Building Upon:
Virginia Plantation’s Business Plan as Restructured after 1612 Charter
Jamestown: the Plantation Strategy Adapted to Virginia
So now we start another mini-module series that begins in 1612 and ends roughly in 1617-8. Our first task is to segue way from our previous mini-series which closely examined the goings on in England from the perspective of the Virginia Company, explored its policy-making structures and dynamics, including its fractured leadership and investor motivations, and observed its key role in the evolution of the English joint stock corporation and the Stuart reliance on a corporate proprietary-led colonization effort.
The thrust of that mini series was the goings on in England mattered, mattered a lot more than the goings on in Jamestown in this period. In England, the Virginia Company was engaged, among other things, with figuring out just what was entailed in colony-building, and what kinds of economic–and political-development strategies and structures were required for Jamestown to survive and become a long term permanent settlement. Three charters later, we now arrive in Jamestown late in 1611 and begin seriously in 1612.
At that time, the colony had literally been abandoned as had Sagadahoc, but due to the timely arrival of Lord Delaware compelled to return to the abandoned site and begin again. In 1611 Jamestown housed about one to two hundred huddled masses, in a cycle that would kill half by the next year. But the Company had figured out a set of strategies, and Delaware and eventually Sir Thomas Gates got them through the 1610-11 winter and in that year another key leader, Sir Thomas Dale arrived–and Delaware returned to England, ill but not disillusioned. He would remain as Virginia’s Governor and Captain General until his death in 1618.
Jamestown had gotten off to a terrible start, but that’s what it was simply a start. The horrors of that start, complete with its heroes John Smith and Pocahontas, have become a mandatory first step in American colonial history and have woven itself into the legacy of America as a nation. But, whatever that legacy, Jamestown was not the foundation for Virginia’s path to statehood, nor was it insightful in explaining America’s drift to independence and revolution. Jamestown was the equivalent of a flat tire on the way to a hospital to have your baby–the real fun begins later.
Now the reader must make the transition from London, the Company headquarters, the politics of the pre-English Civil War, and commanding personalities like Smythe and Sandys. Lord Delaware, in the background, Gates, who will return to England also, left the Jamestown governance to Sir Thomas Dale, and it was he, as Deputy Governor, who took the very first steps down the road to laying an economic base, and establishing a viable, if disagreeable, state and local government system.
Shortly we will begin to refer less to Jamestown, and more to Virginia. What will be as evident as it is unclear, is that the initiatives he launched may have been as much his own device, as anything complied by Sandys or Smythe. They may well have been reduced to giving permission to stuff already in process of implementation. Let’s see how that could be.
Dales’ Land Reforms: Employee and New Settler Provided a Path to Private Landowner
After Lord Delaware left, Gates and Dale essential “restored order” in Jamestown–assuming that there was some order to be restored, presumably that induced by John Smith in an earlier year. The key strategy was imposing a Draconian system of military justice, known as “Lawes Divine, Morall and Martial“. Severe and strict, little trace of civil liberties or judicial processes, they got the attention of any Jamestown resident who managed to survive the swamp and Indians.
Probably harsher in the beginning than they were in later years, residents began to pitch in, build structures of sufficient quality to not fall apart, and to build an armory separate from the storehouse so that any fire would not get both–and palisades that you could not walk through them. Gates and Dale tried to disperse the population into smaller well-placed locations–probably as an anti-swamp strategy as anything else (it failed in its first attempt), and planting food and trying to produce basic instruments,
Gates and Dale tackled the strategy of self-sufficiency, and keeping the London Company investors at bay. In 1611 a new guy on the block, John Rolfe, who had been with Gates in his Bermuda adventure, planted his first official tobacco seedlings. As to Indian affairs, more on that later, but Dale in particular had little talent for that and Powhattan, while not engaging in all out war, made it very dangerous for any Jamestown resident to venture beyond the river on their boats. Dale either sent or tolerated English raids, and one by Captain Argall would kidnap a young Indian queen, and that will be the breakthrough in 1613. So between 1611 and 1613 things were not so nifty. Score 1 for the Indians.
All this could be included with a self-sufficiency strategy, which by 1612 with Dale as Deputy Governor was primary in Virginia–whatever was going on in London. Who was this Dale guy? He was well-born Anglo-Dutch family, resident in Surrey County England, fluent in at least three languages, Protestant, but of unknown lineage–with some possibility he “married up” in an unknown first marriage. He mixed it up with higher status nobility, even though he claimed his first position was a soldier a Dutch army in the mid to late 1580’s.
By 1594, a Captain in the English army, by1598-9 he commanded a company of Lord Devereaux’s Irish plantation military arm. Devereaux, Elizabeth’s famous lover the Earl of Essex, founded his own Irish plantation-colony (“Essex’s Enterprise”)–“an unmitigated disaster that failed in two years” but not before Essex’s death shortly after a gruesome massacre of Irish. His son, the Second Earl of Essex, picked up where dad had left off, making war on the Irish during the latter stages of the Nine Years War. It too failed.
Upon his return to England, Robert Devereaux attempted a coup against Elizabeth. He was executed as a traitor and, the reason for this digression, is that Thomas Dale was associated with Devereaux and imprisoned in the Tower until freed by James (or Prince Henry). He was likely liberated by Prince Henry, the oldest son of James I (who, BTW, was not on the best of terms with Dad); how they met I do not know. He subsequently fought in a Dutch army in 1604, appointed on the basis of a personal letter of reference by the King of France, Henry IV. [Dale, it appears got around, and mixed it up with some first class historical figures].
James I knighted him in 1606. In 1611, Prince Henry requested the Dutch Estates General to provide “leave” to Dale so that Prince Henry could send him to Virginia. Before he left England for Virginia he got married–and left her at the pier. Prince Henry, the heir to James’s throne, died in 1612–and my suspicion is Thomas Smythe sort of protected him. Whatever else he was, he was an established soldier of fortune, a veteran of foreign wars, and as well-connected as one could be in that day and age.
Taking advantage of the 1609 charter, Dale and Gates set up the local government of Jamestown–which is actually the state government of Virginia–was installed, composed of the ever fluid top leadership resident in Jamestown. It served with Dale, enhanced his capacity to govern, and even delegate, and that local council over the next decade would evolve into the de facto upper chamber of the Virginia legislature.
Of note, in 1612, Rolfe after smoking his 1611 tobacco, came to the conclusion it was “bitter”, i.e. foul tasting, and so he experimented on some land given him by Dale with a new seed from the West Indies–wait till next year to find out how that fared. Dale, on the other hand, had his own ideas, about land ownership and workforce development and in 1612 he started his own experimenting.
Dale puts a toe in the water: 1612
We start off by understanding what Dale inherited from the troubled years. The most critical feature of early Jamestown’s economic base–and its most crippling–there was no private property–for the elite as well as freeholders and indentured. Everything that came over on the supply ship, including its passengers, were tied by contract, investment, or indenture to the Company. Anything they did, any goods or services they produced, belonged to the Company–and all stores were in the company storehouse. The need to grow local foodstuffs, being so compelling meant the resident council focused on agriculture, garden plots and outlying fields and the like. If there was an economic base in these early years, it was agriculture.
All buildings, dorms for the most part, were company shared. Even the resident council worked under these rules. By 1612 the Company had committed to issue shares to the Company in return for colonist service, but for the most part (governor-deputy-clerk excepted), they were awarded only at completion of service, starting in 1613. This is downplayed in many Jamestown histories, but there is little doubt that one of Jamestown’s most serious deficiencies that contributed to its rough start was whoever hard one worked in the fields, all produce went into the Company storeroom, and was shared among all at the dinner table.
The gentlemen, freeholders, were more loosely tied to this shared workforce in the sense most had probably traveled not to work the fields, but to scour the land for stuff to export-furs, minerals, fish, lumber, and marine-related–which at one point in that stressed period had been gold–because the Company was upset it was being sent back fools gold instead of the real thing. One might add that scouring the land was dangerous on a number of levels, and anything that was sent back to the Company for sale was not a solo enterprise and meant numbers of colonists were about the countryside on one project or another.
The need to work hard to produce local foodstuffs, including fishing, was further complicated by the terms of the charter, labor contracts, and debt agreements which committed the Company to supply colonists for all their needs, including housing and meals. Cattle and livestock were Company property, and were cared for accordingly. The Company took pride in this as it promised shareholders “the produce of the colonist labor, when exported, was the property of the company and sold for its benefit … colonists had no right to export for themselves … economic conditions indicate the colony as like a private estate” [99] L. D. Scisco, “the Plantation Type of Colony“, the American Historical Review (Jan1903, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 261.
Starting In 1612, Dale relaxed martial law, and systematically pursued a Jamestown urban renewal program, restoring the fort, laying out a street pattern with a market area, built more housing, and a church, plus a separate armory for storage of gunpowder and the like. For the first time, Jamestown took on the look and feel of a permanent settlement. Most importantly for my purpose Dale tackled the fundamental task of building a permanent economic base, and finding a way to retain a workforce, a private workforce that produced food and goods willingly for their own self-interest–breaking up the Company’s plantation economic base in the process.
Dale brought some order to this. Corn was introduced as the staple crop in 1612 and specific individuals were assigned to grow it, and he allowed greater flexibility in assigning private plots and allowing the “renter” to keep a portion of the produce. “Soon after Dale’s arrival, perhaps in response to a petition already presented to Gates, he consulted the council … [to] allot each man a ‘private garden‘”. [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1 (Macmillan, 1904), p. 75. From the start it seems, Dale was sensitive to the lack of a private economy, and for one reason or another, focused on “land”, and the use of land as linked to the introduction of private imitative into the Company town’s economic base.
Remarkably, one can read Sir Thomas Dale’s “Plan for Revitalizing the Colony”, sent in 1611 to Lord Salisbury, and see the seeds of much of what lie ahead. [99] Warren M. Billings, the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, 1606-1689 (Ed), (Institute for American History and Culture by University of North Carolina Press, 1975), pp. 33-6. It my contention that Dale is the author, and in this period, prime mover in a series of initiatives, programs, structures that set in motion the laying of Virginia’s initial economic base–through 1618. Dale, the Deputy Governor in residence. naturally became the focal point in implementation of these initiatives. Of note his deputy, George Yeardley, was also deeply involved with these reforms—and he was destined to become the interim deputy governor when Dale left Virginia late in 1616.
After 1613, the Company embraced a series of reforms, most of which revolved around land grants. It is likely we are seeing the initial response of Smythe, likely Sandys to the opportunities the new 1612 charter made available, and likely took small steps to allow well-placed, and well-heeled investors to send offspring, friends, and associates to Jamestown to pursue whatever opportunities they devised. Simultaneously, the original 1606 debt obligations, was also terminating, and with it expired the seven year contracts between the Company and its first year indentured settlers.
Accordingly, Dale made an offer to these new freeholders they could not refuse. As a indentued contract expired, Dale rented out three acres to each in return for a month’s service and a donation of corn for the common store. He added more substance to this initial deal in 1614 when he allotted small tracts of land to these expired servants and new ones, in which they paid a quit-rent [let’s call this a property tax-but its payment made the former servant a landowner] and one month’s labor. By the end of the year, 1614, there were eighty-one such “farms” [99] L. D. Scisco, “the Plantation Type of Colony”, the American Historical Review (Jan1903, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 265.
Over the next several years, these agreements were expanded and were linked to the “hundreds program to be discussed shortly.
As for the investors, few had actually ventured to Virginia, but more sent their offspring and relatives-associates over and these were the proverbial gentlemen we associate with those starving quarrelsome years. Until 1614 most colonists who went to Virginia were either “gentlemen” or {their] “servants”, i.e. employees of the Company who paid their expenses through service of seven years [99] “the Beginnings”, the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: a Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689 (edited by Warren M. Billings, p. 11. The 1612 charter, however, opened anther alternative. An London investor could assume the role and function of an “plantation undertaker” who recruited a colonist, paid their bills-transport, and sent them over to found a new enterprise-farm-plantation in the New World.
The plantation undertaker was dealt with in our treatment of the Irish Ulster Plantation. The function was well understood in England and Scotland, and was responsible for the transfer of English-Scots to Ireland in this period. Indeed, an undertaker was regarded as the principal agent of plantation/ colony-building and a legitimate alternative for an investor to make profit out of his stock ownership. Accordingly. As Dale began his break with the Company-militaristic communal pattern by initiating the first land grants to former indentured servants, he could offer the same, generally better terms, to the investor’s Virginia principals. Not wanting to sneak this by the reader, what we are seeing is Virginia’s first use of a proto-headright system.
For new settlers Dale offered twelve acres of improved land, rent free for one year. Dale extended upon that by also making outright land grants (between 12 and 50 acres of cleared land with one year quitrent abatement) to new settlers immigrating into the colony) to these investor-linked adventurers. Say it another way, Dale is institutionalizing the private ownership of land in Virginia—for the first time in North America. It was successful, as these initiatives went in 1616, By 1616 the number of “tenant-farmers on company land outnumbered those bound to regular [indentured service” [99] L. D. Scisco, “the Plantation Type of Colony”, the American Historical Review (Jan1903, Vol. 8, No. 2, p. 265.
George Yeardley, Dale’s deputy, was promoted to Deputy Governor after Dale’s departure. In 1617 Yeardley made a final adjustment to the expiration of servant contracts ending as Osgood put it “the system of joint management as applied to land (or company owned land tilled by renter contracts) which dominated the lower settlements and Henrico. Private ownership of land in Virginia became the freeholder default, and the eventual reward of an indentured servant. While I will spare the reader the details, the title to this land was not clear and unambiguous as ultimately all Virginia was land personally owned by the King/Queen. This is an important detail which will be vital to understand post-Virginia Company politics.
the First Small Steps for Permanent Settlement
So, within several years, the Company converted these contracts to ownership rights. Renter or owner, these former servants were now mostly free laborers, and to the extent their contract with Dale allowed, they were able to do what they wanted with the land and their households. They had rights as English citizens, and held some autonomy to pursue economic and personal aspirations. In effect, land had become “capital” for the Company to use to pay off its obligations to the Jamestown settler community—and from the Company’s perspective, the employee had been converted into a “corporate citizens” complete with English civil and property liberties.
Through these new institutions the Company could secure the implementation of its initiatives, and exercise its powers of land and the economy. As Billings asserted: “The clear intent of the new program was to transplant as much of tradition English social [and economic order as the Virginia wilderness and the colonists particular circumstances would allow.] [99] “The Beginnings”, the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century: a Documentary History of Virginia, 1606-1689 (edited by Warren M. Billings, p. 11.
The number of surviving inducted servants was not large; most “ancient settlers” (that’s what they were called at the time) rested in the cemetery, rotting in their own company land grant. But it did create a free-booting domestic land owner able to settle at his own volition, and do with his private land as he shall. It was hoped and intended by the Company that the private landowner would assume the obligation to support himself with staple food himself. He did, but, as we shall see, tobacco, the weed, raised its ugly stalk, and that fledgling farmer had other opportunities. If he planted tobacco, he planted less corn and vegetables. To fill the gap he traded with nearby Indians, or, if they were unwilling he raided their fields. This, it seems, became a way-of-life that developed in this period and carried on for the next half-century.
When this was combined with Dale’s 1614 initiative to disperse the Jamestown population along the river banks (more on that shortly), we can see the beginnings of what will be a “planter class” clearing fields-and securing what economist call “first advantage”, or what the rest of us characterize as a :head start”. Take this seriously, some of these folk-opportunist will play significant roles in the twenties and thirties Virginia.
Not only were former indentured servants granted use of land for private production, but these gentlemen opportunist-entrepreneurs will bring a few indentured servants as their workforce. From this point on, I will accordingly refer less to Jamestown, than to Virginia, and employ the term “settlement” to the nests of land along the James River that gathered a few souls, cleared some land, and developed an identity on a map. This diffusion of population began slowly after 1612-13, and, as we shall see, picked up momentum after 1616.
Our focus in this module is on the land-based reform initiatives, but there were others. The Company store, its Magazine, was in effect a key EDO of the Virginia Company. It handled both import and export trade for the colony; its chief merchant was easily the single most powerful ED official. Through the Magazine not only did the Company provide for the domestic needs of its settlers, but it was the vehicle the Company looked to for its profits and revenues to pay off its debts. As one would suspect, the Magazine pleased no one, and captured more than its fair share of the blame for the failure of the colony to produce profits for the investors. In any event, the addition of tobacco exports went through this office—at least into 1617, and it certainly played a major role in the spread of tobacco planting; in that period the Magazine enjoyed a monopoly. We will expand on this introduction later, but the take away at this point is the Company did have a structure in place to exert, potentially, if not actually, economic influence on whatever product resulted from these land transfers. The Company was very much able to garner the tobacco, that’s what was important” and to export it to England. The office of “Cape Merchant” was an indeed powerful, and its occupant the Company’s economic czar.
“Dales’ Gift”: Plantations as Town-building and Hundreds–and the Complexity of Land Ownership that Resulted.
In 1613 Dale had other rather large fish to fry in his break out transition from the disasters pre 1612 years. There were several identifiable initiatives, interrelated but introduced sequentially over several months, and implemented in a rather disjointed fashion. In no case that I know of was there a clear definition of what and why these were introduced. Collectively at the time they were called “Dales’ Gift”. It is not clear to what extent they were Dale’s, or the Company’s initiatives, but my reading is they were Dale’s–who having awarded the first “Gift” to his boss, Governor De la Warr in London, he went on and followed with the Hundreds.
It is likely the Company back in the Headquarters, were ok with these as they utilized them for their own purposes and further turned them into new opportunities for the Company investors. Both Smythe and Sandys got their own gifts–and one was a joint venture of the two–who a few years later would be bitter enemies. What makes these two initiatives hard to follow is that one (Plantations) was fundamentally private ownership of Company land–and economic in purpose; the other (Hundreds), said and done were mostly political, self-defense and governmental in purpose.
[999] It is also worth note that both tobacco and the plantation were instituted in Bermuda, which by this time were under the auspices of a second subsidiary Virginia Company. Smythe was Treasurer in both, although Bermuda in this present period of discussion is heavily trouble with the rivalry of Smythe and Warwick, which as we shall see drew in Sandys as well. I have not yet ascertained the method by which Bermuda produced tobacco—no reference is made to a plantation or Hundreds in its literature. Nevertheless is very clear that Rolfe, who may well have gotten some of his seeds in Bermuda when he was marooned there in 1610, remained closely aware and involved in the extension of tobacco there. From 1613 Bermuda also was planting tobacco, and until 1617-8 it made more exports to England than Virginia. http://www.bermuda-online.org/history1505to1799.htm. In that the advance of tobacco in both colonies was overlapping one might assume the same process occurred, and that neither was the model for the other.[99] Andrews, Vol 1, p. 120 “Though legally the equal of and distinct from the parent company, the Bermuda corporation was in practice closely underjoined with the other”
If you combine plantation with the hundreds one senses more coherence. Yet at the time they were not linked in any formal-official initiative. Each went its own way through the Virginia Company period with minimal effort to reconcile them with each other or with the Governor’s administration. What is very clear, however, is they were economic development strategy tools employed by the Company-Governor to settle the colony, establish hubs and settlements, and install a local economic base. Noteworthy for us Is their implementation distinguished for the first time, in my opinion, the distinction between state/province and local/sub-state governance. If so. The Hundreds were the first true local government in English America.
Let’s Discuss Plantations First
The First Plantation–Called the “Sherley Hundred” for the 8,000 acres it included, the plantation proved to be the Virginia Company’s first experiment in a settlement program. Sherley was the new wife, Cicely Sherley, of Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, the Virginia Company’s Governor for life and Captain General of Virginia. The grant of land was a “royal” grant directly issued by James (one presumes a marriage gift and an appreciation of the role West had played in “saving” the Colony). Within a year produced a small amount of tobacco, from seeds I assume were provided by Rolfe himself. West was at that time an absentee Governor, living in England. AKA Lord Delaware, West imparted his name to a river, an Indian tribe, and eventually. a U.S. state). It was Baron De La Warr that saved the Jamestown colony in its “starving time” [999].
De La Warr’s grant to found the Sherley plantation was the first of a series of Virginia Company land grants, made from Company land to its chief officials (London and Jamestown), seemingly by its Deputy Governor Dale. The Company grants were made at the same time as a series of other initiatives, chief of which were the establishment of several “hundred, and restarted earlier efforts to diffuse the Virginia population from its two settlements (Jamestown and Henrico) into the surrounding James River territory. As such it is an unambiguous commitment to a permanent settlement, and a serious effort to reverse the stagnation, if not decline, of the colony.
In these dramatic and ambitious initiatives, I see the hand of Smythe, Sandys, West, and Dale, his administrator. In their mind, these “plantations” were akin to those commencing in the Ulster Plantation at that very time, and West’s Sherley Plantation placed West, and the Company in the position of “undertaker” in the development of land intended to settle Virginia and to commence the installation of an economic base from which future prosperity to England and the investor would follow.
Directly following the Company’s Third Charter (mid-1612), the Sherley Plantation royal grant and the Virginia launch of the further plantations by Dale in Virginia, was Smythe’s “kickoff” signature initiative to get the colony back on track with its original promise, and to provide a legitimizing link with the Irish plantation in process at that time. With the participation of the King thru his royal land grant, the King and Company were restoring the belief in the existing and future investor membership that they “as undertakers” in a national endeavor should pay the next installment of their membership, and recommit themselves to development of the plantation.
The strategy behind Dale’s multiple initiatives, I suggest, was set as early as 1610 when in response to the flood of bad news from Jamestown, and the subsequent discouragement of the Virginia Company investor member (existing and future), Smythe and West had issued a promotional publication, ” a True and Sincere Declaration of the purpose and ends of the Plantation begun in Virginia” [99] Drawn from Brown, Genesis of the United States, pp. 775-79, by Charles Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 124.
In that publication Smythe committed the Company to the development of a plantation whose chief purposes included conversion of the Indians, described as “a number of poore and miserable soules“, the enhancement of the honor and safety (think national defense) “of our Gratious King and his Estates” [Parliament], and importantly from our perspective, “to transplanting the ranckness [i.e. rank and file] and multitude of increase in our people [England’s Malthusian population explosion], [and]
Lastly, the appearance and assurance of Private commodity [land] to the particular undertakers [the investors], by recovering and possessing to themselves a fruitful land whence they may furnish and provide this Kingdome with all such necessities and defects (Copper, iron, Steel, Timber for ships yards masts, cordage, sope [soap] ashes under which we labor, and are now enforced to buy, and receive at the curtesie of other Princes [foreign countries]. … These being the true and essential ends of this Plantation. “the Rationale for Colonization”, the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, Warren M. Billings (Ed), pp. 14-15
The focus on the Company’s investor-shareholders was required in 1613–and would continue to be required until 1616- by the terms and conditions of the spectacular 1609 membership surge caused by the Second Charter. These investors were expecting a dividend in 1616, and the Company realizing that was not to be, was pivoting its investors to take an award of land in substitute for “cash”. The willingness of the Governor, and of the Company’s management to do so, was leading by example, and further closing any gap between it and its investor core.
Lacking resources to transport additional colonists, the company devised a new form of settlement–the particular plantation. This was a private plantation, formed by a voluntary association [a form of joint stock corporation] of stock holders who pooled their dividends and concentrated their efforts in a specific settlement along the James [River]. The associates financed the full costs of their plantation, including transporting and maintaining settlers, most of which came as indentured servants with allegiance to that particular plantation, NOT TO THE COMPANY [Mine]. The first plantation was Smythe’s Hundred (renamed the Southampton Hundred in 1620-a slap at Thomas Smythe by renaming it in honor of his principal opponent in 1620), formed by Thomas Smythe, Sandys, and the Earl of Southampton [of Shakespeare fame, who was the alleged “leader” of the Sandys faction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Wriothesley,_3rd_Earl_of_Southampton]. It encompassed nearly 80,000 acres in abandoned tribal land along the Chickahominy River. [99] Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith, pp. xliii-xliv
The first of these of which we have record (Smith’s Hundred-1617, Martin’s Hundred, 1618, or Martin’s Brandan (plantation of 7,000 acres in 1617; between 1619 and 1623 forty four of these patents were issued [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol. 1. pp. 130-1.
Starting in 1614, tobacco planting spread to properties held by the Company’s Virginia elite. First, along the James River, then to the West and Shirley Hundreds, and finally moved east to Point Comfort—a 140 mile expanse that marked the birthplace of Virginia’s tobacco economy and culture [99] The population spread was remarkably quick. Given that Dale’s land reform was in its infancy in 1614, the numbers small until 1616, small household planters followed the profits of the Company elite as they acquired their land. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/tobacco-in-colonial-virginia/. In this period Henrico was successfully settled, fortified, storehouse (even a hospital) and residences as in Jamestown. Adjacent land was cleared for farming, and corn was stipulated by Dale to be planted. Nearby Indian lands were seized, extended the area for staple cultivation and livestock herding. With the creation of each hundred/plantation new settlements were founded–along the James, and the ancient planters diffused into the interior, and away from Jamestown. In these new settlements former indentured servants could now “rent” their own land and in a garden plot of their own sustain their existence. By 1616, previous to Dale’s return to England, six such settlements had been founded [99] Herbert L. Osgood, American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 74-77
As part of this initiative, a series of other private plantations, followed, including a second Smythe’s Hundred, Martin’s Hundred, Berkeley Hundred, Flowerdew Hundred, and Martin’s [son of the Lord Mayor of London] Brandon and Lawnes Plantations followed. Included in this barrage of plantations, was a little noticed award to Pilgrims, who never settled in Virginia, but in Plymouth Massachusetts–outside the boundaries as specified in their undertaker contract. [99] Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith, Jamestown Colony, pp. xliii-xliv. Each of these plantations were in varying degrees “stocked” with settlers/new colonists in the years before 1618″ “Martin’s Hundred and Flowerdew were rather tightly settled villages reminiscent of the English countryside. They were administered separately from Company lands, often by men like George Yeardley [who in 1617 was intended to manage Smythe’s Hundred, but instead appointed as Deputy Governor by Smythe-Sandys to replace Argall-West], Lieutenant William Peirce, and Abraham Peirsey, company officers, soldiers and officials whose first obligation was supposedly to the company” [99] Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith, Jamestown Colony, p. xliv.
In this last quote we catch a glimpse into the ticking time bomb that underscored the award to company officials of company-owned land. Whatever their motivation, the original hundreds and the plantations within them were private in nature, and represented opportunities for prominent Company officials in London and Virginia to make some profit, and to tender them a permanent settlement for which they were personally responsible; several of these awardees persisted in holding key offices after the Company charter was terminated in 1624, and thus we can see evidence of a “first advantage” in the formation of Virginia’s First Migration post-Company elite.
Grizzard Jr, and Boyd Smith follow this hint up with a further observation that followed description of the 1618-19 Greate Charter which we insert here, a half-decade before it was intended to describe:
Smythe and Sandys knew that by establishing particular and private plantations they also had changed the lines of [ Virginia’s] political authority. No longer did the governor have direct control over the colony’s labor force. Each association [and awardee] ran its particular plantation, and the private planners controlled their own land. Furthermore the Londoners deliberately blurred distinctions between company officials and private planners, by employing men who had personal stakes in Virginia, rather than men who intended to make their fortunes, and return home. For instance, Yeardley, as governor was responsible for supervising company lands and the cape merchant, but he also managed Smythe’s Hundred and Weyanoke [a plantation], developed the governor’s lands for his salary [each governor got paid from the proceeds of a allotment of company land whose produce was sold by the governor for his pay], and [on top of this] established a large personal plantation. … Not surprisingly, these officers had a tendency to look out for their personal interests before meeting their obligations to the company. [99] Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith, Jamestown Colony, p. xlv.
To make this section, and the implications-assertions it makes as clear as possible to the reader, I cite these company reforms, economic development initiatives all, as an important element in my position that the Virginia Company period, and the administration and structures-institutions created during the Company era, exerted long-term influence in the development of Virginia’s economy and its politics-policy making structures. The Company deliberately fostered a government that both blurred the distinctions between public and private, but in so doing left in its wake, a government that was weaker than developed in other colonies, but was tilted in a very special and distinctive way, to be “bottoms-up” with agenda and its politics set by representative of subordinate levels of government to the state-without check or balance other than a weak royal governor.
the Economic Development Initiatives of 1616
By the time Dale left the colony in 1616, it was evident that a population nadir had reduced Virginia’s settler population to its lowest level since 1611. Despite the accumulation of men and women who had been sent over before 1616, the number of the inhabitants did not increase. In that year [1616] there were fewer men, women, and children, taken all together in Virginia, than there had been in 1611, three hundred and twenty-four as against four hundred and fifty [Brown reports that 300 had gone back to England [99] Brown, Vol. II, Genesis, p. 782) [99] Andrews, Vol. 1., p.134.
By 1618 the number had been raised to about six hundred, including Company shipments of new settlers, indentured servants primarily, who upon arrival were sent to Henrico’s, awarded with Dale’s incentives of land “rental” rights, garden plots. The Company also shipped one hundred apprentices and servants, and a hundred “young, uncorrupted maids to make wives“. If the maids married “public farmers” [the planters enjoying Dale’s land program], the Company would pay the costs of transportation. But if they didn’t, their future husband had to, in the form of one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco. Further, two shipments of one hundred children each from London were sent over in 1618 and 1619-paid for by the City of London [99] Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 134. One might be forgiven for sensing some level of concern, if not despair in London during this time period. The Company’s finances were in desperate shape, and the future of the lottery was in question.
Dale’s land incentives to ancient planters began in 1613, and implemented by Sir Thomas Dale. “Dale’s Gift” commenced in that year also, The award of various hundreds and plantations continued from that year through 1617, when, as we shall later see they were interrupted by a rogue, one would guess, deputy governor, Samuel Argall. But In 1616 a new feature was introduced, that carried its own implications into the future and deserved its own section. In 1616 Company opened up its settlement strategy to include the direct participation of “new” investors [or existing ones that bought new shares)] in its plantation-hundreds settlement initiative.
They were able to do so because in 1616 the debt covenants of 1609–the huge inflow investors into the Company-expired on their terms. A dividend was supposed to be paid in 1616, and it was, in the form of economic strategy of land settlement and economic development potential participation in a company economic development program to personally or corporately [joint stock association] invest in Virginia outside of the Company, its strictures and ownership. In promoting this new economic opportunity, the Company itself endorsed a system of Company incentives, and deliberately entered a campaign to advertise them and recruit both new investors–and transform settlers, even indentured servants, into company shareholders eligible to take advantage of these incentives as appropriate to their freeholder or indentured contract with the company.
In so doing the Company ramped up and set in motion a people-investor attraction-recruitment program that would in only two years into colonial America’s dominant people attraction strategy–the headright and homestead strategy that in Virginia fueled the expansion of plantations and tobacco export–but in other colonies fostered other forms of local government and economic base. In any case the initiatives of 1616 doubled down on the spirit and the purposes of the 1613, Dale’s Gift”. “The headright system survived as the principal means of acquiring land for the remainder of he seventeenth century. At the outset [however] few new stockholders or settlers responded to the offer. However, the grants to the “ancient planters” were enough to squelch ‘the general desire in the best sort of return to England’” [99] Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith, Jamestown Colony, p. xliii.
From the Company’s perspective, allowed the Company to pivot around its inability to pay a dividend as required by its bond covenants, but utilizing the one resource it had that might be attractive to old and new investors alike: land, and Company incentives to “start up” a farm or plantation, a mine, or trading corporation, or even a fishery. The chief incentive, was awarding land for each indentured servant who the investor-association brought to Virginia at its own expense–relieving I might add the Company from having to pay for recruitment and transportation of settlers. Also, no longer would the Company be required to send supply ships. Through its “incentive package” the Company was offloading its chief expenses to new investors who committed themselves or their hired servants to live and develop Virginia.
That the Company was further “hollowing out” its economic and political authority over the colony is a secret I will only whisper.
[999] The reader is reminded that “plantations” of this period should not be thought of as described in later periods of Virginia’s colonial history. Much smaller in size and workforce, they were rough-hewn out of the unforgiving Virginia hinterland; “any grant [in the seventeenth century], whether it constituted twenty-five acres or a thousand was called a plantation … a man could clear only a few acres of land a year. To have more than five or ten acres under cultivation during the middle of the seventeenth century was rare. [99] Clarence Ver Steeg, the Formative Years, 1607-1763 (Hill and Wang, 1964), p. 57.
An interesting aspect of the 1616 initiatives was the effort made by the Company to actively promote an image–I think “brand” is not accurate– suitable for investment in Virginia, and to actively recruit specific individuals to do so. Most notable of these efforts was the “Nova Britannia” an eight page pamphlet, issued presumably by the Company or someone associated with it, that was published by Brown, who determined the date of publication was in April 1616 [99] Alexander Brown, Genesis of the United States, Vol. Ii, CCLIII, pp. 774-779.
The tract was a frank history of the Company’s handling of the Virginia colony, suitably deferential to his Majesty, and heavy on the positive features and goals intended to be accomplished. It encourages investment in all sorts of materials and homesteading, none of which being tobacco, and invites “undertakers” to take advantage of these wonderful opportunities–complete with tax abatement, Dale’s incentives, and strong on new town formation–pushing Jamestown off into the margins (its bad image one presumes).
Issued with Dale’s departure presumably known, it promised a new governor (it would be Yeardley and then Argall), suggesting Dale’s association with martial rule was over and a new era in government and civil freedoms had arrived. It concludes urging those interested to send their interest and plans, include a sum of twelve pounds for the purchase of one share, to Sir Thomas Smythe (no address given) before June 25 (1616). One might think this was Coral Gables Florida, or Padre Island Texas?
On top of this one also finds nested unspectacularly in Brown, a letter written by none other than the deputy governor. Thomas Dale, who having returned to England almost immediately (May 1616) wrote his several page missive to a Lord he thought to be a potential investor. I suspect, there were other company officials who sent similarly letters, and we are see in this letter yet another aspect of the Company’s 1616 economic development promotion campaign.
Finally, in view that the older Company store, the Magazine, had gone bankrupt, the Company in 1616 created a sort of EDO-like entity it called the “Society for Particular Adventurers for Traffique with Virginia”, located in London, which imported goods into Virginia, and accepted exports from Virginia for sale in England (early tobacco went through it); called a “magazine’, it was more a transatlantic “company store” that held a terrible reputation in Virginia, but being a monopoly people made do. In 1621 it too went bankrupt.
Begin Here
The Hundreds– At this point, we need to transfer our attention to the other element in Dale’s Gift and the 1616 initiatives: the Hundreds.
It is clear that from 1613 on, Dale was dispersing into the James River hinterland Company indentured servants, and former indentured servants, both groups benefited from his post-1613 land incentives. Settlements were founded, and plantations were established; Virginia was transforming itself from a one-horse town, into a real colony. Dale’s gift had, at least rhetorically, linked plantations to “hundreds”, and certainly by 1617 five “hundreds” had been infused with population, and some level of settlement-building was in process.
After Dale left in 1616, his Deputy (George Yeardley) took over until the next Deputy Governor arrived on the scene. Yeardley had been involved with Dales’ Gift and the Bermuda Hundreds, and in the interim into 1617, he granted tenants in the Bermuda Hundred rent free tenancy, providing them near-ownership possession of their land. This should be considered an extension of Dale’s land reforms, and a continuation of the Company-led goal of creating private ownership of the land for former-employee residents-but more so a profit alternative for existing and new investors. [99] Osgood. Vol 1, pp. 77
“Hundreds”, a commonly known English term that dated back to Anglo-Saxon days, used in William the Conqueror’s Normal conquest, and subsequently employed mostly in frontier or regions in flux. It was a sub-county structure, a geographic administrative unit intended for a new settlement holding about 100 persons-households. Its function was “governmental”, core unit being judicial–it had evolved with other functions over the centuries.
In the Virginia context, absent any notion of “county”, and without any substantial demarcation of a town or city level function, Dale’s Hundreds just floated above a geography that was being settled by his dispersion from Jamestown. His initial failure to impart any powers, suggested that in Virginia it was a convenient geographical territory within which land grants could be made by Dale to others, and population diffused. The closest we can come is two judicial-focused courts circuited among the Hundreds, relieving pressure on Jamestown, and addressing local need for an accessible judicial function.
This is exactly what happened over the next three years after Dale left. It also left unclear whether the Virginia Company in London had anything resembling a vision as to how that territory would be administered. The decision to assign the common tasks of a local government to the provincial level council meant Virginia enjoyed no meaningful formal sub-provincial system, saving perhaps the Anglican parish. The Hundreds for its initial period was little more than a container into which Jamestown-based Company administrators–which should be understood as provincial-state level officials-infused and dispersed its population into the hinterland, chiefly for self-sufficiency purposes, but also a critically important element in its strategy to encourage and retain its shareholders through a rough patch when its debts expired and the Company was not able to pay an expected dividend.
Case Study: Bermuda Hundreds–Perhaps the most important of these early Hundreds was the “Bermuda Hundreds” (confluence of the James and Appomattox Rivers), founded by Dale in 1613, as a port town to serve James River exporters, as well as serving as a fishing port, vital in the colony’s self-sufficiency. John Rolfe set up his first export-intended plantation there, and he lived there along with his new bride, Rebecca after 1613. It is certain these lands possessed Indian corn-bearing fields, and that Dale himself had earlier driven them off and seized control of the area. It was part of his early Henrico project. It was Dale who gave it the name Bermuda Hundred [99] Emily Jones Salmon, Early History and Establishment of the Bermuda Hundred https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bermuda-hundred-during-the-colonial-period/. Dale enclosed the area behind palisades, and located several dozen Englishmen within eight square miles that was his original “hundred”. It may have grown to fifty or so by the time Dale left.
Founded formally late in December 1613, According to Osgood, “At Dale’s Gift salt was made and fishing carried on. The production of tobacco had already begun … but special care was taken … to encourage the raising of articles of food, ample in amount to support the inhabitants of the colony”. Rolfe lived there, as did Yeardley. An Anglican parish, probably established at its creation, married Rolfe and Pocahontas. By 1620 the parish population grew to 184, including 30 women and another 31 children/teenagers. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bermuda-hundred-during-the-colonial-period/
Dale, as mentioned earlier, extended his land reforms to Company employees whose term of service had expired. [99] Osgood, Vol 1, pp. 76 Dale, , quickly annexed hundreds of acres to the original grant as territory to be used for plantation and household homesteads.. “Bermuda”, the name, was chosen because of the role Bermuda played in the fateful 1610 saving of the Jamestown settlement. Apparently, this concession fostered population growth as by 1616 about 119 settlers called it home.
Interestingly, a contingent of those former employees were transferred to the Bermuda Hundred Once there. They petitioned Dale for a special land tenure arrangement that provided an extra week of for the tenant-owner to plant and harvest (on top of the month already permitted by Dale in the original contract). Also each man with a family got a house with four rooms, with a year’s rent forbearance. Twelve acres per household were permitted for cultivation by the ancient settlers, and they were “supposedly” provided with livestock, tools, provisions for a “twelvemonth” [I suspect that this was a hit or miss affair] [99] Osgood, Vol 1, pp. 76. Nevertheless, around seventeen such farmers were positioned in the Bermuda Hundred before Dale’s departure. In the Bermuda Hundred we can see how Dale’s fledging land and workforce incentive program functioned as a key instrument in his town-building settlement strategy. [99] Emily Jones Salmon, Early History and Establishment of the Bermuda Hundred https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/bermuda-hundred-during-the-colonial-period/. Dale
The Bermuda Hundreds (as well as the five other Hundreds) were clearly a major Company initiative to diffuse the population from Jamestown into the hinterland, and to make available for settlement considerable land in strategic locations along the James River and its tributaries. As the reader may noticed from the above plantation discussion, these hundreds were given to the major company leaders, London and Jamestown, as it would appear that Dale got Bermuda Hundreds (he sold it when he departed).
That raises the question of who was to handle local matters, and coordinate such activities as arose in daily life? That issue explains why the owner of the properties within the Hundred were entrusted with responsibilities and rights over servants and residents until future governmental entities were created. Even in 1613 , it was within the charter power of the Virginia Company to create such entities as it deemed fit—as Penn did in Pennsylvania seventy years or so later—it consciously chose not to do so.
Hundreds and Investor Joint Stock Corporations–In these early pre-Greate Charter years, population growth lagged and congruently London investor interest declined significantly as the lottery yields were not sufficient to their need, the Company also, consciously or not, used the Hundreds for sale to private English owners who bought shares of Virginia Company stock and as such formed and incorporated-a form of voluntary joint stock corporations–entitled as “associations”. Taking advantage of Dale’s ancient planter incentive scheme, the Company made in available to new stockholders based in England.
Association owners, usually several that joined together in an association, agreed to pay an annual quitrent to the Company. “Sometimes called societies of adventurers” these associations were issued a Company patent (land grant) for the purpose of founding a plantation, manor, economic enterprise, often with considerable acreage. “The patentees were to be invested with limited government powers with specific privileges over tenants or servants brought over” [ — “a colony within a colony” as it was referred to then–] :
Larger and more populated plantations were as Andrews alludes “in the nature of private jurisdictions” (p. 129, Vol 1), and the powers and immunities afforded to the plantation owners “almost an independent colony”. “The Company agreed that the captains or leaders of these associations who shuld go themselves to Virginia to inhabit ‘by virtue of their Graunts (grants), and should plant themselves their Tenants and servants” might have liberty ‘till a form of government is here and settled over them”, to make orders, ordinances, and constitutions, ‘associatinge unto them divers of the ‘greatest and discretes of their companies’ for the better ordering and directing of their servants and business, provided these ordinances were not contrary to the laws of England” (p. 129, Vol 1).
At minimum one might argue these empowerments allowed the plantation to form what later would be labeled a “company town”. Still from the perspective of “the Hundreds” as a potential structure or level of sub-provincial government this “innovation” if one can call it that, did create precedents and role models for others to employ and follow. If for no other reason than convenience and a lack of capacity for exercising governmental powers in the hinterland, the Company was quite willing to delegate them to private landlords and employers. In effect, they were empowering owners of plantations, thereby planting the seeds for the fusion of economic and political power with the local lower level of government.
It gave the associations liberty to carry their commodities to whatever market they pleased—at the company had [at that point] no intention of controlling their tobacco or other output—and it allowed them to reap what reward they could from their own efforts. The idea of these colonies “or hundreds” as they were frequently called, was not so much to help the company on the commercial side as to replenish the colonial population in as short a time as possible “with good multitudes of people”. These societies remained in England, directing each particular “colony” [or hundreds] from a distance just as the company was doing [99] Andrews, Vol 1, p.130
Several of these early volunteer joint stock corporations were not agricultural, but Indian trading entities, while others engaged in the development of fishing, and artisan tradesmen enterprises.
Andrews asserts these [sub] colonies or larger plantations and the hundreds were later included in the Greate Charter reforms (including the General Assembly as elective districts), were primarily intended by Sandys to be people-attraction vehicles, and also to facilitate attainment of nonagricultural diversification of the economic base, critical in its view to overall economic self-sufficiency. In this manner, Sandys was entrusting privately owned and managed corporations to serve as the basic unit of a diversified economic base, and were the equivalent of plantations in the agricultural enterprise. There were forty-four such patents issued under the terms of the Greate Charter between 1619 and 1623. [99] Andrews, Vol 1, p.130
The manifest intent of a patent such as this was that the plantations should be separate, economically self-contained units in themselves, and possessing each its own local government, yet the fact they were subject to taxation, answerable for impositions, burdens and restrains imposed by consent of the whole, and liable to be called into public service … [and] though they might be scattered they were to be near enough together to form a single fairly compact settlement under a common authority [99] Andrews, Vol 1, p.133
Perhaps intended—but likely not–something big and fundamental is happening, developing under the noses of Company officials whose land transfer programs when incorporated into the shortly to be issued the Great Charter, were nevertheless principally initiatives to save their company (and their investments). The governance of any permanent settlement was a means to an end, an end with little considered thought as to the nature of any government its was haphazardly putting into place..
Instead the Company relied on the entrepreneur-land owner to handle local matters, contenting the provincial level to judicial decision-making and administrative record-keeping. The reality of self-defense against the Indian tribes, always a serious concern, especially after Powhatan died in 1619, meant the larger landlords with servants/tenants and surrounding smaller households had to play a major coordinative leadership function in each of the Hundreds.
Thomas Dale Sails off into the Sunset
Dale’s trip home went well, accompanied by Rolfe and his new wife Rebecca (Pocahontas), and no doubt entertained by Dale’s on board execution of a prisoner (an English spy for Spain). [99] Brown, Vol. II, CCLVI, pp. 783-4. As regards to members of Jamestown’s gentlemen elite, Dale was held in high regard–and why not. Most, like John Rolfe, would receive Company land grants from Dale sufficient to develop a small farm or estate, then called a plantation. In this manner Dale cemented his influence over this group—Rolfe, for example, named his son with Rebecca (Pocahontas) “Thomas”.
Dale was about to start a new adventure, a fleet commander for Thomas Smythe’s British East Indies Company. In that capacity, Dale engaged in, and won, a series of naval battles against a Dutch fleet, and secured the relief of key ports in Dutch Indonesia. During and after these engagements, Dale contracted an illness, ironically very similar to the Jamestown “summer seasoning”—and died in August 1619. On the other side of the world, Yeardley and Sandys’ were engaged in implementing that Greate Charter.
Whatever his faults, and he did have them (Indian relations), Sir Thomas Dale is my unsung chief economic developer of the early Jamestown colony.
Dale’s chief personal innovation, an important one, was his limited allowance to well-behaved existing settlers (ancient settlers they were called) of autonomy from communal life and a homestead property of their own which except for certain annual requirements relieved them of communal labor obligations. This was very successful from its start, and over the next few years more former Company employees were able to set up their own farms apart from the two formal settlements.
In short, Dale and his successor, Yeardley, from 1613 until April 1617 had initiated a major economic development program, consisting of tobacco production lodged in plantations located in an administrative unit the Hundreds, diversification of the economic base by voluntary joint stock corporations, and most critically the development of a small mostly agricultural workforce composes of former indentured servants/employees of the Virginia Company whose term of indenture had expired.
We do not have copies of these grants, and so we rely on the “patents” (land transfer grant) used after the Greate Charter (1618) as a reference. These later patents apply to the first three types of land grants, the aggregate of which most certainly produced the greatest diffusion of land ownership in the colony, and had the most impact on the formation of the economic base, and future society of colonial Virginia. These patents invested the private land-owning corporation with governmental powers, and included special privileges over the tenants and services of those who settled within its boundaries.
Implications–This Hundreds-plantation based autonomy and decentralization without doubt began a tradition of local independent action, and by its blurred government and private nature fostered an inequality in political leadership as well as economic. Stuart Bruchey posits that the tobacco planter organized in plantations, Hundreds, and voluntary joint stock corporations, over the following decades developed autonomy and capacity incrementally developing into a cutting edge, and the core unit of production for Virginia’s future economic base-policy system. These isolated entities that populated the lower reaches of the James River were meant to be self-sufficient, to assume burdens the Company could not carry, chief among them being investment capital and the importation of entrepreneurs into Virginia:
Great quasi-public trading companies, privileged, chartered and joint-stock, had served as the initial funnels through which English capital funds and labor sought to exploit the new-world opportunities opened by voyages of discovery and exploration. Overwhelmed by heavy costs of settlement and blinded by fools-gold schemes of easy wealth, they had failed to return profits to their investors. So too had failed the subsidiary colonizing associations which in some instances grew out of them. [So] the private plantation, a method of uniting English capital, the labor of indentured servant, or slave, and the resident management of the planter emerged from these early failures. ‘Venture and capital’ previously united in the person of an English absentee investor [the Virginia Company] split off from each other: the venture now came in person to America to manage his enterprises, and draw upon English capital in the form of mercantile credit. [99] Stuart Bruchey, the Roots of American Economic Growth, 1607-1861 (Harper Torch Books, 1965) p. 32
Argall’s Interlude
Yeardley held the fort (literally) until the new deputy governor arrived, after which he returned to England. Captain Samuel Argall, a protégé of the rising new power in the Virginia Company, (Robert Rich) known to us as the Earl of Warwick (aka Warwick) had been appointed by Governor De La Warr to serve as his replacement. Argall was a naval officer and longstanding an experienced sea captain of the Virginia Company.
Of gentry background, Argall previous to Company employment had been engaged in the war with the Dutch, and had served as captain in fishing expeditions and transatlantic trade to Newfoundland, Spain and England. For his youthful age, Argall had significant marine and military experience. John Pory’s, the Secretary of the Virginia Company, described Argall as “a soldier truly bred in that university of warre the lower Countries [the Dutch War] [99] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/argall-samuel-bap-1580-1626/
Argall captained one of the relief ships that saved the colony in 1610; he captained the ship that took Rolfe and his wife to London; and the ship that returned Rolfe to Virginia alone a year later. To his credit, Argall did engineer a peace with the Indians (by kidnapping Pocahontas in 1613) and presiding over her marriage to John Rolfe, which commenced a period of peace that substantially persisted to 1622.Most important a tell-tale episode of Argall’s past was his 1613 raid against French Canada, attacking French Arcadia, a French settlement in Maine, and seizing Port Royal in Nova Scotia. Also of note, when relieved as Virginia governer by Sandys (and Smythe) he entered into mercenary employment doing battle with the Ottoman Empire.
This brief intro to Argall hopefully suggests to the reader that Argall, his termperment and experience, departs greatly from the previous leadership sent by Smith and Sandys to the colony. Smythe’s core conflict with Warwick erupted “because of Warwick’s freebooting activities [privateering] which had brought him into trouble with the East India Company, of which Smythe was Treasurer [CEO] [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol. 1. pp. 122.
Argall is an adventurer, an adventurer who appealed to Warwick, and conformed to his image of Virginia/Bermuda’s purpose and mission. Argall, initially a Smythe affiliate (he was a member of his extended family) became a protégé of Warwick instead. In this shift of alliances we see the effect of Virginia Company politics in the period after 1610, and in particular, after discovery of Bermuda during Argall’s 1610 voyage. Warwick (and by extention, Argall) is not onboard with the settlement movement embraced by Sandys, and insulated and protected by Smythe. Warwick, and represents the more “privateer” –trading mission and his early quarrels with Smythe almost certainly were a combination of personal issues and their conflict over Bermuda’s development and operation by the Virginia Company. Warwick in this sense, is part of the diffusion of Virginia Company ower-membership that accompanied the expansion of Company membership.to accommodate new investors.
Upon arrival in 1617 Virginia Argall wasted no time. He terminated Dale/Yeardley’s program of land ownership for expired employees of the Virginia Company (approximately fifty-four men). During his two year tenure in Virginia Argall made no private grants of land to such folk. Instead, Company employees were continued as such and their service was shifted to activities that resulted in personal profit to Argall, and his friends. “The ‘ancient colony men’ who were entitled to their freedom, and the laborers from the common garden {and salt works] were kept at work as the governor directed, and largely for his personal advantage” [99] Osgood, Vol 1, p.77.
Argall also made personal use of the stores of grain derived from quitrents at Charles City, and took control over the livestock as well. At the same time he allowed ship captains and private traders to export the sassafras and tobacco produced in the colony—in effect closing the Company’s trade-export unit, the magazine (essentially the Company Store). He granted himself, “Argall’s Gift” (personal Hundred), which, within a year, he sold to private bidders.
Argall soon established dominance over trading with the Native American tribes—and limiting colonist contact with the Indians. To add insult to injury, when Governor De La Warr ordered the transfer of several of those workers confiscated by Argall, the latter arrested De La Warr’s agent and condemned him to death. The court that tried him, however, and Anglican clergy outraged at Argall, ordered the agent to be released and sent back to England. It was this outrage that prompted De La Warr to board ship, return to America and die in transit.
The Company relieved him of his governorship and sent back George Yeardley. Argall, receiving advanced word, quit, and left Virginia on a Warwick-owned ship a week before Yeardley’s arrival. Warwick was able to divert English court charges against Argall. The net effect of Argall’s two year governance as summarized by Osgood was “The significance of [Argall’s] administration appears in the fact that it delayed the process of economic transition in the colony for two years” [99] Osgood, Vol. 1, p. 79
Whatever Argall did with the profits is not known, at least by me. When he died in 1626 he left little behind.
The story behind Argall may be a bit more complicated than this, however.
Andrews posits some mitigating factors that were behind Argall’s imposition of military-communal discipline and economy in Jamestown. Commenting that Yeardley’s previous administration and probably “lax and inefficient”, “while that of Argall, which gave rise to prolonged debate in the councils of the company after 1619 was citied because of its generally arbitrary characer. That severe laws were needed to restrain the habits and practices of the particular brand of settlers that had come to the colony from the jails, bawdyhouses, and slums of London—and there were many such—can hardly be denied, but that such laws aid in any way to increase the prosperity of the settlement or to make the people more contented may well be doubted” [99] (Vol. 1), p.116,
Argall’ personal correspondence is congruent with this and also coitizes the lack of maintenance at Jamestown, the rundown condition of the fort and its facilities, and failure t work the fields. That Dale’s land reforms and diversification of the economic base may well have been a poor fit with folk of this nature may be controversial with many readers, but is not unreasonable. That the Jamestown communal resources Osgood alleges Argall stole for his own profit, may, at least in part, have been used to feed and supply the communal employees is also a reasonable possibility,
Records of this period are at best poor, and it is very clear that Argall had been placed in the crosshairs of Smythe and Warwick’s accusations and investigations in the very turbulent office politics that followed 1619.[99] See also a very interesting article by Seymour V. Connor, “Sir Samuel Argall: a Biographical Sketch (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 59, No. 2,) p. 171ff which develops and provides support in defense of Argall. Connor has a different take on Argall’s seizure of the Company Magazine (prevent the London Company from using the profits of Jamestown produce instead of the Jamestown residents who needed them greatly.
Connor and others also offer mild praise for Argall’s consistent and persistent initiatives to limit colonist contract with Native Americans. It could be so that he could himself hold a sort of monopoly for personal profit, or was intended to maintain the peace between the two conflicting neighbors. I am aware of no definitive records that would preclude any interpretation—and again have in my mind that, who died seven years later, had no extravagant estate that was derived from Virginia.
Argall’s most impactful initiative was to work with voluntary joint stock corporations (usually formed in England and utilizing English capital), but some were set up within the Virginia Company as well. The corporations agreed to purchase land in Virginia and populate it with families and indentured servants in a plantation, which was considered to be a “private colony within the colony”. These plantations could engage in fishing, Indian trade, or agriculture, with attracted populations considered as beneficial to these activities. These voluntary “associations” or joint stock compaies were entitled “societies of the adventurers”, and they would be issued a “patent” or land title. These patents were invested with “limited governmental powers”, and the owners of the plantation were afforded “specified privileges over all tenants or servants brought over”.
Osgood is correct that Dale’s land reform, converting settlers into private ownership, were derailed during Argall’s period, but it is also clear Argall did permit the establishment and settlement of the Hundreds by English voluntary joint venture companies and that in his administration the diffusion of tobacco plantation continued. It is also clear that none of this advanced the population in Virginia—that 1618 Virginia held fewer residents than in 1611.
That negative reality being noted both Osgood and Andrews, while sometimes conflicting on their dates [999], report the creation of a large number of sizeable plantation-hundreds during the period between 1617 and 1619. This overlapped with the considerable inner turmoil within the Company and its fragmentation into three main factions—a turmoil that led to Smythe declining to run as Treasurer—a post he had held for a decade—and the election of Sandys and his allies to that position.
The termination of Argall, the travel of De La Warr to Virginia to investigate, and the subsequent replacement of Argall with Yeardley also transpired in this period. All this leads one to wonder if the two dynamics did more than overlap. In particular a number of investor-members formed voluntary joint stock companies and received a number of very large (one 80,000 acres) plantation-hundred land grants in this period. These were in effect insider deals and they easily could have been fodder for the intra-Company feuding [999].
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[999] To add to the reader’s enjoyment, Smythe had other bones to pick as well. Argall 9De la Warre’s appointed Deputy Governor), who in the past had been associated with Smythe (and a member of his extended family) had been increasing involved with his rival Warwick, serving as Captain of ships he owned. When in 1618 Warwick and Argall jointly owned ship, the Treasurer, participated in a privateering episode (from which the 1619 introduction of slaves to Virginia followed) may have been the straw to break camel’s back. Smythe shifted and became one of Argall’s chief opponents, plus Smythe repudiated Argall’s land policy and his support for the “Adventurers Magazine. Finally, maybe most of all, Warwick had recently married Smythe’s youngest daughter in opposition to Smythe’s will, and without his consent.
Plantations, the Shredded Community
Anticipating the political vacuum that will follow the Company’s termination, these larger plantation owners dominated local affairs within their Hundred for an extended period, thereby creating what has since been called “the shredded community”: a “dispersed rural population on small subsistence farms orbiting around plantations relied for community services on crossroad churches, courthouses and markets. These constituted a kind of “shredded community” as scattered focal points for farming, trading, politics and religion” David Russo, American Towns (Ivan R. Dee, 2001) p.11
The shredded community reinforced Privatist individual self-sufficiency, and sustained it through county-level services that provided minimal governance as possible. That was just as well, the Virginia colony-level policy system until William Berkeley’s arrival in 1642 was more or less overwhelmed, and while it attempted to establish a colony-level governance centered in the Jamestown, later Williamsburg, capitol, it had few resources with which to do so. Royal Governors more or less hacked out a minimal sense of direction, certainly retained a formal approval over the colony’s policy output, but their governance was arguably more reactive than proactive. The Council of State and House of Burgesses, not to mention the Virginia Anglican Church were outside the royal governor’s effective sphere of control.
Less obvious, but hugely impactful was the Virginia royal governor and its colony-level institutions of governance were not able to draw upon the budding urbanization, the formation of towns and settlements, that seemed naturally to occur in other colonies. Massachusetts, New England and New York would be able to form larger towns and establish ports—as did Maryland its nearby rival. Virginia in retrospect suffered from an almost non-existent urbanization dynamic. Noted by historians and economists, this lack of urbanization, in particular the weak formation of towns or formalized, incorporated settlements, meant the colony-level institutions were deprived of a meaningful local structural unit through which it could exercise its influence over the local communities scattered throughout its isolated Tidewater region.
The tobacco-plantation economic base adopted by Virginia in its earliest days did not only encourage, it required, the dispersal of its production units along the coastal lowlands. Access to rivers permitted export of tobacco directly from the plantation. Lacking a meaningful commercial function, settlements/towns could not develop acquire either momentum or population to sustain meaningful growth. Virginia in particular did not connect its plantations by land, choosing to rely on river modes.
Since the economic objectives of the London Jamestown Corporation was at its most basic to find something to export to England, its colonists/residents were primarily “land entrepreneurs”, interested in setting up their individual homesteads as soon as possible. The numerous natural river inlets were natural locations for the early plantation. With a pier tobacco could be laden onto ships and exported directly from the plantation. As late as 1765 George Washington exported and received imports directly from the wharf on his plantation on a Potomac River inlet. So it was geography and tobacco economics that set the course for Tidewater’s lack of urbanization and port cities. Neither political culture nor conscious planning had any determinant effect in that dynamic, but rather that dynamic exerted its impact on the former..
To complete the plantation as urban center picture, the plantation owner was master of his community, and the institutions of local governance, including the parish were located alongside the boundaries of his main house. Moreover, if cities were the residence of culture and hospitality elsewhere, in Virginia the manor house extended its hospitality with abundance and graciousness; what culture there was, a library, discussion and a meeting of elites, occurred in the manor house. To the town was left the tavern.
Virginia contained almost no towns and thus the sense and operation of community played out very differently [than New England]. Connections between isolated plantations or farmsteads often began with kinship networks. In the older settled Tidewater areas the average white family might be related to five other families nearby, and a household head might interact with thirty or more relatives on a regular basis. …
Small planters and families rarely ventured beyond the neighborhood, but when they did, it was normally for judicial proceedings and market days at county seats or religious services at the closest church. Some counties contained only one parish … Thus on Sunday mornings … several smaller rural neighborhoods came together not only to worship, but to exchange business documents, discuss tobacco prices, argue over the quality of horses, catch up on local gossip, and share news of the wider world … the interconnectedness of rural Virginia life makes it difficult to separate the social, economic and religious aspects from the political, House of Burgesses elections demonstrate how different layers of the county society related to the world of legislators, governors, ministers and even kings [5] . Ronald L. Heinemann, John G. Kolp. Anthony S. Parent, Jr., William G. Shade, Old Dominion, New Commonwealth (University of Virginia Press, 2007), pp. 72-4.
Ron W. Coan 