Rhythm of the Beat 1625-1642: First Migration & Policy System’s Importance to Virginia’s History; Where’s the King?; Shredded Community; Tobacco’s Unique Qualities; and Semi-Anarchy Can Create an Elite
My general purpose in this module series seems simple enough. Describe and elaborate upon the contributions to Virginia’s political and economic development harvested from the 1624-1642 Transition Period.
The Transition Period starts with the suspension of the Virginia Company charter in favor of royal administration through his appointment of a royal governor to the official appointment of a royal governor, This left the Virginia-based Company institutions and personnel high and dry. The Transition Period ends in the arrival of a new royal governor William Berkeley in 1642. Berkeley because is important because in the interim eight governors held office during the seventeen years, with one, Governor Wyatt, in charge in 1625 and in 1641—he made a sandwich out of the Transition Period.
What I think is most remarkable is that the two most important, and most impactful Virginia leaders of this period—and the twenty years to follow (William Claiborne and Samuel Mathews)–were undoubtedly the real leaders of the colony, but neither ever served as governor. For instance, Governor Wyatt left only because Berkeley paid his price for resigning–negotiated as part of a larger deal by Samuel Mathews. Sounds promising doesn’t it? Where’s the King in all this? Why I think this behind the scenes leadership pattern is worth comment is that “broker-style” and machine politics will be characteristic of much of Virginia’s political and policy system history. I will not speculate why at this point in the history, but I can’t let it pass unnoticed.
Royal governors appointed during the transition period were either loyal mostly to Virginia’s Council of State, or to the King, in which case (he) was fired. Virginia had a tough time digesting governors ho were loyal to the King. provincial executive was an exceedingly fascinating but troubled affair. This was a rocky period indeed. This isn’t the way a colony is supposed to be governed. Berkeley was able to purchase his office because a deal had been worked out with the Council of State and the Privy Council-King—just in time for the King to muster his army and begin formally the English Civil War. He lost, of course, and in 1649 he had his head chopped off. That isn’t supposed to happen either. Somebody’s not reading the instruction manual.
On top of this, there were a lot of “moving parts” creating dynamics that went every which way. New colonies were being carved out of the Atlantic coast, religious and national wars disrupted Atlantic trade and England’s colonies’ settlement, and England was drifting, in spasms, toward the most significant period in its history: the English Civil War. In spite of all this disruption and dysfunctionality a lot of work got done in Virginia.
The Transition Period was when my proverbial Virginia “twig” got planted officially in Virginia, No sooner planted than a cattle stampede of issues, dynamics and personalities proceeded to bent it significantly. In this module series I will make the case that at least four fundamental pillars of Virginia’s colonial political and economic development were “installed”. If you want to continue this twig and tree thing, then four different “roots” wove their way into Virginia’s soil (or swamp if you prefer) in this turbulent, but horrendously important decade and a half.
- Embedded the plantation-based tobacco export monoculture and economic base
- Created a geographic settlement pattern that I called the “shredded community”, a pattern that compelled a distinct “tilt” in Virginia governance that empowered and relied upon local government, the county in particular, transforming that lower level of government is the powerhouse of Virginia’s policy system and cementing the plantation as its basic unit of economy. Also, combined with the struggle regarding the gubernatorial executive that led to a serious weakening of that key office set up Virginia’s first non-corporate policy system;
- Set a tone/behavior pattern for provincial government that was set in stone during the next seventy-five years, challenged severely by Bacon’s Rebellion (1675-6), and regrouped to jell into a second policy system in the early 1700’s. More on that in later module series.
- Embedded an almost structural inequality into Virginia’s political, workforce, and social system. That profoundly unequal distribution of power, wealth and status, sustained an oligarchic elite, that reacting to a rebellion led by Bacon, jettisoned its previous form of inequality (indenture contract) in favor of black slavery. So strong was the inequality embedded into Virginia’s policy and economic systems that this horrible transformation did not empower, in any significant way, the former indentured servant, leaving them engaged in a subsistence economy still dependent on the plantation owner, and greatly deferential in the political order, and set in discordant rivalry-fear of the chained black slave—both of which injected a negative force threatening the stability of that policy system.
Virginia’s First Policy System: the First Migration and Virginia’s First Policy System
It is the formation of Virginia’s First Policy System, the development of its elite groupings, the steamroller-like expansion of the tobacco monoculture through the Tidewater—evicting and warring with the Powhatan as they pushed deeper in Virginia’s coastal hinterland—and the disruption that followed the birth of Maryland, the settlement of New England, and the Dutch trading colony at New York City that impacted the birth of that policy system.
The battleground of each of these fundamental dynamics or forces was fought during the 1630’s. That battleground was pretty much finished by 1639 (excepting Maryland) when an agreement among the parties, including the King, set the parameters for that new policy system, and made the deals that consented to its new leadership, a leadership that took formal office with newly appointed Governor William Berkeley in 1642. That new period will be tacked in the next module series to follow—and what a crazy tumultuous module series that will be.
Crib Sheet For this Module Series: Underlying Dynamics at Play in this Module Series
Having fought, hopefully successfully, the battle to include this time period in our history of Virginia, I would provide some insight to the reader how to best follow this interesting, important, but frankly confusing decade and a half between 1625 and 1639.
Each dynamic is simple enough when considered in isolation from the others, but I believe strongly their interaction with each other is central to how the final outputs were produced. Events triggered several dynamics and the many moving parts turned on and off affecting decision-making overlapped several moving parts-dynamics. If the trigger had not been pulled, things could easily have worked out differently.
Part of the reason why this decade is both complex and a bit confusing is that the different policy actors and institutions were so young, weak, fragile, underdeveloped as political institutions while the occupants who held their offices and structures of authority were wild, greedy, ambitious, often violent—worse coarse—and dedicated enemies of the Powhattan tribe. The political structures they used were mere vehicles driven by individuals who followed their own value systems, instincts, and whatever it was they wanted at the time. Sort of what you see in a “Dodgem’ amusement park ride. At the end of this module series, I suspect many a reader will come to believe the dodgem amusement part metaphor was pretty on target.
In any case, below are several explanatory observations on several dynamics and critical background drivers that will be encountered in the series. Let’s introduce several of these dynamics, by way of giving the reader some sense of direction and reference point by which to wade through the modules in the series.
Blame it on the King: Another issue was the new young king Charles I, did not share his father’s views regarding the importance of colonization. He had other priorities and agendas. Virginia was pushed off to the margins of English and Court politics. Charles took over when his father prematurely died in 1625, and he was not officially crowned to early 1626. In that he too was thought of as Scottish, everybody in the Court was maneuvering and looking for an angle. Charles had a “commitment” problem with Virginia, and he kept postponing any final decision of the structure of Virginia’s government. He did not clarify the parameters of Virginia’s government, provide any legitimacy or authority to Virginia’s political structures and institutions, and most critically, failed to affirm the decisions of the failed Virginia Company. He administered Virginia through a Privy Council, and that too had its issues.
Indeed, the King used the colonies to offload religious troublemakers, whack at his important ally, Holland (who had founded New York), and extend his fledgling empire, as he did with the Irish Ulster Plantation. More to the concern of this module series, he also granted a colony charter to raise funds for his Court expenses. Maryland will play a prominent role in this series.
Off to the sidelines the Pilgrims and Puritans of Massachusetts and New England, were founded by the Virginia Company subsidiary joint stock corporation that had attempted a colony in 1607 at Sagadahoc. They were slightly more successful in this period, and the disruption these Pilgrims and Puritans caused Virginia was nettlesome, but as well shall see, several Virginians, along with some affluent London investors, saw an angle to make money—and that will consume far too many pages of this novel, i.e. mini series.
Perhaps more subtle a problem was the King’s failure to clarify the parameters of Virginia’s governing institutions including the legal validity of any decision the Virginia Company had made in its seventeen years meant that no one, seriously no one, in Virginia had any security they legally owned the land they had purchased or had granted to them by the Company. Piled on top of that. the Company headright incentive system had granted them incentives to purchase an indentured servant workforce, and tobacco had to be exported to England by law, meant they felt extraordinarily vulnerable. In their mind, Virginians felt, perhaps with some exaggeration, they were a King’s decision away from being homeless and broke. This insecurity lasted until 1634, when a partial decision was made, and finally in 1639 when he agreed to the the key elements of a deal with the Council of State that led to Berkeley making a deal to Governor Wyatt that the latter couldn’t refuse. More on that later.
Say it in the language of Covid, during this Transition Period Virginians were anxious, ofttimes depressed, and at some points scared. Rich, poor, or indentured they were insecure, and resentful that they were being acted upon by outside forces. This shared fear and insecurity between elite and non-elites id create, somewhat, a united front effect in the elites reaction to the English goings on. As I have hinted, the Wild Bunch that infested Virginia took matters into their own hands, and logically, Virginians would inject themselves into English policy-making to affect those decision, or at minimum get out of England what approvals needed to accomplish their own personal goals.
This insecurity regarding the King’s rule over Virginia cast an emotional tone to the politics, economics of the period, and to some extent it also saturated the emotional well-being of the entire of Virginia’s population, Stressing the white English did little to alleviate their stress with Native Americans, and so Native Americans also, were stressed. When commentators look back they often refer to this period as semi-anarchistic—and there is some truth in this. But even given the unsavory nature and behavior of the Virginia elites, the lack of clearly defined authority mobilized all to get what they could out of a vacuum that was authoritative decision-making in Virginia. Yes, the Wild Bunch were wild, but there were no real speed bumps or checks to their ambitions and usually to their actions. The firing of Governor Harvey and the arrest of former Governor Potts for, among other things, horse stealing, are not without its semi-farcical moments, but there is much at stake in these shenanigans—and I will take considerable time to demonstrate how they permeated into the policy system that emerged with this.
the “power” of the Shredded Community–Given that Virginians, as T. H. Breen has correctly argued, were extremely individualistic, and since the colony was a shredded isolated set of vulnerable communities-plantations scattered defenselessly throughout the Tidewater, no one had any real control over the decisions of these individuals or even the isolated settlements and remote homesteads in which they lived their day-to-day lives. Incredibly, cultivated autonomy, and pretty much did what they wanted to do at the moment—and that meant the rich and powerful among them (and these are relative distinctions because no one in Virginia during the 1630’s was really “rich and powerful” by English standards) could rule with impunity so long as they controlled the sources of force and compulsion in their isolated settlement. In the short run conformity ruled, and those that could headed out to “cultivate their autonomy”.
To my mind Virginia, if any place in the English system, could be described as being a “war of all, against all”, and many Virginians, if able, set up a household in very remote areas that granted them a measure of autonomy—even at the risk of Indian attack and torture. So free holder, tobacco entrepreneur, renter, indentured servant, and newbie immigrant took their chances with swamp fever, summer sickness and Indian attack and set themselves apart from the arbitrary world of the shredded Tidewater settlement. It all worked, sort of, even for the Powhatan Confederation which were also a set of isolated shredded tribal settlements attempting to keep their distance from their Native American czar. That meant, the Indians, who vastly outnumbered the white Europeans, did not employ the strength of their numbers in coordinated attack until 1646.
This shredded community “thing” is so important in explaining why things were as they were, and why final actions led to the results they did, that we shall discuss this first in our module series—and the reader should take it seriously. If you want to know the single most important thing that made 1630 Virginia into contemporary Virginia, it has to start with the shredded community. That means, despite each of these social economic and political dynamics I have mentioned to this point, the real underlying atmosphere of policy and individual decision-making ultimately rested on the interplay and interaction within these shredded communities. If you are wondering how Virginia became very decentralized, with a tilt to the local level of government evolving, the noisy background music to this was the shredded community. The music provided by the shreded community encouraged Virginians to dance into the export tobacco monoculture.
There is no doubt in my mind, for whatever that is worth, that tobacco played a huge role in the evolution of Virginia. As we shall see there will be all sorts of large plantations set up in English colonial America during the seventeenth century, and while they certainly dispersed the settlement pattern noticeably, and set up an alternative to a diverse publicly owned community managed by a “municipal corporation”, plantations weakened urbanization. But plantations did not kill it altogether, and each colony was able to develop a port city. Because of the nature of a “tobacco” plantation, however, Virginia did not do so.
What this free-for-all, decentralized to the point of near pure privatism, set the character of the policy-making processes that resulted from its simple existence and operation. In the “privatized” policy sytem in operation, individual plantations of any size could produce and sell mostly on their volition and terms; regulation by the province was minimal—and the extent any provincial decision woud or could be implemented or enforced is anybody’s guess, as few record remain to be accessed today. In the Transition Period, several attempts were made to take on the tobacco monoculture, but to little avail or success. A more lasting consequence was the Tidewater was settled, dotted with numerous estates and small plantations, without any serious effort to promote urban centers—or a centralized port city. Virginians, even a half-century later lamented this failure—but it was as “it was”.
The force that drive Tidewater settlement in the Transition Period was the tobacco export price, at least to 1630; from that price came the mélange, the aggregation of individual decisions that granted to tobacco the power of gold; it was the only authority that all Virginians could accept. Individual decision-making that transformed tobacco into the equivalent of an agricultural form of gold, and tobacco became the literal currency of the economy. Between tobacco and free labor everything was bought and sold. Tobacco was the only logical way to make money and survive in Virginia. Once caught up with it, it was hard to escape it—until it became the only game in town. This is largely the fault of the Virginia Company, and its resident domestic company officials who led the tobacco parade, and structured Virginia’s indentured workforce around it. They became, for the most part, the elite of Virginia’s First Policy System.
Slow to embrace the London’s Company efforts to diversify, these resident company officials invested their time and public management in ways that benefited their own tobacco plantations, and personal estates. When their contracts expired, the former indentured servants had skills limited to tobacco—and not surprisingly they tried them out. It is likely the nature of their indenture and class configuration of indentured servants did not foster non-tobacco entrepreneurism.
Tobacco Unique Qualities as an Agricultural Crop–Tobacco had peculiar qualities that other crops like rice, or most especially wheat and corn, did not have; tobacco was easy to grow, almost a weed, and its impact on soil nutrition was huge-exhausting the soil in a few (five) years. With low barriers to entry, almost anyone could grow tobacco, almost wherever they chose; but in five years they had to move on to a new field. That was ok so long as the price of a barrel of tobacco was high—and in the 1620’s it was. The price, however, collapsed in the 1630’s, and the reaction of tobacco planters to depressed prices only enhanced the production of tobacco and expand settlement further into the interior, i.e., the shredded community on steroids.
Expansion deeper into the Tidewater therefore, was an almost automatic response to the tobacco depression—and an inevitable stimulant to poor Indian relations. The instinctive reaction was to produce more tobacco, and sell it, so to keep up the income flow that sustained life and the homestead. Larger plantation owners, less subsistence by nature, were able to recognize they were making their situation worse, and they began to assert themselves to offer solutions. That is the story which leads to the formation of an elite of large plantation owners. That, and a threat, from a group of rogue planation owners, the Claiborne Clique, that had a more radical idea on how the Virginian should develop—away from tobacco. But that story, an important and powerful one, will be disruptive to the course of Virginia history, and will result in decades of misplaced adventures that, in the end, were a cul-de-sac, leaving the tobacco plantation still the only game in town. A second migration would pick up from there.
But the peculiar qualities of tobacco when combined with the Tidewater shredded community set up the preconditions for the development of a grossly unequal and non-competitive concentration of ownership that constituted a pillar of power to any individual who could set up a pier on a river of consequence, access investment and export factoring, and begin to set up an export and import center on a mini scale on their river-fronted plantation. In Virginia the ocean-going vessel could sidle up to the individual plantation and drop off exports and imports—that meant the pier was an important source of power and discretionary income to the owner of the plantation.
The owner of a large plantation by dint of his scale of export could obtain better prices, access financial investment, and set himself up as the conduit for the smaller tobacco plantations and individual homesteads in his immediate area. This in practical terms remarkably evolved into an American version of an old-style English manor system. Thank you, Virginia Company. We shall later see in other colonies that wheat (and indigo), for example, did not have this effect, and crops that served self-sufficiency until produced in such volumes they could be exported, did not. Both developed port cities and urban concentrations. Ironically, the settlement of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley also demonstrated the consequences of tobacco as the primary export crop..
Formation of the First Migration-First Policy System Elite in a Semi-Anarchistic Era –The next dynamic or in this case “theme” developed in this module series is the formation of the different groupings of elites in Virginia—and by necessity, the forging of an overwhelmingly large “mass” of non-elite groupings who cohabited the fringes of policy making, but on occasion was so anomic and noisy in this rough and tumbled shredded community hinterland that they actually set the tone and occasionally provided some muscle to certain policies. This is most true of relations with the Powhatan, but also impacted the development of the institutions associated with local government.
That theme will be developed over several modules. We might also keep in mind that at the same time Virginians are evolving, the town democracy of Massachusetts is also evolving. In 1630 Religion matters. The role of the Puritan church and religion did play a check and balance on the government, and that difference is critical in understanding why these two states will evolve differently. Virginia’s Anglican religious base unified church and state, the Church of England, Salaries of the clergy were paid by the government (in Jamestown mostly) in tobacco.
The English Anglican Church was by its organizational nature managed by the King, and his official leadership clergy, and its lower-level parish clergy by a local vestry (council), and, in America, by a very remote, and inattentive, central English hierarchy meant that Virginia’s church and state were fused. Religious dissent became confused with patriotism and loyalty to the king. Here, I believe, the shredded community permitted more autonomy for dissident factions of English Protestantism, Puritans were more tolerated, and less so for Quakers. Catholics, as we shall see, are another matter.
There was little in the sense of a “firewall” that existed in a shredded community that forced the newly forming elites to share power and status with dependent “others”. The vestry was easily dominated by the large plantation owners in the parish, and research has demonstrated that the church was also used as a means of their maintaining order and stability in local politics and social life. There was no John Winthrop bellowing on about his “City on a Hill” (1629) thing. The Anglican Church in Virginia went down its own path, and that too had its short and long-term implications.
The Anglican parish in its way danced to the music of the shredded community—which given the religious tumult which commenced in 1634 England’s Archbishop Laud’s Commission, Virginia was able to mute aspects of the English Civil War against Puritanism, and instead was fully able to focus on the hostile Catholics settling in to their north. Groupings of Virginia’s plantation elite were able to drift toward Puritanism over the next two decades, and that opened for them new opportunities that became manifest in the 1650’s.
That brings us into the formation of different groupings of elites that, in aggregate, comprise the First Policy System elite. This is so critical it demand its own separate discussion in the next module.
Ron W. Coan 