Events and dynamics associated with 1630-1639 Virginia offer the best opportunity to see why Virginia is dissimilar from Massachusetts (or South Carolina or any other of the colonies for that matter). This module and the next, at minimum, provides solid proof of why contemporary states and cities are different. The simplest answer is that they were all different at birth, and their history and experience “bent” their political-economic development in distinctive ways that further shaped and distinguished their future patterns.
During the 1630’s Virginia finally, belatedly, prodded its mother country to accede to its own self-governance and thereby activated the Virginia hybrid colonial policy system. Up to this point, aside from simply surviving and coping, the settlers in Virginia could not participate in their own governance, but in the end left it to London-based decision-makers–or simply responded themselves to events to which London passively deferred. The John Harvey affair provided the opportunity for Virginians to wring legitimacy from London and the Crown to participate in their own governance. Suffice it to say, Massachusetts, had a different experience because of lots of different reasons–and therefore from the start, the two state governance “twigs” were bent in different directions.
The establishment, the formation-legitimization of the domestic colonial policy system is a big deal in our history. The role the John Harvey “thrusting out” played in that birth has been unappreciated in most Virginia histories, a byproduct of the failure to properly understand the importance and the contribution of the state’s First Migration. But by the end of this module, domestic elites will drag, England and its Crown into recognizing the need to grant it self-governance, and to finally acknowledge and accede to a role in the making of its own policy. The institutions that were empowered were weak and fragile in 1639, and would remain so for decades, but Virginia finally had its own domestic institutions responsible for government, economy and societal policy. Virginia had a domestic self-governing policy system.
That policy system inherited a policy systems whose structures and institutions were those of private joint stock corporation that needed some vehicle to capture and tap shareholder who had settled in Virginia, and who were in effect responsible for the company’s profits, and the proceeds to pay for its costs. Yanked into the world of a government institutions in 1622 when it was nearly wiped off the face of the earth, these institutions still run and controlled by domestic company elites kept the Virginia ship of state afloat until in 1625 they were magically transformed into government institutions by decision from an English court.
From that point on they were in a limbo because London could not figure out what it wanted to do with Virginia, nor how it should govern the place. The institutions carried on, picking up experience and bruises, but filling the vacuum as best it could, it nevertheless let the economy and society develop on their own terms, without plan or even thought, because that “big picture” macro policy making was way beyond its capacity, and since it had no legitimized job description, no legal basis on which to create and implement a vision for either.
When John Harvey was finally replaced as governor in 1639, the struggle by Virginians for a policy system had been resolved through “instructions” written by the Crown-Privy Council to a new royal governor endorsed and known to Virginians. John Harvey had indeed been fired, and his vision-job description as governor of royal-London colonial administration sent off with him. The job description of a future governor of Virginia had been among the core issues decided by the “affair” that bore his name. Still-born a strong and powerful provincial executive, a faithful implementor of the King’s agenda, and his own as well, was rejected–called tyrannical by its masterful coup leader, Samuel Mathews.
Harvey’s ouster will leave in its wake a poor, disparaging, dysfunctional Virginia governor, a filling of the vacuum it created by provincial legislative political bodies, a pronounced tendency to rely on the lower level of the policy system for overall systemic policy-making, and the development of a system-wide elite plantation planter class that will expel Governor Harvey and commence a four year tempest that will finally compel the English sovereign Charles to make and put in place a consensual domestic policy system that integrated the English and domestic policy systems into a more or less coherent hybrid colonial policy system.
When completed in 1642 this system truly ends the hegemony of the Virginia Company and the chaotic period that was its transition into a more permanent and relatively stable relationship between England and Virginia.
Part I
Prelude to the Thrusting Out, 1629-34:
Appreciating the “Thrusting Out” Requires Understanding the Interaction of Multiple Moving Dynamics, Personalities, and the Flow of the same in London-based Colonial Hybrid Policy System
The literature on the subject (ousting) is surprisingly large and unusually pretty much uniform in its retelling. I approach it differently, however, because I am determined to try a retelling that includes an aggregate of factors and dynamics that led to the ouster itself or in turn resulted from it. In essence I am not convinced the “ousting story” is the real story that underlines Virginia’s 1630’s political development. What happened in 1635 (the ousting) is a legitimate story, but that event has not been relayed to Americans in a way (1) that informs them as to what caused the ouster, and (2) what events and dynamics it generated in the several years that followed. The consequences that flowed from the ouster were vastly more impactful on Virginia’s political and economic development than the ouster itself.
J. Mills Thornton’s “thrusting out” portrait is the best of the classic approach to the ousting. Thornton very much appreciates the importance of what caused the ousting–and clearly puts in perspective that larger dynamics both in Virginia and London condemned a Harvey gubernatorial administration to fail, whatever his personality might have been. England was grappling with its colonial priorities, and colonial governance had not yet been thought out nor finalized. At the same time Virginia’s domestic governing institutions had not developed capacity-experience, legal definition, or legitimacy of its role in the developing English hybrid colonial system.
Charles I inherited a Virginia whose incomplete development had allowed a planter oligarchy to form, and the larger elements assume dominance of the Governor’s Council. He also inherited his father’s decision to step away from the Virginia Company and its charter and renegotiate one that was more to his liking. Charles in 1625-6 postponed a final decision and began a period of “coping” as he worked his way toward a final determination as to whether he would rule the colony directly or revamp the Virginia Company and its charter. Stepping back himself, he entrusted governance of Virginia–and colonial affairs– to two commissions supplemented by his Privy Council, and in 1628-30 sending over a royal governor to manage affairs locally.
Accordingly, during the period after 1629 until 1635 problems accumulated, tensions intensified and by 1635 a decision was still not made on Virginia’s long-term governance, and, if anything given the deteriorating events in an England drifting from simple political polarization into a civil war, any decision was even more unlikely. What made this even worse was the appointment of a royal governor whose personality and job description of a governor was so off the mark with reality and good sense that by 1635 the locals had reached their breaking point, leading to a coup or ousting of the governor. For this reason, our story of the ousting consumes two modules, this one which describes the dynamics, personalities and factors that played out through 1635, and a second module that relates the ouster itself and the reaction and its consequences–which I repeat is the main story–not the ouster itself.
Thornton is well aware of, and sensitive to, the ongoing London-based events that stressed Virginia domestic governance. For Thornton, London, therefore, played a very large role in the ouster of John Harvey. Thornton also finds room to bring in the Claiborne clique and somewhat exposes its conflict with the emerging mainstream planter class. Harvey’s role in all this disruption and dysfunctionality is important, but he, like the other actors, are being thrust about by forces that said and done, emanate from London. What Thornton does very well is to center the story on London’s refusal to legitimize Virginia’s self-governance institutions, and its failure to accept or repudiate the decisions of the Virginia Company, leaving Virginians in a limbo as to the legality of their property holdings, or their local political decisions and actions. The underlying problem was never Harvey per se, but the unmade decision on how to govern Virginia.
Despite the centrality of the above, Maryland is the straw that broke Virginia politics, and triggered the timing of the ouster. which triggered the crisis in London on what to do with Virginia. Thornton’s article provides the framework for us, but to fill the gap it also necessitates our extended discussion on the emerging planter class and its crystallization fighting the Claiborne Clique and existential threats of London fundamentally disrupting a tobacco contract that was essential to its survival.
Overcoming their differences, the Claiborne Clique and mainstream planter class ousted the dysfunctional Harvey and initiated a set of negotiations and overtures that by 1639 resulted in a London acceptance of the Virginia policy system as its partner in its hybrid colonial policy system. Governors Wyatt and William Berkeley installed this policy system, and it governed the colony effectively, if interestingly, through 1649, when Charles lost the Civil War–and his head. Then things will become really interesting–but that is a third module series.
There has got to be a bending of the Virginia twig somewhere in all this.
There is. To help the reader focus on the key take aways that are central to future modules and to underscore the purposes of the book, the pertinent themes and long-term structural changes that arose from the expanded ouster story are:
(1) describes the evolution of the post 1622 Virginia domestic policy system, the Second Powhatan War, the spreading of the tobacco monoculture and the English settlement of their heartland, the Middle Peninsula;
(2) explains the “tilt” in Virginia’s domestic policy system that resulted from (1) above and the shredded tobacco plantation community that jelled in this period into a budding lower level of the developing Virginia policy system–that lower level presided over the system’s economic base, carried out the policies approved by the provincial system over which the forces from the lower level had predominant roles and influence;
(3) in the course of (1) and (2) the structured inequality of the actors resulted in the formation of an elite class of planters, whose plantations operated the economic base of the system, leaving in its wake an oligarchy whose vanguard had dominated the Council of State, largely ran in partnership with the local governor the provincial policy system–only to fracture in 1629-1631 when an element of plantation conquistadors broke away, formed the Claiborne Clique that with London’s approval started to implement a vast and potentially disruptive business plan that if successful would have transformed Virginia and its tobacco monoculture to the grave disadvantage of the mainstream planters in Virginia;
(4) That Clique playing well with the attempt to restore the governance and charter to a revamped Virginia Company in 1631-2, mobilized the mainstream planter class into a program of self-defense, anti-Claiborne Clique, and efforts to build capacity in the domestic policy system, often working with its royal Governor Harvey, and dealing with key issues disrupting the profit and productivity of the tobacco base. Both that effort and the implementation of the Claiborne Clique business plan, however, ran afoul of the imposed carve out of Maryland, and the resistance to it of both domestic factions, which were for different reasons, fundamentally opposed to the King’s decision–efforts by his governor to carry it out. The 1635 “thrusting out” follows from this alliance of convenience between the two factions of Virginia’s domestic elite.
That story told in (4) is the core of the tale told in the first part of this module. Like Dicken’s Christmas ghosts we will deal only with the first ghost in this introduction. Each ghost will get its own introduction. Like the Christmas Carol, there will be three ghosts or Parts in this module.
“Marley Was Dead… of That the Reader Should have No Doubt”.
If Marley was dead, why was he in Scrooge’s bedroom? If the Virginia Company was kicked out of Virginia in 1624, why is it back in the 1630? Marley brought with him three ghosts. What did the Virginia Company send over to Virginia in the 1630’s? Both Marley’s ghosts and the specter of the Virginia Company created page-turning and durable consequences to the recipients; how/what did the Virginia Company effect the development of Virginia policy system.
Some of the more fundamental questions raised by the dissolution of the Virginia Company remained a subject of debate eighteen years afterward. Through the intervening period proposals to establish a superior council in London were usually joined to plans for a revival of the company with the result that rejection of the latter proposal brought postponement of action on the other. Since anything more than a tentative decision on governmental problems in Virginia seemed inadvisable until the superior authority to be established in England had been determined, the colony was left dependent upon year-to-year decisions regarding the management of its affairs. And in the end, it was decided simply to let stand what had been established by custom and usage.
[99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689 (Louisiana State University Press, 1970). p. 153
The Virginia Company, supposedly dead since 1624, true to Dickens, was “dead and well”; Like the dead Marley, the Company returned, and proceeded to haunt Virginia, and London. As the last module details, the seeming death of the Company in 1624 did not impede its ability to disrupt goings on in Virginia–a key element supporting our argument that the London end of the hybrid policy system was essential to proper understanding what was happening in Virginia. The 1631 Dorset Commission–and later the 1634 Laud Commission all played their roles in fueling the events and disruptions discussed in this module. It is the story of how the mother country uniquely impacted the economic, social and political development of Virginia—London composed the tune and wrote the lyrics–the ousting is simply the dance done in Virginia to England’s music.
From the start, the problem was London’s, and so will be the solution. The ousting, and unfortunately Virginia fate, is the story within the story.
There were many problems in Jamestown, but the one that really rocked the boat was the creation of Maryland. From 1631 to 1661 Maryland seriously disrupted Virginia’s politics, and political development as well. With its focus pointed at Maryland, the continued spread of the tobacco monoculture, the be-all of the colony’s economic base, was put on auto-pilot–not be be challenged until Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676. By that time the tobacco monoculture wasn’t going anywhere but deeper in Virginia’s core fabric. But somehow Maryland created in Virginia the need for a “foreign policy”–to remove or impede the “foreign colony” carved from the north of Virginia’s territories. As only another of the disruptions caused in London, its impacts in North America also constitute “a story within a story” that lies alongside our narrative in this module.
That imposed disruption from London also permeated into the evolution of Virginia planter elite, and fostered its fragmentation into at least two competing sub-elites, the Claiborne Clique and the Mainstream Planter Class (sometimes referred to as the moderates). Up to 1631 the power of the plantation remained unchecked in Virginia, and it, I believe, became more central and the aspirational goal of every tobacco planter. Further intrusion of the Claiborne New Men into the economic base of the monoculture was the reason for the rupture of the two factions in 1632-33, and the Laud Commission and the threat of significant revision by the King to the Tobacco Contract in late 1634 along with the settlement of Maryland set in motion the resistance to Harvey, who had been seen also as instrumental in the final expulsion of the Virginia Company, and whose elimination was necessary for any last hurrah attempt by the Company.
The “big picture” of this module then is a quilt woven with these small stories embedded. The real culprit, the chief instigator common to these disruptions was correctly pinpointed by a contemporary, the earl of Clarendon, who described the policy-making unleashed by the arrival of Charles I in 1626:
His insecurity led him to adopt the suggestions, or yield to the influence, of men who where less capable than himself. He never really discerned the merits or vices of those around him; he tended to confide in those who were merely boasters and adventurers while ignoring those of real, if silent, merit. The [Privy] council about him consisted of professional courtiers, many of whom had been close to his father, while the others were friends or trusted servants. The principal decisions, however were derived from full council to selective small groups or committees; suspicion and jealousy were therefore rife. [Peter Ackroyd, Rebellion: the History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution (Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), p. 108
Until 1635 the notes composed and the lyrics written by Charles ( the Virginia Company, the New Men, George Calvert and the choirs in Parliament and the Church of England) could only react by dancing in the local response to these external inputs. In 1635, the local forces, finally got on the same page, and for the first time they disrupted the composers in London.
If the “Thrusting Out” is a story within a story, then what is that story: Formation of Virginia’s tobacco planter elite
Yet another story that is central to our history is the development of Virginia’s political and economic elite. The Virginia elite packed Harvey’s luggage, and sent him off with several of their fellows to explain what they had done to London. The consensus among Virginia’s elites, a budding planter proto-class, did not come easy. London, and the Virginia Company advocates were involved, so were plantation conquistadors, mainstream large and small tobacco planters, and the Claiborne Clique
Over decades that followed the Virginia policy system needed to acquire sufficient governance capacity to forge a consensus from the decentralized individual plantation-centric county elites who took root in the Virginia shredded community, tobacco monoculture during the first generation of the First Migration period. To engage in provincial level governance, Virginia had to evolve an effective approach to improve the quality, at least the capacity, of provincial policy-making. That was what Charles refused to do.
He did not understand the distinction between his royal governor—and his assistants, advisors or whatever the thought they were. Charles put them both in the same pot—and that really did not work. Next he ignored, feared, or most likely did not think about a Virginia legislature, the Assembly or Burgesses. Legislatures were never his preferred tool or vehicle for governance. That Virginia could form a provincial policy system without one, at least one that satisfied Virginia’s needs as well as his own, was not worked out until 1642.
Charles wanted of all was a governor kept things quiet and in order with his orders and priorities– keep the tobacco customs duties flowing to England, and implement his directives and agenda priorities– while His Majesty’s “commissions” figured out Virginia’s future. Holding the fort, however, was not what Harvey had in mind. He constantly tried to write his own job description. His sad lot is that today it is hard to fathom whether his efforts to follow his king’s orders and priorities, or the insensitive job description he constantly put in motion is what put him on the boat to England—twice. What Shakespeare could have done with a character such as Harvey!
And so the reader can see there are in this module two stories being told simultaneously in this module.
Charles Needed to Complete the Definition of Virginia’s Domestic Governance
All these moving parts blend and blur, ebbing and flowing in the telling of the thrusting out story—but they left behind the rudiments of an oligarchical tobacco monoculture, First Migration elite. The flip side of the “Thrusting Out Governor Harvey” coin was the two-step political development in Virginia: (1) the rise of its Greate Charter political institutions, and (2) the development of a planter-tobacco monoculture identity and a consensus against external rule that had not been defined and needed to be. Virginia’s elite wanted His Royal Majesty to legitimize their role, the self-governance, by Virginia institutions in the Hybrid Colonial Policy System. As we shall later see, they were very successful in the last matter.
How Royal Drift to Resolving Tensions in Virginia Domestic Governance Entered into Virginia Historiography.
The previous module alerted us contemporaries that many historians and popular history had misperceived the role and legacy of the Virginia Company. Many have and do assume the Virginia Company lost its control and influence over Virginia in 1624–when it didn’t. It lost the former, but not the latter. The Virginia Company lost its Virginia charter rights for the most part in 1639 or 1642 if you prefer. It is the Virginia Company and the King that composed the notes and lyrics that provided the background dance music alluded to in the last module. Only with the 1634 Laud Commission was the Virginia Company thrust out of the picture in Virginia governance but as we shall see the Company contemplated and was attempting to carry out one Last Hurrah. That effort would enter into the complex politics that led to the ouster of Harvey.
American historians, not hearing the music because it was so far away in another country, and they were around 350 years distant. Without the background music and lyrics emanating from London, the political dance in Virginia is almost comical, certainly opportunistic and driven by motives of uncertain morality by a bunch of uncivilized rural frontier hicks or worse. I suggest the real cause of the so-called Virginia “semi-anarchy” of thugs and middling fools driven by their greedy profit-laden ambitions. was London’s refusal or inability to compete the definition of the domestic Virginia policy system. The system lacked sufficient cohesion, definition of powers and limitations on powers, and was amazingly insensitive to the dynamics and venalities that typically permeate into public decision-making. It also required, as Craven repeatedly asserts, some constant level of monitoring and involvement by London. Pre-1639-42 Virginia domestic government, as we shall discover, simply was an incomplete government, whose processes, participants and institutions have been distorted or misunderstood.
That story line seriously distorted the history of the First Migration and disparaged its elite. Virginia’s resident elite—an elite which by almost anyone’s standards left a lot to be desired. But, if the story is better told, that elite did hear the background music and there are larger logics that create meaning, and even a level of competence to their ambitions and actions. Like all elites perhaps they wanted to create a Virginia that worked for the purposes they deemed valuable—but for Virginia to work they knew they had to get London on board. They knew that in 1624 the Virginia-based policy system was not formed or established, and only London could do that.
If this is ok to the reader. it wasn’t just the the First Generation-First Migration planter elite that led to the bad start of Virginia in the English colonial; rather it was the barons, opportunists, and dilettantes of the Early Stuart kings to prove that negligence need not be benign. That will be even more obvious as the reader engages in our story about Massachusetts colonial development. Massachusetts will never be mistaken for Virginia, or vice-versa, due in surprisingly large measure of how, and why, Massachusetts felt the impact of London-based policy-making during this period—and how it reacted to it.
That in fact was congruent with the chronological phases of political development penned by Jon Kukla’s classic [99] Jon Kukla, Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia (the American Historical Review, Vol. 90, No 2 (April 1985), -pp. 281-2-a work which this history relies upon as central to our task of establishing the importance of the First Migration and the First Migration elite in the development of Virginia,
We note the “shapeless” of Virginia’s governance posited by many historians, but also call attention that the Virginians themselves provided, to the extent they could, some important definition in the formation of their post-Company policy system. 1630, therefore, is an important year for us, as it notes the participation of a General Assembly as an independent policy making representative legislature sanctioned only by the consent and seeming consensus of Virginia colonial leadership and the electoral franchise of the Burgesses. They realized upon first meeting him and dealing with him that they weren’t going to get it. Harvey did not enjoy any honeymoon, and it appears he did not seek one. By its nature, this governor could not, and was not, to the liking of the “Virginia post-Company Fall establishment”.
The lack of an effective legislature meant Virginia had to rely upon a “broker-style”, semi-charismatic boss whose influence and skill rose above the inevitable factions, rivalries and parochial perspectives resulting from decentralization; that was the only way evident to satisfactorily resolve tension and provide some level of action by the overall policy system. It may be that Francis Wyatt was the first, William Claiborne was next, but Samuel Mathews is our choice as the model. Mathews was never governor (his son was), neither was Claiborne. Wyatt was, and a more unhappy camper there has never been. He quit twice. Between the three they brokered a deal with the King that finally got things done in Virginia. That is the story behind Phase II.
Several things these three brokers shared were that to some degree they were tied to the tobacco monoculture, the legacy that the Virginia Company left in its post-1624 wake, a really pissed-off attitude regarding the carve out of a Catholic Maryland from their territory, and a through dislike of a disagreeable governor that actually tried to be a governor, which, amazingly was not what his royal sovereign wanted. And that brings us to John Harvey. For him the main story behind his sorry fate was not Claiborne or Mathews, or even Potts; it was Charles.
All these moving parts blend and blur, ebbing and flowing in the telling of the thrusting out story—but they left out the effects of both on the oligarchical tobacco monoculture, First Migration elite. The flip side of the “Thrusting Out Governor Harvey” coin was the two step political development in Virginia: (1) the rise of its Greate Charter political institutions, and (2) the development of a planter-tobacco monoculture identity and a consensus against external rule. Lack of legitimacy of Virginia’s domestic institutions stood in the way of their evolution-development. Virginia’s elite wanted His Royal Majesty to legitimize their role so that the norms associated with self-governance, by Virginia institutions occupy a legitimate place in the English Hybrid Colonial Policy System. As we shall later see, they were very successful in the last matter.
Who Was John Harvey?
John Harvey was no stranger to Virginia when he arrived as its governor in 1629. Who was he, and how did he get to be governor? What did Harvey do in his first administration?
Born in 1581 or 1582, Harvey’s parents were shipowners in Dorsetshire on England’s southern coast. John’s brother became a merchant, working his way into the honor and position of procurer of foods and wines for the household of James I. John Harvey, on the other hand, worked in the shipping “department” of the family’s business. As a very young man, engaged in transporting settlers to Virginia Company’s Virginia, he was yet another example of the second son and Virginia opportunity dynamic that spawned Virginia’s Virginia Company period. In gratitude for his role in populating the colony, the Virginia Company granted John Harvey about 200 acres for his personal estate. Harvey, and his father, were shareholders. It also meant Harvey had early first hand experience with Jamestown and the Virginia Company bureaucracy.
Harvey’s family association with King James figured into the King’s decision to appoint Harvey chair of a commission—at minimum he was not perceived by the King as closely associated with the Sandys faction. John Pym was certainly regarded as that faction’s representative on the commission. His charge was to investigate and report on the condition and state of affairs in Virginia in 1623-4; it was to be a report, bordering on an investigation, of the Company’s actual performance in Virginia.
The commission and its report was intended to be an element of a larger review of the Company’s charter, and it led into the Mandeville Commission’s course of action. Harvey stayed behind to further report on Virginia possible future, while John Pym returned to make the report to Mandeville. Harvey’s tour of Virginia included Samuel Mathews. The two had to have gotten to know each other as they jointly conducted their investigation in Virginia. Harvey probably made his later report on his own; he likely prepared the report on the way back to England.
Both the Pym Report and Harvey’s report ‘s to the Mandeville Commission did little to tone down James’ determination to radically change the accountability of the Corporation to royal authority; their tone very critical of the Company and its administration (especially when combined with the domestic Virginia commentary), but was, on the other hand, optimistic that a “go” could be made of the colony—and the latter served as served as bottom line not to terminate the colonial effort with the repudiation of the Virginia Company charter.
Still as a lone wolf, Harvey’s report invited comment and some bad feelings. Associated with the revocation of the Virginia Company Charter, Harvey was then appointed by the King to the Governor’s Council. Whose idea that was I don’t know, but it suggests a bit of a careerist opportunism or a reward from the King. There is no record, previous to his appearance as governor in late 1629, that Harvey ever served actively on the Governor’s Council. [99] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/harvey-sir-john-ca-1581-or-1582-by-1650/. It certainly, however, strongly suggests that relatively early on John Harvey had caught the eye of James.
Upon completing the report and undertaking an add-on report Harvey submitted his report alone and personally (in 1625) apart from the Pym Report in 1624. After the Report, according to Osgood, Harvey, held a position in the English navy. . Thus Harvey did not participate in or share in the evolution of the Governors Council into the Council of State during the period intervening his arrival as Governor in 1629. Thus he remained an outsider, three thousand miles distant. [99] For a more detailed account, see Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period in American History, Vol. 1: Settlement, pp. 189ff.
As to how Harvey maneuvered himself into the gubernatorial appointment. L. H. Roper suggests that the “prickly and self-important John Harvey became governor … [by] seizing the chance for advancement … to hitch his star as firmly as he could to the socio-political center of the early Stuart world, the monarch. The reader should be aware Harvey had pivoted away from James after his death in 1625, and captured the attention of his somewhat wayward son, Charles.
Osgood characterizes “Appointments under the English government throughout our colonial period were secured largely through privilege, influence and favoritism. Merit, impersonally considered played some part, but in a large proportion of cases it was subordinate in most cases it could be but roughly ascertained and figured only in connection of motives of a more personal sort. These considerations go far to explain the inferior character of many colonial appointments … a few royal governors rendered excellent service to the crown and the colonists. Of the less acceptable class among them, John Harvey of Virginia was an example” [99] Herbert Osgood. the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol, 3, pp. 96-7
Roper adds:
Harvey [had] entered Virginia’s affairs as early as August 1623 when he accepted an appointment–possibly obtained through the offices of the diplomat Sir Dudley Carleton–to the commission appointed by the Privy Council [see above paragraphs] to investigate the nature of the damage inflicted on they colony by the Indian attack…While rendering this service, [Harvey] identified himself as a soldier in the Virginia Company faction headed by the Earl of Warwick…Having become convinced of Harvey’s experience [in Virginia because of this report], the government rewarded him with membership on the Council [of State–which he never attended during that period], a knighthood, and on 12 September, 1628 the governorship of the colony” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Routledge, 2016), pp. 108-9. James got him on the Council of State, but it was Charles who knighted him and appointed him governor.
So Harvey’s distance from both the disruptive post-Massacre company politics in London and involvement in domestic Virginia governance was a distinct negative in Virginia. Harvey’s published and known views on the Company during Sandys tenure, contrasted with the position taken by the Assembly in 1624. While Virginians in these years were always of two minds concerning the Company and its future in Virginia, Harvey, an outsider despite his Virginia estate and short residencies, was not on favorable terms with former Company officials who infested the Governor’s Council in the post-Massacre period.
There is little reason to believe that Harvey enjoyed any meaningful level of support from Virginians in 1629 when he arrived as governor.
When he got started as governor it became evident that his instructions from the King provided Harvey several specific tasks, the Palisades Project, for one. But the wording of the instructions issued to Harvey was consistent with that of Wyatt and Yeardley–his predecessors– and it was also applied to Wyatt and Berkeley after 1639. Craven asserts Harvey’s instructions were essentially mirror images of the instructions sent by the Company to its governor, which were then incorporated by the Privy Council when they took over in 1624-5. In their consistency one would expect some understanding of how London viewed the governor’s role. Craven summarizes it as:
The rule of the company’s later days [bound] the governor by a majority vote of the council, with a casting vote in case of a tie [not quite a veto], was continued. As before the council held the authority to fill temporarily vacancies in the governor’s chair arising from death or other cause by election, aright exercised no less three times within a decade of the company’s fall. Governor and council continued [throughout the period] to act as the chief administrative agency of the colony, to set in quarterly sessions as a superior court, and to join with the burgesses in forming a general assembly … The joining of governor and council in one commission with provision for majority rule presented, in the absence of the company’s former and close superintendence, a very real question as to the extent of the governor’s independent powers [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, p. 155
That brings up another Roper question as to whether Harvey properly understood his own powers and role in Virginia during this period.
Harvey’s difficulties arose from his miscalculation of royal support for his position, which may have naturally arisen from the diffusion of authority that existed in the government of Virginia and in the English empire at this time. By virtue of his office, he should have constituted the primary point of contact between the Privy Council and the locality [Virginia]. It remained unclear, however, just how much authority–and respect- a colonial governor commanded at this time. The former ship’s captain might have regarded himself as the viceregent of the king–the equivalent of the Lord Deputy of Ireland–but it was by no means clear that anyone else shared this lofty view of the position. The creation of Dorset’s Commission on Virginia and the Commission on Plantations (with its own Virginia subcommittee) [Laud’s Commission] moreover created alternative channels that enabled Claiborne and his friends to outflank even those who held royal office. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Routledge, Number 7, 2009), p. 112.
While I slight the King in his repeated failures to offer meaningful support and assistance to Harvey, including a proper definition of the future goals of his colony, it is somewhat obvious that these objectives were imposed in various terms on the two Commissions–and that their decisions were more fundamental than Harvey’s, and their authority more closely directed by the King on a daily basis if need be.
If Harvey was no more viewed in London than as an administrative arm and linkage to the Virginia policy sub-system, with the Dorset and Laud Commissions as the fundament organs entrusted with Virginia affairs, one can see the king was to a considerable degree relieved of the charge he was meddling and not providing the definition of the parameters of Virginia’s policy subsystem, tasks he had entrusted, certainly to the Dorset, and less obviously to Laud Commission which seems more tilted to actual operations and administration; it does seem, however, dedicated itself, the county system as an example, to increasing the capacity of the resident policy sub-system.
Harvey, however, never willingly bought into the past framework. Harvey from the start of his administration in early 1630, Harvey added to crown-imposed assignments, supplementing them with his own agenda, and infusing his governance style with his own elevated and empowered gubernatorial job description. For the next four years, he clashed with and was often pushed back by the Council and on other frequent occasions independently took actions on critical policy issues without consensual support from that body. In a nutshell he acted, when he could, as a governor independent of the council, who was empowered to go beyond the specific items in his instructions, as updated by the King’s missives.
To be sure, this had some precedent in Virginia’s past. Wyatt, in the desperate post-1622 days, had departed from company policy and instructions pursuing matters were viewed as essential–pushing the Assembly to assert its right to levy taxes and fees was a prominent example. During these years the collapse of the Company in conjunction with the Second Powhatan War left Virginia very much on its own; the survival of the colony was understandably paramount, and timely permission to act was not possible.
Yeardley too was not always in step with London wishes and priorities–and the Assembly when it met, while deferential in tone, never seems to have been unwilling to let London know what it thought. In short, past practices did not seem a fertile ground for Harvey’s vision of Governor. While Harvey did not understand the accepted Virginia decision-making procedures, he probably did enjoy some leeway in adding agenda items congruent with the King’s policy and English law. He was expected to take a lead in shaping policy and solving local and Virginia problems.
In Harvey’s mind, as supported by his numerous correspondence on the topic, and the manner in which he presented decisions to the Council, the governor was empowered to make decisions separately and autonomously of the Council. At best he seems to have acted as the Council had an advisory capacity only. That clashed horribly with the office and accepted practices of the governor that had developed since 1622. (See Craven, p. 153ff). More on that later on in this module.
What is more apparent in hindsight is that London, be in the Company or James and Charles, had set up the Virginia decision-making process a decade previous to Harvey. This framework, beginning with the company, and continuing through James and Charles, viewed the Council more than advisory, but linked the Council with the governor, and together a decision would be made. That this would potentially heavily affect such agendas as not included in the King’s instructions. It certainly would bring into question independent actions by the governor, and those for which he could not secure a majority in the Council.
Harvey did not understand that Charles put governor and council in the same pot. Harvey never got the support from London or Charles on his exercise of an independent and aggressive position as governor. Nor did Charles have an particular desire to set up a “legislature” except when he called the assembly into session for a particular issue or matter, nor did he expect a royal governor to construct and impose a gubernatorial personal agenda unilaterally. In his, and the Privy Council’s mind, the decisions of consequence came from a fused Council and Governor decision-making-which, saving a tie vote meant the governor was potentially able to be checked by the Council.
Charles wanted most of all was a governor who kept things quiet and followed his orders and priorities– keep the tobacco customs duties flowing to England, and implement his directives and agenda priorities. For the larger questions concerning Virginia, His Majesty’s “commissions” were tasked with that. Holding the fort, however, was not what Harvey had in mind. He constantly tried to write his own job description. His sad lot today is that it is hard to fathom whether his efforts to follow his king’s orders and priorities, or his out of step, hand-crafted insensitive job description is what put him on the boat to England—twice. What Shakespeare could have done with a character such as Harvey!
And so the reader can see that before Harvey set foot in Virginia as governor, his future administration, if it can be called as such, suffered from the lack of definition in the powers processes, and relationships among the three institutions set up in the Greate Charter back in 1619.
We can also see the origins of a weak governor, with divided executive entities. That from time to time provincial decision-making meant being called into session of an elected assembly–which included the Council and Governor–forming a fused government–only added an unpredictable layer of different actors. That these various entities could be construed as separate branches of a government, is more than a half-century in the future. As I mentioned at some point, John Locke, the theorist identified with separate branches, was only BORN in 1632.
Accordingly, the reader might, as he or she struggles through this module, see the first stirrings of separate bodies, each with their own constituencies, agendas, and processes-powers. This is fine so long as the actors of the period are not infused with this perspective–and the goings on that emanate from the fused decision-making are not regarded as legitimate or appropriate to the period.
From the start, however, as we shall see, Harvey’s aggressive definition of governor started a politics and policy-making that was not simply contentious, but viewed as requiring more precise and firm delimitation of powers, limits, accountability congruent with each type of actor. That many in Virginia viewed the role of the Assembly, in ways we link today as legislative, is somewhat presumptive of a future evolution in which these bodies developed into full-fledged political institutions.
The reality of 1630 is that Harvey, intended or not, opened up visible evidence the Virginia domestic government could not work well under internal stress. if the King wanted stable Virginia domestic governance he needed to define its institutions and processes. He was hoping one or another of his Commissions would do it, he does not seem to have strongly advocated it do so. Accordingly we drift from the Dorset to the Laud Commissions, and from there to the Thrusting Out of John Harvey.
Enter John Harvey: a Policy-Making Approach
Through these many modules offered thus far has been the constant reference to the term policy-system. Since we have defined economic development as a policy issue, the two foci have to go hand in hand–if only because the latter reflect and is dependent on the former. In “Enter John Harvey” we recast the historical tale of the thrusting out of governor John Harvey, enlarging it to include the development of a colonial hybrid system, but in this module how this important episode in Virginia’s colonial history led to the further development of the Virginia policy system, and the development of political instructions of such strength and character they have become part of our political heritage and offer a better understanding of our contemporary democracy.
The classic approach to the John Harvey affair, to which we are much indebted, is Mills’ “Thrusting Out”. In Mills’ perspective John Harvey is the protagonist, if not the chief provocateur in a play-drama that stands out in the history of Virginia’s first migration. In our rehash, Harvey is a major actor-player, who is the catalyst that jumpstarted Virginia’s distinctive policy system. His failure became the first serious instance of Virginia’s weakening of its provincial executive, and a step closer to its distinctive local tilt in evolving is policy system.
In this story the reader may see the fleshing out of the 1619 Greate Charter policy system, and see value from the separate branches with their own structures develop identities and constituencies as they combat each other to achieve their different policy goals–in this case the economic development future of the province and its economic base. That the creation of a neighboring colony deeply affected that development certainly makes the story more complex, but it offers an opportunity how policy-making can, like a pinball, bounce off, react to other policies–like two boats crossing each other’s wake, the ride is more rough and the course of the boat somewhat diverted. That a good deal of the conflict with Maryland will be economic in nature, is also a valuable addition to our focus.
It has been obvious thus far that the Greate Charter initiative barely got off on a rough, choppy, and ill-focused start in 1619 when he hit a wall in the sudden, near fatal Indian attack that launched the Second Powhatan War. Much of what Sandys intended was left literally dead in the plantations and fields along the James River, and from that point on the policy system reacted. For many reasons that evolution was dominated by capacity-building of structures created by the Virginia Company previous to 1622: the provincial structures set in place by the Greate Charter, and the hundreds (based on investor plantations) from 1613.
The province formally asserted its prerogatives over the hundreds and the monthly courts, but the shredded community and isolation exerted considerable impact on the colony’s ability to centralize its administration and assert a coherent and sustained leadership over its plantation clusters and hundreds-shires. Accordingly, the lower levels, first to feel the impact of Indian war and dwindling food and gunpowder supplies became home base of the plantation conquistadors, and the primacy of tobacco production and export lodged considerable autonomous power in the hands of those larger plantation owners who enjoyed a pier and access to capital fanciers.
The point of the last paragraph simply is John Harvey inherited an administrative system so decentralized it presented an installed barrier to any aspirations he had to be a “real” governor. Once he left Jamestown there was little the office of governor directly controlled–or paid for. Taxes and fees set in Jamestown were collected by authorities at the lower levels; any regulation, such as tobacco regulation, was also administered by locals.
A governor strutting about in a river hundred issuing orders to and fro was on his own in securing compliance. Status always helped in this day and age, but it demanded a presence or local support when was not there, The plantation conquistador and the network of larger plantation owners in a cluster settlement did have this support and influence over the local authorities. Say it another way, the Council of State was more in charge outside of Jamestown than the governor. Before Harvey, the governor, including Wyatt, set up a local presence, and deferred to Council members in their plantation cluster dominion.
From the start Harvey seems to have realized that he had to rule through the Assembly, if he was to establish any dominance over the local levels. Harvey’s veto was rarely used, and the Assembly, until the last years of the seventeenth century always met in the same room as the governor and Council. Osgood does concede that “except in the administration of Harvey, we find in early Virginia no instances of prolonged strife between the different branches of the legislature [99] p. 88. While this does admit to the 1632 Assembly-Council conflict to be described below, I find it remarkably insensitive to a host of disruptions that divided and plagued Virginia over the next half-century. Institutional development gets lost in this shuffle.
That made his presiding over the March 1630 Assembly his first prominent action. There he would launch in miniature his agenda, and secure its approval from a larger and more diversified body, although composed of plantation owners as was the Council, the latter were more war lords or feudal barons. With the Assembly the governor could deal with the “mainstream planter proto-class”, each with their local network.
In essence, for the first time, an outsider to the shredded community tobacco monoculture was governor, and his ambition was to establish an independent base of authority over the larger colony policy system. As we tell the tale of John Harvey, I think it helpful for the reader to realize this larger structural-authority context, and to realize the task he had set for himself almost inevitably meant both a power structure with the dominant power bosses, but also required him to establish his own authority through the only structure available, the Assembly. That meant of course sending the Assembly down a path quite different than the Council.
Solidified Power Base
From my perspective, Harvey, owner of an allegedly obnoxious and arrogant personality, had one special distinction that separated him from Virginia’s resident governing elite—he was an outsider to it. Equally outrageous was that he believed before he arrived, and what he saw when he arrived, was a colony in which the elite planters sucked the lifeblood out of the Company and the colony. It may be he saw Virginia as a “punchbowl” from which the elite drank heartily. Given the variety of metaphors and similes regarding punchbowls, we will content ourselves with using William McChesney Martin’s Federal Reserve comment: Harvey was determined to “take away that punchbowl”. The reaction of the Virginia elite to that is predictable. That reaction will provide the background music for the remainder of this module.
An outsider, Harvey had to preside on a very regular basis over Council elites whose past actions and experiences included extensive London interactions, and who over time had formed into factions, certainly rivalries, pursuing their personal agendas. Among this group we can see a key distinction was the extent to which the Council member had forged London access, because with that access they could achieve more than those that that had to content themselves with their lower level power bases.
Roper describes the path of access to the court used by Claiborne and Mathews, with the former latching on to Edwin Sandys, the Earl of Southampton, and then to Earl of Dorset, a fellow Kent landowner. It is likely that avenue was utilized following Claiborne’s return to London in 1629-30. Roper rightly points out how the Virginia actors in Charles’s hybrid policy policy system entered into the politics and policy-making in England and the Court. That the path meant choosing a faction or individual with which they are allied meant they could play in Charles’s faction ridden, personalistic, opportunistic policy-making morass I call a hybrid policy system.
The norms, seemingly accepted by oligarchical Council of State, blurred governor and council powers, and with fiscal resources of their own, crafted their own agenda. Given their highly individualistic personalities, the extremely competitive ambitions toward land and indentured servant expansion and growth, and widely dispersed locations of Council members (in the shredded community), they were inclined to support each other in their plans, putting aside the various rivalries and factions, to give way to their opponents, fully expecting that the latter would give way to them.
The willingness to do so was probably based on their shared unity and commitment to the tobacco monoculture, the plantation as the home base of the planter class, and the need to be wary of outsiders that may impinge on their ambitions and impede their ability to export tobacco to England–the life blood of their economic position. Within that consensus even the sovereign was an outsider, as the 1628-9 tobacco contract episode would prove, and Harvey surely fell into that category as well.
Avoiding frontal attacks and showing the proper deference, the Council was more than able–it was willing–to press its interests previous to Harvey. For a body that lacked official legitimacy and definition, the Council and even the Assembly, when needed, could figure out what it wanted, and within limits take it to London or approve it in the Governor’s Council. With Harvey on board in Jamestown, they could hold Harvey responsible for transmitting their position to the king–in effect transforming the king’s agent into their agent. No wonder Harvey was cranky. That the previous Acting Governor, Potts, was as scandalous as they came in Virginia, Harvey on day one in the job, enjoyed no honeymoon from that crowd in the Council of State.
But events in London shifted that deck of cards.
William Claiborne’s buckaroo Kent Island adventures, if nothing else , demonstrated the willingness of the Council and even the General Assembly previous to 1631 to back him, issue trading monopolies, elect him to Secretary of the Colony in 1626 (arguably the second or third most powerful position in Virginia governance–a position he would hold until 1634). The Council also created a Burgesses district for a Kent Island representative, and set up a local government– The Claiborne Clique had developed their own back door into Court and Privy Council factions while maintaining an exceptionally strong hold over the Council.
Claiborne was in London from 1629-31. This access and use of London as a basis for power in Virginia was in place before Harvey assumed governorship in 1630. In this suffocating atmosphere, Harvey’s definition of “public good” could not find sufficient oxygen to breathe. If Claiborne was the political leader of this grouping (as opposed to Tucker and Mathews), as he likely was, his absence had little effect on its solidarity as Mathews, and Tucker if needed could muster the votes to carry the day. The glue that kept the oligarchy together in the Council always was that its members, when their time came ,wanted their share of the same benefits others had received.
Accordingly, Harvey was not the only contender for power in 1630. If Harvey wanted to take away the punchbowl, the Claiborne Clique, by nature of its business plant, was hell bent to tip over the Virginia economic base in a coup that potentially placed other tobacco exporters, and all Virginia residents in an economically dependent situation.
In short, from its own midst the planters had developed a disrupter grouping that threatened those not included in its cabal. That disruption erupted when the Dorset Commission issued its report to restore a revamped charter to the Virginia Company. When Claiborne set foot back in Kent Island in late 1631, with his new London-approved trading commission, complete with a new batch of English settlers, he handed to Harvey and the mainstream planter group an apparent fiat accompli.
With this background in place, the next section details Harvey’s first steps in 1630, and carry him and the background politics into the critical 1632-34 period.
Harvey’s Steps Boldly into a Policy System that did not Exist
The reader understands John Harvey was appointed Virginia governor by Charles I, a consequence of Governor Yeardley’s unexpected demise in 1627. While formally appointed in 1628 Harvey remained in England for some time, more than a year to arrange his affairs, and upon reaching Virginia in late 1629 or early 1630, soon became seriously ill (as was common to new immigrants). The first record of his Virginia service was his presiding over the March 1630 General Assembly. His role and impact previous to that date does not seem to have been significant.
One might, however, realize that while Potts was doing “his thing” Harvey was in town, sick or ill, but able to watch Potts and the oligarchy in action–and witness their treatment of their servants and the souls in the community-settlements they dominated. This rough and tumble frontier politics sanctioned arbitrary authoritative ruff-necked actions, and was manor-medieval in its style of law–even more so than England was at that time. Harvey, an alleged owner of an obnoxious and arrogant personality, knew well how to respond to that environment; but he possessed one distinction that distinguished him from the great predominance of the Virginia governing elite—he was an outsider to it–and nobody resented outsiders more than Potts,
Scapegoating Former Governor Pott
No sooner than he arrived, Harvey got into a fight with the previous governor, (Doctor) John Pott. Well-liked (described by Dabney as “a convivial soul and a somewhat mysterious character“, and Virginia’s chief medicine man of long standing [99] Virginius Dabney, Virginia: the New Dominion (University Press of Virginia, 1971), p. 40, Keep in mind also Potts was the governor Harvey replaced, that Pott enjoyed high status as an Oxford M.A, and, finally as a large landowner and tobacco producer had arguably become a popular plantation conquistador who as a chief medic in the various post-Massacre Indian raids and expeditions had acquired notoriety and some scandal. A final thought, when Pott was elected governor in 1628 he was about thirty-three years of age; John Harvey his nemesis was about forty-six. .
Part of Potts (or Pott) mystique is that he was truly an educated medical Surgeon, trained and a protégé of one of England’s best. He was recruited by the Virginia Company and arrived in Virginia in 1619. He was from the start Virginia’s chief medical officer. Of note, surgeons in the English seventeenth century social hierarchy, were of lesser standing than physicians–due to some extent of an occupation practiced mostly in battle zones and involved the rather distasteful daily work of cutting open with minimal painkillers individuals of any class or standing Contemporary surgeons view Pott as an important contributor to the rise of surgeons, to the status of physicians in America because Potts “through his service to colonists … earned the reputation traditionally given to physicians in Great Britain. The colonists in Virginia respected the surgeons and viewed them as doctors, which allowed surgeons to stand on equal ground with physicians”, [99] John D. Ehrhardt, Jr & J. Patrick O’Leary, MD the Rise of the Surgeon in Seventeenth Century Virginia Colony (the American Surgeon, Vol 84, Issue 6 (June 2018).
He possessed a personality not usually attributed to a man of his high status. A certain George Sandys, treasurer of the colony and brother to Edwin, wrote that Pott was “more of a boon companion than quite comported with his dignity … at first he kept company too much with his inferiors, who hung upon him while his good liquor lasted” [99] Charles E. Horton, Jr and Charles E. Horton MD, (Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, 1983, Vol. 59) pp. 678-85. That good nature seems to have affect his style and dedication to his medical duties.
He developed competence in treating what we today believe was typhoid, the so-called summer seasoning, and throughout his tenure as chief medical officer through 1628 “The doctor regularly kept patients in his own home, where his wife served as a nurse. He commissioned a boat which he sailed up and down the James River to make house calls at various outlying settlements. His typical fee for one of these calls was 30lbs of tobacco.[99] Charles E. Horton, Jr and Charles E. Horton MD, (Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, 1983, Vol. 59) p. 680.
Pott survived the infamous first day of the Second Powhatan War, and from that point on is said to have developed a formidable hatred of the Powhatan. As medical officer and surgeon he participated in several military expeditions conducted in the several years to follow. During one of these raids in1623 or 1624, he may (or may not as he did was personally not on the that raid commanded by William Tucker) supplied poison which was used to spike the wine given to the Powhatan at a peace negotiation, resulting in the death of hundreds of Indians.
Accused by none less than the Earl of Warwick of masterminding the faux peace incident, London was in a bit of an uproar that permitted Warwick to successfully expel Pott from the Governor’s Council, and commence a formal investigation. The investigation cleared Pott, as stated above Pott was not present at the poisonings, and he was restored to the Council in 1626. No worse for wear, Pott was elected by the Council to replace Francis West as Governor in 1628. [99] See Grizzard et all, Jamestown Colony: a Political, Social, and Cultural History (ABC-CLIO), 2007), p.133
Pott, whatever his virtues as a doctor, apparently held the property of his neighbors in little regard (one such suit for a contested pig also involved his partner in the action, Samuel Mathews. He would be sued by several–as we shall see Harvey used these chronic laws suits as cause for his actions–and his treatment of a freeholder, MS Jane Dickenson who, after being captured by Powhatan, was ransomed by Potts who required her to enter into indenture to pay for the costs expended (two pounds of glass beads). After ten months in such indenture a court terminated her contract and set her free. Potts treatment of his own apprentices also landed him in court, where his apprentice was the victor. It probably should be said that many of his fellow conquistadors engaged in such behaviors; there are numerous letters and court records to support that assertion. Potts may not have been anything special among that dubious cast of characters.
But not to Harvey who probably focused on Pott because of Pott’s ability to confuse private gain with public good. Potts was notorious, in his cavalier treatment of free holders and indentured servants. Not well hidden, and not very different from the behavior of the other conquistadors the Council of State was populated by such misbehavior–made famous by Yeardley in past years. Another part of the reason was Pott, immediately previous to his surrender of the governor’s office to Harvey, filled the unexpired commissions of sixteen “commanders” of the militia–setting up a bloc of local support beyond the reach of the governor. (It was Pott’s command to the local militia that prompted the local militia to seize hold of Harvey during the 1635 coup–which will be shortly described).
Still Pott was the wrong man with which to start a fight. Harvey couldn’t have picked a worse target for his frustration with “insiders”. The fight developed into a series of clashes on several levels, his personal behavior, and his policy differences with the governor. It also may have overlapped into Harvey’s effort to garner revenues to use for his pay and expenses. The Horton’s assert that Harvey “took an immediate dislike to his predecessor and determined to ruin the popular physician” [99] Charles E. Horton, Jr and Charles E. Horton MD, (Bulletin of New York Academy of Medicine, 1983, Vol. 59) p. 682.
Harvey citing a number of the above charges dismissed him from the Council (although he had no authority to do so) and formally charged him with “wilful murther [murder], marking other men’s cattell as his owne, and killing their hogs“. He threw Pott in jail–Pott declined help from those who paid his bail–where upon Pott stayed until his trial (making him a martyr and celebrity), complete with a Harvey-selected jury, found him guilty. At that point Harvey was sentenced to be confined to his plantation (Harrop) which was in the center of land associated with the Palisades Project. At that point Harvey formally confiscated his plantation, and (probably because of the local reaction) referred the Pott’s case to London.
At this point the reaction to this personal assault on the former Governor was at its height. It was no doubt intensified because Pott was the chief surgeon of the colony, and his absence in the performance of his duties was noticed up and down the James. While Harvey was pressing for the exile–banishment of Pott from Virginia, his wife, ill and of weak health, traveled to London, pressed his case–successfully. The King ordered the pardon of Potts, the return of his estate, and the resumption of his medical duties. Potts, however, was not returned to the Governor’s Council. That the King supported Pott, not his royal governor, speaks to the insensitivity of Charles’s decision-making and his rather uneven grasp of choosing the right people to support.
No worry, however, the reader has not yet seen the last of Pott.
The most chronic and widely shared policy item in the Pott-Harvey dispute was Harvey’s insistence to make peace with a warring tribe of Indians. Pott’s long-standing hatred of the Powhatan, and his policy position of leading to the rejection of West’s 1628 Indian treaty, overlapped with the serious of civil actions discussed above. The members of the Council did not support Harvey in this action, and displayed considerable emotion resisting it. Harvey did find some local advisors, but was unable to drive a wedge in the Council.
As Harvey went forth and concluded a reasonably successful treaty with the tribe anyway, the Indian policy polarized not only Potts, but most Virginians. Nothing was more guaranteed to mobilize the plantation conquistadors than the Powhatan War and its role in hinterland settlement. Into this morass of a policy issue, an issue which played on and off with each raid or incident throughout his first administration.
On to top of this it was probably very frustrating to Harvey that the King’s instructions required him to cooperate and build the great Palisades Project, of which Pott was a prime beneficiary and key to much of the project’s implementation. If ever a project blurred public and private, the Palisades Project would be on a short list and Pott had his fingers in virtually every nook and cranny of the project.
However, damaging the fight was for Harvey overall, Harvey’s takeover of the Pott estate, given Harvey’s prior remarks on the topic of repossessing company land back in 1624-5, reinforced the perception that Harvey indeed was determined to repossess landholdings of the Virginia elite as was ongoing in the Ulster Plantation. Land patents-sales were linked to the vital workforce headrights obtained by all settler and Harvey had suspended his approval of both. I do not know what sympathies Harvey had for the Ulster Plantation strategy, or the degree to which Harvey acted on his own mission in seizing the Pott plantation to build up his own personal holdings and increase his own wealth, the matters became conflated in the minds of many Virginians.
Why Won’t They Pay the Governor?
The seizure of Putt’s estate by Harvey raised two issues, the first, the vulnerability of Virginia land ownership in the wake of the demise of the Virginia Company, which we have discussed elsewhere, and the unwillingness of either the Virginia Company or the King to pay a salary to its Virginia resident CEO. To a certain extent trivial from a big picture perspective, that mysterious practice did play a noticeable role in the weakening of the Virginia governorship.
From the start in 1607 and further confirmed by the Greate Charter practices, the governor did not accrue a salary, nor were his expenses picked up by the Company. From Dale’s Gift on (1613) the Company paid “in kind” with abundant resources that did not tap into its scare cash; grants of company owned land–and servants, were “leased” to the governor (and other offices) in lieu of salary/expenses. The governor was expected to derive from these lands proceeds which were his sustenance, and his path to wealth. Although Virginia had asserted its right to tax and levy fees in 1624, that power had as the 1630’s not been formally legitimized by the King nor his Privy Council. Fees, as they are today, are on safer ground, but taxes were believed to be a major reason why the King had not legitimized the Assembly as a legitimate institution of Virginia government. Craven offers a assessment of this practice:
When through the years after 1624, the colonists took up almost the full burden of the public charge [i.e. Virginia’s expenses], they relied chiefly for relief on other forms of compensation for public service than financial. Witness the effort, both conscious and unconscious, to make the badge of office a mark of honor and standing in the community …[Also] after 1624 it is doubtful that members of the council received any compensation other than the opportunity afforded them as men selected from the more substantial planters to protect a common interest. And if some of them used the advantage of their position to extend in one way or another their stake in the community, it should be remembered that a land grant was the oldest form of reward in Virginia, and that it was natural to use land, the colony’s major asset to subsidize services” [One can easily recognize the award by the Council of various “monopolies” is simply yet a creative and innovative use of land]
At face value this had some merit, and it squared quite well with the customs of the day. That it blurred the public with the private was less a concern in 1630 where a certain ethics had evolved that seemingly created “red lines” of personal behavior that exposed deficiencies of honor and character, and laid oneself open to public charges. Everybody did it–even the King–but as times were changing the practice had a certain “medievalness” attached to it. That the medievalness evolved through the seventeenth century suggests to the reader that future colonies, future states, were founded and developed in accordance with the changing ethos, politics, historical experience and morals-popular culture of the English. Virginia was the first, and its heritage, more than Pennsylvania for example, shared more with Henry VIII than with William and Mary as did Pennsylvania.
The practice had enormous consequences because the company officials in the 1610’s used it to grow Rolfe’s tobacco, and from their innovation the tobacco gazelle was set in motion. The refinement of the use of indenture for workforce as wrought in Sandys’ Greate Charter initiatives supplement land grants with workforce to utilize the land. The combination of the two in the hands of the company elite probably more than any single factor created the oligarchy that governed Virginia by 1630. In addition, the blurring of public and private, diverted the attention of public officials to their private holdings, but also limited the capacity and use of government as those in charge of government were just as unwilling as the next taxpayer to pay taxes or fees.
Obviously that is no small matter, but we can further observe that its continuation, by default of James and Charles in allowing the practice to continue after the Company’s charter was suspended permitted that oligarchical elite to continue in power and as Virginia grew in wealth and size, so did that elite. By the 1630’s the reader would be off base to think the distinction between private and public in Virginia well developed–in fact the contrary held–and that was one value Harvey shared with the resident Virginia elite, and his seizure of Pott’s estate carried more than tinges of being partially motivated as a means for Harvey to pay his bills and garner his own estate.
In 1634, not a small matter, Harvey was able to finally secure approval for a salary for the governor, rather than empowering the governor to live off the proceeds of whatever property was under control by his office [99] Phillip Alexander Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 2. pp. 340-45. Combined with his expansion and update of the local shire governance, one must view this as positive in the enhancement of Virginia’s capacity to govern itself and the initiatives were congruent to the dominant settlement nexus of the colony.
Harvey was not without cause for his actions. He had not been paid, and he needed to replenish his coffers to support himself as well as pay expenses, such as “hosting meetings and guests” that were incumbent in his office. By his time, any pay would have to be borne by the public, and that meant taxes or fees levied on the citizen and taxpayer. There were several “third rails” in the politics of the day, and taxes-fees were one of them. The aversion to public costs heavily affected the policy initiatives of the day, and the propensity of the actors to rely on them.
From the 1630 Assembly Harvey Set the Tone and Followed Up with Controversial Actions
If there was any issue that permeated into mentalities of both Virginia elite and non elite it was land ownership, or the prospect of land ownership. Land was the lynchpin of the economic success in the tobacco monoculture, and the basis for participation in the colony’s governing institutions. After 1625 the colony continued to spread out into the hinterland, settled new, former Powhatan lands, and founded new plantation. The governor’s approval was necessary for such land sales; previous governors had approved such sales, and linked them with eligibility for headright incentives–ensuring workforce to develop the new plantation.
As we have detail in several past modules, this fundamental dynamic was threatened by the King’s refusal to legitimize the past actions of the Company (past land sales approved by the company), or the new ones issued since the king assumed administrative direction of the colony. Past memos, and this one, detail how various factors and London goings-on had generated considerable land insecurity a among all Virginia residents, and John Harvey’s appointment and arrival as governor (considering his consistent past statements that advocated for less than favorable support from the King) only raised the temperature.
If there was sound government policy behind Harvey’s agenda, his none to subtle condescending tone, if not insulting tone, undermined his position. Following royal instructions did not shield Harvey from negative reaction either. In many of his positions the King was not sensitive to and often opposed to the Virginian agenda. Implementing them made Harvey decidedly out of step with resident Virginia elites. [99].https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/harvey-sir-john-ca-1581-or-1582-by-1650/, Harvey became the lightning rod for that generalized anxiety, the flashpoint in prompting resistance, and the basic underlying reason why few in Virginia felt comfortable with a strong governorship that with a letter from the King would oust them from their homes. Overnight, the divine-right king could make all homeless and likely bankrupt. It would possibly annul the indentured servant contract provisions promising free land at its completion. As we begin our discussion of John Harvey in 1630, a year and a half before the Dorset Commission, is called into session, Charles had still not made a decision on the matter.
Harvey’s approach to the tobacco monoculture
By 1630, the Virginia second generation tobacco elite, with their army of indentured servants/plantation workforce, were obsessed with carrying out personal expansion plans and were not in the slightest interested in hearing Harvey’s threatening pontifications. Settlement expansion, Indian relations, tobacco production, securing headright incentives were wrapped together in a mental and policy nexus that with the Dorset Commission in 1631 reactivated old fears in the security of one’s land holding and workforce. Harvey’s tone and actions only made things worse. He did not get off to a rousing start. Thornton rightly puts this fear as the single underlying cause of Virginia’s innate anxiety about Harvey–at least through 1634.
In the past Harvey made loose comments on the Company’s use of land patents and headrights as evidence of its corruption, and Harvey had consistently advocated return of Company-derived benefits (headrights and land grants as salaries) to the Company–as an attack on the Sandys administration. As one might expect former Company officials, and those hangers on that benefited from Company administration (the plantation conquistadors) took notice and never forgot. Harvey was one step short of being their worst fear. [99] Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and the Social Structure in Virginia” in James Morton Smith (Ed), 17th Century America: Essays in Colonial History, p. 96.
Not one to keep his feelings private, once in Virginia, Harvey reconfirmed much of his past views. His Virginia reluctance to approve them for ordinary and necessary sales activated these has generated land patent and headright fears from Virginians. Piled on top of this was Harvey’s negative attitude toward land patents and headright incentives. From the start he approved fewer and fewer land sales and headright incentives (which legally the governor had to approve) despite rising demand for new land to increase production. Harvey had, by comments back in the 1624 report disparaged risky penetration into the hinterland for its potential to stir up Indian reaction and consequently generate a call for British redcoats to protect the colony.
This anxiety was not ameliorated by Harvey’s agenda in his first year in office.
Harvey pursued several economic strategies, including an attempt to diversify Virginia agriculture away from tobacco to cash crops, an attempt to develop iron ore/potash mining, workforce indenture reforms, and limiting tobacco production to 2,000 plants per worker in lines with the legislation enacted previous to his arrival. But Harvey in March 1630 proposed a radical new initiative intended to ensure better quality tobacco (as a solution to the decline in Virginia tobacco price). Harvey had tobacco burned rather than export it–and that was possible because he required its inspection previous to export.
Harvey’s initiative was a reasonable response to the realities of market demand, but the abruptness and demeanor– he derided their obsession with growing tobacco at the expense of corn and staples and labeled such action as their “greedie desires to make store of Tobackoe” thus ignoring the wishes of the king by not diversifying their economy [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p. 6 The response to the initiative after it was approved by the Assembly was at best uneven, and it did not provide any increase in tobacco prices in the years after. None of this was especially to the liking of local plantation elites, and particularly to the smaller tobacco planter who did not have the luxury of cutting production.
Harvey continued to use the Assembly to launch his assault on tobacco and to introduce his economic development strategy. Of course, when frustrated he would use the equivalent of an executive order in defiance of both Assembly and Council. During the 1630’s Virginia’s governor and assembly attempted to support tobacco prices by various subtle measures (1) crop control laws; (2) increased use as currency (acceptance of tobacco for public dues and taxes and its promotion as a medium of exchange which established a monetary demand for the crop); (3) numerous encouragements and requirements to diversify farm production into staples, and (4) the imposition in 1633 of a 64 lb. duty on all newcomers who planted tobacco within one year after their arrival. This duty was repealed in 1634 because it was a John Harvey imposed regulation with little public consensus so few paid it any attention [99] Gary M. Pecquet, British Mercantilism and Crop Controls in the Tobacco Colonies: a Study of Rent-Seeing Costs (the Cato Journal, 2003-Researchgate).
I suspect that Harvey’s agenda set the tone for the policy differences between the Virginia planters, the Claiborne Clique, and the horde of military commander plantation conquistadors starting with the March 1630 Assembly. As we shall shortly see, Harvey was capable of positive and supporting initiatives to planters in particular. Andrews, for instance notes that in his communications with the King, Harvey constantly and consistently called attention to the King’s not having rendered a final determination on the nature of Virginia governance, and pleading in return that he enjoy the King’s support in his actions until such would occur [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Volume I (pp. 203-4).
I would add he opposed the Claiborne Clique (which Mainstream planters opposed), and he specifically supported tobacco export using Dutch ships, not the expensive and hard to get English. Harvey, also from time to time could see value in the Assembly, as it probably allowed him an opportunity to bypass the closed-door oppositional decision-making by the Council of State. In the end Harvey was not able to forge an effective alliance of Mainstream planters with him or his agenda., Harvey, I think, suffered the fate of Herbert Hoover in that his policies were reasonable and logical, but his manner, and the suspicions regarding his motives and ultimate vision for Virginia, could never sustain the support of his constituency–I also suspect strongly that was partially because it was apparent he did not value it.
Harvey’s Relations with the Powhatan
Likely also is that Harvey’s subsequent actions of sending ships to trade for corn with the Indians, hit plantation conquistador business plan using military expeditions against the Powhatan as a means of grabbing Indian maize which they sold to settlers, hard. Whatever its outcome, and however fair or unfair, moral or unmoral, Harvey’s tolerance of Indian-owned land resulted in periodic incidents involving Native America. Settler fear of the Indians (they were vastly outnumbered and vulnerable in open fields), and the sheer hatred that followed the 1622 Massacre made peace treaties a road block to settling on Indian land–all of which combined to make positive Indian relations a third rail of 1630 Virginia politics.
Harvey, on his own authority, negotiated and signed an agreement in spite of this opposition.
Harvey’s position on Indian conflict, and uneasy with expansion of the colony through takeover of Indian lands, Harvey reflected London’s position on tribal relations. Never inclined to fight the tribes, it was expensive, disruptive, and really got in the way of fostering imports of furs, minerals, and, of course, tobacco–plus the Anglican Church tilted to missionary work and humane treatment, The Settlement & Indian Nexus, however. was so central to the past regime that Harvey’s position quickly manifested itself–and triggered the opposition of the conquistadors, if not the planter and resident population.
Harvey seemed totally at odds with the zero-sum land settlement-tobacco monoculture-Indian-fighting Virginia strategy nexus held as a paradigm by Virginia’s domestic elites. It also ran counter to corn raiding, the key to renter-servant exclusive planting of tobacco and a a source of profit to the conquistadors, and to the formidable commanders that exercised considerable sway in local governments and counties. For better or worse, the bitter memories of the 1622 Massacre and the periodic incidents that were chronic lent an extremely emotional tone to the issue, which in no way helped Harvey’s standing.
What’s more Indian relations was an issue over which Harvey as governor had little effective control. Indian relations were the jurisdiction of the local commanders, the militia under their control, and the Hundreds local elite. What followed was an undeclared war, characterized by a succession of local incidents, and if anything a continuation of corn raids and unfair corn and trade exchanges. Considered by the Virginia English as little more than savages, undeserving of trust or peaceful relations, Ironically, the reluctance of the average settler to participate in a militia expedition–in preference to staying in an isolated, exposed tobacco field to plant-harvest tobacco–meant the plantation conquistadors lacked manpower to mount a full attack, and encouraged shorter, smaller corn raids that only created more incidents–and deepened Powhatan antipathy.
Of considerable irony the Palisades Project, the King’s primary instruction to Harvey, could not have been regarded as anything but the largest single land grab of Indian lands to that point in Virginia history. It was a nest of land sales, headrights and an access to which was limited to the few plantation owners and settlers who could use them. Applying the King’s instructions, Harvey had introduced the proposal for the Palisades Project, and began its implementation. In stark contrast to his intended restriction of land patents and headrights, Harvey granted 600 acres each to Captain John West and Captain John Utie–plus a fifty acre headright for servants for the next year, and twenty-five for the next. [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p. 6. In Harvey’s favor, he then ordered the construction of a four mile long palisade between the James and the York Rivers as a protection against the tribes. Still the inconsistencies had to imply hypocrisy at minimum.
With the Dorset Commission and Revitalized Virginia Company as Catalyst: Clashes between the Council of State and the Assembly exposed cleavages among Virginia planters
The reader must be advised at this point that historians have found these years before 1635 as hard to detail. Records are scarce, imprecise, and secondary materials, with relatively few exceptions similar. The lack of detail has allowed, perhaps required, historians to create their scenario of what motivated the politics during this very important few years. In presenting our new view of the period, I have relied on a great number of these different themes and have wove them into my own. None the less, Thornton is our main source, but Osgood offers useful information as does Andrews and Craven–and of course, Brenner & Roper.
The problem is that each of these authors stress or focus on different themes, and seldom, save for Thornton, consider the several issues and themes as they unfurled, and how they interrelated. Chronology and time sequences are difficult to construct, as narratives “smush” their themes to maximize their cohesiveness and press their case. Like Hercule Poirot we need to deconstruct as best we can the sequence of actions and dynamics as we interweave the different dynamics and events into a coherent tale that takes us to the thrusting out in 1635.
The perspective and approach offered in this and the following modules emphasizes that chronological evolution of the Virginia policy system with emphasis on its associated class-elite-political culture development. In this way we can trace the political and economic development of each of our selected three states. This is my story within story: how the thrusting out catalyzed the political development of Virginia.
Several constants emerge. Harvey is the principal focus. His personality and arbitrariness negatively, or ineffectually, plays into each theme. Harvey was decisive, but polarizing, arrogant, and occasionally brutal (he attacked a Council of State member at a session with a cane-cudgel, and beat him severely (1632). Osgood, I think, offers a reasonable perspective on his behavior. He observes that by 1631, Harvey got virtually no support for his embroidered gubernatorial job description in London or Jamestown.
Osgood summarizes Harvey’s authority as governor was repeatedly, and consistently, restated by London. On each occasion London asserted Harvey’s position as governor was linked to the Council. Harvey did not enjoy autonomous power without the support of the Council. Council decisions were made by “the greater number of them among whom the governor was always to be one … Apparently the only distinction given to Harvey was that his name appeared at the head of the list, and he was designated as governor. Discretion was not granted to the governor alone … Instead the early commissions bound the governor by the advice of the council and were intended to necessitate his full cooperation with them [thus]… it lessened the prestige of the governor and increased the political authority of the councillors“. In that Harvey did not always conform to this state relationship, taking executive actions on his own, seemingly constructing his own agendas, Osgood suggests “was an important cause of the civil troubles of the Harvey administration” as the governor exerted himself “to the utmost to get free from the restraints which it imposed”. [99] Herbert Osgood, pp. 86-7
Finally, Osgood states by 1630 the Assembly was called into session each year “for the most part”. Its acts were subject to veto by the governor and the Privy Council–but as Andrews almost obsessively comments its role was never defined, nor were its parameters outlined, and hence it always acted in some fear of the consequences and reactions from London and the King. The only issue the Assembly took a lead was tobacco, and in particular reacting to the King’s consistent attempts to turn it to his own ends, not those of the Virginia planters. On tobacco the Assembly, and the Council also, shared what seems an already unbreakable commitment to its expansion.
The other constant that emerges from the sources is the disruption caused by the grant to Calvert and the Maryland colony. Osgood asserts this disruption was primary in the thrusting out. He is not alone. Osgood makes no reference to the Claiborne Clique and its polarizing business plan. But Claiborne cannot be ignored. Claiborne is one of the more powerful members of the Council, Secretary of the Colony, and in the first two years of Harvey’s administration, he was in London advocating and securing passage of his initiative.
Claiborne is usually wrapped up in the Maryland Kent Island initiative–indeed I have suggested such in a pervious module–but Maryland aside I now carve out that issue and show how it played into the larger political development of Virginia, and offer a suggestion as to its critical role in developing the class identity of Virginia planters, and fostering an ability to separate out those planters, plantation conquistadors mostly, but Claiborne chiefly whose vision was not tobacco and plantation exclusive. It is at this point in 1632 that we can see the first meaningful initiative whose implication was to limit, if not break, the hold of the tobacco monoculture on Virginia by Virginians themselves.
Except by Thornton and perhaps Craven & Roper, the effects of London policy-making are but distractions from the real story, opposition to Harvey and his ouster. The revitalization and revamping of the Virginia Company presented by the Dorsett Commission in 1632 was for all practical purposes revolutionary. Certainly the return of the Virginia Company as the governance of the colony was no small matter.
Through the revamped Company, London officials would once again, for better or worse, directly impart their vision–and background politics–into Virginia’s affairs and development. The King would, as he so badly desired, be one step removed from Virginia, and accordingly a more commercial vision would be restored. In this the Claiborne Clique and Brenner’s New Men saw an opportunity that could have transformed not only the pure agricultural path the colony had heretofore followed, but indirectly would have altered the development of its political institutions radically. The bulk of Virginia’s “Mainstream Planters” almost instinctively realized these implications and this is the tale of how they reacted to them in 1632-4.
Claiborne’s initiative was based in large part on fur trading with the Indians–and it embraced potentially all English holdings in North America. Secondarily it rested on “supply”, the provisioning of the colonies with imported goods–as well as the export of their goods. In other words, it would exercise a primary impact on Virginia’s economic base.
That required a port city, and Kent Island was likely to be it. But even more threatening, perhaps, was that its finance and logistics core, meant the development of new occupations that were not closely associated with tobacco, export, or even the shredded community agricultural base. If successful over time a new occupational configuration could logically follow: the introduction of a middle class, artisans, professionals, merchants and the like whose interests were greater and wider than tobacco agriculture.
Claiborne’s enterprise was a departure from the tobacco monoculture, even though it incorporated that monoculture in its business plan. It was at heart a logistics-transportation, finance-based business that linked the tobacco with the outside world, and the outside world with tobacco and Virginia settlement. That it originated from the plantation conquistador element-but by no means a significant portion of them–was not remarkable in and of itself. The nature of export, and the need to import provisions to live on and work with required from somebody to develop a focus, expertise, and transportation and contracts, and the need to create an export hub to connect to the global market. Accordingly, hidden in plain sight we see a catalyst behind the formation of a new sector and set of occupations
To the reader this “what if” may be taken as a sort of alternative history. Perhaps it is. But as I shall discuss in our Massachusetts chapter, what is a primary distinction between Massachusetts and Virginia was the former rested, and further developed, a proto-urban middle class occupation configuration, while the latter sucked it up into tobacco and the plantation. Both Massachusetts and Virginia had plenty of entrepreneurs, but they pushed them onto separate paths. If accurate, then the First Migration era was indeed the period in which Virginia’s tobacco monoculture was fully embraced and became embedded in its political and economic systems.
The revitalization of the Virginia Company, and the possibility the Kent Island initiative would control its Magazine, rendered Virginia’s planter class a muddle of conflicted positions and interests. Undoubtedly, that they could not, but needed badly to, express their positions and articulate their interests, left them both frustrated, each plantation owner atomized. No newspapers existed in Virginia at that time, and communication was by letter to the members of Dorsett, the Privy Council and even the king. So how does the Mainstream Planter get into the action more effectively–by using the Assembly when it could. And Harvey sympathetic on this issue in the background, they did.
The Dorset Commission inevitably became the lightning rod and generator of Virginia political action and concern. The Commission was tasked with the responsibility for determination of the colony’s future, kicking Virginians–and Harvey–into the margins. It was clear from its beginning the Dorset Commission was loaded up with pro-Virginia Company shareholders, past Company officials, and those, like its “customs farmer” chair John Wolstenholme who saw an opportunity to regain control over the Virginia colony and in particular the “monopoly over its trade”. Within a matter of a few months, the Dorset Commission announced its recommendation to reissue a revamped charter to the Virginia Company.
Also ,of great concern was the membership of Lord Chichester (and several associated with him), governor of the Irish Ulster Plantation on the Commission. Chichester, governor-general of Ireland, had faced a similar situation before, and he had proposed and carried out the systematic takeover of Irish held lands in Ulster, evicting all former owners regardless of their social status. The fate of the Irish farmer was most horrendous, and over a decade they were simply deprived of the exercise of their rights as Englishmen as they tried legally to resist the dispossession. The peers that replaced Irish peers were mostly merchants and adventurers. As Thornton observes “it was only natural… that the appointment of the [Dorset] commissioners aroused considerable apprehension among the Virginians“. Thornton goes further; he suggests it is the primary cause of Harvey’s ouster. Simply put Virginian landowners feared they would suffer the same fate as had befallen the Irish landlords and freeholders [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. 14.
With this dire future, the resurrection of the Virginia Company, an action which seemed likely at that time, was much more the preferred direction. Whatever Virginians thought of the Company and the Company officials, the return of the Virginia Company offered the security of the Company recognizing the legitimacy and legal rights of its past actions and decisions in Virginia. It was no great love for the Company period, or loyalty to it that prompted their willingness to be governed by the Company again. Oddly enough perhaps, to the Mainstream Planter, the Company without the Magazine controlled by Claiborne, was a source of stability, whose past behavior proved little threat to the plantation and the tobacco monoculture.
It was that news, received by Mathews in December 1631 that prompted him and the Clique on the Council of State to carve out an agreement with Harvey ending the policy bickering within the Council of State that disrupted governance badly, which, if continued, might reflect itself on the actions of the Dorset Commission as it prepared the Virginia Company charter for implementation. It was at this point, that concerns of the planter community regarding the Claiborne Clique’s northern venture became more serious, imminent, and threatening. They had to react before they became real, and embedded in a contract with the new Virginia Company.
Brenner captures the bare knuckles conflict between his “merchant-councilor interest’ (what we call the Claiborne Clique) and the “general planters”. Brenner argues that English “New Men’ financiers like Cloberry and Thomason, had forged an alliance with members of “Virginia’s council clique [those with membership on the Council of State]:
Working together, councilors and (New Men) merchants penetrated all aspects of the Virginia economy. The specific trajectory of Virginia’s early economic evolution, is indeed incomprehensible without reference of a special merchant-councilor interest distinct from, and in important ways directly opposed to, the interests of the generality of planters. During the pre-Civil War era, the merchant-councilor combine engaged in wholesale share out of the colony’s major resources–furs, lands, and commercial monopolies. At the same time its members pursued pro-merchant commercial policies that were directly harmful to, and opposed by, most of the colony’s planters–above all the establishment of a new Virginia Company and the abolition of free trade with Virginia” [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 117.
If that trade relationship materialized planters saw themselves transformed from economic agents with some measure of autonomy into a crushing dependence on the magazine and the Claiborne joint stock board of directions that set their policy. The fur trading initiative and the import “supplies” function threatened their standard of living, and given the strength of the Clique on the Council of State only heightened their fear of political suppression.
And so the stage was set, as early as 1632, for the Claiborne Clique to encounter a solid opposition from the Mainstream planter groups. In this sense, then, with New Men on both sides of the conflict, the Virginia planters embraced what leverage its members could, using institutions, the Assembly and the Council, each could dominate, to battle their conflicting ambitions and hopes. So in 1632-35 we see the fledgling, fragile, but flexible Greate Charter institutions acting as expressions of particular groupings of the planter class–and in so doing– take yet another step on their path to becoming a functioning legislature. That they did so with the most tenuous of relations with the greater population of Virginia, reflecting rather different wings of an oligarchy, they had not yet tackled the important and pivotal question-issue of representativeness. We shall see that a generation in the future.
The conquistadors attracted to Claiborne, like Claiborne, were well-connected and educated, with kinship linkages to the political actors and the resources needed to play politics in London. The great bulk of Virginia planters, as we shall see did not enjoy these advantages to the same degree–and did not enjoy the luxury to pack off to London. Any Virginian planter who wanted to export his tobacco himself had to enter those troubled waters to address their fear. So great was the perceived threat of Claiborne’s potential trade monopoly we see an alliance forming around Harvey’s tobacco and agricultural proposals introduced at March 1632 session of the Assembly.
Harvey, we should remember had earlier in 1631, sent to the Dorset Commission comments expressing his opposition to Claiborne’s Council of State-approved northern fur trade monopoly. His position on Claiborne receiving a Magazine-like monopoly in trade was similar and likely to have been expressed to many. Moreover, Harvey was consistent in his position. In mid-1633 he again reiterated his opposition, sarcastically attacking Tucker’s proposed provisioning “magazine” (personalizing the attack by identifying Tucker by name)) that 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. His accusations came close to cries of extortion and certainly exploitation, never mind excessive greed. By that point politics in London had stalemated the Company’s revival; the King was personally trying, unsuccessfully, to negotiate a compromise.
Harvey was “on the record” and likely that made it easier for planters to work with him on a comprehensive set of initiatives to both protect tobacco and to encourage its limitation by expanded corn production and limited plantings. The latter had already been passed by the Assembly in 1628. While the planters no doubt wanted an open market (free trade) on tobacco pricing, their trading at the best price they could get, the King always wanted a set price, a fairly low one.
It was fear of the Claiborne initiative and its potential contract and takeover of the Company Magazine that made Mainstream planters anxious, and prompted their mobilization in early 1632. Back of their uneasy minds was the memory of tyranny, corruptions, miserable quality and scarcity of goods imported, and the horrendously low prices for tobacco purchased from Virginians and then exported at greater profit by the Virginia Company magazine. This was, I suggest, not an irrational fear from the likes of Tucker and Claiborne and probably the New Men behind them.
Harvey and the planters came to an agreement of six pence per pound, which contrasted with the preferred English (and Claiborne) price of one pence. The deal also included legislation requiring each planter plant at least two acres of corn per head, which product could be sold to the highest bidder. The penalty for noncompliance was forfeiture of the entire tobacco crop of that year. That Harvey had little capacity to reach into the hinterlands to enforce that is suggestive the planters were willing to some degree comply on their own terms [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, pp. 7-8.
In addition, both planters and Harvey unified around the most visible and threatening aspect of the Claiborne plan, its use of English ships as vehicles for it export. This was exactly what the King and Privy Council wanted, not to ignore the powerful customs-farming cluster that had an undue say on the Dorsett Commission. A Claiborne monopoly prevented any non-Clique Virginia planters from “seeking our best market” [by using Dutch ships] if they were to utilize the magazine of the new Claiborne Company. Dutch ships were plentiful enough in Virginia. The attraction was the Dutch, relying on their logistical mastery over the English at that time, could offer as much as eighteen pence. Against such competition English shipping was doomed to be the ship of last resort for Virginia exporters. Washburn reports that Virginia planters had already built several barges to ship their tobacco to the Dutch New York plantations on the Hudson River [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p. 8
With these initiatives under their belt, the March Assembly moved on to what I regard as perhaps the most radical of all actions: sending the Assembly position on the Claiborne plan combined with a revamped Virginia Company directly to the Dorsett Commission
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.
The economic reality of Virginia’s 1630’s plantation owner was that he was atomized, i.e. almost totally on his own. This may have suited the temperament of the plantation owner, the system and culture was extremely individualized and every owner was out for himself and his family, many of whom seem to have shared his values. Economically, however, such individualism imposed its own reality that investment capital was not just a prerequisite for growth, but a requirement, for example seeds for the future year. Under the Company, the Magazine whatever its evils, and there were many, filled the void. But by 1630 if one wants evidence of what a Hobbesian world was, a war of all against all, Virginia could have been the poster child. However, haughty, the Mainstream planter class was fiscally vulnerable.
The [Virginia] company had ceased to exist as a single enterprise [that enjoyed an exclusive monopoly over economic investment], and had begun to dissolve into separate commercial joint stocks and separate colonies: each year’s magazine, or corporate cargo for the company, was financed by a different set of subscribers from the last, and side by side with the common enterprise of the company, there were some thirty or forty ‘private plantations’, financed by groups of subscribers of whom some were members of the original company, while others were not. When the company itself was taken away [stripped of its charter], some of these sub-companies survived, and when they too dissolved, the colonists contrived to carry on the plantation [hundreds] by themselves [99] Richard Pares, Merchant and Planters (Economic History Review at the University Press (Cambridge), 1960), p.13.
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.
If this were not enough, amazingly on the very same day, March 6, 1632, the Council [of State] took the additional step of making it clear to the Dorset Commission that it supported restricting the trade in Virginia tobacco to the English market–on the very same day the Assembly petitioned for free trade. The battle between the Council and the Assembly commenced. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 130-1
Predictably, the Claiborne Clique dominated Council of State reacted several months after the March Assembly petition, using its direct access to the Dorset Commission, 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 corporation’s governance consisted of members of the Clique, including as principals Tucker, Thomson and ally, the large merchant planter partner, Thomas Stone.
Pulling off what could be described as coup over the Virginia economy, the Clique/Council further fleshed out their program so to achieve the desired powers in the reconstituted Virginia Company. They petitioned the Dorset Commission to approve a company in London (the Virginia Company) that would enjoy a monopoly of North American trade with, and to, England–from which would be excluded all non-English ships, merchants, and factors (anti Dutch). With powers such as these that joint stock corporation could 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.
At the time all the Clique were members of the Council of State, and Claiborne was the colony’s Secretary of State. However, they accomplished this economic coup,, the Council added to it by securing the required signature of an apparently unwilling Governor Harvey, making it a legal commission and legislation. In his letter to the Privy Council forwarding the act, however, Harvey urged them to reject the act, insinuating the Clique had compelled him, by virtue of their existing stranglehold of tobacco 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 In short, during the spring and summer of 1632 the Council, the governor and the Assembly played as hard-balled politics as had been seen in Virginia since its founding.
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 of State establishing the Tucker et all monopoly. In response in August, William Tucker doubled-down by petitioning 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 personally 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.
The reader might note that decisions on the matter in 1633 had shifted from Dorsett to the Privy Council. Perhaps not surprisingly in March 1634, the King replaced the Dorset Commission with a new Commission, headed by Archbishop Laud. The Virginia Company charter was never issued.
Accordingly from very early 1632 we see the Council of State and the Assembly (dominated by Burgesses, Harvey and dissident Council of State members) take opposing positions on powers of the revamped Virginia Company regarding the exercise of monopolistic pricing/regulation over tobacco exports, and domination and pricing of the “provisions” or import of goods for Virginian consumption and use. The Company magazine was the focal point of interest to the Clique, and the great fear of both the planters and Harvey. The victor in all this was the tobacco monoculture.
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 and the near universal unwillingness of Virginians to permit Maryland to be carve out of their territories.
Equally important, the Clique was highly motivated, and focused on the Maryland venture, to make the time and effort to attend its meetings and muscle its way on the voting. Whatever was going on behind the scenes, the Council 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. More to the point, the Clique was able to secure rights to send petitions and letters regarding the revamped Virginia Company to the Dorset Commission. This was indeed a coup.
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.
Still in early 1632, with the Assembly in session, it was the Assembly that scored the initial advantage to advocate its position and program to the Commission. In a formal position in early March, knowing full well what the Council was to do the same day (the Assembly had the Council in attendance and voting on their resolution) the majority members of the Assembly had developed a robust and specific program, accompanied by requests for decisions from the Commission, and accordingly demonstrated its autonomy and independence from the Council.
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 they 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.
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, that in 1632 was not a pie-in-the-sky concept-path doomed to failure. But whatever wound up happening, the Claiborne venture stirred up 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.
How Harvey and the Council of State Bent the Virginia Executive “Branch”
It would be a mistake to think the House of Burgesses was the key Virginia colony-level body during the 1630’s. It met irregularly to begin with, and the reality was that previous to 1689, the House was decidedly in a secondary position to the Governor’s Council/Council of State which was more active, aggressive, and powerful. For most of the seventeenth century, legislation was approved, but for the most part not made, by the General Assembly, which included both the governor and the Council. Virginia’s prime decision-maker was the governor-council nexus. In this period the council ought not to be considered as the upper body of the legislature that will evolve several decades in the future.
That said this module is all about Virginia political development, the formation of its colonial policy system, and the foundation of one of the two major contributors to the formation of the current American state/local, and yes, even national government. To make such an assertion, not especially controversial, entails some appreciation for how American commentators, including historians, have treated Virginia, and the First Migration period especially. In this module I offer an interpretation of Virginia that contrasts sharply with some elements of American conventional thought.
As explained in our module which detailed the historiographical inconsistency common to the First Migration period–and to establish what I believe is a more accurate description of the Virginia political and institutional development, it is worth a moment to clarify how far apart some commentary, even from noted historians, departs from this module’s argument. Hence a not atypical description of these institutions as is expressed by economic historian John Steele Gordon. Our intention is not to single him out–I respect and use his books in my histories with great pride. He is excellent in almost all his comments–but not in this assessment of early Virginia. In his much respected An Empire of Wealth, a classic in contemporary economic history Gordon sets the tone for his perspective on Virginia’s contribution to America’s heritage.
After first describing “the masculine atmosphere reminiscent of a mining camp or military bivouac” saturated the colony and its decisionmakers, Gordon launches into his assessment of its governmental institutions as including “the first representative assembly in the Western hemisphere: … [created by] the great parliamentarian Sir Edwin Sandys … elected treasurer of the Virginia Company … [who] sent out a new governor, Sir George Yeardley, with instructions for him to form a representative assembly, called the House of Burgesses, with the governor and his council sitting as an upper house of the new legislature. This miniature Westminster met for the first time on July 30, 1619. John Steele Gordon, An Empire of Wealth (Harper, 2004), p. 17
Bluntly that governance was massively different in character, decision-making and internal morality than found at precisely the same time period in Massachusetts. The comparison between the two, I suggest, inspired many historians to defer to, and better understand, the dynamics of the latter. It was easy to push Virginia to the side, awaiting more favorable trends in the 1640’s and 60’s.
The problem for historians, including myself, is that the oligarchy that populated the Council, did not generate any sort of approval for their character, their rather bold-faced use of public powers for personal benefit, their transparent abuse of their residents and constituencies, and their rather obvious style that bespoke of a mean-spirited manor lord simply does not foster any warmth. Their agenda, while capable of some level of comprehensive Virginia-wide governance and responsible policy-making, was way to often saturated with personal ambition, the quest for individual profit regardless of consequences, land-grubbing and headright snatching that was sustained largely because it was shared by its members–who expected, and often go, deference to their wants and needs.
In my view nothing of the sort awaited John Harvey when he arrived in Jamestown. What he found were, except for the Council, a half-formed provincial government whose enforcement and administrative capacity rested almost entirely on its local governments in the county-shire. With an Assembly pushed off into the margins of decision-making–more a reactor to the Council-governor than an maker of its own policy.
The Council too, lined so tightly to the governor, acted more like the commission form of government found today in some local jurisdictions. The commission style of decision-making is, I believe, not regarded highly by most commentators-although some voters perceive it as its own check on a too aggressive government. It is also an open invitation to uncoordinated, inconsistent and fractured decision-making that is prone to administrative fiefdoms. In Virginia of this period it was prone to the ambitions of its more powerful and well-placed members. In its way, it too is half-formed, with little capacity aside from its local dominance over the militia and the county offices of its membership. If anything the Council intensified Virginia’s tilt to the local level.
Log-rolling and trade-offs, poor attendance and a lack of commitment to the institution did not distinguish its policy-making. A powerful member, with a highly individualized plan of action, had no hesitation in using the Council to his advantage–while he lobbied in London for over two years (William Claiborne) arguably reveals the Council was not yet a true government body, but more a vehicle for the agenda of an oligarchical elite. There seems no equivalent of a Cato or even Cicero in this happy homestead.
We have already set the stage behind Governor Harvey’s confrontation with the Council of State. in my opinion, Harvey, whether it be personality or a heart-felt commitment to impose necessary changes, truly saw the governorship in different terms than past practices, and the established tradition specified in his instructional job description issued by the King. It was clear, likely from the first day they met together that the Governor and Council were on different paths and thinking.
It was likely a very bad start for Harvey, and left a bad, if confused taste in the mouth’s of Virginia planters–of which he was one. Roper asserts there had been no obvious friction between Harvey and the powerful plantation conquistadors before Harvey’s entry as governor [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, P. 109 , but friction seems to have been felt quickly after Harvey exercised his powers and imposed his–and the King’s agenda in the March 1630 session of the General Assembly.
I suspect the disparity between past practices was evident and generated reaction from the first meeting of Harvey and the Council–but there is no record of the event. Harvey’s temperament likely added a strong odor of personal contempt for them. Moreover, while lacking direct evidence from the Council of State records, I suspect his moderating of these meetings revealed a headstrong backing of an agenda of his making. On return to their plantations and settlements from Jamestown, Council of State members likely did little to keep their opposition secret.
Harvey, however, reflecting his alliance with Warwick and the Richs, did little to temper his lack of regard for the Sandys faction and its administration of the colony after 1619. In any event, Roper confirms that by March, 1631 in a letter to his benefactor Carleton that he was at odds with the Council, particularly Mathews and Peirsey:
Despite the king’s “gracious letter for the strengthening of my commission which I have often showed them’, they continued ‘this malignity against me [which Harvey interpreted as] “nothing but factions, seeking to carry all matters, rather for their own ends, then either seeking the general good, or doing right to particular men” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, P. 109
Andrews, does note, however, that, in his communications with the King, Harvey constantly and consistently called attention to the King’s not having rendered a final determination on the nature of Virginia governance, and pleading in return that he enjoy the King’s support in his actions until such would occur [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Volume I (pp. 203-4). Many Virginians, however, Harvey’s deference to the King as a challenge to the primacy of tobacco, and their right to grow it as they saw fit. For this to make sense we ought remember the King’s tobacco contracts, contested by the Assembly, would have imposed a more London-centered tobacco nexus. The status qu0, on the other hand, allowed considerable planter autonomy. Harvey got caught in the middle through little fault of his own.
Through the first year of his governance, 1630, continual intense fights with the Council made it clear that not only did the two disagree on policy and strategy, but Harvey did not agree with the previous role the Council had assumed in regards to the exercise of the governor’s powers. The pre-Harvey Council–and past governors as well–shared a view that the Governor’s power was limited by the right of the Council to advise (i.e. no contested unilateral action by the governor, unless ordered by the king), and also “consent” by the Council, by a majority vote, to the action itself. It was a jointly issued decision.
Harvey did not accept this, acknowledging only that the Council had a right to be consulted, and was intended to offer advice to the Governor, who was, in Harvey’s mind, free to reject or accept. As reported by Alexander:
members of his Council, who were bitterly hostile to him on account of his unscrupulous conduct in general, and his support for the Baltimore patent [Maryland] in particular, boldly adverred that he was only authrized [sic] to do what they advised and approved; and that his only independent power lay in his privilege of casting the decisive vote when there was a tie. Harvey on the other hand, loudly asserted that his Councillors were mere assistants whose opinions he could accept or as he saw fit; and that he possessed an incontrovertible right as the King’s representative to carry out his own wishes, purposes and plans, unaffected by any opinion which the Council might entertain, provided that they were not inconsistent with the injunctions of [his] Commission [as governor] and Instructions [99] Phillip Alexander Bruce, Institutional History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 2. p. 318.
Craven reports that the nature and composition of the Governor’s Council had “little changed [over the years] 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.
When confronted with the Harvey-1630 Council clash, the Council had evolved to an institution whose members were not elected, but formerly appointed, by the King from suggestions offered by the Council through the governor. Once appointed, a member was nearly impossible to be removed. Attendance was weak and sporadic previous to 1629, probably a combination of its members preoccupation with their own private affairs in their shredded community isolated plantation empire, and because they shared a consensus and a heritage of past company experience and contacts with the governor that reduced their fear of actions that threatened their autonomy, independence and plans..
After the Company’s fall, the institutions and their membership simply continued on, without the active involvement of the Crown or its administrators. 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 defined 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 . ..
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
Sympathy with the Bailyn point of view, while correct in its depreciation of the character of the First Migration elite, seems to believe nothing good could come from this period. I contend that precisely in 1632 we can see the first tentative steps to genuine Virginia political development. In that year the half-formed provincial government got a pulse, probably the first since 1624-5. That pulse gave some life to those ill-defined political structures so long neglected by Charles.
The fault for creating and continuing an ill-designed governor-Council structural relationship lay with the Virginia Company and Charles. Again, Charles’s failure to define the parameters of royal governance, put in place the roles and the rules that governed Virginia’s domestic political structures inherited from the Company period. No one in London picked up the slack and addressed that deficiency. No one was going to play nice in the playground without the sovereign’s active role. In its subtle way, his Privy Council monitored the procedures and decisions of the resident government such as to avoid explosions and maintain the peace between the two wings of the hybrid policy system.
The heart of the problem in 1632 was the governor-council decision-making nexus. The inability of the Governor’s Council to work cooperatively with a royal governor bespoke something more profound that an obnoxious governor clashing with a wild bunch, greedy land and fur grabbers. It was a visible expression of a fundamental failure of the Stuart hybrid colonial policy system that created both sets of tensions (land tenure and the capacity of its structures to govern effectively) that inevitably, if left unresolved, underlay the tumult that was the 1630’s.
A Spark From the Governor’s Council Triggers a Pulse in the Assembly
Harvey’s structural Virginian problem in carrying out his imagined job description was the so-called Governor’s Council–not the Assembly. In its battle with Harvey, the individual members of the Council not only confronted his initiatives, but hugely contested Harvey’s view on the role and powers of the governor and the role of the Council. In what turned out to be a near-decade long struggle with Harvey, the Council willingly distanced itself from the governor, and consciously or not drifted into new ground, as the consummate lawmaker for the province.
This enlarged sense of their own importance started their activist members down a road that was as out of tune with their sovereign’s wishes as was Harvey’s. In their desire for autonomous policy making roles, several in the Claiborne Clique, but also others like Francis West, bypassed the Virginia institutions and instead headed to London for satisfaction. Considering Charles wanted as little responsibility for the governance of the colony as realistic–wishing wholeheartedly to spin that off to almost anything resident in London–the Council was knocking at the wrong door. They would come to realize that in 1639.
In 1632 the King’s chosen, and appointed, macro governance institutions was the Dorsett Commission. Its formation and membership reflected a London constituency with interest in Virginia governance–and to them Charles had entrusted its short-term governance while it worked out in accordance with his wishes a long term solution. The obvious problem was the governed were not all that happy with the short term decisions of either the Commission as embodied in its Report, or the actions of his appointed, if erratic, temperamental and ambitious governor.
In early 1632, and for the next year and a half or so, the two hybrid systems did battle in London, a battle that caused paralysis in the Dorset, maximizing the King’s frustration, so that in early 1634 he had abandoned the Dorsett Commission and created a replacement, the Laud. In the interim, the folk in Virginia both banged their head on the London wall of paralysis, and, activated their opposition and interests through the feeble, half-formed political institutions left behind by the Virginia Company: the Greate Charter framework of domestic governance. Remarkably, as we shall see, the Claiborne protagonists mostly controlled the Council, and their opposition turned to the only other institutions available, the Assembly, and the governor they so disliked and distrusted. This is the story within the story of the Thrusting Out.
To make matters complex, through 1630 and early 1632, the Council itself fractured. Its decision-making closely reflected the consensus of those who attended its sessions, tightly bound to its quorum of those in attendance. While we do not have attendance records, nor even a schedule of Council meetings, it would seem that in this period Mathews and Tucker proved very effective.
With Harvey engaged in his initiatives (implementing the March 1630 Assembly initiatives, his fight with Potts, his Indian peace entreaties, and his economic diversification and tobacco regulation) Mathews and Tucker railroaded through the Council several critical initiatives that empowered the Claiborne business plan, and set it up for its positioning to be the revitalized Virginia Company Magazine.
In London the Claiborne advocates and the New Men enjoyed access with which the Claiborne opposition could not contest. There is no evidence I have found that Harvey willingly supported the Claiborne initiative, but he too seemed unable to throw a monkey wrench into the Dorset Report recommendations. Near year’s end something of a stalemate had developed. It continued into 1632–and persisted to the eve of the issuance of the Dorset Commission report.
So over a year, Harvey was already writing home with considerable “indignation” regarding the “waywardness and oppositions” of the Council and its members. Throughout the first year, “the antagonisms had become so intense that a formal peace treaty had to be drawn up between Harvey and the Council” [99] Bernard Bailyn, “Politics and the Social Structure in Virginia” in James Morton Smith (Ed), 17th Century America: Essays in Colonial History, p. 97. By the end of the year (1631), to break the stalemate, negotiations began and in 1632 an agreement was reached to allow Harvey to proceed with his agenda before the 1632 Assembly.
The clique, knowing Harvey’s position, wanted to pacify (and distract) Harvey. 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, 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. In return, Harvey consented to operate in accordance with the Council’s interpretation of the Governor-Council relationship.
Of course, Harvey’s almost immediate response to the “peace treaty” was to write the King and ask for formal empowerment by him over the Council–which was not forthcoming. The King did not react. No surprise, nothing permanent resulted from the peace treaty, but it did open a window, breaking the impasse just enough for Harvey to once again introduce his agenda to the March 1632 Assembly. It was also distraction enough that Harvey, by this time having to confront the awkward role he was called on to play in supporting the king’s grant to Catholic Calvert, and the carving out of Maryland from Virginia’s loins.
This peace treaty within the Governor’s Council had more to do with Claiborne’s Kent Island venture and the behind the scenes preference or a favorable Dorset Commission decision to return the Virginia Company to power. In other words, it was a backdoor tactic to enhance a favorable decision made in London, a decision that would have greatly benefited the Claiborne Clique and Brenner’s New Men. Policy-making regarding the Virginia Company and its Magazine was not made by Jamestown, but by London intrigues.
So from 1632 on the nexus of issues that fractured Virginia’s government encountered the problems of governance through a half-formed, deeply partisan, and badly designed Governor-Council decision-making framework. That encounter shared the background dynamic that neither the governor nor the Council agreed on the role and authority of either the governor or the Council–and London was keeping its distance.
Logically in the Council oppositional factions emerged–and that opposition spread into the Mainstream planter proto-class. George Menifee is credited with being a leader of the “moderates” as some historians have called them. I think them more anti-Claiborne than moderate, but, in that they shared a common position with the Governor regarding the Claiborne initiatives, planters held off attacking him, particularly when he took issue with those matters associated with Claiborne New Kent and the powers of a proposed revitalized Virginia Company. In this sense these independents on the Council were viewed as moderates in their support of Harvey, and their support continued through to 1634 when the Laud Commission superceded the Dorset. The rise of these moderates erupted in 1632 as we shall shortly see.
the 1632 General Assembly Battles the Governor’s Council
After the late 1631 peace treaty was signed, Harvey called the General Assembly into session (1632). At that session, Harvey negotiated a significant expansion of shire government sufficient to accommodate Tidewater expansion to that date (we shall develop that in a future module).
He also signed Virginia’s first highway bill, legislation that entrusted building and maintenance of highways to the local parish-government. Future highway bills (1657, 1663) reassigned that responsibility to the county courts; fr a generation however, this critical infrastructure, made especially critical by the shredded community, was left to the discretion and fiscal support of a religious institution (it does appear the parish was delegated power to call a labor levy). This may well be as convincing a proof of my “local tilt” as could be offered. The Assembly declined a role other than authorization. and the consequence that roads were not a comprehensive nor uniform priority in Virginia dates at least to 1632 [99] See Changju Lee, & John S. Miller “Lessons Learned from the Rise and Fall of Toll Roads in the United States and Virginia” (Virginia Center for Transportation, Innovation and Research, 2014)
Reflecting the king’s desire to diversify Virginia’s economy beyond tobacco, Harvey secured Assembly approval of his tobacco legislation that, in a time of collapsed prices and serious drought, attempted to limit production, and to regulate its local price and export terms. Harvey pursued several economic strategies in his early years, including an attempt to diversify Virginia agriculture away from tobacco to cash crops, an attempt to develop iron ore/potash mining, workforce reforms limiting tobacco production to 2,000 plants per worker in lines with the legislation enacted previous to his arrival.
The rapid growth of tobacco production put a high premium on land … As a result [domestic planters] demand[ed] that the size of the colony be increased, and to seek special land grants [headright] … Naturally enough, the merchant-council clique [Claiborne, Tucker, Thomason group] was especially active on this score. However, by the mid-1630’s they had run up against the implacable opposition of Governor … Harvey, who was pursuing a land policy diametrically opposed to their own … because he wanted to avoid costly military mobilizations and to minimize catastrophic military conflicts … [he] sought, above all, to maintain peace with the Indians. But unless the Indians were destroyed, the planters could not expand the colony at the desired pace. Harvey had also been stingy about granting land to the planters [in his five years he old signed off on nine headright and land sales contracts]. Finally as the King’s servant, Harvey had fully backed Charles I’s grant [of Maryland] to Cecilius Calvert … a direct affront to Virginian planter expansionist ambitions. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 140-1
Also in order to ensure better quality tobacco (as a solution to the decline in Virginia tobacco price), Harvey had tobacco low quality tobacco burned, rather than export it; burning, unpopular as it was, was possible only because the authorized regulation required its inspection previous to export. Diversification and tobacco regulation were primarily provincial level initiatives promoted by the governor as a solution to low tobacco prices, which in the end proved largely ineffectual with inconsistent enforcement and autonomous plantation owners able to bypass through export from their own piers.
Harvey in this period systematically reviewed Virginia legislation with a mind to update it, make it consistent and reflective of the royal position. In accordance with his royal instructions he secured funds for the Palisades Project and construction of a second fort, entrusted to Samuel Mathews for implementation. Mathews was unable to successfully build the structure, and Harvey associates blamed Mathews. Mathews, who at the onset of the project may have been more accepting of Harvey, probably crossed over his Rubicon and joined Harvey’s Claiborne Clique’s outright opposition to Harvey [99] http://americanhistorypodcast.net/category/series-7-virginia-under-charles-i/. In essence the reader is seeing mobilization of political support, ostensibly against Harvey, but in Mathew’s case pushing him from his broker role in the 1631 peace treaty, to the Clique.
The 1632 session was, in my opinion, Harvey’s finest moment, in an administration reeking with disruption and animosity. When Harvey left office, no matter how discredited, the office of the governor was, it was more defined, and anchored within the Greate Charter framework. That the King did not know how to use it more effectively was not Harvey’s fault.
Despite these successes, it would appear any consensus between Harvey and the Council had pretty much evaporated by early-mid 1633. While the looming Maryland issue festered in the background, the effects of the Dorsett Commission Report put Harvey on his back foot. The events in London promised Virginian transformative consequences, with the 1632 likely return of the Virginia Company, and the threat of Claiborne opportunism in using Dorsett as his launch pad for his New Kent venture. Harvey tried to voice his opinions on key topics, and jockey around for support for his agenda and initiatives, but again London was where all eyes were turned. What happened early in 1632, in my opinion, was dramatic, probably unexpected, but page-turning.
A Gift from Mother England: Brenner’s New Men Replace Virginia Company Merchant Adventurers in the Nick of Time
This “section or topic” is not a tangent but a legitimate, in my mind, element of the Thrusting Out complex. We introduced the New Men in our previous Maryland module, but in this one we connect them to their larger role in English politics and policy-making–a role which was impactful straight through the Cromwell Protectorate.
It is an element, however, which first is not central of the narrow ouster narrative but describes the activities of London-based political actors that are important to understanding the goings on in London. Their role in financing the Virginia monoculture will continue in the thirties, but their financing of the Claiborne Clique represents the greatest threat to this point in the dominance of the monoculture for Virginia’s future. What it will do in this module is fragment the planter class into the Claiborne Clique and its allies and the Mainstream planter class, and the conflict between the two will underscore the domestic politics of Virginia into 1635–and after. The planter elite is at war with itself, and the tobacco monoculture is what is at stake.
We have described thus far in our past modules, the rise of the tobacco economy and the culture and society its sustained. The installation of the tobacco economy as Virginia’s economic base when combined with Virginia’s climate and geography that created its shredded community fostered and sustained a way of life that is today identified with the South. This is a story about the plantation, as not only the basic unit of the South’s agricultural base. In 1625 or so that investment in Virginia’s economic base, the Virginia Company was severed–indeed the merchant adventurer of that Company left “the office”, potentially creating a vacuum that threatened the plantation and the tobacco economy. At one point early on in the late mid-twenties, it was on the verge of collapsing as tobacco prices plummeted, but was saved by Brenner’s New Men-an unintended consequence of England’ inheritance, a byproduct of her drive to capitalism and industrialization]
Despite the fact that the relationship between the two factions seems clear, we may well ask why the Virginians were anxious to achieve the restoration of the Company. [The planters in particular] would hardly profit after all, from the reestablishment of the trade monopoly. The answer … seems to lie in the peculiar value which the Virginians placed upon their estates and other property [indentured servants] to accumulate which they had undergone so many hardships.
The rules of Virginia in this period were men who held their high position by virtue of their ability to gouge wealth from the hostile environment. The ownership of property represented for them, many of whom came from relatively humble [or middling] backgrounds the attainment of a measure of security-and security was a desperately sought goal on the frontier. Even the most well-to-do among the [Claiborne Clique] were not wealthy. Most of them held estates of three to five hundred acres, much of the land uncultivated. Other Virginians held even smaller plots …
In such a situation the cool calculation of the London businessman seeking profits gave way to the feverish race for the accumulation of the trappings of stability, security and social attainment. The chief among these trappings was land. Its acquisition provided psychological rewards quite apart from any economic benefits [99] J. Mills Thornton III, the Thrusting Out of Harvey, (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76, No. 1,Jan 1968)p. 20, quote p.22
In this we can hear echoes of such a psychological bond evident two hundred thirty years later: Scarlet O’Hara, her father] and “Tara” their plantation. As Dad tells her, “land is the only thing in the world worth fighting for … because it is the only thing that lasts“. [999] It is very interesting to contrast that with the Native American conception of land ownership [999]. Those refugees unleashed by the Enclosure Movement, freed from their binding to land, they imagined their future in terms of its ownership.
These are the folk that emigrated to Virginia–but not Massachusetts. Virginians came to Virginia for the most part for the opportunity to start a new life through the ownership of land. In Virginia of this period, everything was in some way saturated with the aspirations associated with unrestricted land ownership. The constellation of values that became ingredients for Virginia’s distinctive political culture emanate from the prospect, the aspirations associated with land ownership. Over time these values crystalized into a solid and distinctive political culture, and from there into a way of life.
Intense, hyper individualism, enflamed by the fire of death by disease, and the fear of being overwhelmed by the dark of the forests and swamps inhabited by hostiles who say you as robbers of their land and way of life. One stayed in Virginia because one built them into their mental framework; many returned (even William Tucker, and maybe, in his way, Samuel Mathews). Virginians were women and men who became hardened and fixed to these aspirations. But all that did not mean they were destined for success. By 1630 or so Virginia was at a crossroads.
Her sovereign loved the thought of her, more precisely the need of a productive colony, but he had other priorities and interests. He wanted to rule but not govern her. That took time, commitment and consistency, non of which were mainstays of his character or policy-making.
Three thousand miles of ocean and storms further led him to delegation not direct governance. And the ever-looming prospect of a civil war, as much a religious war led him in 1634 to turn colonial administration, “the foreign plantations” over to Archbishop Laud. Laud was not Dorsett, who was not James I, nor Thomas Smythe or Edwin Sandys. His commitment to Virginia was even more distant than his sovereign’s. This is to say that Virginia’s future depended on whether the colony could “make a “go of it”, and by the late 1620’s and early 1630’s that was in question.
The why of continued survival of the colony was two-fold: (1) it had not “broken out” it was thriving, it had a pulse, but by even 1632, Massachusetts who got going in late 1620’s had more people than Virginia–despite the harsher winter, and rocky soils. English emigres went to Ireland and West Indies, and even Bermuda in preference to Virginia. When one dwells on its small population still about a couple of thousand in such a harsh environment the mists of even five hundred years cannot hide how fragile things were in 1632 Virginia;
(2) the second dynamic, the tobacco monoculture, barely scratched into the fields and minuscule and isolated plantations of the shredded river communities no longer was a gazelle. Its price in a steady decline meant that to break even more tobacco had to be planted. That meant more land, more startup costs, and an even more scattered portfolio of fields or surrender of the old fields in favor of new deeper in the hostile hinterland.
Whatever peace treaties there would be, the zero-sum drive for land meant sometime a Third Powhatan War would explode–and the threat of a 1622 rerun had to be on the minds of those who tilled these lonely hard isolated fields. As it usually does, money became the factor that would determine if this fragile colony could sustain itself.
In the early 1630’s that was at issue. To move into the Middle Peninsula, to carve out a fur monopoly in the forests of what is now Maryland and northern Virginia required settlers-workforce who had to be paid for, and food, tools and goods to keep them alive and working, seed for corn-tobacco, and access to those who would buy exported tobacco. By the early 1630’s the tobacco monoculture either found a source for funding to replace the Virginia Company, and a king who would not lend his own dime, or it would die out over the next decade–a failure to thrive. This financial crisis is downplayed by historians of the period, but it is central to our story about the Thrusting Out.
Harvey had glimpses of all this I suspect, so did the Kent Island Clique who had grand ideas about a new and even larger Virginia, but so did the mainstream planter who was still tied to the monoculture and tobacco. It was the money (stupid), that each needed to achieve their aspirations, and that came, in a timely fashion, mostly from Brenner’s New Men, who replaced the Smythe Merchant Adventurers, and, who by the late 1620’s and early 1630’s, were seemingly ready and willing to finance the Kent Island dream, as well as the those of the tobacco-bound mainstream planters.
But in providing such money, in the nick of time, they also kept alive an institution that was the vehicle of both: the plantation. It was the plantation that became the basic core unit of the tobacco economy, but as importantly it was the plantation that housed those who would evolve the political culture than was to define Virginia–and in the course of the next hundred years would produce a world view that hardened into a way of life that would define Virginia, and much of the South through the American Civil War.
But none of this could have evolved if someone, some group, had not entered into this conversion of land from corporate to private as provided the financing that got it its start and allowed it to settle in and develop. That group, as the reader suspects, is Brenner’s New Men, England’s young newcomer colonial investment cohort. The New Men were the only source of capital available in the 1630’s to plantation owners in Virginia–ironically, they did not make their capital available to our desperately poor Harvey. But the New Men did provide the investment needed to operate and grow the Virginia plantation. By the 1660’s their money had sustained the colony, tobacco, the plantation and its owners so well, that its sovereign, Charles, the Second would call the province, his “old Dominion”, thinking of it as a refuge for his father’s supporters.
Understanding the Larger Role Played by Brenner’s New Men in Virginia
So, after spending considerable time describing the “usual suspects (Harvey himself, Maryland, the Claiborne economic coup, resurrection of the Virginia Company) hovering about as the causes of Harvey’s thrusting out, Thornton reverses field and centers his reader on the underlying dynamic, the submerged ice of the iceberg, economic instability of land ownership in Virginia. Virginia’s economic base, its tobacco monoculture, was in transition, under serious pressure from without, and increasingly by the 1630’s forcing tobacco planters to consider alternative, or at least supplemental options that fragmented the pre-1630 unity of most of Virginia’s settlers and elites.
Before Harvey ever stepped foot in Virginia as governor, the Claiborne Clique had formed, developed a business plan, and set off to London for financing and political support. Meanwhile the mainstream planters left behind had turned to the Assembly to approve reforms of tobacco production and export, Governor West took on the plantation conquistador nexus with its permanent war against the Powhatan by signing a hugely controversial peace treaty, and finally tobacco itself reeling from sustained declining prices that signaled to even the most intense tobacco devotee that all was not well. Before Harvey arrived, Virginia elites were already fragmenting, and each were devising a different path to Virginia’s future.
If the trend line of Virginia migration had finally turned upward by 1630, the growth was miniscule–especially when compared to the explosive growth of the Puritans in Massachusetts. Virginia had nearly collapsed and came precious close to Sagadahoc in 1622, and by 1630 with Harvey beginning his new administration Virginia was still on the edge. By shifting our focus to land and the instability underlying the tobacco monoculture, Thornton was forcing us to deal with the 800lb gorilla, Virginia’s need to resolve its internal contradictions, develop more fully its economic base, and to complete its development of political structures.
It was a breakdown in the last, the ouster of Harvey, that finally led to the various forces to commit to an economic base and set up a domestic policy system with capacity sufficient to manage its own problems and find a path to economic growth.
For us who seek at this point to exploit and understand the rise of the Claiborne Clique. the reaction of the Mainstream planters to it, and the attempt by Harvey to set up and behave as a strong royal governor, we need to account for how each proposed to pay for its agenda. Harvey, of all had no deep pockets. Taxes were never an alternative in 1630’s Virginia. The other two factions had identified sources for capital: Brenner’s New Men for the most part.
But Thornton, I believe is correct. His central focus that land insecurity was the underlying dynamic that led to the Thrusting Out. Our only quarrel with him (and Andrews) is they limited that insecurity to the political–the refusal of Charles to accept and define the parameters of Virginia’s self-government, a failure that certainly raised the specter of their loss of land and entitlement to a workforce. What he didn’t say was that Brenner’s New Men had arrived at the nick of time to provide the financing needed to sustain the plantation through these years.
What he didn’t sense, however, is that Brenner’s financier and financing, a godsend, had some rather serious small print implications: dependence on debt, and a reliance, a dependency, on maintaining the plantation and its decentralized ownership in a position to establish itself as an oligarchy over local, and eventually provincial, Virginia governance.
There is a reason why historians saw Virginia at this time in near-anarchy or “shapeless”–it was. I suspect no one knew that better than the contemporaries of that day and age. It was evident to them that more domestic structural development was necessary.
That in no way implies their model was based around present-day visions of democracy. They were oligarchs, and the structures they desired revolved around their governance. What screwed up their vision was the emergence, and power in London, of the plantation conquistador Claiborne Clique whose business plan to personal profit implied a radical rebalancing of the tobacco monoculture, and as startling, a coup in the Council that meant at minimum pushing non-Clique planters to the margins of power.
For the non-Council planters, they were not likely to be able to protect themselves and their prospects were to be dependent on the Clique and its new Kent Island Magazine. They knew the Kent Islanders well enough to know they would give no quarter. What the average free holder or indentured servant conjectured, I can only hazard a guess, but to the extent their hearts and mind revolved about tobacco, their own ownership of a plantation, and their own shredded community homestead I fail to see what the Clique offered them. Although their numbers had noticeably increased by the early 1630’s Wertenbaker posits the 1626 census taken of landowners “no less than 25 were for fifty acres or less, 73 for 100, and most of the others for less than 300. The total number of proprietors listed is 224 and the total acreage, 34,472 giving an average for each plantation of 154 acres” [99] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, “the Planters of Colonial Virginia, p. 17. The fog of a five-hundred-year past should not distort the reader’s sensitivity to the small population that was Virginia by 1630, and despite its power in the Council, the relative wealth of the Clique was far from considerable. Oligarchs they may well have been, but wealthy and affluent was only relative to others in Virginia.
The muscle behind the Claiborne initiative were Brenner’s New Men. This young generation of English financiers who replaced Thomas Smythe’s merchant adventures came in like the proverbial Calvary to save the day by proving capital and investment to planters and fur traders alike. They were also very, very interested in opening up new colonies; the West Indies attracted them greatly. The was serious interest among the various groupings of the English investment community for colonial investment. The missing link to their capital was an investment manager that would not simply raise the funds, but secure effective deployment of their capital to those in the New World that could put it to sustained profitable use.
That was the bifurcated business plan of Brenner’s New Men. Unlike the now displaced Smythe Merchant Adventurers who in one way or other did not have the patience of the willingness to get their hands dirty by involving themselves in that slow yielding “settlement nexus” that promised return on investment measured in years, not ship voyages. Nor were they willing to do, as some (very few actually) Company investors had been to start settlements (hundreds) of their own, and directly manage the investment themselves, generally using their families and ship captains. Hamel and Tucker came from these folk–as did Maurice Thomson the king of Brenner’s 1630 New Men.
That was Claiborne’s strength that interested Cloberry, another of the New Men: he got his hands dirty leaving to Cloberry the capital-raising, and the behind-the-scenes management of the financial environment. Make no mistake, Cloberry spent his time in the colonies, so did Thomason (but not in Virginia after he left it in 1622). While Cloberry and Thomason captured much of Brenner’s interest, there were other New Men capable and willing to bear gifts to Virginia planters outside of the Claiborne Clique. They would provide economic sustenance that mainstream planters embraced to save their plantations and return them to growth and new lands. At this vital juncture America inherited from England yet another significant inheritance: investment from her evolving financial, goods-commodities-based and logistical clusters. American would be in the front seat of England’s bus to industrialization and capitalism.
It was the New Men who in this period supported Claiborne against Maryland and fed into their dreams about a new Virginia Company Magazine contract–the prospect of which that drove a wedge into the unity of the Virginia planter class. The Kent Island venture–and its stormy prospect of pivoting the Virginia economic base away from land and the monoculture– pivoted to trade, finance, logistics–and even better relations with the Native Americans. In that new world, land, owned or not, would become a commodity for a larger finance-trade/export-supply and logistics economy. Kent Island would not have abandoned tobacco, to the contrary, but it would have broken its stranglehold over the economic base–and its oligarchical dominance over the half=developed, closed and unequal policy system that purported to govern it.
There was more, however. The other New Men who offered capital to export and supply the needs of non-Claiborne Clique extended a lifeline to struggling, non-Clique plantation owners. Certainly, smaller in scale than the chief exporters who led Kent Initiative, the general planter community were still able to find financiers that provided financing for the ownership, development, production and expansion of smaller plantations scattered throughout the shredded community that was Virginia. Mainstream Virginia planters had London and ship owner contacts also. In essence, the New Men and the highly individualistic smaller plantation owners found the means to keep their monoculture intact and even grow. What they and the reader have yet to recognize, these New Men gave to all Virginians a path through the Civil War and Cromwell’s Protectorate. But we are getting way ahead of ourselves. So, let’s back up.
There is a “big picture” that provides a measure of clarity to the developing split between the typical tobacco planter of size and the budding colonial merchant adventurers who were replacing the established old school merchant adventurers associated with the Virginia Company. Stuart Bruchey’s valuable perspective calls attention to the key function of acquiring capital for Virginia’s domestic investment; in essence, lacking a currency, and without even the minimal support provided by the traditional London merchant community, where did post Virginia Company get its investment capital?
Bruchey posits that “the private plantations, a method of uniting English capital, the labor of indentured servant or slave, and the resident management of the planter, emerged from these failures” [of merchant adventurers and Virginia Company]. ‘Venture’ and ‘Capital’, previously united in the person of the English absentee investor [Company shareholder or Merchants settling up the Hundreds’ plantations], split off from each other: the venturer now came in person to America to manage his enterprise and drew upon English capital in the form of mercantile credit [99] Stuart Bruchey, the Roots of American Economic Growth: 1607-1861 (Harper Torchbooks,1968), p. 32.
In essence, Bruchey’s perspective is congruent with Brenner’s, but he asserts that these new investors saved the medieval plantation, and transformed it into the basic unit of production, finance, and government of the developing Virginia. Whether they thought about it or not, the New Men updated the manor-plantation so that it could function as the vehicle by which colonialist obtained their capital in the form of loans and credit. In this we can see how the plantation provided the muscle for the “tilt” in Virginia governance–and we can see how the plantation owner, the vortex of that fused dynamic, housed and supported an economic and political elite, that owed its existence such prosperity as it could hack from the wilderness. It did so finance its debt and credit from London, principally.
Understanding the centrality of the New Men to Virginia in the late twenties and early thirties was their comprehensive provision of credit-finance to the totality of the colony. Summarizing this comprehensiveness, we cite Wesley Frank Craven:
Both Professor Brenner and the late Richard Pares have demonstrated that the merchants trading with the colonies did not limit their activity merely to trade. Engaged in a trade that was basically one of supply and that repeatedly involved extensions of credit, they might find it a natural development of their interest to become promoters of settlement by providing a settler or prospective settler with a needed stake on some form of partnership agreement … The planter received a supply of servants, provisions, equipment, and perhaps land, well beyond what his own means could have provided; the merchant assured himself of the right to market an increased share of the colony’s crop, and gained a measure of protection against what Professor Pares has described as ‘the chief risk in all colonial enterprise’ by making his agent in the colony as a partner. [99] Frank Wesley Craven, White, Red and Black (W. W. Norton & Co, 1971), p. 24
That partnership is the nub underlying the financial relationship that started in this period and continued through to the Revolution. It is the key distinction that separates the New Men from the Merchant Adventurers. The key financial instrument, the bill of exchange, a key financial innovation early for seventeenth century Virginia, was used starting in the 1630’s. “Virginians could purchase bills of exchange. These bills entitled the holder to buy merchandise on credit. The prices of tobacco and the bills of exchange varied inversely. Since the bills amounted to claims upon future merchandise, the colonists could purchase with the present tobacco crop. By altering his [tobacco] portfolio, a colonist could effectively insure his [tobacco] asset. … The best way to maximize the value of the tobacco [thus altering the tobacco portfolio] was to grow the tallest and the highest quality tobacco as possible. This could be done only on virgin land … By the end of 1637, the colonists discovered that the best tobacco lands were along streams” [99] Gary Pecquet, “Crop Controls and Indian Raids in Colonial Virginia” (Foundation for Economic Education, February 1, 1990) https://fee.org/articles/crop-controls-and-indian-raids-in-colonial-virginia/
That debt, limiting as it was in the 1630’s, grew with each passing decade and depression in tobacco prices. By the end of the golden era of Virginia planters, around the 1740’s and 1750’s, it grew to be a serious burden, a chain binding tobacco planting and elite status to British (Scottish) factors that had become unsustainable. In breaking this chain, we will see Virginia planters, switching away from tobacco, commencing trans-Appalachian land development in development corporations, and those who did not (Jefferson for example) degenerating into a sort of permanent fiscal instability verging on bankruptcy. That fiscal instability stood at the bottom of the elite unrest that expressed itself in the drift to independence and revolution of the post 1760’s Virginia. In time, it would lead to the great shift away from tobacco by Virginians in the 1830’s and 1840’s.
Thus, decentralization of Virginia investment capital, issued to plantation owners by foreign creditors, led to creation of a Virginia elite that based its fortunes, fragile though they might be, on debt and tobacco grown on their individual plantations. Those plantations, the bastion of their economic power were harnessed early on–as we can see by the very early 1630’s, to the weak and very fragile political institutions left over the defunct Virginia Company, to the institutions of governance in post-Company Virginia. With the plantation owners came a durable style of politics and governance was launched in Virginia– a style, that I assert, continued through the Byrd political machine of the mid and even late twentieth century.
As the twig was bent in the decades following the transition from the Virginia Company, we see it developing into a more solid branch-trunk through the remainder of the colonial period. It was to the plantation that Berkeley will turn as he settles royalist refugees in the Northern Neck, the Fall Line and Piedmont–and that plantation was as tied to the credit of the British factors as it was to the Tidewater establishment that other royalist refugees took over through marriage or the dying out of the First-Generation planter elite.
That this autonomy becomes observable in the early 1630’s grew out of the flux and transition from the demise of the Virginia Company, and the emergence of a new merchant class that replaces the merchant adventurers of that Company, is only part of the long-term story. Thomason went on and had a large role in the writing and approval of the famous and infamous 1651 Navigation Law, and as we will see, Cloberry and others will play a large, and not always positive or consistent role in the Maryland-Virginia confrontation. But the financing of Virginia’s mainstream planters continued; conducted by hired “factors” that traveled the rivers and eventually the byways of Virginia, accessing and servicing each plantation they could recruit into their financial network. As we shall discover in long-future modules, these factors, mostly Scots by prerevolutionary decades, played an important role in the post 1740-50 evolution of the Virginia planter class. These New Men and their financing proved also to be a mixed blessing to the English-British.
McCusker & Menard observe how that autonomy would frustrate the ends of early English colonial trade policy, creating in Virginia something akin to a 17th century free trade zone:
It should not be at all surprising that colonial interests, intent on controlling their own economy to benefit themselves, sometimes did things that conflicted with metropolitan interests [English colonial trade regulations]. The earliest governmental measures taken by the colonies were in the pre-1650 era, when few, if any, imperial regulations were in force. The colonists most intensive period of activity in this regard, from the late 1630’s to the mid-1640’s, was conditioned by the breakdown of English government during the Civil War. This was accompanied in the colonies by a severe depression from which only they could and did deliver themselves–or so they thought. Thus, the colonists accustomed to managing on their own, largely ignored the Act of 1651 (First Navigation Act], and they paid scant attention to it when it reappeared in 1660 [Second Navigation Act]. By then Massachusetts, Virginia, Barbados and the other colonies could point to mercantilist theory and to several decades of practice, which they believed entitled them to considerable autonomy in their economic affairs [99] John J. McCusker & Russell R. Menard, the Economy of British America. 1707-1789 (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press), 1985-1991), p. 48
Wrap Up
It was these hundreds of plantations that were the mainstay of the economic base, and the potential members of the emerging Virginia planter class. By the nature of the tobacco beast that devoured soil rapidly, and compelled frequent movement into new fields, if not plantations, the volatility of plantation ownership was huge–and it necessarily, if not inevitably, led to a concentration of larger owners over time–with the unfortunate falling into the non-owner class. The nature and character of the plantation, that it in essence substituted for the town and settlement, must be understood. While it grew and evolved through the seventeenth century, becoming more robust, defined, and differentiated in the eighteenth, from the start the plantation possessed characteristics that it carried into the American Revolution and beyond:
The plantation differentiated Virginia agriculture from that of other communities in old England or the Northern and Middle colonies. The plantation made the Chesapeake society unique. Unlike the traditional American farm [homestead], a tobacco estate was virtually a little society in itself. Out of thousands of acres, owned by well-to-do planters, only small areas were actually cleared and under cultivation at one time; most of their lands were still forest. Moreover each large holding was usually divided into several units in order to secure more efficient production: one would contain the ‘mansion house’ where dwelt the owner and his family, others, similarly composed were operated by overseers or leased by white tenant farmers. Each unit, or ‘quarter’ had its gang [workforce]… Rounding out the population of the plantation were a few white indentured servants, who customarily performed the tasks requiring highly skilled artisans [blacksmith] [99] Carl Bridenbaugh, Seat of Empire: the Political Role of Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg (Henry Holt& Co, 1958), p. 4
Part II: The Thrusting Out
Governor John Harvey Affair: “the thrusting out” or The Shootout at the Not-So-OK Corral:
A 1635 Virginia Western starring John Harvey, as the Bad Guy
with Samuel Mathews playing Wyatt Earp
and
John Potts, John Utie, and George Menefee as the Earp brothers
Having spent several dozen pages outlining background dynamics and tortured history of the Pre-Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey period, it’s time to discuss the event. Accordingly, I offer my distillation of the series of events and actions which began in 1635 and culminated in 1639.
A reader already familiar with the “Thrusting Out” narrative will note this history departs from the more accepted description. Usually, the event’s narrative begins in the late spring of 1635, and culminates in Harvey setting off in symbolic bondage for London, sent by his Council of State prosecutors. Some writers will allude to the rumblings that were going on in Virginia; some will include aspects of the London decision process that followed, usually stopping with the decision to send Harvey back. What happened after, to the extent it is considered, is its own affair presented in a rather unremarkable matter-of-fact segue way to the introduction of our soon-to-be hero of the Second Migration, Governor William Berkeley.
My basic problem in this module is that a lot is going on and it is hard for any reader to grab ahold of the deeply layered storyline that, in my opinion, was the birth of Virginia’s real colonial self-government . This is the capstone of the First Migration, and the true testament to its importance, indeed centrality to Virginia’s colonial political development. Up to this point Virginia has been on the edge of survival. Its politics and economic and political development have been reactive.
The lack of any plausible alternative to a tobacco economic base in a shredded community fostered a tobacco monoculture presided over by a privileged Virginia Company elite and large planter oligarchy, noted for its rough, low-class, and thuggish behavior, greed, and Indian land-grabbling, while reducing its workforce through indenture into a wilderness version of a feudal manor worked by serfs–all of which is correct, but still only a part of the complete story. Some of its better angels, however, become more apparent in this extended version of a thrusting out narrative. Whatever their motives, their coup finally forced Charles to “get off the pot” and agree to, and set, the parameters for Virginia’s self-government, whose cutting edge was its “Little Parliament” the House of Burgesses.
In the 1630’s Virginia finally “comes of age”, and like a teenager assert itself by a temper tantrum. England, on the other hand, sliding year by year into the devastation and change of its Civil War–the greatest single event in its early modern history, gets its act together and finally commits to work with the other half of the English colonial hybrid policy system. From this point on Virginia is a subordinate partner in the making of its policy, and it begins its journey down a road that leads to its contribution of land to a national capital for a new nation.
Once again I repeat, the expanded Thrusting Out episode presented in this module finally resolved the unwillingness of Charles to firmly set in place the legitimacy of Virginia’s domestic governance, and outlined the parameters and procedures of its political institutions. The agreement of 1639 remained in its essentials the framework that governed Virginia until the Revolution. Virginia finally acquired the legitimacy needed for effective self-governance in the hybrid policy system.
It, among several important structural entities, empowered a potential competitor and check on the gubernatorial-Council of State nexus, the offshoot of the General Assembly, the House of Burgesses. The heritage of the thrusting out was a weakened governor, and a powerful policy-making partner, the Council of State, a future upper house of the legislature (House of Lords) in a bicameral age, that constrained gubernatorial leadership at the provincial level, and protected the rise of the Virginia county as the cockpit of Virginia’s self-government. The mainstream planter class had in the county a place where they could “set up shop” and curate provincial legislation relevant and benefiting their power base: the county.
There is a lot resting on the outcome of the Thrusting Out. But it also creates a few questions that for the most part still are not resolved today. Our expanded history amasses a lot more complexity, i.e. moving parts and implications, that no doubt is less preferred to an abridged history which simplifies and smushes (collapses) the lived reality of the day. So it is worth (to me) a moment or two to comment on the pitfalls as well as virtues of the extended history.
the Beauty or the Beast in the Abridged Version of the Thrusting Out
First, and very important to American historians focusing on events in Virginia. There is a surprising amount of primary material on the Thrusting Out, which is not the case in early Virginia history taken in toto. Sadly, the primary literature is scattered, much of it burned in the Richmond library in the final days of the American Civil War, and serious limited. Insensitive to chronology, opinionated, and frequently is internally contradictory when one focuses on “details”, it begs more questions than it sometimes answers.
For example, I am still not sure who was on the ship with Harvey in 1635. Was in Francis or John Potts–or both? {Likely it was Francis] Who actually said what to Harvey in the second session of April 28 coup? What really went on in Merrie Olde England in 1637-8? Who did what to whom and why? It almost appears that Virginia’s self-government birth came into Virginia through its backdoor. But birth of self-government it was, and from 1639 on we can see Virginia start to develop and use its old company-installed governance bodies in ways that mirror provincial and local governments.
Throughout the whole episode, the real motivations behind the actors are implied by the historian, and are only loosely confirmed by the actor himself. So, I am constructing a narrative in this module which overlaps and sometimes contrasts with other more serious historians. I am sure of only one thing, this is not the abridged story.
Our task in this module will be to separate out the inputs and understand how they might have played a role in the first phase, if not the entire event. In doing so, I want to not lose sight of the core drivers of the event, and how each affected the course of events at critical junctures (such as the shift to London in decision-making). This episode deeply involved both sides of the Atlantic, and “bridging” that is not easy, but very necessary.
Because the colony’s institutions were still evolving during most of these years there was little in them to give the colonists a sense that change was taking place within a stable, recognizable framework. Until they became rooted in tradition and won the settler’s acceptance, these institutions contained no effective means of dissipating tensions generated by fundamental social change. Their extreme fragility always carried the potential for violence…. (N)ecessity had forced Virginians to conduct their affairs in accordance with the provisions in the 1618 charter, but there were no assurances that these provisions would be sanctioned in the future. As long as the crown remained indecisive, grave doubt surround such important concerns as the validity of the colonist’ land tittles and the legitimacy of the General Assembly or the newly established county courts [99] Warren M. Billings (Ed), the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, University of North Carolina Press, 1975), p. 237
Left alone under the mantle of domestic Virginia planter governors these badly unstructured institutions fabricated their path after the Company was sent packing. With the king unwilling to assume an active role in domestic affairs, these institutions cobbled their way through from 1624 to1630. They did so because they their membership were based on a highly individualistic, ambitious planter oligarchy, with a relatively firm commitment to the tobacco monoculture.
When that commitment broke down in late 1629-31 the resident planter oligarchy lost its cohesiveness, and simultaneously was disrupted by the administration of the first royal governor John Harvey. Mixing good and bad through 1634, the stresses of that year simply broke the dam and the tensions poured out in late April, early May 1635. This was the infamous “coup” that unseated the governor–and that inaugurated the four year restructuring of Virginia’s hybrid policy system.
Virginia Company politics came to boil in 1634 England, and yet another attempt by Charles to wring more money from the tobacco export reactivated old anxieties and fractured politics within the Virginia elite and mobilized the colony’s various factions–catching Harvey in their crosshairs. In 1634 the Dorset Commission formally died, and was replaced by the Laud Commission–which in English politics is a real shift in power and a serious catalyst in the rapidly brewing English Civil War.
On top of this usually unrecognized and unacknowledged, the death of Deputy Governor Francis West (downing) removed an aristocratic pillar of the colony, and likely leader of the moderate planters. Without him as buffer, the factions went their own way and made their own plans and conducted their own meetings. This was not a Leninist planned coup by any means.
And for those of us following the misadventures of our Governor John Harvey there is a whole series of episodes that alienated one or another major player–especially Mathews. Harvey’s opposite ego, John Potts and his family are given fresh motivation to conduct a prequel to Sam Adam’s Tea Party (Potts brother was fired from a key position in the Virginia militia in 1634 by Harvey). Finally, a not well appreciated event, Harvey’s firing of Claiborne from the Secretary of the Colony position (sort of a Vice President of Bureaucracy), was a revolution in Council of State-Gubernatorial relations. The appointment of a royal replacement, Kemp, to be sent from England was another. Either Harvey’s bubble had to be pricked, or one had better prepare for a new more serious battle with him.
The reason why, I believe, the Thrusting Out began in 1634, not April 27th 1635 is so much stuff happened in 1634 that each incident and event inputted its own fuel into the Thrusting Out saga. The perception of dysfunction amid widening circles, the alienation of Harvey from so many key groupings, an alienation that likely forced a sense of conspiracy and isolation into his mentality that it became in its way the powder keg that was lit on April 28 1635. Maryland, the flame that ignited the powder keg, injected a constant stream of inflammatory inputs into Virginia’s elite that raised the Virginia waters to a boil in and of itself.
Simply, with that deluge of disruption, the half-developed, fragmented, and polarized Virginia provincial policy system was overwhelmed with inputs, and given its vague to non-existing capacity to administer the colony, most of the inputs were filtered through its county-level elites scattered among the shredded community settlements of 1630’s Virginia. With the Assembly, the weakest of the institutions, on the governor-king’s beck and call, the Assembly could not call itself into session. The politics that reacted to the disruption could only unite in their shared belief that Governor Harvey had to go. All of this fed into the fire that erupted the night of April 27th, 1635.
As I retell the thrusting out narrative, my focus is the development of the Virginia policy system. In the early narrative I will single out details which will lend clarity and understanding of why the coup took place, what the coup entailed, and in particular, will try to estimate the impact of the several dynamics we discussed earlier. Most importantly we will demonstrate how the established structures and protocols broke down, and how the fragmented planter class was able to unify in the ouster of Harvey. I shall endeavor to take advantage of the information available to open the door and windows into the politics, personalities and process that had dominated, wracked the domestic policy system during the last four years.
Planter-owner cohesiveness was fragile due to the personality of the owner, the intense individualism of Virginia’s emerging political culture, and the isolation of the shredded community. The spin-off plantation conquistador Claiborne Clique discussed in earlier modules is testimony to this fragility, and the Claiborne Clique itself appears to have been somewhat loose, and flexible, with its members quite sensitive to their own ambitions and situations. Claiborne was stubborn, but Mathews and Tucker were certainly their own men. What is particularly important for us, beside the obvious Council-Governor relationship, is the interaction between our Claiborne Clique and non-Claiborne Clique Council members–and the process by which the Council was able to bring along the Assembly, full of non-Claiborne Clique delegates, to the ouster of Harvey.
We ought to be sensitive that in 1635 the business plan of the Clique was jeopardized by politics in London, and the attraction of Clique members such as Mathews pulled them into the politics of supporting a revival of the Virginia Company. The mainstream planter owner, given that the Crown had not yet endorsed their property ownership or the Assembly, was also pulled into supporting the Company as a known alternative to royal administration and a dysfunctional Harvey. Support for the Company comeback, however, did not include approval of any contract to the Claiborne Clique, and the Company Magazine in principle was a sore spot as well. With these nuances in mind, Claiborne Clique and the Mainstream Planter grouping exhibited some overlap in their approach to Virginia governance, and demonstrated leaders such as Mathews, Potts, Menifee, and the Wests were respected if not admired.
The relative immaturity of the Council, its quorum set by a hard core attendance rather than the totality of its membership, predisposed the Council to supporting the Clique. While the Council seemed relatively united in its assertion of autonomy from the governor, and general opposition, Harvey’s position on tobacco reform and his genuine openness to using Dutch ships to export, plus his seeming deference to planter domination of their local communities had taken some of the sting from his personality. Nowhere was this more evident than in Harvey-Assembly cooperation in past sessions.
Even in the early thirties the assembly did not blindly follow the agenda of the Council, and it demonstrated a rather clear sense of what they wanted to Harvey. What the Assembly lacked was a staff that sustained them between annual sessions, and a set leadership. The Assembly, and to a considerable degree the Council, lacked a long-term vision, apart from tobacco, their personal independence, and the autonomy of local government. Without legitimization by the Crown the Assembly was unwilling to take the next steps to assert itself. Half-formed the institutions had to confront the tensions associated with a hybrid colonial policy system, the settlement nexus in a shredded community, and the fragility of the tobacco monoculture at this stage in its development.
As I suggested above, the events of 1634 seem to have in aggregate destroyed whatever working consensus existed in the 1630-1634 period. The 1634 Assembly meeting seems to have been the high point, and from then on the gap between Harvey and Virginian planters of all persuasions increased. It is likely the sunset of the Dorsett Commission and the installation of the Laud Commission in the late spring, was have unleashed some tensions and uncertainty. The King’s foray into the revamped tobacco contract without doubt mobilized everybody into resistance. And then there were the events in Maryland! Essentially the seven dynamics discussed in the last module (London policy intrusions, Maryland, the unstable governor-Council relationship, the poorly defined role of the Assembly, the de facto primacy of local institutions over provincial, and the personality and governance style of Harvey, and the Claiborne Clique-Mainstream Planter fracture) combined and conflated in a two day coup and one month series of events that constituted Phase I of the Thrusting Out.
A retelling of the story in our expanded timeline deviates substantially from its phase I in 1635, and is far more complicated–as it should be. This is a fundamental turning point in Virginia’s history, and the old lessons learned from the ouster story–that the ouster was not merely a tale of an outrageous gubernatorial petulant personality who ran afoul of the greedy, ambitious, often thuggish cabal of large oligarchic planters that dominated the Council of State. Instead we start our tale a year or so before the April, 1635 coup as the unsettling events of 1634 mobilized Virginians, and isolated Harvey caught in the cross hairs of his own personality, style and agenda and the support he must give to the positions of his sovereign.
Assembling these multiple moving parts into a coherent explanation is much like putting order to a pinball game with seven balls simultaneously in play. But at least, we hope the reader will be able to appreciate how these fragile institutions, whatever may be the character and disposition of the actors, simply could not hold under the pressure of such tensions. In the end, Harvey and the Coup leaders sought resolution in the only place it could be found: London. In the meantime, as London saw it, Virginia was in the middle of another existential crisis. This crisis, however, in the atmosphere of 1636-9 England, was one that could no longer be postponed or ignored; pressed by events, Charles was more willing to do what it took to settle Virginia so that he could move on to other priorities.
the Coup Described
So, in Harvey’s defense, something was in fact going on. Historians explaining the ouster do not question that the April 27th meeting was just one of many that had been going on for some time. That the 27th meeting included the brother of former governor–council member John Potts, elevated the standing of the Virginia conspirators to include potentially the Council of State. John Potts, no longer on the Council, his standing in Virginia could not be ignored. and the simple series of Harvey-Potts misadventures-persecutions since 1630 likely sounded as yet another episode in the blood-feud between the two. But in any case there is no mistaking the reaction of Harvey to that April 27th nighttime secret meeting is what started the thing off.
As the reader makes her way through the narrative of Harvey’s “Thrusting Out” one important issue whether this was a semi-organized “mutiny” by self-serving elites, or the almost necessary expulsion of an explosive, unpredictable and increasingly arbitrary and mean-spirited governor, rather a governor who for his personality shortcomings was traveling down a path of reasonable royal governor-led provincial governance tossed out by an elite used to getting its own ways.
One could also wonder if this was caused by a governor who could not navigate the crosshairs in which his sovereign put him–Maryland, the tobacco contract, the divisive turbulence associated with his on-again, off-again revamp of the Virginia Company, and his parade of Commissions to which he delegated responsibility for managing the affairs of the colony–all ow which in aggregate pales in the shadow of his unwillingness to define the parameters of inevitable level of self-government and land-property ownership core to the permanent settlement of Virginia.
Frankly I do not think it necessary for the reader to choose. There was no one single factor, and in the narrative there are elements of all to be seen. What is most fascinating, I believe, is how in microcosm they all come together. Looked at aware of the depth of what is going on, the prelude we can see it all coming together; maybe not inevitable, but with each passing day becoming more likely–waiting for a match to set it off. It would not be surprising that the match was lit not by his opponents but by Harvey himself.
In any case Francis Potts, John’s brother, and several others met probably in the evening of April 27th to discuss and organize behind a petition intended to oppose Harvey. To personalize the matter, on the night of the secret meeting, Francis Potts, John’s younger brother, had been fired earlier in 1634 by Harvey from his post as commander of Pointe Comfort, a key fortification in the defense of the colony. Francis was about 30 at the time of the coup. Captain Potts in any case was not just anybody but the past commander of Virginia’s principal fort, intended for defense against possible Spanish invasion-raid. His admissions, recounted in the Report complied by Secretary of the Colony Richard Kemp, Francis Potts conformed that other members of the Council of State had attended such meetings and hinted they were prime for action.
Many historians have confirmed a series of such meetings, previous to April 27th, had occurred for months, and that several motivations were in play. Petitions and blogs were alleged to have been transmitted in various parts of the colony. Not only were Virginia Company agents gadding about town stoking up support, but by late 1634, and carrying into 1635 Wertenbaker claims Potts, and “the Councilors and other leading citizens were holding secret meetings to discuss the conduct of the Governor. Soon Dr. John Pott, whose private wrongs [inflicted on him by Harvey] made him a leader in popular discontent, was going from plantation to plantation, denouncing the governor’s conduct and inciting the people to resistance. Everywhere the angry planters gathered around him, and willingly subscribed to a petition for a redress of grievances” [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 61.
If so, I would offer a groundswell of resistance was in the making previous to April 27th, a groundswell so powerful that it unified many planters that Harvey had to go. This groundswell apparently had reached such levels of intensity that it likely had overcome any bad feelings among personalities, rival leaders, in particular those associated with Claiborne’s New Kent-Virginia Company Magazine business plan. Added to this bitter emotion was the no longer latent anti-Catholicism that underscored the Virginian anti-Maryland hostility that had been activated by the February 1634 settlement at Stain Mary’s.
In my mind, the increasing likelihood that the Virginia Company would not be revived, and the threat that Claiborne would be able to misuse its Magazine had receded just enough to make a deal with the Claiborne Clique possible on the matter of holding John Harvey accountable for his actions and style of governance. It is also likely that Harvey’s actions during 1634 had generated a lot of this opposition, and that increasingly in isolation of the body politic Harvey was using executive actions on controversial issues and with the arrival of a new Secretary of the Colony, Harvey was turning to a more aggressive style of governance that was not welcomed.
What made the 27th meeting different besides its composition was Harvey got word the night it happened, and had the “suspects” rounded up by the local sheriff, or by a sheriff Harvey unilaterally appointed. He ordered them to arrest the attendees, interviewed at least Potts, and pack them off in irons to jail. Thornton cites that night (the 27th) Harvey “took forceful action. Arousing his secretary [of the Colony who had replaced Claiborne after Harvey had recently fired him], Richard Kemp, he drew orders [that the attendees] be arrested and clapped into irons. In addition, acting on Pott’s statement that some of the [Council of State] were privy to the conspiracy, [Harvey] summoned the Council to meet the following afternoon (28th) [99]
When the nighttime suspects asked why they were being arrested, they had been told, in essence, not to worry- they would find out on the gallows. The governor had Potts’ brother questioned, locked up in chains, and all were threatened with a martial law trial that promised the gallows. Harvey’s convening of the Council for later the next day was to approve martial law trial for these imprisoned conspirators, a trial which given Harvey’s words and temperament promised a quick trial, judgement and summary execution.
it is likely the Council arrived at the Council meeting wary that Harvey was off once again on an independent executive action.. Harvey on the other hand, had been told by his Secretary Kemp, that Francis Potts told him Council members were involved in these meetings. Thornton believes he commenced the meeting with the belief several of those in attendance were actively conspiring to unseat him. On its face, it was likely the Council arrived in Jamestown the day after, already war and partially mobilized to restrain Harvey. It appears they were, not surprisingly, joined by Potts who was more than mobilized, and ready for action. [Potts, we remind the reader, was NOT a member of the Claiborne Clique, nor the Council]. It is likely that Potts brought with him a militia unit under his command.
Harvey presided over the Council meeting, held in his house living room, and his first reported agenda item was his demand that military law “should be executed on the prisoners”, to which several councilors “push backed” (literally), and demanded a legal trial of the defendants in accordance with English law. Considerable discussion ensued, today it would either be called “frank” or would be summarized with words using a lot of asterisks–depending on the newspaper. (Mathews stated the exchange involved “extreme coller and passion”, and after many passings and repassings, to and fro at length”. [99] Mathews Letter. After this heated discussion, from which it was clear the Council was not sympathetic to his military law wishes, Harvey either sat down on his own accord in a chair, or was placed in it–depending on who tells the story.
Harvey, after silence and some thought, than pivoted to his second issue, demanding each councilor writing out their personal response to a question he posed. Thornton believes this was motivated because Harvey was trying to sort out which of the Council members were co-conspirators. “(W)ith a frowning countenance[Harvey] bid all the council to sit” [99] Mathews letter. “After a long pause” Harvey then pulled a paper out of his pocket, read from it and demanded of each Council member in attendance they provide a written answer right away, without discussion, to his question as to what each thought motivated them to “persuade the people from their obedience to His Majesty’s substitute“-i.e. acknowledge by their written response that they were or were not conspirators seeking to unseat him or oppose his/the King’s initiatives. That such a confession invited a charge of treason and immediate imprisonment, certainly entered the mind of each Council member.
Unsurprisingly , the councilors did not reply to his demand for drafting a confession of treason, but Harvey persisted and he first asked George Menifee to read his answer. Menifee was not a member of the Claiborne Clique, although in the past he had voted for several of its Council initiatives, Menifee, Thornton asserts was the principal leader of the Mainstream Planters on the Council, a grouping Thornton calls the “moderates”. Likely Harvey knew he was not a Mathew’s dependable ally, and if anyone would oppose the conspirators on the Council, it was Menifee. So Harvey asked him first.
Menifee, however, declined, saying he was only a young lawyer (he was 39, but only recently had passed the bar). Harvey insisted he reply, and as they say “things went south from there”. If Thornton is accurate in his assessment of Menifee, Harvey likely knew he was in trouble, the moderates had probably decided not side with him against the conspirators. That also, was likely not lost n the conspirators either, because it was after this point that all hell broke loose.
Thornton then states “the councilors led by the wealthiest and most powerful of their number, Captain Samuel Mathews refused to comply with his request” [99] Thornton, p. 11. Mathews in his letter likened Harvey’s insistence to a past episode in the War of the Roses implying that Harvey’s request was of a tyrannical nature, and then added “the rest of the council began to speake and refused that course” [of action]. “Then followed many bitter languages from him till the sitting ended”. Somehow, the meeting adjourned and the first session was over.
The next meeting was set in Jamestown, at the governor’s house on the 28th–the same day as the first meeting. I do not know what happened during the interlude between the two sessions. I am not one who believes each councilor retired in isolation to think of a rational response to secure a consensus. If the Council had any unity in their initial reaction at the first session, they likely met in some form and fabricated a response, seeking likely as not seeking to control the agenda and inhibit Harvey from taking action.
Did they in a premeditated fashion devise a plan to unseat the governor is not known. One clue is offered by Harvey in his letter. He asserts that as the Council met in the governor’s house, a group of fifty militia men, led by John Potts hid in secret from their view. He also asserted that the militia closed off the adjacent roads. Such militia came into site when a shot rang out and they made their appearance.
The appropriate question, I think, is whether the militia were Plan A or B? The militia were led by Dr. Potts and seemingly answered to his command. But it is not clear as to whom Potts was allied, or was he acting under his own authority and impulse? He was not, for example, a known member of the Claiborne Clique; in my opinion it is unlikely he was working with Menifee, who seems to have followed a more negotiated solution. Potts, I believe, was his own man in the events of April 28th.
The problem with Harvey’s letter is that it describes the above version of events in a first paragraph and then moves to a second where he describes a somewhat different version in which there was no secrecy, and in which Mathews, Potts and several other Council men by name enter his premises and then the meeting room with the militia in tow. It was clear in both versions, Potts commanded the militia, that Mathews led the party into the meeting room.
Mathews has a different version in which the militia does not get mentioned, but instead the second session begins with Menifee voluntarily reading his answer to the question poised at the first section [obviously some preparation had happened in the interlude]. In Mathews’ words “The next meeting in most sterne manner [Harvey] demanded the reason that wee conceived of the countreye’s Petition against him, Mr Menefiee made answer to the chiefest cause was the detayning of letters to his Majestie and the Lords. Then he [Harvey] rising in a great rage sayd to Mr Menefee, ‘and do you say soe?‘ [i.e. Did Menefie himself agree with that]. He [Menefie] replied ‘Yes”;
(P)resently the governor in a fury went and striking him on the shoulder as hard as I can imagine [this from an Indian fighter plantation conquistador], he [Harvey] could said ‘I arrest you of suspicion of treason to his Majestie. Then Captain [John] Utie [a fellow conquistador and Council member], he being near said “and we the like to you sir’.
Whereupon [Mathews] seeing him [Harvey] in a rage, tooke him in my armes and said ‘Sir, there is no harm intended you, save only to acquaint you with the grievances of the Inhabitants, and to that end, I desire you to sitte down in your chayre. And so I related to him the aforesaid grievances of the colony, desiring him that their just complaint might receive some satisfaction, which he altogether denied, soe that sitting ended. A comprehensive outline of their complaints suddenly materialized, suggesting some agreement had been reached in the Council. But it does admit to the likelihood the pre-agreement included sending Harvey to England to answer their complaints against him.
That in the course of events, Harvey seated along with Kemp, was approached by John Utie who ‘gave me a greate and violent stroke upon the shoulder, and sayd with a loud voice ‘I arrest you for treason’; and thereupon Mathewes and the rest of said company came all about me, and layd hold on me, and there held me so I was not able to skirr from the place, and all of them sayd to me, you must prepare to go to England, for you must and shall goe to answer the complainte that are against you”. At that point the militia entered the room itself. Shortly after this action, the prisoners from the previous night meeting were released [99]
As to the Council Thornton states “This incident had the effect of polarizing the opposing groups with the Council [Claiborne Clique and Mainstream Planters]. George Menefie, the leader of the moderates had maintained that while he disagreed with Harvey’s policies, he thought the governor’s removal unjustified. Soon, however, he was convinced that Harvey’s actions posed a real threat to the continued existence of the colony, and he [Menefie] lent his support to the radical group, headed by Mathews and Utie. With Menefee’s backing the radicals were prepared to being the conflict to a head” [99] Thornton, p.12.
From this I glean that during the interlude between sessions, a robust debate within the Council brought about a consensus on the need to resolve the dysfunctions of Harvey’s governance–but likely no firm decision as to how this was to be accomplished. That position, I argue, can be supported by the near week long negotiations with Harvey that followed. Clearly Harvey was put in check; clearly Harvey was no longer in control of events (the Council called the Assembly into session, and it elected its candidate John West to replace Harvey as Acting Governor to be confirmed by the Assembly when in session. Harvey opposed both acts. Whether Harvey was formally “arrested” as implied by Utie cannot be ascertained.
If there was a coup, it was by the Council–which previously split between at least two major factions–had forged a consensus, perhaps a deal: mainstream planter support to oust Harvey in return for the election of Francis West, a moderate married to the settlement and tobacco monoculture (he was in process of settling the Palisades-related land in the Middle Peninsula), and a serious effort to secure from Harvey his admission to the catalogue of complaints that would underscore their action.
The hotheaded Claiborne Clique, however, in the course of the second session erupted, and conducted what was a coup by physically taking control of Harvey, through use of the militia which cordoned off Jamestown, and surrounded the governor’s house (which served as his office and the place were the sessions were held). Essentially under house arrest Mathews and Menifie, probably others as well, conducted negotiations with Harvey intended to elicit his compliance with their “recall” of his governorship, and his expulsion to England where he would be held accountable by the Privy Council, and of course ultimately the King. Harvey was not willing to sign on to a catalogue of his misrule, and to a definition of gubernatorial powers and rights as required by the Council. Neither it seems was he willing to reverse his acts and positions of issues. This dialogue went on over the next week which was awaiting the convening of the Assembly as requested by the Council of State.
In Harvey’s mind, of course, this was a coup, while Mathews saw it as a justifiable action to force Harvey to address in some form the various complaints the Council had assembled–to which Harvey refused. A classic “he said, she said” situation. That Harvey’s attack on Menifee ignited these plantation conquistadors, and spurred them to an unpremeditated action also is a possible scenario. In any event, Harvey was reduced to house arrest after this meeting, and for the more than a week negotiations with him on all of these matters continued. It appears the bottom line was that the Council had decided Harvey return to England to stand hearing and/or trial for his list of abuses and misadventures with gubernatorial and royal authority. That Harvey no longer governed the colony, and that the Council on its own volition had called the Assembly to convene, and by some accounts designated John Wyatt to serve as Acting Governor.
There is a third comprehensive version, a letter to Sir John Zouch, from his son, the royal appointed Secretary of the Colony, John Zouch Jr. who was present somewhere in all of this), [99] the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 8, No. 3 (Jan 1901), pp. 299-306, Young Zouch, no friend of Harvey, offers considerable detail as to the event and the activities that followed, which is most valuable in filling in other details than who said what. Zouch’s commentary provides considerable substance to the negotiations, the background noise of events, and minimizes the compulsion used against Harvey. Harvey in this version sticks to his own view of matters, refused to compromise, until it seems he is convinced (perhaps by Kemp) that he has lost control of events and his own safety was at question.
From the combination of all, my sense is whatever the version of the actual session one supports, it seems Harvey was placed in house arrest, and over the better part of a week discussions ensued. Those discussions were followed by a session of the Assembly (May 7-8), called by the Council, a session that was opposed by Harvey–who may have been in attendance.
In simply convening the session was proof the Assembly had entered into the overthrow of Harvey. The Council did not possess the authority to call the Assembly into session without the vote of the governor. The governor had formally vetoed the action. Nevertheless, the Council called the Assembly into session, scheduled it for a week later and the Assembly came, and well … Assembled. There waiting from them was a missive from Harvey declaring the session illegal and ordered them to return to their homes [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 63. The delegates remained and proceeded into session–make of this whatever the reader will, there is little doubt that from the onset the Assembly members knew what they were up to and went forward on their own volition.
Keeping in mind, the Council members were voting members of the Assembly, and in themselves constituted a sizeable bloc of voters. That the Council, certainly not the Claiborne Clique, could muster a majority. Also, in that the Company in London (Mathews) had attacked the 1634 formal creation of counties, referring negatively to the “several governments”, we might have a additional sliver of evidence that the formalization of county powers in the election of Burgesses did not automatically preference the Council, nor the plantation chieftains, who had appointed to the county courts and officers. One. I think, should see the Assembly as a player independent of the Council, and the governor, and not predisposed to the agenda of the Claiborne Clique.
It is possible the installation of the formal English county into Virginia had broken or at least weakened the link between Burgesses elections and the other institutions, creating for the first time a fledgling legislature, whose operations and voting decisions were their own as the aggregate of the individual districts. The subsequent actions of the Assembly do not seem to have dictated by the Council, and the Assembly wound up sending its own representatives to London, with their own list of charges and complaints. In any event, when the Assembly, on May 7th, met, it was the first session since the 1634 establishment of counties in which they county became the principal election district for Burgesses.
The Assembly responded to a petition compiled (presumably by the Council) to present the grievances against the governor for their support, and after such had been secured, a vote on the appointment, by the Council of John West as Acting Governor. The Governor thereafter was sent by ship to England, in the custody of Francis Potts (some say John) and at least two others. These individuals were entrusted to present the case of those who had participated in the event, and to present evidence regarding the charges against the Governor. To my best knowledge, with the exception of Assembly delegates from Accomack district, Harvey received no support from the Assembly.
Wertenbaker develops a case for his asserting the Assembly, as an institution and its individual members, had been repeatedly offended by several of Harvey’s actions. Although Wertenbaker did not provide a specific example, he asserts with some logic that one its first acts passed after the ouster was the governor was a “law’ declaring it illegal for the governor to issue a proclamation (our executive order) repealing an enactment of the Assembly, and stating it was the “duty of the people to disregard all proclamations that conflicted with any act of the Assembly [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 60.
Wertenbaker also listed Harvey’s various fees, fees that flowed to himself and to the province, came perilously close to being taxes. That was an accusation for which citizen commentary and missives provide support. That Harvey did so in many instances over his five years suggest that he may have usurped what the Assembly believed was their exclusive power, without even the pretense of advice of the Assembly. I would argue this does provide considerable support to my earlier position on the impact of Harvey’s ‘tyranny” in bringing about his ouster.
I would also offer the patriotic surge generated by Maryland’s ongoing attack of Claiborne as no doubt would by the time the Assembly met have been well appreciated in Jamestown. At this point, it is helpful to remind the reader that Burgesses election franchise includes all male freeholders of appropriate age, i.e. it was not subject to owners of property-land. To run for Burgess office, however, imposed an extra burden of holding a specified amount of property. Officials of local counties, however were appointed-not elected. Burgesses elections therefore were the most open to popular influence in this period.
There was, Wertenbaker asserts (supported by numerous other historians) that a 1634 incident in which Harvey unilaterally and capriciously commanded the transfer of an indentured servant under contract to another to himself. The Assembly had forbade this type of action in 1624, and without doubt in Virginia at this time the action generated the same reaction as horse and cattle stealing in the 1880’s proverbial American West.
Mathews may have been the planter whose servant was commandeered, but regardless he is citied as meeting Harvey and demanding its repudiation, to which Harvey declines (offering instead to buy him a drink at the tavern). Mathews declined throwing a temper tantrum by hitting nearby weeds and bushes with his walking stick. So there! Supposedly the incident went “virial” as it crossed the line of seizing private property without process or compensation, a violation of English law, and a direct attack on the basic institution that underscored the entire tobacco monoculture.
Its agenda seemed to follow a series of missives sent by the Council. Likely the tobacco contract affair and Harvey’s support of Calvert and Maryland to the detriment of Claiborne and Virginia were issues of great discussion and weighed heavily on their vote. They confirmed and voted to elect John West as Deputy Governor to administer matters of state in the period that Harvey was in England to defend his record as governor. Washburn and others believe the Council had endorsed West earlier and the Assembly concurred (Washburn, p. 13).
In sending Harvey home for accountability of his actions to the King, the Virginians were stating this was not a mutiny, but a legitimate exercise of their rights, and their responsibility to check a delegate of the king who had violated these rights in ways hostile to the sovereign himself. To this end, they compiled a list of their findings against Harvey and voted to send him to England so the King could decide for himself as to Harvey. Thornton, makes a last observation on this act, stating that after the list of complaints they” added a single sentence revealing their true motive for the mutiny: “Lastly, the planters of Virginia pray his Majesty will establish the affairs of this languishing colony, and confirm their estates, the incertainty whereof makes the chiefest inhabitants think of deserting the place” [99] Thornton, p. 26.
In this manner, Thornton reminds us of his core reason why the ouster was occurring: the uncertainty over the land and and property ownership inherited from the Company largesse and governance, and the legitimacy of its land transfers and headright incentives. In Thornton view, it was this fear of losing title to their lands and estates and workforce that unified the colonists, that motivated them to risk the return of a revamped Virginia Company, and that prompted them to ask the king to remove Harvey.
It is most interesting that in this last plea for action, the Assembly did not cry out for its own legitimization by the King, a cry which they had consistently sent to him since 1624, but for the resolution of the land-property title issue. They did so because the land title-property issue transcended all elements of the colonist, and unified them as no other.
Their last statement in which they threatened to “desert the place” demonstrated how the issue was the existential third rail of the colony’s continued survival. It is important now for the reader to understand that once in London, despite the initial decision of the King in 1636 to send Harvey back to Virginia and the arrest of the conspirators, the nub of the final agreement carved out through negotiations which lasted until January 1639, was the land-property legitimacy, and the legitimacy of the Assembly as a element in the provincial self-government policy system–both of which had become in its way, interlinked. The ouster of Harvey, from this perspective, was a means to an end.
I would also add a last point before sending Harvey off to England and commencing the next phase in the ouster scenario, that consciously or not, the colonists themselves had demonstrated the centrality of the Assembly as the focal unit of Virginia’s provincial self-government in the London hybrid policy system. The Council of State had unified behind the ouster, and had taken physical possession of the governor. It had likely prepared a set of charges, and probably selected one of their members, John West, as their replacement to Harvey. They could have put him on the boat themselves; they didn’t.
These rough, rowdy, thuggish, greedy ambitious Indian fighters, cattle rustlers and horse thieves visibly deferred to the centrality of the Assembly-Burgess in provincial matters. The missive calling the session on May 7th, sent by the clerk, titled it “An Assembly to be called to receive complaints against Sir John Harvey: on the petition of many inhabitants to meet 7th of May“[99] Nathanael Kreimeyer “the Virginia House of Burgesses struggle for power, 1619-1689, p. 53 citing Warren M. Billings “Little Parliament“, p. 21 and Henning,, the Statutes at Large, Vol. 1, p. 223. On the day of the coup, the clerk noted “On the 28th of April, 1635, Sir John Harvey thrust out of his government and Capt. John West acting governor till King’s pleasure known” [99] Nathanael Kreimeyer “the Virginia House of Burgesses struggle for power, 1619-1689( A Thesis …for Graduate Program at Liberty University, December 2013) p. 54, citing Henning, Vol. 1, p.223.
The Council thus called the Assembly together to legitimize their actions and agenda. In this they deferred to the Assembly as a whole as their legislature. If legitimized by the King, the Assembly could only then be thought of as a “little parliament”. It would, of course, take the Civil War and the Protectorate that followed to define more particularly what “Parliament” entailed, and by extension what the little parliament implied.
In essence, the two major events occurred simultaneously. It also suggests an explanation to the events on the second day where it was clear the Claiborne Clique members (Mathews, Utie for example) seized Harvey and secured their personal control over his person. In fact, if the reader looks closely at the dialogue and action, the planters, led by Menifee, had been previously attempting a dialogue with Harvey, an unwilling Harvey who erupted and hit Menifee, which seems to have prompted both Utie and Mathews, not to mention Potts carrying out his own version of the Boston Tea Party, into the physical confrontation and after which the tone and purpose of the session transformed into Harvey’s house arrest, and subsequent exile to London to defend himself before the King for his action.
One is tempted to insert some motivation by the actors in his rapid turnover of purpose, but none is clear. That it happened is not doubted. A midcourse review of the sessions and events-activities that follow suggest to me that whoever prompted the conflict and the act of expelling the governor, it functionally amounted to a coup by the Council, supported by the Assembly a week later. In notes of its meeting in December of that year, the King and Privy Council labeled the act as a “mutiny”.
The Ship to England
Before he left town, Harvey requested the Council to provide him with documents of his “royal commission and instructions {from the King}. The Council instead placed them in possession of its member, George Menefee, to hold in their name, with instructions to never surrender them. The Assembly on its own developed its own documents, its missive of explanation and request (described above), and entrusted them to its member, Thomas Harwood, who was tasked to deliver them to the King. Harwood was sent on the ship carrying Harvey, and one of the Potts, I believe Dr. John, was sent as well, but concede a case could be made that it was his brother.
The three set off for what must have been one of the more delightful travel experiences of that era. Cramped in a small ship, the first available to send over, many warm moments must have been shared. Upon reaching Plymouth, Harvey convinced the mayor to arrest the others, hold them in the Plymouth prison for a hearing of “the late mutiny and rebellion”, and Francis Pott was put under direct arrest as the “principal author and agent thereof”. Harvey commandeered all their documents–which to my best knowledge have not since been recovered. Harvey went on the London and explained on his own terms what happened.
Thrusting Out: The Coup Deciphered
Literally, the event (the coup) began on April 27, 1635 in a York County house, somewhere south of Jamestown. As events of this nature go, the commencement of the event trailed a past set of actions and activities that prompted the meeting itself, and Harvey’s reaction to the news of the meeting. That leads us to reconstruct key 1634 events that fed into the April 27th meeting, Harvey’s reaction, and precipitated the coup itself the next day. In this beginning we start with the primary written defenses of the two main actors in the coup, Harvey and Mathews. From these written defenses employed during their London Privy Council hearing we try to create a timeline, develop a scenario that led to the coup, and resulted in a delightful return voyage of England for its cast of characters.
In his letter of defense, Governor Harvey cited activities that occurred in December 1634 as the occasion of the April 27th incident. From “December last and many times since secret and unlawful meetings were had by the said Mathewes (sic) with the rest of the foresaid councillors [Council of State] and divers [other] inhabitants drawn to the said meetings and assemblies [99] Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, I, (1894), pp. 425-43, in Billings, the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 254-257.
Harvey believed there was at least one conspiracy afoot, although he implied there might be two (that of Mathews and the other of “divers” inhabitants (which we hold to be Potts). It is not clear Harvey had done anything about these conspiracies since December. Despite its Captain Queeg (Caine Mutiny) overtones, Harvey’s perception proved accurate enough, and it offers insight into the mentality of the governor and a point at which he had perceived the it (December, 1634).
As the reader will see, Harvey got his timing wrong–the meetings on the fate of the Virginia Company revival had started months earlier within the Claiborne Clique, but December 1634 captured the attention of the larger planter groupings and at that point John Potts seems to have taken the lead and began to organize the planters. The reality of late 1634 was that there were at least two, if not three, separate groupings active. With some overlapping membership in this rather small community of Virginia planters, it is remarkable that Harvey picked up the emerging uproar only in December.
the Virginia Company Enters the Picture–What was it that prompted a series of high-level secret meetings for the last four months at minimum? I suggest we concentrate on the backwash of the Virginia Company’s “last Hurrah” attempt to secure the king’s support in a new charter to the Virginia Company. The threat Harvey presented to the Claiborne Clique’s domination of the Council of State, and reality that the pro-Dorsett Commission had been replaced by the anti-Company Laud Commission was almost certainly fatal to Claiborne’s. New Kent business plan.
Also, the position of the Laud Commission in regards to the Calvert Maryland charter was an unqualified support of the King’s decision to grant the charter, and therefore placed it in opposition to Claiborne’s and the Company position on that matter. By the summer of 1634, then the Claiborne allies were mobilized in England and their plan, quickly devised by the opposition leader, John Wolstenholme, was to mobilize the Virginia planters to voice their support for the Company, their opposition to Maryland, so to check the power of the Laud Commission and by default to reinforce that of the Privy Council on which they enjoyed considerably more support.
Hence, it was no coincidence that the letter Mathews sent to England to explain his side of the coup was sent to Wolstenholme, a large customs farmer, as well as a major leader of the pro-Virginia Company advocates. Mathews’ relations with Wolstenholme had expanded considerably in the effort of the past several years to revitalize and empower a new Virginia Company. That advocacy had included the Claiborne Cliques key role in that revamped Company as the manager of its export-import “Magazine”. Wolstenholme was also a leader in that initiative as well. In Wolstenholme, Mathews was drawing upon allies of Brenner’s New Men who were Claiborne’s investors. Mathews, to complete the picture, was, along with William Tucker the hard core of the Claiborne Clique.
In this relationship-alliance Mathews and his cohorts were not without power. The lifeblood of Virginia was its tobacco exports, and what is little appreciated in this period of the middle thirties the Claiborne Clique controlled a hugely large chunk of it. Mathews, as the leader of the Clique in the Council of State could draw upon that near monopoly of exported tobacco to force his position through the Council and even the Governor. That is how and why the Council became the chief bastion and support of the Kent Island initiative. That is why other large planters were pushed to the margins of that body as they were unwilling or unable to check for fear of reprisal or consequences the agenda of the Clique.
That power was rooted in the dominance of the Clique over the annual export of Virginia’s tobacco. Brenner reports that in 1633 that one Claiborne ally nexus, the Thomson-Stone-Tucker syndicate, imported 256,700 pounds of tobacco of the 405,000 into England–that figure did not even include Claiborne, Utie, nor Mathews who exported considerable sums. In 1634 Thomason and Stone alone exported about 20% of Virginia’s tobacco export. [99] Brenner, p. 134. The customs farmer Wolstenholme, a business partner in these transactions, was listening to Mathews and would be a sound ally because he was the recipient of much of that exported tonnage. In real terms it is here we can see the threat of a revitalized Virginia Company, and a contract to manage its Company (export and import) Magazine.
That few Virginia planters, indeed the governor himself, wanted to directly confront the spokesperson for this near-monopoly of Virginia’s tobacco export, is quite understandable. Indeed, in the last module we discussed the 1633 legislation that Harvey signed after being compelled by Mathews, against his will. It is here, then, we can also see the potential opposition that Harvey could exercise in opposing the Company and the Claiborne (New Kent) Magazine.
It is clear that in 1634 Wolstenholme was leading an Virginia Company “last Hurrah effort” to secure approval of the revitalized Virginia Company charter from Charles. By the end of 1633, however, it had become clear to Charles that he could no longer delegate Virginia to the Virginia Company’s tender mercies, and was moving on to other options as to how to cope with the distraction of Virginia governance. The Dorset Commission in its last days signaled this pivot, and the replacement Laud Commission portended a new approach to Virginia governance.
If hope springs eternal, the Virginia Company commenced what they knew to be a last ditch effort to assemble an effective alliance that might temper Charles’ pivot. In their mind, that meant using domestic Virginia forces to indicate the colony itself preferred the Company to royal administration. Wolstenholme hoped he could leverage off Virginia opposition to stop the pivot.
Harvey was viewed in London as the chief opponent to the Virginia Company, and from their perspective, he had to be neutralized. To this end Company advocates were sent in 1634 across the Atlantic to raise support from Virginians. These agents, known to Harvey, no doubt created an uproar in his mind, and no doubt left behind in their wake much dissatisfaction with Harvey. They catalyzed , at least, part of the conspiracy that Harvey observed. Indeed, a powerful Wolstenholme supporter, John Zouch had recently obtained the appointment of his son, John Zouch Jr, as Secretary of the Colony–and the latter was resident in Virginia at the time of the coup. Thornton thinks it so and so they are a notable part of his explanation for the events of the “thrusting out”. [99] See J. Mills Thornton, the Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey, p. 16.
Also Wolstenholme, an important and well-placed figure in colonial policy-making, was close to the various members and investors of the Claiborne Clique. Claiborne in 1634 was in Virginia, at his estate or in defense of his Kent Island center against the Maryland claims and attacks. That left his investors to manage the London activities. Their focus was on Maryland principally; the settlement at Saint Mary’s, and the Maryland actions that followed, did not faithfully follow the more moderate path outline by Calvert, who himself remained in England.
In L. H. Roper’s words Claiborne “Having sufficient colonial prominence have cultivated powerful patrons to whom he readily exercised recourse, Claiborne [was submitting] a battery of petitions to metropolitan authorities seeking relief from Calvert “tyranny”. He also worked with the Earl of Dorset, and his commission to “thrust out” Sir John Harvey who had supported Baltimore’s colony in accordance with his orders from the King” [99] L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge University Press, 2017), pp. 53-4. Harvey’s position on assisting Maryland (and the accompanying anti-Catholicism which also permeated the Laud Commission), deeply unpopular among all Virginians, became a second stream of discordance in Virginia, a much larger one than the pro-Company faction.
Harvey had alienated non-Claiborne Planters (the Moderates) as well–Still other noted historians focus more on the dynamics unleashed by John Harvey himself. That accounts for the larger than life role Harvey plays in historical commentary. Whatever sympathy Harvey had built by his opposition to the Claiborne Clique among the mainstream planters, he alienated them through his personality, his increasing style of making decisions without local input through his executive action, and his habit to turning the Assembly into the legitimizer of his personal and London agenda.
The recent (1634) firing of Claiborne as Secretary of the Colony, and his replacement by the royal appointed Richard Kemp, strengthened Harvey’s position considerably, and the arrival of Kemp in the early months of 1635 suggested a more aggressive tone to Harvey’s future actions. Also, seldom noticed, the leader of the moderates, the former governor John West, died in 1634 (drowned)–West was Deputy Governor. The power balance in the inner circle of Jamestown decision-making seems to have significantly shifted in the first months of 1635.
If so, by early 1635, the substance of Virginia governance constructed since 1624 appeared under threat from Harvey. However feared or even hated among the moderate non Clique planters in the end they preferred to unite with the Clique and get rid of Harvey. No doubt Harvey’s role in the Tobacco Contract matter was critically important, but lurking around that was an intensified fear that Harvey’s future actions would be more consequential to them than the New Kenters.
Indeed, it should have been clear by that time the New Kent initiative was in trouble both in London and in Maryland. The potential that an aggressive Harvey could transform gubernatorial leadership and initiative into a series of executive orders issued at the expense of the weak Virginian Greate Charter structures conveyed the real possibility of a tyrannical administration. No doubt these anxieties generated their fair share of private conversations and meetings. The timing for Harvey to achieve the substance of his version of the Virginian governorship seemed to be on hand–and that, make no mistake, threatened the oligarchy of all planters.
“Harvey’s clashes with the Council were due, in part, the fact that the councilors were determined and not always reasonable men. The councilors furthermore were anxious that the Crown confirm ‘theire land and priviledges’ … which was the true motive for the mutiny“ [6].
This position does have value in tempering our reaction to Harvey’s behavior in the first meeting of the Council on the 28th. The Council was a rough crowd, and its members were congruent in spirit to those in a Tombstone AZ tavern up the street from the OK Coral. https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/county_formation_during_the_colonial_period#start_entry.
the Tobacco Contract–Samuel Mathews, in his post mutiny letter to Sir John Wolstenholme, asserts the April 27th-28 event was triggered by the failure of Governor Harvey to sent a missive, adopted by the General Assembly in regards to the Assembly’s position to the King’s proposal to amend the Virginia tobacco contract. Harvey sent copies instead–without the proper seals. Its fate and potential effectiveness when received in London was jeopardized, or perceived as so in Virginia. There is little doubt that this issue was paramount among the mainstream planters and was the key issue in the Assembly’s support for the coup and ouster of Harvey. The cavalier treatment Harvey accorded to the Assembly missive was likely the Assembly’s last straw, not only with Harvey but with its illegitimate position as the representative body entrusted with Virginia’s own governance.
Mathews was probably accurate in describing in his letter to Wolstenholme that “the Consideration of the wrong done by Governor to the whole Colony in detayning [delaying] the foresaid letters to his Majesty did exceedingly perplex [the Assembly] whereby they were made sensible of the condition of the present Government [i.e. when the matter became public] [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 61. Washburn further confirms that it was this issue that raised the hackles of the Council-planter moderates citing that at the second session on the 28th, Menifee “began to recount the grievances of the country, naming Harvey’s detention of the Assembly’s letter to the King as the principal one“. It was at this point that Harvey, either put his hand on Menefee’s shoulder–or hit hard–that caused the eruption. [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p. 13
Then, of course, is the issue with Harvey having not forwarded the proclamation approved by the Assembly in regards to the recent King’s proposal modifying the tobacco contract. Without any doubt the King’s initiative was viewed by Assembly members as a threat to the existing tobacco contract, the latest in several attempts by the king over the years. In some form he wanted to establish a royal monopoly over tobacco import (the king could set prices) in order to acquire revenues beyond Parliament’s control. The Assembly took a position, opposing the action and instructed the governor to send it to the King and Privy Council.
Several paragraphs were deemed by Harvey (correctly) as inviting the King’s wrath. So, Harvey, for perhaps good and bad reasons, did not send over to England the original Assembly missive, but a copy which removed the controversial elements and in so doing altered the tone of the Assembly’s opposition. As reported by Thornton: “Harvey fearing the King’s reaction, withheld the original, but sent a copy to Secretary Windebanke. Windebanke was known to be inimical to the interests of the pro-Company forces, and the colonists evidently took this as a hostile act on Harvey’s part”. [99] Thornton, p. 26 This was a bit of guilt by association, as Windebanke was Harvey’s “boss” to whom he reported, but he was also a “protégé” of Windebanke, who while very close to the King, and a member of his inner circle of advisors. Windebanke during 1635 was embroiled in a highly controversial, verging on scandalous, set of activities (which we will later explain).
Harvey’s substitution of a copy, which was kept secret, was very serious action which, anything but transparent, had come to light only in the ouster time period. The Assembly may have had little legitimacy, but it certainly had presumptions, and that the governor unilaterally felt free to alter its correspondence with the king, hit a nerve. This issue alone could easily have guaranteed the Assembly would ignore Harvey’s proclamation not to convene its session, and would predispose the Assembly towards a hostile position in regard to Harvey.
They had a legitimate bone to pick with him and wanted him held accountable to the King for it. It is not clear why they thought the King would be upset at Harvey’s actions, considering the goings on in which he and Parliament were engaged in over these years, but they clearly wanted limitations placed on the power of the governor vis a vis the Assembly. Certainly we can see in this yet one more attempt to elicit an approval from the King on the legitimacy of the Assembly as a representative of the free holder settlers.
It is also a clear and certain contrast between Harvey’s perceived gubernatorial job description and that held by his principal, if unpowered, check, the future legislature of the province. That this legislature had a right to ship a governor they did not like back to England, however, crossed a line they knew to be risky. In any case, we ought not understate the importance of, the risk it took on, and the sincerity and commitment of the Assembly as a major participant in the coup. That they were willing to put aside their differences with the Mathews led Council further bespeaks the intensity of the resistance to Harvey, and the fear that he had abused his powers, and promised to do so more aggressively in the future.
I would also add one more observation, central to the purposes of this history, that while the matter that generated the action by Harvey, the tobacco missive, was certainly their spirited defense of the much despised tobacco monoculture, the issue at this session was the rights and responsibilities of a body that was insistent it was the legislature of the province–even if the king had for a decade been unwilling to concede, at least on paper. Harvey had already raised the charge of treason in regards to both the conspirators at the secret meeting of April 27, but at the Council as well.
No doubt a significant body of opinion in London could easily view their action as such. The Assembly, I believe, in their participation in the coup had elevated the affair to be more than a defense of tobacco, but a matter of English right to be represented in a legislature, a little legislature to be sure, but that right had been violated by Harvey and it needed to be rectified by the King. This observation may be the strongest yet in my effort to demonstrate the settlers of the First Migration, and even the infamous oligarchic elite, had better angels that they were willing to risk death, and loss of their property rights.
The Harvey ouster was much more than the removal of an obnoxious governor, should thought of as such by historians who miss the opportunity of seeing in this a fundamental and brave effort to install a representative governance into the North American wilderness. An after thought in much of the literature, the role and action of the Assembly forces us to consider that the Assembly at least was making a sincere and concerted effort to bend the Virginia twig of governance in a direction to which the Stuarts had not yet approved. That thread of serious Virginian political development did travel well to England and was not forgotten in the final agreement with the King, Wyatt and the Privy Council by Samuel Mathews and John Potts.
It is here the “conspirators” had an issue which united nearly all Virginians, unified the Council of State, and no doubt underscored the Assembly’s willingness to back the Council in its ouster of Harvey. They wanted to hold Harvey accountable for his action, and to secure this review of the matter they wrote their own missive to the King outlining Harvey’s action(s), and sent two emissaries on the same ship as Harvey to make their case in the hearing they assumed would be held in England. Mathews adopted this issue for his defense as well, and it was cited as yet another of Harvey’s “tyrannies”, as a style of governance hostile to the king’s interests and the rights of Englishmen.
Tyranny–But after the trigger tobacco contract matter, Mathews launches into an expanded litany of complaints and actions that, for all practical purposes, includes much of of this module’s past commentary. No fear he does it more succinctly than I did. Matthews’s (he was thought to have been the coup leader) defense ultimately rested, not on the tobacco “trigger”, but the totality of John Harvey’s mal-administration. The latter was clearly, I believe, the main point in his letter. The governor had to go; he no longer had support of either elite nor populace, and in losing that respect, he had violated the rights of the English settlers by engaging in repeated and even systematic acts of tyranny. In this respect, whatever had motivated Mathews on the eventful days in April, he too raised the level of dialogue and confrontation as had the Assembly.
In his description of the events leading to the coup, Mathews consistently, if not persistently, inserts cries, metaphors and adjectives accusing Harvey as tyrannous. Tyranny, Mathews asserted, permeated the substance and style of Harvey’s administration. Indeed, Harvey’s reaction to the April 27th meeting (imprisonment, military law with no trial, and the death penalty) was just one more instance of his multi-year turn to tyrannical behavior.
The severity of the arbitrary action Harvey proposed on April 28 trigger the need of the Council to send him back to England. The ouster or mutiny, as it was construed in England, was nothing more or less than a defense of the rights of all Virginia Englishmen. Mathews even implies Harvey was proceeding down a path that called out in his mind to the dysfunctional War of Roses, an allusion that was certain to have that raised many conflicting memories of England’s past in the minds of whoever read his defense.
What is “Tyranny” thing? Was it mere rhetoric or does it indicate something deeper that we ought to understand to appreciate why Harvey’s opposition was transformed into a very uncertain, if not revolutionary action–a mutiny is what London would call it. That meant the death penalty.
It became apparent to me that for Mathews and probably the Council and Assembly’s most disliked behavior-action by Harvey was the latter’s repeated use of an “executive order”. This executive order, supposedly allowed when the Assembly was out of session (which was near 51 weeks of the year), with or without discussion or vote in the Council, had become almost commonplace in the last several years. That assertion of gubernatorial authority had carried over into the governor’s personal behavior, and included bashing in the head of a Council member with his cane after a Council meeting, knocking out several teeth, for which he was not punished.
Rather than a normal decision from the gubernatorial-Council nexus or action by the Assembly. Tyranny was not simply Harvey’s position on the issue itself, but the manner in which Harvey dealt with the issue. Harvey’s bypassed the other governance institutions, and exerted “gubernatorial leadership” both in the implementation of the king’s instructions, but in matters not cited by the king–Harvey’s personal agenda.
Bypass of the Council was less of problem when the governor was “one of them” and the gap between governor and council was narrow. By 1633-34 that was no longer the case. This recourse to executive order, which is evident after the 1632 Assembly, suggests Harvey’s administration as it matured marginalized the Council; it also suggests Harvey was ignoring the input of the Council on those matters central to Harvey’s personal agenda. That Harvey as governor would have his own agenda, on top of the King’s was not by any means accepted practice in 1630’s Virginia. Of course, when Council members wanted action they pressed Harvey for a formal session, but frequently as the years went by they only found out when it was printed by the newspapers–except, of course there were no newspapers at this time.
Sadly, I confess, this propensity to outrageous, haughty behavior, was characteristic of the style of Virginia governance, and the oligarchy, from Yeardley on, Mathews included, and certainly Potts, been charged with similar actions. My suspicion is that if we had the records of governance at the local level, and in the proto-counties, we would see almost daily actions of this nature. The veneer of civilization had not yet taken root in Virginia–but if it were to take root, it had to start with the governor.
To the extent shenanigan’s such as this occurred–and they did–this is the behavior that likely is generated the cries of tyranny from his opposition on the Council. In that the King and the Privy Council had both confirmed their view of the provincial decision-making process was that both elements combined in the making of a decision was the approved process. That the process was being consistently violated, or so it would appear merited some attention in London. Cries of tyranny saturated the future opposition’s position justifying the the coup–and as I will elaborate shortly, I believe it was effective in their defense.
I will further assert this defines as gubernatorial tyranny in the Virginian mind as independent action by the governor, call it leadership or otherwise. That perception of gubernatorial behavior is an important, indeed core legacy of the coup. Harvey left such a durable impact on Virginians that through to the American Revolution Virginians would be complaining to London that the governor had yet again overstepped his role and powers. Harvey would not be the last governor thrust out in Virginia, and far from the last governor that was threatened with such action.
[999] Harvey was no Winthrop by any means, but it is hard to fathom whether Winthrop’s style would have worked in Virginia, especially in the 1630’s. Reasons why it would not include a vastly different culture, character, and composition of the settler population, and another would be the less than firm style of governance possible in a Virginia shredded community governed by a class-based oligarchy that based its power, wealth and status on land and tobacco primarily. The oligarchy that arose from this generation that developed pre-1635 in no ways that I can construe compared meaningfully with Winthrop’s “Elect”. They shared a love for personal profit to be sure, but Winthrop’s “city on a hill’ put some fences around that. In Virginia the oligarchs were able to “fence in” the governor.
That both were moving in opposite directions at the same time, with the same king in charge, suggests how much autonomy his inconsistent and lax administration allowed. The hybrid policy system of the early Stuarts, despite the various royal initiatives that popped up from time to time, did allow from input from the colonies, and often as not, were not developed into final law. The tobacco contract in Virginia is an excellent example of that. As we shall see, the flurry of disruption that followed the “coup” revealed a policy process so inconsistent we can easily see how the several colonies could find the room in policy making to go it their own way. [999]
In a nutshell, frustration and opposition crystallized between the governor and the Council of State. Yet, as the reader will see, I will argue that the settlement of Maryland in 1634, and the establishment of the Laud Commission shuffled the Virginia deck of cards that was the Court policy-making process in London, so that by December 1634, London decision-making “pot” had been stirred so vigorously, that much disruption and dysfunction spilled over to Virginia, and its London-sensitive policy actors. It was this London-induced dynamic that, it seems to me, is what set in motion that stirrings that led to the the April-May coup. Hint: Harvey’s paranoia about the Virginia Company agents in Virginia may not have been all that wrong.
the Role of Maryland–But there is no doubt events in “Maryland-New Kent” surged a deluge of anti-Maryland-Catholic emotion across Virginia and that underscored and intensified the the coup, its conspirators and Assembly, not to ignore the settler population. Whatever Virginians thought about Claiborne and his business plan, they were horrified Maryland was carved out of Virginia’s territorial loins; they were further incensed that a Catholic papist stronghold was destined to become their neighbor–and that they were obliged, formally tasked, to assist it and ensure its survival.
Claiborne as we know from a past module, never accepted the legality nor the actual settlement of Maryland by Calvert. I cannot make claims that Harvey felt one way or another privately about the issue, but tasked by the king to assist the founding of the new, Feb 1634, Maryland settlement at St Mary’s–not all that far from Kent Island-he was a loyal subject of His Majesty. But despite Claiborne’s resistance, and that of the Virginia Company and its allies, the issue was not in doubt in London.
The king wishy washed both Calvert and Claiborne, urged them to work it out in the main never backed away from his promise to Calvert. The charter arrived just in time for its author, father Charles Calvert’s death, but his son assumed responsibility to found and manage the colony. The demise of the Dorsett Commission and the start up and relatively quick determination in favor of Calvert by the new Laud Commission effectively ended the legal decision on the matter. It didn’t stop Claiborne and he returned to Maryland only to be fired as Secretary of State (February, 1634), tossed from the Council of State and then confined to his estate-plantation. That mattered little to Claiborne who continued in his active resistance against the charter, and then against the settlement of Saint Mary’s.
The position, taken by Harvey, in regards to Virginia favoring the creation of a new colony of Maryland to its north, and the King’s insistence Virginia provide it such support as necessary for its survival, was zero-sum to that argued by Secretary of State Claiborne, and a position he shared with a great majority of that body. Seldom included in the dynamics that set off the coup was the arrival of Richard Kemp in early 1635, the royally appointed Secretary of the Colony–Claiborne’s replacement. The arrival of Kemp gave substance to Harvey’s governance over the colony–to the detriment of the Council which heretofore been mostly able until 1635 or so to envelop the governor in its policy-making.
Kemp, at minimum was royalist to the core, and his personality was every bit as strong and aggressive as Harvey’s. The two made a pair. The death of John West, the termination of Claiborne as Secretary, the departure of Potts and Claiborne from the Council seriously weaken the ability of the Clique to set its agenda. The arrival of Kemp provided implementation capacity to his willingness to issue executive orders, and a leader on the Council. The pattern of Council governance, set since 1630, was checked in early 1635. Actions by the governor to support the settlement in the course of the winter of 1634-5 infuriated Virginians and the planter elites.
Both the settlement of St Mary and the conflicts it engendered, mobilized domestic allies of Claiborne to take some action, if only to protect their privileged position in the Council. That these events gave the appearance of a “coup” in reverse, that Harvey was taking over the Council, could well have prompted anxiety from both mainstream planters and the Claiborne Clique. A series of meetings and public discussions ensued throughout the colony in the months that followed. By early spring 1635 it is likely the gamut of issues and frustrations conflated, and it would have been hard by April to separate out Maryland, Catholicism, pro-Kent Island Claiborne support, pro or anti Virginia Company feelings, and the fear of land title instability from the Laud Commission–and personal dislike of Harvey and his various actions.
Rumors from London,, and then the actual request by Charles to radically alter the existing tobacco contract piled on, and made things even more worse. Harvey’s correspondence to the Secretary of the Privy Council, Francis Windebank during this time weakened Harvey as it was well-known Harvey was a member of his faction. Harvey seemed to view Windebank as his “go to” overlord, not the Laud Commission or individual Privy Council members. This turned out to be a major mistake.
Windebank, close to Charles, knighted, and sympathetic to his Catholic tendencies, was Charles’s Secretary of State, an office which he was using at that point in conducting secret negotiations with the Catholic Spanish. The Laud Commission’s politicization of religion, arguably its chief agenda, drove a wedge in conservative Virginia Anglicans and mobilized latent Puritans. , as we shall see. The Privy Council itself was rife with pro-Company members, and virulently anti-Catholic and anti-Spain. Windebank opposed the resurrection of the Virginia Company, and logically supported Calvert Maryland. Known as such to outside observers, the long trail of correspondence between the two was correctly interpreted as Harvey’s support for a Maryland charter to Calvert, and the various acts of support Harvey made in this period of rapidly building tensions was throwing gas on fire.
That Harvey sent, not the original, but an abridged copy of the tobacco control missive composed and sent by the Assembly to Windebank, minus appropriate seals and confirmations, was also seen as confirmation of Harvey’s support of an anti-Virginia London agenda. Probably unknown to Harvey at the time, but throughout 1635, the secret negotiations with Spain leaked out, and Windebank, still close to Charles, was under serious public attack, and likely unable to control the various institutions such as the Privy Council which was stuffed with pro-Company members and quite close to the merchant community, much of which had ties to Wolstenholme and Zouch.
The Maryland issue came to a head in April 23,1635–four days before the 27th meeting. Claiborne’s ship, operating out of New Kent was attacked and taken by Marylanders. A second battle was fought a few days later–and Claiborne lost that one also. A few days later (May 10th) in a land battle, Claiborne bested the Marylanders and saved the Kent Island project for the time being. Virginians were killed in these battles. Harvey’s resolute support of Maryland, and the King’s position was no comfort to Claiborne and fueled emotions at the time of the coup. [99] Warren M. Billings (Ed), the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1975), pp. 238. Frederick Fausz is also correct when he points out that these events were closely associated and necessarily figured prominently in the course of the April-May coup and Harvey’s physical ouster on May 23rd. Wertenbaker goes further and claims:
In these encounters the Kent Islanders had the sympathy of the Virginia planters. Excitement ran high in the colony, and there was danger that an expedition might be sent to Saint Mary’s to overpower the intruders and banish them from the country. Resentment against Harvey, who still gave aid and encouragement to Maryland, became more bitter than ever. His espousal of the enemies of Virginia made the planters regard him as a traitor [99] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, 1607-1688 (1914, 1958, 1959) Filiquarian Publishing-Princeton University Press), p. 60.
Fausz asserts the underlying motive for the coup was likely Maryland. “Only five days after the Claiborne-Mathews Council faction forcibly expelled Governor Harvey from office, charging him with ‘Treason, for … betray(ing) theyr Forte into the hands of theyr enemies of Marylande‘” [99] J Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Eds) (Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p.71, but this, in my opinion, is a bit too strong. The coup was instigated as much by the proceedings in Jamestown between the Council and Harvey as it was fuel by the bevy of bad feelings and host of issues that led into the coup, The arrest and threat of martial law trial for the April 27 meeting attendees was a terrible platform from which Harvey started the April 28 Council meeting. That meeting “went south” from its opening gavel. The events that followed from the April attacks against New Kent, however, in so much as they followed the coup and were reported in the week that elapsed before the Assembly met, likely had more immediate effect on the negotiations with Harvey, and the hardening of the Assembly against him.
Harvey is Back in the Office
That the king was incensed at the mutineers, for such is what they were called, may have been a predictable conclusion. Charles, upon hearing Harvey’s report, characterized the Council members involved as mutineers, and cited their action was an assumption of royal power”, for which, in his mind, the only possible response was to send Harvey back to Virginia “if only for a day“–a curious response, because it avoided the term “traitor”, and in further comments implied that in Virginia he would have to work it out upon his return.
In the meantime charges against the mutineers would be debated and heard by the Privy Council. The Council met in December, 1635, heard Harwood’s charges and characterizations of the event, and his descriptions of Harvey’s rule, likely truncated versions of the original lost upon arrival in England. The case came before the Privy Council in December, 1635. In the charges that were made against Harvey, nothing was said of the illegal and arbitrary measures that had caused the people to depose it. All references were omitted to the detaining of the Assembly’s letter [regarding the tobacco contract], to the support given Maryland, to the abuse of the courts, to illegal taxes and proclamations” [99] Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 64
The prosecutors having stripped away key substantive issues and selected only charges and accusations that were more personal, and secondary. Harvey easily repudiated these faux charges. Harwood’s assertion that Harvey ” had so conveyed himself in Virginia, that if ever hee retourned back thither hee would be pistolled or Shott” warned the Privy that its pending decision likely would be badly received in Virginia, and that Harvey when he returned and was not likely to be well-treated. These comments may have set the stage for the conspirators when they were sent to England for their trial. [99] Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 64
Harvey was acquitted, restored to his office to be issue a new warrant as governor, and a second order that West, Utie, Mathews, Menefie, and Pierce, whom Harvey had designated as the ‘chief actors in the mutiny’ were commanded to come to England for trial, there to appear before the [infamous] Star Chamber for the charge of treason. [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, pp. 63-64. The warrant was entrusted to Harvey to exercise upon his return to Virginia and it empowered him to arrest and send to England these conspirators. In the meantime Francis Potts remained in prison, but from there launched a series of appeals (England and Virginia) for his release, and it seems sometime in 1636 he was released. He was able to join his brother who was also sent to England as one of the four conspirators in 1637.
From the notes of the Privy Council one can discern the King, while considerably upset at the mutiny–which was a direct challenge to his royal authority–did not issue any personal support of the governor, and stated that the governor should be returned to Virginia “if only for a day”, presumably to make firm his authority to choose the governor. At that point, the governor’s return to authority seemed more a second start in which it was hoped he could render himself accountable or to reconcile any transgressions or bad feelings.
Although Harvey admitted during the trial he had exerted authority over the Council, the decision by the Privy Council supported Harvey’s position, but not Harvey, and it sent him back to Virginia as governor again—with new instructions which did not clearly state whether Harvey or the Council was right or wrong; it did provide a few new appointments loyal to Harvey but absent the leaders Harvey was left to deal with the large body of dissatisfied councilors and residents. To my way of thinking, it was a decision to let the locals figure it out for themselves.
The Privy Council also ordered the arrest of Councilors Mathews, Utie, West, and William Pierce, and empowered him to seize their property. Harvey wasted no time in doing so, confiscating their property and possessions. “And wee the like to you Sirs” Harvey may have said as he sent them packing on the next boat, to be tried for their actions. It is not likely Harvey took the entirety of their Virginia holdings, but he did seize Mathew’s personal estate, evicting his wife and her children-more on that shortly.
Charles, during the course of 1635, faced various other matters of serious concern, likely this particular one competed for his time and attention. He certainly had been advised by various of his councilors, and petitioned by a good number of individuals of influence in Virginia, his Court and Privy Council. His reactions to the incident and Harvey’s accusations at Harvey’s Dec 11th Hearing are recorded by the Privy Council secretary [99] Virginia History Magazine, “Virginia 1635” (Vol VII) p. 404. His recorded comment, that “it is the assumption of legal power to send hither the governor, which is the nature of the fault. They King will not punish it too far as [illegible]”. He then sends for the quartet that conducted the “assumption”, referring their involvement to be left to the Star Chamber.
Accordingly, Harvey was sent back as governor with the additional recorded Privy Council comment: “the King as Yet resolved he thinks it necessary to send the governor back, though he stay but only a day, …[unless] he can clear himself, then he shall stay the longer than otherwise his Majesty would have continued them” [p. 404]. In a later action he consented to the removal of Thomas Hinton from the Council of State, on the account of his having spoken inappropriately to Harvey. The Harvey matter for all practical purposes, however, generated no further decisions or notes by the Privy Council through 1637. It seems to have fallen off the table until the early 1639 decisions were recorded.
If this were a serious mutiny deserving of treason, why the silence and inaction?
At this point it becomes unclear why Harvey did not leave England quickly. There is evidence he remained in England as late as October, 1636. The reason most cited for the delay was Harvey insisted upon a royal military ship to transport him; such a vessel would convey the full commitment of the king to his resumption of office. Absent military protection, Harvey justifiably was anxious concerning the reaction of the natives. A ship was arranged but only after some months had passed. Named the “Black George“, the ship took on water immediately upon its departure, and returned to port. Harvey had fronted most of the costs and he was left in the lurch. As to Harvey, “Harvey was able to collect some of his back pay … He was ordered [however] to pay out of his own pocket all the losses he had sustained by the affair, although he was authorized to collect an equivalent amount from the estates of the mutinous Councilors SHOULD (mine) they be convicted.
Another period of time elapsed before a merchant ship became available and on it Harvey sailed. That probably was late fall-early winter 1636. Harvey reached Virginia January 18 1637. He left on May 23rd, 1635, so he was absent for a good year and a half–during which time John West was governor.
London: the Deal is Made 1637-January 1639
Our so-called “Deal” is well known and acknowledged in Virginia history.
The deal unsimply put is that Charles acknowledged the legitimacy, i.e. his acceptance of its existence and function, of the Assembly, in particular its elective representative House of Burgesses. Functionally that meant Virginia possessed organs and institutions capable of self-government, subject to the King, Parliament and English law. A representative Burgesses would meet each year, and reflective of our contemporary political institutions, Virginia possessed a “little legislature’.
Relegated today as a side issue, the King in the same instructions, also granted legality to all company and subsequent land and property titles, thereby secured the existing land and workforce holdings of a free Virginian and an English investor. Of immediate impact, this last act rendered Virginia as a functioning permanent settlement in the New World. This legality of land and property ownership was fundamental to Virginia’s economic base which had been in watchful and apprehensive suspense since 1624. I may also add it removed a serious tension and anxiety that underlay the post-Company relationship with London and the sovereign.
This is by no means a functioning democracy–simply look at Virginia’s social and elective structure, most of its residents were not free white adult males who could vote, but indentured servants, adult women–and Indians who could not. Interestingly, there was no property requirement for voting, but there was for holding office (Burgesses). For fourteen years he had been unwilling to do so, and in 1639, without much fanfare, the deal was simply included in the instructions to a new (and all following) governor.
In my mind the policy process began on this issue with the ouster. The appearance of Harvey, Hayward, and Francis Potts at Plymouth in mid-1635 triggered the process in England. The first phase lasted surely through December 1635 with the decisions of the Privy Council-and King– on the matter. 1636 was consumed with Harvey trying to get back to Virginia, and the “conspirators’ being notified of their arrest and sent to England for trial-hearing before the Star Court. That consumed a good deal of 1637. The process, however, was transcended by the king’s determination to establish-finalize a firm tobacco contract with Virginia. That separate, but very related policy process seems to have begun earlier, with Harvey still in England back in 1636.
Here’s half the story behind the birth of Virginia’s policy system: the King’s 1637-38 Tobacco Contract
I hope it is little surprise the tobacco monoculture gets caught up with the birth of Virginia’s policy system. Don’t mistake me, the tobacco monoculture did not “cause” the birth, nor is it merely “associated” with it, but rather the closeness of the economy and the economic base to the formation, operation, and decline of a policy system (and vice versa) is as close to a universal law of political economy as one can get. Interestingly, the monoculture played a serious role in the final decision by Charles to sign off on the deal.
And, less known, the role of the Virginia Assembly as the “spokesperson” for the monoculture provides key support to our position that the Assembly, viewed as the collective spokesperson of Virginia’s local hierarchy, the counties chiefly, had fully embraced that role in 1638, and for that matter a decade previous. As we shall see the obstinance of the Assembly to the King’s proposal to restructure the tobacco contract in 1638 was arguably the last straw for Charles, and in frustration he made his peace with his colony and allowed it to develop its half of the hybrid colonial system, in the process legitimizing the foundations of Virginia’s colonial policy system.
Its partner was the Council of State, no shirker in its closeness to the monoculture, strongly mixed into its motivations its desire to limit the power of the governor, and to inject that the governor ought, if not to be “one of them”, participate in Virginia’s economic base to the extent he shared their interests and concerns. Lost in this, of course, is Harvey’s royal governor job description. From this point on, any royal governor who seriously followed that job description was in trouble as far as a smooth and productive administration. Extending its reach into the English policy-making system, Samuel Mathews in particular, and to be fair William Claiborne, were apparently key to negotiating the deal there-the latter at that point not on the Council.
the Tobacco Contract of 1638
If there were any consistencies in the early Stuart’s attention to Virginia, it had to have included tobacco. From the beginning, James I favored a diversified economic base in Virginia, and his son on that matter at least did not fall far from his father’s tree. What may have activated that issue yet again, was John Harvey’s recapitulation of what he had observed in Virginia. He wrote the report while in England awaiting the Black George, and sent it to the king [cited in Roper. p. 114, Sir John Harvey to Secretary of State Windebank, 26 June 1636, CO 1/9ff 40-1. Included in his comprehensive set of observations was Harvey’s complaint that tobacco as a currency resulted in very serious disruptions; he called for “the issuance of farthing tokens” as a replacement. In his description of those who ousted him he tied them and their actions to a mentality that had developed from their obsession with accumulation of wealth through tobacco. Through that mentality the plant spread through the colony, to the detriment of the latter.
Harvey laid the blame for the colony’s failings, partly on ‘irregular government’, chiefly arising from covetous and grasping disposition that strives to plant such vast and excessive quantities [of tobacco], so base and ill-conditioned [poor quality], that for some particular gains [profit] they hazard the common good of the whole plantation [colony], and bring such low esteem and value upon their tobacco. This behavior, and the attitude that underpinned it, brought minimal return for both the planters and the government” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, p. 114.
This concern with the effects of the monoculture on politics, economy, and the “culture” of its elites played into Charles’ feelings regarding tobacco as a sort of hydra-headed monster whose revenues he needed badly, yet whose implications and complications distorted his colony’s economy, which in its turn further reduced its capacity to supply revenues for his purposes. Charles disliked the weed probably as much as his father (he may have smoked it on occasion) and without doubt he wanted more from Virginia than tobacco exports.
In any event Harvey’s letter stoked his by now chronic effort to secure more revenue out of the tobacco export to England. The reader remembers that his attempt in 1634 to impose a plan and a price to tobacco, a plan which forbade the use of Dutch shipping, and required (diversification)s the planting of corn and staples to ensure the colony could feed itself and not be dependent on goods and staples imported from the Dutch.
It was the reaction to this proposal-tobacco contract restructuring that the Assembly had drafted its negative (and “saucy”) response to the king which Governor Harvey had substituted with his own version of the missive. Implied in this plan, which went by default into effect, were actions and policies over which he had limited to no capacity to enforce. This had always been the killer of the king’s effort to secure revenues, be it from stopping smuggling or regulating the “farming” of customs. In short, no matter what his plan for the tobacco contract, he was unable to get more out of it, and in its perverse way further encouraged the Virginians to act on their own, export as they will, and to make matters worse simply overproduce their product and fail to inspect or to ensure marketable quality, that the price had been in extreme decline for the entire decade.
So during early 1636 the king launched yet a new initiative, actually a rehash of the above, and applied it to not only Virginia, but to the West Indies, Caribbean and Bermuda (Virginia’s sister Virginia Company colony). He once again banned trade using Dutch shipping–the violation of which would “result in the intervention of the Privy Council” (a sort of “when Dad gets home he will spank the living daylights out of you”). A missive from Whitehall was issued in April 1637, in which the king had collapsed his tobacco reform into “Five Propositions”. On February 20, 1638 he ordered the House of Burgesses to be called into session (once again}–and sent the reminder in this order that he wanted more diversification beyond tobacco in Virginia.
L. H. Roper suggests that Charles’ 1638 “tobacco scheme” “followed a tactic Charles had employed in Ireland. This involved securing legislation from the Virginia House of Burgesses that would have “approved the reformation of the tobacco trade by collecting exports in set locations, limiting production, and maintaining quality control, agreeing in advance how much the colony would export, providing relief from creditors such as [Maurice] Thompson, and setting a monopolistic contract under which the colony’s tobacco would be bought [set the price] that would hamper Dutch smugglers.[99] L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge University Press,2017), p.59
Charles observed that Virginians had been particularly deficient, compared to other colonies on this matter, and that it had greatly influenced their need to illegally use Dutch shipping . It was time therefore for Virginia to start immediately on producing staples and developing a goods-producing economic base. Accordingly Whitehall reduced the King’s proposal into “Five Propositions”, and sent the missive to Virginia. First, and foremost it complained that the Dutch had “taken advantage of your necessities, and by the equal brunt of wines, victuals, and other commodities, make a prey of the tobacco and crop of the plantations, not only to our subject’s great loss in their livelihoods, but to the prejudice of such duties and profits that should rebound unto us upon the same“. Roper observes that no other colonial Assembly had been called into session to discuss the Five Propositions–and that this appears to have been the last time in English colonial history that the king used a colonial assembly to support and implement his orders and policies. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, pp. 114-15
Harvey, of course, carried all of these missives with him on his return, and per the king’s order the Assembly was called into session in the spring of 1638. The reaction of the Assembly, as summarized by Charles A. Andrews was yet another similar response to the king’s effort to establish a tobacco contract that had followed from the Assembly in some form since 1629. It was clear, as Andrews’ observes that the position of the Assembly was in fundamental ways directly opposed to the position order ordered by the king.
So dependent were the colonies on this staple for their maintenance that it became at this early period the one most important subject of controversy with with the mother country [I might also suggest Maryland]. The very idea of a [tobacco] contract was a ‘terror and a discouragement’ to those, who as the assembly wrote the king, had ‘laboured in the confused pathes of those labyrinths’. Probably in the year 1628 the easing of the tobacco situation was quite as important to the planters as was the reestablishment of the popular assembly, and the fixing of a satisfactory price, the prohibition of of the English and foreign tobacco, and the abolition of the contract as far as the [Virginians] were concerned were the conditions deemed most likely to bring relief to the colony. The planters were strongly opposed to the requirement that all tobacco be sent to England only, and frequently asked that the privilege of sending [exporting] to the best market, that is to Holland, be restored. But this request was always emphatically refused …” Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. I, the Settlements (Yale University Press, 1934, 1968), p. 211
Specifically, in 1638, the Assembly “never seemed to have acted upon any of the king’s propositions for regulation, other than to offer counter-proposals, centering on the maintenance of free trade which they insisted would provide the best basis for furthering the prosperity of their colony. They also doubted the other tobacco-producing colonies would cooperate in the formulation of a general policy” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, p. 115. This, of course, was to the consternation of Harvey who chastised them for “serving their own ends” and failing to comply with the king’s policy. Roper asserts that if the Assembly continued in its obstinance he saw no alternative than to dissolve the Assembly [I suspect in the manner with which Charles had suspended parliament–but, in my sense, that would incorrectly place the Assembly on a par with the latter]. Roper does admit the Assembly did pass legislation that once again attempt to regulate the quality of tobacco before exportation–which according to Harvey suffered the same fate as previous such regulations. As to staple diversification Roper reports Harvey as saying it went nowhere (‘sticks still”), and he believes Harvey himself took no action on that topic.
What are we to make of this? Simply, although he king clearly expressed his opposition to the lack of diversification within Virginia’s economic base, the Assembly as an institution, and its members as individuals simply ignored the proposition and continued along their former path. Likewise they publicly opposed the king’s opposition to use of Dutch ships, and in practice they continued that as well. As to effective self-regulation on the quality and amount of tobacco produced, the Assembly responded in the fashion of the past–and individual compliance with the intent of the legislation was seemingly minimal. In my mind, the only winner in this exchange was the Virginia tobacco monoculture, which in the spirit of the Mississippi River “just kept on rolling along”. It did so, of course, with the financing and expertise of England’s (Brenner’s) New Men who were seemingly as beyond the effective control of Charles as was the Virginia planter. As we shall soon see in future modules, the New Men had already begun to make their pivot to the parliamentary-Puritan side, and they would by the middle to late 1640’s have taken the side of Parliament and later Cromwell. The times were certainly changing.
What i believe followed is this dialogue, and the frustrating resistance it engendered, carried through to a great part of 1638. The drift of English (and Scots) politics was toward the Scottish invasion which was to shortly follow. While I have no evidence to cite, it is likely Virginia, always in the margins of discussion, fell off the agenda of Charles entirely. It is under this atmosphere that we can sense that Harvey never having been close to Charles, drifted more to the margins and Harvey, if anything had been somewhat discredited and certainly had proved unable to forge a governing consensus in Virginia. As the wrong man for the job of managing Virginia while Charles was consumed with other matters, a new governor was called for.
INTRODUCTION
[999] Thoughts on the Value of “a Birth of a Policy System” in a larger conceptual approach
As a former professional-educator who dealt with private and public policy-making for decades, I realized the process of making policy reflects the larger policy system in which the policy is “made”. That impact not only creates differences as well as similarities with other policy systems, but also weighs heavily on its effectiveness and evolution over time. Economic development, the policy area of interest in this history, is by our definition a “policy” that is made in a policy system, and in this history we have the rather unusual experience of the birth of an initial policy system overlapping on the making of an important economic development policy (the tobacco monoculture, for example).
In this module we focus on the “birth” of Virginia’s initial policy system in 1639, a policy system which had been nurtured in the wilderness womb of the Chesapeake rivers, and whose delivery was conducted by policy-making midwives, not all of whom had goals and ambitions separate from a successful birth of a policy system. Indeed, the midwives had been nurtured themselves in that womb, and had fixed intentions that the baby being birthed and reared would continue that nurturing experience after its birth thereby sustaining the midwives in the manner to which they had been accustomed. That this experience of the womb should not be replicated, however, and other goals and intentions should result was desired by the doctor who delivered the baby, the King of England in this instance. That his intentions proved of little consequence largely arose because upon birth the doctor handed the newborn to the tender mercies of the midwives.
Some might question that the birth of the Assembly-Burgesses was more properly its first session called in the midst of the Greate Charter reforms of Edwin Sandys. That reform package had many goals on its agenda, and the creation of a representative legislature in Virginia was not one of them. For Sandys, the structures of 1616 were private corporate structures that were forged from a public-private partnership through charter of the king with a joint stock corporation, owned and managed by shareholders-stock owners.
The Greate Charter structures certainly overlapped in function with some government powers, but primarily the Assembly was modeled after the joint stock corporation model of an annual meeting of shareholders. One had to be a shareholder to participate and the Assembly was intended to be the annual meeting for shareholders resident in Virginia–front-line shareholders in the settlement wilderness who needed to be given input into their governance if further investment was to happen. In this sense, the Greate Charter reform was the conception of future representative government, not its birth. Birth came only when these structures were legitimized by the sovereign and empowered by requiring their input and confirming the legality of their land and property ownership–the underling core of individual citizenship. That was January 1639.
In this very tortured metaphor we can see how the controversial economic base which had emerged and fostered during the period previous to the birth of Virginia’s first policy system was embedded into that policy system, despite the wishes of its sovereign. The plantation conquistadores sent of England, who prodded and negotiated London-based policy actors to not only oust Governor Harvey, but to grant to them the right and [land and property] titles to self-govern their colony-settlement centered firmly on their desire to incorporate the tobacco monoculture economic base as primary in their personal goals which were accordingly embedded into the political structures which they dominated.[999]
Here’s the Other Half of the Story behind the birth of the Virginia’s policy system: the Story of Charles 1637-38 Court Policy Process and how the Deal was made
I make no claims regarding my expertise in English history, this period or any other. For what it is worth my impressions gathered by my research conducted over several years is the Stuarts, as an aggregate dynasty, were more committed to the “idea” of colonization, but adverse to its “management” of the colonial-colonization experience in practice. On occasion they talked the talk, but seldom walked the walk. The words were there but they did not always match the actions and discussions regarding various policies, for example the “tobacco contract” can easily leave the reader with the wrong impression of what is actually going on.
The tobacco “reality in Virginia” was that each planter to some degree was able to raise tobacco and export it on his own terms. If that meant selling it to the Dutch, shipping it on a Dutch vessel, or smuggling it into the Caribbean and West Indies. If he secured his staples by trade or conquest with the Powhatan or other tribes that was his affair as far as Jamestown was concerned. If some plantation conquistadors wanted trade with the tribes for fur, that too was their enterprise. The use of tobacco as a currency meant that no matter one’s business, tobacco production had to be a part of it. Merchants traded in tobacco and customers paid their bills with it; artisans and professionals were likewise invested in tobacco as part of their business operations. Say it in other words, there were few viable alternatives to tobacco in Virginia–that was the reality of the monoculture.
As for improving the quality, and reducing the quantity of tobacco produced, that was never really effected by the inspections stations which were lodged outside of Jamestown in key shipping points The annual “tobacco fleet” captured only a portion of Virginia’s production, and whatever reforms were made, they did not materially impact the price of tobacco. There was little sympathy to these regulations and inspections and quality gave way to increased volume, whatever the quality. The import nexus in England, its customs farmers et al, were themselves a rather leaky group, able to manipulate their imports for profit and dodge the fees and taxes in varying degrees. In other words, the gap between royal colonial policy and actual behavior was quite large in this period–and Virginians were well aware there were bypasses to each of the king’s dictates.
There was never enough time committed to Virginia by the King and his main advisors. When an event or issue arose, it was used to further the king’s other agenda priorities, or to maintain a coalition of support in his vendetta against parliament and his campaign to rectify the Anglican church–Maryland grant to Calvert is another example (or the Northern Neck later in the 1640’s). Even Claiborne’s New Kent commission of trade was granted through the backdoor policy process, propped open by Brenner’s New Men and their aristocratic allies-investors.
As Roper correctly observes whatever one read on paper, the Stuart colonial administration lacked capacity to implement its programs and priorities. It was in this fashion that Virginia s, and their Assembly was able to respond to the King’s tobacco contract policies with counter programs of their own–which, even if rejected, often meant the locals could find their way to do what it was they wanted. This reality and the behavior behind it, I suggest, is not the start of American independence, but simply the inevitable byproduct of early English hybrid colonial policy system.
Colonialization, and Virginia specifically, was brought to the attention of the king, and he seldom initiated a comprehensive policy, save, of course, his infamous tobacco contract. which was hopelessly tied to his ever-constant search for revenues to pay his bills and conduct his other policy ventures. In this period, Charles I was most concerned about religious matters, as reflect in his Laud Commission, and the polarization of England’s religious community is a dominant motif in the politics of the period. We might think of this drift to civil war as a drift to war with parliament over religious matters as well as the standing of parliament in the English policy system. Colonies were not his hot button.
Court Policy System at Work
The “Deal” was made within the 1636-9 royal court policy system. By 1638 it was under considerable strain, and by that time parliament had been suspended, and thus the system that remained in place, a rump policy system, rested on the king’s agencies and offices, and whatever funds or resources he could amass to pay off his bureaucrats and retain his supporters.
L. H. Roper rightfully calls our attention to his perception of Charles’ policy-making process that conducted colonial policy as a reflection of “the overlapping and semi-autonomous institutions of colonial administration [that] stemmed from the character of [its] central administration. … the king remained reliant on a bewildering array of officers … some of which held their places directly from the central government, but others whom gained their places from powerful local patrons, and, so were beholden to the Crown for their positions. Additionally, of course the pursuit of the fruits of office provided a raison d’etre for faction. The lack of clear policy direction from Whitehall, as in the case of Caroline Virginia, gave additional room for autonomous operation to these networks, despite the best efforts of the king’s ministers [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, p. 112.
He, in my opinion, had little vision about the English empire or colonies–more a broad stroke image often stoked by the actions of other rival nations and monarchs. James I had firmer notions than his son, and one can see how Charles’s insensitivity to his background betrays his commitment to principles other than religious., Charles was as Scotch as his father, but he, defined his Church of England [Anglican] in terms more Catholic than Protestant. That he rankled Scotch Presbyterians (Covenanters) led him into a war with the Scots as early as 1638-9. The birth of the Virginia colonial policy system overlapped this movement and the birth may well have been facilitated by it. Indeed, Charles’s introduction of the “Prayer Book” of the Church of England into Scotch Presbyterian kirks, who intensely resisted and “famously entered into a ‘National Covenant’ on 19 February 1637/8 (as it happens, the day before the Virginia Assembly met [in 1638] to consider the royal proclamations on tobacco [to be considered shortly]) to resist this new religious policy” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, pp. 116-7.
This lack of clear vision by the sovereign and his chief advisors that inhibited a more reasonable juggling of many priorities weighed heavily during 1638. As the drift to religious war was foremost in his mind, Harvey and the Virginia question seemed quite secondary. Harvey himself, never personally close to the king, became an unnecessary burden to resolving the Virginia situation so he could move on to his primary concerns. The various institutions and personages pressing the king for action consumed his precious time. In that policy tempest whatever the formal powers of the sovereign were, Charles were reluctant to use them an start yet another confrontation three thousand miles away (“whether imperial or state formation” these powers) “all to often exceeded its [his] grasp. The distance from Whitehall … compounded the continuing inability of king and ministers to reconcile the conundrum of balancing monarchical authority and prestige with policy issues … and the ongoing manoeuvres of factions [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, p. 113.
In court politics “hot buttons” are important and everything else feeds into, or works around, the hot buttons. Court policy making is very personal and individual relationships are central. Access, in one way or another, to the king is primary, and the trigger for a policy decision. How this fits into the “rationality” of the process, I have no idea nor expectation. Seventeenth century English court rationality is not ours today, and the process today appears, in a word, “awful”. It certainly begged for consistency, if nothing else.
What is surprising to me is the Charles I that emerges is not especially mean-spirted or even rigidly dictatorial. He frequently presses a point hard, the tobacco contract again, and then reaches some speed bump, and he moves on to something else without action or resolution. Some historians believe after his December 1635 Privy Council action, he simply forgot about the matter, and delegated it to others for resolution. The “others” as we shall see had their own ideas on the matter, and that led in a direction one would not have thought likely. When they came to a decision, Charles I seems to have simply signed off on it.
I would add to this mix, Charles’s willingness to call the Virginia Assembly into session to discuss matters of importance to him, and when they failed to sign on, and offered other ideas, Charles moved on, ceased his efforts on the matter and moved onto another. If the reader has in her/his mind he forced the issues, more than not, that would have been mistaken. Policy speed bumps often did much more than merely slow him down. Distraction did much to Charles’s policy making, but Virginia and colonization’s relatively low priority should also be included.
Lost in the bureaucratic and personality jungle that was his court policy system, Charles was consistently unable to follow up on, implement in today’s wordage, the intent of his policy actions, or for that matter develop those policy actions mindful of the realities of that existed in Virginia. If this assessment be correct then the policy process that resulted in the issuance of the future instructions to a new governor was dominated by the larger English policy environment which set the hierarchy of policy priorities that overcame Charles’ past reluctance to grant legitimacy and consent to the empowerment of Virginia self-government.
We shall in this module discuss how this deal came to be “made”, and reveal its outlines. The inner workings of this deal, HOW it came to be made, however, are less known and the elements of it are scattered about among many commentators. For the reader to understand the larger context of the atmosphere in the King’s court policy system during 1637 and 1638, the critical years, we ought keep in mind the king is now, almost broke, exhausted his fight with Parliament for revenues and divine right, and had, through the actions and dictates of the Laud Commission, commenced what was essentially a religious war against the Puritans and non-Anglican Protestants–the center of which was in Scotland. Scotland, BTW, commenced an invasion of England in 1639 in reaction–and for my two cents that was the first phase in the English Civil War. A decade later Charles was executed.
The 1635-9 court policy process by which Virginia specifically, and early English colonial administration-policy was conducted in this quite significant decision suggest several comments. The host of agencies, including the remnants of the Dorset Commission and of course the members of the Laud Commissions (the likely most critical being the sub-committee of the Privy Council that was directly responsible), and the wide casting of various actors and influencers was again matched in 1635. Those who might think the royal word was brief and paramount ought to reconsider the belief.
By this time the King and Parliament were adversary, and the latter was not called into session. Parliament, of course, still existed and its members clearly could and did articulate their feelings and respond to issues, but the King-parliamentary nexus was essentially broken–and serious partisan issues, particularly in home of the merchant trader community, the City of London, were complex and trending from bad to worse–to the king’s disadvantage.
Not only was the process relatively open, but it allowed considerable penetration and access by the economic institutions and entities, status circles from class friends and families-the heritage of patronage and nepotism that saturated the era, and reflected the larger politics of the time by allowing access by parliamentary-based actors. As we see by the critical role played by the New Men investor community, we can also see that English colonial policy-making was influenced by those who financed the colonial policy, and sustained the colonial development. Whatever one might say, this was not a closed process to any who could penetrate the oligarchic elite of England.
Certainly, the fluff and the serious who engaged in court politics, impacted the decision, I suspect more by closing ranks, and back of the room conversations, not to ignore whisperings in the King’s ear, than any formal participation in the actual proceedings. Harvey, especially when he was in Virginia, enjoyed no such luxuries of access–which many well account for why he did not attempt it. London policy-making involvement required timely and wide access to the decision-makers and the various interested whirlpools of interest that surrounded them.
As to what motivated successful, if time-consuming, decision-making, quite clearly a crisis was quite beneficial. Decisions were avoided when possible in this period, and the chief reason a crisis decision was made was to get it off the table. The best motivation was an outright implosion and the Harvey affair was certainly that. In the early Stuart dynasty, especially that of Charles I, as far as Virginia colonization went, Charles talked the talk, but he did not walk the walk; it was far from his highest priority–which in this late thirties period was parliament, religion, Scottish rebellions, and raising revenues to finance the Crown expenses. Virginia mattered in the latter sufficiently to moderate Charles’s emotions and defer to advisors.
Harvey Sacrificed on the Altar of Court Policy Process
As a former ship captain, Harvey, although connected to the King through Windebank and a few others, was never personally on the inside, and when he left England in late 1636 he was three thousand miles away, totally dependent on his contacts. The irony was Harvey “got what he asked for” the arrest of his conspirators and their dispatch to London for hearing-trial. Washburn puts it best: “the sending of mutinous Councilors-Capt. John West, Samuel Mathews, John Utie, and William Tucker–[and John Potts to resolve his brother’s imprisonment] as prisoners in England, strangely enough allowed them to accomplish what they had been unable to do in Virginia. So many and so powerful were their friends, so wealthy were they themselves, and so many were the charges they contrived against Harvey now that he was back in the colony and unable to answer them, that the King soon reversed himself, and order Harvey relieved from his post” [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p.14
Historians noted that Harvey himself probably played a role in this inaction, in that despite his extended stay in England, Harvey had retained no counsel nor representative to handle his case, and push forward his serious and considerable accusations against the conspirators. Historians have also noted the lack of letters and petitions from Harvey to those of influence and salience on the case, after he had been sent to Virginia. The 1638 enlisting of a lobbyist, George Donne, was too little, too late, and the lobbyist was too sick to repivot the debate and refute the charges.
While all this was going on in Virginia, our four mutineers arrived in London in the early spring of 1637 and, despite the foreboding charges levied against them, and a threat of a dreaded Star Court hearing and trial, they were able to post bail and have free rein to travel–and amazingly access to the royal Court. Wertenbaker simply asserts that Charles, in the sixteen months or so had moved on “and probably forgot about it“. Apparently so did everybody else. It is likely the matter was to be handled by Lord Keeper [of the Seal] and Attorney General, and from these individuals no action was taken, nor any hearing scheduled. The prisoners were set free on bail–and off they went to lobby. While this inaction raises a number of questions, I have no explanation–other than below.
Of the so-called mutineers who spent a shade more than a year and half in England (returning in 1639), John West, fifth son of the Baron De La Warre and younger brother to Lord Delaware the first governor appointed by the Virginia Company in 1609) was of noble heritage, his family was still well connected, and his presence no doubt conveyed continuity and status to those who were now accused. In my opinion, however, it was Samuel Mathews (who BTW was West’s brother in law as well) who likely proved the most aggressive in haunting the walls of Whitehall. To put Mathews in a 1637 context, however, we need to briefly comment upon Harvey’s second administration. In so doing we will stumble upon an action by Harvey which may well have undone him in the eyes of both the Privy Council and the Queen, excuse me, King.
West Administration in Virginia During the Interlude–The Council had in effect elected its own (temporary) governor, John West. West seizing the moment authorized the opening up of the contested lands for sale. “In addition to the patenting (sale) of former Indian lands, the councilors and their associates [amassed] tens of thousands of acres that formerly were [Jamestown] Company lands“–in excess of 300,000 acres. T
his was by any calculation a colossal land grab, whose principal beneficiaries were the largest planters and even the plantation conquistadors associated with Claiborne benefited. There was spillover to smaller landowners and even venturesome immigrants, but the intensity of the land grab is testimony of the planter frustration with Harvey’s land policy–especially his extreme 1634 curtailment of gubernatorial approvals of land sales patents Brenner reports that in the eighteen month interlude when was West acting Governor he signed 377 headright patents, with indenture patents not far behind. Pent-up land sales no doubt explains much. Utie bought 1,250 acres, Menifee, 1,200 , William Pierce 2,000 , others close to Claiborne (the Stones and Bennett) got thousands as well. A goodly number of these patents were headright patents which translated into a small-scale population boom in these years. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 144-5
This certainly can be characterized as his (and the Council’s) reversal of Harvey’s position on the settlement-tobacco-Indian nexus, and a full-throated return to the headright and land sales programs followed previous to Harvey’s 1630 arrival. Included in this settlement bonanza was “plenty of action” in which the plantation conquistadors as well as the mainstream planters reaped personal fortune and enhanced their estate-workforce hegemony–at the expense, of course, of the Powhatan.
With Harvey’s exit, John West became the new governor and proceeded to open the door for expansion [of settlement and tobacco plantations] In addition to the patenting of former Indian lands. the councilors and their associates in 1635 began to amass tens of thousands of acres that formerly were company lands by breaking up the [defunct] hundreds and private estates [created during the Company period, destroyed, and essentially abandoned by their investors after the 1622 Massacre]. These tracts included the Berkeley Hundred (8,000 acres), Martin’s Brandon Hundred (4,500 acres) and Southampton Hundred (200,000 acres) … Labor for these estates continued to be provided by indentured servants [i.e. headright resumed and applied to these former company lands for the benefit of their new owners] [99] Ronald . L. Heinemann, et al, Old Dominion: New Commonwealth, University of Virginia Press, 2007), p.3
Essentially the sale of these lands was an exercise in large-scale eminent domain–which again benefited the “usual suspects” , either Council members or their friends and allies. In January 1637, the Council awarded the Berkeley Hundred to a London-based syndicate (composed of New Men financiers and sea captains) that included Maurice Thomson, William Tucker. This was a symbolic metaphor of the Company’s Greate Charter hundreds reorganization, when Thomas Smythe taking the lead purchased the Berkeley hundred. The Berkeley hundred 8,000 acre -eminent domain sale was, according to Brenner, the “largest patent granted in the entire pre-Restoration period. It didn’t take long to replicate; a little more than a month later, on March 16, 1637, Martin’s Brandon Hundred was sold to a similar syndicate with a different cast of Long merchant-financiers.
In fact these huge land transfers to the New Men and the largest, Council of State members–and their friends both in London and Virginia–cemented the oligarchy that had conducted the coup against Harvey, providing them critical headright benefits to bring in scare workers into the new plantations, ensuring their ability to dominate them politically, and as we have come to expect further confirm the tobacco monoculture and its expansion. The more foresighted Virginians may have seen in all these the final seeding of what will be the Third Powhatan War that would occur slightly more than five years hence.
What is truly remarkable is the timing of these massive eminent domain transfers. Harvey by that time was physically back in Virginia and conducting his roundup of his opponents property and estates in his set up capital of Elizabeth City. The Council of State was obviously busy in Jamestown, lining its coffers before Harvey’s new members could seat themselves and he could reassert his damaged authority over them. Most interesting to me is several of the beneficiaries were our coup conspirators, Utie and Menifee, who at this time were enroute to England for trial.
From the New Man perspective this was a power grab by Maurice Thomson who enlarged his personal network of financiers and capital to achieve scale that allowed him to compete in larger deals and lucrative trading opportunities–including efforts to tap into the British East India Company ventures. Thomson was now well on his way to becoming the acknowledged Warren Buffet of Restoration Era colonial finance. No surprise that by 1651, he was to be the unofficial author of the first Navigation Laws.
His brother-in-law, William Tucker, a Claiborne conquistador strongly silent during the ouster period–and the strongest ally of Claiborne in his New Kent venture became his close partner–and as we might remember from an earlier module, this group provided Claiborne a post-1638 pivot into the Caribbean, creating a five year or so cease fire in his war with Maryland. Several members of the syndicate were also New Kent financier (Turgis, for example participated in the Martin’s Brandon sale). Tucker would eventually return to England permanently. The New Kent investors had abandoned him and moved on. Bereft of investors, Claiborne was about to begin his chaotic but stubborn lone quest to restore New Kent and destroy Maryland in the process–a quest that would only end with his death in 1677.
What we are seeing in these transfers is something more subtle, the dissolution and shift from the New Kent venture, into Virginia’s Tidewater heartland, and a scale of capital that allowed Thomason and his associates to venture into new colonies in the West Indies, Caribbean and India and Asia. Not surprisingly, we can see Thomason and other New Men, privately sympathetic to the Puritan religion, gravitate to the parliamentary opposition, and eventually to Cromwell and his protectorate. To bring us back to earth and 1638 realities, the reader should also incorporate Robert Brenner’s summary of these land grabs:
It is unclear whether these specific groups of Londoners made these great acquisitions of land at this particular time in order to involve themselves more deeply in plantation production, or merely for speculative purposes. What is certain is that land was an excellent investment, and that the position of those merchants so near to the sources of political power left them particularly well placed to profit. The Virginia Council [of State] remained throughout this period committed to expanding the colony [and I suggest the monoculture by default], and continued to harbor a deep antagonism to the Baltimore [Maryland] Colony. Despite the Privy Council’s confirmation of the Calvert [charter] patent in April 1638, the potential for conflict remained only just below the surface. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 148
Post 1637 Harvey’s Second Administration--When Harvey arrived he proceeded, not to the capital Jamestown, but put in at Pointe Comfort, a military post, and set up his capital at nearby Elizabeth City. Jamestown, I would wager, the home base of his adversaries, did not suit Harvey as he began his second gubernatorial administration. Armed with the instructions to detain West, Utie, Mathews, Pierce, and Menifee he did so and in short order packed them off on their slow boat to England. Excluding these fine folks, Harvey issued a pardon for all others that had participated in the ousting, but formal actions aside, he sustained personal campaigns against selected officials-residents he deemed complicit in the ouster..
Armed with Charles’s appointment of several new members to the Council, Harvey had for the first time a tentative majority in that body, which met in Elizabeth City. He also appointed several sheriffs and over a short period ousted a number of officials in local government who presumably were not supportive of him (geographically they were in the southern counties and Accomack, the latter Claiborne territory. Having restored his governance capacity, Harvey began to exercise authority and implement an agenda largely of his making.
Historians believe Harvey did not learn much from the episode. Wertenbaker reports the “thrusting out” did not cause Harvey to become more prudent in the administration of government… it seem to have interpreted it as a license for greater tyranny. If the accusations of his enemies may be credited, he went to the greatest extremes in oppressing the people, and defying their laws. With the Council now completely under his control, he was master of the [county] courts, and inflicted great many wrongs by means of ‘arbitrary and illegal proceedings in judgement … confiscations ,,, most cruel oppressions … unjust fines which they converted ‘to their own private use” and … to strike terror into the people with whippings and cutting of ears” [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 65
Probably the most notorious offense, confirmed by historians, was his treatment of a clergyman Anthony Paxton. Paxton quarreled with Secretary Kemp, Harvey’s closest associate, and in the course of conversation Paxton called Kemp a “jackanapes” (an impertinent person), “unfit for the place of secretary“, and noting that Kemp’s hair was tied up with a ribbon “as old as Saint Paul’s“. With these kind observations, the parson was arrested, brought to trial and charged with “mutinous speeches and disobedience to Sir John Harvey”. He was found guilty and fined with a ruinous sum of 500 pounds, forced to apologize to every parish in Virginia, and was banished from the colony under pain of death if he returned–and the same to any who assisted him.
We do know that included or on top of all these reports, Harvey did confiscated the estates of the absent conspirators, with particular vindictiveness against Mathews–whom he held responsible for the ousting. Harvey confiscated goods, cattle, and their indentured servants in addition to his estates. Publicly declaring that he would not leave Mathews with “more than a cow’s tail”, he then commenced a series of law suits by several who secured judgments against Mathews for actions he had taken against them–some of these dating back well over a decade. It was the last set of actions, confiscating the estates of those who were sent to England that proved his undoing.
When Mathews heard [while in England] that his estate had been seized, and ‘havoc made thereof’, he entered complaint with the Privy Council [that, of course, had permitted the seizure], and secured an order requiring Harvey to restore all to his agents in Virginia. But the governor was most reluctant to give up his revenge upon his old enemy. For seven months he put off the agents, and at last told them he had received new orders from the Privy Council, expressing satisfaction with what had been done and bidding him proceed [?].
Thereupon Secretary Kemp and other friends of the Governor entered Mathew’s house, broke open the doors of several chambers [rooms], and carried away apart of his goods and eight of his servants. Soon after, however, Harvey received positive commands from the Privy Council to make an immediate restoration of all that had been taken. In January 1639 he wrote that he had obeyed their Lordships exactly, by calling a court and turning over to Mathews many of his belongings. But Harvey denied that he had ever appropriated the estate for his own use [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p.65.
Washburn is a bit more charitable, if slightly more accurate.
On the basis of unjustified or unsupported charges concerning Harvey’s alleged misappropriation of the mutinous Councilors’ estates, which had been seized for the King pending their trial, the King on May 25th 1637, ordered these estates returned to their owners. Harvey complied immediately as far as four of the Councilors were concerned, but he had already allowed legal action to be directed against Mathews’ estate by those who had claims against Mathews, and judgements had been made in favor of the plaintiffs. When the English government heard he had not turned back Mathews’ property, it promptly ordered that he do so without delay, which order Harvey then tried to put into effect as best he could. The damage had been done, however, and the impression created that he had willfully misappropriated Mathews’ property and disobeyed the King’s commands [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p.14
Thus by the end of 1637 Harvey was already on the ropes
Mathews Behind the Curtain Role in England--At this point we can return to England and focus on Samuel Mathews, who upon arrival in England as a co-conspirator had been, along with the others, pretty much on their own, without arrest or confinement, to do as they pleased, with whom they pleased. While they awaited some reaction from the Star Court, or for that matter anybody, Wertenbaker reports that once on bail the mutineers played an active role in the Court and in the merchant community to counter Harvey and advance their position. He asserts that within months they had secured access and influence which secured “the active support of the sub-committee of the Privy Council to which Virginia affairs were usually referred” [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 66
Roper confirms these contacts, naming Wolstenholme, Sir John Zouch, “as well as Samuel Vassall and Maurice Thompson, “counterparts of Wolstenholme and Zouch at the head of the capital’s merchant community” (p. 110). Each conspirator stayed with their relatives, and as one might expect, did the rounds to alert English decision-makers that “all was not well in Virginia”–and Harvey was making things intolerable. Those conversations, unknown to historical record, lead me to believe Mathews, by dint of his leadership and vulnerability as coup leader, and because of personal retribution of Harvey against his estates, and finally by virtue of his own connections, also took the lead in continuing negotiations to oust Harvey. Whether or not he took a larger position on Virginia self-governance, I also do not know, and on that I will make no guess.
Mathews, made a career from his very strategic marriages. He had just married again in 1634. His first wife, Frances Grenville, formerly the wife of Nathaniel West (another of De La Warre’s brothers) and Abraham Peirsey, Cape Merchant) passed in 1633. From that marriage, his co-conspirator and Acting Governor John West was a brother-in-law. In 1634. (Mathews (54) first wife had passed). Mathews married Sarah Hinton (about 30), brother of Thomas Hinton another member of the Council of State. Hinton, it seems was an active participant in the coup, although his specific role is not known to me. Harvey, however, confirms by his actions that Hinton was indeed an enemy of his. Sarah’s noble heritage could be traced back to Henry II; her father Thomas, a wealthy MP, was extraordinarily well connected in Court politics. His death in 1635, of course, empowered his sons and daughter, as the successors to his wealth and estates. They were well-placed and were well-motivated to provide some assistance to Mathews.
Sarah’s younger brother was, at the time, the Court Physician to the Catholic Queen of England, Henrietta Maria. In 1635 her younger brother, Thomas, was also a member of the conspiracy, and in the aftermath, when Harvey returned, had been arrested, placed in jail, and probably banished from Virginia. She herself had been thrown out of her home in seemingly rough order by Richard Kemp on orders from Harvey. In short, Mathews was well placed, and Sarah well-motivated, to secure access and a respectable hearing from key policy-makers and influencers. One might wonder, for instance, if the Queen might have had something to say to His Majesty on Mathews’ possible trial for treason in the Star Chamber. Added to this, it is likely Mathews, who knew former governor Wyatt well and had served with him on the Council of State and as plantation conquistador. Wyatt had served and was active on the then-expired Dorsett Commission, and was also close to the Sandy’s Virginia Company faction, as brother George (to Edwin who had passed, was his father-in-law. Wyatt, of aristocratic background, somehow became a player in the negotiations during 1638. We shall return to him shortly.
In any event, those in England continued to receive reports concerning Harvey throughout this critical year. English merchants, in particularly, were incensed by Harvey’s imposed fee on tobacco export and immigrants, and a requisition of powder and shot from the ships that docked in Virginia. Aggrieved merchants argued this cost the King revenues and frustrated trade in general, and Harvey consequently was sent orders demanding a formal accounting of these proceeds, and an explanation for the imposition of what were construed as “duties”. In imposing a tax unilaterally Harvey had likely exceeded his authority, one that belong to the king alone.
Harvey responded, defending his action, and urging the complaints be disregarded. To us this action seems small, but Harvey was messing with the King’s tobacco contract while it was in the midst of contention with the Assembly, and, in any case was a source of his much-needed revenues for his new Scottish situation. Harvey had not been authorized to take such action and had no authority on his own to do so. In other words, Harvey’s executive order had backfired. In case, the hostility of the merchant-custom farmers gave life to the irritation. and kept it inflamed within the court during the year.
But the 800 lb. gorilla in the Virginia decision-making process during this period had to have been the not-inconsiderable support Mathews, Claiborne and his Clique, were able to muster in London. Brenner reports that “when the Councilors’ conflict with Harvey was brought to the attention of the royal government in 1635, the Virginia Company [formally] not only petitioned the privy council on their behalf, but did so on the basis of precisely the same set of grievances and demands as the councilors had presented“.
Brenner further observed that Harvey himself in his written defense.while in England, attacked and charge the Company “had opposed him all along” and specifically named Sir John Wolstenholme. Harvey’s written defense is rife with accusations that it was the Company that had fermented the ouster, and that it was a part of their effort to restore the Company charter. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 144. As we have discussed earlier, from the start Harvey had confronted the Company–and vice versa–, and now with him ousted then reinstated as governor, the Company intensified its efforts against Harvey. With its considerable influence on the Privy Council (and its Virginia subcommittee), and with individuals of influence on the Laud Commission the Virginia Company and its various factions likely brought Wyatt in tow into the discussion.
Roper goes one, if not two steps further, however, by stating “The positions occupied by these patrons–although we have no firm evidence that they had foreknowledge of the coup against Harvey–enabled the Claiborne-Mathews faction to grasp the chance to arrest Harvey and return him to England. In taking this initiative the rebels naturally took considerable pains to emphasize their ‘miserable condition’ brought on by the governor’s ‘tyrannical behaviour’ which had compelled them to overthrow him [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2016), pp. 110-11. In making this assertion, Roper also, to me, insinuates, the motivation of these supporters lay in their support of the Kent Island initiative, and the rejection of the Maryland charter which at the time threatened its continuation. These individuals developed a case against Harvey and Maryland and submitted a case to the Star Chamber, and sent a petition to the King “to have Baltimore’s charter revoked. These actions were taken after the king’s and December 1635 decisions. The Company in other words had not backed away from their opposition to Harvey even though he had been returned as governor.
“Thus their pleadings characterized the behaviour of Baltimore and Harvey as grave threats to royal authority, social order, and the prosperity of their colony; the governor in particular, had disobeyed royal instructions and refused to administer the oath of allegiance to any belonging to Maryland … At the same time Harvey had cooperated with Baltimore’s agents ” to interdict … trade without the limits of Maryland. He also assisted the Marylanders in the struggle over the patent, ‘forbidding the planters trade there and taking away commissions formerly granted, as well as prosecuting Claiborne ‘with all violence’. The charge also included Harvey’s policy with Indian relations, his advocacy of using Dutch ships for export, and they warned, Harvey’s initiative to create counties [which they called “several governments“] which would “give a general disheartening to the planters and serve as a bar to that trade which they have long exercised“. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2016), p. 111.
The best counter Harvey could make to first send his “agent”, George Donne (yes– the son of the famous “no man is an island” John Donne) in 1638. George Donne’s substantial written essay [99] on the needs of strong authority in Virginia was written at such length and so abstractly that it did little service to Harvey. Donne’s sickness thereafter seemingly ended his role in the matter. It is possible, that sometime late in 1638, Harvey himself returned to England. We do know that hjs (and more importantly Windebank’s) Virginia protégé, George Reade, was confirmed as Acting Governor in his absence. If so it did not weigh heavily on the internal debate in the Privy Council, nor did it elicit any support from the king. Just the opposite, [99] https://http://www.geni.com/people/Col-George-Reade-Esq-Acting-Gov/6000000006803245420
[99]The essay, however, is useful as a insightful commentary on colonial administration and its particular application to Virginia. This was an exercise in :too little and WAY too late” defense. See T. H. Breen, “George Donne’s Virginia Reviewed”: a 1638 Plan to Reform Colonial Society (Notes and Documents, William and Mary Quarterly, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1973). As Wertenbaker states
The exiles [the four coup conspirators awaiting trial in England] had no difficulty in finding prominent men willing to join in on an attack upon Harvey. Before many months had passed they had gained the active support of the ‘sub-committee’ of the Privy Council to which Virginia affairs were usually referred. Harvey afterward complained that members of this committee were interested in a plan to establish a new Virginia Company and for that reason were anxious to bring discredit on [Harvey’s] government [99] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 66
From the sub-committee the matter jumped to the full Privy Council. At this point, Professor Jon Kukla leaps in and inserts Wyatt, not only as a participant, but as the leading candidate to succeed Harvey as a new governor:
Despite his formal acquittal, Harvey had failed as governor; his Virginia enemies and their influential English friends had little trouble getting him recalled [this may be his 1638 venture to England}. Sir Francis Wyatt, serving again as governor from 1639 to 1641 calmed the political waters and began a program of political and judicial reform that enhanced the possibility for consociational stability … The scion of a prominent Kent commission [the Dorsett], the second of three groups that shaped royal policy toward Virginia after the dissolution of the Virginia Company. WYATT HAD PROBABLY WRITTEN TWO KEY PROVISIONS INTO HIS [GUBERNATORIAL] INSTRUCTIONS: ROYAL RECOGNITION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND CONFIRMATION OF THE LAND TITLES OF ‘THE PRESENT PLANTERS AND POSSESSORS’ [capitalization, mine]. As a result, the king’s incoming governor ended fifteen years of uncertainty and transformed Virginia’s political life” [99] Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia” the American Historical Review, vol. 90, No. 2 (April, 1985); for a printed text of Wyatt’s commission see VMHB, 11 (1903-1904), pp. 50-54
Roper further insinuates an element in Wyatt’s rise and key to his assumption to governor was his position on the tobacco monoculture. Commenting that “nothing seems to have happened with his [1638] proposal … and discussion about [his] contract idea then disappear[ed] from the record … his successor Sir Francis Wyatt … advised Whitehall that the planters had returned yet again to the vexing issue of tobacco overproduction ‘ whereof hath so been great a hindrance to the growth of the colony. By that point, Roper has Wyatt commenting/proposing that “the problem had compelled the destruction of ‘the bad and half the good’ of their crop in order to raise the price of the weed to an acceptable level. ‘Although the physic seem sharp, Wyatt hoped ‘it will bring the body of the colony to sound constitution of health than ever it had enjoyed before’ so as to justify the action against any ‘refractory person’ who should question it. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America p. 116
Wyatt had seemingly entered the picture as Harvey’s replacement after stalemate with the legislature was apparent and a last initiative, to send the Governor of Barbados, Henry Hawley to visit the various colonies and “work out” the king’s proposal with them. Hawley’s brother, Jerome, was appointed Treasurer of Virginia to manage the annual tobacco fleet and to ensure its arrival in England with tobacco sufficient for revenues needed by Charles. Jerome Hawley, however, sickened and dies soon after arriving [99] L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge University Press,2017), pp. 59-60
Roper than asserts that indeed the stalemate concerning the 1638 tobacco monoculture , and the failure to resolve it to the satisfaction of the central government constituted in some degree a failure to resolve the matter to the king’s position, and no doubt a source of some dissatisfaction to him. But time had run out, as Roper posits that overlap with the Prayer Book and Covenanters had taken a sharp turn to conflict and war, a Scottish invasion which ended disastrously for Charles, a necessity for Charles to reconvene the Parliament for funds (April 1640), which after its dissolution, led directly into the formal English Civil War.
In essence, by the end of 1638, the king likely had come to the conclusion that his future agenda required a calming and consensual governor for Virginia, Wyatt fit the bill well, and Wyatt’s recognition of the need to install a level of self-government into Virginia policy-making, and a legalization of the ownership of land and property were essential to the consensus needed to effective governance. He further offered his solution to the tobacco monoculture issue, proposing that the “culling of the weed” to increase its quality and reduce its overpopulation was the best way to resolve the problem so that the king could better focus on other matters.
As to Harvey’s termination, as we earlier suggested he was a continual embarrassment. The word in London was any ship that landed in England carried with it another tale of misadventure, misrule, and offended merchants and settlers. In terms of administration Harvey was constantly in some bureaucratic struggle or another with actors in London. Roper recounts several:
[Harvey] failed [ed] consistently to receive proper remuneration for the expenses he incurred as governor … his ship sprang a leak as it left harbor. This engendered both a humiliating return to port and an admiralty lawsuit over wages he brought against the governor by some of the mariners involved … Having had the previous attempts to regulate the tobacco trade via the [tobacco] contract mechanism rebuffed, the king directed the Virginians to consider propositions he had prepared to address their particular situation … He also banned trade ‘with any Dutch ship that shall either purposely or casually come into any of your plantations … [and] on 20 February 1637/8, the House of Burgesses, called by his Majesty’s appointment, convened to consider five ‘Propositions’ offered by Charles I for the reformation of the colony’s tobacco trade’ … the 1638 session proved to be the final time in the history of the British Empire that a monarch ordered the summoning of a colonial assembly for the consideration of imperial issues [99] Roper, pp. 114-15
At their trial in 1639, the four were acquitted. By that time the decision-making process had arrived at several decisions during the course of 1638. The first of which was that John Harvey had to go. Another was Calvert’s Maryland charter was confirmed. An effort was made to finesse the Kent Island-Claiborne trade monopoly. A final decision, who would replace Harvey necessarily followed from the first–and that proved if not more complicated, it also was significant to Virginia political development.
That all this placed the arrogant, if beleaguered, governor in the middle between a rock and a hard place, it also got the various players engaged in a complex, complicated, polarizing administration of Virginia that if nothing else tempted London to install a governor more able to blend the conflicting impulses of the hybrid colonial system than Harvey could or was doing. When the end came at the Privy Council, Wyatt was appointed governor with such instructions as written. He was ordered to retain the the Council of State as then composed, and to confirm the controversial Richard Kemp as Secretary of the Colony, But he was empowered to complete the return of the Mathew’s estate, and to reopen the court case against Anthony Panton. Wyatt, as you will remember, was married to George Sandys daughter—and was closely, very closely connected to the Sandy’s faction of the Virginia Company. Go figure that? The behind the scenes regarding this decision is not known, at least by me, but from that point on Samuel Mathews seems to have created a lasting and favorable regard among the Privy Council and the King’s entourage. This will set the stage for events in the 1650’s.
As to Wyatt, and his second administration, we shall refer the reader to a future module. We leave the reader to Warren M. Billings apt summary of him and his governance:
(99) Wyatt … was an able administrator with a long record of service in Virginia. He was the company’s last governor, and the Crown’s first, and he had won great respect for his skill at steering Virginia through the troubled 1620’s. His admirable reputation accounted for his reappointment in 1639, when Charles sent him back to quiet the settlers after they overthrew John Harvey. An evenhanded tactful man, Wyatt was widely popular with Virginians, especially those who ranked at the head of the colony’s nascent political establishment. He managed his duties well and enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, and no one in Virginia clamored for his removal (99) Warren M. Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia (Louisiana State University Press, 2004), p.33
As to Harvey, the poor man entered into what has to have been the darkest period of his life–and it ended in his death, penniless and without friends. At first upon having been relieved of his responsibility and position by Wyatt when the latter arrived in Virginia, “Wyatt lost no time in bringing Harvey to account for his misdeads. He was arraigned before the courts, where he was forced to answer countless complaints of injustice and oppression and to restore to their owners his ill-gotten gains“. [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p.67 Wyatt then turned his attention to his Secretary of the Colony, Richard Kemp, and Wyatt being no friend of Kemp tied him into the reopening of the Panton court case. Fatally damaged politically, Kemp was ousted. Kemp wanted an immediate departure from Virginia, as did Harvey, but Wyatt wanted no replication of the 1638 policy process that had ousted Harvey for the second time–against him. So he kept the two in Virginia, refusing them permission to return. By 1641, however, he was willing to let them go. And, surprise, they tried to oust Wyatt upon their return. That story too, a rather short one, will be left to the future module as well
Assessment of the Thrusting Out Impact
Andrews, much concerned with the evolution of Virginia’s company political institutions, succinctly described the persistent efforts made by the Assembly and the various governors to obtain the confirmation and support by the King of these institutions [and I add the land, property and headright contracts as well], point out they were at times at some risk for these positions as it was by no means certain that Charles was receptive to these requests. From this past history Andrews came to believe “that the authorities in England had not yet [pre-1639) determined the form that the government of the colony should take, and that the king was still in a position to deprive the Virginians at any time of the privilege of an assembly, if he so wished, for no such body could legally come together without his consent. But through he was trying to govern without parliament in England, he probably had no intention of denying to Virginia the liberty of a representative gathering of the freemen, if we are to accept his own statements and those of his ministers. … They kept the assembly alive during these years, though they knew they had no legal right to do, as they were without any direct authorization of the crown (99) Charles A Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol 1: the Settlements (Yale University Press, 1934/1964), p. 203-4
The Massachusetts General Court charter expressly acknowledged the General Court and thus was included in the establishment of the Bay Colony in 1629. The Court first met in 1630. This suggests the King likely never had any compelling desire to withhold legitimacy of self-governance in the colonies. I think it likely that in his mind, Virginia was kept in flux due to the possibility that the Virginia Company’s charter would be reinstated for Virginia. As to why, in 1639, the king had finally consented to the “privilege of an assembly” and the legality of land and property titles, Andrews believes, I think strongly, “the Virginians themselves were largely responsible for the establishment of self-government in a royal colony in America. The work of the company might well have been undone by the king after 1624, and indeed for fifteen years the issue was in doubt. But with the instructions to Wyatt in 1639, Wyatt and his councilors were ordered “as formerly once a year or oftener, if the urgent occasion shall require, to summon the burgesses of all and singular plantations there, which together with the governor and the council, shall have power to make acts and laws for the government of that plantation, correspondent as near as may be to the laws of England, in which assembly the governor was to have a negative voice as formerly, Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 204
The interests behind As the Twig is Bent are both broader and more comprehensive than most histories which operate in a particular time period in which one or another paradigm or perspective is dominant. Frankly, most of the complexity and the preponderance of “moving parts” included in these “thrusting out” modules results from simply aggregating the different positions of the various historians, lodging them in a chronological order, and culling out those aspects which relate to the founding of a “self-governing” Virginia policy system, the establishment of its economic base, and its development of both elites/masses and political governance structures. To a certain extent we are concerned with the evolution of economic development, but in these very early years late medieval years, it does seem a bit premature.
The picture that emerges from this approach is, of course multi-faceted, multi-thematic and necessarily difficult to get one head around what is being discussed. So what do we get out the thrusting out in the form of take aways which we will further develop and use in the following modules?
- Early on I tasked this module with being “the birth of the Virginia colonial policy system”. I think I demonstrated that in the very simple yet obvious detail that demonstrated the Virginia self-governance and its political structures were so loosely defined they invited contentious struggle, almost (when combined with the realities of the shredded community) compelled the development of a local (county) government as the front line level of Virginia governance, and most importantly the sovereign consciously refused to endorse or legitimize the principal political structure, the Assembly and its elective Burgesses. By the end of 1639, with the thrusting out completed, all these problems had been addressed, and Virginia was blessed and legitimized with political structures tasked with self-governance. End of that story!
- In that this module series in particular faced an almost ideological historiological problem, many–not all–historians simply believed the First Migration period, which lasted at minimum until the Berkeley administration, and mostly into the pre-Bacon Rebellion (1676 or so), was so damaged to be useless for historical commentary. I took strong exception to this for many reasons but the obvious one, that if our colonial structures were “twigs” that were bent in different ways as they matured into trees, I had to deal with the birth and the warping of these twigs that followed. Twigs are most vulnerable in the early years before they become harder and more durable after all. By removing this period from discussion we lost, arguably, the most important period in which our Virginia twig was bent. I believe these modules have provided the reader with ample support that indeed the First Migration period was important, and that it had bent several branches of the twig (the limited definition of the governor’s role and powers, the creation of what will become a strong upper house of the legislature (the Council of State), and a provincial legislature closely tied to local elites). On these items alone, future chapters will demonstrate how Massachusetts and Pennsylvania were bent in different ways.
- For those who are interested in English-North American evolution of English colonial policy, we have created “the hybrid colonial policy system” which distinguished between a London-based court dominated (in this module at least) policy system, and the yet to be acknowledged Jamestown/Virginia-based self governance policy system. We were very concerned to capture the interaction between the two policy systems, exposing the nature of the early Stuart, Charles in this case, policy system and how it impacted Virginia political and economic development. I was not impressed with the London-based policy system, nor with its sovereign, decrying the lack of attention–and support for its colonial development-and for its inability to figure out how they wanted to govern Virginia. Perhaps, we have stumbled on an obvious reality that English colonization was not a “plug in and play” export from London, but in Virginia’s case especially, a multi-generational experiment, conducted without an instruction manual. The story of the Virginia Company in these two modules is central to that–and it played a major role in bending the Virginia twig. The Virginia Company’s role in Virginia during the 1630’s should not be ignored.
- As to the Virginia self-governance side of the hybrid colonial system, we saw what we were not supposed to see–an emerging Virginia policy system demanding to be heard and legitimized by its sovereign. The Assembly certainly after the 1622 Massacre always had its own mind, and composed with local elites who perceived themselves as autonomous and challenged by local wilderness and tobacco export realities, had their own opinions that contrasted sharply with those of the sovereign, and which, usually they ignored. The Council of State emerged from the thrusting out as at minimum co-equal with the governor–and in 1638 the latter was handicapped by a strong autonomous council that represented the largest, most articulate elements of the emerging planter/conquistador class. While it is hard to discern the “better angels” from the “bad angels” in Virginia policy-making, it is very clear the Virginia elite could manage to overcome its factions and to successfully demand London legitimize its self-governance. The low-class merchant-tobacco land grabbing thugs of the First Migration handed it to their superiors in London (of course the imminent English Civil War played a big role in that).
- If we want to test out the assertiveness of the locals, however, it is their ill-thought of marriage with the tobacco export economic base, an obsession that meant seizing land from none-too-happy Native Americans and therefore likely raising the risk of Indian war and destruction of the export profits England hoped from the colony’s economic base. Certainly England and both of its early Stuarts wanted tobacco import revenues, but neither sovereign wanted an economic base almost exclusively tobacco-bound. Diversification was a constant policy aim–and a very articulated one which, BTW, was also shared by the Virginia Company corporate leadership. Today we think of Virginia’s tobacco economy, its tobacco monoculture, as defining characteristics of the colony-state. Yet, in this module and the modules discussing the Claiborne New Kent initiative–the most fundamental and path-breaking breakaway from the monoculture–we saw serious and substantial forces arrayed to challenge the monoculture repulsed, and in our last sections we seen the unraveling of the London financing of the venture as the Virginia policy system was born. There were several reasons for this, but the intense opposition of the mainline planter class, and Charles’s incredibly bad decision to found Maryland by tearing it out from Virginia, and letting it be identified with the hated papists, ended that diversification initiative and as we shall see, cemented the monoculture in Virginia’s economic base. Whether Charles inadvertently embedded the tobacco monoculture through his inconsistent policy is certainly a question that needs more thought. By the time the messianic Governor Berkeley arrives in Jamestown in 1642, the tobacco monoculture is growing by leaps and bounds and is the acknowledged and uncontested economic base of the province–and Maryland to boot. That is yet another First Migration “achievement” that was deeply intertwined with the policy and politics of the thrusting out.
- Perhaps lost in all this to and fro and complexity of the thrusting out was the simple embedding of the Virginia land-owning, tobacco exporting merchant-planter elite, which by the end of the thrusting out had more of less become a second-generation post-Virginia Company oligarchy. This oligarchy, for reason we hope we revealed, depended on a workforce of indentured servants (slaves were few and far between in these years), whose immigration were hand-in-glove with the colony’s headright immigration incentives-land grants inherited from the Virginia Company period. Former Company officials/shareholders captured a near exclusive monopoly over it, and that monopoly persisted through 1639. Those indentured servants who survived their contract and started up plantations of size and consequence were few and far between (Abraham Wood is always cited as an example); embedded in the tobacco export monoculture was a colony saturated with structural inequities that would in future years institutionalize itself and thereby render the elite planter oligarchy-class with the only meaningful access to the Virginia policy system. This has yet to play out in our history, but we can see in 1639 that at least the first component, the institutionalization of the planter oligarchy, was pretty much established. Thank you First Migration.
- Finally, the story of Brenner’s New Men, at least the pre-English Civil War version, has been introduced and fleshed out a bit. If one is a follower of the now old adage “Follow the Money because its is always about the Money”–which I accept–this tale of New Men is no small matter. The merchant-planter class of 1638 is not the cavalier planter class of the eighteenth century in the golden years of Virginia tobacco plantations. This is a different breed that has not yet been embraced by American historians. The hard and rough form of land-owning expansion, an early version of Go West Young Man, is not the homesteading that we have come to love. The colonels and captains that came out of it, the conquistadors, and their local militias infused these merchant-gentry Brenner New Men with a capable and aggressive entrepreneur and both understood they had to control the larger politics and policy-making to prosper. This is political capitalism as much as it is mercantile-early modern. The alliance between these hard local capitalist entrepreneur and London money will evolve, and evolve fast, but there is no doubt in my mind the New Men and their Virginia compatriots forged a style of early capitalist financing that fed and fostered the tobacco culture-export, and institutionalized the plantation as Virginia’s basic, and core, unit of its economic base. This will have serious implications which we will export later, but again the plantation has achieved that position and role by 1639. When Berkeley arrives in 1642, the first thing he does is found his own plantation. The Virginia plantation, however, is not the Dutch plantation, nor will it be the Pennsylvania–and as everybody know, Massachusetts goes down its own path.
Ron W. Coan 