The shift to royal government is an excellent opportunity to update and revise the macro picture of Virginia, and to summarize its development, or lack thereof, upon the coronation of Charles I in 1625-6. Our second module series will  carry us through the reign of Charles until the eve of the English Civil War in 1642. In this period, little appreciated much of relevance to our topic and history occurred or evolved. In 1624 Virginia had barely a pulse as a colony; in 1642 its pulse, while not strong, was steady and improving.

At least four distinct sets of developments and changes in environment and dynamics had transpired:

(1) Mercantilism as a European foreign relations system evolved, and English mercantilism, a weaker player, was greatly affected. The module series significantly overlaps the Thirty Years War–in which the English sat on the sidelines, the rise of English-Dutch rivalry in this period of its ally, Sweden’s, adventurism enhanced the adverse reaction by the English to their trading and commercial mastery of vital geographies helpful to the isles economic robustness.

With relations between France and Spain having improved, England still remained engaged in a nether world of trade and rivalry with the latter, and an artificial tolerance of the latter. In 1607 Jamestown had to worry about Spain; by 1625-35 Virginia’s global and North American environment was much more complex.

French-English Relations during Charles 1 period-– For those of us raised under the illusion of constant war between England and France, Charles was an interesting exception; he married Henrietta Maria of France, making her his Queen. She feathered her nest with five children, and the marriage in its royal way went well enough–EXCEPT, she was Catholic. Secretly his terms of agreement with Louis XIII, gave to the latter seven English ships which were used to crush the Huguenots. Louis’s principal foreign affairs advisor was Cardinal Richelieu. Charles’s closeness with Louis further rankled an already rankled Protestant Parliament. Heavily engaged in the Thirty Years War, France under Louis found time and money to expand his colony (Quebec founded in 1608) in today’s Canada. Champlain explored the area around the Great Lakes and headwaters of the Mississippi River. Montreal was settled in 1642, a year before Louis’s death.

The “Far East” and the Mediterranean were another matter, however, as that reflected the commitment made by the English tradition merchant adventurers away from permanent settlement in the wilderness, to “trading post” exchange with the declining empires of the East. As Governor Dale became Admiral Dale, his short-lived future was spent battling Dutch merchant fleets for the East Indies Company, perhaps a dubious harbinger of Cornwallis leaving Yorktown for India. As for the West Indies we will leave that to a later module series.

Less anticipated, but a reality that continues through the next one hundred years, is the rise of English colonial settlement–bluntly the founding of a series of English colonies that created a new dimension, English inter-colonial relations. in modules of this series we shall see that explode, literally, into a war between new established Maryland and a leading plantation conquistador. Carved out of Virginia Company territory, and already partially settled by Virginians Maryland would haunt Virginia politics for a generation–and vice versa. In North Carolina, a contested geography in 1625 and after, we see another unexpected Virginia border appear when it  –a forerunner we may add to the establishment of a southern border, in what turned out to be another colony, Charles in 1629 issued a charter to form “Carolana” in a proprietary colony to his Attorney General, Sir Robert Heath; he named the colony after himself BTW–(31st-36th N. latitude), an empire that included todays, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, and Florida for good measure (Spanish controlled). As we shall discover, English colony boundaries (between and within) a colony are what the King says they are–and that too will partially answer our overriding question of this history–Why are States Different? Virginia’s position in North America radically changed with a number of colonial rivals having been founded–and the competition from the Ulster Plantation continued. In that era Virginia was left much to her own devices;

More central to Virginia’s future political development was the slow, inconsistent, semi-conscious development of early British colonial trade , commercial relations, and colonization policy. With the coming of English royal governance, Virginia lost the intermediary-advocate-buffer that was the Virginia Company. Not-to-worry though the new King exhibited a profound inability to make a commitment. That meant Virginia was not on his agenda, and for the most part he and his Privy Council, were involved in other matters. With loose to no monitoring, Virginia domestic policy-maker, primarily pursuing their own private and economic interests, jelled into a sort of “J. R. Ewing’s Cattle Man Club that coalesced within the Council of State.

Update Brenner, pp. 199,201-3,212,215-18

(2) English merchant adventurers, the Thomas Smythe crowd, pulled out of Virginia’s-Sandys-led permanent settlement strategy. With Sandys defacto ouster new groupings of colonizers, entrepreneurs, and financiers made their appearance in Virginia, as well as London. In London, we shall follow the tale told by Robert Brenner (an noteworthy others) as he describes “the Dynamics of Commercial Development” through 1640–which he fortunately applies to the Virginia colony, outlining its reflection of that transformation [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders (Verso, 1993). We shall supplement this with a brief introduction to the evolution of the “plantation” in Virginia during this period–laying the foundation for the great disruption engineered by Berkeley principally in the 1650’s and 60’s, our topic in the next module series. In this series, we will draw more on Bernard Bailyn and his reconstruction of the rising plantation conquistadors and the formation of Virginia first migration elite.

(3) England was evolving its colonial administrative policy, while Virginia was developing its resilience, capacity and identification within the hard-pressed and pressured times of the pre English Civil War. –the  Ulster Plantation was even more turbulent than Virginia and Ulster was competition enough. In the period of this module series (1825-42) Virginia dramatically increased its population–but from an incredibly small 1825 population base. Development and expansion were sustained, but there was no “take-off”.  A dynamic of importance to this history is how the trends and transformations described above trends were captured-incorporated into the Virginia large plantation business model, and how they facilitated the rise and establishment of Virginia’s plantation elite  and its dominance over Virginia policy-making.

In Virginia former Company elite-plantation conquistadores tightened their grasp on political and economic structures, and waged a ceaseless war against the Powhatan, pushing them out of the Tidewater. During these years a new financing mechanism evolved in Virginia and London–with the added delight of ship captains and indenture and headright added to the mix. Virginia’s settlement expanded and its impact deepened, as did her struggles with the Powhatan. The plantation tobacco export monoculture matured, a maturing which admitted some diversification during hard times of low tobacco prices. Tobacco export had skyrocketed after 1623; in 1627 500,00 pounds had been exported (18,000 in 1618), and by 1629 it tripled to 1.5million pounds. But in the early 1630’s the price collapsed, causing great distress and disruption–but the Virginian answer was simply increase production. In 1638, 3 million pounds were exported. [99] John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth: the Epic History of American Economic Power (Harper Collins, 2004, p. 13 The “tobacco contract” persisted, but not so global tobacco prices–Virginia entered into a tobacco depression that greatly enhanced Virginia inequality, while forcing the plantation conquistadors to develop new financing and diversify into other sectors. So in the 1630’s we find a new manifestation of the tobacco-defense-settlement nexus, the palisades project as an example of Virginia’s distinct economic development policy in this period.

Less appreciated, Virginia’s political development, if such could be called development, evolved. The plantation conquistadors, largely secure in their domination of the Virginia large planter elite, held sway over the Council of State, which in this period was the dominant institution of Virginia governance. In 1629-30, however, the King appointed John Harvey as royal governor–and then the fun began. What we refer to as the John Harvey affair will arguably be the most important single “event” that hit Virginia’s pre-1942 politics. It laid the foundation for what will be a distinguishing characteristic of Virginia’s historic policy system–a weak governor, viewed as the greatest threat to local governance.

More positively, the period saw the formal transformation of the hundreds into counties, and the steady and impressive incretion of powers and responsibilities to that level of government. Simultaneous with that was the interweaving of the local economic and social elites with leadership of counties and impact on these policy areas. As such the county became the stepping stone in the career path of Virginia’s future provincial leadership.

Why did the Virginia Company fail so badly?

The Jamestown module series reveals many factors that played into its collapse, and failure to build a sustainable colony in its eighteen years.

Much can be said for the simple inexperience of England and the masters of the Virginia Company. This was their first effort, and for all practical purposes it never had many of its few cylinders firing at any point in time. It can reasonably be asserted the real beneficiaries of Virginia were the colonies that followed. Massachusetts in particular learned from observing Virginia.

Much of the failure can also be laid upon the period of time, the era, in which Virginia was first settled. England during the sixteenth century was engaged in a fundamental economic, social, political–and psychological transition from its feudal past. Whatever you may believe about the mercantilist system, it was just beginning its development, and on the whole, it was a transitional system, anyway– loosely defined and used to provide some sort of coherence in hindsight–but little substance to those who lived and made decisions of consequence. One might suggest so many demographic, economic, religious, social and political dynamic currents were flowing during these years that it was inevitable any colonial venture (including the Ulster Plantation) would be caught up into their unpredictable cascading toward some unknown future.

There were an incredible number of moving parts during the shift from feudalism, dynamics that today are only marginally understood tore up the English intellectual and political landscape–Virginia literally was founded by the ill-fated Stuart dynasty using a profit-non profit joint stock company to establish a colony, a foothold in the New World so that it could compete, avoid defeat, by a number of competing countries almost all of which were more powerful and wealthy. On top of it all, England and its monarchy was broke, or nearly so. That’s why a private company was used, because the public side had no money for the colony venture.

The organizational structure, a variation of the English joint stock corporation, committed to paying the costs of settlement and sustained colony-building, was a fool’s enterprise from the start. Its profit seeking membership was a mismatch for the Company’s long-term vision and task. Its democratic decision-making, by shareholders, and its use of an incredible number of subsidiaries as financial instruments, its discovery and settlement of Bermuda, and the lack of consensus among the investors as just what the Virginia Company should be doing was fatal in itself.

The fragmentation and politicization, so bitter in the last years, injected the Company into national politics, King versus Parliament in a period that led to the English Civil War led to a coup, and the King’s eventual dissolution of its charter. That James I preferred the Ulster Plantation to Virginia–pushing aggressively to force the English private sector to invest in Ireland, not Virginia–arguably created more than headwinds for the Virginia Company as early as 1610; it cut the legs out from it–it was a “going concern” from that point on.

One might be forgiven for wondering if the Virginia Company had anything of significance in its favor. Still one might think of Virginia as proof that abortions need not be fatal. So let me summarize 1625 Virginia.

In the Jamestown module series, our first in this chapter on Virginia, we introduced and provided an initial description-rationale-background on a number of “dots” which will continue through this chapter on Virginia, through As the Twig is Bent, and into Book 2, the Early Republic to the Civil War, and most importantly, Book 3, As Two Ships Pass in the Night. Each module and module series extends upon these themes salient to the modules(s), and from time to time will develop new dots and themes useful connections into explaining the future course. At this point as we emerge from our first module series we offer a heuristic list of the themes which either are pertinent to this module series, or will be important strands of future ones. These are in no particular order:

• salience of organizational structure, the joint stock corporation in this series, and dynamics, strengths and weaknesses of that structure in leading the colony-building strategy nexus
• the absolute imperative in our colonial history of linking the English-British experience (pre English civil war politics, evolution of English mercantilism, economic change-enclosure movement and exodus, evolution of merchant elites) with American colonization: England was the mother country and primary (competitive hierarchy) environmental driver of colonial, Virginian, development–colonial administration which evolved from English experience being the connecting strand, a strand that was seriously impaired by the logic, logistics and realities of a 3,000 mile ocean. In the Jamestown module series we explained how Virginian colony-building was nearly wrecked by its competition with another English colony, the Ulster (Irish) Plantation
• the economic development strategies necessary to, or elements of, a successful colony-building enterprise. In particular, I discussed the strategy for self-sufficiency, the settlement strategy nexus with their people-attraction, infrastructure, installing an economic base, and settling up the (first} policy-making system, and the early link of war-defense to economic and policy system development
• description and imposition of the famous/infamous headright system, a economic development strategy nexus and incentive initiatives that connected people attraction and investor capital to land, homesteading, and plantation startup–and critically linked the English investment community into providing essential “venture” or private development capital to the settlement strategy
• the centrality of Native Americans to the early colonial experience, and sadly to the zero-sum battle for “site control” that befell nearly all of colonial America–especially Virginia
• the development of colonial, Virginian “elites” and the origin of the the initial “masses”, the average Joes and Josephines who constitute the principal workforce and potential citizen base of the new policy system, and further linked it to the development of English mercantilism and eventually to early movement into finance capitalism and industrialization
• creation-importation of critical economic and political “institutions”/structures fundamental to the Virginian economic base and policy systems (provincial and sub-provincial): including the development of Virginia’s tobacco monoculture that created Virginia’s tobacco export economic base that itself created Virginia’s shredded community, which (when threatened by self-defense needs) “tilted” relationships and political expectations to create a “bottoms-up” Virginia policy system

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Shifting Tides in English pre-1650 Mercantilist Competitive Hierarchy

Inter-colony Relations – The most obvious change in English mercantilism is the expansion of her North American colonies. Putting Maryland and New York aside for the moment, the intermittent settlement of much of the English Atlantic coastline, coupled with a weakened, and by this module neutral Spain was the singular achievement of the Stuart dynasty. Each colony was a rival of these others, and as we shall see, Catholicism aside, Protestantism being a many-flowered religion created a series of colonies fragmented by their religion as well as their economic self-sufficiency. For Virginia, the exceptions noted, only North Carolina appeared on its radar screen. The divorce of Virginia and the Virginia Company broke her two-decade old relationship with New England (Council of New England (the sister Plymouth Sagadahoc replacement corporation). [999] So with the exceptions again noted, Virginia no longer enjoyed a monopoly of attention with the Privy Council, and the King enjoyed any number of requests from adventurers and half-starving colonies. Complexity and rivalry therefore, but, exceptions noted, little disruption.

Virginia we know included the Virginia Company’s Bermuda remained a proprietary province, under the Virginia Company after 1624-5 for the next several decades. Virginia was the only English mainland southern colony in 1620–middle colony New Jersey was founded in 1664, and Pennsylvania in 1681. Maryland, a southern colony was created from Virginia’s “side” in 1632–and we shall discuss that amply in this module, but North Carolina settled formally in 1663, was actually a part of South Carolina which was founded in the time span of this module (1629)–and whose boundaries included North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee.

[999] Massachusetts, the reader no doubt already knows was founded in Plymouth in 1620, and that was followed by Puritan Salem and Boston–and a flurry of colonies founded by refugees from her loving Puritan administration followed that (Rhode Island and Connecticut). New Hampshire was declared a province in 1629, but Massachusetts put her grubby little fingers on that fledgling administrative body until it was once again made autonomous in 1679–only to have Massachusetts restored to its glory in 1686–and after that until 1741 it alternated between the two contending authorities–it still does, with Massachusetts today being better known by New Hampshire’s population, whose largest component is former Massachusetts natives, as Taxachusetts. Notice I have not included Vermont, Maine or Delaware. Don’t Ask. [999]

Virginia’s position in North America radically changed with a number of colonial rivals having been founded–and the competition from the Ulster Plantation continued. In that era Virginia was left much to her own devices; Virginia’s position in North America radically changed with a number of colonial rivals having been founded–and the competition from the Ulster Plantation continued. In that era Virginia was left much to her own devices;

the Dutch--So far as we are primarily concerned with England’s North American colonies–and Virginia in this module–I suggest the Dutch near monopoly over the Atlantic waves was a heavy duty problem for England and frustrated the latter’s hope for any effective English colonial policy in the pre-Civil War and even Civil War periods. The Dutch Republic had been an ally of Elizabethan England, Dale, Gates, John Smith, Miles Standard, and even George Yeardley and Lord Delaware fought under English commanders in the Dutch wars with Spain. Edwin Sandys had a short involvement with his brother in a Dutch military venture, and followed up by staying there for a bit to study and acquire a trade. Thomas Smythe was James’s primary negotiator with the Dutch. In short, a war-time ally was also a peace time trading rival–especially when the Thirty Years War gives the Dutch a geographical advantage in commerce and trade with the Continent.

The English were, in Charles Andrew’s words, “humiliated” by Holland’s success and dominance over such critical sectors and skills, and near monopolies over geographies critical to England’s future growth and life style-consumer economy.  But as he comments, “they were powerless to anything about it”. “The Dutch were exhibiting so many points of superiority over the English, particularly in the naval, mercantile and commercial fields, that there seemed little chance of English success on the basis of ability alone”.

[For Example] In the building of ships, in the conduct of their finances, in the handling of the carrying trade from port to port along the northwestern and western European coast, and in the dexterity, diligence and skill of their artisans, the Dutch were superior to the English, and were destined to remain so for three-quarters of a century, and even longer. [indeed, Peter the Great worked and interned in the Dutch shipbuilding sector in 1697]. [99] Charles A Andrews, Vol. 4. the Colonial Period in American History, p. 23.

We certainly can trace the evolution of British colonial administration-policy, but its founding of a comprehensive policy only really starts with the 1650 Navigation Law–which was repeated and updated in 1661 with the Restoration. This lag of a half-century in formalizing their colonial trade policy in particular was in part the laxity of the pre-Civil War Stuarts, but also to the fragile nature of English commercial elites in this period. Focusing exclusively on English cloth merchants, we create a bit of a bubble in that everything else is push aside–and as far as English trade in this period was concerned, England decidedly did not yet rule the waves.

The Dutch did.–and that affected its North American colonies in subtle ways.

Andrews devotes a chapter to the complexities the Dutch caused to the development of English commercial and colonial administration; it is worth summarizing because in our contemporary times it is hard to appreciate how lesser powers of our current day, Holland and Sweden for example, were in effect world, at least European, major powers of this period. England was still a developing European power, and an unstable and not affluent one at that. Being an island, trade and commerce were essential to her military power, economy and lifestyle–and the Dutch dominated English commercial elites and England’s trade:

During the first half of the seventeenth century the Dutch forged rapidly ahead, and England was powerless to stop their progress in Muscovy, Norway, the shores of the Baltic, and most of the cities and states of Germany. They controlled the commerce of Flanders [English textile trade], Ireland and Scotland, were the distributing agents for the colonies in America and the West Indies, and had been the pioneers and remained the leaders in deep-sea fishing, and in all the whale and herring fisheries of the North Sea [99] Charles A Andres, the Colonial Period in American History, Vol. 4, pp. 22-3

The culmination of this North American Dutch disruption had already occurred during the Virginia Company period with the 1614 founding of New Netherland (New York City). In no time at all Dutch ships sailed up the Virginia river systems offering trade and even entertainment for the isolated plantations, and their not quite civilized residents. In fact, it was the Dutch, and Dutch ships, that dominated the intercoastal trade of North America–and logistics to England and Scotland. The Tobacco Contract could require whatever it wanted, restricting tobacco to English ships and export to England alone, but for the most part in this period it was Dutch ships that carried tobacco wherever it wound up.

The frustration of English elites, I suspect, resembled that of American manufacturers during the 1970 whose frustration with Japanese superiority challenged their pretensions, business models, and stock markets. In that period I received an economic development award to study these in Japan for a nearly a month, traveling and visiting sites, meeting with Japanese companies etc.–only to be ignored when I got home. In many ways, I think, my experience nearly three and half centuries later provides some insight into the mentality of the English commercial elites, who in their bubble, stumbled on for the next hundred years.

To the Dutch trade was a national sport and merchandising was was [the province], not of the enterprise of a class [as in England], but a function of the state. To the English on the other hand, it was but one of many interests and its pursuit was viewed as an inferior form of activity, in which merchants but not the gentry engaged, and its social importance was considered distinctly less than that obtained by possession of land.

In this we can see the nub of a new English financial-investor grouping that could see benefit, in English terms, with its acquisition of “land” in the colonies; the headright system, with its land and workforce incentives match precisely the aspirations of a rising group that could replace the merchant adventurer trading czars. If the Dutch glorified finance, efficiency and performance and the accumulation of wealth, the English had to create their own version using goals and aspirations characteristic of English elites. In this we can see how New York City, became a trading metropolis, a free trade zone for colonial America, in contrast to the evolution of other merchant elites in other colonies. That Virginia was the first, and got caught up in the refugee flow from the defeat of Charles I in the Civil War, we can see the ease with which Berkeley was able to launch a Second Migration based on the awarding of land and by implication, manors, to a defeated royal-dependent class in England. Bailyn followed up and discussed its formation into an elite during this period.

The pretentions behind the Privy Councils “tobacco contract and monopoly”, with all its trade and commercial restrictions, could not be meaningfully enforced, other than in English ports. Compliance by Virginians was problematic at best. Even the Pilgrims came to Massachusetts on a Dutch built ship. The core problem for England was not only that the Dutch dominated trade, but also the European ship-building industry, and Holland’s merchant adventurers were aggressive, efficient, and competent–words not always used in regards to the English merchant adventures. and Dutch ships and trading companies were superior in many aspects-including delivering low cost logistics solutions to tobacco exporters. The Dutch were competitors to the evolving new generation of English commercial financiers.

The Economic and Political Context Inherited by the new Royal Colony

By the middle of 1623 Virginia was yet again at another nadir. Its population massacred and starved, the colony was probably at its lowest level since 1610-11. The census of 1628, however, proved that once again population had bounced off its lows and climbed to levels never before seen. Immigrants were paying their own way, or having someone else pay their way over. Both were by-products of the headright incentive, which despite its own fragility in the post-company period, was still in play, and still being offered to immigrants who settled in the colony.

In a near vacuum created by the “formless”, insider-dominated, isolated and fragmented fractured, but still driven by competing and rival wealthy, well-born, large plantation owners the economic development package we today call the headright continued in practice. Despite the reality headright was a Virginia Company incentive program, that fed off the sale and settlement of former company-owned land now owned by the King, the local provincial officials still approved land sales and linked them to future land grants for any settlers they imported.

The province needed revenues to operate and land sales, associated quitrents, and an expanded workforce promised a solid and growing source of income for all. That the overwhelming use to which the workforces was employed meant clearing, rebuilding, and expanding tobacco plantations, with its shredded community, lack of sizeable towns, inevitably led to an economic export monoculture as its principal, if not its only, real economic base should have been troubling to, if no one else London/Crown, and thoughtful provincial leaders (whoever they might be in a world of young entrepreneurs hell bent to acquire wealth through tobacco and land)..

The effect of the Massacre on the company’s ill-fated post 1618 “big push” to diversifying Virginia’s economic base was as devastating as the mind could imagine. There was no silver lining as diversification projects, from the college to all sorts of natural resources mines and processes. (A)ll the earlier industrial enterprises had failed, and except for a small amount of shipbuilding and the necessary construction of houses and other buildings, all artisan activities had ceased. The attempts to make glass, iron, potash, wine and the like had come to an end”[99] Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 210

Whatever passed for candidates for an emerging small urban population was wiped out from Indian raids, taking the merchant community with them. War with the Indians naturally enough meant no fur trading, and the best way, probably the only way to secure revenues to pay the bills was an annual sale of one’s tobacco. In 1623-4, tobacco was really they only game in town—if there was anything large enough to call a town.

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Arguably any real power underlying my historical effort, and the power behind my book(s) is the deep dive into our history–to the founding episodes that created the foundation from which were paved the path on which the footprints of those who made the great trek to the present day can be found. We go back to these roots, and talk to the midwives who birthed the child that became colonial state and local America through her primary policy area, economic development. Jamestown and the Virginia Company, by simple dint of being the first on the “colonial block” offers an extremely critical insight not only into Virginia’s development, but through lessons learned why the colonies-states that followed followed different paths.

We uncover these foundations and the paths that followed from them by “connecting the dots”, i.e. relating and examining the threads or dynamics that are pertinent to this history–and primary and distinctive to Virginia. My history rests on many different “moving parts”, the aggregate of which could, if I am not careful, overwhelm the reader. This is why these dots, themes and individual dynamics are so important to the history–they allow the reader to isolate on those they believe most matter or interest them while alerting them they are only seeing part of the explanation. We try to offer citations that allow insight, and provide background which better explains why these folk at a particular time made the decisions they did.

The Second Module Series: the Transition from the Company Era

What is it we shall see in the Transition Module Series?

Absent a firm commitment from Charles I, English oversight, think of Privy Council, was loose, and reactive toward Virginia. Not inclined to rock the boat, the Privy Council was inclined to defer to Virginia opinion, and not look too hard at affairs and decisions made domestically. Through 1629, the royal governor was a “native” Company official, with Sandy’s brother’s son-in-law (George) removed from office once Charles had secured coronation. In the meantime, royal administration incorporated past company decisions, institutions to stand and carry over to the royal period. No reform administration was ever contemplated.

The laid-back London administration allowed free expression to the post-Massacre company era dynamics and institutions to fill the gap left by the Virginia Company–which BTW did not die; it still governed in Bermuda and would do so for several decades. Nor did Sandys go away, and he continually attempted to restore the charter which mobilized the traditional Smythe faction (he died in 1625), and interestingly the bulk of the former Company elites in Virginia to resist any restoration of Virginia Company governance. While plagued by allegations of scandal, there was an ebb and flow to political discussions in London that kept all in constant doubt as to whether the Virginia Company was, or was not, finished in Virginia–probably until Sandys’ death in 1629.

So this module series, while watchful of London, will concentrate on the affairs in Virginia. With the local resident former Company officials still in charge there was no shift from the Company era dynamics and consensus, and the young plantation conquistadores joined their ranks along with a small number of entrepreneur-investor-opportunists. Expansion into the Tidewater still continued at a pace resonant with the mild rise in new immigration–and so did the tension and intermittent struggle with the Powhatan and neighboring tribes. There would be a Third Powhatan War in the 1640’s.

Virginia’s commitment to the tobacco plantation export monoculture deepened, as did inequality of its workforce and “citizenry’. By the end of the transition period, this inequality had been nearly institutionalized in that the non-elites were almost totally indentured servants, former indentured servants, subsistence based small but free homesteaders (owner and renter), and slaves (almost all being Native America with a few blacks).

In these years, an oligarchical policy system emerged within, and alongside the Company era provincial and sub-provincial “governments”. Formerly private bodies tasked with governmental functions, these institutions made decisions in the nether land that was Charles’s limbo and policy vacuum. In so doing they acquired a legitimacy of sorts, and with no competition or opposition of consequence the institutions and their decisionmakers mixed caution, innovation, necessity to act, and simple bold assertion, carrying on a dialogue with London, and buffered–at least until 1629 by a resident former Company official as royal governor. After 1629 things will get interesting–and too complex to summarize. The remainder of the 1630’s will constitute a great deal of our discussion in the series.

If the reader wonders where all this leads to she is alerted that in 1642 a new non-resident royal Governor will be appointed, William Berkeley. When he arrives he will be confronted by a well-entrenched “status quo” plantation conquistador domestic elite, that firmly dominated local and provincial institutions, structures and were the principal actors in the state’s tobacco export plantation economic base. Berkeley will manage the difficult politics of the mid and late Civil War, but will “retire” to his Virginia estate during the Cromwell Protectorate.

In that period key plantation conquistadores and their large plantation owners will run affairs until the Restoration in 1660-61. At that point Berkeley will return, transform Virginia by launching a Second Migration, push settlement of the Piedmont, and attempt to manage the complex mechanizations of the Virginia politics that culminated in Bacon’s Rebellion–and the ouster of Berkeley. That Berkeley in his Second Migration incorporated and used plantations and tobacco, with their unequal and contract-bound workforce meant the institutions and practices of the First Migration Company period and transition were continued and expanded. Succinctly put, with a bit more complexity, what we see in 1625 will still be in ascendancy in 1680–and one might be tempted to argue would remain dominant  into the 1720’s.

That said, we can, and will, argue the system set up in a rudimentary fashion during the Company period before 1625, evolved after, but dominate Virginia history for a full one hundred years.

t

he Limbo that was Charles I

James I was dying by early 1625. By that point it had been decided the Virginia Company would lose its charter. He died shortly after the charter was formally revoked. What ever his intentions or interests for Virginia were, they were likely not those of his son. The two did not see eye to eye, and Charles did not blindly follow his father’s priorities. Charles I was coronated in 1626, so for the better part of 1625 Charles began to assemble his advisors and support team; he did, however, hold his father’s belief in divine right more firmly perhaps. That and his marriage to the daughter of the French King and his seemingly closeness to a positive neutrality to Spain raised anti-papist emotions both in Scotland and the English Parliament.

Charles (whatever his actual interest in Virginia was) was not anxious to initiate radical change in Virginia. Various Virginia Company investigations, hearings, and even a commission sent to Virginia, yielded little to any hope the Virginia Company could be acceptably modified or reformed, and so, whatever Virginia Company “politics” lingered on–as mentioned above–such politics constituted more noise than actual threat of concrete action. In Virginia, former Company officials continued to occupy their old positions while London figured out where it wanted to go.

Post-Company initial treatment of Virginia by the Crown supports the position that the Virginia Company fell on account of its own internal disruptions, and the perception of its investors that not only was the Company internally corrupt, but was incapable or unwilling to reform itself. Whatever hostility the King felt against Sandys died with him, and Charles was more open and less bitter on the matter than his father.

Charles’s early interest in revitalizing the Anglican (Church of England), ensuring its preeminence in religious and even political affairs may have backfired on Virginia. Charles’s version of the Anglican Church was viewed by many English as essentially warmed-over Catholicism. In reaction to this, an exodus of hard-core Puritans from England commenced—to Massachusetts, but also to Virginia (Norfolk-Hampton Roads adjacent Isle of Wright area–were settled by Puritans at this time). In any case, the “northern” or Plymouth Company subsidiary of the Virginia Company became a focal point of the Crown’s attention–and that meant the development of a rival colony in Massachusetts.

In any event, it was clear Virginia was not high on the Crown agenda, and the new king had no plans in particular for its future. That Virginians looked for clarification on the royal position of its governance, the legitimacy of past Company actions and initiatives, and Charles’s position on the validity of Virginian land titles and headright incentives, was minimally appreciated in London–leaving a serious residue of uncertainty and fear among Virginian landowners and government elites in particular.

There was an important reason for that formless; Virginia was in a limbo in London, and the new sovereign Charles I kept the colony in flux due to a nearly decade long “discussion, debate, commissions and hearings” that failed to reach an agreement of what government should follow after the revocation of the Virginia Company charter. Many recommendations and reports offer their solutions—but none was signed off on by the King. Until he finally sent over a new royal governor, John Harvey. We shall pick up on Harvey shortly, but the first period until 1634, was, if nothing else, a testimony to the existence of “non-decision” as a vital policy-making concept.

Charles Andrews, in my opinion, offers the best, if hopelessly detailed, description of that discussion and the major events and multiple decision points during that decade [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Settlements, Volume I (Yale University Press, 1934,1964), see Chapter IX, pp. 180-205]. The Company, and Sandys made a brief comeback with a new charter proposal—but fortunately or not Sandys couldn’t sell matches in the Artic. The Privy Council, Charles I’s chief decision-making colonial unit at the time,  was responsible for managing the Virginia Company receivership that Virginia had been placed in 1624, and it simply delegated matters to its appointed governors,  keeping a ten foot pole between itself (the King), and Virginia..

As we shall see, the Virginia Company personnel and membership continued to haunt the succession of appointed royal governors that ran Virginia affairs in this period. brothers and other West family members [remember the powerful governor Baron De La Warre—i.e. Thomas West, began the gubernatorial parade after Yeardley. The thrust of that indecision and delegation, of course, meant that the policies and structures of the Virginia Company, such as they were (principally the Greate Charter and Dale’s Headright-Land initiatives); new settlements drifted further into the swamps as Tidewater plantations were established. In 1628 Virginia’s population was about 3,000, and by 1630, “upwards of 2,500”; in 1634 “nearly 5,000”. [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol. 1 (Yale University Press, 1934-1964), p. 140.

 FROM Transition Period 

Of Necessity and Opportunity, Company Provincial Institutions Transform into Institutions of Royal Government Administration

London as it disposed the Company could not come to a workable solution that pleased the contentious parties or that motivated the King. The disruption really started early in 1623, and until March 1626 when the King issued temporary” guidance and instructions to Virginia governance, events and politics followed their own path in Virginia. Lacking any sense of direction, gubernatorial requests were usually conceded to—except, the request of the General Assembly back in 1624 that the Assembly be recognized by the Crown as legitimate institution representative of the Virginia settler.

That was too far out for the King, given his own struggle and tenuous politics with his Parliament—and so in March 1626 he said “that being forced by many other urgent occasions … he would continue the existing form of [Virginia] government until he ‘should find some more convenient means upon mature advice to give more ample directions” [99] Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 196. In other words, he punted—kicked the can and left Virginia governance to its own devices.

What appeared fairly evident to Virginia decision-makers was the King had not embraced the Greate Charter legislature—which at the time he had been vocal in his opposition, and in his preference for “anybody but Sandys” as Company Treasurer. But now we had a new king in 1626, and Charles was not without his problems with a Parliament. Also several entreaties direct to him on the matter or a legislature (including by Yeardley) did not elicit any green light. There could be no assumption that a Virginia-decision-maker could make that a full-blown legislative autonomy or even structure was a substantial risk.

The King’s missive and the guidelines issued by his Privy Council did not call attention to the Greate Charter annual conclave, and the elections that sent delegates to its Burgesses. At this point there is no “House” of Burgesses, and the official “Council of State” as an upper house is a decade and a half into the future. There is precious little that reminds one of a legislature, and more likely seems like a shareholder or stakeholder conflab. The Company in Virginia was no more and hence company institutions were not of royal concern. So there was no support of, but again, there was no inhabitation against such a gathering if such was needed to conduct local governance and implement actions necessary for survival of so obviously a vulnerable frontier colony.

So between 1624 and 1629,“assembly-like” convocations were called and met, they were labeled a special meetings or a “convention”. Virginia officials were rightly sensitive that the Crown could be threatened by exercise of authority he did not sanction, and so they constantly pressed for formal recognition of such assemblies. The necessities of governance during the 1623-4 starving times and even the transition period that lasted into 1625 required action in Virginia—against Indian attacks especially. Isolated the assemblies acted on the own, raising taxes to support militia and build forts—and facilitate the export of tobacco and its sale abroad. A rudimentary local administration was established, two in 1622 and more after the Massacre. The Hundreds were the instrument used to develop capacity at the ground level.

That there was no observable pushback, likely most attributable to Charles’s distant concern with affairs Virginia, and over years that certainly encouraged elements of the Virginia governance to assert themselves in the policy vacuum—“better to ask for forgiveness than permission”. On such a slender thread did the first potential institution of American self-governance and future democracy relied in this 1624-29 period.

There was, however, another matter, a matter of detail some might say, that carried over from the Company to the new royal government—and then to the Early Republic and present day State of Virginia: the link of the governor with his Governor’s Council in the passage of law and decision. During the Company era, the London Company issued to its appointed governor instructions and policy decisions made in London, to which it intended Virginia decision-makers would be required to implement, addressing any discomfiture with a petition for the Virginia Company in London to address.

The Greate Charter itself was a series of these instructions which the governor simply executed. With the creation-installation of the system of government contemplated in the Greate Charter, however, legislative decisions, as opposed to those areas where the governor possessed independent executive decision-making powers, were made by both the governor AND the Governor’s Council, as well as by Burgesses. That set up the Governor-Governor’s Council as a sort of House of Lords, an upper chamber.

The concurrence of that latter body in a piece of legislation was, as it was in Burgesses, by a majority decision of its membership. Independent of this the governor had a veto of that legislation. A bit too many moving parts, I would agree, but unsurprisingly, the self-interest of the subordinate parties and the vacuum and indecision that followed the fall of the Company and the rise of Charles I invited a bit of mischief and honest confusion as to what powers the governor possessed over his own appointed Governor’s Council or our Council of State?

That question was further enlarged because Charles and the Privy Council in his 1626 message to temporarily continue the Company governance in the royal era included the phase “Governor and the Council of State”, as though they were one entity. That was compatible with what I described above for a legislative action—but it did not necessarily conform to an internal decision, which was not a legislative item, that the Council adopted or rejected.

Say it more impolitely, could the governor be outvoted by his Council in an internal administrative decision pertaining to an area of the Governor’s delegated responsibility? [99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689 (Louisiana State University Press, 1970, pp.153-155, and Phillip Alexander Bruce , Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 2, ( Peter Smith, 1964) Chapter’s IX, XV, and various chapters throughout; Charles Andrews, the Colonial Period in American History, Vol. I, Chap IX provides both context, and on p. 204, its implied carryover into the 1639 King’s missive on Virginia governance both develop that theme that the distinction between the royal governor and his appointed governor’s council was imprecisely defined, and the two were at least in some ways linked in the minds of London decision-makers.

The royal governors were residents of Virginia, embedded in the Virginia Company’s investor community, and former company officials. Not until Harvey in the late decade did the King send over someone who solely represented his point of view and was personally loyal to him. By default, the King and Privy Council were indulging in a bit of local discretion and decision-making autonomy to get them through an unwanted transition. It is doubtful they thought much of the long term implications of this autonomy, or how future historians could attach meaning where there was none.

Previous to 1630, with Yeardley or his spirit included in local decision-making, the question did not rise to the fore. With the arrival of new governor, John Harvey in 1630, it did. The ambiguity of this issue was to set in motion a series of events and then a tradition of precedents, that would not only check the power of Virginia’s governor, but would reinforce the prerogatives of legislature. From Harvey onward, even with strong governors such as Berkeley and Spotswood, the legislature would assume its right to fire the governor—with the concurrence of the King, of course. And it did so several times. As we shall see, whatever the power of the governor was in other colonies, in Virginia even a royal governor under instructions from his monarch had to “dance to the tune” the Legislature, which included the Council of State, played.

Since the largest landowners were appointed by the governor to serve on the Governor’s Council/Council of State, that body became the bulwark of Virginia’s domestic policy system, built-in as it was into the governor’s exercise of gubernatorial prerogative. The King. almost certainly inadvertently,  had left an opening for the expanded power of the Council of State relative to the exercise of gubernatorial power by linking the two in his missive outlining the interim governance of the province issued in March 1626, and reinforced in further instructions by the Privy Council that April.

The two missives carried, or at least opened the door for the implication the Council was more than the governor’s simple advisory body. In this very early period, in the beginning with the parade of early governors who were former Company officials, the Council acted and thought of itself as a policy-maker on par with the governor, the latter being a vote breaker. It thought itself able to affect gubernatorial executive action, and also participate in the writing of legislation to be submitted to the Legislature. From 1628, the Council of State, smaller and composed of the chief landowners of the province, was the crown jewel of Virginia political life.

In the interim before the coronation in1626, the colony lost its organizational advocate and self-governance link to London; it lacked a single spokesperson, arguably aside of Wyatt, the governor, to advocate in London. The collective Assembly, now the colony’s defacto legislature periodically, in fact regularly, pleaded for attention on a variety of matters. Such requests if acknowledged yielded only reactive temporary fixes or non-specific guidance that only contributed to the administrative, economic and political drift in Virginia. The “softness” of the royal reaction to events in Virginia, gradually provided the Assembly with some small measure of belief they could, and probably should act on their own dime when they needs arose. If asking for permission got you nowhere, asking for forgiveness for any unwanted assertion of autonomy or authority could be little worse. Truth be told, London and the Crown was willing to let the colony figure out its own path, believing the larger issues of its future could be debated at a better time.

The reappointment of the existing Company’s governor, John Wyatt in 1624-5, a Sandys appointment and a governor who wanted out, was soon followed by the appointment of old two-time former Company governor/lieutenant governor, George Yeardley who presided into 1627, when he sickened and died. Other former Company officials and associates replaced Yeardley and preserved the primacy of the former company elite. and the administrative status quo, until an outsider, John Harvey was appointed in 1629. Harvey did not travel expeditiously from London to Virginia–and once in Virginia took his time in assuming office. Until then an intended stability and continuity in governance was maintained. Harvey as we shall see was his own can of worms.

What was very clear by this point was that potential new investors in a North American opportunity had abandoned the Company as their investment vehicle. After 1623 they increasingly bypassed the Company in what investments they were willing to make in Virginia. They formed their own joint stock corporation specific to their venture and business plan, and when approaching Virginia officials they were treated as as a new “hundred”, a colony within the colony, or if in an existing hundred were left to the land sales officials of that hundred, and the governor’s signoff on a headright incentive. From that point on the colony would receive no reliable funds from the Company, and in order to pay for the colony’s sustenance and economic development, fees attached to new investment was a major source of income.

That meant whatever investment capital Virginia would attract was its private, distinctive and autonomous character, on the margins of royal or domestic government. The opening for opportunistic and even corrupt action by Virginia officials was huge, and as later said “Virginia officials saw their opportunities–and took them. During this period the provincial government continued its administration and filled in several of the missing gaps to develop its capacity: a more robust local government was created, and an expanded capacity, taxation, for example was added to the provincial government. Tobacco spread into new hinterlands, meaning, of course, more plantations—but only a few of any scale sufficient to export in volume. Most plantations are subsistence and immediately adjacent to the larger plantation on which they are dependent for just about everything that matters.

There was as we shall one one major departure from the Virginia Company governance model. The provincial legislature (the Council of State and the House of Burgesses) assumed leadership leaving the royal governor, caught squarely in the middle between London and Jamestown. Jamestown the new capital of Virginia, conducted government affairs, such as they were in this period.

The Burgesses saw itself as the default source of authority, but not legitimacy, as Virginia’s domestic sovereign. Elected, they could speak for those that elected them, but Virginia’s sovereign was its divine right king. The Council of State was a bit more complex. Owing its existence to the Greate Charter, it had developed its own procedures and independence during the Company period. They carried over into the pre-1629 Transition period and that blurred the independence and power of the royal governor. In 1629-30 that blurring and the informal partnership between governors who were former Company officials and the Council broke down and polarization followed. Accordingly, if the Burgesses were the more cautious branch, the Council of State in these years was in practice co-equal with the Royal Governor–who, of course, was the agent of their appointment. Until Harvey, this assemblage of governmental units were populated with resident Virginians. most of which were former Company officials, or hundreds investors or their representatives in Virginia.