THE VIRGINIA COMPANY.

125

performer, Newport set forth on his exploration. No discovery either of the South Sea, the lost colonists, or gold rewarded his labors, and he returned to Jamestown after an uneventful journey which bore no fruit, either for good or ill. In the mean time Smith was more usefully employed in freighting the ship with timber and wood-ashes, and in testing the possibility of manufacturing pitch and glass. Soon after Newport's return the ship sailed, carrying Smith's remonstrance to the Company. Amongst those who returned was Ratcliffe, whose unpopularity, if Smith is to be believed, made it unsafe for him to stay in the colony.3

of the

colony in England.

2

Hitherto the founders and supporters of the colony had little cause to congratulate themselves on their success. From an Prospects economical point of view, the profits had been as good as could be reasonably expected, far better, indeed, when we consider the material of which the colony was made. But in every other respect the result was utterly discouraging. The history of the settlement almost from the time. it left Plymouth had been a succession of quarrels. As might have been foreseen, the air of Virginia could work no charm to turn wild spendthrifts into hard-working settlers. The colony had been saved from famine, perhaps from massacre, by the energy and courage of one man. In the short space of a year and a half, two Presidents had been deposed. What wonder if, in the plays of the day, Virginia figured as a Transatlantic Alsatia, the last refuge of the destitute and dishonest. But the influences at work on behalf of this colony were strong enough to overcome the discouragements, and the men who had undertaken to settle Virginia were not to be laughed out of their scheme, or disheartened by a single failure. The critical nature of the occasion

' Our knowledge of Newport's voyage is derived from Smith's History. Had the expedition been conducted by Smith himself, some more impressive episodes would probably be recorded.

8 lb., p. 72.

2 Smith, p. 70. 4 We find in the contemporary pamphlets on behalf of Virginia, more than one remonstrance with the play-writers of the day for their disrespectful treatment of Virginia. Thus in the New Life of Virginia, published in 1612, by authority of the Council for Virginia, and republished in Force, vol. i., we read how "The malitious and looser sort (being accompan ied with the licentious vaine of stage poets) have whet their tongues with scornful taunts against the action itselfe." Strachey again, in a prayer drawn up apparently for the use of the colony, and published in Force, vol. iii., denounces "Sanballats and Tobias, Papists and Players, and such like Amorites and Heronites, the scum and dregs of the earth." The only passage I have met with to which these charges are applicable is in Fletcher's The Noble Gentleman, Act 1, Sc. i., where a husband being asked to bring his wife to court, says :-"Sir, I had rather send her to Virginia

To help to propagate the English Nation."

A little later Virginia figured not ungracefully in more than one mask.

seems to have roused them to fresh efforts. The year 1609 sa w an outburst of energy and activity from which the beginning of English colonization may be almost said to date. Sermons were preached, and pamphlets published, putting forward the claims of the colony. From one of the latter, entitled "Nova Britannia,"1 we may form a good idea of the nature of these appeals. The writer, probably himself one of the original shareholders, sets forth the charms of Virginia, its fertility, its stores of minerals and timber, of silk and furs. "The natives are generally very loving, and do entertain and relieve our people with great kindness." He then dwells on "the swarms of idle persons which having no means of labour to relieve their misery, do likewise swarme in lewde and naughty practices, so that if we seeke not some waies for their forreine employment, we must provide shortly more prisons and corrections for their bad conditions." Recent experience might have shown that bad subjects at home become worse in a colony. The writer, however, qualifies his statement. "I do not mean that none but such unsound members, and such poor as want their bread, are fittest for this employment." Especially would the colony be valuable as opening a fresh market for English cloth and "raising againe of that ancient trade of clothing so much decayed in England." Our navigation is to revive, and the glories of the last reign are to return. "We shall not still betake ourselves to small and little shipping as we daily do beginne, but we shall rear againe such Marchants. Shippes both tall and stout, as no forreine sayle that swimmes shall make them vayle or stoop; whereby to make this little northern corner of the world to be in a short time the richest storehouse and staple for marchandise in all Europe."

the consti

tution of the Com

pany.

If these soaring hopes were to be fulfilled, the whole organization of the colony needed to be shaped afresh. One great deChange in fect in the existing constitution was that it withheld all share in the management of the colony from the real promoters, the patentees, and entrusted it to a body. of men who were in no wise specially interested in the success of the undertaking. Moreover, it was clear that the control of the emigrants must be vested in men of greater influence and higher station than Smith and Wingfield. It was evident, too, that the system of double government, by two Councils, one resident and the other non-resident, was thoroughly unsatisfactory. In the

1 Republished in Force, vol. i.

THE COMPANY RECONSTITUTED.

127

spring of 1609, a new system was established remedying these evils. Who was the immediate author of the change does not appear. On the 23d of May, a charter was granted to the Company, constituting it a corporation, and specifying all its members by name. Every rank, profession, and trade supplied representatives. The list is headed by Salisbury, and the name of Bacon appears here as it does in the East India Company. The subscriptions were not confined to individuals, as all, or nearly all, of the London companies appear in the list. Taken altogether, the constitution of the company betokens a wide-spread interest and confidence in the success of the undertaking. By this charter the extent of the plantation was more exactly defined than by the former instrument. It was to extend along the coast two hundred miles on each side of Cape Comfort, and inland for one hundred miles. The whole constitution of the colony and the company was remodeled. The government was vested in a Treasurer and Council, composed of members of the company. Sir Thomas Smith was appointed Treasurer. The Council was to be originally nominated by the king, but vacancies in it were to be filled up by a vote of the whole company. A legislative power, and the right to appoint colonial officers, was vested in the Council. The company was given full sovereignty over all British subjects who might settle in Virginia. It had the right to export settlers, and was to enjoy immunity from all duties, except five per cent. customs, for twenty-one years. It was also em powered to wage defensive war by sea and land, and to exact a duty upon all imports and exports of five per cent. from British subjects, and ten per cent. from aliens, the proceeds as before to accrue to the company for twenty-one years, and then to the Crown. Virtually the company was established as an independent community governed by a representative body.

The best idea of the plans of the company, and of the system n which it was constructed, may perhaps be gained from the pamphlet to which I have already referred. The stock was to be taken up in shares of 127. 10s. each. Personal emigration in the service of the company was to be equivalent to the price of one share. All "extraordinary men," divines, public officers, physicians and others, were to receive a certain number of shares proportioned to the supposed value of their services. The proceeds

I This document is to be found in the Col. Entry Book, lxxix. p. 49, and in the Appendix to Stith.

were to be spent upon the settlement, and the surplus was either to be divided or funded for seven years. During that period the settlers were to be maintained at the expense of the company, while all the product of their labors was to be cast into the common stock. At the end of that time every shareholder was to receive a grant of land in proportion to his stock held. Those shares which had been taken up later than 1609 were to suffer a proportionate diminution. The company, as thus designed, was to be a vast joint-stock farm or collection of farms worked by servants who were to receive, in return for their labor, all their necessaries and a share in the proceeds of the undertaking. How far the company contemplated the possibility of private farms in the territory under their jurisdiction seems doubtful. The provision of the charter which empowered the company to levy duty on all imports and exports, would seem to suppose the possibility of private trade, and the records seem to show faint traces of such undertakings.

At first one is inclined to think that the company would have done better to allot private holdings of land at once, reserving for themselves rents and custom duties, or to adopt a system of métayer tenure, and in either case to have trusted the future of the colony to the stimulus of private enterprise. But it must be remembered that the company deliberately laid its account to managing what was little better than a penal settlement. Many of the emigrants were sure to be men who could be made to work by nothing short of a slave-gang system. If the company had kept to the plan on which they started, Virginia never could have become a flourishing community, but it is not at all certain that they did not, from a merely economical and commercial point of view, act with wisdom.

To such good purpose did the friends of the colony plead its cause, both in the press and the pulpit, that, in spite of the somewhat discouraging conditions of service, five hundred emigrants were collected. The character of the

The voyage of 1609.1

I We have two contemporary accounts of this voyage and of the discovery of the Bermudas, both written by men who took part in the voyage. One is by William Strachey, and is entitled A true Report of the Wrecke and Redemption of Sir Thomae Gates, Knight, upon and from the lands of the Bermudas, his coming to Virginia, and the estate of that Colonie then and after under the government of the Lord La Ware, published in Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1734. The other is entitled A Plain Description of the Bermudas, published in 1615 and republished, Force, vol. iii. Strachey's account is written in a style of considerable literary pretension. It is at times turgid, but on the whole powerful and graphic. The other account is a far more homely performance and perhaps the more trustworthy of the two

DISCOVERY OF THE BERMUDAS.

129

men to whom the management of the colony was now entrusted was a guarantee for a vigorous and upright policy. Lord Delaware had been in the spring appointed Captain-General and Governor of the English colonies to be planted in Virginia. For the present, however, he was willing to leave the control of the colony to the most experienced and capable members of the company, and the command of the present expedition was entrusted to Gates, Somers, and Newport. Ratcliffe, despite his previous failure, returned with them. On the 1st of June they set sail with a fleet of nine vessels. In the very hour of departure a dispute broke out between the three leaders which in its results was nearly fatal to the colony. Being unable to settle the question of precedence, they decided that all three should sail in one ship. About the end of July a storm scattered the fleet. Seven out of the nine ships at length reached Virginia, but one perished, and the Sea Venture, in which were the three leaders, was completely cut off from the rest of the fleet. The ship was, in the words of one of her crew, "so shaken, torn, and leaked, that she received so much water as covered two ton of hogshead about the ballast." For five days the crew baled and pumped "without any intermission, and yet the water seemed rather to increase than to diminish; insomuch that all our men being utterly spent, tyred and disabled for longer labour, were even resolved, without any hope of their lives, to shut up the hatches, and to have committed themselves to the mercy of the sea." Some sank down, utterly exhausted, and slept: others stupefied themselves with strong drink. But there was at least one man on board who had been trained in a school where death was no stranger, and who did not think that a man could face it best drunk or sleeping. As undaunted as when in the prime of manhood he had fought his way up the cliffs above St. Jago, Somers sat for three days and nights on the poop, scarcely eating or drinking, using all his skill to keep the vessel upright and save her from foundering. When everything seemed hopeless a cry of "land" from Somers roused the crew from their despair. By dint of hard pumping the ship was kept above water till within half a mile of shore, where, "fortunately in so great a misfortune," she stuck fast between two rocks. The whole company, one hundred and fifty

1 "Some of them having good and comfortable waters in the ship fetcht them and drunke one to the other, taking their last leave one of the other until their more joyful and happy meeting in a more blessed world."-Plain Description, p. 10. The quaintly euphemistic language suggests that the writer was himself an actor in this part of the affair.