William Claiborne, the Claiborne Clique, Brenner’s New Men and the Kent Island Pivot to Trade and Finance away from the Tobacco Monoculture
Prelude to the Kent Island initiative: Brenner’s New Men Integrated into the Transition from Virginia Company to the Kent Island Proposal
This module centers on the Kent Island initiative through its conceptualization, design and early approval and its initial settlement in 1631, Several core themes or dynamics underlie the historical narrative that outlines that initiative: the elites which developed during the transition from 1622 through to 1630; their fusion with members of Brenner’s New Men, and their joint effort-partnership in establishing the first settlement, trading hub, at Kent Island in 1631. This initiative, so transformational that had it been successful would have installed an alternate history for Virginia-and with only slight exaggeration, the English North American colonization. What happened to this initiative after 1631 will be discussed in several modules to follow.
Because this module’s principal concern is to understand Virginia colonial political and economic development, I was reluctant to delve too deeply in how the Virginia Company, its collapse, and its transition to royal administration after 1624 provided an opportunity, if not a stage for the entry of a new generation of English colonial investors to seize a foothold in financing English colonization. That story is important–it sheds a new light on how the politics of the collapsing Virginia Company was itself a tale in the evolution and shifts of English colonial investment, but in the larger more path-breaking evolution of English-British capitalism. That is the story Brenner is telling, but it is far too large and too distracting for our focus in this module.
Accordingly, in this mini-module series I offer an optional module which the reader if he or she so desire may glimpse into these neglected dimensions. The optional module, entitled “Follow the Money: Formation of An Elite Faction–Brenner’s ‘New Men’ & Virginia’s Contribution to the Evolution of English Modern Capitalism. The reader is invited to consider it at their own inspiration and need to understand more deeply the fundamental path followed by English investors in England’s North American colonial experiment. In my mind, “Follow the Money” offers the reader an opportunity to bridge the traditional and conventional paradigms of American historians of this period. Its political-economic bias departs from an almost singular focus on American colonial political and civil liberties development that led to Americans 1776 and 1789 path of exceptionalism, a bastion of democracy, freedom, and liberty. Our path is more poorly hacked, less exciting, but the view is great and what it reveals of the “lay of the land in English colonization” is, I think, mind-opening.
As an opening to this module, and brief summary of a major observation from Follow the Money, the extended summary made by Brenner himself, will open up this Kent Island module by revealing who the main authors of this strategy were–in a larger sense–and at the same time follow up on a previous module in this mini-series which develops the Virginia post-transition domestic elite:
… in plantation development in early Virginia, the distinction between merchant and planter tended to be blurred: merchants took up plantations, planters became merchants, and all sorts of merchant-planter partnerships were formed …especially true at the top level of society, for in order to market large amounts of tobacco, it was generally necessary to combine plantation ownership with a trade. As a result the Virginia councilor elite [members of the Council of State] … became closely connected with the greatest merchants in the field [at that time]. The natural commercial bond between councilors and merchants was moreover strengthened as a result of their complementary resources. The planter-councilor … had privileged access to the colony’s most desirable economic opportunities; the merchant could supply the capital and entrepreneurship needed to exploit these successfully. In consequence, from very early on, the leading merchants and chief councilors… constituted the most powerful force in Virginia’s early development
[99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 116-17
For Brenner the first half-decade of the 1630’s was a battleground between contentious groups in London and Virginia. That seems a departure from our earlier module; it isn’t. Previously we outlined how the Virginia domestic merchant-planters, mostly company officials, plantation conquistadors, and free-standing émigré entrepreneurs who somehow gained access into the closed post-1622 oligarchy, set up the “councilor” state to which Brenner calls our attention. So having outline how his ‘councilor’ state developed, we now moved to describing what it did. Our first topic, an interesting one, is the formation of a minority elite group that pressed its advantage within the Council of State. The interesting feature of the group was what it advocated for: a redirection of Virginia’s economic base, and their leadership, indeed monopoly over it.
In subsequent modules, centered about “the land”, described as the shredded community created by Virginia’s coastal Tidewater river system and the bulldozer spread of tobacco, that laid the foundation for the infamous Virginia tobacco monoculture–a monoculture defining how we view colonial, if not Early Republic, Virginia to this day. The plantation was Virginia’s core economic, political, and social unit, and the county became the political structural vehicle linking locals to the provincial policy system.
This module’s basic storyline is the Kent Island initiative. Largely conceived by a sub-grouping of Virginia’s Council of State, the initiative attempted to fill in the vacuum created by the Virginia Company’s 1624-5 debacle. The fault line in the initiative was that it reverted back to the very early Jamestown strategy dilemma of whether the colony should pursue a “trading factory”, East India Company strategy, or as the Virginia Company had decided to do, design and implement a permanent settlement strategy.
The elite sub-group elected for the former, and accordingly one can best understand their initiative as a private one, to achieve their personal ambitions and profit–not as a Virginia provincial initiative. The problem, however, was its objectives and organizational structure exacted profound implications and consequences on the colony, its resident elite, and its tobacco plantation economic base–and hence by extension on its policy system as well. Viewed from the perspective of most Virginian planters, the initiative was seen as a coup.
We will develop the initiative more fully below, but to introduce the initiative the reader should understand that the Kent Island project struck at the heart of how the tobacco monoculture harnessed its financing for both export and settlement. We are “following the money” of the tobacco monoculture in 1630. The story below certainly describes the “who” and the “how” behind the Kent Island initiative, we need to first step back a bit and suggest that in a raw sense the project’s advocates wanted the North American equivalent of the East India Company–a joint stock corporation that had monopoly over the East Indies for a trading factory strategy. The tension within it, however, was the latter did not involve itself in settlement whatso ever; in North America that option was not possible. By its nature North America had already become a settlement opportunity for English, Scots and Welsh, if not Irish –and that was the second prong of the Kent Island strategy–it attempted to bridge the two strategies for even greater profits.
If the Kent Island advocates had attempted the trading factory strategy alone, I would suggest it was the first expression of what will be–within a half a century– the very successful Hudson Bay Company. That element of the strategy was based on trading, fur trading with, and by, the Native Americans; secondarily it pursued resource, timber and mineral exports as well. The second strategy, however, was to “supply” the settlers with their needs and wants. If the first strategy worked cooperatively with the Native Americans, the second was perceived to make serfs of the settlers–not a very good idea. Equally bad, it made the Kent Island group a corporation with a “Magazine” that could and likely would exploit the plantation owner–not a good idea either.
Moving on and building upon the interaction of mid 1620’s economic and political development, we can see the Kent Island initiative is a rival alternative to tobacco, and the monoculture; it would like give rise to a differently configured elite than the uncomplex dominance of tobacco plantation owners. If the elite-sub-group which we focus on in this module had been successful–and they were not, after thirty years of trying–than we could think of subsequent Virginia history in terms that would have rendered our contemporary paradigm as alternative history. Almost certainly a different policy system would have evolved–and as we shall see the Kent Island initiative would have not included other colonies to develop within the Virginia boundaries. Thus it would have been a rather fundamental bending of the twig–and we discuss it because the initiative was not a foregone affair, an idea that never stood a chance. It nearly, in one form or another, achieved success.
Accordingly, an important element in the story retold below is my belief that it suggests that Virginia’s reliance and dependence of the tobacco monoculture did not HAVE to happen; the evolution toward the monoculture while facilitated by tobacco, coastal Virginia topography, and the shredded community was not inevitable. In its childhood, that monoculture could have been disrupted, and was, by the Claiborne Clique Kent Island initiative. That the initiative did not succeed in large measure was the effect of Stuart-era politics and policy-making which crippled the initiative and then the Civil War killed it.
A Comment Regarding early Colonial Policy-making– Finally, before I launch into my tale of the Kent Island initiative, the reader will encounter a style of policy-making that is very distinctive to this period, but will continue through to the Revolution. The politics and policy-making style dominant in the pre–and post–Civil War period was heaving laden with personalism, the King’s fiscal dilemma, the Parliament’s resistance to an unchecked royal divine right authority–and the growing role of religious polarization. The colonial agenda ebbed and flowed, especially with Charles I, and delegation to the Privy Council created a process of multiple fracture points.
Domestic policy-making, full of its own issues, biases, and land-grubbing conquistadors, also had the wilderness, starvation and disease, and the Powhatan as its priorates. Not surprisingly the Kent Island policy process was to be a hybrid of these two wonderful but non-convergent agendas, internal dynamics, and inconsistencies. Also, a lag between the two axis, inevitable due to the Atlantic, meant given an inconsistent London attention to Virginia affairs, that Virginia domestic decisionmakers could “game” London’s policy process.
A great deal of this case study involves these games because the ultimate decision was London’s–and whether that decision would carry any weight with the Virginia domestic elites could never be taken for granted. Finally, that hybrid decision-making, particular at the London axis, was highly influenced by the social status and access to the King of the various players. One of the most interesting features of the Kent Island initiative is that it played out in a power vacuum in which the previous masters of colonial trade and policy, the various wings of the merchant adventurer trading group, was leaving North American colonialization in favor of East Indies and West Indies. In that vacuum a new generation of merchants would be able to compete and access the royal decision-making corridors. Watch as we show who this new merchant elite worked out its business model in Virginia, using the Kent Island initiative as a principal learning experiment
Background Factors Significantly Affecting the Kent Island Initiative
As it was, this thirty year attempt did manage to noticeably bend the Virginia twig, by solidifying changes in Virginia’s institutional development, and, in the dog that did not bark tradition, continuing the decentralization of that policy system, the tradition of weak executive power in favor of broker political management, and leaving just enough room for local elites to install themselves into the development of a new political institution: the Assembly, or the House of Burgesses. In the meantime, the tobacco monoculture sailed merrily on, up and down Virginia’s rivers to London and English ports.
As such I have come to the belief this five year period laid the foundation for the consensus, political structures and institutions and policies that constituted Virginia’s economic and political development paradigm through 1980. In any case, the noise the reader hears, is not her stomach growling, but England moving, seemingly inevitably, into the most impactful period in her history since William the Conqueror, the English Civil War, which try as one might to make a war fought for democracy, representative government, and civil freedoms, is more a war that fleshes out the Protestant Reformation in England. There is a great deal of flux and transition in London caused by the King’s step back from the Virginia Company colonial leadership. In that vacuum Virginia often got lost in the shuffle.
Religious-based disruption enters into colonial politics, immigration, and political life in this period and after–it will play a very large role in later modules concerning the Kent Island initiative. By tracing the religious impact on Brenner’s merchant-planter-councilor coalition we can see the thread that allows Virginia to cope with the parade of English policy systems that follow the events of the Civil War until the Restoration in 1661. Religious disruption will also go a long way in explaining the differences between Massachusetts, Maryland, and Virginia, each of which are colonies that took form during this period. Colonial America by the 1630’s is a bit more complicated, and inter colonial interaction, especially in London, will complicate the story we tell.
We will see in our discussion of this awkward turn in Virginia elite political development that it drew upon an expanded notion of Virginia that included New England, and, in my view, was a near-successful effort to form and institutionalize a North American counterpart to the East India Company–a, as it turned out premature, expanded version of the more well-known Hudson Bay Company. Blame George Calvert and Maryland for sandbagging that historical alternative. While the reader may at this point be trembling at the prospect of coping with so many moving parts, keep in mind the serenity of the tobacco monoculture which just “keeps “rollin’ along”.
the Kent Island Narrative
The Kent Island catalyst is William Claiborne, with William Tucker, and a behind-the-scenes push from Samuel Mathews adding their skills, contacts, and support. Abroad, the inspiration and the big bucks is Maurice Thompson and William Cloberry. Our story begins with a description of Claiborne, and will as the narrative proceeds, introduce the other main players as well. The timeline of the module is 1626 through 1630 regarding Virginia, and extending the discussion to include London politics and dynamics into 1632. There will be a separate modules that will deal with Virginian domestic politics after 1630. We will include Kent Island in those modules.
William Claiborne
I introduced Claiborne as one of Edwin Sandys “new regime” which replaced Yeardley with Governor Francis Wyatt, Sandy’s brother George as Colony Secretary, and a small number of other officials and who would implement initiatives associated with the 1619 Greate Charter. One of those other officials, on board with Wyatt, was twenty-one (or so) year old William Claiborne, who was described as “a gentleman” familiar with the art of surveying. Claiborne was the center of focus, the catalyst and the protagonist of what will be the initiative that launched an almost thirty year dispute, war, and chronic conflict with the Maryland colony.
Born in Kent, England in 1600, he attended and finished his education at Cambridge (its Pembroke College) in 1621 when he was hired by the Virginia Company. William Claiborne is the typical second son of a successful first generation English gentry of that time period. William Claiborne, son of a Lord-Mayor of Norfolk (England), also a merchant engaged in a number of commercial ventures. William’s mother was a descendent of a London brewer. Dad and son were investors in the Virginia Company.
His father and grandfather engaged in a variety of shipping and small industrial enterprises–the manufacture of sale and Icelandic fishing among others–and both held the office of alderman and lord mayor of Kings Lynn [Norfolk] during the last quarter of the sixteenth century. In 1598, Claiborne’s father, Thomas, married the daughter of a London brewer and moved to a county house in Crayford, Kent, where both of his sons were born. Despite his civic prominence and social situation, Thomas Claiborne does not appear to have been a very wealthy man. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 121
As such it was off to America to seek his fortune, his path somewhat prompted by the turbulence and disruption of English demography in tension with early seventeen century economy and divine right medieval royal policy system. Claiborne is part of my introduction to a new generation of merchants whose importance to Virginia and the thirteen colonies overlaps their role in the evolution of England’s development into modern finance-trade capitalism and the future Industrial Revolution. It is so ironic their major impact for Virginia will be the persistence of its tobacco-export monoculture.
Claiborne was, as I frequently put it, well-born. Related to Captain Nathaniel Butler, the governor of Bermuda (Virginia Company’s sister corporation), he was not only a shareholder as was his father, but well-connected with Virginia Company’s internal politics. [99] See Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders (Verso, 2003), p, 115. Butler was closely associated with the Earl of Warwick faction, and Butler was a noted privateer. At this point, after ousting Smythe, Warwick was drifting back to his despised enemy in frustration with Sandys.
As such Claiborne had a path into both factions of company politics in its last days. Claiborne was quite able to mix it up in London society and court politics. Historians who dismiss these men who dominated the First Migration as thuggish conquistadors of low status, greedy ambitious, rapacious plantation owners without value, morals or social class, might be surprised that the First Migration leadership readily “worked” the King’s court and Parliamentary politics; they could influence London decision-making circles, and as the movement to civil war picked up steam, they proved they could maneuver around the factions while keeping their balance on protecting their interests and those of Virginia as they defined them. Even if unsuccessful in London they learned quickly they could ignore its decisions in the power vacuum that was the Civil War.
The policy system and the Virginia economy under the First Migration elite endured and continued to evolve–in large measure because they were able to rely on the New Men, their financing and “boldness” to sustain their private fiscal situation over the decades that followed. As we follow Claiborne’s footsteps over the next nearly forty years, the young man that walked the pier in 1621 proved able to blend his Virginia affairs with the destinies of those who engaged in the politics that lead to the Civil War, and the Civil War itself. Sadly, to be sure, they did not meet the expectations of an elite predisposed to democratic values and actions, but instead were driven by profit, and an obsessive insensitivity to those who stood in their path.
When he stepped walked down the Jamestown pier-a young affluent on the make in the New World–one suspects he had inherited some of his uncle’s adventurous streak. His several months on board ship with Governor Wyatt, however, didn’t hurt his future prospects, and likely overcame any impact from Warwick’s activities in company affairs. At that time Claiborne was formally an Anglican, but one with distinct leanings to Puritanism.
If the reader will recall, I introduced Claiborne as being one of Edwin Sandys “new regime” that replaced Yeardley with Governor Francis Wyatt, Sandy’s brother George as Colony Secretary, and a small number of other officials and who would implement initiatives associated with the 1619 Greate Charter. One of those other officials, on board with Wyatt, was twenty-one (or so) year old William Claiborne, who was described as “a gentleman” familiar with the art of surveying.
William arrived in Virginia in 1621. Appointed the colony’s land surveyor, a position which included a 200 acre grant and a salary of 30 pounds per year. By the nature of his position, Claiborne was a company man, who also enjoyed the right to charge fees for his services which were required to file a title claim for land and headright. Being a surveyor, in a wilderness where land sales was the path to wealth, and land settlement an aspirational goal of all, Claiborne’s appointment as the colony’s chief surveyor was like being a bartender in a neighborhood with only one bar; sooner or later you got hired by everybody. Moreover, anytime you wanted to build something, a fort or a pier, or construct a map, you could use his design services. A hundred and thirty years later, George Washington would build his wealth around his surveyor business, constructing a frontier real estate empire, and a rolodex that proved essential in his later political life. He followed Claiborne’s footsteps.
Claiborne no sooner set up shop when the March 1622 Indian Massacre occurred. Claiborne survived the Massacre, and he did extremely well in surveying reconstruction of plantations devastated by the Indian attack. Hired by Wyatt, Claiborne went from settlement to settlement to plat and construct palisades, forts and whatever else was required in those desperate times. Since immigrants still arrived during the Second Powhatan War, Claiborne platted their land titles and sales agreements–all of which paid him fees. By 1625 he owned about 1,100 acres. In short, the Indian war did not inhibit his accumulation of land, wealth and status, and his central position-occupation ensured his entry into the oligarchy forming during this period.
Claiborne’s role in conducting Jamestown’s first urban renewal in 1625, in which in true urban renewal style Claiborne set the plan for Jamestown’s outside the palisade new suburb, suitably named “New Towne”; it soon became the home of the province’s elite. He was appointed by the Crown in 1626 as the colony’s Secretary of State. He was appointed to the Council of State as well (Brenner says as early as 1624, p. 121). By 1630, on the basis of poundage export of 8,500 pounds of tobacco, Claiborne was in the top ten tobacco exporters. Wertenbaker also calls attention that Claiborne was a “dealer in [indentured] servants and reaped from the business very large profits [99] T. J. Wertenbaker, the Planters of Colonial Virginia, p. 18.
Over the next four years, Claiborne brokered additional headright grants that brought him an additional 1,100 acres. To add to his charm, Claiborne commanded an expedition against Opechancanough’s Pamunkey capital in 1629. Apparently wildly successful, he gained some military experience and standing as an Indian fighter. It certainly established his “creds” with tribes hostile to the Powhatan. As the reader might notice, by that time, Claiborne had ticked off all the checkmarks needed to be a plantation conquistador.
Appointed to the Company Governor’s Council in 1624, he survived politics associated with the fall of the Company, retaining his position in Charles’s first Council of State. Roper asserts that specific planters, Mathews and Claiborne, and Governor Wyatt by name, developed close ties to Earl of Dorset, who presided over the series of entities that corralled the Virginia Company into its 1624 receivership. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, p. 19. His ascendency to the Council, and his success on the Council strongly suggest leadership and political acumen was widely appreciated by the Council and the likely Wyatt. Described by Brenner as Virginia’s most powerful politician at that time, perhaps a bit of an exaggeration, Claiborne. by the time the Kent Island initiative starts in 1626, was a man no longer on the make: rather he was a “made man” at the ripe old age of twenty-six.
A plantation conquistador he was, certainly by 1630.
Early Adventurism (i.e. entrepreneurism)
Claiborne’s skill and expertise in erecting palisades brought him to the attention of Samuel Mathews, who in 1628 advocated to Governor Wyatt a “plan” for “winning … the Forrest”, i.e. the Indian-held hinterland between the James and York rivers–what was to be our “Palisades Project”. Wyatt, had legal problems that stymied his implementation, and soon returned to England, happily, as the King had replaced him with Yeardley.
It is likely, Mathew’s and Claiborne proposal, made directly to the King, occurred after Wyatt been replaced as governor by Yeardley, and following his early demise in 1627. Lost in the flux of the Council’s alliance flux after Yeardley, it reflected more that these two two had seen an opportunity in fur trading in northern Virginia, and sought the closest thing they could get to a monopoly in it from the king. The petition, wrapped in their so-called expressed desire to serve the public interest in the defense of the colony and advancement settlement therein, was always a money-making venture.
Accordingly, the operative lines in the petition requested an advance payment to them by the king of 1,200 pounds, and 100 pounds each year thereafter. Attached to the petition was a supporting letter by Governor Francis Wyatt, who linked his support to the Palisades Project, complete with a permanent attached militia force–which also had to be paid for. [99] T. H. Breen, Puritans and Adventurers, pp. 123-4. The King did not respond to the petitioners, but he did include the Palisades Project as a high priority of his new royal governor, John Harvey. As was the nature of that time, this meant the local domestic plantation conquistadors could go ahead and make their money before the King’s operative took control.
Considering the impact on the schedules of the two petitioners in 1628, a major fur trading trading endeavor more than a hundred miles to the north seems not to have been Mathew’s first priority. Claiborne, considering the centrality of his expeditions of discovery, was likely thinking about fur trade, but he did have ambitions elsewhere as well. But nothing was heard, and these rather ambitious and headstrong adventures, in the spirit of Elon Musk I suspect, moved on and Claiborne pivoted to a major fur trading project. In any event, the alliance of convenience between Mathews and Claiborne sparked a thirty year friendship. It also may have sparked a mutual interest in developing the fur trade in Virginian lands north of the James, stretching to Virginia’s charter borders around the present-day Maryland-Pennsylvania boundaries.
Perhaps, fur trading had always been an interest of the large scale Virginia planters and Claiborne shared their interest, but was tied up with surveying. Others, William Tucker for example, co-commanding Wyatt’s 1623 expedition against the Piscataways and the Nacotchtanks, had “settled trade” with friendly tribes he ran into in the Potomac area [99]. Fleet certainly was an outlier, considerably more interest in fur trade, Fausz, Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 57 the larger Virginia planters were not simply wedded to tobacco; they were wedded to making money and profits. Mathews, whatever his intriguing background in Virginia involved, was also familiar with fur trading and non-Powhatan Indian dialogue without Claiborne’s convincing. In an atmosphere of declining tobacco prices, fur trade, indenture recruiting, and even West Indies adventurer, not to ignore the early slave trade, all had their place in the upscale planter business plan.
Whatever it was, a flurry of activity related to fur trading with tribes around and north of the Potomac Rivers erupted in, and after, 1626. Three adventurers, our Mathews and Claiborne plus a new arrival twenty four year old Henry Fleet set the stage for the Kent initiative.
Mathews in 1626, and again in 1629 secured from the Council of State an annual monopoly for Chesapeake Bay fur and corn trading. In 1626, his friend William Claiborne was awarded by the Council a similar monopoly for captured Indian guides; they served as his explorers and negotiators in expeditions of discovery conducted under monopolistic commission of fur and trade which he obtained from the Council in 1627 and renewed through 1632. [99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Eds) (Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 58-9
During the period after 1626, Claiborne was emmeshed in learning how to take advantage of fur trading in the northern lands of Virginia. Fausz claims Claiborne was the first of the oligarchs to shift his attention to fur trading there. Armed with his monopoly on captured Indian guides, and his commissions on discovery he followed up with several “exploratory voyages” previous to 1630. He “came to know the native lands and languages north of the Potomac better than any colonist since his fellow Kentishman Samuel Argall” {Mathew’s likely mentor]. He was the first trader to sign a fur-trading pact with a tribe to the north of the Bay, but within the Virginia borders. Claiborne’s brother, a hat merchant (hosier) in London, traded Virginia furs as early as 1627 [99] See Footnote 20, Fausz, Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 59.
The relevant question is why in 1626 did fur trading become so popular? Claiborne mounted expeditions in 1628 and 1629, with the latter extending north to include “Winstons Island, named by John Smith two decades earlier. Claiborne renamed it Kent Island after his home shire, and determined that it should be his hub for the initiative he was developing. It is likely that with the location of his port-hub determined, Claiborne shifted his attention to the establishment of a settlement there. No doubt, in 1629 he left a few hardy souls behind to start the process, and to complete the negotiations for the land. In short order, he bought it from the relevant tribe
Part of the reason he put his “scheme” in high gear in 1629 was that Virginia was unexpectedly visited by an English Lord, a Catholic one, George Calvert. Whether Calvert was a blabber, or his reason for visiting Virginia so well known, we do not know for sure (the former seems to fit best). Calvert wanted to establish a colony in North America (his most recent attempt in Nova Scotia had just failed), and it was implied, if not stated, that he was looking around and about Virginia for interesting possibilities. Virginia’s charter boundaries were exceedingly large, and one option was to carve out a new colony in its northern, unsettled lands, today’s Maryland. Interestingly Calvert at this time was probably himself more interested in land associated with today’s North Carolina–but as we shall see the King had other ideas.
Calvert’s reception in Virginia was cold indeed. As Manfred Jonas relates “the Virginians realized that Lord Baltimore was seeking the grant of a portion of their land, and wary in any case of ‘Papists’ made his stay [in Virginia] both uncomfortable and short by tendering him [requiring him] to take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy, signifying acceptance of the English Reformation”. One of the men sent to him to take the Oath by order of the Council of State was our William Claiborne, the colony’s Secretary. [99] Manfred Jonas, the Claiborne-Calvert Controversy: an Episode in the Colonization of North America, Jahnbuch fur Amerikastudien Bd, 11 (1966), Universtatsverlag WINTER Gmbh, p. 1
Another likely reason why our Virginia planters were interested in the fur trade, aside from their consummate and compelling drive to make a profit anyway they could, was the market for beaver fur skyrocketed as European demand for hats made from it became the new fashion of the day–a fashion trend that persisted to the Revolution–indeed Franklin’s wearing of that beaver pelt hat seems to have been instrumental in his accessing the French royalty in 1776-7. In essence as early as 1628, the fur trade and the beaver pelt was fast becoming yet another economic gazelle, a cluster in the making, for the young North America.
Also, while the great crisis in the price of Virginia tobacco did not capture historian attention until 1629, the price had declined since 1622; one would suspect London financiers were well aware, and sensitive to, the price of the product in which they invested so that to be lured into a venture in beaver fur trading by the time Claiborne’s plans had matured sufficient for an investment. In short, the fur trading market was ready and willing to buy his goods.
The first opportunity for a Virginia-Potomac area fur trading investment was, however, not Claiborne, but rather Henry Fleet. Fleet, first “on Virginia block” to seek financing for a Virginian beaver trade, demands an introduction because he will play an important role in the Maryland story. Who is Fleet? Like Claiborne (and Maurice Thomason and William Tucker, not to ignore the Sandys’ brothers), originated from Kent England, and he also seemed to be part of Wyatt-Sandys “new regime” that arrived to replace Yeardley in 1621. Then a nineteen year old, Fleet, during the next year was captured by the Anacostan Indians who inhabited the Potomac River area. Spending five years in their captivity, Fleet learned their languages, learned how to trap, and became acquainted with the geography.
After his release, Fleet briefly returned to England, only to return and settled on the Chesapeake Eastern Shore. Immediately he trapped and traded beaver pelts. Setting up a trading and export corporation, Fleet executed a financing deal for this entity with a William Cloberry, a London merchant-trader. Cloberry, who by his mid-twenties, had attached himself to a established and respected merchant adventurer corporation, quickly involved himself in all sorts of North American, West Indies and Virginia tobacco export ventures.
Cloberry was the third son of an armigerous [possessing a heraldic coat of arms, likely Scottish] Devonshire family who had secured his future by becoming first apprenticed to, then business partner of, Humphrey Slaney, one of the most adventurous London merchants of his day, and by marrying Slaney’s daughter” [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 122
Cloberry was actively involved in Slaney’s Canadian, Newfoundland fishing trade [and likely with slave trade in Guinea]. Cloberry also was involved in Virginia tobacco trade as well. Most critical to our story was that Cloberry had entered into a financial relationship with William Alexander–the English Secretary of State for Scotland. In that relationship Cloberry’s financial partner-investor was Alexander; the latter was also involved in Cloberry’s Canadian fur trading as well–all of which previous to 1629.
It was possible that Fleet and Cloberry overlapped when the former was briefly in England around 1627-8. Cloberry, in any case, was Fleet’s “New Men’ financier and “venture capital investor” in Fleet’s pioneering Potomac River venture and fur trading business. Twelve years the elder, Cloberry had pioneered the Virginia fur trade before Claiborne’s initiative.
The important point in this Cloberry finance “tangent” is that we can visibly see, as early as the mid-to-late 1620’s, the impact and activity of Brenner’s New Men of English colonial investment. At literally the same time as the older merchant adventurer class had pulled out of Virginia colonization (with the loss of the Virginia Company charter) we can see the more aggressive of these New Men immediately stepped in to fill their vacuum. It is not clear whether fur trading followed the money, or vice versa, but It is likely the New Men were looking for an opportunity in fur trading. Why?
Fur trading was already alive and well with the Hudson River Dutch, the French were also heavily involved on the St Lawrence in Canada, and New England Puritans were getting involved as well. By this point, fur trading was the place to be–the latter were the ones that Slaney and Cloberry were involved. Indeed, we can see at that pivotal point in the development of the Kent Island initiative, the attention of these New Men, heretofore engaged in a very risky financing of fur trade in Canada (Canada, at this point was held by the English) were ready for a new financing pivot.
In 1628 all had their knees cut out from under them when Charles transferred Canada to France in receipt of his dowry for his French Queen (1628). Sunk money in that northern fur trade, needed some other avenue to save their investment. Whatever the perils of a Chesapeake fur trade funding, it offered a back door to salvage their Canadian, oops French, investment. So a pivot from Canadian investment to English Virginia was quite logical from the New Men perspective at the time. For Claiborne, this timing was good.
Claiborne’s proposal [and/or business plan] for a Chesapeake beaver trade appealed to a particularly aggressive group of individual entrepreneurs who had almost succeeded in conquering and monopolizing the furs of, French Canada. Sir William Alexander, Viscount Stirling [Secretary of State for Scotland] and Puritan merchant William Cloberry helped fund the controversial seizures … of Port Royal, Tadoussac, and Quebec between 1626 and 1629, while Maurice Thompson interloped in the Canadian fur trade through a separate business syndicate [99] Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds“, p. 63.
If so, then what was Claiborne’s business plan?
a Business Plan Takes Shape
Claiborne become enchanted in the period after the Massacre with a more expansive business venture than the tobacco monoculture offered. So while he increased his plantation acreage, his fields of tobacco, he also developed an interest in fur trading. In 1626, perhaps because of his friendship with Mathews, he acted on it more aggressively; in that year and the years after he explored and opened up areas north of the Potomac River–and the Chesapeake Bay in general Learning about tribes to the north was remarkably easier than southern coast populated by the Powhatan. Indian tribes north of the Potomac were more receptive and outright willing to discuss trade and relationships. These tribes already were engaged in serious trading with Europeans in the Middle Atlantic and Canada for fur trade. Moreover, they were instinctive enemies of the Algonquin, which included the Powhatan, and were not at all impressed with French traders who dealt with them.
One tribe in particular were receptive to Claiborne, the Susquehannock; initially friendly, in large measure because the English were perceived as an enemy of their enemies: the Powhatan. Interest in fur trading meant trapping beaver–which mean colder winters that produced higher quality fur. Areas around and above the Potomac offered friendly tribes, colder winters, and lots of beaver of the quality Virginian fur traders needed.
The Susquehannock were the perfect match. About 8,000 in population, they were well placed and on good terms with the Iroquois and Lake Superior Hurons. They had good relations with Powhatan tribes on the Eastern Shore (which were Claiborne’s base of supply for his northern adventures)–and they were well regarded as quality fur trappers and fearsome warriors. Even better, they were frustrated with their ventures with both the Dutch and the French, although for different reasons. The core of their frustration was these colonies were allied with their enemies, the Algonquin. [99] Fausz, Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 60
Claiborne’s only competitor in northern fur trading was Henry Fleet, who had by that time set up a fur trading business with Indians resident around the Potomac–with Algonquians. That trade proved deficient as Potomac beaver played out, and were of lower quality; Potomac pelts did not yield profits sufficient to sustain an expanding business.
The increasingly crowded and competitive Potomac trade that brought inferior pelts and disappointing returns to the Fleets [Fleet had brought into the company his three brothers], despite their expert knowledge of native languages and financing from London merchants, convinced Claiborne that only a well-managed monopoly of the Susquehannocks’ superior beaver would permit the fur trade to realize its full potential in the Chesapeake … [accordingly, it was] their control over [Virginia] Indian policy and settlement patterns, convinced the Susquehannocks that neither English farmers nor Anglican missionaries would threaten their lands and lifeways” [99] Fausz, Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 61.
Probably Fleet’s experience with Potomac Virginia likely convinced the Claiborne that the secret for success lay in moving considerably north, up the Chesapeake Bay–and to counter that risk meant he wanted a monopoly to be granted by the British Crown. [It should also be noted that expanding into new markets was at that time built around obtaining some sort of monopoly from the Crown; Claiborne’s search for a monopoly vehicle was quite conventional for colonial trade.]
The Susquehannock were by this time “married” to the fur trade, and a partnership with the English, which in return they got European trade goods for their pelts. Guns and powder to battle the Algonquin were key elements in their thinking. When Claiborne arrived they found in him an Englishmen whose enemies were the Dutch and the French, and whose Chesapeake Bay outlet to Europe was distant from their enemies. In 1629, Claiborne with his expedition against the Powhatan capital, Claiborne and his plantation conquistadors had earned their creds as Powhatan fighters. To add to the picture, the “beaver trade” with Europe was at its height at the time–and could, in its way, match the profits of tobacco export. [99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Eds) (Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp.56-59.
Claiborne’s trading convinced him the demand for beaver fur harvested by the Susquehannock existed, and that in volume would lead to profit. This trade required him finding a location to locate and establish a settlement for his port city– a place with access to the Susquehannock, and to the Atlantic and the James River, through the Chesapeake Bay. So as related above in 1628 he choose an island across from today’s Annapolis. Kent Island would be his port and trading hub, a trading post that he hoped would be at the center of a much larger coastal trading business. From our contemporary perspective, this trading hub, across and down the river from today’s Baltimore, would have been a logical port city for Virginia, one very badly needed.
At what point Claiborne had adopted such an ambitious plan–the coastal trade in his mind extended to Nova Scotia and include Massachusetts and New England–I do not know. Neither do I know whether he shared this with fellow (and rival) plantation conquistadors in the Council. It is likely he did as later events would suggest–and Mathews is most likely to have been in on the scheme. At this point, the reader ought be sensitive that Claiborne’s coastal trade scheme embraced “provisioning” the colonies, Virginia as well as New England. Provisioning meant handling the logistics and sale of goods imported from England to serve the needs of the colonists.
Say it another way, the vital goods, tools, and quality of life furnishings, not to ignore foodstuffs, and indentured servants would arrive in North America at Kent Island, and from there would be sold to the colonists throughout the English colonies of that time. This is a massive task; even though the numbers were low in England, they were not in New England. Given the realities of the day, for this aspect of the business plan to work well and quickly, a “monopoly” like the Virginia Company enjoyed, had to be obtained.
In essence, Claiborne’s business plan was much more than fur trading and tobacco trading, it implied a continental Virginia Company “Magazine” as well. Remembering our less than gracious comments on the Virginia Company Magazine, warning bells should be going off. I would also add that it is not likely Claiborne or his fellow partners, were ignorant of the risks associated with this huge venture–and the likely reality that it would threaten the interests of those who were likely to have to purchase stuff from this Magazine, at costs that would be set by the Claiborne entity.
Finally, the costs and debt required, forget about the hoped for profits, was no small investment risk. All of this would cross the Atlantic, and its winds, currents, rocks and Spanish privateers. And yes, the most dominant and aggressive traders of this period were not the English; it was the Dutch, in New York, that they were going to have to compete against. The Virginia Company in its most aggressive thoughts would never have tackled this. Thomas Smythe is rolling in his newly dug grave.
What is remarkable about Claiborne’s proposed business plan for a settlement in northern Virginia/Maryland was its scale and grandness. Outlined by Brenner we see a vision that beckon’s us to the future (1670) Hudson Bay Company:
[Claiborne’s] goal was to develop a vast fur-trading and colonial provisioning network up and down the Atlantic Coast, and to center its operation on an island that he had discovered in the upper Chesapeake Bay. To this island, which he later named Kent, would come furs from the Virginia back country and as far away as Canada for shipment to England. At this place, the food and clothing needed in the fledgling colonies of New England and Nova Scotia, but also in Virginia itself, would be produced and distributed. … As Claiborne realized from the start, the creation of a large-scale provisioning center in the Virginia colony that was under the control of a private merchant syndicate would inevitably arouse hostility. Claiborne certainly expected opposition from the governor, and perhaps also from the Assembly. He therefore found it advisable to secure the help of London merchants who had not only the requisite capital but also the connections in England needed to obtain a monopoly patent to secure the enterprise. [99] See Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders (Verso, 2003), pp, 121-2.
It was at this point, the establishment of such a port-trading hub that he badly needed investment, because as we know, the founding of a settlement required a sustained financial commitment, and the costs of an ongoing fur trade, in addition to those associated with an expensive settlement and port facilities was more than Claiborne, or for that matter any plantation conquistador could provide. Also we might note the need for skilled artisans who would offer key services and skills to the enterprise was compelling–and these needed to be imported from England, and somebody was going to have to pay that cost whether they were indentured or not. Claiborne’s initiative was well beyond what any colonial magnate could afford.
A brief comment concerning investment in the Virginia company’s second subsidiary company, which by Claiborne’s time was reorganized into the New England Council. Claiborne’s business plan included New England, fur trading, and the supply of provisions and in fact Cloberry was able to negotiate an agreement on the latter matter. By 1630, the New England Council, despite the founding of two official settlements, plus New Hampshire and Maine fishing, was in its earliest years. The New England Council was dominated by older merchant adventurers, compatriots of Smythe, Ferdinando Gorges and a mélange of merchant traders from the western cities, Bristol especially. Their vision of the colony-building and settlement strategy mirror older Virginia Company trading factory, and the New Men reflected that in their fur-trading bent. The important take away is that the gulf between New England Council and their colonies, and their inability to develop and execute a viable trading and provisioning strategy. The topic will be covered in much detail in the next chapter, Massachusetts. [99] See Bernard Bailyn, the New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1955), see Chapter 1
So Claiborne needed investors, and investors needed to feel confident in future profits from this venture. As explained above the more aggressive New Men were ready to buy into his venture. It is not an established fact, but Claiborne in later years, after he had fallen out with Cloberry, claimed Cloberry was the one who approached him. In this Claiborne was fortunate. Cloberry was related to the rising New Man, Maurice Thomason, whose network of Virginia planters was solid, and cemented through marriage and Kent lineage. Cloberry brought in Thomason into Claiborne’s venture, and with that the economics and prospects for a successful start up improved measurably. Who is this Thomason–time to introduce him.
Maurice Thomason and William Tucker
In the previous module outlining the development of the First Migration elite, I left out two very important members–one of which lived in England, and the other who would towards the end leave Virginia and die in England. That was not the reason they were not included; rather these two formed the core of the Claiborne Clique, along with Samuel Mathews who was his own independent player, but, as we have suggested, always a close friend of Claiborne and sympatico with his northern fur trading Kent Island venture.
by 1630 the small group of councilor-commanders had become a cluster of commerce-minded planters at the pinnacle of Virginia society. Whatever their social origins, these men found common ground during the tobacco and maize boom of the 1620’s. Gentry-born leaders rediscovered the practicality of a Renaissance courtier’s military skills, while plain-born men found that habits of leadership learned in the Indian wars had civilian utility. Their camaraderie enforced by the fight against a common enemy, this enterprising group owned the ships, and formed the partnerships that dominated the colony’s internal and external trade in corn, fur, and tobacco. The virtually complete domination of Virginia by this single, cohesive group imposed order on a potentially unstable population of smaller planters and indentured servants whose share in the fortune, although smaller or deferred, was still real. [99] Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia” (the America Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (April 1985), p. 285
Maurice Thomson and William Tucker, also had their own interests, apart from those of Claiborne, but during 1629-31 Claiborne joined with them and from that time on they formed a team that along with Cloberry, who also had his own interests, navigated the rapids of Virginia and London politics to preserve as they could the business plan forged in these years.
Thomason, who after 1623, operated mostly from London or wherever he was investing in at the moment, is the larger of the two. He is the central character, the personification of Brenner’s New Men during the pre and civil war years. Born in 1600, the eldest of five sons, in a “armigerous” [i.e. heralded] Hertfordshire family, he had, for some reason emigrated as a free holder to Virginia in 1617. Within a year he was a ship captain who sub-let his ship to the Virginia Company and performed supply ship duties sustaining the colony in this period. Drawing off the company incentives, he founded a relatively small plantation of about 150 acres. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 119. It was large enough to get him appointed to the Governor’s Council, and he was top of the list of Virginia’s tobacco exporters by 1623.
Thomson’s experience as a sea captain in the pre-Massacre company period no doubt brought him into the acquaintance of another sea captain, who also plied his trade in service to the Company: William Tucker. Born in 1589, and appearing in Virginia by 1610, Tucker was the elder of Thomason, and the more experienced in Virginia. Tucker married sometime around 1618 (in England) and his wife Mary, was the daughter of a certain Ralph Thomson of Hertfordshire–you guessed it, Maurice’s dad. Tucker was Maurice’s brother-in-law from that point on.
Tucker, who Fausz describes as “prominent in New World colonization” the twenty-one year older arrived in early Jamestown in 1610. He could have been on the boat with Governor Gates, or on the De La Warr’s group whose ship had broke apart on Bermuda’s reefs, and spent eight months or so there before reaching Jamestown, in the nick of time. In either event he missed the starving time, but was a participant in its desperate aftermath. [99] J. Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds”, p. 57,
Tucker was also an early Virginia Company shareholder. Brenner asserts he was “originally a sea captain”, and in 1616 “was active with several London citizens in the foundation of a plantation in Virginia, and among his partners [were] … Elias Roberts a London Trader whose son Elias would also enter the colonial field and marry Dinah Thompson, another sister of [our soon to be introduced Maurice Thompson], the other was Ralph Hamor“–described in our Forging of the New Elite module, a sea captain, early partner in the Virginia Company, and post-Massacre plantation conquistador
Tucker made his home-plantation, to be known as Kecoughtan, near the key coastal defensive settlement Pointe Comfort–an early settlement set up to warn Jamestown of attack. It is today the city of Hampton, and was also known as Elizabeth City. It had been a newly acquired stronghold of Powhatan, and Gates seized the area while he was governor, i.e. during the First Powhatan War. When the Greate Charter Burgesses first met in 1619, Elizabeth City was recognized as an election “district” and one of its two delegates to the Burgesses was William Tucker, then referred to as Captain and leader of he militia. He also held several positions in the Elizabeth City hundred-incorporated city
At that point Tucker would have been about 29-30. Strongly wired into the Virginia Company
Gentry born, sea captains by occupation, Virginia their point of habitat, they each developed their own estates and portfolio with Tucker’s the larger called Kiccowtan (or Elizabeth City) located on 800 acres, complete with a large establishment for import-export trade. First serving on the Elizabeth City Council, Tucker was a Burgesses in 1619, and by 1621-2 was also on the Governor’s Council, With the onslaught of the 1622 Indian war, Tucker took to the field as one of the more aggressive, and nasty Indian fighters-commanders in that period; it was he that likely was the main cause of Potts poisoning of two hundred Indians, and the slaughter of those remaining at a supposed peace conference. That is congruent with his biography that described him as a “shrewd and hard man of business”. By 1625, Tucker was one of the top fifteen landowners with more than ten or more indentured servants. In 1623, among his other activities, the Council sent him and Ralph Hamor to London to negotiate and argue against the King’s proposed tobacco contract. https://www.geni.com/people/Capt-William-Tucker-of-Kiccowtan/6000000003853772881
It was during this post-Massacre aftermath that Tucker himself promoted and conducted his own “settling of trade” with friendly (non-Powhatan) tribes in the Potomac River basin. As the co-leader with Governor Francis Wyatt (in 1623) of a raid against the Powhatan tribes, Tucker was able to separate out those tribes with which the English could do business and fur trade. Here was a businessman who left no pennies on the floor. As an owner of black slaves, Tucker’s parish included black and Algonquin Christians. He was appointed as harbor-master of the James River.
In 1626, that position was solidified as the King re-appointed him to the Council, and in that year was also appointed as the Colony’s Treasurer. Described by George Sandys at that time, Tucker “was one of the few councilors of that era sufficiently wealthy, honest, and industrious to carry out the responsibilities this office [Treasurer] entailed” [Brenner, p. 119].
Thomson survived the 1622 Indian attack and obviously Tucker did also. In 1623 Tucker transported his wife from England to Virginia and brought along Maurice’s three brothers who took up residence at Kiccowtan because Maurice, in the same year, returned to London–never, I am led to believe, to return to Virginia. And here is the key insight into this relationship–Brenner observes “It was undoubtedly Thomson’s business connection with William Tucker, facilitated by Tucker’s marriage to [his] sister, that paved the way for Thomson’s meteoric ascent as a colonial merchant” [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 119.
In association with other Virginia planters (including William Felgate–yet another brother in law–the group formed a corporation, with Thomson in London to manage its trading and investment affairs with Tucker holding fort in the Council of State and funneling the wealth he was able to corral through his partnership. “Over the next fifteen years, Thomson and Tucker remained partners and leaders in developing all aspects of the Virginian economy … For Thomson and Tucker, probably the critical moment was their entry into partnership with the great magistrate of Virginia, William Claiborne. The sealing of this alliance opened the way to an extended period of overpowering ascendancy within the colony for the emerging new-merchant entrepreneurial leadership“. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 120.
It was Cloberry who brought in Thomason who likely activated William Tucker, his kin and partner in Virginia. In the period after 1623, Thomson had “immersed himself in the opening up of the West Indian tobacco trade … [and] had launched a fur-trading venture in Canada [independent of Cloberry-Alexander’s venture]. Brenner further adds “it is indicative of the eminence already achieved by the Maurice Thomson-William Tucker partnership that Claiborne and Cloberry asked Thomson to join with them in the Kent Island project. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 123. Fausz suggests the logic of this alliance was so compelling in that an alliance between London merchants and Virginia power-brokers complemented each other so neatly that joining together in a single formal business entity was the logical next step in the issuance of any sort of monopoly. In 1630 that joint stock corporation, Alexander, Cloberry and Thomson, was formed [99] Fausz, Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 62
At this point I might slip in my observation that, in my view, Tucker’s dominance in Virginia was not as compelling as Brenner suggests. Nor was Claiborne an undisputed master of its politics. To be sure, the addition of Mathews to the “Clique” no doubt made it the most powerful group within the Council, but the consensual nature of the Council, and the position-authority of the governor could, and did, through the five five years of the 1630’s, check the Claiborne Clique–and also exercise its own autonomy from the Clique’s activities and ambitions. That checks and balances will play an major element in the story to follow: the ouster of governor John Harvey.
A “Claiborne Clique” took shape; they provided the necessary glue for the Clique to exert leadership over the divided (localist) Council of State, on the issue of Claiborne northern venture. Ironically enough, the inclusion of the Indian-fighting conquistadors into the venture was regarded by the Susquehannock as a measure of security for them, as the plantation conquistadors were regarded as allies against the Algonquin Powhatan, their enemy. [99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Eds) (Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp.59-62.
What we are seeing is “the making of a deal” in seventeenth century Virginia Tidewater.
the Deal in London
Claiborne cemented the deal after personally returning to London in late 1629. During 1630 he put together the deal with the principals Cloberry, Thomson and Alexander (and probably Tucker–which BTW meant they were not available for the Council of State during much of the Potts administration as governor). In that period Thomson took the lead and incorporated a trading company, Alexander, Cloberry and Thomson, to broker the financing and manage the affairs of the Kent Island venture.
Practically, Claiborne would honcho the project in Virginia, and conduct day to day administration. Thomson handled New England’s end of the affairs, and Cloberry recruited additional financial support from City merchants and mobilized his partner Alexander to issue a trading commission. The trading commission was not a formal monopoly, but it inhibited intrusions of other traders from the date of issuance. [99] Brenner, p.124. The distinction between a charter monopoly and an exclusive trading commission was to prove fatal to the Claiborne venture in a wee bit less than a year. This document fell short of a royal charter, authorized the partners to trade ‘for corn, furs, and other commodities in all parts of New England and Nova Scotia where there is not already a patent’. Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London’s Overseas Traders (Verso, 2003), pp, 124. [p. 124].
In London Claiborne was surprised to learn that Thomson’s partners, Cloberry and Anderson, had also identified Kent Island as a likely outlet for their provisioning trade into New England and the Canadian territories. Anderson carried sufficient pull with London to prod the Privy Council to issue a trading commission under His Majesty’s signet for Scotland. It was Anderson, a well-connected Earl who proved to be the political muscle behind the Clique. Cloberry was able to secure the Massachusetts and New England approvals to contract with Claiborne for their provisioning–a key, if not compelling step in the venture’s promise of future success.
So Alexander, Cloberry, and Thomson issued Claiborne a royal trading license (a monopoly) under the privy seal of Scotland in the hopes that Virginia-Susquehannock trading alliance would weaken the French in Canada while inspiring cooperation among all the English colonies in the northeast. Cloberry set up the joint stock corporation with its associated network of investors. [99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Eds) (Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 61-2
Capital for the settlement was advanced by William Tucker and the cooperation of Cloberry (and other investors) “made arrangements with the colony at Massachusetts Bay, as well as Nova Scotia for their provisioning”. Claiborne sailed from England on May 28, 1631, after Alexander formally issued the trading signet on May 16th. Claiborne, more properly the COO of his project. appealed to his kinsmen, William Tucker for financial and logistical support, including indentured workforce and use of Tucker’s ships. Claiborne cemented the deal to provide for the twenty servants, $319 pounds of supplies, and Tucker’s ship (costing $700 pounds from Tucker) returning to London in 1631. On Aug Claiborne reached Kent Island, and landed the settlers and supplies.
By May 28 1631 Claiborne “landed settlers [twenty servants] and supplies at the trading base of Kent Island which was he stated “ideally situated to ‘attract the trade of Beavers and ffurs which the ffrench now wholly enjoy in the Grand Lake. Kent Island, one hundred and fifty miles north of Jamestown, but only seventy five miles south of the Susquehannock capital was the perfect location. Dependent upon the Susquehannock for protection, Kent Island settlers were recruited from Virginia’s Eastern Shore Accomack County. [99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Eds) (Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p.63.
Kent Island’s settlement by 1634 rose to about one hundred, possibly larger than Jamestown [99] Aubrey C. Land, Colonial Maryland: a history (KTO Press, 1981), p. 26. By 1632, the Council of State had authorized the settlement and “gave it its blessing”; further the settlement was recognized as a electoral district by the Council of State and, in 1632 elected a representative to the Burgesses. An Anglican parish was established
This was no longer a wild-eyed scheme; Kent Island and Claiborne’s business venture was a done deal. From 1631 over the next several years (3 and one-half), the trading post blurred into a settlement, within which a highly successful trade in furs. His base of operation was Accomack County on the Eastern shore where Claiborne was Justice of the Peace on the County Court, and until 1634 hired a black manager, Thomas Savage to coordinate the linguistic links with the Susquehannock. Each spring Claiborne sent our ships to collect the fur pelts and “Claiborne over the three and half years he ran Kent Island before Maryland became an issue grossed some 4,000$ sterling on seventy-five hundred pounds of beaver pelts, while his extensive support personnel on Kent Island contributed another 700$ from the sale of farm products [99] Brenner, p. 124.
As with any startup, however, expenses were also high (costs associated with indentured servants sustenance, and excessive cost charged to him from Virginia traders), and the provisioning trade did not mature as fast as hoped. The Susquehannock were a bit disappointed as Claiborne could only sell through his supply chains half of what they delivered. The Kent Island enterprise was in the red.[99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, p. 63. The Susquehannock were also a bit upset, as Claiborne could not purchase all the pelts they delivered to him, about half in any one season–but, for their own reasons, the Susquehannock remained loyal to the Claiborne venture in these years and the years to follow.
Let’s pause for a thought before we introduce Lord Calvert and his Maryland colony. A wealthy, well connection element of the plantation conquistadors and of the Council of State had made a significant pivot from the tobacco monoculture to establish with funding and contacts of London merchant traders to set up a business venture –on a scale that was literally continental. While tobacco export was clearly involved and important, the fur trading was its own economic focus, so too was the provisioning of colonial America, and most importantly the finance and logistics, not to mention town/port building could like dwarf the monoculture and finally create a diversified economic base for Virginia.
Amazingly, so bold and almost reckless a venture, with the backing and investment of powerful and wealthy London merchants, had set up the first and second stages of its business plan and, despite financial insecurity, was on the road to demonstrate its viability. A successful fur trade with the Native Americans was in place. and an Atlantic wide provisioning production and trade was established with New England and Nova Scotia.
In some measure because he had heard of Lord Calvert’s desire to form a colony, and use such a colony to jumpstart a beaver trade that would compete with his own Claiborne’s success backfired as Calvert, more than upset with Claiborne because of his treatment in Virginia, could see the potential inherent in the venture–but also in the profitability of fur trade as a revenue for his future colony. As this partnership developed, however, the Calvert colony became a visible issue. In May 1632, George Calvert would be issued a charter for the colony of Maryland, starting a struggle that would last for three decades–and be the primary reason for the failure of the Kent Island enterprise.
Ron W. Coan 