qualities, mixed both with joy and sorrow." He told them of the safe arrival of Gates and Somers, and of their resolution to abandon the settlement. Delaware, on hearing this, promptly manned his long-boat and sent it to meet and stop the pinnaces. On the next day the long-boat met Gates near Mulberry Island. The vessels immediately turned up stream, and were brought by a favorable wind to Jamestown that night. State of under Two days later Delaware himself landed. After a sermon had been preached, he caused his commission to be read. Gates then delivered up his commission with both patents and the colony the seal of the Council. The new Governor immediDelaware. ately took vigorous measures for establishing his authority. He delivered an address to the settlers in which he “laid some blame on them for many vanities and their idleness, earnestly wishing that he might no more find it so, lest he should be compelled to draw the sword of justice to cut off such delinquents, which he had much rather draw in their defense to protect from enemies." The wretched state of the colony is shown by the fact that the Governor transacted business on board his ship as there was no house fit for the purpose. A Council was appointed, consisting of Gates, Somers, Percy, Wenman, Newport, and Strachey. The first necessity was a supply of food, and to obtain it seemed no easy task. The Indians and the settlers, between them, had consumed all the live stock of every kind. Of six hundred hogs not one remained, and even the horses had all long since been eaten. No supplies could be looked for from the savages. In this strait Somers volunteered his services. He would go with his pinnace to the Bermudas and bring back a supply of fish and flesh for six months, together with some live hogs, which abounded in the newly-found islands. On the 9th of June he set sail, accompanied by a small vessel, whose commander, Samuel Argall, a young kinsman of Sir Thomas Smith, played at a later day a leading part in Virginian history.3 Meanwhile Delaware did what he could for the present support of the colony. The food was carefully doled out in small quantities. Fishing was tried both in the river and along the coast, but the result was not enough to repay the labor spent. In five months one hundred and fifty of the settlers died. 2 lb. Famine was 1 Delaware's letter, Major, p. xxix. Our authorities for Somers's voyage and the remainder of Delaware's sojourn are Delaware's own letter, the True Declaration, the Brief Declaration, and Strachey in Purchas. • Major, p. xxxi Brief Declaration. THE COLONY UNDER DELAWARE. 135 not the only form of misery from which the settlers suffered. Delaware had brought out with him a code, compiled from the martial laws in force in the Low Countries. In an amended form, in force a few years later, to which I shall have occasion hereafter to refer, this code is still extant. The severity of it may have been, and probably was, increased, but even in their original form the laws must have been such that nothing but the utter prostration of the settlers and the commanding position and character of Delaware could have made them tolerated. Straitened though he was for resources of every kind, Delaware had not remained inactive. Two small forts were built in a fertile and well-watered spot for the reception of new-comers. Newport captured an Indian chief with his son and nephew, from whom Delaware exacted a promise of five hundred bushels of corn in return for a quantity of copper beads and hatchets. To insure the execution of the promise, the nephew was detained as a hostage. For greater security the young Indian was taken on board ship with his legs fettered. Notwithstanding he leaped overboard, and, as it was believed, escaped safe to the mainland. As might have been foreseen, when the time came round the corn was not forthcoming. Delaware determined to punish this treachery, and a force of some fifty picked men was sent against the Paspaheys, the tribesmen of the criminal. The Indians fled before the invaders. The English burned their houses, and fourteen of the fugitives, among whom were the queen and her children, fell into the hands of the English, and were put to death. In another skirmish at the falls of the James River, two or three of the settlers were slain, among them Francis West, Lord Delaware's nephew, and two were taken prisoners, a triumph which seems to have specially delighted the natives. A somewhat ill-timed expedition in quest of gold and silver mines ended in the slaughter of all the miners by the Indians. These disasters seem to have disinclined the settlers for further adventures, and for five months they remained quiet, "doing little but suffering much."1 The summer passed away and the looked-for supplies from the Bermudas did not come. Shortly after sailing, Argall had been separated from Somers by a fog and driven back by stress of weather. Reaching the mainland north of Cape Cod, he coasted southwards, fishing and trading with the natives for corn. Coming farther to the south, he sailed up the Potomac. There he not 'Brief Declaration. only obtained four hundred bushels of corn from the king of the country, but recovered an English prisoner, Henry Spelman, the sole survivor in the massacre of Ratcliffe's troop the year before. Meanwhile Somers pushed on in spite of contrary winds, and at length reached the Bermudas. But his labors had been more than three score years could bear, and in November the brave old man died in the island that he had discovered, toiling to the last for the colony which he had done so much to found. On his deathbed he commanded his nephew, who was left in command, to return to Virginia, but his orders were disregarded. Somers's heart was buried in the island, and his body brought back to England and interred with military honors at Whitchurch, in Dorsetshire.1 State of By the end of the year 1610 the news of the misfortunes in Virginia had reached England. The Company were utterly disheartened. The adventurers became remiss in paying for their shares.2 The funds of the Company ran short and the profits failed, while Delaware impressed upon Delaware. them the utter futility of their present policy, and the necessity for greater outlay. "Only let me truly acknowledge," he says in a letter written from Jamestown a month after his arrival," they are not a hundred or two of depaucht hands dropt forth year after year, with penury and pressure, ill provided for, before they come, and worse governed when they are here, men of such distempered bodies and infected minds, whom no examples daily before their eyes, either of goodness or punishment, can deter from their habitual impieties or terrify from a shameful death, that must be carpenters and workers in this so glorious building. But to delude and mock the business no longer, as a necessary quantity of provisions for a year must be carefully sent with men, so likewise must there be the same care for men of quality and painstaking men of arts and practices chosen out and sent into the business." "4 The Company, feeling probably the Travayle into Virginia, p. 39. See letters from the Virginia Company, and from Matthew Somers, Sir George's nephew. Virginia Company, pp. 55, 57. Mr. Neill has a curious statement that Somers died from a surfeit of wild hog's flesh, English Colonization, p. 50. In his later work he says that Somers's "frail body succumbed to the hardships he had encountered." One would fain believe that such a hero did not perish by a thoroughly unheroic death. 2 Letter from Chamberlain to Carleton, Col. Papers, 1612, Aug. New Life of Virginia, P. 20. 3 For the financial condition of the company, see New Life, pp. 11, 20. 4 Major, p. xxxi. The very same words are used by Strachey in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1750; strong confirmation of Mr. Major's view as to the authorship of Delaware's dispatch. SIR THOMAS DALE. 137 difficulty in carrying out Delaware's advice, seriously debated the abandonment of the whole scheme. Fortunately Gates arrived in England at the end of the year, and his report was on the whole encouraging to the Company. He drew a vivid picture of the astounding fertility of the soil. Wheat yielded six or seven hundredfold, and "beside, the natural pease of the country, returns an increase innumerable; and garden fruits, with roots, herbs, and flowers, do spring up speedily; all things committed to the earth do multiply with an incredible usury." Moreover, the Frenchmen brought over by Delaware gave promise of a plentiful vintage. Whatever sickness there had been was due to want of judgment in the choice of a site. Finally, Gates adjured the Company not to neglect a trade which would in a great measure make them independent of foreign countries. "For our commodities in the straights we stand at the devotion of politique Princes and States who for their proper utility devise all courses to grind our merchants, all pretences to confiscate their goods, and to draw from us all manner of gain by their inquisitive inventions; when in Virginia, a few years' labor by planting and husbandry will furnish all our defects with honor and security." Sir Thomas Gates's exhortations were not wasted on the Company, and early in the spring, three ships were fitted out with three hundred settlers and supplies of food for a year. The command Dale. of the expedition was given to Sir Thomas Dale, who was appointed High Marshal of Virginia. Of his previous character and exploits we know nothing, but his later career proves him to have been a true representative of that adventurous generation which was just passing away; energetic, self-reliant, selfasserting, without weaknesses of his own and merciless to those of others. Dale's arrival in Virginia was fortunately timed. Delaware had been driven by ill-health to leave the colony. With his commanding influence no longer over them, the colonists had gone back to their old habits of sloth and improvidence. Many of them spent their time playing bowls in the streets of Jamestown while their houses were crumbling before their eyes. Content to trust to the chance of supplies from England, they had neglected to sow any corn.3 Dale at once set to work to 1 Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1758. The substance, if not the actual words, of this report are given in the True Declaration, p. 21. For events about this time we have a fresh authority in Ralph Hamor, the author of A True Discourse of the Present State of Virginia, published in 1615. He was a man of high remedy these evils. Corn was sown, timber was felled, and the houses repaired. Active preparations were made for settling a new plantation. At the same time, knowing the importance of encouraging those in England by some immediate return, Dale labored diligently to get his three ships freighted.1 His letters home, while they candidly admit the difficulties with which he was beset, are full of schemes for the advancement of the colony. It will be "an enterprise of charge, but let him only have two thousand men and he will settle five plantations up the river and overthrow the subtle mischievous great Powhatan." 2 Of the ultimate gains to be looked for, and of the resources of the country, he draws a glowing picture. "Take the four best kingdoms of Europe, and put them all together, and they may no way compare with this country for commodity and goodness of soil." 3 The only drawback to the prosperity of the colony was the abject character of the settlers. As for those whom Dale himself brought out, "they are profane, and so notorious and so full of mutiny that not many are Christians but in name." "Their bodies are so diseased and crazed that not sixty of them may be employed upon labor." Yet, strange to say, he suggests that England should follow the example of Spain, and, as the only means of peopling the colony for the next three years, send over all criminals condemned to death." The first If it was Dale's object to make Virginia a penal settlement, his predecessors had furnished him with a system on which it could be fitly governed. A code of laws, already mencode.' tioned as introduced by Gates or Delaware, was now confirmed and supplemented by Dale. The basis of this code was the military law in force in the Netherlands, to which certain additions were made specially applicable to the wants of a new country. The code accordingly consisted of two portions, one military, the other civil. Of the first it is enough to say that its extreme and pedantic minuteness must have made it practically a dead letter in a rude and unsettled country. The civil code standing in the colony and in favor with Dale. The destitute state of the colony is described Dy him, p. 26. I Dale's proceedings are described both by Hamor and in his own letters, Col. Papers, 1611, Aug. 17, 1641, June 3. Besides these there is a third letter from Dale published in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1768. Dale to Salisbury, Aug. 17, 1611. Dale's letter to the Company, quoted in the New Life, p. 12. Letters to Salisbury. These laws are published in Force, vol. iil |