their own ears; then, by an overwhelming vote, they refused to relinquish their charter, and expressed their determination to defend it.

The king, in order to procure additional evidence to be used against the company, appointed five commissioners to make inquiries in Virginia into the state and condition of the colony. In November, 1623, when two of these commissioners had just sailed for Virginia, the king ordered a writ of _quo warranto_ to be issued against the Virginia Company.

In the colony, hitherto, the proclamations of the governors, which had formed the rule of action, were now enacted into laws; and it was declared that the governor should no more impose taxes on the colonists without the consent of the a.s.sembly, and that he should not withdraw the inhabitants from their private labor to any service of his; and further, that the burgesses should be free from arrest during the session of the a.s.sembly. These acts of the legislature of the infant colony, while under the control of the Virginia Company, render it certain that there was more of const.i.tutional and well-regulated freedom in Virginia then, than in the mother country.

Of the commissioners appointed to make inquiries in Virginia, John Harvey and John Pory arrived there early in 1624; Samuel Matthews and Abraham Percy were planters resident in the colony, and the latter a member of the House of Burgesses; John Jefferson, the other commissioner, did not come over to Virginia, nor did he take any part in the matter, being a hearty friend to the company.[172:A] Thomas Jefferson, in his memoir of himself,[172:B] says that one of his name was secretary to the Virginia Company. The Virginia planters at first looking on it as a dispute between the crown and the company, in which they were not essentially interested, paid little attention to it; but two pet.i.tions, defamatory of the colony and laudatory of Sir Thomas Smith's arbitrary rule, having come to the knowledge of the a.s.sembly, in February, 1624, that body prepared spirited replies, and drafted a pet.i.tion to the king, which, with a letter to the privy council, and other papers, were entrusted to Mr. John Pountis, a member of the council.[173:A] He died during the voyage to England. The letter addressed to the privy council prayed "that the governors may not have absolute power, that they might still retain the liberty of popular a.s.semblies, than which nothing could more conduce to the public satisfaction and public utility." At the same time the Virginia Company, in England, presented a pet.i.tion to the House of Commons against the arbitrary proceedings of the king; but although favorably received, it was withdrawn as soon as the king's disapprobation was announced.

In Virginia the commissioners refused to exhibit their commission and instructions, and the a.s.sembly therefore refused to give them access to their records. Pory, one of the commissioners, who had formerly lost his place of secretary of the colony by betraying its secrets to the Earl of Warwick, suborned Edward Sharpless, clerk of the council, to expose to him copies of the journal of that body, and of the House of Burgesses.

Sharpless being convicted of this misdemeanor was sentenced to the pillory, with the loss of his ears.[173:B] Only a part of one ear was actually cut off.

The commissioners, having failed to obtain from the a.s.sembly a declaration of their willingness to submit to the king's purpose of revoking the charter, made a report against the company's management of the colony and the government of it, as too popular, that is, democratic, under the present charter. The king, by a proclamation issued in July, suppressed the meetings of the company, and ordered for the present a committee of the privy council, and others, to sit every Thursday, at the house of Sir Thomas Smith, in Philpot Lane, for conducting the affairs of the colony. Viscount Mandeville was at the head of this committee: Sir George Calvert, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Sir Samuel Argall, John Pory, Sir John Wolstenholme, and others, were members. At the instance of the attorney-general, to enable the company to make a defence, their books were restored and the deputy treasurer released. In Trinity term, 1624, the writ of _quo warranto_ was tried in the Court of King's Bench, and the charter of the Virginia Company was annulled. The case was determined only upon a technicality in the pleadings.

In one of the hearings against the company, before the privy council, the Marquis of Hamilton said of the letters and instructions of the company, written by Nicholas Ferrar, Jr.: "They are papers as admirably well penned as any I ever heard." And the Earl of Pembroke remarked: "They all deserve the highest commendation: containing advices far more excellent than I could have expected to have met with in the letters of a trading company. For they abound with soundness of good matter and profitable instruction, with respect both to religion and policy; and they possess uncommon elegance of language."[174:A]

The company had been long obnoxious to the king's ill will for several reasons; it had become a nursery for rearing and training leaders of the opposition, many of its members being likewise members of parliament. It was a sort of reform club. The king, in a speech, swore that "the Virginia Company was a seminary for a seditious parliament." The company had chosen a treasurer in disregard of the king's nomination; and in electing Carew Raleigh, a member, they had made allusions to his father, Sir Walter Raleigh, which were doubtless unpalatable to the author of his judicial murder. The king was greedy of power and of money, which he wanted the sense and the virtue to make a good use of; and he hoped to find in Virginia a new field for extortion. Fortunately for the history of the colony, copies of the company's records were made by the precaution of Nicholas Ferrar: these being deposited in the hands of the Earl of Southampton, after his death, which took place in 1624, descended to his son. After his death, in 1667, they were purchased from his executors, for sixty guineas, by the first Colonel William Byrd, then in England. From these two folio volumes, in possession of Sir John Randolph, and from the records of the colony, St.i.th compiled much of his History of Virginia, which comes down to the year 1624.[174:B]