My Policy-Making Version of the Thrusting Out of John Harvey

 

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 Pre-Thrusting Out Period of Governor Harvey, 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 is reminded this history departs from the more accepted description of the event. Indeed for me, it is not an “event” but a phase in the birth of Virginia’s colonial policy system. 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 Virginia’s Council of State and Assembly.

To be sure,  some writers will allude to the rumblings  going on in Virginia and others will include aspects of the London decision process that followed the coup, usually stopping with the decision to send Harvey back to Virginia. What happened after the event, to the extent it is considered at all, is its own affair often presented in a rather unremarkable matter-of-fact segue way to the introduction of our soon-to-be Second Migration hero, Governor William Berkeley.

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

From the perspective of this history, a lot is going on during the 1630’s. It is very hard for any reader to get one’s arms around the deeply layered storyline that, in my belief, constituted the birth of Virginia’s colonial self-government. This achievement of self-government and the establishment of a Virginia policy system that would co-administer the Virginia colony through England’s colonial period is the capstone of the First Migration, and the true testament to its importance.

the Abridged “Plot” Underlying the Thrusting Out

The heart of this decade-long birth saga is the actual “thrusting out of John Harvey”. That “event” or phase, our view lasted for more than a year beginning in the last months of 1634 and ending in December 1635 with the hearing and trial of two of its conspirators. But the narrative does not end there. The next module will pick up that tale of “the Deal” and the “Birth” that laid the foundations for Virginia’s colonial policy system, a policy system that last through to the American Revolution–and was incorporated into Virginia’s Early Republic through a simple one vote adoption of the colonial Virginia Constitution as its first state constitution. Viewed this perspective our long-winded narrative of the First Migration and its settlers does a bit of rewriting in the traditional tale of early colonial Virginia.

Rewriting versus “Looking at the Camel” from a new direction

The First Migration confronts a massive lack of documentation and primary sources available to contemporary use. Fires, the London Fire, and the “burning of Richmond in our American Civil War, reduced much of what little was available, to ashes. First generation migrants, for the most part, were not prolific in their letters or diaries–and that didn’t help. The gaps make it very hard to develop a consistent narrative apart from that of the five three to five years of Jamestown.

To fill in the missing narrative, historical commentators have replaced it with an overemphasis on the development of the tobacco economic base, which both superimposed itself and then simultaneously fostered a shredded Chesapeake geographic dynamic that evolved over a half-century, if not more, to become a tobacco monoculture presided over by a privileged Virginia Company elite and large planter oligarchy, noted for its rough, low-class, thuggish behavior, greed, and Indian land-grabbling, while reducing the dignity and civil rights of its  workforce through indenture and Indian and Black slavery into a wilderness version of a feudal manor worked by serfs. 

All of which is correct as far as it goes. But it is only only a part of the complete story.  The more complete story presented here not by creating heroes out of the First Migration, but by balancing their achievements with their failings. Some of its better angels become more apparent in this extended version of a thrusting out narrative. Whatever their motives, their coup, and the near decade long struggle for self-governance finally forced Charles to “get off the pot”, 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.

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.

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. These are not small events in the course of Virginia history. Rather we are watching the last act of the early Stuart dynasty-Virginia Company play.

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, made their own plans and conducted their own meetings. This was not a Leninist planned coup to achieve an ordered set of goals and start down a future path by any means. In the thrusting out there was a serious dose of emotion, a “we’ve had enough”, but  also a serious intent to bring this disorder to a productive end. It is this last inspiration that we can see the dynamics that led to the birth of the self-governing Virginia hybrid policy system.

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, sent from England was another. Either Harvey’s bubble had to be pricked, or one had better prepare for a more serious attack by him.

The reason why, I believe, the Thrusting Out began in 1634, not April 27th 1635, is that in the last months of 1634 dissatisfaction expressed itself, overcame the atomization of Virginia’s shredded community, and gave time for English, specifically the Virginia Company, to devise and initiate a campaign in Virginia. Stuff happened in 1634. By the time John Harvey and Richard Kemp launched their counterstrike in late April 1635, they were throwing a match into a gunpowder factory. What passed as a policy system since 1624 had probably broken down beyond repair.

Each night-time meeting, each new incident and outside events 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 only made things worse, became in its way the powder keg that was lit on April 28 1635. Maryland, another 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.

the Role of Virginia elites in the Coup

As I retell the thrusting out narrative, my focus is the development of the Virginia policy system, with particular stress on the legitimacy and functionality of its core political structures-institutions. 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 and individual acts of whom we discussed earlier. But most importantly we will also demonstrate that the established structures and protocols broke down because of the frustrated and fear-laden motivations and expectations of the elites that held positions in these political structures.

The enlarged thrusting out rests on the achievement of some level of planter identify as an elite, and perhaps paradoxically, its fragmentation into competing groups of elites with different visions of Virginian’s future. Amazingly that bifurcated planter class was able to come together, only further supports the exasperation with John Harvey’s personality and style, but with his version of the gubernatorial job description. Virginians had a different conception of what a governor’s role and authority was compared to Harvey’s. But the really salient question was how that conception could be accepted by the sovereign Charles I. Spoiler alert: his initial response to it was not good.

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. Why the Assembly joined into the coup is its own tale. With an amazing sense of timing they both threw back yet another attempt by Charles to impose his “tobacco contract” on Virginia exports, but asserted an imperative that their role in Virginia self-governance was a must–and essential element in the over Virginia policy system. It took three more years but Charles acceded–and I am totally unsure that he ever really did, given his signature was affixed just preceding his riding off to battle with the Scots.

As to the alternative vision for Virginia’s economic base, we ought be sensitive that in 1635 the business plan of the Clique was jeopardized by politics in London. In fact, that future vision was seriously cast in doubt. Linked to the last hurrah of the Virginia Company into the politics of supporting a revival of the Virginia Company, the Claiborne Clique were likely conflicted (Claiborne was not) relative to their expanded view of a trading and finance-based North American Company as opposed to the enhancement of the tobacco monoculture. How this affected the coup, I am less sure, but Mathews, I argue, was to be a central architect of “the Deal” that followed.

On the other hand, the mainstream planter-plantation 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. The Company Magazine in principle was a sore spot, a third rail. They were, however, the Company revitalization was at least for the moment a lost cause, and if anything, that meant to them that the Assembly’s time for legitimacy had better be now. Whatever the future would bring, they clearly needed a political structure upon which they could rely.

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 above and beyond their membership in the Clique. 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, the Assembly was keen on 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. All of these reduced some of the sting from his personality. Nowhere was this more evident than in Harvey-Assembly cooperation in past sessions.

In the early thirties the assembly did not blindly follow the agenda of the Council Dominated by the larger planter class who early on communicated a rather clear sense of what they wanted from Harvey. What the Assembly lacked was a staff that sustained them between annual sessions, and served as a foundation for sustained 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, the government of their individual plantations was their prime interest and concern.

Jamestown was farther way from their thoughts and ambitions than its mileage would suggest. Without legitimization by the Crown, however, 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. The coup changed all that.

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 water mark, 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, unleashed some tensions and uncertainty–but opportunity as well. 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 [99] 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 yet another existential crisis (such as the 1622 Massacre). 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

The ouster narrative usually commences with an April 27th secret night time meeting in a York county settlement tavern. It ends in mid-May 1635 with Governor John Harvey being escorted to a ship bound for England by a major coup conspirator and a representative of the Assembly. The intent was to hear charges mutually levied by each party against the other. No less than the Privy Council and the King, Charles I were to hear the charges. How has Hollywood missed this grand opportunity for a swell-sounding movie? 

Both events, I suggest, are relatively arbitrary and each leaves out considerable parts of the ouster story. Still, they are convenient entry and closing points to dive in. The April 27th secret meeting a semi-public meeting intended to raise opposition to various facets of Governor Harvey’s mal-administration. 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.

The events after the ship voyage to England are seldom included other than a smush of a paragraph or two which the Charges against Harvey are dismissed, and Charles sends him back to govern Virginia. The alleged conspirators are summoned under warrant to appear for their own trial. None of this usually gets more than a passing reference in the conventional ouster narrative; the after events would seem salient to the ouster narrative–but they are seldom included. In this narrative, they consume the next module in this series.

That the 27th meeting included a former commander of Virginia’s key entry port fortification,  the brother of a former governor–council member John Potts. Celebrities such as this elevated the standing of the Virginia conspirators who initiated this secret meeting to potentially include the Council of State. John Potts, however, was no longer on the Council–and hadn’t been for nearly two years–yet his standing and popularity, in Virginia could not be ignored. As described in the previous module, John Potts and Governor Harvey had been involved in a bitter and mean-spirited series of public fights, trials, confiscations of estates and accusations that carried over to England. 

This background music likely played some role in the Gestapo-like raiding of the meeting by militia who seized hold of brother Potts and several others, cuffing them, and sending them off to jail. The raid was ordered by Harvey and the newly installed Secretary of the Colony, Richard Kemp–arguably the two most powerful officials of Virginia’s provincial government. To many, no doubt, this was merely another event in the series of Harvey-Potts misadventures-persecutions since 1630. But for us this is just the trigger that set off yet another phase in the ouster narrative.

It was not, at least to Harvey and Kemp. Because of that meeting a “crisis” meeting of the Council of State was called for the next day. Civil insurrection and mutiny against the Crown and its Virginia representative, the Governor was the likely charge but those arrested were told they would formally hear the charges “on the gallows”.  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. By the time the Council session commenced the next day, the crisis had been expanded to the potential involvement of the Council of State itself-seeking depose the governor. As we shall see the Council session “went south” from there. 

Interestingly, the actual trial of the conspirators that led the event to follow the Council session of April 28th was not held until well over a year later in London. Harvey by that time was back in Virginia as governor, and when the verdicts were issued, the charges were for the most part dismissed. That part of the ouster narrative occurs well after Harvey himself was exiled on that ship and for most American versions of the ouster narrative are not deemed essential to the drama that followed from the April 28th Council session. Usually the main culprit in the conventional ouster narrative is the governor, John Harvey, not the conspirators.

 

As the reader makes her way through our narrative of Harvey’s “Thrusting Out”, one important issue whether this was a semi-organized “mutiny” by self-serving Virginia elites, or the almost necessary expulsion of an explosive, unpredictable and increasingly arbitrary and mean-spirited tyrannical governor, or just the opposite, a governor who, except for his personality shortcomings, was traveling down a path of reasonable royal governor-led provincial governance tossed out by an corrupt elite used to getting its own ways. Commentators have attached several meanings to the ouster and depending upon which the reader has stumbled upon, one of these plot lines is likely to carry the day in the mind of the reader. So today, I am not sure of American readers in particular, to the extent they are even aware of this episode, share a common take away from it. 

One could also wonder if this episode was caused by a governor who could not navigate the crosshairs in which his sovereign put him. The issues of 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. That is how we approach this topic.

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. To help us along, then, let us return to the events of the night and deepen the drama with new information.

Francis Potts, John’s brother, and several others, met in the evening of April 27th to discuss and organize a petition (presumably to the king, or maybe someone else, intended to oppose Harvey and demand his removal. To personalize the matter, on the night of the secret meeting,  Francis Potts, John’s younger brother, had been fired earlier by Harvey in 1634  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 was not just anybody but the past commander of Virginia’s principal fort, intended for defense against possible Spanish invasion-raid. It was his statements that night, recounted in the Report complied by Secretary of the Colony Richard Kemp, that formed the basis for Harvey’s unarticulated charges and the next day Council of State session. That night Francis Potts had confirmed that other members of the Council of State had attended such meetings and hinted they were prime for action. This is treason in that day and age–and the punishment is death.

What made the 27th meeting different, besides its internal composition, was that Harvey got word the night it happened, and had the “suspects” rounded up by the local sheriff, or by a sheriff Harvey unilaterally appointed that night. Harvey in any case ordered them to arrest the attendees, interview 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. Francis Potts alleged statements, however, led to Harvey believing the Council itself was involved and plotting. Lest the reader assume we are witnessing a precursor to the Caine Mutiny, Harvey was correct.

 

But there is more to the story. Many historians have confirmed a series of such meetings, previous to April 27th, had occurred for months. Potts’s meeting was “e pluribus Unum”, one out of many. The so-called petition was bandied about across the province. Several motivations were in play. Petitions and  blogs were alleged to have been transmitted in various parts of the colony on different aspects and topics. Not only were Virginia Company agents gadding about town stoking up support for their Company for months and months previous.

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. Reactions to the king’s proposed changes in the Virginia tobacco contract had also spawned a number of meetings as well.

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. It seems a Virginian had their choice of what petition to sign or what topic to hear at a secret meeting. Suffice it to say, the natives were not happy. 

In my mind, several issues were paramount. The increasing likelihood that the Virginia Company would not be revived, lessening the threat that Claiborne would be able to misuse its Magazine, while at the same time, spurring Company and Claiborne advocates to reverse the tide against the Company, had generated counter meetings and petitions. Interestingly, however, to the extent the Claiborne business plan was much less likely to be approved meant that opponents of the business plan had less to fear and hence their emotions had receded just enough to make a deal with and/or involving the Claiborne Clique possible.  The swirl of fragmented oppositions meant that those of opposite persuasions could find common ground  on the matter of holding John Harvey accountable for his actions and style of governance. 

That led to the possibility, perhaps the reality, that Harvey’s actions during 1634 generated lots of opposition, that increasingly put him in the crosshairs of the various domestic groupings. Harvey used his executive actions on a variety of matters, including some fairly controversial. In addition sometime during 1634, Wertenbaker asserts, (supported by numerous other historians) an incident occurred which Harvey, unilaterally and capriciously, on a visit to an area, commanded the transfer of an indentured servant under contract to another to himself.

The Assembly forbade this type of action in 1624, and in Virginia at this time the action generated the same reaction as horse and cattle stealing in the 1880’s proverbial American West. Mathews likely was the planter whose servant was commandeered. He is citied as meeting Harvey on the spot, and demanding its repudiation, to which Harvey declined (offering instead to buy him a drink at the tavern). Mathews declined that generosity, and threw a temper tantrum by hitting nearby weeds and bushes with his walking stick. So there! What they social media would do with that today!

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. With the arrival of a new Secretary of the Colony, Harvey was seemingly turning his administration into a more aggressive style of governance, a governance derived more from the personal agenda of the governor, and delivered-implemented in a fashion outside the norms, values and customary parameters of domestic Virginia. To say in another way, Harvey was decidedly not “going native”. Harvey (and some action to do something about him) during 1634 became a top priority of Virginians. To complicate this style, rightly or wrongly (perhaps a bit of both) his arbitrary, personal, executive orders were sometimes perceived as corrupt and of benefiting Harvey personally.

Back  to April 28th. At minimum, it is likely the Council arrived at the Council meeting fairly wary that Harvey was once again off on an independent executive or arbitrary action. Harvey on the other hand, had been told by his Secretary Kemp, that Francis Potts told him that, on the basis of his question of Potts, that Council members were involved in these secret meetings. Thornton believes he commenced the meeting with the belief several of those in attendance were actively conspiring to unseat him. We will suggest below this may well have been the case. On its face, the Council arrived in Jamestown the day after the infamous tavern meeting, already at war with Harvey, and poised to restrain any future arbitrary actions–others may have had more dramatic hopes. We should not believe, judging by what will happen, that the Council was of one mind previous to the meeting.

It appears they were, not surprisingly perhaps, joined by Potts. His brother arrested no doubt brought him there, and he took with him his crowd of supporters–and militia members– 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 of State]. It is likely that Potts brought with him a militia unit under his command. It is likely that Company delegates from England were there also. In other words, two, perhaps more, factions independent of each other had arrived at the scene of the meeting. The ingredients for a “perfect storm” were in place on April 28th.

Harvey  presided over the Council meeting, held in his living room of his home. His first reported agenda item was to demand 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 write 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 must have 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.  He first asked George Menifee, a very prominent Council member. 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 Menifee 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. This is my guess.

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’s responses that followed, Harvey likely knew he was in trouble; the moderates had probably decided beforehand not side with Harvey against the conspirators. That also, was likely not lost n the conspirators either, because it was after this point that all hell broke loose. As the reader senses, I believe it likely the various factions had fabricated some rude consensus previous to the session. There is no actual evidence that I could find to support this; in my experience legislators rarely walk in cold to a meeting such as this.

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 himself reports that he responded by comparing Harvey’s capricious 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 or went to solitary bite to eat, or to think of a rational response from which a consensus could be found. Rather, my belief is the Council members assembled somewhere and reviewed the first session, and likely sought to fabricate a unified reaction. Moreover, they likely met in some form and fabricated a response, seeking, likely as not, to control the agenda and inhibit Harvey from taking action. It is very unclear whether the second session began with the Council members have decided to launch a coup, although it is not improbable they wanted to hold Harvey accountable for his perceived abuses.

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 while 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 sight when a shot rang out and they made their appearance outside the meeting. It is not clear that even the Council was “in” on this. Potts, not a member of the Council, did not have the right to participate. 

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 in the early part of the second session. Potts, I believe, was his own man in the events of April 28th. My suspicion, presented below, is that Potts, himself and his brother, had commenced a series of secret meeting “leaking” the claim Harvey had not sent the Assembly tobacco missive to Charles, but had substituted his own, and sent it through his boss rather than to the sovereign directly. The alleged petition discussed at the meeting was, Thurston claims, to include that charge and demand action from the Council.

A series problem with Harvey’s defense document 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, but that Mathews led the party into the meeting room. How these two  versions squared with each other in actuality, I do not know.

Mathews has a different version in which the militia does not get mentioned at all, 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, Claiborne Clique member, 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 had suddenly materialized, suggesting some agreement had been reached in the Council. Whether a specific manner of “acquainting Harvey with the grievances of the inhabitants” had been reached, it does admit to the possibility the pre-agreement included sending Harvey to England to answer their complaints against him.

Harvey remembers being seated along with Kemp, was being 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. Whether Harvey was formally “arrested” as implied by Utie cannot be ascertained.

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 [Menifee] 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.

In short there are several version with nuances that flowed from the second session.

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 by the end of the second session and confined to his house–where over the next week negotiations, seemingly led by Mathews, rehashed events and accusations, and several suggest trying to convince Harvey to voluntarily place himself of the ship to England. 

Clearly Harvey was no longer in control of events. In the course of the next week, 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. 

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?

It is also possible 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 Menefie, 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,

There is a third comprehensive version, a letter to Sir John Zouch (in England), from his son (in Virginia). Zouch Jr., the royal appointed Secretary of the Colony, 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–an advocate for the Company–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  (the battle on the Chesapeake over Maryland and Claiborne), 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, 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.

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 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 session 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 their own version of Lexington and Concord,  with a physical confrontation, 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 Assembly Enters into the Coup

Convened about a week after the “coup”, the entry of the Assembly into the decision-making process makes an excellent juncture to assess not only what that means, but what the Harvey affair reveals about how decisions were made in 1635 Virginia. Clearly the governor, and secretary, handled day-to-day activities in response to events. When events got complicated, however, the Council of State was called into session. The governor presided over the Council session, topic/agenda aside, Council members participated on their own terms. There is no vote taken in the Thrusting Out decision, but that likely was the path for a normal policy decision.

What is somewhat remarkable is the Council, almost instinctively, called the Assembly into session (although it lacked any formal power to do so on its own). Given the Assembly and Council had clashed in the last couple of years–and in which the Council had been outvoted by Burgesses in very key and controversial matters central to the Council majority–the Council, in my mind at least, may have acceded to the elective representation of the Burgesses as the holder of higher authority. Surely, the Council wanted to share the blame and risk, but unless the Council felt comfortable the Assembly would support its actions, there was a risk involved if the Assembly deferred. I suspect the former.

Interestingly Harvey, whose recent record with the Assembly was positive, refused to support an Assembly session, and when it convened, he essentially told it to go home, and threw in treason for good measure. One might suspect Harvey expected little support from the Assembly in the matter at hand in early May 1635. It may be his role in the tobacco contract missive sent by Assembly to the King, that matter had at some point been exposed by somebody, and the word seems to have been passed on to a larger audience by that time.

But contrary to his tendency over the entire of his gubernatorial administration to bypass the Council by reaching an accommodation with the Assembly–achieved in the last annual Assembly meeting in March 1634–Harvey made no attempt to do so in 1635. As I stressed throughout the last module and this one as well, 1634 was a very stressful, turbulent and eventful year. Things seem to have changed. All observers I ran across did not see in the Assembly an institutional support for the governor by early May 1635. Harvey confirmed as such by commenting in his later testimony that only one county’s Burgesses supported him in the contested vote. We lack the vote and records, but I concede to Harvey. statement his lack of Assembly support that May.

The Council did not possess the authority to call the Assembly into session without the vote of the governor. Nevertheless, the Council called the Assembly into session, scheduled it for a week later, prepared its agenda, apparently “nominated” Harvey’s replacement (West), and likely produced such collateral material as needed for the session. Presumably, Potts’ militia let delegates enter Jamestown, and the meeting house. Actually, by simply convening the session when it met on the 28th, it was clear the Assembly had entered into the overthrow of Harvey.   Harvey had formally vetoed the action in the week previous; and he apparently did so again when the Assembly was about to convene. By simply opening the session, the Assembly had crossed its Rubicon. That, the reader should realize, was bold stuff–and I think the prod was the “leak” of the Harvey’s misconduct in the tobacco contract Assembly missive.

So 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. They had willingly become involved in the thrusting out affair. I might add yet another factor the 1635 Assembly was reflective of the electoral franchise change imposed within the 1634 Assembly approved creation of counties for Virginia. 

One senses strongly the Council did not see the Assembly, meeting for the first time under the new franchise rules reflecting the election of two delegates from each of the eight counties, plus a few other districts, a body it could dominate. It is possible the installation of the formal English county into Virginia had strengthened the status of the Burgesses, creating for the first time a fledgling legislature, whose operations and voting decisions were their own as the aggregate of the individual districts. We are dealing for the first time with a more representative Assembly than had ever yet met in Virginia.

Keeping in mind, the Council members were voting members of the Assembly (as was Harvey), and the Council constituted a sizeable bloc of its voters. The Council, certainly not the Claiborne Clique by itself, could speak with some authority, and it appears to have presented its version of events and issues. 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. When the Assembly, on May 7th, met, it was the first session since the 1634 establishment of counties in which the county became the principal election district for Burgesses.

In that Mathews had publicly written reservations concerning the 1634 formal creation of counties, referring negatively to the “several governments” (counties), 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. It appears they saw a more independent Assembly also. At this point, it is helpful to remind the reader that Burgesses election franchise included 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 of all Virginia positions of authority to popular influence in this period. 

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 does seem, however, to have been roused by events in Maryland over the past week–the eruption of war in Maryland, but without doubt was truly exercised by Harvey’s action in withholding the original Assembly tobacco contract missive. Taking all this into mind, I suggest to the reader that the more traditional focus of the Harvey Thrusting Out was the Council meeting, I off the role and position of the Assembly was the more truly dramatic aspect of the Thrusting Out. I also suggest that this rise of the Assembly to authority in May 1635, underscored the future negotiation of “the Deal” outlined in the next module that delivered the birth of Virginia’s completed policy system.

 

In the course of the May 7th session, the Assembly responded to a petition compiled (presumably by the Council) to present the grievances against the governor. Asked for their support, the Assembly confirmed it by vote, and after such had been secured, a vote on the appointment/nomination, by the Council of John West as Acting Governor it also concurred. It then determined to send its own representatives to London with Harvey and the chief conspirators (Francis Potts), and developed a written response and requests to be presented as evidence and petition for the sovereign’s’ consideration.

This assertion of authority–and will–is to me remarkable given the risk and the customs of the time; it is also strong evidence that they Assembly was making a strong point to the London governance that the Assembly had a role to play in Virginia self-government. The Council did not send its own representative, nor did it formally write its defense of its actions. Mathews alone, to my knowledge, wrote a defense of his actions, but sent it to a leading member of the Company and strong force on the Privy Council.

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 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. 

 

The Governor thereafter was sent by ship to England, in the custody of Francis Potts (some say John) and the Assembly representative. 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. Such charges and defense was written and presented in the form of a petition–but as we shall see are now lost and no longer are available. To my best knowledge, with the exception of Assembly delegates from Accomack district, Harvey received no support from the Assembly. 

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”. 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, 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 led 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 section attempt to delve deeper into the motivations of the participants, hoping against hope their observations are reflective not only with their self-interests, but with their perception of what actually happened. We start with the primary written defenses of the two main actors in the coup: Harvey and Mathews.

From their written defenses, supplied at varying points in the hearings and trials of the coup participants, we can try to create a timeline based on their comments, develop a scenario that led to the coup, and, most importantly the paramount issues which they cite as responsible for the coup. 

 

In his letter of defense, Governor Harvey cited activities that occurred in December 1634 as when he first became vigilant, and wary of forces “conspiring” against him and the king. 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 does not touch on the topics that generated these meetings, but he seems fixated on Mathews as their leader. As a chief member of the Claiborne Clique in Virginia at that point, save for Claiborne that seems fair. But, left unsaid is whether Harvey perceived the “Council moderates”, the mainstream planters in opposition to the Clique as conspirators.

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).  He sees these meetings as unlawful, without charging they were conspiring at that point for his overthrow-ouster. His mentality I sense, is flirting with that his opposition by its articulation of their point of view, are a challenge to royal authority, and perhaps to the king himself. It is far from sure from the evidence I have seen that this is accurate. The Company, for example, never challenged the sovereign, but sought instead to convince him of their point of view. 

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 it is possible that December 1634 captured some momentum within the mainstream planters, and it seems likely that his brother having been dismissed from his key military position that John Potts seems to have taken the lead and began to organize the planters and general citizenry-militia. The reality of late 1634 was that there were two, perhaps 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 Company, in particular was sending delegates from London over to assess and organize opposition to the Laud decisions regarding the Company charter and Maryland.

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. There is ample evidence from historians that opposition was mobilized in England, and that a determination made the most successful strategy to reverse the Laud decision lay through Jamestown–and probably the Council of State.

The Laud Commission position in regards to the Calvert Maryland charter  did not question the king’s power to grant the charter. By definition, the Company relied on that power for the king to reissue their charter to be valid for Virginia. By the summer of 1634, 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 the authority over that matter to the Privy Council on which they enjoyed considerably more support.

Hence, it was no coincidence that the letter Mathews sent to England after the coup intended 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 during the past several years as he sought to work the revitalized Company charter, and secure a contract with the Company’s Magazine  for a joint stock corporation in which he was a member. 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 investors. Mathews, to complete the picture, was, along with William Tucker the hard core of the Claiborne Clique, albeit on the defensive at this point.

In this relationship-alliance Mathews and his cohorts were not without power. The lifeblood of Virginia were 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–Clique non-members had to wade through the Claiborne export nexus for them to export efficiently and profitably. 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 (into England) 256,700 pounds of tobacco of the 405,000 –that figure did not even include Claiborne, Utie, nor Mathews who exported considerable sums on their own. 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 an English partner 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. We can also understand the fear of the Clique by the mainstream planters.

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 Sr., traveled with his son and daughter to Virginia in 1634. An “intimate  friend of Samuel Mathews”, Zouch Sr, a shareholder in the Company with a record of involvement dating the Jamestown’s first years, owned a plantation in Virginia and attempted, unsuccessfully, to found an ironworks. Zouch Sr, claimed by no less than Mathews himself, carried Mathews letter of defense when he returned to England after April 1635. That defense was sent to  Wolstenholme. Zouch Sr (and probably Jr.) were likely present in Virginia at the time of the coup. [99] Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography, Vol.1, September 2013 . Another version of the coup was later sent by his son, to Zouch Sr., and it can be obtained through Edward D. Neill, Virginia Carolorum (Albany, 1886), pp. 118-120.

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. Thornton, in his opening paragraphs throws a bomb into his version of the Thrusting Out: he opens by stating the Pott’s petition of April 27th included a formal accusation-complaint that Harvey had not submitted the original Assembly petition regarding the tobacco contract., and also urged the Council take action on the matter; Thornton claims several Council of State members had already signed that petition.[99] J. Mills Thornton III, the Thrusting Out of Governor Harvey,(Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 76, No 1 (Jan, 1968), p. 11. Thrown out at the start of his presentation, the “leak-bomb”  goes almost unnoticed. Its explosion occurs only when the reader combines and aggregates the multiple moving parts of this affair, and we can see how this leak likely catalyzed and cemented the ouster of Harvey–by the Assembly. 

To me this suggests that, if Thornton is correct, the petition of the 27th was an escalation of the the conflict between Harvey and the Council, and that the leak of Harvey’s action regarding the recent tobacco contract was certain to mobilize the ill-feelings of the Assembly, and likely the general citizenry that elected it. The fingerprints of the Company in this last turn of events must be prominent throughout these letters. The result, intended or not, was a mobilized Assembly that did not go away after it put Harvey on his boat to England.

It also confirms the Virginia Company had also played a serious role in the actual ouster. They policy leader was Wolstenholme. Wolstenholme, an important and well-placed figure in the larger colonial policy-making, was also 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 (Thomason and Cloberry) to manage the London activities. As we shall see the turn of events that followed over the next several years forced them to be nimble and flexible–but in 1635 they were still on board with Claiborne largely. Their focus was on Maryland principally; the settlement at Saint Mary’s.

 In the first year of the Thrusting Out there were still hopes the Company could manage a turnaround, and Harvey’s ouster could have been the trick that did it. As we shall see the Company went forward aggressively in this period to defend the mutineers, Mathews and the rest, and replace Harvey. But Maryland broke that bubble.

Calvert, himself in England, did not effectively control the actions of his brother sent to Maryland to administer the colony. The Maryland-caused actions that followed in 1634-5, did not faithfully follow the more moderate path outline by Calvert. From the perspective of the Company, the Maryland charter was on a par with the reissuing of the Company charter, without the former, the latter was virtually worthless. As New Kent exploded in 1635, and Claiborne eventually reconquered his New Kent base, hope continued until Thomason and Cloberry lost hope. That left Claiborne standing virtually alone in New Kent. Harvey’s reinsertion as governor in these years, intended or not, deprived Claiborne and his Clique of using Virginia as a wedge to revitalize the Company and its Virginia charter. By 1638, if not slightly before, both policy thrusts were essentially exhausted. Maryland provided the coup de grace retaking New Kent in 1637.

In this confused tangle of cross pressures the Thrusting Out continued to play out in muted, subdued tones and back of the room discussions in London. Visibly in this period, it was only Claiborne that fought on–and on–and on. 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, replacing the previous Virginia Company revitalization in late 1636-8.

The take away from the dying echoes of the Company’s last hurrah in 1636-37 cleared the way for, and the greater need for, putting the Virginia policy system in order. By 1638 for sure, New Kent was within Maryland, and Maryland had seized New Kent physically. The Company itself with the loss of Maryland, had diminished interest in its resumption of authority in Virginia. The king now knew he had to deal with Virginia as his direct responsibility–whether he wanted it or could focus on it properly. It was no longer proprietary but royal. The preconditions for a Deal that elevated the role of Assembly and confirmed the rights of Virginia property holders had finally put in place.

 

Case Studies-Take Aways: Virginia Planters Coalesce, Tyranny and Limitation of the Governor, Maryland’s Impact on the Thrusting Out

 

Harvey alienated non-Claiborne Planters (Mainstream Planters, the Moderates)

Many historians and commentators have focused more on the dynamics unleashed by John Harvey himself. “The Thrusting Out of John Harvey” logically should center on the governor and that accounts for the larger than life role Harvey plays in the narrative of these critical years in Virginia’s history. Viewed from a policy-making perspective, however, Harvey like Hamlet is a container, catalyst, and metaphor for the convergence of several dynamics, as well as the chief protagonist i.e. the glue or magnet that ties together or attracts the other key key players who weave into the Thrusting Out their own stories and sub-narratives.

One of those dynamics I think deserves special consideration is the effect the thrusting out played on the development of Virginia’s “mainstream” planters into a sort of proto-class, a proto-class that dominated what passed for Virginia society, politics and economic development. When one compares that class as it matured in the eighteenth century, its golden age, the planters were more polished, sophisticated, enjoyed a more affluent lifestyle and architecture, their plantations were more complex and, in their way productive, and their hold on politics and the economy more firm, if nothing else more obvious. What I find amazing, however, in the course of the thrusting out was that the principal foundations of that 18th century golden age were largely all in place during the thrusting out.

In essence what amazed me is not how dissimilar the two Virginia eras were, but how much they shared. To be sure the family dynasties had yet to take root, the plantations and the architecture had to be enhanced, but at the root of it all was tobacco, as powerful in the 17th century as it was in the 18th. The tobacco monoculture was embedded in Virginia’s first several decades.

The greatest threat to that, the New Kent-Claiborne-Revived Virginia Company alternative, pretty much reduced to ashes by 1638, leaving tobacco and the plantation owner undisturbed, if anxious for a time, and solidly in place. For the most part, the Harvey narrative was a play in which only the elites meaningfully participated, to be sure watched by the general population who occasionally substituted for a Greek chorus in the background. Harvey, who shared elements of this vision, oddly enough was opposed to its authors, especially the Virginia Company, and major exporters who could accept the use of English ships at least for the time being.

In that export Clique he found opponents that repudiated his authority and decision-making and preferred their own oligarchy to the one, the tobacco plantation owners, that had already developed. So Harvey joined with the mainstream planters and used the representative Assembly as his tentative instrument of authority and policy-making. The Assembly, it seems, was not sufficient for Harvey, however, and his use of executive orders, bypassing when he could both the Assembly and Council of State, threatened to impose itself on Jamestown.

When he monkeyed with the Assembly’s missive in the 1634 tobacco contract debate it seems he left as one of his legacies their idea that a strong governor was destructive to the path the Virginia planters wanted. That legacy was not so formidable that it precluded a strong governor forever, but the success the planter class enjoyed in the thrusting out certainly created a precedent, and a model for the planter class to use if it perceived threats from the executive branch. For those familiar with Virginia history, the next hundred and thirty-five years saw many a Virginia governor “thrust out” in some pattern not much different than Harvey’s. What do they say, a trip of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

Still it was in the thirties that the planter class fragmented into two distinct groupings, with very different visions of the colony’s economic base, and of necessity likely its political development as well. One vision, the Claiborne, was based on economic diversification, with the introduction of a considerable diversity of artisans, merchants, and even professionals. Its market area was the then known coastal North America, not just Virginia, and its partner in this vision were some native Americans of sympathy to this trading empire.

One can suppose this vision would evolve into a good deal of communication, transportation, and finance infrastructure; and, one can envision the society would be more diverse and multi-occupational. Different mixtures of immigrants were likely to follow, and probably non plantation agricultural homesteads could take better root. None of this vision appealed to the mainstream planters, only to the major exporters of tobacco, the Clique, who possessed the will, capacity, and therefore found this vision profitable and achievable.

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.

 

The vagaries of the early Stuart colonial court politics, drifting as it was in a period of decline and drift to the English civil war, could, and would not, sustain this vision and partner in its success. It is a fascinating alternative history that could have obsoleted the Mason -Dixon line had it been sustained–but it wasn’t. By the end of the 1630’s it was dead as a door nail. And so Virginia history passed to the mainstream planters, who were let free to root themselves and to evolve into the cavaliers-family dynasties and mansions of eighteen century. Half-way through the First Migration, therefore, the path into Virginia’s future was already apparent and functioning.

Tobacco and the plantations were the scenes of action in the shredded, decentralized  and miniaturized body politic and society. The huge inequality of Virginia workforce and society was already not only evident but fully in place. Substitute black slaves for the white European indentured–a late 17th and early 18th century transition–and we can see inequality was certainly a hallmark of this colony, as it would be in no other save Carolina (Bermuda and West Indies). The plantation developed in the early Stuart years in the non-English colonial world took a similar form and dynamic, with the expected modifications caused by climate, location and geography. The class systems that evolved from these colonies were much the same. Interestingly, Massachusetts-New England did not follow that pattern–for reasons we shall later explore.

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, 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, pretty much informal” tobacco contract, the latest in several attempts by the king over the years. In some form Charles 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. The Assembly stuck to that position in spite of the king’s wishes.

By mid-1638, Charles backed away and drifted to signing “the Deal” which gave birth to the legitimacy of the Assembly as Virginia’s legislature. Hitting the third rail of Virginia politics head on and losing, Charles, unwilling to impose his will, let Virginia make its own inputs and implementation. In my mind there is no doubt when the Virginia planters heard of “the 1639 Deal”, they lit up their cigar or cigarette, if nothing else to show their devotion to the monoculture than set in motion the future of what Virginia  would call its version of democracy.

the Stuart Tobacco Contract and Cohesion of the Virginia Tobacco Planters

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. he sent it not to the sovereign but to his boss on the Privy Council. Its fate and potential effectiveness when received in London was  jeopardized, or perceived as so in Virginia. Whatever, Harvey’s motivations in this non-transparent action, it was a miscarriage of effective and responsible policy-making, and more than anything demonstrated the unifying role of tobacco in the formation of Virginia’s present and future elites. It also imparted a certain odor to the office of governor that stank up the place so bad it never dissipated. In our words, it bent the Virginia twig of policy-making.

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. The shenanigans with the tobacco contract, being present at the birth of its policy system, the role and structure of the Assembly-Burgesses. In their shared vision of the tobacco monoculture, Virginia planters seized ahold of the Assembly as early as 1632, and after 1635 ousting its independence from the Council of State, and its check on the governor were well in place. 

Why did Harvey do this? Several paragraphs in the Assembly missive 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/ Windebanke. who was Harvey’s “boss” to whom he reported, but also Harvey was “protégé” of Windebanke, and a member of his policy faction. Windebanke, while very close to the King, and a member of his inner circle of advisors, was suffering in bad fortune at that particular time.  Windebanke during 1635 was embroiled in a highly controversial, verging on scandalous, set  of activities in pursuit of Archbishop Laud’s tendency to draw closer to Spain in foreign policy, and to Catholic forms within the Anglican church. In Virginia, this catholic tilt only reinforced the flames caused by Catholic Maryland being carved from Virginia’s boundaries..

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 formal legitimacy, but it certainly had presumptions, and that the governor unilaterally felt free to alter its correspondence with the king, hit a raw 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. That perspective misses the opportunity of seeing not only this historical episode, but Virginia’s pivotal 1630’s decade as a fundamental and brave reckoning that resulted in two converse directions: the formation of a representative assembly that anchored Virginia’s tilt to decentralization, and a victory that would sustain the tobacco monoculture as Virginia’s long-term economic base. That the decade led the Stuarts into recognizing the reality and need for a hybrid policy system that rested on both London centralization and North American colonial self-governance.

Applying those observations to this history, I observe the role and action of the Assembly forces us to accept this early on in colonial history that the Assembly 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. In that sense Virginia pushed the Stuarts to define the parameters of colonial policy-making. Colonial self-government promised even then to be a tenuous affair. 

The recognition of self-governance, epitomized by the Assembly legitimacy, the reality that tobacco and the monoculture emerged as the true victor, and the recognition of settler property rights and land sales (and by implication English civil liberties) signaled a green light for each colony’s pursuit of its own defined economic base. But that is not all that the Harvey affair produced; it also led to the application of English civil rights to colonial North American colonies.

 

the Tyranny Thing

Indeed, it should have been clear by 1635 that the New Kent initiative was in trouble both in London and in Maryland. As a member of the Claiborne Clique, Samuel Mathews led the Virginian Company counter-push in Virginia, and likely his role in the putsch of April 28 reflected that action. Yet in our mention of Mathews thus far, I have been quick to alert the reader, in my opinion at least, “Mathews was his own man”. Throughout his very opportunistic career Mathews seems to have been for the most part respected by his contemporaries and counted a number as his friends and business associations. One suspects his personality was much the opposite of Harvey, whom by 1635 Mathews knew well for more than a decade. Mathews was about forty-five years old, and a Council of State long-tenured member since 1623 (Lyon Gardiner  Tyler, p. 48).

Well-connected through his marriages, Mathews had standing in English Court policy-making, we suspect Mathews, a certified plantation conquistador had led many an Indian raid, and had seized his fair share of Indian land–yet early on had also led him to develop ties with non-Powhatan tribes to establish a serious fur trading element in his business plan. Indeed the latter may have been his initial break through with then Governor Argall.

He seems to have survived his close connection to Argall, and worked his way into the Wyatt-Sandys Company wing. He may well have been a natural survivor–and an ideal candidate for brokering intense situations. He displayed these characteristics until his death in 1657. At no point in his life was he ever governor or deputy governor. His son was–while Samuel Sr was in London working for the Cromwell Protectorate Privy Council to negotiate a solution to Maryland-Virginia “war”. This quick biography inserted to support my belief that Mathew’s was Virginia’s prime actor in the thrusting out–as Harvey himself asserted–and Mathews was in life a complex, multi-faceted, versatile, yet respected political-economic leader of the First Migration.

That he had a rough, thuggish or militaristic bent, and was very opportunistic and ambitious to the point of being greedy and even abusive overseer of his property (including indentures) I have no doubt. He likely owned black slaves, and acquired others by marriage. He was no saint, but he was an entrepreneur and a natural leader. His defense of his role in the Harvey coup included in his letter to Wolstenholme encourages me to insert a major point he offered in defense of his participation in the coup: that Harvey violated English civil liberties and verge on tyrannical. That assertion opens up to us a dimension of Mathews that can be projected onto the and into the motivations of other in that coup.

The recent actions by Harvey (aided by his ally Secretary Kemp) raised the likelihood that an aggressive Harvey could engage gubernatorial leadership and initiative with a series of executive orders issued at the expense of the weak Virginian Greate Charter structures. That fear, likely shared by many others, conveyed the real possibility of a self-directed gubernatorial provincial policy system.

No doubt these anxieties generated their fair share of private conversations and meetings. The action Harvey took with the secret meeting of April 27th possibly both forced a reaction by his opponents, and also provided them because of the tobacco contract leak a real reason for their hard line on April 28th. But it also created a receptive audience who feared the Harvey’s version of the self-directed Virginian governorship seemed to be on hand–and that, make no mistake–threatened the oligarchy of all planters be they large or small.

Mathews in his defense presents a reasonable picture of an element that was behind the Virginian resistance to Harvey–as a threat to their civil liberties and political rights. In this I see one of the better angels of the First Migration. That Mathews and others blended this with and into their economic and political objectives one can suppose–as suggested in the Encyclopedia Virginia

“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“.

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. Yet, greed alone need not explain the coup, even the rough and tumble crowd have their rights and can assert them:  https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/county_formation_during_the_colonial_period#start_entry.

 

After discussing 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 defense ultimately rested, not just 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 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 triggered the need of the Council to send him back to England. While Mathews probably suspected the ouster or mutiny, as it was likely to be construed in England, did not apply because the coup 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. Amazingly, Mathews was taking the position Harvey was making a coup, inserting Harvey’s own self-directed, corrupt ambitions and goals as a substitute for the king’s.

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

There is no doubt events in “Maryland-New Kent” that happened in the course of the Harvey coup caused a surge, a deluge of anti-Maryland-Catholic emotion across Virginia. One cannot serious believe it had no effect on Harvey, a known and unrepented friend of Calvert, and a protégé of an official who at the time was accused of being sympathetic to Spanish and Catholics. That emotion underscored and intensified in the month of the coup, and it did so across Virginia.  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 had wishy-washed both Calvert and Claiborne, urged them to work it out, and  in the main he 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 two years after the charter was issued (1632). The demise of the Dorsett Commission and start up and relatively quick determination by its replacement, the Laud Commission, in favor of Calvert effectively ended the legal decision on the matter.

None of which stopped Claiborne and he returned to Maryland only to be fired  by Harvey as Secretary of State (February, 1634), tossed from the Council of State, and then confined to his estate-plantation. Confinement to his estate 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, later Kemp, 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 rubbed salt in Claiborne’s wounds.  Further, the arrival of Kemp gave enhanced substance to Harvey’s governance over the colony–to the detriment of the Council, heretofore mostly capable until 1635 to sidestep 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, departure of Potts and Claiborne from the Council seriously weakened 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. Hence, the pattern of Council governance, set since 1630, was checked in early 1635. Actions by the governor to support the Maryland settlement in the course of the winter of 1634-5 infuriated Virginians and the planter elites and left little doubt as to the direction of future actions.

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 to conduct 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, on the other hand, 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 were 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 fueled 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.

Final Observations and Assessments

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. Their first priority was the confirmation of their land and property titles and ownership. They did so because the land title-property issue transcended all segments in Virginia society and citizenry; that issued unified them as no other could. Their final statement, in which they threatened to “desert the place”, demonstrated how the issue was the existential third rail of the colony’s continued survival.

However, at this point it ought be noted that Samuel Mathews did, in fact, express his opinion much earlier on the matter of confirmation of the Assembly as a legislature for Virginia. He had done so, in writing, a decade earlier. As a member of the Privy Council-appointed commission to review and make a determination of the fate of the Virginia Company, Mathews was named “commissioner” on a “task force” headed by one, John Harvey. Mathews sent comments directly supporting an Assembly to the Privy Council [99]  https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/p/a/l/Jerry-M-Palmer/GENE9-0001.html. Mathews also signed the 1624 petition sent by the Virginia Assembly on that matter–Mathews was a member of the Assembly at that session.

Mathews, conflicted as he was between a central representative Assembly and his interests in the Claiborne-Virginia Company venture, wound up as the key Virginia official in England involved in the negotiation of the future deal. By 1638, I argue, it was clear the New Kent venture and the revitalized Company charter were dead ends, thus freeing Mathews to provide his muscle to future Governor Wyatt’s insistence the role of the Assembly should be included in his letters of instruction by the king.

It is thus important now for the reader to understand that, the 1635-36 decision by King and Privy Council (to send Harvey back to Virginia, issue warrants for arrest of the conspirators, and their referral to a trial), was only the first phase in the Thrusting Out resolution. Larger issues than Harvey had been raised by the “coup or mutiny”. There is some evidence that even the king saw as he was making his initial decision that not only serious dissatisfaction of the Virginians with Harvey as well as other issues such as tobacco were real and transcended Harvey and the mutiny.

 

His January 1636 decision seems to have been regarded more as an assertion of the sovereign’s ultimate authority, and the wrongheadedness of the coup participants–but not their treason. Charles it seems lost interest in the matter after the decision, and I believe he would not have done so had he regarded the action as truly treasonous. It was more complicated and to address those complications he left it, as was his style and the nature of the court policy system, to others. The nub of a final agreement regarding matters associated with the Harvey ouster was carved out through negotiations which lasted until January 1639. 

The ouster of Harvey, from my perspective, was, after January 1636,  a means to an end.