the London-based Hybrid Colonial Policy System Plays the Tune & Writes the Lyrics to which Virginia Dances the Political Development Two-Step
Let’s Regroup What We Have Discussed So Far
Thus far the Third Mini-Series have concentrated on the emergence of a post Company Virginia elite, composed of plantation conquistadors from the Second Powhatan War, larger tobacco planters-exporters, and former company officials with special access to land & headrights. This tobacco-focused elite, while open to a few hard-working and opportunistic freeholders, closed ranks and held a dominating position at local and provincial levels of government.
Next we focused on the arrival of Brenner’s New Men, the new English investor and finance intermediaries who will pay and invest in the Virginia economic base through the remainder of the seventeenth century.
We described a faction of that budding, and still developing elite, the Claiborne Clique, whose New Kent venture promised a fundamental shift of Virginia’s economic base reducing the power and dominance of the Virginia tobacco monoculture. In the telling we suggested the potential for a more diversified, comprehensive, economy tied to export-import to other colonies as well as fur-trading, tobacco exporting, and import-supply to Virginia and other colonies. The sheer size of its embrace and its monopolistic impulse raised fears and concerns among the rank and file Virginia planter class–who would be supported by the new-comer governor Harvey who is the central figure around most of the discussion in this.
Lastly, we hinted of a looming threat to all this, George Calvert & his son Cecil and their intent to found a colony carved out of Virginia, north of the Potomac.
What are we up to in this module?
It will be obvious when we tell the story behind the John Harvey affair in the next module that the failures of Charles’ court policy–making, and the inconsistencies of his personalized divine right governance, created such disruption in Virginia that “it bent the Virginia twig”–weakening the power of his governor, and inflicting serious damage on the New Kent initiative and its reseting of a tobacco monoculture that was Virginia’s economic base. Since Maryland is its own story, I will simply assert Charles’s mishandling of its creation manufactured the most serious disruption in Virginia’s political development since the rise of the monoculture.
In this module, we shall concentrate on James but mostly Charles’ inability to formulate a vision that would allow the definition of the nature and configuration of Virginia’s resident governance. That failure to cope with the “vision thing” injected considerable insecurity and even fear into the hearts and minds of Virginians, rich and poor, plantation owner or indentured servant. In this module we shall see the London-side of the Hybrid Policy System did its “thing” for nearly a decade, during which it did little more than postpone meaningful decisions or usually worse by causing serious disruption in Virginia that forced its elite to defend itself and its side of the Hybrid system–in so doing forcing them to use Virginian institutions in ways they did not have capacity.
So, at one level this module deals with two major topics: (1) nature and dynamics of the emerging English Hybrid Policy System heading down the Road to the English Civil War, and, (2) how this Hybrid System Bent the Virginia Twig or say it another way, what else did we inherit from our Mother Land. Each is the flip side of England’s, the Stuart Kings, to define English colonialism so that the colonial side could carry its weight in the goals intended for the colony to achieve.
It will turn out Charles took a full fifteen years to provide sufficient definition and vision that Virginian politics and policy making could be stable and somewhat capable participants in the colonial venture. So that the reader appreciates, this problem, for various reasons, fell mostly on Virginia and that will help to answer the underlying question of this history: why our states and cities are in their ways different from each other. I might also add it will partially explain why many American historians viewed First Migration Virginia as semi-anarchistic and shapeless. In many was it was–but the fault lie mostly in London, not in the mixed character of its elite.
Having said all this, there is a Third Level, a 3D Third Dimension if you will that enters the picture and that affected Virginia directly, and the other future colonies indirectly: the internal structure of the administrative vehicle required for a successful and durable permanent settlement in the American wilderness? Could the Virginia Company joint stock corporation be revamped sufficiently to be the organizational vehicle used by the English sovereign to conduct English colonization? Specifically, what was the configuration necessary for accountability to the sovereign, and who, if anybody, was willing to step up to the plate and pay for the colonial ventures. This dimension, little appreciated by Americans because of necessity its dynamics were English, and very far away in geography and time for the “contemporary us” to feel their relevance to our political and economic development.
In 1624-5 England and Virginia, hand-in-hand faced a sort of colonial existential crisis–a crisis it did not share with other North American colonies, Massachusetts being the only other alternative in those two years. The 1606-07 Jamestown model of English colonialism had imploded. In this sense, 1624-5 had become a teachable moment for England and its Stuart sovereign James. As we shall see that teachable moment passed with only a temporary decision that lent little comfort or security to Virginians.
That hugely incomplete vision came back with a vengeance in the 1630’s-the entire decade was wracked by the politics and personalities of those who tried to define the vision and Virginia’s parameters of self-governance. That definition and vision, I might add was provided by Massachusetts’s governor John Winthrop as early as 1629. The reader might know it as the famous “City on a Hill”–but there is the “vision thing” that made Massachusetts and Virginia so different. At best Virginia got her definition a decade later–after a very impactful and stressing period of dysfunctional politics.
In Virginia the backdrop to the turbulent politics were four fold: the Second Powhatan War and the expansion of settlement-shredded community; the Hybrid Policy-Making between London and Jamestown; the decline in tobacco pricing; and the incoherent, self-serving oligarchy that had populated the governorship and the Council of State during the 1620’s, and the fragile emergence of an early stage planter “class”, a class that was centered around, and dependent upon the tobacco monoculture, which controlled Virginia’s local government, and introduced a pronounced “tilt” to decentralization in its provincial level. That is a lot of stress on non-legitimate and largely unformed political structures.
Add all this up and it is evident that much of the turbulence of the period came from the state of affairs within Virginia and its half-formed policy-making sub-system. Small wonder that outsiders to all this saw a system so chaotic it defied description as a policy system at all. With both sides of the Atlantic dealing with its own can of worms politics and policy-making, the overall decade defies description and in retrospect it is amazing that in 1639 they were able to work thing out.
Just in time for a full-fledged civil war and a first class revolution that led to at least four distinct policy systems between 1642 and 1661. If Virginia was semi-anarchistic, than England was certainly flirting with anarchism. In reality neither were anarchistic; their decision-making institutions and processes were disrupted and in transit to yet another stage as they worked their way to a more stable system with a supportive culture and consensus underlying it. If Virginia was chaotic, it reflected disruption in its motherland.
If all this sound complicated, grant me that it is fundamental to Virginia’s future economic and political development. That all this disruption happened during the neglected and ignored First Migration, and by definition, involved the semi-anarchistic, thuggish, faction-ridden First Migration elite. The reader can see that once again I am making the case for the importance of understanding this period as it is foundational in the development of Virginia’s distinctive colonial experience. All of which, BTW, directly answer my book’s underlying question of why our states and cities are so different today.
Nothing could be Final or Permanent, Unless and Until the King Defined the Parameters of Virginia’s Colonial Governance Infusing Legitimacy into the Virginia Company Heritage
Charles inherited a half-resolved Virginia vision developed half-heartedly by his father. Unable to sort through what he really wanted out of Virginia over the long term with the realities of how to pay for the young colony’s costs and infrastructure. His focus had a hard time reaching beyond his “tobacco contract” and the revenues he drew from it. He knew the Virginia Company had imploded and accordingly he put it out of its misery by suspending, not terminating, its charter over Virginia until some vision of it could be developed. That complex vision he left to the Mandeville Commission and the Privy Council. But then he died in March 1625. His son Charles became king, crowned in 1626, Charles spent 1625 dealing with his inheritance.
By 1630 Charles still had not made up his mind on the parameters of his version of royal administration over Virginia. He would not do so until 1639. His temporary 1626 missive was in effect thru the entirety of the Harvey affair. The associated lingering question regarding legality of land ownership and headright right decisions of the Virginia Company provided fifteen years years of insecurity and nightmares to the resident population of the colony–and its powerful elite, that no doubt, in its way contributed to an emotional anxious tone to the goings-on.
Because of this insecurity as to who can do what, the provincial level corporate Greate Charter institutions (Assembly, Governor’s Council (of State), Burgesses) were walking on glass; the King’s unpredictable and arbitrary wishes, the unstable politics of his court, and hostile politics of Parliament provided little incentive to take risks in Virginia. By default that meant problem resolution and the exercise of authority fell disproportionately on London decision-making.
Between 1625 and 1631 that meant primarily the King’s court politics and his personal whims and administration goals. In that vacuum the Virginia realities encouraged Virginians to bypass their own institutions and pursue their own ambitions and goals. Extreme individualism and opportunistic profit-seeking were the Company’s and now Virginia’s chief cultural dynamics. Virginia in this five or six year period was a “wild west”, a frontier beyond the capacity and the concern of the London sovereign not yet ready to take on the hard definition of Virginia vision.
To be fair, the Virginia elite did try to create its own vision, extremely individualistic, and to get London to approve it. The logistics involved in this governance bypass were overwhelming–including two three thousand mile transatlantic voyages that consumed several months a trip. Staying over in London while London got its act together meant more time. Claiborne left Virginia in 1629 and didn’t get back until the fall of 1631. The Virginia Assembly persistently asked for definition from 1623 to 1639. Governors from Wyatt to Yeardley and even Francis West tried to force some stability and order from London–to little avail.
In a period of desperation, some decision could not wait that long–the colonists were at war with the Powhatan and that was behind the Assembly’s 1624 assertion of the right to tax. Incrementally, Virginia Greate Charter institutions assumed greater responsibility congruent to their perceived risk, without permission or defined authority; these fledgling institutions took action, issued executive orders, and approved their initiatives into law without any formal authorization to do so—yet receiving little or no royal pushback.
As years went by it was evident the Privy Council and the King were tolerant of such actions as they had little desire to insert themselves into distant colonial matters. The uncertain line, however, between “big” decisions that matter and had to be brought to London, and “little” decisions was unwritten, and probably unspoken–crossing that line was truly risky, hence the hybrid decision-making continued through the thirties.
This insecurity injected even more uncertainty, that Virginia-resident policy-makers ignored what they could, did what they wanted, and took advantage of the isolation caused by the shredded community that provided them a curtain obscuring from Jamestown, never mind London as to what they did or did not do. Jamestown had no enforcement powers that it could consistently apply, and London had no soldiers in Virginia until 1676. The local government was, however, in command and in control over the militia and the sheriff.
In other words, this insecurity played into the decentralization, the tilt, so evident even in the earliest of Virginia’s policy systems. What the colonists couldn’t ignore, they resisted–demanding from London some clarification, which in most cases was not forthcoming or clear in its intent. In any event such “conversations” were untimely, creating huge blocks of time to work out the matter, if London had the persistence to keep up the conversation. Then in early 1630, royal governor John Harvey took over affairs in Virginia. An unfortunate choice, from that point on events deteriorated in Virginia.
Charles’ royal governor, John Harvey, advocated strongly, and consistently, to the King asking for guidance and structural definition of Virginia’s key institutions. Harvey repeatedly questioned his London authorities as to how he should react to actions, policies and procedures he thought unsuitable to Virginia. He seldom got an answer, even to such a basic question as to how he was to be paid, and who should pay for his expenses. This increased his frustration, and given his temperament, he often reacted inappropriately relative to his goals. No doubt his requests were often unwelcome as London wanted him to resolve the situation, not them. In this sense, Harvey was the victim, as much as the perpetrator-transmission belt, of the King’s ineptitude; his troubled administration was the most visible expression of Charles’ mal-governance. Often to Harvey’s disadvantage, Harvey’s orders and initiatives were traceable to Charles and the Privy Council’s unwillingness to establish its ownership over the colony.
By 1635 certainly, Virginia’s frailty of its government institutions reached the breaking point, and the actors were unable to resolve their differences. The capacity of its structures exhausted, with no real sense of who could do what to whom, Virginia’s policy sub-system simply collapsed.
The following section delves deeper into the key institutions of the Virginia provincial system. Created by the London-end of the the Hybrid Policy System, the undefined and unclear powers, responsibilities, and limits among Virginia’s three blurred branches of government in an era before separation of powers became a guiding principle of English government, fostered an unstable and erratic policy-making process that led to disruption and bad-feeling through the first four years of Harvey’s administration–and climaxed that bad feeling with a coup in 1635 that ousted him and sent him back to England on the nearest ship the coup leaders could find. Below we shall introduce the reader to the two key Virginia institutions that were in desperate need of definition and updating.
the Role of the Assembly in this Period-–
Virginia’s provincial leadership, had, even it wanted to–and there were precious few instances of that– assert itself over the local authorities to check decentralization, or to engage in a productive dialogue with the governor or even the Privy Council, the provincial level in aggregate was not yet structured it could do so.
In these years, the Council of State (Governor’s Council) was not viewed by the Privy Council, or the members of the Council of State as independent of the Governor. Until Harvey arrived London, the Governor’s Council and the current governor viewed the two as joined at the hip. Historians, seeing the future evolution of the Council of State into an upper legislature–which it was to a certain extent when the Assembly met, saw the Council in the 1630’s as more self-willed oligarchs in simple opposition to a governor imposed on them by the king–an outsider royal governor.
In a larger sense, however, the struggle between the two reflected a series of policy differences that could not be worked out because the governor had a definition of his powers as governor that were larger, and not supported by past practice, nor when the crunch time came, the Privy Council. If so, Harvey was a step ahead of his sovereign. Indeed, reflecting Charles’s struggle with Parliament, the Governor’s Council was seen by London as more the King’s advisors comparable to the Court in London’s policy-making. It is not likely Charles ever thought the Council as a House of Lords during the 1630’s.
Second, if the Assembly wanted to act it needed a consensus of local elite leaderships who influenced the voting by Assembly delegates; also, the Assembly met sporadically, on the call of the Governor that it could not function as a day-to-day participant in provincial policy-making. As to the General Assembly, it was a fused body that combined the governor, his “appointive” but autonomous Council of State, and the district elected Burgesses. It meant once a year normally for a short time, leaving the management of provincial affairs to the governor, as checked by the advice and (as we shall see) consent of the Council of State.
That goodly number of Assembly Burgesses were members of the Council of State, and were simultaneously local officials and plantation owners exposed the double-sided nature of the Council: linked to the governor, yet chosen to represent larger landowners. Left alone in the Council, the latter were oligarchs, while in the Assembly they were part of the budding planter class. That meant in practice that delegates were so closely tied to the local power base they could not make Assembly decisions on the basis of the larger issues and Virginia-wide perspective.
Rivalries among the districts and their local leaders did little to help the provincial assembly play a role independent of the locals. Each individual in the Council was more or less on their own; they represented no particular geography, held what turned out to be lifetime membership, and their positions and perspective usually centered on personal advantage. Only wen uniformly threatened by an external threat would one expect each to fold themselves into a common position. That the oligarchs benefited from Virginia’s decentralized tilt that emphasized the influence of local preferences/agenda just as much as the mainstream planter class, the latter were simply outvoted when they deviated from mainstream planter positions. That meant if the mainstream planter class held together, the Burgesses in the Assembly could dominate the final vote.
With the Council more or less amenable to the Claiborne Clique and the Kent Island initiative–in which the mainstream planter class held strong apprehension–the opposition, essentially voted down in the Council, could resort to the Assembly, when in session, as a vehicle to express itself. When not in session, a loss in the Council was fatal. The Kent Island initiative assumed importance when it became linked to a revived Virginia Company Magazine, after issuance of the Dorset Commission report and the Assembly convened several times in 1632 to express itself on that matter, giving an opportunity to the opposition to the Claiborne Clique.
This was no Roman Republic at hand in Virginia. The Assembly, if anything was a Roman Senate, meaningfully representing only one element of Virginia’s society and population. The residues of a military-militia command system persisted into the thirties, legitimized by the perpetual war against the Powhatan. Along side these plantation conquistadors were large plantation owners who usually were able to win Assembly votes in their settlement-district. Given Virginia. weak artisan merchant and professional groupings–almost all such individuals planted tobacco as well–tobacco planters overwhelmingly dominated the Assembly. Whatever it was the Council or the Assembly, a considerable majority were planters. Up to this point, 1631, it is premature to think of this as a budding democracy or even as a legislature. But, we are open to the view that in 1632, events and voting patterns took a step, just a step, down those roads.
As Kukla suggested, two competing policy systems were in tension during this period; the seeds of a future system had not matured sufficiently for the Assembly to assume leadership as was Parliament in London. In fact, as we proceed in the 1640’s that we can see the sophistication of the county improve to the extent the military element is displaced in favor of free holders, most of which, but not all, were tobacco planters. For the provincial level to be more representative, the county had to blaze the path first.
That the Assembly did not enjoy tangible royal legitimacy of action except as a vehicle of convenience to work with the royal agenda, and to assume responsibility for the bothersome details of daily administration, one can sense that although it wanted to, the Assembly in the 1630’s was not able to walk down the path of being a “Little Parliament”. They could say what they wished the king to do or not do, but they could not stop him. That next step could only occur after the Civil War, and after Charles’s execution. In the 1630’s the Assembly was advisory, and only held an unconfirmed authority to make those decisions which were necessary to keep the colony operating, and which did not challenge the royal agenda or sovereign dominance.
The reality of Burgesses representation, however “liberal” the franchise eligibility might have been, tilted to hundreds land owners, other large landowners, and, logically, Company shareholders–this after all was a company institution, not a legislature. The 1619 Assembly was not intended as a democratic legislature by Sandys or the Company, and at that point freeholders and servants who were entitled to land at contract expiration were considered as shareholders of the Company, not citizens of Virginia. That voting for Burgesses was by voice in a meeting room of all in attendance meant that free holders faced being a profile in courage when they exercised their franchise.
Few, if anybody, alive at the time saw the Assembly as a mini-Parliament; the grandiose expectations for this body often found in the literature of today are not even found in the English Parliament of that time–indeed that uncertainty and poor definition of powers was much of what caused the Civil War to begin with. Delegates to Parliament were often oligarchs themselves, and certainly were tied to their feudal local institutions and local elites. It was not until the eighteenth century Parliament became a Parliament we could recognize as such. [999]
In the first quarter of the seventeenth century, Locke had not yet has written his treatise, as a matter of fact he was born in 1632, and the actors held few expectations as to its need to be held accountable to representative standards pertinent to a modern democracy. Democracy in this period is more akin to two fat old men pushing each other about in a parking lot. Flexible these structures may have been, they contributed greatly to the “shapeless” system of policy making– the anarchy–that we earlier used to describe the governance during this transition period on the road to a civil war. What we are seeing is a provincial system without sufficient legitimacy and capacity, riven by factions and lacking internal cohesion and cohesiveness, that coexisted with a similar London policy system on edge of breakdown. Unable to proceed on its own, Virginia had to sit in the shadow of events in England before it could express any maturity or ambition.
[999] Wyatt did convene the assembly in March, 1628, and it met for three or four days. To Professor Charles Andrews this assembly differed only slightly from the “convention of 1625”; it differed in that it was authorized by the king, and the assembly exerted its right to tax by authorizing a levy on Virginians to pay for its costs. “But even with these differences it was essentially similar to the gathering of 1625 and, in no way a revival of the [company] assembly of 1624, for it exercised no administrative or legislative functions and as far as we know followed no form of parliamentary procedure” [99] Charles A. Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 198.
The pattern was repeated in 1629 when the king appointed John Harvey as his royal governor ( departure from nomination by the Council of State). In his instructions to Harvey (August, 1628) , the king called for another convening of a “Grand Assembly” dedicated to the “purpose of providing a palisade to run from Martin’s Hundred to the York River, to guard the colony against the Indians”. No other matter was suggested to be considered. Harvey convened the Assembly on October 16, 1629, and confined its activities almost entirely to the subject named” [99] Charles A. Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 199. [to my best knowledge, however, Harvey had not arrived in Virginia]
In 1630, however, Andrews asserts the Assembly met on their own volition, and did so, with the possible except to 1636, every year–without instruction by the King, and no restrictions upon its deliberations or actions. Andrews believes that calling the ‘conventions’ of 1625, 1628 and 1629 “may well have seemed to the Governor and the planters, a sufficient precedent for a continuation of the practice every year, and for the resumption of the law-making powers … There is no reason to doubt that these assemblies assumed all the rights and privileges of regular representative bodies and followed each its own variety of parliamentary practice.” [99] Charles A. Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 199. [Again, this “parliamentary procedure” likely did not exist, and parliaments in other countries were seldom ever called]
These houses of Burgesses in Virginia passed many laws which had force in the colony, but as far as we know, only a very few of these laws were ever sent to England for confirmation, and not one of these few was ever acted upon by the Privy Council … On the contrary, there is reason to think that until 1638 no certain decision had been reached in England, as to the final form that government in Virginia should take. That the king and the Privy Council had tacitly and in a measure openly recognized the legality of the assemblies already held is clear, but that during these years since 1624 they had not decided on the definitive course to be followed seems certain also. [99] Charles A Andrews, Vol 1., pp. 199-200 [999]
Council of State or Governor’s Council?
For me the key to understanding the 1630’s policy system is to recognize in this decade the Council of State was dominant. With the arrival of Harvey it was facing a governor who wanted his own independent powers and agenda. Harvey simply broke too abruptly with past decision-rules and processes, without it turns out his sovereign’s support. Harvey’s temperamental, excessive overreach created one incident after another, and his insensitivity to the ways and views of Virginians isolated him.
Meeting much more frequently than the Assembly, the Council formed into factions during this decade, with the Claiborne Clique able to muscle its way with unpredictable attendance at the Council. If the Council had a de facto leader, the leader of the Council was Samuel Mathews (Claiborne was in England), and he, always of his own mind, was as much a power broker in the Council, than the puppet of Claiborne. It was Mathews who negotiated the “peace treaty” with Harvey, and Mathews that late in 1634 began moving toward the ouster of Harvey.
The Council was not elected, but rather appointed, by the Governor (or in 1625, by the King) from lists prepared by the Council itself. That broke down almost immediately as Governor Yeardley died within a year and the Council “appointed” one of its own to hold the position. Charles. In his “formal” appointment of Francis West (to replace Yeardley), the king admitted in his written instruction to Wyatt that the latter had been “chosen to his office by the ‘opinions and voices of the council‘, also authorized [commanded] him to convene a general assembly to debate one issue: the tobacco contract under consideration at that time. Why, I ask, could he not have added these actions were within the bounds of his system of royal governance?
Very early it was apparent that once appointed, an Assembly member was nearly impossible to be removed. Attendance was irregular and sporadic previous to 1629; a combination of its members preoccupation with their own private affairs isolated in their isolated plantation wilderness complicated travel, and because, sharing a consensus with most fellow planters, they felt comfortable that decisions made would reflect that consensus.
To supplement this, a heritage of past company experience and contacts, a set of procedures worked out with a friendly governor who held to the consensus, there was less urgency to attend faithfully. One made efforts to attend when the agenda item(s) affected the member. What was afforded to one would be reciprocated to the others. The Governor presided, held a veto, and, without formal parameters could make appointments (usually from a prepared list submitted by the occupants of the body], and issue what we call “executive orders”–again with reference to no known set of powers or limits as to his right to do so.
After the Company’s fall, the institutions and their membership simply continued on. Craven reports that the nature and composition of the Governor’s Council had “little changed except for certain extensions of its power traceable to a failure of the King’s ministers to maintain the same alert oversight of its actions as had the company. The rule of the company’s later days binding the governor by a majority vote of the council, with a casting vote in case of a tie, was continued [99] Wesley Frank Craven, The Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689 (Louisiana State University Press, 1970), p. 154.
Bailyn describes the situation as:
The private interests of this group, which had assumed control of public office by virtue not of inherited status, but of newly acquired and strenuously maintained economic eminence, were pursued with little interference from traditional restraints imposed on a responsible ruling class. Engaged in an effort to establish themselves in a land they sought as specific ends [i.e. agenda goals]: autonomous local jurisdiction, an aggressive expansion of settlement and trading enterprises, unrestricted access to land, and at every stage the legal endorsement of [past land] acquisitions . ..
Let’s Delve a Bit Deeper
The Greate Charter is distorted by many to be the only serious contribution of the First Migration period to Virginia’s colonial development. The Greate Charter is rushed into a flush of emotion that it is the first step down the olde democratic road. Sandys did little of the sort; he was trying above all to save the Virginia Company from what appeared to be its fate: bankruptcy. We should not waste our time here to think these political institutions that it created as the first step down the path to our “exceptional” future, based on civil liberties, representative democracy, frontier individualism, and the political thought on which much of our 1789 Constitution is based.
That obscures the reality in this period that whatever functions these institutions gained from their conversion to public governance institutions they were not organized or structured to be more than a decision-making process that reached outside the Governor and Council of State. The so-called electoral franchise that underlie Greate Institution governance in these years, however, liberal it is made to appear, was heavily influenced by the dominance of the oligarchic elite over local affairs and governance.
The “tilt” of Virginia governance had already cemented control over that level to plantation conquistadors and the developing tobacco planter class. What this module will show, in spit of that, was the larger planter class could use the Assembly as its vehicle to fight the Claiborne State Council clique, and spike the New Kent initiative. That I will argue is a major step in the Assembly’s walk to being a legislative institution. The distinction between legislative and representative should be noted.
It often seems to many Americans that the formative contribution of the Mother Country to our political development were the tea bags left floating in Boston’s harbor. There was a lot more we inherited. My goal in this Virginia module is not to focus on America’s path to the Revolution and the Constitution, nor to explain our future leadership of the modern world. I more simply want to focus on how the early Virginia twig was bent in these years. Seventeenth century colonial America was forging its own governance well within the framework of the English colonial empire. That the rising and confused English empire of this period caused several mixed messages is not likely a surprise; those impacts reshaped the import of the institutions imported from the mother country at a colony’s founding.
From my vantage point the Stuart dynasty was a near-century long wrecking ball that knocked asunder pursuit of a balanced economic and political development in Virginia– and North America. What it did to Virginia it did much the same to the other ten or eleven (Delaware) colonies that were founded under their reign. It did so, however, in different periods of time, and with having accumulated some experience with its first colonial experiment, Jamestown. Each colony was founded in different years and geographies by different settlers.
How each of these responded to the misadventures and failures of Stuart hybrid policy systems, and their successors, through 1689 is their own affair–and that goes a long way to explain why our institutions, governors, legislators, counties, towns and cities are called the same name, but exhibit very different policy systems. A rose is a rose, I guess, but there are so many varieties, each with their own characteristics, strengths, limitations and colors that one might argue the opposite credibly–a rose is not a rose. In this history a state is not a state. A bend in the twig can still be seen hundreds of years later. That bend can affect contemporary policy systems.
The seventeenth century can explain a lot of the difference between states, cities, political institutions, and contemporary policy systems. In this module series and several to follow, I hope the reader can see how this occurs, at least in Virginia. Charles I did more to shape our policy systems than we usually realize. So, off with his head.
But all good things come to an end. In 1630, the outsider, and rogue personified, John Harvey took Virginia’s gubernatorial helm. From the start, the Council was his chief impediment to gubernatorial governance as he pictured it: Bailyn continues his earlier statement:
From his first appearance in Virginia, Sir John Harvey threatened the interests of this group. While still in England he had identified himself with the faction that had successfully sought the collapse of the Company, and thus his mere presence in Virginia was a threat to the legal basis of land grants made under the Company’s charter” [99] Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and Social Structure in Virginia”, in 17th Century America: Essays in Colonial History, James Morton Smith (Ed), University of North Carolina Press, 1959), p. 96
Relevant Background to Harvey–Surely the most important contextual factor in the provincial policy system Harvey had to face was the one that had evolved after the1622 attack and persisted to his day of arrival: the procedures by which the Council of State had conducted its agenda and decision-making–in an atmosphere shared by the previous domestic governors. If there was a personification of the oligarchy that formally and informally governed the colony, it rested on the Council of State.
The governor always had powers, appointment, approving headrights and land sales-patents, moderating the Council, and a veto over it–a veto that could be overridden. There were some gubernatorial prerogatives over the militia, and he did have unspecific powers to issue what we might call an executive order. Larger issues, such as the right to tax, a right that was no where in the formal company system, usually meant calling the Assembly into session after the Council had debated and refined it for its consideration. The overlap between the Assembly and the Council-Governor was considerable, and the Assembly’s rights and responsibilities as we shall see were undefined and not formally approved by the King.
… both Sir Francis Wyatt, the first royal governor [and the last Company-appointed governor], and his successor [Sir George Yeardley-a former Greate Charter Company governor and subsequent plantation conquistador] found it convenient to sound out colonists’ opinions on matters of special importance. Although the governors had plenipotentiary powers, once in Virginia they found themselves very constrained. They had no soldiers or bureaucracy on which to fall back, and found ultimately that they could govern only with the consent of the colonists.
Given that state of affairs, some kind of dialogue was required. To this end the assembly was a useful entity. Even the Crown acknowledged the wisdom of occasionally convening such a body, as in 1627, to discuss the issuing of licenses to import tobacco, and again in 1628, for the provision of a palisade between the James and York rivers. Charles I did not grant the assembly formal recognition, however, until 1639. [99] Richard Middleton, Colonial America, a History 1565-1776 (3rd Ed) (Blackwell Publishing, 2002), p. 61
But as we have seen the Assembly met so infrequently, after an election, in an uncertain atmosphere in Jamestown–which was unhealthy in a good season, and hot and miserable and deathly in the spring and summer. That kept Assembly meetings short. The reality was the Council, since 1622, had always been the workhorse. As mentioned above, the Council wasted little time in seizing the initiative, and solidifying its position as the mainstay of Virginia’s provincial government. The best way to do that was to assert is authority and “elect” or more tactfully in the event of a vacancy to nominate its candidate for governor, send the request onto London, and in the meantime, the nominee would exercise the prerogatives as governor. Invariably the Council nominated an individual who could command the respect, and presumably the votes of the Council.
Yeardley was Wyatt’s replacement as governor, but he died unexpectedly, but not suddenly, in Virginia a few months later (1627). Charles had prepared for such an eventuality; in his initial instructions-commission–to Yeardley, the King pronounced his intention to appoint his successor, by name John Harvey. That appointment was formally made in early 1628 when the king received notice of Yeardley’s death [99] J. Mills Thornton, “the Thrusting out of Governor Harvey: a Seventeenth Century Rebellion” (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Virginia Historical Society, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan, 1968), p. 18. It is not clear if the Council of State was aware of Yeardley’s instructions, and it certainly was unaware when it selected Francis West (brother of deceased Baron De La Warre, the first Governor of Virginia). Francis West served as (Acting) Governor (1627-9) seemingly oblivious of Harvey’s appointment. Harvey himself was in no hurry to come, and his arrival in late 1629 only created opportunity for the Council to run matters for the better part of two years.
Francis West arrived in 1608, appointed to the Governor’s Council in the same year, and was Jamestown’s military commander from 1612-18. A prototypical example of a plantation conquistador he proved to be. Of noble heritage, one of the very few in Virginia, he is said to have quarreled with Captain John Smith back in his Jamestown days—and persistent rumors were Smith tried to have him killed by the Indians. Francis West served as Jamestown’s first delegate to the Burgesses in 1619. After service with the Company as Admiral of its New England Venture; he returned to Virginia as its Captain General, the colony-its chief military officer. In 1627, he was an “old man”, an ancient aristocratic settler of about forty-one years of age.
He had acquired a plantation, near Westover by 1622, and owned land at Shirley, the old Baron’s estate and the first plantation in the colony. West was able to amass considerable land holdings, becoming one of the colony’s largest plantation owner, accumulated by his none-too-subtle marriages to three widows in three years (1626 to 1629). One of these marriages was to Governor Yardley’s widow four months after his death (her children fought somewhat successfully to keep West from inheriting Shirley Plantation when she died in December 1628).
Why West returned to England in early 1629, I do not know, but once there he became aware of George Calvert’s efforts to carve a colony out of northern Virginia–an action he opposed. He died, drowning, in 1634, but not before he was elected by the Governor’s Council to once again in 1631. After his death his younger brother, John, replaced Harvey as Deputy Governor (don’t worry we will cover all this insider politics stuff later). In any event the controversial treaty of 1628, intended to bring the Second Powhatan War to an end, was negotiated by West–and abandoned by his successor John Pott.
Francis West’s successor was physician (graduate of Oxford), John Pott, who had served as the Company’s physician in Virginia since 1619. Pott’s breakthrough claim to fame, apparently, was his spiking the liquor with poison at a 1623 Indian peace treaty, leading to the death of an alleged 200 Indians. He was cleared of this charge (as local defender’s proclaimed “he was by far the best physician in the colony … skilled in epidemicals” [don’t ask], and restored to office. He entered the Governor’s Council after the Company’s fall in 1625. Elected to the Governor’s Office by the Council in 1628, Pott served in 1629 to early 1630—when Harvey arrived and assumed his position as governor.
As we shall soon see. for all sorts of reasons. I suspect, a new and hostile Governor Harvey unleashed a contentious period of attack, elite debate, and popular accusations against Potts, loosely tied to the Potts scandal that hit the court in 1630. Potts standing within the oligarchy was less a military chieftain, than its behind the scenes godfather, wheeler and dealer, with a network that resembled a Rolodex. He did have a rival in that role, the emerging Samuel Mathews. Potts chief ambition at this point was likely to acquire acreage and headrights associated with the settlement of the Middle Peninsula about and around the Palisades Project.
Pott’s position on peace with the Indians–he was arguably a major advocate for the “perpetual war”, and his strong negative reaction to a rising Maryland and “Catholic” question, and his complete immersion in the land-patent-headright settlement strategy offer little ground for any serious love affair between the two. If that were not sufficient Potts made a number of ‘midnight appointments’ immediately previous to Harvey’s assumption of power, appointments that insured each of the Council had their people in charge of local militia and the courts-etc. that populated shire-county governance. This could not have set well with Harvey. As we shall see one of Harvey’s first action was to launch what turned out to be a multi-year battle with Potts, a battle that was not viewed favorably by Pott’s colleagues on the Council.
In any case, the reader can see into the nature of the oligarchy, its audacity, and its determination to ensure a “friendly” governor during the three year period previous to Harvey. One can also get a sense of why Bailyn is so upset with this batch of thugs who had embedded themselves in the Council of State. I may not be overstating the case, but one might watch a few episodes of Dallas, Succession, or Yellowstone; that will allow you to keep up the flavor of Virginia politics during these years. Have no fear, Harvey’s personality was reasonably congruent with the Council’s hardy pioneers.
James’ Death and Charles’ Succession: Formulating a Virginia Vision,1624-1634
The first section of this module makes several key points that are critical to our understanding of this period in Virginia history. The First Migration and its elite is a contested and controversial phase in that history–but a phase that is absolutely essential to our assertion that Virginia’s “bending of the twig” did affect the shape and direction of Virginia’s future economic and political development. Our second theme was that the chaos of these years gave plentiful opportunity for Virginia’s Wild Bunch to display their more negative features.
Next, we made the case that politics and atmosphere in London, hybrid London policy -making, was itself in disarray, moving headlong from one struggle and controversy to another. That disruption and dysfunction, the court politics, struggle with Parliament, and Charles’ insensitive flirtation with Catholicism and a moderate Anglican Church was increasingly polarizing the country.
Moreover, we made the case that Charles was unwilling to come to terms with his colony, define its government and administration, or spend sufficient time and personal discipline to devote to the colony to administer it with consistent and responsible actions that helped to accomplish some sense of objectives and mission in the colonies. That meant anything approaching effective governance would have to come from Virginia’s governance institutions and its elite. That proved very unlikely given the heritage of the Virginia Company, and the limbo in which Virginia had been placed since its suspension in 1624.
So our final theme in the last section showed the reader how Virginia’s established political institutions previous to 1630 were only reconverted private company bodies simply shifted over into government bodies. Lacking definition, legitimacy, and populated with an oligarchic planter class that lorded it over a structured inequality of the tobacco monoculture, that engaged itself in a perpetual war with its Native American residents, a war that provided food staples as the spoils of war, and conquest of land for tobacco expansion. Under such conditions, these institutions were too poorly developed, virtually unempowered, without experience or capacity to govern such a tumultous and turbulent decentralized shredded community translated into what some saw as a semi-anarchy, with little control or purpose save for ambition and greed.
That I contend was the fault of Charles. Potts was not King of Virginia; Charles was.
In this section of the module, we take the opposite point of view. We discuss in detail how Charles tried to govern his colony during this period. Up to this point I have “cut him little slack”, and that was not completely fair to Charles. Charles did put in some time with Virginia, and he did set up some initiatives to understand what was going on, and to fathom a path on how he should govern his colony–as well as expand English colonies in other areas of North America, during a time of heavy-duty mercantilist European rivalries. To square the circle–he failed, for not the best of reasons. He choose policies that intensified English disruption and polarization and that inevitably spilled more and more into Virginia’s hybrid policy-making. He fell victim to the hard-to-escape collapse of policy systems in transition to other policy systems.
As we shall see Charles’ initiatives, the first two at least, alert us that Charles had not yet given up with returning an amended charter to a new Virginia Company. A decade after that charter had been taken away from it, a Virginia Company was still likely the king’s preferred option–because he did not want to pay for, or spend the time to personally rule Virginia and the other colonies. That inconsistency fully exposed the failure of his first initiative: the Mandeville Commission. When these efforts failed, Charles created a third entity to oversee the “Foreign Plantations”, and that was a kiss of death for effective Stuart colonial administration. The Laud Commission lasted to the outbreak of the civil war, 1642 (Laud was executed by the Puritans), and so the bulk of its initiatives and actions will be discussed in future modules.
But we get ahead of ourselves. At this point, we need to demonstrate that from 1631 through and after 1635, Charles was involved with Virginia, and was trying to come to grips with its political and economic development. That his efforts ultimately failed, draws from many reasons, but they expose the difficulty of developing a hybrid London-Jamestown colonial policy system during the pre-civil war Stuart years.
London Hybrid Politics is more than mere background noise to the affairs in Virginia; London Colonial Administration Wrote the Notes and Lyrics.
What they demonstrate, arguably, was England at this point, with the Stuart dynasty at its helm, was unable to exercise sufficient governance to sustain more effective rule and focused over Virginia. The so-called anarchy that enveloped Virginia in these years was in large measure, not exclusively, caused by this failure from the London side of the colony’s hybrid politics. To be sure it did expose the villainy in its oligarchic elite, and the consequences of an economy that created a structurally unequal workforce and citizenry–and if in fact class inequality although to talk of “class politics” is this period is very premature.
So more than less, domestic Virginia institutions, out of their league and beyond their job descriptions, were left with the responsibilities of day-to-day resident governance. Virginia’s domestic elite did react to this disruption, did try to forge as effective a policy system policy-making system as it thought possible given the confining reality it would not deviate from the tobacco monoculture; but it was not a pretty affair. At this point we can simply state Virginia’s broke down completely under the strain in 1635, with the ouster of royal governor Harvey.
Little appreciated today, policy-making in London during these years threatened to alter the development path of the colony. The Kent Island initiative, in our background temporarily, whatever else it would do, would potentially radically restructure Virginia and its economic base. That, we shall discover, radically split Virginia’s planter oligarchy into two factions, and that raised havoc with the fears and expectations of resident post Virginia Company Virginians. Likely, again as we shall discover, Governor Harvey was the lightning rod. Harvey rode the policy bronco into 1635, when his personality and tendency to overplay his own agenda, gave him an expenses paid trip to merrie olde England.
The effects of these intrusions are usually collapsed into the background and frustration that caused the ouster of Governor Harvey in 1635. But the real story is not his ouster per se, that minimizes the disruption from London so we lose a very important lesson on the how the Stuart Dynasty, Charles for the most part, mishandled the colony, not only contributing to any Virginia’s bending of its fragile colonial twig, but directly standing by, if not encouraging, the bend, and further bends as well. Harvey’s firing was not the first shot in the American Revolution, nor was it the first instance that democracy in the wilderness, frontier democracy, made its appearance.
While I stand in awe of American colonial historians, indeed this book stands figuratively on their shoulders, but many did us no favors by neglecting the impact of London and British policy-makers on Virginia’s early First Migration period, With exceptions such as Andrews, Osgood, Roper and Craven and several others (Billings) one is hard-pressed to get a clear understanding how London policy-making distorted the resident Virginia policy system. This module attempts to fill in that gap. The story of seventeenth century English colonialism requires the perspective that events in the mother country exacted serious consequences in the political and economic development of the English colonies in North America.
No doubt I ought to be more forgiving; the Stuarts were clearly a transition dynasty that presided over the transition of late English medieval-mercantilism to the beginnings of the early industrial revolution. No one is at one’s best putting pants on at 5:30 AM in the dark and half asleep. Transitional regimes rarely have the opportunity to provide good governance as they constantly face disruption, dealing with poorly understood new drivers and dynamics that invite violent behavior, war, and internal breakdown. Stuarts had their share, and like Nicolas II in Russia we still live dealing with their consequences.
In this module Charles is heading into his last years previous to their Civil War. The Civil War, the Parliamentary interlude, the Cromwell Protectorate were not conducive to inspired and consistent governance of their North American colonies; to be an agent of political and economic development that provided both stern and sensitive administration moving the colonies in directions that were sustainable, and realistic was likely beyond the capacity of each English government of this period. So we best learn how our English colonies reacted to this disruption and dysfunctionality.
Four London Disruptors of the Virginia twig
the First Disruptor: the 1624 Mandeville Commission
The first meddlesome intrusion from London wasted no time in disrupting the future path of Virginia. The 1624-5 Mandeville Commission was intended as a temporary interlude by the Privy Council-Commission made necessary by a court’s decision that parts of the 1606-9 Virginia Company charters were deficient, the remedy being the suspension of the charter until such sections and their deficiencies were redressed. As we hall now see, the 1624 charter was more properly termed “suspended” as it was then believed some version of reformed charter would result in the resurrection of the Virginia Company.
As James, increasingly associating the Virginia Company with forces of Parliament, had also watched it disintegrate after 1622. The Second Powhatan War was one thing, but Virginia Company was collapsing because the 1609 Merchant Adventurer colonial business plan had collapsed, the Company was at the edge of bankruptcy and in so doing exposed the nakedness behind the Elizabethan-Stuart royal business plan of not paying for colonial ventures, while extracting from them all that could be extracted.
The Merchant Adventurers thought they could pay for colonial Jamestown if they were given the autonomy to direct affairs in ways that produced a profit, a quick profit that matched the Dutch trading factory model. The problem from its start Jamestown/Virginia was not intended to be a trading factory-a small outpost in a far-away land that made a deal with the natives, settled in a small area that resembled today’s free trade zone, and traded, ship by ship for whatever could be sold or was needed by England. Smythe and his Merchant Adventurer investors recognized they wanted a more permanent settlement, but bluntly they had little sense of what that meant.
Over the first decade, the Merchant Adventurers learned they could not view a settlement colony as congruent with the business plan of a trading factory. They imposed martial order, a company town socialism, and sent English gentlemen investors to scratch out an economic base from their own ambitions. That did not work, it failed as quickly as Sagadahoc Maine had a year earlier. From the brink of extinction in 1610, Lord De la Warre, and lieutenant governors Gates and Dale they experimented, tobacco seeds being one.
By 1618,however,after a disasters administration by Argall, the Company was on the edge of bankruptcy that lead into a coup by Smythe’s vice-Treasurer, Edwin Sandys and his parliamentary allies. From that point on Smythe and his merchant adventurers were on the outside of Virginia (mostly in Bermuda) looking in. Sandys and his allies ran the Virginia shop–politicians, nobles and gentry parliamentarians all they tried to reconcile financial innovation with economic development-diversification and a measure of Virginian company self-governance: the Greate Charter company institutions.
Their business plan, a combination of bailing out the finances of the good ship Virginia Company, and through the Greate Charter initiatives intended to reshaped Virginia into a more permanent settlement. The Powhatan, however, saw into that, and for them that future was bleak. By the end of 1622, the Greate Charter movement was literally in ashes and what was left of the settler population clustered behind palisades on the James River.
Simultaneously, from 1620-1 the Virginia Company was in the throes of its own civil war. The terrible news from Virginia only intensified that war, and drove the Sandys’ faction behind its own legal barricades defending itself from Smythe, Warwick and by that time, the King was fully engaged in pushback to his foes in the Virginia Company. By 1623 the Merchant Adventurers were pulling away from Virginia, concentrating their attention on the small island of Bermuda, which seemed more compatible with their capacity, interest, and pay-go business plan. The king, aware the Virginia Company had imploded knew it was up to him to forge a bigger picture for Virginia, one that could make Virginia a colony of benefit not just to him, but England.
the Suspension of the Virginia Company Charter over Virginia
Probably the most detailed review of the period previous to the Court decision made in May-June 1624 by Sir James Ley, Chief Justice of the King’s Bench (Trinity Term) is found in Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3 [99] (The MacMillan Company, 1907), Chapter II, pp. 44-53. If company politics had predominated between 1622 and 1623, James stepped in rather dramatically around October, 1623. At that point the Privy Council was ordered to assume prime responsibility “for all correspondence with the colony“, but also that “all complaints against the company should be submitted to the [Privy Council] commissioners“. The intent appears to have been to stop any further action by courts on the deluge of charges and representations that had been accumulated to that point. The King also ordered the election of new [Virginia Company] officers in April 1624, and confirmed the status of those in office until that election.[99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3, p. 47.
From that point, the [Privy Council] commissioners , frequently meeting at Sir Thomas Smythe’s house, “instituted a prolonged investigation, examining the company’s papers, and hearing witnesses. The report they made “while moderate in tone, was less favorable to the contentions of the company than to those of its opponents, and confirmed the king [Osgood suggests] in his resolve to change the government of the colony [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3, p. 47. Around this time, the Privy Council appears to have appointed on its authority Captain John Harvey, John Pory, Abraham Peirsey and Captain Samuel Mathews to the Council of State. Osgood cites a Sandys’ remark these individuals were “certayne obscure persons … found out by the Earl of Middlesex [who was Lionel Cranfield, James’ Lord Treasurer]. In that at minimum, Peirsey who had been Virginia’s Cape Merchant since 1618 would have been very well known to Sandys, we can suspect Sandys did not consider these fellows as his allies [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3, p. 47.
The matter came to a head on October 8, 1623 when Deputy treasurer of the Company, Nicholas Ferrar (and others) were order to appear before the Privy Council whereupon they were told “that the king had resolved, by a new charter, to appoint a governor and twelve assistants to be resident in England [mine], to whom in subordination to the Privy Council would commit the government of the colony and company [mine]. Provision was also made for the appointment by the king of a governor and assistants for the colony [presumably in residence in the colony]. The company was then ordered to assembly and resolve whether it would surrender its former charter, and accept a new one with the changes thus described”. [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3, p. 48. Strong letter to follow!
Osgood reports the company folk in attendance were shocked, and contested the immediacy of their reaction to the Council. What followed were at least one company board of directors meeting, with seventy members in attendance, only nine of which supported the Privy Council changes. It refused to surrender the charter. A warrant was then issued Attorney General Coventry before the King’s Bench and in early November it was served on the Company. The Quarter Court met on November 19th and ordered a grand jury to conduct the company’s defense. The matter drifted until March 1624 when the Privy Council presented to the Company a “form” [presumably a new charter] for the company’s acceptance, such acceptance being denied by the company. Admitting they did not yet have the authority to act, the Council said no retribution against the Company management and board would follow and that for the “good of the plantation” the company should acquiesce.
When convey to Virginia, the Governor Wyatt and the Assembly he called into session, they Virginia authorities submitted a response to the Council, defending the Sandys management of the colony, and bitterly attacking the previous Smythe management. The petition concluded with a request that if the government was to be changed, it not be returned to the Smythe faction. This, however, had no effect on the Privy Council which then ordered the company “return its papers” and “the pretense of an investigation ceased and the case was prepared for trial before the King’s Bench. In response, the Parliament then institution impeachment action against the Lord Treasurer Cranfield, and passed an act against “monopolies”. To enlist the support of the Parliament Deputy Ferrar appeared before the Parliament in April 1624, approved by the company, and issued a petition supporting its position against the Council. The King almost immediately forbade the Parliament, saying the decision was a prerogative of the Privy Council. The Parliament, grumbling, backed down.[99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3, pp. 50-1.
Judgment was rendered on this suit in May-June 1624 by Sir James Ley, Chief Justice of King’s Bench in Trinity Term.. Ley held the Virginia Company countersuit was not sufficient to stop the king’s suspension of the charter over the Virginia colony. As reported by Osgood “the effect of the adverse judgment under a writ of warranto was not to cancel the charter, but to restore the liberties which existed under it into the hands of the king. This is probably the reason why the charter does not appear as canceled or vacated on the Patent Roll. Under that condition it was quite possible that the patent might again be granted with such modifications as should appear wise to the king and his advisors. A result such as this was regarded by both parties at the time as possible.[99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 3, pp. 51-2.
Osgood’s “take” as to the partial suspension of the Virginia Company charter was the question of its reissue lingered on for over a decade following. He rightly observes that the niceties and precision of the impact caused by the action was more understood in England than in America. The assertion of authority by the king over his colonial possessions marked a moderation in his willingness to grant wide autonomy to [private] individuals and corporations “marked the end of the romantic period of Virginia history” and initiated a predisposition to inject more royal powers into the governance of the colony, while privatizing where possible the domestic administration over economic and civil matters to another entity under the charter. In other words there was a larger perspective that proved as key in the future evolution of British colonial and trade policy and regulation.
The reader ought to take away a more specific understanding of the underlying problem that caused the 1624 suspension and the same problem that refused to go away over the next decade. We will refer to this using a more simplistic metaphor that James (and Charles) had from the beginning a desire to include themselves in the governance of the colony–and such structures and relationships that made that necessary–were present in the original 1606 Virginia Company charter–the charter that launched the Jamestown-bound ships. The desperation of Jamestown, however. persuaded the king that more autonomy to the joint stock corporation was required in order to “save” the colony from extinction. Accordingly, the 1609 charter in particular was granted to the company allow much greater autonomy of the company over both domestic administration and governance as well.
The Company, for obvious reasons considered in the course of this history, favored strongly the 1609 charter. The victory of the Sandys’ faction, closely tied and linked to a Parliament willing to extend itself into colonial matters, plus the obvious fiscal and financial incapacity of the corporation to fund the settlement of the company, led to its internal disarray, that by 1623 seemed likely to lead to its extinction–bringing down the colony with it.
James, and later his son Charles, no doubt believed their involvement in the governance of the colony would likely have mitigated some of the ambiguity of managing and financing the colony, while allowing the king to require more regulation of resources-revenues imported to England. This the Company, particularly the Sandys faction, would not tolerate. Their resistance to the assertion of royal authority was as intense in 1624 as it appeared to be in 1634. That “stubbornness”, likely in my opinion, was what finally caused the king in 1634 to sever the partnership over Virginia with the Virginia Company.
Smythe, himself in ill health–as was James–and Smythe associates were ready to move on to other non-Virginian ventures, but James was stuck with Virginia, and Massachusetts, a brand new colony fashioned from the Virginia Company’s second subsidiary, was already splashing about in its own bath tub; Massachusetts promised yet another open-ended venture in the making. James needed a plan, a vision, and a transition, and that was what the 1624 Mandeville Commission was about, as was the 1623-4 Pym-Harvey Report.
Certainly by 1624 England’s nearly twenty year experiment in Virginia had come to an end; the colony needed a vision, and the plan as implement needed capacity in terms of financial, pay the bills and make some profit, and England needed to define a mercantile partnership that was less extractive, but more more accountable to the sovereign’s foreign and trade policy.
James, I believe, realized whatever else he did he could not hire a private company to settle as it saw fit, make such profits as it could, but in the end be loyal to and accountable to the England and its Sovereign-who when he looked out his window saw day-by-day polarization, conflict and the emergence of a second power in the land, Parliament. With less and less access to funds and cash flows, the divine right business plan was itself in collapse. Indeed, the Mandeville Commission could be looked at as a retaking of Dodge City by Wyatt Earp at the OK Corral. His problem, however, was obvious–once he reasserted himself into Virginia, how would be govern it, and in 1624, more important, how were the bills of a colony to be paid.
the Mandeville Commission Inherits the King’s Suspension of the Charter: It also inherited the Virginian Vision Thing
At the time the court decision was shaping up, the Privy Council assumed formal control over Virginia. It was clear that like it or not, the Crown had inherited the Virginia colony. To a Virginian, this was pretty important. If nothing else, instead of company officials, Virginia domestic governance would require royal, not private company, appointment. The shift to royal authority was important to the Crown as well; it had offloaded Virginia to the Company, but in 1624 the whole shebang fell into the Privy Council lap. There was no instruction manual on their bookshelf. The 1606-9 experiment had not worked, and its failure meant that England needed to forge some sort of a colonial strategy without the buffering vehicle of a private joint stock corporation. Say it another way, England had to pay Virginia’s bills. Osgood observes it is at this point that England became first “concerned with the very beginnings of English colonial administration, as applied to the province of Virginia“ [99] [p. 72]
Osgood continues that the English-Virginian relationship that followed under the early Stuarts “was more intimate than at any later period [regarding Virginia], or than they were in the case of any other royal province … the [English] government took more direct interest than at later times. As colonies multiplied and their diverse interests demanded consideration, control became generalized and details were left to be worked out by merchants, planters, and local officials. Virginia then fell into its place among the rest”. In this short-lived relationship a special bond was forged between the mother country and Virginia, and here we see the origin of the Stuart nickname for Virginia: the Old Dominion. From its start in 1607, and carried over to the royal province in 1624 was Virginia’s coat of arms that proclaimed the province the “fifth of the dominions of England (Scotland, Wales, France, Ireland–and Virginia] [99] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/old-dominion/ As England’s first North American colonial experiment, Virginia “enjoyed” a special relationship with the mother country, relationship not shared by the other twelve colonies.
Off and on for the year previous, the Privy Council had injected itself from time to time in matters Virginia and colonial. But in these issues the dysfunctional and fairly autonomous Company was the intermediary, a buffer, an advocate, and a vehicle of communication and power between sovereign and the colony. The company could “make laws” so long as they were compatible with those of England. From 1623 on, however, the Company was no longer regarded as able to handle administration of that province.
The complicated reality was that even if the Virginia Company was no longer able to administer Virginia, the Company continued its existence and retained its charter for the “northern territories, a land mass for which the second Virginia Company sub-company, of Sagadahoc fame, continued issuing patents and charters to such as the Massachusetts Bay Company; a third element of the Company, the Somer’s Company (Bermuda) also remained in Company hands until 1684..
What was suspended was only the Virginia Company charter regarding Virginia. Americans today likely assume the Virginia Company ceased its impact on North America when its charter was suspended in 1624; not so, the events in Massachusetts and New England continued to be administered by and thru the Virginia Company for a generation later. That, however, did little to support the paradigms that developed out of the Massachusetts colonial experience, and so they are usually pushed off to the side.
The Mandeville Commission was formerly established on July 5th (a near irony with the Declaration of Independence) 1624. “the Mandeville board was expected to report eventually on the desirability or otherwise of issuing a new charter to the company, but its first duty was to administer the affairs of the colony“. [p.192]
Composed of about fifty-five members, appointed in “waves”, a quorum of only six, the Mandeville Commission was firmly lodged n the hands of Lord Mandeville and such Privy Council staff as assigned. “The Commission consisted of ministers of state, the law officers of the crown, knights, clergymen, and merchants. It contained many who had been members of the company [shareholders and board officers], but they were selected largely from the party [faction] of Smythe and Johnson … because its work was expressly confined to one colony … it rather involved a return to the arrangement [charter] of 1606. … The meetings of the commission were held weekly at the house of Thomas Smythe [99] Osgood, p. 74.
As the personal agent of the King, Mandeville watched–and waited– as the Company reformed its structures, and more importantly completed the ouster of the much disked Sandys majority. During 1624 the Virginia Company “affair” had degenerated into the no-holds-barred fight between the Parliamentary faction headed by Edwin Sandys and his chief Virginia Company administrator, John Ferrar. The Smythe faction which obviously included the King, and the Earl of Warwick’s (the Rich family & allies) held insider positions on the Commission.
Smythe was reportedly in ill health (he died in June, 1625), his Merchant Adventurers allies had long lost interest in a Virginia settlement strategy, and had moved on to other trading ventures;. The interest in the Company’s Magazine in 1624 included a variety of London traders, merchants and custom factors-farmers. It appears from the records that the Warwick faction was the more dominant at the meetings of the Commission. [99] See the documents. TheRecordsoftheVirginiaCompanyofLondon_10295352.pdf as complied and presented in Forgotten Papers].
The Commission’s membership, it turns out, was mostly composed of individuals whose position regarding the Company was acceptable to the King. It is not unlikely that its membership could soon find itself on the board of the newly reformed Virginia Company. Symbolically and tellingly, the Commission held its first meeting at the house of one of its key board members, our friend Sir Thomas Smyth. The board members of the Commission were a who’s who of Sandy’s opponents. with only a “sampling” of the despised faction.
An item of critical importance, little noted in Virginia history, was the Crown did not assert any obligation to pay for the expenses of the colony, which, had, of course, been paid for by the Company. As Osgood reports “But if, and when, royal government was established, all aid [by either the Company or the Crown] was withdrawn; … the substitution of government by the crown for government by the company threw the colonists more on their own resources” [99] p. 75 Today we might think of the Mandeville Commission as able to devise and execute “unfunded mandates” for which compliance was required, and the costs of such borne by the regulated. To sense the extreme of this, Governor Harvey was not paid by the Crown, or by the province of Virginia. He was left to his own devices to pay for his expenses, including travel to an from America. This issue did play an important role in the “Governor Harvey affair” in the next module. I can only mention that Harvey died penniless. In any event, the costs of compliance to royal authority were paid for, if at all, by Virginian fees and taxes, a source of funds for which the king had not yet conveyed his approval for the colony’s right to do either. It might also be noted that in this period, the king authorized the first significant infrastructure project in Virginia, the Palisades Project discussed in detail earlier, whose 1200 pounds had to be paid for by Virginians, a tax imposed by an Assembly not yet ratified as legitimate or congruent with royal governance.
The Privy Council received Pory’s Report (originally commissioned in October 1623) from Virginia about a month AFTER the court had decided to suspend the charter (one member of the Porys Commission, John Harvey, stayed behind in Virginia until 1625 to prepare his own report on the the future status of the colony). This was the first major involvement of the Council in Virginia. Within a matter of weeks of that, the Privy Council appointed a “Commission” (July 1624) headed by Viscount Mandeville, the Lord President of the Privy Council (i.e. its boss). The creation of the Mandeville Commission was then intended an interim body to operate the colony, and to transition its governance to a more firm footing, presumably a reformed Virginia Company charter. The Commission assumed powers and functions of the lapsed Virginia Company, and functioned in the name of the King.
In this atmosphere the Commission took action which made clear its intention not to listen to or revive the Company’s charter so long as the Sandys faction ran the Company and the affairs of the colony. In the course of the next few months into the late winter of 1625, the Commission entertained petitions from all parties. During this time, behind the scenes, key players–including John Harvey, in the Virginia linked up with Commission members of their liking. The Sandys’ faction prepared a “Discourse” making its case to retain its management largely under the terms of the original charter; its message and limited reforms were not to the liking of either the Virginia Assembly (conveyed in its Brief Declaration), or the Commission–and certainly not King James. Private letters abounded and made their way into the Commission’s records. In short this was not an expedited affair.
So with a resolution of the issues not yet in sight by late August 1624, the Commission believed it best to formally transition Company governance structures to royal administration, with the dotted line going directly to the King–a royal colony. It seems the King did not want a repeat of the corporate autonomy over Virginia governance that the 1609 charter provided; he likely wanted a formal input into the selection of key positions and a line of accountability to him. Osgood summarizes this report:
[The Report] recommended the reestablishment of the Company and the issue of a new charter. This should provide for a president and council who as the appointees of the king should administer from England the government of the colony. The resident governor and council in Virginia should likewise be royal appointees. All other rights and privileges pertaining tot he enterprise [Virginia], except those of government, should be again intrusted [sic] to the patentees. This was clearly a plan for a revival of the system of 1606. [99] p. 79.
Accordingly the Privy Council appointed the company’s governor, Francis Wyatt, as royal governor, and the membership of the Governor’s Council was reappointed to serve at the King’s service. No revision of operating procedures or new requirements specific to the latter entity, nor mention of the Virginia Assembly was made. Except for Wyatt, a relation of Sandys and a key member of his faction who wanted out, there appears to have been little dissatisfaction with the reorganization.
But lost in the politics of the day was the long-term implications of seemingly simple change in appointment relationships from Company to the King. In essence the Virginia corporate status quo was transformed into the government of a Virginia royal colony. Keeping in mind that a new charter and contract issued by the king was contemplated to inject the king into what had been a pure company, i.e. joint stock corporation, governance process, this administrative transformation was a step in that direction; its main effect was to remove the Company from Virginia’s chain of command. [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. I, (Yale University Press, 1934), p. 192,
The practical effect of this action, however, was it embedded the Virginia corporate elite which had evolved out of the tobacco monoculture and the Second Powhatan War, and reconstituted it as the royal governance of the colony. When the Virginia Company later “dropped off the table” as we will later describe, what was thought to be an interim transition became permanent.
More to the point, the Privy Council 1624 decision to rollover the Company’s governance into royal governance was the the fateful decision that transformed Bailyn’s “thugs and non aristocratic scoundrels”, the oligarchic-plantation conquistadors, and the larger planters-ship captains, into government appointees in the transition from the Company to royal administration. If we are in search of the way in which the Company elites who dominated the post Massacre Company Governor’s Council became public servants of the King in the royal colony of Virginia, this Privy Council, as James’s agent, was the culprit. It was a fiat accompli by the end of 1624.
Along with the names the administrative reshuffle also carried with it the Greate Charter institutions–excepting the Assembly. The Governor’s Council was specified in the same phrase as the governor–the perception in London seems to have been the two were in some manner linked. No specific decision-making process for this combined entity was cited, with the chief restriction being the governor moderated and had a veto over any decisions of the two bodies. That veto extended to the Assembly.
So whatever the Assembly was meant to be in 1619, it was outside the royal chain of command in the revamped royal governance. The Governor and Council were clearly executive bodies, empowered to issue legislation and conduct the day-to-day affairs of the colony. Also, seemingly without thought, such officials were legitimate representatives of the domestic governance as actors and participants in London’s end of the hybrid policy system.
If the link of Council and Governor was fundamental–and it later proved to be–this had to have taken the Governor down a notch or two. I suspect no one sent that memo to the prospective future governor, Harvey. That administrative ambiguity, the reader is notified, proved to be the first step down the path to the ouster of John Harvey, a little more than a decade later. What it seemingly did was the reauthorization of the Governor and Council also endorsed the style of decision-making and the who’s who of participants and customs that had arisen since 1622.
A final point of note to the reader is to reiterate that during this period, the last half of 1624 and the first three months of 1625, the fate of the Virginia Company’s revived charter was still on “the table”, and, in fact, was the likely outcome to be issued by the Mandeville Commission as soon as it could. In short, the Virginia Company, in some revamped state, minus the Parliamentary-Sandys-dominance, was expected to resume its administration of the colony.
On 27th March 1625, King James I died.
Enter Charles I
As Andrews reports “Charles I …was much less prejudiced against the company [which I interpret as ‘the company dominated and operated under the Sandys faction’], than his father had been, and apparently was willing to give careful consideration to the {Sandys’ company] presentation of its own case [meaning negotiation on the future of the Company and its charter was still on the table such that all factions were now represented].
Bluntly the deck had been reshuffled. That the Commission, an agent of James I, had been stacked and sent off to do dirty with the Sandys Virginia Company, left it out-of-step with the new king. Accordingly, the Mandeville Commission prepared to dissolved itself shortly after the death of King James. To this end, the Privy Council in April 1625 appointed two committees of its own members to work out the tobacco contract, and second, to determine the future governance of the colony. Essentially Virginia affairs went back from Mandeville to the Privy Council, which was Charles agent in the new administration.
Hearings followed, the earlier mentioned “Brief Declaration” of the Virginia Assembly, and the “Discourse of the Company”, Sandys argument in favor of continuing his management of the Company were heard, read, and received. John Harvey’s delayed report on the conditions he found in Virginia during 1624 and his recommendations for its future, were also presented to the Privy Council–an important step in the career of our Mr. Harvey.
And behind the scenes Charles engaged in many matters and priorities, his openness to the Sandy’s led Virginia Company charter led to a Privy Council rehash of the Sandys Discourse position submitted earlier. By April 11 hearings regarding the “Discourse of the Old Company” were conducted, and, as reported by Andrews, the position of the Sandys’ led Company in regards to its position on “who governs’ Virginia was advanced in terms of the 1609 Charter which rendered to the Company great powers autonomous of the Crown, and a monopoly largely outside the fabric of trade intended by the King in the import of tobacco to England.
Sandys and the Ferrars drew up what is known as the “Discourse of the Old Company” in which they reviewed at great length and with noticeable bitterness the situation from the beginning. They disparaged their opponents, both individually and as a whole, and condemned the Smith administration, exactly as had the the Assembly of Virginia in its “Brief Declaration”, with an injustice that at times borders on malice. The authors of the Discourse asked that the old company be restored with all its powers and privileges as an incorporated boy of adventurers and planters, and that its pattern be confirmed by an act of Parliament [of which Sandys was an MP in opposition to the King]. … It seems clear that in some way or other, the Sandys party overreached itself. [99] Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 193-4
Given the terms offered in the Discourse there appear to be no serious common ground given to support a compromise with the king. However, open Charles was to Sandys resumption of a charter, there is little grounds to believe he supported the 1609 charter, and that Charles’s proclivity was to return to some form of the 1606 charter–with strong does of royal participation and monitoring in and over the company’s administration.
So, within a month, on May 13 1625, Charles issued a proclamation “refusing absolutely to revive the Company [‘s Charter of Virginia]: “Our full resolution is to the end that there may be one uniform course of Government, in and through our whole Monarchie that the Government of the Colony of Virginia shall immediately depend upon Our Selfe, and not be committed to any Company or Corporation to whom it may be proper to trust matters of trade or Commerce, but cannot be fit or safe to communicate the ordering of State affairs, be they never so meane [of small] consequence [99] Andrews, p. 194
A return of the charter to the Virginia Company was off the table!
Little more than six weeks on the throne (he was not crowned until 1626), Charles–not James–stripped the Virginia Company of its Virginia charter.
In this period, Virginians were aware of what was transpiring in London [although Wyatt’s convening of the 1625 May Assembly was done without knowledge of James’s death]. That Assembly drafted an appeal [to James] which restated the earlier Brief Discussion and specifically and vigorously opposed the restoration of the revamped Company to the Smythe faction. The evils of its trade and Magazine were cited, and the inadequacies of the 1624 Tobacco Contract restated. The Virginia Assembly sent over a delegation headed by Yeardley [who arrived in London in October] to protect its interests and to advocate positions congruent with its submission to the Commission.
The decision by Charles, so quick to act in his first days will turn out to be his first major inconsistency in colonial affairs. Charles in his statement unabashedly repudiated colonial governance through joint stock corporations. But, apart from Virginia, other corporations would receive charters from Charles–and fairly soon after. To demonstrate, however, the future inconsistency of Charles, Andrews further observes that four years later Charles did precisely the opposite in issuing a charter to the subsidiary of the Virginia Company to found the Massachusetts Bay Company colony in Salem. That inconsistency was further confirmed when in 1632, Charles forced passage a new charter to George Calvert’s Maryland joint stock corporation. Others were to follow. In other words, by 1630, Charles was of a different mindset, and the matter of the Company’s revitalization and charter reissuance to it was again back on the table. Oh well, consistency is the hobgoblin of mediocre minds.
But before we leave the Mandeville Commission there is one large matter left to be discussed.
Although during its short history, the Mandeville Commission never took action on the headright, land tenure in Virginia, and undoing the past decisions and actions of the Virginia Company (indeed just the opposite as it retained its leadership in the “new Virginia”), it did unwittingly unleash a firestorm of unease and fear among Virginia settlers, rich large planters, the homesteaders and renters, and the indentured servants as well.
From the start in 1624 it was obvious, to the already insecure Virginia settler, that all it would take is a note from the king, saying Virginia was his personal land, and they were all out of business and living on his land. Or that he would sort through who was naughty or nice and make gifts only to those who had stars by their name. Even indentured servants who had signed away five years of their life were threatened if the headright went away; they would not get their promised acreage and a set of tools at the end of the contract. It was also obvious that anyone in London could see this as an opportunity opening up a whole bunch of quick rich schemes and “custom farmers”, while ship captains worried they could lose control of their developing logistics cluster of headright-fueled immigration, supply ship, and privileged export access to England.
Virginia settlers got as anxious as American school kids got when Covid hit. Snowflakes no longer, they took notice of this vulnerability in 1624 when Pory’s came to town, and the Assembly in that year’s missive to London raised a number of issues, many of which shared a basis in the vulnerability of past Virginia Company corporate actions which created the basic foundation of the colony; they asked for a quick confirmation–and they didn’t get it. That vulnerability would linger in varying degrees until 1639.
Perhaps not surprisingly that anxiousness saturated their view of John Harvey in 1629, when the loose-lipped Harvey, back in merrie old England, made a number of statements against the company, its actions, its officials and its use of the headright in particular. The nasty implementation of a new Scottish headright system by the Ulster Plantation alerted Virginia settlers to their ultimate vulnerability in the transfer of power away from the company: that the court had clearly determined the charter of the Company as it pertained to Virginia meant a questioning on the legality of the company approved land sales, grants, shareholder hundreds and their plantations, and workforce headrights.
Loose lips sink ships and Harvey may well have sunk his own before he ever stepped foot in Virginia as governor. Every decision he made, every arbitrary action he took, and every statement he uttered was often viewed through the prism of land and property vulnerability. He seemingly never understood the psychological importance of property to those who had risked their life and fortune on it. Combined with his haughtiness and vindictive tendencies, in 1634 Harvey arbitrarily seized an indentured servant from Samuel Mathews for his own personal use, simply because the servant was nearby and Harvey needed him. Mathews was outraged, stormed up to Harvey and started beating with a stick nearby weeds in fury. My image of Harvey is he had a good port and hardy laugh that night; he who laughs last, often laughs last.
The Mandeville Commission intensified this anxiety simply by virtue of the actions of certain of some of the Commission’s key members who were closely associated with the goings in the Irish Ulster Plantation. Three of the Commission’s most prominent members were the principal actors in that land strategy that evicted Irish homesteaders and Irish nobility from their age-old lands and titles, and displaced them in favor of a new crop of rich British/Scot plantation owners and indentured settlers. There on the Mandeville Commission sat Lord Chichester and two of his principal associates in this land transfer. That the King (James) had authorized this strategy was obvious, but even when James died, Charles did not abandon it. Charles’s failure to confirm past Company decisions sent out a message, right or wrong, that he was keeping his options open.
The Irish settlement strategy was not ancient history rehashed–it started in 1609 and was ongoing during the 1620’s. Eventually in 1641 the Irish rebelled–as the Indians did in 1644. The Ulster Plantation was current events in the 1625 Virginia world. The fear of it in Virginia was real. When in 1625 he took off the table (temporarily it turned out) that the Company would be reissued its charter, he left the issue an open, never healing sore that the colonists would not ignore or forget.
That he appointed Harvey was no good omen of his intentions. If nothing else, Harvey came to America with baggage he did not need. No less than the leading authority on the “Thrusting out of Governor Harvey”, J. Mills Thornton III asserts this concern over Virginia land and property insecurity was the primary “background factor” that led to Harvey ouster:
James and his commission seem to have desired to follow Virginia in a policy similar to that adopted n Ireland after the Tyrone War [Nine Years War]. In connection with the plantation of Ulster, six counties had been declared escheated [a feudal law allowing a property in private ownership to “revert” back to king’s ownership when its past owners were dead without legal heirs or traitors] to the crown in 1609. The solicitor general …had ruled that the Irish inhabitants of the areas … whose ancestors had occupied the land for generations, were not freeholders but tenants at will. Tittle of their land was taken from them, and estates created which were distributed to new owners, often absentee and usually English or Scottish. … The [royal] government was so pleased with this result of this venture, that it set about extending the system to many other parts of Ireland. In each case the crown lawyers sought every excuse to deny the Irish inhabitants freehold rights. … [As a consequence] The Irish peerage [elite] created by the redistribution of these lands was dominated by English merchants and speculators [99] J Mills Thornton III, “the Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey: a Seventeenth Century Rebellion” (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76., No. 1 (Jan, 1968), pp. 13-4
Harvey made this issue worse; the kings, both of them, caused it.
the King’s Tobacco Contract Revision
The 1627 Royal Edict: how English politics entered into colonial development
Many a book has been written on tobacco and seventeenth century England/Virginia. Boy are they dry like a tobacco leaf. Full of names I do not know, and statistics citing English currency of long ago these works were written because tobacco was an important topic particular to the time period. For all practical purpose it was Virginia’s economic base, and tobacco gave meaning to the land owned by householder and plantation conquistador alike. Export and use as a Virginian currency were its chief uses and if one follows the money all you have to do is use your nose and smell the tobacco. The topic of the day that unified James, Charles and the Virginians was the money that could be drawn from tobacco.
While some observed the new King Charles actually smoking in public, supposedly to conform smokers in his presence, the young King probably disliked the weed as did his father but like his father soon discovered he needed funds to finance his lifestyle and agendas. By this time the price of tobacco was already falling, and it seemed likely Virginia was pumping out more than market demand could purchase. The remedy, at least from James’s-Charles’ perspective was to make a monopoly of importing tobacco, and then sell farming out the customs duties from those that traded in it. That is what James did in 1621. By 1625-6 the temptation was to set terms of tobacco import and export to buy low and sell high. If the king set an arbitrarily low purchase price for his monopolistic export, he could, one presumes sell it higher to reap even more funds from duties and extractions from the trading cluster that lived off the import-export.
This is what the colonists feared was in the future, and against which they sent the Yeardley delegation to London in 1625. What Virginians wanted was as unrestricted an export process as they could obtain from the king. Purchase price should not be set, and the chief cost of export, ship logistics, should be competitive, i.e. not required to use only English vessels, but whoever would ship at the best price–usually the Dutch paid more, and their shipping costs were appreciably less than English ships hiding behind the king’s import monopoly. Even in the mid-twenties, New Men were floating around and plying the Virginians with offers about as frequently as Dutch ships arrived at a plantation pier. The loop hole in the royal monopoly was that he could not enforce compliance with his rulings on the Virginians. Call it smuggling or call it your right to sell at the best price, the Virginians were not unwilling to cut their deals.
Not unexpectedly, the largest Virginia tobacco exporters were our plantation conquistadors who provided shelter and sustenance to a number of other large and small planters (often former Company officials themselves. Their home base was from 1622 on the Governor’s Council, now Council of State. That Yeardley in 1625 wasted little time in petitioning the Privy Council that “planters shall hold all reasonable privileges as they had formerly enjoyed“, and that Charles should retain “the existing councillors in their respective places“–along with a pliable Governor Wyatt. The Privy Council and presumably Charles went along with this, and as loose as it was, the power of the Council of State was further enhanced, as well as the loose regulation of Virginia tobacco export [99] See Charles A. Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 195-6
Yeardley’s success in this lobbying, Andrews asserts was evidence he was well-received in London-Privy Council, and that when Wyatt officially resigned the governorship, Yeardley was viewed as next in line. Duly selected to serve as governor in 1626, Yeardley left with instructions that clearly made known Charles’s unwillingness to close his Virginia options by setting a firm set of priorities, or an accepted institutional governance process “until he [the king] should find more convenient means upon mature advice to give more ample directions” regarding the latter. While issuing the list of acceptable Council of State members, no mention was made of the right and legitimacy of using the Assembly as a participant in the policy-making. The instructions later issued to Harvey after Yeardley’s death made no change in this position.
But by 1627, the king was ready to change the loose tobacco contract arrangements earlier negotiated. On August 9th “the king issued a proclamation forbidding anyone, merchant or other, to import tobacco into England without the king’s license, requiring that this be done only through commissioners appointed for the purpose“. A copy was sent to the then Virginia-selected acting governor, Francis West, confirming the latter in his election, and also empowering West to call into session the Assembly “to say what they wanted to say regarding any new tobacco contract that might be made“. [99] Charles A. Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 197-8. This appears to have been an honest effort to secure the opinion of that body before a final action on the command was taken. The Assembly met for three or four days in March 1628. Washburn summarizes the response by the Assembly:
It is likely what Charles had on his mind, when he issued his proclamation, was to curtail the import of Spanish tobacco by raising custom duties and hence raising additional revenues for himself. He also wanted to crack down on illegal English tobacco production, and smuggling in general. But the proclamation also set productions limits of 200 pounds of tobacco by each householder, and 125 pounds for each servant, and that such should be consigned [sold) to him or his representatives. [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660 (Create Space, Independent Publishing Platform, April 14, 2016), p. 5. I remind the reader whatever the intent behind that last regulation, the king’s ability to secure compliance was minimal and that was no doubt appreciated by an Virginian reading the proclamation.
For the early Stuarts revenue was a constant struggle with a generally unsympathetic Parliament… Ultimately tobacco taxes and colonial profits assisted the Crown in their financial struggles, but in order to collect that revenue the Crown needed to control smuggling. The creation of the General Farm of the Customs (back in 1604 was the first in a chronic need) to rationalize the system of tax collection in the ports that paid off, not just with increased revenue, but with increased lines of credit, that enabled the Crown to survive some of its battles with Parliament. While it definitely was not the intention of any of the architects of customs collection, one effect was to create a legal and protected market for tobacco. The English tobacco market was created out of the Stuart struggles with Parliament over taxes, specifically import taxes, and by the development of colonies intended to promote the English presence in the New World at the expense of Spain. [99] Ruth Savage Turpin, “the Political Economy of Tobacco in the Seventeenth Century English Atlantic” (2017), Open Access Dissertations/1648, p. 38.
The Assembly thanked the King for prohibiting the importation of [untaxed-tariffed] Spanish tobacco into the English market, but cried that they would be at the mercy of covetous individuals in England if a monopoly on Virginia tobacco was allowed. They proposed, however, that since the King intended to take all their tobacco, he should agree to take at least 500,000 pounds of tobacco at 3 shillings 6 pence, the pound delivered in Virginia, or 4 shillings deliver in London. If the King was unwilling to take so much, they desire the right to export again from England to the Low Countries, Ireland, Turkey and elsewhere. As to the King’s proposal to limit tobacco cultivation … [in Virginia] they asserted … this would not be sufficient for their maintenance. As to the King’s desire [to diversify the economy] that the colonists should produce pitch and tar, pipe staves and iron, they complained that much capital was needed to put such enterprises in operation [Finally] The Assembly commissioned Sir Francis Wyatt, then in England, and two Virginians to represent them in negotiations with the King
The Assembly debated the matter and sent its observations back to England for consideration. The episode, however, sustained the role of the Assembly as an advisory body, and offers us an opportunity to introduce what will be an important dynamic of the 1630’s—the evolution of trade from England, tobacco trade in particular, and the individuals and actors involved. This discussion allows us to go beyond the issuance of regulatory proclamations, and to have a perspective as to what the vital tobacco trade did in this period.
1626-8 is a good benchmark period for use to understand the loose organization of trade, and the type of actors involved it in at the end of the Company period. Neville Williams reports that in 1627-8 there were 354 importers of Virginia tobacco. The cast of characters importing ranged from powerful London financiers, merchant adventurers, a number of shipmasters, several gentry and aristocrats including Edwin Sandys, the Earl of Warwick, and even the former Governor Wyatt and Governor Yeardley. “Most Virginia voyages were undertaken as a common venture for considerable partnerships of merchants”. For example one voyage carried 42,626 pounds of tobacco for 33 merchants. Merchants usually spread their tobacco into several ventures to mitigate against their loss at sea. Most deposited their goods at London customs, but 24% went to other ports.
Bristol was the most prominent second port. Closely aligned with Parliament and actively a participant in the Virginia Company’s colonization in the north, Bristol attempted as best it could with a divided city council to remain on terms with the Crown. While Bristol had been more closely aligned with Massachusetts region colonization, Bristol also was a major actor in the Virginia tobacco trade, and a likely avenue of smuggling to avoid custom taxes. Its role in the trade suggests the impact of the political divide in England could, and likely did, play a role in the mechanics and financing of the tobacco trade. We shall see this later on in this module.
On the whole, in London and the outports it was in the cities and merchants interests to make regulation work and the big ports were strong enough to do so. But London and the larger ports also had sufficiently robust merchant classes to effectively avoid regulation when they choose, particularly when they regarded that regulation as unfairly favoring another port.[99] Ruth Savage Turpin, “the Political Economy of Tobacco in the Seventeenth Century English Atlantic” (2017), Open Access Dissertations/1648, p..50.
The administration of the shipment and the payment of customs suffered, it seems, from serious inefficiency and gaps, and so it is likely a good deal of the smuggling was at London, but it was known that many ships deposited their goods of back of the way inlets and small isolated areas. [99] Neville Williams, England’s Tobacco Trade in the Reign of Charles I, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (Vol. 65, No. 4, Oct, 1957).
The reader might note the “dog that did not bark” was the Virginia Company Magazine; by 1627, the Magazine had ceased functioning, and Virginia’s tobacco trade had passed to the private planter, merchants, shipmasters-owners, and former company officials. Involvement by the Virginia institutions, such as the Council or Assembly, were regulatory, but did not intrude upon the financing or the transportation-logistics associated with the trade.
By 1627, it certainly appears that investment capital and export trade for Virginia planters was a private matter, individual to the planter. In that league, volume and access to investment sources mattered. Anyone could grow tobacco in Virginia, but if you wanted to sell it in England you’d better make your deal with planters who exported in volume (requiring BTW lots of indentured servants) and contacts with willing English investors. If Virginia politics and policy-making were shaping up into an oligarchy, so was the tobacco economy. Would the reader be surprised if I suggested they overlapped with the latter reinforcing the former—and the former reinforcing the latter.
Finally, let’s make it clear, the London-side of Virginia’s hybrid colonial policy system, the side dominated by the Crown, contested by Parliament was “onboard” with Virginia’s tobacco monoculture as its economic base. That doesn’t mean that the Crown, nor even the London-based faction leadership was comfortable with the lack of diversification among crops planted, nor were they satisfied that diversified industries associated mostly with natural resource exports should be pushed more aggressively.
London was not happy about a permanent war with the Powhatan as the strategy to grab ahold of the new land needed to deal with the deficiencies of tobacco production, never mind the spread of tobacco plantations deeper into the Indian heartland. But we are still left with what seems to have been the reality of how London regulated Virginia exports. London relied on tobacco exports–as did the outer ports who could and did risk smuggling some into England. The name of the game, be it James, Charles, or the parliamentary allied outer ports, was making money. This tobacco did. And so everybody wanted its pie of that pie, what was referred to as the “tobacco contract”.
I believe this history has been consistent and merciless with Virginian planters, be they Company officials, plantation conquistadores, former indentured servants-ancient settlers, and the consistent flow of free holder immigrants, many of English gentry families out to make their fortunes. I have held them accountable for the spread of the tobacco gazelle, with an intensity, almost a compulsion, so extreme that a mere decade after the first seeds were planted, the crop had become the mainstay of the economic base, political and social systems. But they were not alone; London lived off the weed just as they were. That love affair would deepen even more in years discussed in this module. London’s love of tobacco was not an infatuation.
the Dorset Commission
During 1626-7 two issues were pressed by the Virginians, who sent to London a delegation of Captain Ralph Hamer and former Governor Yeardley. During that period Wyatt “retired”, left Virginia and was replaced by Yeardley. Yeardley died not long after his return to Virginia–and Charles appointed his latest rising star, John Harvey. In his 1628 instructions to Harvey, he continued his reluctance in defining the parameters, legitimizing the governance institutions of Virginia self-government and the status of Virginia property ownership. Harvey inherited this unresolved morass of defining the parameters of Virginia’s governance.
From the disbanding of the Mandeville Commission with Charles’s assumption of kingship (1625), until 1631Virginia was governed by, and through, the Privy Council “and its committees”. A special subcommittee [of the Privy Council]” was eventually created and it did not take long before it was populated by those who associated with the Company–which the reader knows continued in its rump form after the termination of its Virginia jurisdiction. These former company associates came to dominate that special sub-committee.
But in 1631 Andrews observed “so many petitions had come in, “on one side from the Sandys party asking for the restoration of the old [Virginia] company”, or on the other hand ‘from the colony asking for the legal recognition of its general assembly” [99] Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 200-201 that Charles created in late May, 1631, the Dorset Commission (with twenty members). Why the deluge of petitions pressing for some kind of action or other with the territories of the Virginia colony? Because by that time the court was abuzz with different groupings advocating for different initiatives in regards to Virginia. Stuff had happened in London.
Specifically tasked with making recommendations on “settling the plantation [Virginia] “and to encourage the Present Planters & Adventurers, and those willing to become such by new Settlers, Patents [land grants] … and to “consider the estate of the Colony of Virginia, what Commodities have been raised there which may be more profitable to the Colony, and by what means the Colony may be better advanced and settled in future times“. The scope of the Dorset Commission was considerable, comprehensive and very wide-ranging. Finally, Charles had taken a reasonable action to clear the Virginia decks and set the long term framework for its governance in order.
Charles, first of all, had not resolved his 1625 problem of raising funds to support his lifestyle and autonomous governance of the Parliament. He still needed money and was back to thinking about reasserting his version of the tobacco contract that would (1) confirm the English royal tobacco monopoly and the king’s right to administer it, and (2) set prices for tobacco in return for a guaranteed market to which the Virginians would export their tobacco. For Charles this would supply the customs duties he needed [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Number 7, Routledge, 2009) pp. 107-108
Second, as Andrews mentioned above, the Sandys faction (Edwin had died in 1629) led by George Sandys, the Ferrar brothers and a host of his factional leaders of the old Virginia Company–much the same crew that had pressed their losing non-compromise to Charles in 1625–were back. From their vantage point lodged in the special committee of the Privy Council, they could amazingly pick up the old rejected charter and put it back on the policy agenda table of the Privy Council. Brenner believes the prime advocate responsible for resurrecting the Virginia Company in 1631 was Sir John Wolstenholme, a wealthy customs farmer who is considered attached to the old former company Sandys-Ferrar faction. The shared motivation behind each of these three groupings, (interest groups perhaps premature) is that each is its own coalition and there can be little doubt, the sum total of their ambitions, their net-net, was to make money from the new charter.
There seems, however, more to the story behind the reemergence of the Virginia Company. From Brenner’s research, he asserts that “by the time of the establishment of the Dorset Commission in 1631, something like a three-cornered alliance had emerged in support of such a [reconfigured] company, and that leading members of the Virginia Council of State formed a key element in this alliance”. This the reader will recognize as the Claiborne Clique, and behind them with some muscle in London were Thomson and Cloberry. Brenner suggests these New Men were “the second main group” pushing for a reestablished Virginia Company. “(D) uring the period in which the Dorset Commission was considering reconstituting the old company, Maurice Thomson, William Tucker, Thomas Stone and their friends were seeking to secure their own private monopoly of the tobacco commerce, and so they had little reason to come out publicly on the issue. However, the moment they lost this very special privilege they did not hesitate to make their opinion known. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 132
Add to this mix the king, still close friends with the Ferrar, did not rein in any discussion that advocated a return of the charter to the Virginia Company. His 1625 Proclamation was definitive on its own terms, which by 1631 seem inoperative. Logically, the king seemed sympathetic to the idea the experienced joint stock corporation could take Virginia administration off his hands through a new charter. It seems the king had no special desire to assume the responsibility for governance of these settlement colonies in North America. He wanted money for his coffers from tobacco, but that in no way meant an active involvement in colonial administration.
J. Mills Thornton III produced what many regard as the best single analysis of what he calls “the thrusting out of Governor Harvey”. That episode is at this point, 1631, four years in the future. In this module we are most concerned with the events, more precisely the dynamics that caused what I will call a coup–a coup caused by the overload and breakdown of a resident Virginia policy system that could no longer cope with a royal governor so out of step with serious elements of its leadership that coup occurred, tossing the matter of Virginia’s governance back into London hands for resolution. To Thornton’s credit he recognizes that: “The long trail that culminated in the expulsion of Sir John Harvey in May of 1635 is a difficult one to follow. The story is compounded of court politics and commercial competition in England and the dreams and aspirations of the settlers in Virginia. Groups of conspirators arose on both sides of the Atlantic, and we must give due weight to both of them if we are to discover the true origins of the mutiny“–and I add the real nature of the core problem in which Harvey’s ouster was a symptom, not the disease. [99] J. Mills Thornton III, the Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey: a Seventeenth Century Rebellion (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76, No. 1 (Jan, 1868), p. 13
The buzz from Virginia’s hybrid colonial policy system did not emanate from a desire to resusitate the Virginia Company, however–except to voice concern on the implications from any Company monopolistic magazine. There was stuff going on in Virginia, and it had accumulated for more than five years. As mentioned previously Andrews asserted the main concern of Virginians, the concern that launched the proverbial “thousand” petitions was their desire for a legitimization of the Virginia Assembly. I am not sympathetic to that position, at least if one takes it at face value. [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. I, (Yale University Press, 1934), pp. 200-1
No doubt that matter was a concern among the planter class in particular, but the underlying reason was a vehicle-institution was lacking which could serve their larger agenda, an agenda that included guns/powder for fighting Indians, addressing the considerable insecurity generated by a failure to legitimize and legalize the Virginia Company land sales and headright issued, the furtherance of their expansion of local governance powers and institutions–and what always was behind it all, tobacco, its export and spread into the hinterland (the third rail of domestic Virginia politics). By 1631, Maryland and the Catholic issue has begun to take root, as well as the activities of the Claiborne Clique and the monopoly trading magazine.
The emerging planter class had a lot on their plate, and that was because the only functioning policy institution in Virginia was the turbulent, but closed, policy institution: the governor-Council of State nexus. For the most part, that nexus had a disproportionate influence on not only the calling of the Assembly into session, but on its agenda. That the nexus had sufficient strength to exert impact on votes which were central to their ambitions and goals was also noted. In 1631 domestic Virginia policy-making was the political equivalent of one-hand clap. The only actor that could remedy this was the King, and in 1631, the Dorset Commission.
Before we move on to the goings on with the Dorset Commission, a few observations on the character-configuration of the 1630-1 English hybrid policy system. It is obvious thus far that a subset of the large planter/conquistador group was playing in, with, and among the London based policy makers. Claiborne left Virginia in 1629 and didn’t come back until 1631. Francis West had voyaged to England, and then played ball, not to ignore the Yeardley-Hamer delegation after the Mandeville Commission’s demise.
As we shall see later in this module, the London group was not above crossing the Atlantic either, although it was rare. This two-way street was previous to Harvey, and it indicates the acknowledged power base of the hybrid system was in London. Time lags and letter writing, and the occasional petition to the king kept the flow open, the first by creating a no-mans-land between actions, requests, and proclamations and their receipt and presumably actions. Stuff overlapped, duplicated and was made obsolete or prone to be ignored. That the stuff had to reach the right set of ears and eyes obviously mattered. To me this is worse than sending an email or text–which is too fast and too unfiltered to cause little but trouble. Modes of communication were, and still are, serious obstacles to policy-making.
Secondly, it is obvious the Virginia elites at least, could have a say in London–and they did. A goodly number of Virginia planters, it seems, had contacts and family in England that could be of service. That suggests that historian Bailyn’s condemnation of the lack of status, civility, and even acknowledgement of competence did not prove to be a major problem in the policy of this period–in fact just the opposite. Virginia elites could more about in English policy-making; they had families, were proteges, and had direct alliances with London players. If nothing else it seems these low-class thugs could be useful to Londoners. Rather they could function rationally and on occasion effectively in prestige policy areas like the king’s court, the Privy Council, and Parliament and the merchant traders-custom farmers of the export community. Francis West could travel in aristocratic circles, and so could the Virginia Company associated groups.
Our last observation, brief, but important as we read further into this and following modules, is that policy-making in the hybrid policy system had its institutions, around which decisions were made, but the “process” was more like a “flow”, with personalities, ebbs and flows, and events always changing the process and the individual decision-makers. We also see the unwillingness of Charles to make decisions and take sides creates its share of cul de sacs and endless loops.
Through 1632 or so as turbulent as it was, things seem to have flowed along. By 1633 things were breaking down, and after 1634, with the Laud Commission, the flow-process improved and got worse simultaneously. By 1639 it was a different world in London. Through this period, policy-making was not static; it did not simply follow established “processes”, and authoritative decision-making was muted, and not transparent. In this shift, the New Men, and the Merchant Adventurers chose different sides in the King-Parliament, Puritan-Anglican/Catholic dichotomies. That will have consequences in Virginia, and the fate of Governor Harvey was not the most important. Watch Samuel Mathews–his day is coming. Be amazed at Claiborne’s escapades. He survived it all.
Events and Decisions of Dorset Commission
That the Commission was composed of, rent and fractured by a divergent and competing mélange of advocates did little to help it reach is assigned goals. Composed of twenty members, most of which were old Virginia Company shareholders and officials (chief of which was George Sandys/Ferrars–Edwin was dead by that point), the purpose of the Commission was to make recommendation’s on the fate of Virginia and the Virginia Company–and to in the interim manage and respond to the affairs of the colony.
So stacked was the Commission, it did not waste a great deal of time on the future–it wanted to reissue a charter to the Virginia Company–BUT, whose Virginia Company, and how much decision-making or accountability would the “new “company share with the king. The difference between the 1606 charter and the 1609 charter, the distinction that defeated the 1625 revamp, was still very much in play. Accordingly, the Commission in mid-1632, after debate, hearings and such, approved a new Charter for a new Virginia Company, to the delight of the London investors and the Merchant-Plantation Conquistadors (Claiborne Clique).
The commission in its report suggested that a president and a council be named IN ENGLAND (mine) would have general oversight of the colony; that a governor and council IN THE COLONY (mine) be continued to have general oversight of local affairs; and that the governor, council and planters meeting in their general assemblies … should be authorized to make laws ‘correspondent to the the lawes of England and but probationary only until confirmed here [England]. Furthermore the commissioners recommended that a new Virginia Company [NOT a revitalized Sandys’ Company] be created to take the place of the old, with all the latter’s rights, goods, liberties and privileges [Including the Magazine], saving to the King, however, the supreme and royal power of the government‘ [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. I, (Yale University Press, 1934), pp. 200-1
The reader should be stunned. Most of the players of that period probably weren’t. During the interim after 1624, the Virginia Company and its subsidiaries were still around, functioning, and keeping alive the possibility they would be back in power when events turned in their way. Virginians were not oblivious to this, and events were followed from Jamestown with an eye as to shifts and flows. By 1630 many former company officials had died; the Sandys faction withdrawn back in England, leaving the field to the younger Virginia players–who formed their own links, and protégé alliances. Naturally, their involvement intensified after the Dorset Commission report to the Privy Council-King. Indeed, a firestorm quickly followed.
Up to the report, the Claiborne Clique had its representatives on the Commission, and so had no need to take an active role in the discussion. Others did it for them. In private letters and no doubt conversations, Brenner suggest they had insinuated their Kent Island initiative into a possible contract with the Virginia Company, using their own shell joint stock corporation, as a contractor for the new company magazine.
Behind the forces allegedly had led the victory of the Company were Claiborne’s New Men financiers. Not only did the specter of Ireland remain, but it was joined with the possibly that the new Company would grant Claiborne a monopoly that would equate it with its old, much disliked, and extremely, expensive Magazine. Indeed that Magazine was what Claiborne’s business plan called for–the key to its export tobacco and import supplies monopoly.
[James’] son and successor Charles had numerous friends among the stockholders of the defunct Company. These men promptly moved to use their friendship to gain the restoration of the Company’s charter. Their motive is clear: to regain the profitable monopoly which the had enjoyed in trade with Virginia. They had used the Company’s colonial trading agent, the so-called magazine, as a means of ‘supplying the colony’ [provisioning] with all it needed at thrice its price in England, and of receiving in payment tobacco at prices sometimes reduced as low as one penny on the pound” [99] J Mills Thornton III, “the Thrusting out of Governor Harvey: a Seventeenth Century Rebellion”, p. 14.
In late 1631 the Company seemed destined to return to govern Virginia .The 1632 report was clearly a victory for Virginia, and its prospects for self-government and normalization of the Company political institutions and its past decisions The report the Dorset Commission issued also seemed to confirm the legitimacy of the Company’s Greate Charter institutions, and repositioned them from Company institutions into “governmental” bodies. Clearly within the scope of the Dorset report was control of the colony’s economic base and trade policy which by their nature were tied to the hopes and fears of anybody, and any entity, that was profit-seeking. Many of these hopes–and fears– got wrapped into the prospect of reviving the Virginia Company.
The Clique, up to this point, took no known formal position on the matter, although private correspondence clearly demonstrates a lack of fear regarding the Company’s return to power, and some sympathy. Having just concluded its own “Maryland” agreement which securing its Maryland trade monopoly and tobacco pricing,(issued by the Council of State in 1631) as well as “magazine-like provisioning store on Kent Island, enjoyed its own access and membership on the Commission but abstained from any visible action or comment. Seemingly it felt comfortable in the issuance of a new charter to the Virginia Company, and likely was hopeful of securing an enhanced position in the new Company’s organization.
The 1632 Dorset report was privately regarded by the Claiborne Clique as heaven-sent. The Magazine was on the table, and they likely believed they had the inside track for the contract. If so, they wished to inhibit any limitation be placed on that Magazine–and that meant restraining Governor Harvey who had strong opinions on the Magazine–and voiced them. Harvey, earlier in 1631, had sent to the Dorset Commission his opposition to Claiborne’s Council of State-approved trade monopoly to a corporation established by the Clique to conduct its trade in its northern venture.
Harvey asserted publicly that a potential Clique monopoly prevented any non-Clique Virginia planters from “seeking our best market” [by using Dutch ships] if they were granted a monopoly contract by the restored Virginia Company–i.e. the Claiborne group would in effect assume the role, function and the chief beneficiary of Virginia export-import trade. This Harvey asserted would only enhance the personal benefit of the group holding the monopoly at the expense of others who exported or imported.
Harvey’s position, of course, reinforced that view and perspective of the mainstream planter class. Harvey’s support on this issue no doubt obviated some of the planter class opposition to hm. It also supported articulated positions of Claiborne’s rivals, both in the Council and the Assembly. Harvey raised the stakes when he sarcastically attacked Tucker’s proposed provisioning “magazine” proposal when that initiative became public. Claiborne’s proposal would set, what Harvey regarded as, absurdly low prices for the monopoly’s purchase of tobacco from Virginians. allowing its sale in England at markedly higher prices. Harvey’s fear was the Dorset Commission could come to an agreement with the Clique and convey its powers to the latter.
The hope that Crown politics would yield a revamped Virginia Company charter to a Company they could influence if not control, a trading monopoly, prompted the Claiborne Clique (resident in London) to neutralize any impact by Governor Harvey in the Virginia backwaters. Knowing Harvey’s personality, and fully aware the governor could take up this report–and frankly how could he ignore it–and in his obstinate and vigorous fashion take a position that could derail it.
Accordingly, the Clique sent suggestions to Samuel Mathews back in Jamestown urging him to make a deal with Harvey that would redirect his energies, and mute any formal involvement in the Privy Council–and King’s–review so that no amendment to the report would result, at least from the instigations of the governor. So Mathews entered into negotiations to end the bitter and polarizing opposition of the Council of State to the governor’s actions and agenda. Mathews likely hoped the offer to set Harvey free to pursue his agenda in the General Assembly about to be convened would divert Harvey. Harvey would have the opportunity to achieve some of his desired goals, and accordingly would be inclined to restrain his advocacy to the Dorset Commission on the Virginia Company matter.
That opportunity to act freely, when offered the opportunity by Mathews, “was joyously [received] … and a formal statement of accord was drawn up” [99] Thornton, pp. 19-20. The agreement produced a harvest of legislation that we will discuss below. It should be mentioned, however, the agreement did little to latent the tension that had existed between Harvey’s agenda and the Clique within the Council.
The Council did take as positive Harvey’s reluctant agreement to abide by the Council decision-making procedures advocated by the Council’s members regarding the role of the Council relative to the governor’s decision-making. But the visible conflict between Council and Harvey subsided, in a period where the Dorset Report seemed destined to be approved–through 1632 certainly. While Harvey continued to advocate the king for change in his powers vis-à-vis the Council, in day-to-day action from that point on he abided by the Council’s demand they were equal partners in the vote with the Governor. The agreement did not bind Harvey from advocating his position on these issues to the King or Privy Council, and it left him free to continue his advocacy for a normalization of Virginia’s self-government by the Assembly.
So a truce was reached between the Clique, and the Council of State, to abate the near civil war each had with each other. That truce was an important factor in the domestic politics in 1632; Harvey as we shall see unveiled his agenda on the 1632 Assembly, with remarkable success in securing its approval. But during the time period between the issuance of the Dorset Report in late 1631, and the the beginning of 1634 a remarkable episode in English colonial administration was about to unfurl. A pushback against the Dorset Report shuffled London’s deck of cards dramatically; The casualty was the Dorset Commission and its report.
The clearly announced intention was to revamp the Virginia Company, and to reissue a new charter on the basis of the Commission’s Report–on that the members of the Commission seemed to have a natural majority. This seemed like a done deal. It wasn’t
Why the Pushback?
The 1631 decision set in motion the creation of a new charter for the Virginia Company. However, it rapidly bogged down in 1633. The reaction had time to set in and the buzz feed to the King and Privy made them aware not everyone was on board by any means. “Dorset, having the ear of the king, had the initial advantage … and on November 25, was able to gain a royal order to the attorney general to proceed to draw up a new charter. The opponents to the project, however, quickly submitted a lengthy negative argument to the throne. This document cause the king, not noted for his decisiveness to postpone final decision on the Dorset report” [99] J Mills Thornton III, “the Thrusting out of Governor Harvey: a Seventeenth Century Rebellion”, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76, No. 1 (January, 1968), p. 15.
Lost in the discussion with the decision to reissue a new Virginia Company charter was that the recommendation of the Commission did not correspond to that of those who advocated a charter similar to the one revoked in 1624. Advocates in essence wanted an autonomous Company that corresponded to the fundamentals of the 1609 charter–not the original King’s charter of 1606. The Commission recommended governance of Virginia be retained by the king personally through his appointees and oversight.
The basis for the issuance of the new charter was the recommendation of the Dorset Commission, “that a new Virginia Company be created to take the place of the old, with all the latter’s rights, goods, liberties and privileges, saving to the king, however, ‘the supreme and royal power of the government” [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol 1, p. 201 and it also proposed a governance system in which ” a president and council be named in England to have general oversight of the colony; that a governor and council [of state] in the colony be continued to have a general oversight of local affairs; and that the governor, council, and planters meeting [Burgesses] in their general assembly … should be authorized to make laws ‘ correspondent to the lawes of England, and but probationary only until confirmed [in London]. [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol 1, p. 201
Part of the problem, a large part it turns out, was the Company advocates wanted the autonomy of the 1609 charter, but the king had insisted stipulations and structured decision-making more congruent with the 1606 charter. Thornton points out that as early as March 1632, the Company shareholders “in an attempt to force the king to a decision [to make] a new Charter of Restitution of a Company with confirmation of all their ancient Territories (denying the Calvert-Maryland colony charter], rights and privileges whatsoever, point of Government [the royal involvement in Company decision-making] only with some few other reservations excepted“ [99] Thornton, p. 15. The reservations excepted, however, infused considerable autonomy back to the Company, again reminiscent of the 1609 charter.
All of a sudden all the Claiborne mechanizations for controlling the Magazine, creating a trade monopolies dominated by, and benefiting the individual members of the Claiborne joint stock corporation which held the Virginia Company contract. The exclusion of Dutch shipping affected all exports of tobacco, and importers of goods. The monopoly granted by the Council of State to the Claiborne Clique in 1631 was reversed in the Privy Council. By mid 1633 a world of opposition to the Dorset report from all sides, including the king himself.
Approved and in process of implementation, the report stopped dead in a limbo. In May 1633, in an effort to reach agreement with the Company, Charles himself traveled to (Nicholas) Farrar’s manor to negotiate out the stalemate. “The resultant negotiations came very near to hammering out a compromise, but the [Ferrar faction] remained unmoved in their refusal to acquiesce in the grant of Maryland”. [99] Thornton, p. 16
That the negotiation failed was spectacular enough, but that the matter of reissuing a 1606 style charter was so important the divine-right king stopped in for chat with its chief opponent. At minimum it suggests to me that Charles wanted a middle ground in his administration of Virginia. He wanted something akin to government in which he had a say, and an economy and investment financed and conducted by the private, joint stock corporation. He was not pushing back against Claiborne and the New Men so much as he was pushing back at the evolved Sandys faction who wanted a return to the broken company over which they had led in to scandal, bankruptcy, and a distant and ineffective governance over the province.
That the schemes involving the Magazine, or even Kent Island had not broken the deal is itself remarkable. That the breakdown was the Company’s unwillingness to allow a carve out of Virginia to Catholics, in which the king was unbending, whispers volumes. The Ferrar negotiation proved to be the “high water” for a new company charter. The issue languished in limbo until a year later the king dissolved the Dorset Commission and replaced it with the Archbishop Laud Commission (composed of a clear majority opposed to an approval of a new Virginia Company charter) [99] Thornton, p. 16.
That shift in 1634 suggests Charles had moved on and was making a pivot away from a Commission focused on “Foreign Plantations” toward a Commission with larger goals and intents. Central to the Laud Commission were the views and priorities of the Archbishop, views like his version of the Anglican Church that constituted a major break with the Puritans. To be sure, as we shall explain shortly, the Laud Commission had its impacts on Virginia, but it was its larger focus that rippled though English politics and culture. The ruptures that led to the English Civil War, about eight years in the future, and only four years away from the Presbyterian Scot invasion, were now affecting Virginia colonial policy.
the 1633 (Twitter) Petition Storm Against the Dorset Report
In the nowhere land of 1633, with Dorset Report, unequivocal in its support of a new Virginia Company charter, and a deep gap regarding the vision of what that Company should look like, invited pushback and a seventeenth century Twitter storm. A twitter-storm of petitions against the unwritten charter, and opposition to it, mostly from Virginia, went virial. Obviously, the charter proponents sent their own blizzard of petitions.
Buried with petitions and requests the process bogged down, and Dorset Committee members headed for the hills. The king, always reluctant to press matters that did not involve money for him or divine right parliamentary compliance retired into the background after his May meeting with Farrar. The proposed charter was taken “off the internet”, and for all practical matters it seemingly no longer existed. Unsurprisingly Andrews comments “So many and so vigorous were the protests against the recommendations of the commission … that suggestion went no further, and no Virginia Company was ever formed. The Proposal [to reissue the Virginia Company charter] was [eventually] rejected … , as it had been before because it was ‘altogether inconvenient for his Majesties service both here and there” [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol 1, p. 201.
Everything was “on the table”; its just that no one could find the table.
In 1633 and even as late as the early 1640’s, the Company would submit petitions for a new charter–requests that went nowhere. The Company would hang around Virginia’s fringes for almost a decade to 1642, but it is safe to say the Virginia Company charter, the prospects for its return to governance, were severely minimized by 1633-4 that Virginians could focus on other isues and concerns.
In any case between the opening created by the Dorset report, and the catalyst of the Claiborne Kent Island and Company Magazine initiatives opened up an extended period in which various players could make their case to Dorset, and, of course to the king. The Dorset Commission, fading more into the backdrop, remained the ostensible authority over Virginia [and the other colonies], but in this vacuum, the Claiborne Clique acting pretty much on its own without critical support or best wishes of Brenner’s London-based New Men, pressed its advantage seemingly inherent in hoped for Dorset report.
In London as we have seen, the Brenner New Men pushed for the reestablished Virginia Company. They pushed hard to secure their own private monopoly of tobacco, obtained an approval for it from the Council of State–and lost it after it was overturned in London in 1633. That loss flushed out the Claiborne Clique and in 1633 they left the shadows of London policy-making: In August 1633, William Tucker wrote to the Privy Council in England asking that the government take action to exclude the Dutch from Virginia’s commerce. Tucker argued that the superior competitiveness of the Dutch would soon drive the English merchants [read the Kent Islanders] from the trade and thus leave the planters even worse off than they already were [99] Brenner, pp. 132-3
The reception from those not sympathetic to the Claiborne Clique was not so sanguine. Virginians lobbied the Commission and Harvey wrote to it for guidance and accountability. In this dialogue one could see advocacy and jockeying for favorable items to be included in the charter, and suggesting unfavorable ones, like monopolies on tobacco magazine pricing, would not. From very early 1632 we can see the Council of State, and the Assembly (dominated by Burgesses), Governor Harvey, and dissident Council of State members take opposing positions on powers of the revamped Virginia Company.
Controversial issues and items such as the exercise of monopolistic pricing/regulation over tobacco exports, domination and pricing of the “provisions” or import of goods for Virginian consumption and use, and opening of trade using Dutch ships–all core to the Virginia economic base, its tobacco monoculture, and the success of the emerging planter class. The Company magazine was the focal point of interest to the Clique, however, and the great fear of both the planters and Harvey. When the Clique decided to press its case for its trading monopoly’s inclusion in the charter–and its implementation in Virginia, it opened up a can of worms.
If there was a surprise in the clash between Clique and Planters, it was that the Maryland-focused Claiborne Clique was able to exert commanding influence on the Council of State decisions. Always a minority of the Council, the Clique mustered the power of being composed of the largest tobacco exporters in Virginia. Probably equally important the Clique was highly motivated and focused on the Maryland venture to make the time and effort to attend its meetings and not infrequently muscle its way on the voting. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, the Council had in 1631 and in early 1632 approved a special commission and awarded to it several monopolies and accommodated Kent Island by extending the electoral franchise and its entry into the Burgesses (it extended membership in the Burgesses to Kent Island). More to the point, the Clique was able to secure Council rights to send petitions and letters regarding the revamped Virginia Company to the Dorset Commission.
The Clique already dominated Virginia’s tobacco export by virtue of their scale of production or their ability to develop and utilize tobacco export infrastructure to reinforce their position and bring to heel many smaller uses who could not export effectively individually without their assistance. Without doubt the key power their ability to favorably access the headright powers to secure indentured labor. Harvey’s restraint on issuing new land and headright approvals for royal owned lands, seemingly to the advantage of the non-Clique planters, actually reinforced the status quo dominance of the Clique, and sharpened the competition for sale of existing land titles that were beyond the control of Harvey.
Reeling from the Claiborne Council of State string of successes, the Assembly in early 1632, with the Assembly in session, seized the opportunity to advocate its position and program to the Commission. In a formal position in early March, the Assembly developed a robust and specific program, accompanied by requests for decisions from the Commission. Stressed by the decline in tobacco prices, a drought, and the insecurity of being a minority European in an isolated Native American wilderness, the Assembly planters were already highly apprehensive regarding the Claiborne Maryland venture.
The fear of Clique control over a London-based Company magazine was as close to an absolute hell as they could imagine. With their proven ability to affect Council decision-making, the Clique struck fear into the planter community, and with the Assembly as their only effective means to protect themselves from a possible Clique monopoly opposition planters had to act fast to ensure the Dorset Commission did not grant the Virginia Company, or the Claiborne Clique, powers over a new Company magazine-or for tobacco export regulations.
On March 6, 1632, the Assembly approved a petition to the Dorset Commission, in which they outlined the planter position on the matter. Brenner summarizes that position as expressed in the petition:
Their program was straightforward: to use the Virginia Assembly to put limits on tobacco production and [therefore] keep up tobacco prices; so far as possible to compel planters to produce their own supplies [thus limiting the need for provisions], especially food within the colony; and to overcome their dependence on the merchants [Claiborne Clique] by destroying privileged trading syndicates, and especially by opening up the colony to free trade, in particular with the Dutch [by using Dutch ships in contravention to English colonial policy]. In attempting to implement these measures the planters had no doubt that their main obstacle was that small group of merchant-planter-councilors [on the Council of State, i.e. the Claiborne Clique] that in these years was attempting to secure a stranglehold on the tobacco economy [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 130
In the petition the Assembly further explained that their rising debt levels was tied to the export of tobacco, and that absent restrictions on production by the Assembly, the logic was for individual planters to increase volume thereby further lowering the price and raising their debt levels. They pointedly attacked those who sought to make them “a slave to other men’s purses“, and specifically targeted, by name, Captain William Tucker.
It was clear that “in the back of the planter’s mind” was the approved magazine allowed to the Claiborne Kent Island venture could be in a position to be adopted by the Dorset Commission–that meant the Claiborne Clique could provision not only of its commission-approved territories, but the larger colony itself. To add substance and specificity to their position, the Assembly approved the setting of a minimum price for tobacco, and they asked the Dorset Commission to approve it. If the Commission did this, Virginia planters would be in position to restrict tobacco production and move to diversity their crop into staples and food for provisioning. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 130-1 In short, the planters, using the Burgesses and Assembly, had coalesced and had matured sufficiently to realize–and act–to regulate themselves.
Amazingly on the very same day, March 6, 1632, the Council of State sent to the Commission its memo advocating opposing positions on the Company and its Magazine, and took the additional step of making clear to the Dorset Commission that it supported restricting the trade in Virginia tobacco to the English market–and English ships only–on the very same day the Assembly petitioned for free trade. The battle between the Council and the Assembly commenced.
Predictably, the Claiborne Clique reacted, using the Council of State and direct access to the Dorset Commission as their vehicle. Several months after the March Assembly petition, the Council approved a monopoly, the sole right to market (export) the entire colony’s tobacco crop to a new syndicate or joint stock corporation for three years. The governance of this corporation consisted of members of the Clique, including as principals Tucker, Thomson and ally, the large merchant planter partner, Thomas Stone. At the time of action all were members of the Council of State and Claiborne was the colony’s Secretary of State.
However, they did it, the Council secured the signature of an apparently unwilling Governor Harvey, making it a legal commission from the colony. In his letter to the Privy Council forwarding the act to the Privy, Harvey, however, urged them to reject the act, insinuating they had compelled him by virtue of their existing stranglehold of export to sign the Council act. In that letter Harvey asserted the act created “an official monopoly … to use their powerful market position to extract exorbitant profits from the planters” [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 131. Harvey too had entered the fight.
Pulling off what could be described as coup over the Virginia economy, the Clique further fleshed out its program so to achieve the desired powers in the reconstituted Virginia Company. They wanted to secure from the Dorset Commission a company in London that would enjoy a monopoly of trade with and to England from which would be excluded all non-English ships, merchants, and factors (anti Dutch), a power which allowed them to effectively set the price from sellers for such tobacco and other goods. If the planters wanted free trade with Dutch and use of Dutch ships as a means to add competition into the pricing of tobacco, the Clique had countered with their own monopoly and powers to set prices for the Virginia Company.
In mid-1633, following a strong lobbying effort from ten Virginia planters (several members of the Assembly), the Privy Council revoked the legislation approved by the Council establishing the Tucker et all monopoly. In response in August, William Tucker wrote the Privy Council “asking that the Virginia Company be resurrected and demanding that the government take action [i.e. enforce] to exclude the Dutch from Virginia commerce. Referring the matter to a committee and meeting with Tucker, Stone and other Clique members, the Privy Council, however, did exclude the Dutch from trade with Virginia. However, no decision was made on the charter for the Virginia Company, and the matter was again deferred.
In March 1634, the King replaced the Dorset Commission with a new Commission, headed by Archbishop Laud. The Virginia Company charter was never issued.
This remarkable battle between the Council of State, the Assembly-Burgesses, and Harvey over the approval of the reissuance of a Virginia Company charter by the Dorset Commission during 1632 and 1633, has to be a transformative movement in Virginia political-policy development. Never before had the clash between and among Greate Charter political institutions been so visible, so intense and sustained, and so fundamental to the province and its economic base.
The clash vividly demonstrated the power bases of each–and the remarkably weak position of the royal governor. The Council had even compelled his signature on their enactment to make it legal. The governor had to plead with Commission to ignore it. The Council, however, could not silence the Assembly, nor could the latter impede the Council’s initiatives nor forbid its petitions. The Greate Charter political institutions were at war with each other for two years, each trying to affect the decisions of its master, the Dorset Commission..
The clash between emerging and divergent economic classes, combined with the jockeying and clashes with Governor Harvey, created an awkward but noticeable development in the identity and use of the the two political institutions (Council of State and Assembly-Burgesses), and the authority of the governor as an independent, and dominating, actor in policy-making. The issues were serious and fundamental to the configuration of Virginia’s future economic base. They also presented an opportunity for a path away from an near exclusive monopoly of plantation tobacco export-a breaking up of the tobacco monoculture. The Claiborne venture was a real opportunity and so was the Assembly’s willingness to take on the Tobacco monoculture through provincial regulation.
But whatever wound up happening, the Claiborne venture stirred up Virginia politics and economic interests to cause the use of the existing political institutions in ways that genuinely enhanced their role in serious policy making, and established different constituencies for the two branches of the Assembly, setting them apart from the governor–and each other.
What implications can we draw from this episode, at least at this point in our history, ought be based on the realities of the mid-1630’s, not our hopes of what they may, or may not in regards to the long-term future. The institutions themselves had not yet evolved sufficiently; they were little more than opportunistic political vehicles for different groupings to make their case to the Dorset Commission and the King/Privy Council.
We are way too early to think of this as a budding expression of a developing democracy; it is also too early to think of them as legislatures, or God forbid a “little Parliament”. To me at this point in 1630’s the Council and Assembly were the structures at hand to be utilized in the struggle between the Clique and the mainstream planter class (with the governor caught in the crosshairs). The Clique can be thought of as a faction of the planter class, but for the first time we can see a proto-planter class taking root in the horribly configured social-economic-political policy system that was the monoculture. What was still lacking in regards to Virginia’s post-Company Greate Charter institutions was they lacked legitimacy that only Charles could provide.
The struggle between different interests, proto-classes was afoot, but the incoherent political institutions that existed had neither tradition, experience, and capacity to do more than write petitions to their sovereign. Their sovereign, however, was still off in his own world. He needed to be brought to bay, focused on the problem in Virginia and his role in its solution. We are at this point desperately in need of a Virginia colonial version of a Magna Charta, an accepted framework of parameters, responsibilities, and procedures to act. It is time, therefore, we begin to shift to the events in Virginia, because it is there, with the ouster of Governor Harvey, that we shall find Virginia’s Runnymede.
But the reader should have no doubt appreciating the importance of this clash between the Council of State and the Assembly-Burgesses amid the disruption caused by the Dorset Commission. That distraught policy war was a potentially critical opportunity for a different economic and political future for Virginia. That it is central to the First Migration period, in the period of time in which it supposedly is the most uncivilized and semi-anarchistic, speaks volumes of the need this period be regarded as of prime importance in the evolution of future colonia Virginia.
This is what the Laud Commission inherited in spring of 1634.
the Laud Commission & Wrap Up
Once Dorset had engaged into the process of trying to implement its report, it immediately encountered an opposition so widespread that seemed, as we would now say, as it had gone virial. Out of the woods and swamps came petitions, correspondence and mobilization of contacts that beset the Commission, the Privy Council and the king and his courtiers. At this key point the Sandys’s faction got is second wind and with its Report pressed the case it had lost within the Dorset Commission.
The King, it seems, was friends with Sandy’s chief operating associate, Nicholas Ferrar, and in 1633 the two commenced discussion-negotiations intended for the Sandys faction to restore its position in a Virginia Company which the king would reissue an amended charter. “The resulting negotiations came very near to hammering out a compromise, but the [Sandys’ faction] remained unmoved in their refusal to acquiesce in the grant of Maryland”. This refusal to bend to what was a royal non-negotiable item seems to have prompted the king to break the policy log-jam that had become the Dorset Commission, replacing it with a third Commission, the Archbishop William, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Laud-led commission in the spring of 1634.
The Archbishop William Laud Commission is the final disruptor encountered in this module.
Laud had just been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 1633. From that position he launched a movement within the Anglican Church, a movement that polarized the realm, and radicalized the Puritans in particular. By 1639, this movement triggered the so-called “Bishop’s War”, and the Scottish invasion followed shortly after. Laud was imprisoned by Parliament lodged in the Tower of London in 1640; executed in a trial by Parliament in 1645, he was beheaded. Laud should be understood as a major figure associated with the drive to Civil War, a controversial one.
His role in colonial governance was not the feature he is remembered for today. Still, as the following modules will describe, his impact was fundamental there as well. His appointment in 1634 to the Commission which bore his name (he was one of twelve members) was the first in a series that lodged him as chief official of the Treasury, and the Privy Council. His impact on Virginia, while critical and path-breaking, does not compare with his disruption in Massachusetts [99] Arthur Percival Newton, with intro by Charles M. Andrews, the Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans (Yale University Press, 1914), p. 182ff.
The Laud Commission–chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Plantations–is so large and complex, so central to the politics and religious polarization of the period that we cannot do it justice in this history. Laud was as much the personification of the religious polarization of the period, the fearsome proponent of an Anglican Church whose nature was hugely unacceptable to the Protestant Puritan factions that he himself was a major driver in the Puritan colonization of Massachusetts Bay Colony.
In its earlier years, the decision of the Commission to support the Maryland charter, and a secondary one to encourage, if not order, the establishment of counties in Virginia in 1634 deserve comment. We shall cover both topics in more detail in sections of modules specific to these topics. Both were fundamental to Virginia (and Maryland) political development and were, in their ways, London bending the Virginia twig. Otherwise, the Commission impacted Virginia in a number of ways briefly presented below:
The membership of the Laud Commission “containing a clear majority of men opposed to the Company, and who in one of its first actions voted its approval of the Maryland grant–an approval which led the Calverts to send their first settlers to Maryland, founding there its first settlement at St Mary’s. [99] Mills Thornton III, “the Thrusting out of Governor Harvey: a Seventeenth Century Rebellion”, the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76, No. 1 (January, 1968), p. 16-17. This is probably the most significant in bending the proverbial twig.
Noteworthy also was his partial support in July 1634 of the Virginia headright, which Harvey blithefully seemed to ignore. [99] Brenner, p. 145
The Laud Commission had the effect mobilizing the Sandy’s faction to attempt one last “Hail Mary” effort to block the Maryland charter in 1634-5. They sent over two representatives to Virginia (William Button and Sir John Zouch, and the Wolstenholme affair–Brenner p 133, p. 144 ) to press the case with Governor John Harvey and engage him in opposition to Maryland and subsequently reviving negotiations to being back their version of the Virginia Company. It would backfire, as we shall later relate, and would be another important episode in the John Harvey affair. L. H. Roper presents an interesting observation on these two fellows, who they were identified with, and how they entered into the thrusting out of Governor Harvey [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Routledge, 2009), pp. 110-111
Roper also has an interesting insights into the Dorset and Laud Commissions, which by and large I think ought to be included here. Roper, in his own version of my dog that does not bark, comments that by their nature, creating a major platform with goals and powers fundamental to the colony in the short term and long term present a significant limitation on the power and authority of Governor, Harvey. He observes that at the very minimum they duplicated his role, and by inviting feedback from the colonists and their leadership, created a meddlesome and troublemaking backdoor or bypass to Harvey.
The Laud Commission never embraced Virginia nor the Virginia Company tangent as a primary goal-agenda issue. It had larger, more religious and more royalist goals that rendered it a major driving force in the politics that further polarized the county and kingdom, and led directly to the first phase of the Civil War. For the most part those religious and larger issues are not our concern in this history, with one observation that we will pursue in more detail later: how the religious polarization between Charles and Archbishop Laud’s vision of the Anglican Church with that of Presbyterian Parliamentarians, which by its magnetizing nature, dragged in the more Puritan elements of the New Men.
This polarization effort would affect William Claiborne and eventually offer some hope to revitalize his opposition to the Maryland colony and to reassert and restart his New Kent venture. It would also activate the Clique to reassert its interest in the larger politics of Virginia. Much of this extend into a time period not discussed in this module, and so we will deal with them in a later module series.
Ron W. Coan 