The Birth of the Virginia Policy System: the Deal and How it was Made

the Deal is Made: January 1636-January 1639

This last module in the John Harvey Series wraps up the period after the coup until the Deal was signed by Charles in January 1639. Finally, we get to see what the Deal is, and how it came to be.

We start out in Virginia describing replacement Governor John West’s year and half administration that ended when Harvey returned in January 1637. One might summarize West’s mission statement as “get while the getting is good” or “while the cat’s away, the mice will play”. That came to an end when Harvey returned.  With Harvey back in office, we’ll see if he has learned his lesson or not. He didn’t.

Harvey, officially at least, remained in office until replaced by Wyatt in 1639. The Deal that gave Harvey  his his second boot and Wyatt’s second administration was slow in coming. Charles, perhaps predictably, tried yet again to get his version of the tobacco contract through Jamestown and its Assembly. I’ll let the reader guess how that turned out. During that period things were, from Charles’s viewpoint, deteriorating in England, and Scotland, as Archbishop Laud and Charles introduced their reforms of the Anglican Church.

That deteriorating atmosphere, what policy analysts call the policy environment, negatively impacted the Virginia-relevant policy process. Accordingly, things got steadily worse through to the Deal in January 1639. The futility of renegotiating the tobacco contract and worsening negativity of policy atmosphere-environment were major factors in shaping the Deal and in the end getting the issue onto Charles’s agenda. It also greatly affected how Charles dealt with it.

The “how” of the Deal can be traced to Samuel Mathews and the sustained advocacy of the Virginia Company, plus the chronic hap-hazard misadventures of Harvey back in Virginia. These drivers of change acquired momentum and focus with the entry of former governor Francis Wyatt into the Deal’s process. Having identified a plausible candidate to replace Harvey, Wyatt and the other advocates held the floor, wrote a set of instructions for a new governor–and inserted The Deal into them. Charles was pitched to give the governorship back to former Governor Francis Wyatt, and Charles signed on in January 1636–and over to Virginia went the new Governor, second term Francis Wyatt. Charles went off to fight the Scots and Covenantor’s.

The module than finishes up by describing Wyatt’s initial actions, taking command of the situation, replacing the Harvey-Kemp administration, and cleaning up the rather soiled Virginia provincial office. We then focus on Wyatt’s implementing the Deal and integrating it into the Greate Charter system, as evolved, spanking its butt thus giving life to Virginia’s first fully-fledged colonial policy system. The Deal takes life and Wyatt takes the deserved credit for putting it together for the next governor, William Berkeley, in 1642. Berkeley takes over a system that was pretty much in place and functioning–just in time for the beginning of the English Civil War

West Administration in Virginia During the Interlude

The Council in effect elected its own (temporary) governor, John West, confirmed by legislation of the Assembly. West seizing the moment reversed Harvey’s land sales approval by the governor, and authorized opening up of the contested lands for sale. Likely a backlog existed, but the volume of approved land transfers suggest very strongly that much more was going on. “In addition to the patenting (sale) of former Indian lands, the councilors and their associates [amassed] tens of thousands of acres that formerly were [Jamestown] Company lands“-excess of 300,000 acres. Given that Charles’s legalization of company and post company land titles was three years in the future, there had to be a rolling of the dice on this massive land sale.

This was by any calculation a colossal land grab, whose principal beneficiaries were the largest planters. including the plantation conquistadors associated with Claiborne. There was some spillover to smaller landowners and venturesome immigrants but the intensity of the land grab is testimony of the planter frustration with Harvey’s land policy–especially his extreme 1634 curtailment of gubernatorial approvals of land sales patents \

Brenner reports that in the eighteen month interlude when was West acting Governor he signed 377 headright patents, with indenture patents not far behind. Pent-up land sales no doubt explains much. Utie bought 1,250 acres, Menifee, 1,200 , William Pierce 2,000 , others close to Claiborne (the Stones and Bennett) got thousands as well. A goodly number of these patents were headright patents which translated into a small-scale population boom in these years. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 144-5

With Harvey’s exit, John West became the new governor and proceeded to open the door for expansion [of settlement and tobacco plantations] In addition to the patenting of former Indian lands. the councilors and their associates in 1635 began to amass tens of thousands of acres that formerly were company lands by breaking up the [defunct] hundreds and private estates [created during the Company period, destroyed, and essentially abandoned by their investors after the 1622 Massacre]. These tracts included the Berkeley Hundred (8,000 acres), Martin’s Brandon Hundred (4,500 acres) and Southampton Hundred (200,000 acres) … Labor for these estates continued to be provided by indentured servants [i.e. headright resumed and applied to these former company lands for the benefit of their new owners] [99] Ronald . L. Heinemann, et al, Old Dominion: New Commonwealth, University of Virginia Press, 2007), p.3

The sale of the past company-owned hundreds was more in character of a large-scale eminent domain–which again benefited the “usual suspects” , either Council members or their friends and allies. In January 1637, the Council awarded the Berkeley Hundred to a London-based syndicate (composed of New Men financiers and sea captains) that included Maurice Thomson and William Tucker. This shifting of titles was a symbolic metaphor away from the Company’s Greate Charter hundreds, when Thomas Smythe, taking the lead, purchased the Berkeley hundred. The Berkeley hundred 8,000 acre -eminent domain sale was, according to Brenner, the “largest patent granted in the entire pre-Restoration period”. It didn’t take long to replicate; a little more than a month later, on March 16, 1637, Martin’s Brandon Hundred was sold to a similar syndicate with a different cast of merchant-financiers.

In fact these huge land transfers to the New Men and the largest, Council of State members–and their friends both in London and Virginia–cemented the oligarchy that had conducted the coup against Harvey, providing them critical headright benefits to bring in scarce workers into the new plantations, ensuring their ability to dominate them politically, and as we have come to expect, further confirm the tobacco monoculture and its expansion. The more foresighted Virginians may have seen in all these the final seeding of what will be the Third Powhatan War that would occur slightly more than five years hence.

What is truly remarkable is the timing of these hundreds eminent domain transfers. Harvey by that time was physically back in Virginia, and conducting his roundup of his opponents property and estates in his set up capital of Elizabeth City. The Council of State was obviously busy in Jamestown, lining its coffers before Harvey’s new members could seat themselves, and he could reassert his damaged authority over them. Most interesting to me is several of the beneficiaries were our coup conspirators, Utie and Menifee, who at this time were enroute to England for trial.

From the New Man perspective this was a power grab by Maurice Thomson who enlarged his personal network of financiers and capital to achieve scale that allowed him to compete in larger deals and lucrative trading opportunities–including efforts to tap into the British East India Company ventures. Thomson was now well on his way to becoming the acknowledged Warren Buffet of Restoration Era colonial finance. No surprise that by 1651, he was to be the unofficial author of the first Navigation Laws.

His brother-in-law, William Tucker, a Claiborne conquistador strongly silent during the ouster period–and the strongest ally of Claiborne in his New Kent venture, became his close partner. As we might remember from an earlier module, this group provided Claiborne a post-1638 pivot into the Caribbean, creating a five year or so cease fire in his war with Maryland. Several members of the syndicate were also New Kent financier (Turgis, for example participated in the Martin’s Brandon sale). Tucker would eventually return to England permanently. The New Kent investors abandoned him and had moved on. Bereft of investors, Claiborne was about to begin his chaotic but stubborn lone quest to restore New Kent and destroy Maryland in the process–a quest that would only end with his death in 1677.

What we are seeing in these transfers is something more subtle: the dissolution and shift from the New Kent venture, into Virginia’s Tidewater heartland, and a scale of capital that allowed Thomason and his associates to venture into new colonies in the West Indies, Caribbean and India and Asia. Not surprisingly, we can see Thomason and other New Men, privately sympathetic to the Puritan religion, gravitate to the parliamentary opposition, and eventually to Cromwell and his protectorate. To bring us back to earth and 1638 realities, the reader should also incorporate Robert Brenner’s summary of these land grabs:

It is unclear whether these specific groups of Londoners made these great acquisitions of land at this particular time in order to involve themselves more deeply in plantation production, or merely for speculative purposes. What is certain is that land was an excellent investment, and that the position of those merchants so near to the sources of political power left them particularly well placed to profit. The Virginia Council [of State] remained throughout this period committed to expanding the colony [and I suggest the monoculture by default], and continued to harbor a deep antagonism to the Baltimore [Maryland] Colony. Despite the Privy Council’s confirmation of the Calvert [charter] patent in April 1638, the potential for conflict remained only just below the surface. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 148

While the hundreds land transfer overlapped with the return of Harvey, the continued power of the Council of State during Harvey’s second administration suggest that, had attained a level of influence and impact in provincial decision-making that noticeably exceeded that of the pre-ouster Council. As we shall see, Harvey too had his arena of action, well beyond the confiscation of conspirator estates. The departure of West, in fact, may have sufficiently opened up Jamestown decision-making to allow the New Men and Claiborne Clique to make their pivot from New Kent to the West Indies and Virginia–Maryland.

Harvey is Back in Office

That the king was incensed at the mutineers, for such is what they were called, may have been a predictable conclusion. Harvey was able upon landing (July 14) at Plymouth to seize the trunk that carried Harwood’s missive from the Assembly, and get him and Francis Potts arrested, the latter sent to infamous London jail where he was confined for at least a year. Charles heard Harvey personally, and then referred it for a hearing which did not occur until  Dec 11, five months later. Charles, upon hearing Harvey’s report, characterized the Council members involved as mutineers, and cited their action was an assumption of royal power”, which, in his mind, justified, if not required his sending Harvey back to Virginia “if only for a day“–a curious response. He did not use the “traitor”, and his further comments implied Harvey upon his return to Virginia would have to work it out on his own.

In the meantime charges against the mutineers would be debated and heard by the Privy Council. The Council met in December, 1635, heard Harwood’s charges and characterizations of the event, and his descriptions of Harvey’s rule, likely truncated versions of the original lost upon arrival in England. The case came before the Privy Council in December, 1635. In the charges that were made against Harvey, nothing was said of the illegal and arbitrary measures that had caused the people to depose it. All references were  omitted to the detaining of the Assembly’s letter [regarding the tobacco contract], to the support given Maryland, to the abuse of the courts, to illegal taxes and proclamations” [99] Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 64

The prosecutors having stripped out key substantive issues and selected only charges and accusations that were more personal, and secondary. Harvey easily repudiated these faux charges. Harwood’s assertion that Harvey ” had so conveyed himself in Virginia, that if ever hee retourned  back thither hee would be pistolled or Shott” warned the Privy that its pending decision likely would be badly received in Virginia, and that Harvey, when he returned, was not likely to be well-treated. At that point, it is likely that Calvert weighed in and prodded Charles (at the hearing on Dec 23) to issue a warrant to bring the mutineers to England. In any event, a  petition to do such was made with Calvert as its second. These comments may have set the stage for the conspirators when they were sent to England for their trial. [99] Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 64

Harvey was acquitted, restored to his office as governor, and a second order that West, Utie, Mathews, Menefie, and Pierce, whom Harvey had designated as the ‘chief actors in the mutiny’, were commanded to come to England to appear before the [infamous] Star Chamber for the charge of treason. [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, pp. 63-64. The warrant was entrusted to Harvey to exercise upon his return to Virginia and it empowered him to arrest and send to England these conspirators. In the meantime Francis Potts remained in prison, but from there launched a series of appeals (England and Virginia) for his release, and it seems sometime in 1636 he was released. What is very interesting is that Harvey did not make  it back to Virginia until January 1737–a year later.

Although Harvey admitted during the trial he had exerted authority over the Council, the decision by the Privy Council supported Harvey’s position, but not Harvey, and it sent him back to Virginia as governor again—with new instructions which did not clearly state whether Harvey or the Council was right or wrong; it did provide a few new Council of State appointments loyal to Harvey, that when combined with the arrest of the “mutineers” would have altered the decision-making by that body. Harvey was still left to deal with the large body of dissatisfied councilors, Assembly representatives and residents. To my way of thinking, it was a decision to let the locals figure it out for themselves.

Charles, during the course of 1635, faced various other matters of serious concern, likely this particular one competed for his time and attention. He certainly had been advised by various of his councilors, and petitioned by a good number of individuals of influence in Virginia, his Court and Privy Council. His reactions to the incident and Harvey’s accusations at Harvey’s Dec 11th Hearing are recorded by the Privy Council secretary [99] Virginia History Magazine, “Virginia 1635” (Vol VII) p. 404. His recorded comment, that “it is the assumption of legal power to send hither the governor, which is the nature of the fault. They King will not punish it too far as [illegible]”.

Accordingly, Harvey was sent back as governor with the additional recorded Privy Council comment: “the King as Yet resolved he thinks it necessary to send the governor back, though he stay but only a day, …[unless] he can clear himself, then he shall stay the longer than otherwise his Majesty would have continued them” [p. 404]. Accordingly, Harvey was sent back as governor with the additional recorded Privy Council comment: “the King as Yet resolved he thinks it necessary to send the governor back, though he stay but only a day, …[unless] he can clear himself, then he shall stay the longer than otherwise his Majesty would have continued them” [p. 404]

The Privy Council resolution ordered not only the arrest of Councilors Mathews, Utie, West, and William Pierce, but empowered Harvey to seize their property to pay for any expenses associated with the incident. As to Harvey, “Harvey was able to collect some of his back pay … He was ordered [however] to pay out of his own pocket all the losses he had sustained by the affair, although he was authorized to collect an equivalent amount from the estates of the mutinous Councilors SHOULD (mine) they be convicted. In a later action he consented to the removal of Thomas Hinton from the Council of State, on the account of his having spoken inappropriately to Harvey. The Harvey matter for all practical purposes, however, generated no further decisions or notes by the Privy Council through 1637. It seems to have fallen off the table until the early 1639 decisions were recorded.

If this were a serious mutiny deserving of treason, why the silence and inaction?

At this point it becomes unclear why Harvey did not leave England quickly. There is evidence he remained in England as late as October, 1636. The reason most cited for the delay was that Harvey, probably in lieu of the lack of military support to accompany him, insisted upon a royal military ship to transport him; such a vessel would convey the full commitment of the king to his resumption of office. Absent military protection, Harvey justifiably was anxious concerning the reaction of the natives. A ship was arranged but only after some months had passed.  Named the “Black George“, the ship took on water immediately upon its departure, and returned to port the same day. Harvey had to front most of the costs associated with the debacle and he had to seek another ship to make his return. So another period of time elapsed before a merchant ship became available, and on it Harvey sailed. That probably was late fall-early winter 1636.

Harvey reached Virginia January 18 1637. He left as a prisoner on May 23rd, 1635, so he was absent for a good year and a half–during which time John West was governor.

Post 1637: Harvey’s Second Administration

Harvey, upon his arrival in January 1637, wasted no time confiscating the mutineers  property and possessions. “And wee the like to you Sirs” Harvey may have said as he sent them packing on the next boat (except for Peirce who had already left for England), to be tried for their actions. It is not likely Harvey took the entirety of their Virginia holdings, but he did seize  Mathew’s personal estate–which was held-owned by the children of Mathew’s deceased first wife, evicting his second wife–more on that shortly. Harvey also seized Mathew’s eight slaves. https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/p/a/l/Jerry-M-Palmer/GENE9-0001.html

Mathews, as near as I can figure, stayed in England for nearly two years, and so his unconfiscated properties were seriously impaired. That suggests Mathews activities in negotiating the Deal came at some consequence to his fortunes. It seems in September 1637, upon their petition to the royal Attorney General, that Utie and Menifee, upon payment of a bail, were released and allowed to return to Virginia with the proviso they need return if further action were made. Probably at that time Francis Potts was released from jail. One can assume that from this period on, formal action against the mutineers was unlikely. With the return of Utie, Potts, and Menifee, two of which still retained their Council seats, that Harvey’s sphere of action was reduced. https://www.genealogy.com/ftm/p/a/l/Jerry-M-Palmer/GENE9-0001.html. 

When Harvey arrived he proceeded, not to the capital Jamestown, but put in at Pointe Comfort, a military post, and set up his capital at nearby Elizabeth City. Jamestown, I would wager, the home base of his adversaries, did not suit Harvey as he began his second gubernatorial administration. Armed with the instructions to detain West, Utie, Mathews, Pierce, and Menifee he did so and in short order packed them off on their slow boat to England. Excluding these fine folks, Harvey issued a pardon for others that participated in the ousting, but formal actions aside, he sustained personal campaigns against selected officials-residents he deemed complicit in the ouster..

Armed with Charles’s appointment of several new members to the Council, Harvey had for the first time a tentative working majority, which met in Elizabeth City. He also appointed several sheriffs, and over a short period ousted a number of officials in local government who presumably were not supportive of him (geographically they were in the southern counties and Accomack, the latter Claiborne territory. Having stabilized his governance capacity, Harvey began to exercise authority to implement an agenda largely of his making.

Historians believe Harvey did not learn much from the Thrusting Out. Wertenbaker reports the “thrusting out” did not cause Harvey to become more prudent in the administration of government… it seem to have interpreted it as a license for greater tyranny. If the accusations of his enemies may be credited, he went to the greatest extremes in oppressing the people, and defying their laws. With the Council now completely under his control, he was master of the [county] courts, and inflicted great many wrongs by means of ‘arbitrary and illegal proceedings in judgement … confiscations ,,, most cruel oppressions … unjust fines which they converted  ‘to their own private use” and … to strike terror into the people with whippings and cutting of ears” [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 65

Probably the most notorious offense was his treatment of clergyman, Anthony Paxton. Paxton quarreled with Secretary Kemp, Harvey’s closest associate, and in the course of conversation Paxton called Kemp a “jackanapes” (an impertinent person), “unfit for the place of secretary“, and noting that Kemp’s hair was tied up with a ribbon “as old as Saint Paul’s“. With these kind observations, the parson was arrested, brought to trial and charged with “mutinous speeches and disobedience to Sir John Harvey”. He was found guilty and fined with a ruinous sum of 500 pounds, forced to apologize to every parish in Virginia, and banished from the colony under pain of death if he returned–and the same to any who assisted him.

We do know that Harvey confiscated the estates of the absent conspirators, with particular vindictiveness against Mathews–whom he held responsible for the ousting. Harvey confiscated goods, cattle, and their indentured servants in addition to his estates. Publicly declaring that he would not leave Mathews with “more than a cow’s tail”, he promoted a series of law suits by others who secured judgments against Mathews for actions he had taken against them–some of these dating back well over a decade. Confiscating the estates of those who were sent to England that proved his undoing.

When Mathews heard [while in England] that his estate had been seized, and ‘havoc made thereof’, he entered complaint with the Privy Council [that, of course, authorized the seizure], and secured an order requiring Harvey to restore all to his agents in Virginia. But the governor was most reluctant to give up his revenge upon his old enemy. For seven months he put off the agents, and at last told them he had received new orders from the Privy Council, expressing satisfaction with what had been done and bidding him proceed [Harvey did not respond  to England until January 1639].

Thereupon Secretary Kemp and other friends of the Governor entered Mathew’s house, broke open the doors of several chambers [rooms], and carried away apart of his goods and eight of his servants [black slaves]. Soon after, however, Harvey received positive commands from the Privy Council to make an immediate restoration of all that had been taken. In January 1639 he wrote that he had obeyed their Lordships exactly, by calling a court and turning over to Mathews many of his belongings. But Harvey denied that he had ever appropriated the estate for his own use [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p.65.

Washburn is a bit more charitable, if slightly more accurate.

On the basis of unjustified or unsupported charges concerning Harvey’s alleged misappropriation of the mutinous Councilors’ estates, which had been seized for the King pending their trial, the King on May 25th 1637, ordered these estates returned to their owners. Harvey complied immediately as far as four of the Councilors were concerned, but he had already allowed legal action to be directed against Mathews’ estate by those who had claims against Mathews, and judgements had been made in favor of the plaintiffs. When the English government heard he had not turned back Mathews’ property, it promptly ordered that he do so without delay, which order Harvey then tried to put into effect as best he could. The damage had been done, however, and the impression created that he had willfully misappropriated Mathews’ property and disobeyed the King’s commands [99] Wilcomb E. Washburn, Virginia Under Charles I and Cromwell, 1625-1660, p.14

Thus by the end of 1638 Harvey was already on the ropes

 The Deal Evolves

Our so-called “Deal” is well known and acknowledged in Virginia history.

The deal unsimply put is that Charles acknowledged the legitimacy, i.e. his acceptance of its existence and function, of the Assembly, in particular its elective representative House of Burgesses. Functionally that meant Virginia possessed organs and institutions capable of self-government, subject to the King, Parliament and English law. A representative Burgesses would meet each year, and reflective of our contemporary political institutions, Virginia finally possessed a “little legislature’ that could manage its own affairs, agenda, leadership and schedule its own sessions, beyond the required annual session. Of all provincial political bodies, only the Burgesses was elected by a franchised electorate resident in a county. Two representatives were elected from each county.

Relegated today as a side issue, the King in the same instructions, also granted legality to all company and post-company land sales and property titles, thereby secured the existing land and workforce holdings of a free Virginian and an English investor. Of immediate impact, this last act rendered Virginia as a functioning permanent settlement in the New World. This legality of land and property ownership was fundamental to Virginia’s economic base which had been in watchful and apprehensive suspense since 1624. I may also add it removed a serious tension and anxiety that underlay the post-Company relationship with London and the sovereign. The legitimacy of future land in return for indentured labor was validated; the impact on Virginia’s future immigration was considerable.

Virginia 1639, is by no means a functioning democracy. Virginia’s social unequal configuration was to some extent taken into account as  most of its residents were not free white adult males who could vote, but indentured servants. There was no property requirement for voting, but there was for holding office (Burgesses). Adult women–and Indians/Blacks who could not.

In my mind Virginia’s policy system finally began to function.

Here’s half the story behind the birth of Virginia’s policy system: the King’s 1637-38 Tobacco Contract

Since Charles had made his pivot away from a revamped charter with the Virginia Company, heralded and personified in his appointment of the Laud Commission in mid-1634, his constant need for funds hugely aggravated by the deteriorating politics within Britain/Parliament elevated his perceived need to revamp the “Virginia tobacco contract”. He launched a new version of it in 1634, and that as we saw in the previous module led to, in a curious way albeit, the thrusting out of our Governor Harvey. As events deteriorated in Virginia during 1635 nothing on that matter was resolved. Thus the revamp of the tobacco contract temporized in 1635 it came back with a vengeance in 1636 through 1638.

As I discussed in the thrusting out module, a mind-bending host of dynamics, events, personalities came together in an gordian knot of untangle able interwoven complexity, and the tobacco contract as well as its underlying tobacco monoculture blended and blurred into other dynamics such as land/property titles, the empowerment of the legislature and Virginia self-government in the hybrid policy system, and Maryland impact on Virginia. The Virginia Company’s last hurrah efforts were like a match in a gunpowder factory–as was Harvey’s governance style and personality. By the time we get to 1636-39 any serious effort to make one or another dynamic as primary is a pure waste of time; in the minds of the participants, the were so interconnected they rolled off the “mental bubble” of the policy-makers of that period.

So it bears repetition to recite Craven’s observation: for him he sensed the “planter’s hardening opposition to the revival of the Company [the Claiborne/New Men Magazine-based business plan especially] and their apprehension over the disregard of the Heath [North Carolina} and Baltimore [Maryland] land grants of the boundaries fixed by the second Virginia [Company] charter. Issuance of the Maryland charter was followed promptly by renewal by the colonists plea for some royal confirmation of their own estates and rights”. The Assembly in 1634 actually hired Captain William Bulton as their lobbyist to press English decision-makers to such action.

He met with some success, as the Privy Council in a restatement of governor’s instructions [a temporary action valid only until superseded by other instructions] which provided legal comfort to titles issued after 1625. That the action was soon (1637) linked to the appointment by the King of a new treasurer whose primary instructions was to collect quitrents rendered the seeming compromise a mixed bag. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, 1607-1689 (Louisiana State University Press, 1970), pp. 175-6. From the perspective of the Virginians, the Burgesses especially, there was still work to be done on this matter and they continued in the lead to advocate and stand their ground.

The tentative nature of these qualified adjustments only, I suggest, intensified the need perceived by Virginians of the empowerment and setting of relationships among the Greate Charter political institutions. The Assembly-Burgesses, but also the Council (feeling no doubt the reappointment of Harvey) likely saw considerable merit in that reform, and it likely moved up a notch by 1637-8–and likely also noticed and shared by Samuel Mathews still resident in England and pressing for action there. With that in the background we now insert the tobacco contract revision which had lain dormant as far as perceived by Virginians through 1636, returned to the fore in 1637-1638.

If there were any consistencies in the early Stuart’s attention to Virginia, it had to have included tobacco. From the beginning, James I favored a diversified economic base in Virginia, and his son on that matter at least did not fall far from his father’s tree. With the recent 1634 tobacco initiative in some sort of limbo, it reappeared in mid-late 1636. What may have activated that issue yet again, was John Harvey’s recapitulation of what he had observed in Virginia in the form of a “report” sent to the king in 1636. Harvey wrote the report while in England, it may explain partly his delay in returning to Virginia) while awaiting the Black George Harvey sent it to the king [cited in Roper. p. 114, Sir John Harvey to Secretary of State Windebank, on 26 June 1636, CO 1/9ff 40-1.

Included in his comprehensive set of observations was Harvey’s complaint that tobacco as a currency caused serious disruptions in Virginia’s economy and reduced her value to England as a colony.  Harvey called for “the issuance of farthing tokens” as a replacement for tobacco as a currency. More importantly, in his description of those who ousted him, he tied them and their actions to a mentality that had developed from their obsession with accumulation of wealth through tobacco. Through that mentality the plant spread through the colony, to the detriment of the latter. That obsession prompted their roguish behavior and unnecessarily unbalanced the Virginian economy and its political and economic development. Most contemporary commentators would agree with that assessment:

Harvey laid the blame for the colony’s failings, partly on ‘irregular government’, chiefly arising from covetous and grasping disposition that strives to plant such vast and excessive quantities [of tobacco], so base and ill-conditioned [poor quality], that for some particular gains [profit] they hazard the common good of the whole plantation [colony], and bring such low esteem and value upon their tobacco. This behavior, and the attitude that underpinned it, brought minimal return for both the planters and the government” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, p. 114.

This concern with the effects of the monoculture on politics, economy, and the “culture” of its elites played into Charles’ feelings regarding tobacco as a sort of hydra-headed monster whose revenues he badly needed, yet whose implications and complications distorted his colony’s economy, which in its turn further reduced its capacity to supply revenues for his purposes. Charles disliked the weed probably as much as his father (he may have smoked it on occasion) and without doubt he wanted more from Virginia than tobacco exports.

In any event Harvey’s letter stoked his, by now chronic, effort to secure more revenue out of the tobacco export to England. The reader remembers that his attempt in 1634 to impose a plan and a price to tobacco, a plan which forbade the use of Dutch shipping, and required (diversification)s the planting of corn and staples to ensure the colony could feed itself and not be dependent on goods and staples imported from the Dutch. His new initiative did not deviate wildly from that proposal.

It was the reaction to this proposal-tobacco contract restructuring that the Assembly had drafted its negative (and “saucy”) response to the king which Governor Harvey had substituted with his own version of the missive. Implied in this plan, which went by default into effect, were actions and policies over which he had limited to no capacity to enforce. This had always been the killer of the king’s effort to secure revenues, be it from stopping smuggling or regulating the “farming” of customs. In short, no matter what his plan for the tobacco contract, he was unable to get more out of it, and in its perverse way further encouraged the Virginians to act on their own, export as they will, and to make matters worse simply overproduce their product and fail to inspect or to ensure marketable quality, that the price had been in extreme decline for the entire decade.

So in 1636 the king launched yet a new initiative, actually a rehash of his previous efforts to impose a tobacco contract on Virginia that provided him both control over its actors (appointment of customs farmers for example), and the revenues forthwith derived from import (customs duties). Charles, however, enlarged his vision and extended the tobacco contract proposal to include not only Virginia, but the West Indies, Caribbean and Bermuda (Virginia’s sister Virginia Company colony). He once again banned trade using Dutch shipping–the violation of which would “result in the intervention of the Privy Council” (a sort of “when Dad gets home he will spank the living daylights out of you”). And once again we are off and running with tobacco.

A missive from Whitehall was issued in April 1637, in which the king collapsed his tobacco reform into “Five Propositions” to which the reader is referred to L. H. [99] Roper’s, Charles I, Virginia and the Idea of Atlantic History” (Itinerarto, Vol. XXX (2006), No. 2), p. 33. His Five Propositions reached Virginia in 1637 and no doubt sparked some discussion. As Roper posits these Anglo-American Virginians “seeking the advertised opportunities in the ‘New World’ continued to draw on the ‘Old World’ both for their conceptions on how to construct a society and [in our case] how to achieve social and political ends: through seemingly incessant manoeuvring by forming factions, currying favour with patrons, and developing their own patronage networks” [99] Charles I, p34.

Once again, Charles on February 20, 1638 ordered the House of Burgesses to be called into session (the last time ever}–and sent the reminder to Virginians in this order that he wanted more diversification beyond tobacco in Virginia. From the Virginian perspective these Five Propositions were both a set of export injunctions, and a stern lecture. Charles observed that Virginians had been particularly deficient, compared to other colonies in their export practices, and less than diligent in feeding themselves– the latter had greatly influenced their need to illegally use Dutch shipping. It was time therefore for Virginia to start immediately on producing staples and developing a goods-producing economic base.

First, and foremost it complained that the Dutch had “taken advantage of your necessities, and by the equal brunt of wines, victuals, and other commodities, make a prey of the tobacco and crop of the plantations, not only to our subject’s great loss in their livelihoods, but to the prejudice of such duties and profits that should rebound unto us upon the same“. Roper observes that no other colonial Assembly had been called into session to discuss the Five Propositions–and that this appears to have been the last time in English colonial history any king used a colonial assembly to support and implement his orders and policies. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658, pp. 114-15

Roper further suggests Charles’ 1638 “tobacco scheme” “followed a tactic Charles had employed somewhat successfully in Ireland. This involved securing legislation from the Virginia House of Burgesses that would have “approved the reformation of the tobacco trade by collecting exports in set locations, limiting production, and maintaining quality control, agreeing in advance how much the colony would export, providing relief from creditors such as [Maurice] Thompson, and setting a monopolistic contract under which the colony’s tobacco would be bought [set the price] that would hamper Dutch smugglers.[99] L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge University Press,2017), p.59

Harvey, of course, carried all of these missives with him on his return, and per the king’s order the Assembly was called into session in the spring of 1638. The reaction of the Assembly, as summarized by Charles A. Andrews, was simply one more negative response, for pretty much the same reasons, as had occurred since at least since 1629. It was clear, as Andrews’ observes that the position of the Assembly was in very fundamental ways directly opposed to the position order ordered by the king.

So dependent were the colonies on this staple for their maintenance that it became at this early period the one most important subject of controversy with with the mother country [I might also suggest Maryland]. The very idea of a [tobacco] contract was a ‘terror and a discouragement’ to those, who as the assembly wrote the king, had ‘laboured in the confused pathes of those labyrinths’. Probably in the year 1628 the easing of the tobacco situation was quite as important to the planters as was the reestablishment of the popular assembly, and the fixing of a satisfactory price, the prohibition of of the English and foreign tobacco, and the abolition of the contract as far as the [Virginians] were concerned were the conditions deemed most likely to bring relief to the colony. The planters were strongly opposed to the requirement that all tobacco be sent to England only, and frequently asked that the privilege of sending [exporting] to the best market, that is to Holland, be restored. But this request was always emphatically refused …” Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. I, the Settlements (Yale University Press, 1934, 1968),  p. 211

Specifically, in 1638, the Assembly “never seemed to have acted upon any of the king’s propositions for regulation, other than to offer counter-proposals, centering on the maintenance of free trade which they insisted would provide the best basis for furthering the prosperity of their colony. They also doubted the other tobacco-producing colonies would cooperate in the formulation of a general policy” [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, p. 115. Indeed, this response to the 1638 tobacco contract initiative was not followed up “by the patent to mint farthings [and] instead, the Burgesses generated a battery of fulsome remonstrances that generated, in turn, a more laconic reply from Governor Harvey, and his Council.  This, of course, was to the consternation of Harvey who chastised them for “serving their own ends” and failing to comply with the king’s policy. As Roper reports, Harvey made known he saw “no alternative [than] dissolving the assembly and conveying your disobedience to the king”‘

Roper asserts that if the Assembly continued in its obstinance and it appears in no serious way did the five Propositions change the minds of the Burgesses. Roper does admit the Assembly did pass legislation that once again attempt to regulate the quality of tobacco before exportation–which according to Harvey suffered the same fate as previous such regulations. As to staple diversification Roper reports Harvey as saying it went nowhere (‘sticks still”), and he believes Harvey himself took no action on that topic.

What are we to make of this? Simply, although he king clearly expressed his opposition to the lack of diversification within Virginia’s economic base, the Assembly as an institution, and its members as individuals simply ignored the proposition and continued along their former path. Likewise they publicly opposed the king’s opposition to use of Dutch ships, and in practice they continued that as well. As to effective self-regulation on the quality and amount of tobacco produced, the Assembly responded in the fashion of the past–and individual compliance with the intent of the legislation was seemingly minimal.

In my mind, the only winner in this exchange was the Virginia tobacco monoculture, which in the spirit of the Mississippi River “just kept on rolling along”. It did so, of course, with the financing and expertise of England’s New Men who were seemingly as beyond the effective control of Charles as was the Virginia planter. As we shall soon see in future modules, the New Men had already begun to make their pivot to the parliamentary-Puritan side, and they would by the middle to late 1640’s have taken the side of Parliament and later Cromwell. The times were certainly changing. Roper, in Charles I reminds us that this rejection of the tobacco contract, as had been the entire thrusting out affair were:

symptomatic of a profound disorganization of European [English]  society in an American setting that revealed in turn a new configuration of forces which shaped the origins of American politics, the strike against Harvey actually demonstrates the political sophistication in his enemies, despite the apparent material and cultural shortcomings in their “old World” backgrounds. It also illustrates the complete integration of the leading Virginians into the early modern English socio-politico world [99] Charles I, Virginia and the Idea of Atlantic History, p.40.

What i believe followed is this dialogue, and the frustrating resistance it engendered, carried through to a great part of 1638. The drift of English (and Scots) politics was toward the Scottish invasion which was to shortly follow. While I have no evidence to cite, it is likely Virginia, always in the margins of discussion, fell off the agenda of Charles entirely. It is under this atmosphere that we can sense that Harvey never having been close to Charles, drifted more to the margins and Harvey, if anything had been somewhat discredited and certainly had proved unable to forge a governing consensus in Virginia. As the wrong man for the job of managing Virginia while Charles was consumed with other matters, a new governor was called for.

I hope it is little surprise to the reader that the tobacco monoculture gets caught up with the birth of Virginia’s policy system. Don’t mistake me, the tobacco monoculture did not “cause” the birth, nor is it merely “associated” with it, but rather the closeness of the economy and the economic base to the formation, operation, and decline of a policy system (and vice versa) is as close to a universal law of political economy as one can get. Interestingly, the monoculture, having beaten him in his attempt to impose his version of the tobacco contract in 1637-8, played a serious role in the final decision by Charles to sign off on the deal.

And, less known, was the role of the Virginia Assembly, the “spokesperson” for the monoculture, provides key support to our position that the Assembly, viewed as the collective spokesperson of Virginia’s local hierarchy, the counties chiefly, had fully embraced that role in 1638, and for that matter a decade previous. As we shall see the obstinance of the Assembly to the King’s proposal to restructure the tobacco contract in 1638 was arguably the last straw for Charles, and in frustration he made his peace with his colony and allowed it to develop its half of the hybrid colonial system, in the process legitimizing the foundations of Virginia’s colonial policy system.

Its partner, the Council of State, no shirker in its closeness to the monoculture, strongly mixed into its motivations its desire to limit the power of the governor, and to inject that the governor ought, if not “one of them”, participate in Virginia’s economic base to the extent he shared their interests and concerns. Lost in this, of course, is Harvey’s royal governor job description. From this point on, any royal governor who seriously followed that job description was in trouble as far as  a smooth and productive administration. Extending its reach into the English policy-making system, Samuel Mathews in particular, and to be fair William Claiborne, were apparently key to negotiating the deal that replaced Wyatt with William Berkeley, ensuring the carryover of “the Deal” into the new administration.

The tobacco “reality in Virginia” was that each planter to some degree was able to raise tobacco and export it on his own terms. That could mean selling it to the Dutch, shipping it on a Dutch vessel, or smuggling it into the Caribbean and West Indies. If he secured his staples by trade (with Dutch New York) or Powhatan raids/conquest that was his affair as far as Jamestown was concerned. If some plantation conquistadors wanted trade with the tribes for fur, that too was their enterprise. New Kent through 1638 was still in operation.

Inspection and quality improvements to increase price and marketability seems to have been unevenly applied, and tobacco’s use as a currency in Virginia was a convenient back door. Imagine if you could grow dollar bills.  The use of tobacco as a currency meant that no matter one’s business, tobacco production had to be a part of it. Merchants traded in tobacco and customers paid their bills with it; artisans and professionals were likewise invested in tobacco as part of their business operations.  Say it in other words, there were few viable alternatives to tobacco in Virginia–that was the reality of the monoculture.

Virginia’s public regulation of tobacco aimed either at improving the quality, or reducing the quantity of tobacco produced. Neither objective commanded the attention of growers. The inspection stations, which were lodged outside of Jamestown, in key shipping points could be bypassed if the planter had a mind to do it. Dutch ships sailed up to the plantation, and the annual tobacco fleet was by no means 100% of Virginia’s export to England. The annual “tobacco fleet” captured only a portion of Virginia’s production, and whatever reforms were made, they did not materially impact the price of tobacco. There was little sympathy to these regulations and inspections and quality gave way to increased volume, whatever the quality.

The import nexus in England, its customs farmers et al, were themselves a rather leaky group, able to manipulate their imports for profit and dodge the fees and taxes in varying degrees. In other words, the gap between royal colonial policy and actual behavior was quite large in this period–and Virginians were well aware there were bypasses to each of the king’s dictates.

the Other Half of the Story: Charles 1637-38 Court Policy Process

I make no claims regarding my expertise in English history, this period or any other. For what it is worth my research leads me to believe the early Stuarts were more committed to the “idea” of colonization, but adverse to its “management”. James and even Charles prioritized Irish colonialization, and the New Men inspired projects about as opportunities opened up. On occasion each talked the Virginia talk, but seldom did the sovereign walk the walk. The words were there, but they did not always match the actions and discussions regarding various policies; for example the “tobacco contract” can easily leave the reader with the wrong impression of what is actually going on. Virginia’s tobacco growers were pretty much running their own show.

The king never committed himself to Virginia. When an event or issue arose, it was used to further the king’s other agenda priorities, or to maintain a coalition of support in his vendetta against parliament and his campaign to rectify the Anglican church–Maryland grant to Calvert is another example (or the Northern Neck later in the 1640’s).  Even Claiborne’s New Kent commission of trade was granted through the backdoor policy process, propped open by Brenner’s New Men and their aristocratic allies-investors.

As we discovered earlier, likely a major element in the king’s unwillingness to commit to Virginia’s self-government, was that after his initial suspension of the Virginia Company’s Virginia-related charter, restoring the amended charter remained in the back of his mind. Delegation of day-to-day governance was left to the administrative entity du jour, and to the royal governor, who until 1630 was a “native Company era-Virginian”. At no point did he seriously step to the plate with financing, even in the desperate days of the 1622 Massacre. The idea of sending English redcoats over to Virginia was out of the question–for all practical purposes they only appeared when Cromwell exerted his Protectorate, or when Berkeley had to be saved from Bacon’s Rebellion. The more committed colonialization of North America would have to wait for the Hanoverians.

As Roper correctly observes whatever one read on paper, the Stuart colonial administration lacked capacity to implement its programs and priorities. It was in this fashion that Virginia, and their Assembly was able to respond to the King’s tobacco contract policies with counter programs of their own–which, even if rejected, often meant the locals could find their way to do what it was they wanted.

This reality and the behavior behind early Stuart colonialization, I suggest, did not elicit any drive to autonomy and independence from England; rather. if anything the Americans wanted their autonomy to advocate more effectively for their security, prosperity, and flexibility to deal with the realities of the North American wilderness. Up to this point is the early English hybrid colonial policy system was more reactive than proactive, lacked a sense of direction even it it had formulated some goals and directions. The capacity needed to govern their colonies was not yet in place, and the polarized politics-culture of an England heading into the jaws of a civil war commanded more attention than the colonies ever could.

Colonialization, and Virginia specifically, was brought to the attention of the king, and he seldom initiated a comprehensive policy, save, of course, his infamous tobacco contract. which was hopelessly tied to his ever-constant search for revenues to pay his bills and conduct his other policy ventures. In the thirties, Charles I was most concerned about religious matters, as reflected in his Laud Commission; that polarized England’s religious community by 1637-9. Calvert and Maryland fit more easily into this frame of mind than Anglican Virginia.

Into this London-hybrid colonial policy system vacuum seeped (1) Charles’s “court” policy sub-system; (2) the scuffle he was having with Parliament which although suspended intruded into Charles’s court policy-making; and the increasingly divergent opposition to him emanating from places like the City of London, Scotland, the secondary port cities such as Bristol and their metropolitan areas. Charles may have still be in charge, but the system, I sense was breaking down in 1637-9. Charles closely held court policy system, not only suffered from intrusions from the above but also fractured into almost unrestrained self-interested parties achieving a measure of influence, however temporary or narrow, to bend court policy to their advantage.

The Privy Council, flanked and infiltrated by the Laud Commission, still held remnants of the defunct Company-prone Dorsett Commission, factions manipulated by Harvey’s protégé, Windebank, representatives of the New Men, and the ever-present groupings associated with the Virginia Company. We should not neglect the presence of the upper hierarchies of English custom farmers, the textile merchant adventurers, the Irish-Scottish “undertakers”, and the rising merchant kingpins who gained access into the King’s plumpest pork barrel. Somewhere also we must find room for the upper classes, nobles and knighted whose heritage seeped into the strangest of spots (I am now thinking of William Berkeley who is a member of this court policy system, hovering about with his bright idea (and poetry) of how to carve out a piece of the pie).

So into this permeable, niche and cranny-laden policy-making system, we start with a most unlikely wanderer. Out on bail, ready for action and armed with an agenda, is our favorite Virginian plantation conquistador, slaveholder and mutineer Samuel Mathews, a First Migration thug of thugs.

Mathews: Is He and his Wife Behind the Curtain?

At this point we return to England and focus on Samuel Mathews. Mathews, upon arrival in England (spring 1637), had been, along with the other co-conspirators, pretty much on their own, without arrest or confinement placed on bail, to do as they pleased, with whom they pleased. Each conspirator stayed with their relatives, and, as one might expect, did the rounds to alert English decision-makers that “all was not well in Virginia”–and Harvey was making things intolerable.  Wertenbaker reports that once on bail the mutineers played an active role in the Court and in the merchant community to counter Harvey and advance their position.

He asserts that within months they had secured access and “the active support of the sub-committee of the Privy Council to which Virginia affairs were usually referred” [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 66. Roper confirms these contacts, naming Wolstenholme, Sir John Zouch, “as well as Samuel Vassall and Maurice Thompson, “counterparts of Wolstenholme and Zouch at the head of the capital’s merchant community” (p. 110). While they awaited some reaction from the Star Court, or for that matter anybody, Menifee and Utie attained permission to return home, pledging their return to England if required. Leaving Mathews behind, these conspirators likely carried the fight back to “old Virginny”.

Those unreported conversations/meetings, unknown to historical record, lead me to believe Mathews, by dint of his leadership and vulnerability as coup leader, because of personal retribution of Harvey against his estates, and finally by virtue of his own connections, took the lead in continuing negotiations to oust Harvey. Whether or not he took a larger position on Virginia self-governance at this point, I do not know. At some point over the next year, the issue entered into the negotiations. I suspect that Mathews diligently pursued the return of his estate and possessions, and probably advocated on behalf of his new wife’s brother who had probably been arrested, tried and banished by Harvey. Likely he cultivated support for the replacement of Harvey and joined with Company leaders in advancing Wyatt as a candidate.

While there is much about Mathews we do not know, we do know Mathews, made a career from his very strategic marriages. He had just married again in 1634. His first wife, Frances Grenville, formerly the wife of Nathaniel West (another of De La Warre’s brothers) and Abraham Peirsey, Cape Merchant) passed in 1633. From that marriage, his co-conspirator and Acting Governor John West was a brother-in-law. Mathews had two children, and they inherited the estate that their mother had brought into the marriage. The children proved to be serious adversaries and repelled Harvey’s confiscation legally.

In 1634. (Mathews (54) married Sarah Hinton (about 30), brother of Thomas Hinton another member of the Council of State. Thomas Hinton, it seems, was an active participant in the coup, although his specific role is not known to me. Harvey, however, confirms by his actions that Hinton was indeed his enemy. Sarah’s noble heritage could be traced back to Henry II; her father Thomas, a wealthy MP, was extraordinarily well connected in Court politics. His death in 1635, of course, empowered his sons and daughter, as the successors to his wealth and estates. They were well-placed and were well-motivated to provide some assistance to Mathews.

Sarah’s younger brother was, at the time, the Court Physician to the Catholic Queen of England, Henrietta Maria.  Sarah, residing on Mathew’s estate, had been thrown out of her home, in seemingly rough order, by Richard Kemp on orders from Harvey. In short, Sarah was well-motivated, to secure access and a respectable hearing from key policy-makers and influencers.  One might wonder, for instance, if the Queen might have had something to say to His Majesty on Mathews’ possible trial for treason in the Star Chamber.

Added to this, it is likely Mathews, who knew former governor Wyatt well and had since 1623 served with him on the Council of State and as plantation conquistador. Wyatt, after his return to England in 1626, served and was active on expired Dorsett Commission, and was also close to the Sandy’s Virginia Company faction, as Edwin’s brother George (deceased at this time) was Wyatt’s father-in-law. Wyatt, of aristocratic background, became a player in the negotiations during 1638. We shall return to him shortly.

In any event, those in England continued to receive reports concerning Harvey throughout this critical year. English merchants, in particularly, were incensed by Harvey’s imposed fee on tobacco export and immigrants, and a requisition of powder and shot from the ships that docked in Virginia. Aggrieved merchants argued this cost the King revenues and frustrated trade in general, and Harvey consequently was sent orders demanding a formal accounting of these proceeds, and an explanation for the imposition of what were construed as “duties”. In imposing a tax unilaterally Harvey had likely exceeded his authority, one that belong to the king alone.

Harvey responded, defending his action, and urging the complaints be disregarded. To us this action seems small, but Harvey was messing with the King’s tobacco contract while it was in the midst of contention with the Assembly, and, in any case was a source of his much-needed revenues for his new Scottish situation. Harvey had not been authorized to take such action and had no authority on his own to do so. In other words, Harvey’s executive order had backfired. In case, the hostility of the merchant-custom farmers gave life to the irritation. and kept it inflamed within the court during the year.

But the 800 lb. gorilla in the Virginia decision-making process during this period had to have been the not-inconsiderable support Mathews, Claiborne and his Clique, were able to muster in London. Brenner reports that “when the Councilors’ conflict with Harvey was brought to the attention of the royal government in 1635, the Virginia Company [formally] not only petitioned the privy council on their behalf, but did so on the basis of precisely the same set of grievances and demands as the councilors had presented“. The leverage the Company still enjoyed in the Privy Council, while clearly not sufficient to secure a charter revision from the king, was concentrated enough to affect the decision-making in a Privy Council subcommittee responsible for the management of Virginia affairs.

Throughout Virginia colonial history, the parties to any dispute who were in London to urge their side had a great advantage. So Mathews, Utie, Pierce, and Francis Pott, after they secured their liberty under bail, devoted their time to undermining Sir John at Court. The Governor charged that they planted spies in all parts of the city to invite persons who had just arrived from Virginia into taverns, treated them to wine to make them talkative, and got them to state their grievances. So they poured out the stories of Harvey’s confiscations, extortions, whippings, and pressure on the courts of justice. As the evidence against Harvey piled up, the exiles gained the support of the subcommittee of the Privy Council to whom colonial affairs were usually referred. [99] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Give Me Liberty: the Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia (the American Philosophical Society, 1958), p. 51

Brenner further observed that Harvey himself in his written defense. while in England, attacked and charged the Company “had opposed him all along” and specifically named Sir John Wolstenholme. Harvey’s written defense is rife with accusations that it was the Company that had fermented the ouster, and that it was a part of their effort to restore the Company charter. [99] Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 144. As we have discussed earlier, from the start Harvey had confronted the Company–and vice versa–, and now with him ousted then reinstated as governor, the Company intensified its efforts against Harvey. With its considerable influence on the Privy Council (and its Virginia subcommittee), and with individuals of influence on the Laud Commission the Virginia Company and its various factions likely brought Wyatt in tow into the discussion.

The exiles [the four coup conspirators awaiting trial in England] had no difficulty in finding prominent men willing to join in on an attack upon Harvey. Before many months had passed they had gained the active support of the ‘sub-committee’ of the Privy Council to which Virginia affairs were usually referred. Harvey afterward complained that members of this committee were interested in a plan to establish a new Virginia Company and for that reason were anxious to bring discredit on [Harvey’s]  government [99] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p. 66

Roper goes one, if not two steps further, however, by stating “The positions occupied by these patrons–although we have no firm evidence that they had foreknowledge of the coup against Harvey–enabled the Claiborne-Mathews faction to grasp the chance to arrest Harvey and return him to England. In taking this initiative the rebels naturally took considerable pains to emphasize their ‘miserable condition’ brought on by the governor’s ‘tyrannical behaviour‘ which had compelled them to overthrow him [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2016), pp. 110-11.

In making this assertion, Roper insinuates, the motivation behind these supporters lay in their support of the Kent Island initiative, and the rejection of the Maryland charter which at the time threatened its continuation. These individuals developed a case against Harvey and Maryland and submitted a case to the Star Chamber, and sent a petition to the King “to have Baltimore’s charter revoked. These actions were taken after the king’s and December 1635 decisions. The Company in other words had not backed away from their opposition to Harvey even though he had been returned as governor.

“Thus their pleadings characterized the behaviour of Baltimore and Harvey as grave threats to royal authority, social order, and the prosperity of their colony; the governor in particular, had disobeyed royal instructions and refused to administer the oath of allegiance to any belonging to Maryland … At the same time Harvey had cooperated with Baltimore’s agents ” to interdict … trade without the limits of Maryland. He also assisted the Marylanders in the struggle over the patent, ‘forbidding the planters trade there and taking away commissions formerly granted, as well as prosecuting Claiborne ‘with all violence’. The charge also included Harvey’s policy with Indian relations, his advocacy of using Dutch ships for export, and they warned, Harvey’s initiative to create counties [which they called “several governments“] which would “give a general disheartening to the planters and serve as a bar to that trade which they have long exercised“. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, 1602-1658 (Pickering & Chatto Publishers, 2016), p. 111.

Ernest while these Company efforts to repudiate the Calvert Maryland charter, they were not in the end successful. It does seem that by the early spring of 1638 several events, the Assembly and the tobacco charter, the order to return Mathew’s estates to him, and the entry of Wyatt into the larger Virginia negotiations, plus an increasingly polarized English religious politics culminated in the Laud Commission’s spring 1638 decision to finally, and irrevocably, grant Calvert his Maryland charter (Brenner, p.157).

Six months later, forces from Maryland took physical possession of New Kent, hung its leaders, and seemingly forever dispelled any hope that Claiborne’s business plan could be put into effect along the lines desired by Thomason-Cloberry New Men. They abandoned Claiborne to the latter’s own devices, and convinced him to join with them in West Indies adventures (May 1638).

A final, very interesting proposal, was made by Claiborne–and Samuel Mathews–along with Maurice Thomason, George Fletcher and William Bennett for a land grant encompassing a very large section of land between the Potomac and Rappahannock rivers in an unsettled area between Virginia and Maryland. What is most intriguing about this endeavor is that in making their bid these men took as their partner the Bermuda Company itself [a subsidiary of the Virginia Company], which joined them in their petition to the privy council. This petition never seems to have been acted on. Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 157-8. Whatever else this early 1639 petition may indicate, it does strongly suggest not only the centrality of Maryland and the Claiborne business plan, even as late as 1639, but also the inclusion of Mathews with Claiborne, the Bermuda Company and the key Virginia New Men in a partnership, if not a working alliance, in the period when the final “Deal” was signed by Charles (January, 1639).

It was immediately after the spring of 1638, therefore, I believe the path of Virginia-relevant negotiations shifted to replacing Harvey with Wyatt, and to perfect the establishment of a functioning self-governance by Virginia.

The best counter Harvey could make to first send his “agent”, George Donne (yes– the son of the famous “no man is an island” John Donne) in 1638. George Donne’s substantial written essay [99] on the needs of strong authority in Virginia was written at such length and so abstractly that it did little service to Harvey. Donne’s sickness thereafter seemingly ended his role in the matter. It is possible, that sometime late in 1638, Harvey himself returned to England. We do know that his (and more importantly Windebank’s) Virginia protégé, George Reade, was confirmed as Acting Governor in his absence. If so it did not weigh heavily on the internal debate in the Privy Council, nor did it elicit any support from the king. Just the opposite, [99] https://http://www.geni.com/people/Col-George-Reade-Esq-Acting-Gov/6000000006803245420

[99] Donne’s essay, however, is useful as a insightful commentary on colonial administration and its particular application to Virginia. This was an exercise in too little and WAY too late” defense. See T. H. Breen, “George Donne’s Virginia Reviewed”: a 1638 Plan to Reform Colonial Society (Notes and Documents, William and Mary Quarterly, Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1973). As Wertenbaker states “the Deal” moved rom the sub-committee the and jumped to the full Privy Council. At this point, Professor Jon Kukla leaps in and inserts Wyatt, not only as a participant, but as the leading candidate to succeed Harvey as a new governor.

Wyatt Enters the Picture

Despite his formal acquittal, Harvey had failed as governor; his Virginia enemies and their influential English friends had little trouble getting him recalled. Sir Francis Wyatt, serving again as governor from 1639 to 1641 calmed the political waters and began a program of political and judicial reform that enhanced the possibility for consociational stability … The scion of a prominent Kent commission [the Dorsett], the second of three groups that shaped royal policy toward Virginia after the dissolution of the Virginia Company, WYATT HAD PROBABLY WRITTEN TWO KEY PROVISIONS INTO HIS [GUBERNATORIAL] INSTRUCTIONS: ROYAL RECOGNITION OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY AND CONFIRMATION OF THE LAND TITLES OF ‘THE PRESENT PLANTERS AND POSSESSORS’ [capitalization, mine]. As a result, the king’s incoming governor ended fifteen years of uncertainty and transformed Virginia’s political life” [99] Jon Kukla, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia” the American Historical Review, vol. 90, No. 2 (April, 1985); for a printed text of Wyatt’s commission see VMHB, 11 (1903-1904), pp. 50-54

Roper further insinuates an element in Wyatt’s rise and key to his assumption to governor was his position on the tobacco monoculture. Commenting that “nothing seems to have happened with his [1638] proposal … and discussion about [his] contract idea then disappear[ed] from the record … his successor Sir Francis Wyatt … advised Whitehall that the planters had returned yet again to the vexing issue of tobacco overproduction ‘ whereof hath so been great a hindrance to the growth of the colony. By that point, Roper has Wyatt commenting/proposing that “the problem had compelled the destruction of ‘the bad and half the good’ of their crop in order to raise the price of the weed to an acceptable level. ‘Although the physic seem sharp, Wyatt hoped ‘it will bring the body of the colony to sound constitution of health than ever it had enjoyed before’ so as to justify the action against any ‘refractory person’ who should question it. [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America  p. 116

Wyatt seemingly entered the picture as Harvey’s replacement after stalemate with the legislature was apparent. A  last attempt, which sent the Governor of Barbados, Henry Hawley, to visit various colonies and “work out” the king’s tobacco proposal, came to nothing. Hawley’s brother, Jerome, was appointed Treasurer of Virginia to manage the annual tobacco fleet and ensure its arrival in England with tobacco sufficient for revenues needed by Charles. Jerome Hawley, however, sickened and dies soon after arriving [99] L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge University Press,2017), pp. 59-60

Roper asserts the stalemate concerning the 1638 tobacco monoculture , and the failure to resolve it to the satisfaction of the central government, contributed not just to royal frustration, but also a sense of futility that diverted Charles away from Virginia to other affairs, either more pressing or attractive. Harvey’s time had simply ran out, as Roper posits (and I agree) that the Prayer Book and Covenanters dissention took a sharp turn to actual conflict and war. A Scottish invasion which ended disastrously for Charles, drove him into reconvening a hostile Parliament for funds (April 1640). It later dissolution, led directly into the formal English Civil War.

In essence, by the end of 1638, the king likely had come to the conclusion that his future Virginia-relevant agenda required a calming of the turmoil there, and acceptance of a measure of self-governance and a governor whose ambition and management style was more acceptable to the settlers. As to Harvey’s termination, as we earlier suggested he was a continual embarrassment. The word in London was any ship that landed in England carried with it another tale of misadventure, misrule, and offended merchants and settlers.

So, at their trial in 1639, the four conspirators were formally acquitted. By that time the decision-making process had arrived at several decisions during the course of 1638. The first of which was that John Harvey had to go. Another was Calvert’s Maryland charter was confirmed.  An effort was made to finesse the Kent Island-Claiborne trade monopoly. A final decision, who would replace Harvey necessarily followed from the first–and that proved if not more complicated, it also was significant to Virginia political development.

That all this placed the arrogant, if beleaguered, governor in the middle between a rock and a hard place, it also got the various players engaged in a complex, complicated, polarizing administration of Virginia that if nothing else tempted London to install a governor more able to blend the conflicting impulses of the hybrid colonial system than Harvey could or was doing. In terms of administration Harvey was constantly in some bureaucratic struggle or another with actors in London. Roper recounts several:

[Harvey] failed [ed] consistently to receive proper remuneration for the expenses he incurred as governor … his ship sprang a leak as it left harbor. This engendered both a humiliating return to port and an admiralty lawsuit over wages he brought against the governor by some of the mariners involved … Having had the previous attempts to regulate the tobacco trade via the [tobacco] contract mechanism rebuffed, the king directed the Virginians to consider propositions he had prepared to address their particular situation … He also banned trade ‘with any Dutch ship that shall either purposely or casually come into any of your plantations … [and] on 20 February 1637/8, the House of Burgesses, called by his Majesty’s appointment, convened to consider five ‘Propositions’ offered by Charles I for the reformation of the colony’s tobacco trade’ … the 1638 session proved to be the final time in the history of the British Empire that a monarch ordered the summoning of a colonial assembly for the consideration of imperial issues [99] Roper, pp. 114-15

Wyatt fit the bill well. Wyatt’s sincere recognition of the need to install a level of self-government into Virginia policy-making, and a legalization of the ownership of land and property were essential to the consensus needed to effective governance. His solution to the tobacco monoculture issue, proposing that the “culling of the weed” to increase quality and reduce overplanting, doomed to failure, however, proved a good middle ground for Charles. Wyatt  was the best way to resolve the problem so that the king could better focus on other matters.

When the end came at the Privy Council, Wyatt was appointed governor with such instructions as written. He was ordered to retain the the Council of State as then composed, and to confirm the controversial Richard Kemp as Secretary of the Colony, But he was empowered to complete the return of the Mathew’s estate, and to reopen the court case against Anthony Panton. The behind the scenes regarding this decision is not known, at least by me, but from that point on Samuel Mathews seems to have created a lasting and favorable regard among the Privy Council and the King’s entourage. This will set the stage for events in the 1650’s.

Wyatt, as you will remember, was married to George Sandys daughter—and was closely, very closely connected to the Sandy’s faction of the Virginia Company. In Wyatt the Virginia Company could hold onto the fiction of a last hurrah return to governance. Another attempt was made in 1642, but to no avail–and by that time the Virginians were content to go it on their own.

Wyatt’s Second Administration

As to Wyatt, and his second administration, we shall briefly consider this topic  in the next module series. In this module we shall content ourselves Wyatt’s implementation of the Deal. Wyatt was a “healing”, a semi-normalization tone to his second administration. He purged Virginia of Harvey, rectified some abuses, and made his own royal governor “peace” with the Claiborne Clique and the planter oligarchy. Warren M. Billings apt summary of him and his governance helps the reader understand Virginia’s transition from a tumultuous decade into a new one of growth and even prosperity despite the English Civil War:

(99) Wyatt … was an able administrator with a long record of service in Virginia. He was the company’s last governor, and the Crown’s first, and he had won great respect for his skill at steering Virginia through the troubled 1620’s. His admirable reputation accounted for his reappointment in 1639, when Charles sent him back to quiet the settlers after they overthrew John Harvey. An evenhanded tactful man, Wyatt was widely popular with Virginians, especially those who ranked at the head of the colony’s nascent political establishment. He managed his duties well and enjoyed the confidence of his superiors, and no one in Virginia clamored for his removal (99) Warren M. Billings, Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia (Louisiana State University Press, 2004), p.33

More to the point of our interest, Billings suggests Wyatt was an instinctive politician. He seems to have correctly perceived the distinctions that divided the Claiborne Clique from the mainstream planter class (or the Moderates in the Thrusting Out).

The cutting edge of this chasm was the issue of using Dutch ships as opposed to English ships, as required by the Crown and Privy Council. Tied to the Magazine of the now fading prospects of the Virginia Company, the underling issue, the Kent Island monopoly that would deprived the mainstream planter from making their own arrangement with whomever they deemed desirable–to the benefit of the Claiborne Clique, was ended in 1638. Wyatt, according to Billings, did not link up with the powerful Claiborne group, the leaders of the Thrusting Out”, but rather “treated the Mathew crowd deferentially, though he was also at pains NOT (mine) to appear overly partial to them“ [99] Warren M. Billings, A Little Parliament (the Library of Virginia, 2004),” pp. 21-2

As to Harvey, the poor man entered into what has to have been the darkest period of his life–and his death in 1651, penniless and without friends. Dealing with Harvey was Wyatt’s first priority. He wasted no time in summoning the General Court (which was essentially, the Assembly) but an entity whose function was primarily legal-judicial.

At first upon having been relieved of his responsibility and position by Wyatt when the latter arrived in Virginia, “Wyatt lost no time in bringing Harvey to account for his misdeads. He was arraigned before the courts, where he was forced to answer countless complaints of injustice and oppression and to restore to their owners his ill-gotten gains“. [99] Wertenbaker, Virginia Under the Stuarts, p.67; see also Wertenbaker, Give Me Liberty: the Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia, the American Philosophical Society, 1958), pp. 51-3

Harvey’s defenders, under Secretary Kemp’s protection (he still enjoyed support from the Crown which had included him as Secretary in Wyatt’s instructions) made their peace with the new governor The opposition did not prevent the sequestering of  Harvey’s estate and possessions, and kept Harvey himself in a sort of lockdown in Virginia. Harvey’s numerous creditors were arrayed against him at the Court and for the most part they were victorious.

Wyatt then turned his attention to his Secretary of the Colony, Richard Kemp. Wyatt no friend of Kemp, wrapped Kemp, deservedly, into the reopening of the Panton court case. Kemp, “who proved especially nettlesome did not let bygones be bygones and no friend of Mathews or Claiborne … put Wyatt in an awkward spot”, and was a hindrance to Wyatt’s maneuverings on the Council of State (Kemp being a member) [99] Warren M. Billings, A Little Legislature, p.22. The Governor and the Council, acting as the General Court, reversed the past verdict, and cleared Panton; they did so following the Privy Council’s investigation of the trial, which concluded that there was no evidence found that support Panton’s conviction. Left in the aftermath of this repudiation, Kempt was pushed to the margins politically.

The Virginia Court cleared Panton, returned his estates to him, and allowed his return. Panton came back to serve his two vestries and parishes. Fatally damaged politically, Kemp’s coup de grace was provided by Claiborne who in 1640 secured the approval of the Crown to strip the signet ring (whose seal was required for official documents, and for which a fee was paid) from the Secretary’s office and lodge it in a newly created signet office, to which, as the reader might suspect, the Council and Governor appointed no less than Claiborne himself. Claiborne is back–to those who remember our past module on his post 1637 New Kent activities.

Kemp wanted an immediate departure from Virginia, as did Harvey. But Wyatt wanted no replication of the 1638 London policy process that ousted Harvey for the second time, conducted against him. So he kept the two in Virginia, refusing them permission to return. By 1641, however, he was either willing to let them go, or they both escaped. And, surprise, they tried to oust Wyatt upon their return. That story too, a rather short one, will be left to the future module as well.

Harvey returned to his former career as a sea captain, dying in 1650 more or less penniless. Kemp returned to England, and if ever there was a survivor politician, Richard Kemp was one–he shall darken our doors in this history in several future modules. In very short order he will return to Virginia on the ship that carried the new governor, William Berkeley–at no point BTW had he lost his position on the Council of State, a position he held to 1649, after serving as Acting Governor for a year in 1644-5.

Digesting the Deal: Wyatt Sets Up the Policy System

Wyatt engaged in a series of Assembly-approved legislation between 1639-1643. The centerpiece of the reform were nine initiatives approved in 1641 Assembly (of which no written copy now is known to exist), and an unknown number in 1641 (which we have no copies). These initiatives were Wyatt’s “take” on the reforms needed for proper governance of the colony, and more precisely to curb abuses and to enhance the capacity of Virginia’s governance.

The thrust of these reforms, as the reader shall see, are core to the arguments made in this history. In this case the development of Virginia’s lower level of government–the county– and noticeable “tilt” or decentralization in Virginia’s provincial politics that linked the legislature to the influence and agenda-setting priorities of that level.

The reform commenced with a joint action taken by Wyatt and the Council of State in 1639. The enactment suspended the settlement of debts by the county courts; that clearly suggested Wyatt’s reforms lay in a restructured and empowered, yet more accountable local governance central to a new order in Virginia. The relief of indebtedness was the opening salvo, but in 1640 a more comprehensive restructure of the courts was approved. That focus continued in 1641 and 1642–the last inherited by the new governor, William Berkeley, who secured their enactment and thus “bought into” Wyatt’s approach to the new Virginia policy system.

Development of the Virginia county system–and its relationship to the Burgesses in particular–will be a central them in the next module series. The reader might, however, understand that in strengthening and clarifying the county structure, jurisdictions, and powers, Wyatt played a little noticed role in the “tilt” and most importantly made it so transparent that it naturally flowed into the “deal” given the realities of the institutional heritage Wyatt (and the King) had inherited as a consequence of the Deal. The topic of indebtedness that was prominent in this series of reforms is instructive as to how these reforms benefited the existing order of authority.

The Virginia oligarchy, in the absence of banks, was a primary lender to the great mass of Virginia tobacco planters. The reforms of the Wyatt era addressed in particular those debtors who fled their debt obligations,, by empowering  to the provincial court, not the county courts, where the Council of State was a minority. To  a certain extent the reforms were not intended so much to assist the poorer and less advantaged debt-ridden planters than to enhance the capacity of the county courts to insulate themselves from the power of individual Council members living in their jurisdictions.

Moreover, the1634 establishment of the county system required some cleaning up, adjustment, and precision. Wyatt’s effort was to sort these matters out and strengthen overall capacity for effective, and efficient, management. Billings correctly describes these early initiatives by Wyatt (which overlapped Berkeley in its implementation):

Even a casual reading of Virginia’s laws enacted between 1634  and 1676, reveals the Assembly’s preoccupation with local government, as well as its inclination to give the county courts control of local affairs and many of the processes of justice. During the first eighteen years of their existence, the county courts gained extensive addition to their jurisdictions. As early as 1640 they were empowered to punish such moral lapses as bastard-bearing and fornication–offenses which the English traditionally tried in church courts … Necessity thus forced the provincial government to surrender much of its control over local government to county officials. [99]  Warren M. Billings, “the Growth of Political Institutions in Virginia, 1634-1676″ (William & Mary Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 2 (April, 1974)), p. 229

As significant as the county-relevant legislation, was the reliance upon, and the development of the Virginia Assembly as a deliberative institution–a provincial legislature–and testimony to that was these sessions lasted as long as a month. Indeed, the 1642 session involved a second “phase” to allow Berkeley to participate and the Assembly members to seek guidance from their districts–meaning the legislature was in a position to determine its own schedule. It did not have to wait until it was called into session. As Wyatt stated at the time,  working longer permitted the “well-ordering and settling of many Weighty Affairs Controverted and Concluded” that it took “more tyme than was first expected“. The second phase held months after the first created the precedent for an Assembly that could suspend and pick up affairs when they returned for a renewed session. [99J Jon Kukla, Order and Chaos, pp.287-8

The final ingredient for a functioning Virginia colonial policy system was finally in place, thanks to the First Migration and its leadership.

Assessment of the Thrusting Out Impact

The interests behind As the Twig is Bent are both broader and more comprehensive than most histories which operate in a particular time period in which one or another paradigm or perspective is dominant. Frankly, most of the complexity and the preponderance of “moving parts” included in these “thrusting out” modules results from simply aggregating the different positions of the various historians, lodging them in a chronological order, and culling out those aspects which relate to the founding of a “self-governing” Virginia policy system, the establishment of its economic base, and its development of both elites/masses and political governance structures. To a certain extent we are concerned with the evolution of economic development, but in these very early years late medieval years, it does seem a bit premature.

The picture that emerges from this approach is, of course multi-faceted, multi-thematic and necessarily difficult to get one head around what is being discussed. So what do we get out the thrusting out in the form of take aways which we will further develop and use in the following modules?

How Important was Virginia in the Grand Scheme of the 1630’s Things?

Let’s commence our assessment with a starting point of Virginia’s policy system status previous to the 1639 Deal. Charles A. Andrews, much concerned with the evolution of Virginia’s company political institutions, succinctly described the persistent efforts made by the Assembly and various governors to obtain the confirmation and support by the King of these Company Greate Charter political structures-institutions [including land, property and headright contract,

He comments on occasion that the Virginians at times risked venturing into controversy with Charles and his various commissions and councils as it was by no means certain that either were receptive to these requests. Concluding from the laundry list of requests and attempts made during and after 1624, Andrews came to believe ”

that the authorities in England had not yet [pre-1639) determined the form that the government of the colony should take, and that the king was still in a position to deprive the Virginians at any time of the privilege of an assembly, if he so wished, for no such body could legally come together without his consent. But through he was trying to govern without parliament in England, he probably had no intention of denying to Virginia the liberty of a representative gathering of the freemen, if we are to accept his own statements and those of his ministers. … They {the Virginians] kept the assembly alive during these years, though they knew they had no legal right to do, as they were without any direct authorization of the crown (99) Charles A Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol 1: the Settlements (Yale University Press, 1934/1964), p. 203-4

I think it likely that in his mind, Virginia was kept in flux due to the possibility that the Virginia Company’s charter would be reinstated for Virginia. As to why, in 1639, the king finally consented to the “privilege of an assembly” and the legality of land and property titles, Andrews believes, I think strongly, “the Virginians themselves were largely responsible for the establishment of self-government in a royal colony in America. The work of the company might well have been undone by the king after 1624, and indeed for fifteen years the issue was in doubt. But with the instructions to Wyatt in 1639, Wyatt and his councilors were ordered “as formerly once a year or oftener, if the urgent occasion shall require, to summon the burgesses of all and singular plantations there, which together with the governor and the council, shall have power to make acts and laws for the government of that plantation, correspondent as near as may be to the laws of England, in which assembly the governor was to have a negative voice as formerly, Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 204

If this be so, and I agree with his belief the Virginians fought for the right to self govern, then it was the despicable First Generation, those of lowly status, grasping selfishness and ambition, whose manners were rough and rowdy, if not violent and cruel, who managed the byways of not only their politics, economics and policy-making , but navigated successfully over time those of London and Whitehall. They were the leadership that coped with the semi-anarchistic absence of legitimate political institutions, the land grabbing spread of the tobacco monoculture, and fabricated a business plan that imported a workforce and found their own individual plantations, raise tobacco, and find a way to get it to England, or wherever it wound up. Their success in 1639, I argue in the next module series, set the stage for Virginia’s breakout during the 1640’s and 50’s.

London Policy Process is Central to Understanding the Empowerment of Virginia’s Initial Policy System

My history posits the reason Charles did not empower the Assembly in particular–and legalize the land titles, patents, and property headright contracts of the Company period was his back-of-the-mind hope to activate and reform the Virginia Company 1609-12 charter and thus reauthorize the Company to resume its governance of the colony. The Company was “on board” with this hope, but over a decade the two parties were unable to arrive at an acceptable arrangement. This hope lasted until 1634 or so. During the limbo during which the king kept the Company option open, Charles never came close to committing serious royal resources, save his tittle to Virginia land, to the colony–and the sending of military, naval or land was never a viable option. For those versed in the study of colonization, this last observation suggests that the concept lacked definition and capacity in this period.

From that point on it seems the king had concluded that royal administration was the default governance for Virginia, but he still preferred to leave the more onerous aspects of that governance to the Laud Commission and the Privy Council–within which remnants of a former Dorsett Commission exercised considerable influence over the sub-committee that supposedly was a first step in Virginia’s London policy process.

I am aware of no formalized process that clarified the manner in which policy concerning Virginia could be made, and accordingly the three or more political structures involved constituted a free-floated autonomously of each other, with each seeking confirmation of their proposals through direct access to Charles. Actors within these policy-making structures included pure opportunists (I would suggest various Earls/nobility, parliamentarians, city officials and merchants, but the list is endless). As we have seen, Virginia planters of size and status, were able to access this as well–and given their lives, economic and personal, depended on this access, certain of them, Claiborne, West, Wyatt, Mathews, Tucker stand out, resided in London for periods of time.

The Virginia Company seemed a formidable player throughout this period, and its impact on Virginia, contrary to the opinion of a good  deal of contemporary Virginia popular history, was lasting, behind-the-scenes, and at cross-purposes with Charles and others in his inner circle–which BTW seem to have functioned not dissimilar to today’s White House staff. The rise of a new group of colonial merchants complicated this picture as these folks infested the entire process, and inserted themselves at every opportunity into it. They seemed to have funds available and that was their calling card to open the gates and channels of this policy-making maze.

Putting aside the tobacco contract, Charles displayed little consistent involvement in Virginia, and contented himself with reaction to advances made by others in its behalf. Whatever he felt about colonization, North American or otherwise, he simply did not engage in the nitty-gritty and given the Court policy system that existed in the latter half of the 1630’s, with polarization growing in England and Scotland, Charles, and everybody else, lacked a focus on Virginia, and much of colonial policy as well.

I offer by the mid-1630’s the rise of Massachusetts–and of course, the status of Maryland/North Carolina, East/West Indies and the Caribbean–plus the rivalry of Dutch New York, (and then there were Spain/France, of course) dissipated the status/priority Virginia held during the Company period. As we have seen, inter-colonial “politics”, usually seldom considered in American historical analysis, confused the policy-making process in London, and usually bedeviled intra-north American colonial relations. One can sense the conflicting, free-flowing inter-colonial business plan of Claiborne, Cloberry, Thomason, and the Virginia Company Magazine

Indeed, Maryland and Virginia were seeming engaged in a zero-sum rivalry. Massachusetts’s, the squeaky wheel in North America consumed much of the oxygen in the small policy rooms of this period. Neither in the larger English policy environment, nor in the more limited colonial environment, the little bubble with pretentions, i.e. Virginia, could have mattered as much then, as it seems to Virginia-related commentators today.

I might also add that our last several pages certainly has added complexity, subtlety, and multi-dimensionality to our perception of the so-called Mercantilist economic and trade system which supposedly characterized this period. While we have to draw a line somewhere, my point is that policy-making then was complex, not well defined, with permeable and fluid parameters as we enjoy today. English colonies in North America had to wade through this, as lest we forget, they were a colony of the Mother Country.

The simple concept of Mercantilism, and it is simple despite the thousands of pages it has generated, does no justice, and provides very little understanding of what was transpiring in this Age. We have argued that policy systems in this time lacked capacity to execute their decisions, but in this history, I also add that both England and Virginia were in transition, and that policy making in an age of transition–which can last a century as easy as not–is sophisticated, complex, and dysfunctional as anything we now face since the end of the Cold War, although, we are more fortunate, the Internet and AI, artificial intelligence, will lead us to victory and success.

[999] To compare Virginia’s experience with its contemporary, Massachusetts, w can see the latter’s concern with land titles and indenture-workforce related concerns was nil. The emigration into Massachusetts bore, as we shall discover, scant resemblance to Virginia’s. As to the legitimacy of its governance institutions, there were fears but they had more to do with religions and Charles’s definition of the Anglican Church. The Massachusetts General Court charter expressly acknowledged the General Court and thus was included in founding the Bay Colony in 1629. The Court first met in 1630. This suggests the King likely never had any compelling desire to withhold legitimacy of self-governance in the colonies.[999]

Impact of the 1630’s on Virginia’s Political Structures

Our history has uncovered as a fundamental factor-dynamic in the evolution of Virginia’s policy system is its initial period of governance by the Virginia Company. Without repeating our conclusions on that period–which theoretically ended in 1625–we did make an important point the structures and relationships established by the Company in Virginia were from its perspective private political structures, structures which allowed domestic shareholders to participate and commit to the maintenance of order and the promotion of economic growth and prosperity.

The Company policy system, as determined by the charter from the sovereign was the entity to which the sovereign delegated governance powers, subject to its approval and sanction. Necessarily then we are tasked to understand the political interface of a joint stock corporation, and as new colonies were founded the political interface of a variation of the joint stock corporation–the proprietary corporation. The Virginia Company was the only joint stock corporation, and additional colonies created by the Stuarts were proprietary.

That means Virginia was distinct from other English colonies simply because of its rough, experimental joint stock corporation dynamic. It is very easy to simply observe that distinction and move on, but in that our task is to understand how the “twig-like political structures” evolved to become major limbs capable of making a distinctive policy system compared to others, I find the joint stock corporation dynamic must be examined in great depth and sensitivity. Indeed the sensitivity requires us to understand the reality of that period which only “suspended” the governance of the Virginia Company over only Virginia, with the intention that the charter would be revamped and governance returned to the Company.

That meant a “limbo” was created, and the development of the Virginia policy system lived in it for about fifteen years. While Charles seemed to have finally decided to install a royal governance to Virginia in 1634 (remembering Charles’s constancy in decision-making was very tentative and fluid), the Virginia Company, amazingly more impactful in colonial policy making than traditionally recognized, continued to play an important role in the evolution of its former company political structures as they transformed into more properly governmental structures in the immediate period after the king’s decision. Taking all this into account I hoe the reader can see why it was only in 1639 that Virginia’s formerly private governance bodies were finally empowered and granted the legitimacy to act as a governmental policy system.

I suppose we could slide over that messy, nearly forty year rough start, but I cannot. The twigs of future Virginia governance were, in my mind at least, firmly and distinctly bent in ways that distinguished Virginia from the other North American colonies. The foundational “footprint” for Virginia’s colonial policy system were then “installed” in the aftermath of 1639, and evolved further in yet another distinctive period of the English Civil War-Protectorate, becoming more or less permanent with the departure of Governor William Barkeley in 1676.

As we shall see several trans-Appalachian Early Republic states emulated the Virginia policy system partially creating a regional distinction we today refer to as the Mason-Dixon line. That distinctiveness was incorporated into the Articles of Confederation and the Early Republic American Constitutional system. That the Virginia Dynasty dominated the Early republic until Andrew Jackson-we can see there is significant value in understanding the distinctiveness of Virginia as a policy system, whose political structures acted differently than the like-named political structures of the other colonial policy system. In short, the bends and twists in Virginia’s political structures during the extended period from its founding until 1676 matter.

The need to establish a boundary for what is meant by political structure is imperative. In this module, and the for the most part in this history of colonial Virginia, I content myself with the three principal political structures created by Sandys in his 1618-19 Greate Charter reforms: governor, council of State, and the Assembly–with a focus on its Burgesses. In that my research has evidenced a need to examine the development of a colony’s local or lower policy system because of its value in distinguishing the character of the overall provincial-state policy, it is also imperative we include Virginia’s principal local government level, the county. Of necessity we must also observe the failure of Virginia to found-create cities of any meaningful size.

The Greate Charter, as implemented mostly by Governors Yeardley and Wyatt, consisted of four major structures, the governor, the Council of State, the Assembly (Burgesses),and the hundreds. Again, these structures were private company-created structures whose model and concept were more company shareholder entities that enjoyed public powers as entrusted to the Company in the public-private partnership that was enumerated in the 1606, 1607, and 1609 charters.

Without any question these structures combined private function and public powers from their start, but what is obscured by the fog of history is that their colonial function meant they exercised their functions, purposes and powers three thousand miles distant, at a time when transportation modes injected a degree of autonomy and applied judgement. Today when we can talk to the man in the moon with only seconds gap, we felt the need to create our hybrid London-Virginia Colonial Policy System to get our heads and arms around the impact of such a transformative dynamic as distance, time, and policy-making structures that inevitably occur in a colonial situation. Having dealt with that above, we are more free now to explore the domestic Virginia wanderings of the Virginia-bound policy system that commenced in 1619 or so.

The Greate Charter structures were barely placed in their cribs when the Great Massacre, Second Powhatan War, commenced in March 1622. One can with some merit assert that war breathed life into those structures, and their development through to the suspension of the Company charter in 1624-5 was so desperate and existential that the colony survived due to their operation and the actions of those who occupied them. When these structures commenced their limbo during 1624-6 they were acting as governmental units whatever their character or nature.

Forged in the isolation and fire of distance and that war, Virginia’s proto-government bodies were infused with plantation conquistador types and highly individualistic agricultural “entrepreneurs” , whose dominance over policy making was accentuated by the gross inequality of its workforce-citizenry that without conscious design created an elite, a planter-political elite that was legally entrusted and empowered to operate the system and make its decisions.

For all practical purposes before 1630 a proto-policy system and the economic base on which it was dependent fused into the hands of an unorganized planter elite, literally scattered in the nooks and creeks of the James and surrounding rivers–a shredded community that overlay and reinforced the dynamics created by a hybrid colonial policy system. That curious, and somewhat horrible mélange of dynamics had essentially installed the rudiments of Virginia’s future policy system. That, John Harvey was soon to discover, imposed its own strictures on the future evolution of the Virginia-based policy system.

the Structures Emerge

While the official launch of the Greate Charter reforms by Governor Yeardley/Secretary Pory was 1619, the take off was the month following March 1622 Massacre. Then Governor Francis Wyatt (of 1639 fame), a scarce three or so weeks in office called Council of State survivors, six had been killed, into session, and from that point on–without pause, the two political structures (governor and council) became joined at the hip.

Since we have no records I know of, the internal debate and voting pattern can not even be guessed at. I suspect Yeardley, the leading councilor of the day, was designated Wyatt’s successor in those turbulent years. As we detailed in our modules the Council enjoyed regular appointments from London, of large plantation owners, and plantation conquistadors, along with a collection of old company officials and hangers on (ship captains and hundreds investors. Representative it was not, but who ever made it into session made provincial policy–and continued to do so through the arrival of John Harvey in 1630.

Harvey’s take over as governor then seemingly unmasked the close convergence of governance exercised between the governor and the council majority. One could argue, and I did, that necessity  and short time spans made that somewhat necessary, but in those dire times, Wyatt carried out the joint decisions, and seemingly, perhaps with some consultation with key Council leaders, acted on his own in appointments and military affairs especially,

The latter, however, being militia meant a serious and pronounced local tilt which to some degree had to overlap with plantation conquistadors on and off the Council; it also likely overlapped the rudimentary settlement governance of the hundreds in those early fragile years. With key exceptions, taxes, land and headright patents, and tobacco export, the action in the years through 1627 was at the local level. The governor, likely of necessity, assumed a great role in coordination of these local areas, and problem-solving and managing internal political tensions had to have been in the Wyatt skillset. It is likely that gubernatorial deference to lower levels was more effective than efforts toward centralization of decision-making. These are guesses, but the tension I observed between Yeardley, whom Wyatt had displaced, may evidence some tilt to decentralized decision-making.

As to whether or not the Council was advisory to the Governor as Harvey assumed in 1630, I assume to the contrary. Herbert Osgood cites the king’s instructions to Harvey in 1628, and a clear reading makes Harvey as governor “first among equals”  over decisions: “Giving and by these [instructions] granting unto you and the greater number of you respectively, full power and authority to execute and perform the places, powers, and authorities incident to a governor and council of Virginia”. Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol III (Imperial Control. Beginnings of he System of Royal Provinces (MacMillan Company, 1907)  pp. 86-7.

Roper believes this congruent with the Sandys-Ferrar Greate Charter intentions which clearly distinguished a council based on appointment from London, and a Burgesses “elected out of each  Incorporation [hundred] and Plantation”. The initial structure was amended in 1621 with the creation of a permanent council of colonists, appointed in London, to run day-to-day affairs as did the Privy Council, while the general assembly would meet annually (but ‘no oftener’) ‘with free power to treat Consult & conclude as well of all emergent occasions concerning the publique weal of the said colony’, and to enact appropriate laws for the review of and ratification by the company’s quarter courts in the metropolis [Company headquarters] [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America (Routledge, 2009, pp. 79-80.

While I disagree with Roper that the Burgess was modeled after Parliament, I believe instead the model used was the joint stock corporation’s own governance structure, it may be a distinction without a difference in this instance. Both result in a permanent council that ran-day-to-day, appointed by London, an executive committee who, with the elected leaders of the corporation (or in Virginia, the Governor) ran the entity between annual meetings of its membership/shareholders.

For eight years the Privy Council, and Charles, had worked with the older pattern, and while it was likely Charles wanted more attention to his agenda than it got, his instructions to Harvey does not seem to allow a bombshell be thrown into the decision-making nexus. This position is reinforced as Harvey’s complaints to London drew that out from the Privy. The Privy Council clearly saw the Council as more than advisory, and essentially replied that the two were partners in decision-making.

It does appear, however, a two-legged self-governance was becoming more unworkable, and that over the next several decades, a third leg was added. The role of the Virginia and Massachusetts assemblies, both of which had played major roles in the 1630;s (Virginia with the John Harvey thrusting out), had to be incorporated into the colony provincial governance as well.

Braddick asserts that “In the early seventeenth century, it has been presumed that the ideal form of government was conciliar–a governor and appointed councillors” and he goes further to state that “by 1640 [after the Deal] the tripartite model [which included the Assembly] had become established, and in 1660 became the acknowledged basis of colonial [self-] government. Braddick also posits that Virginia and Massachusetts “mimicked the constitution of the mother COMPANY [mine] (general meetings of stockholders) whereas in Maryland it grew out of manorial society (assemblies of freemen)”. [99] Michael J. Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550-1700 (Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 404-5

This seemingly does offer support for my position that each colony, simply by virtue of its birth as a functioning policy system bent its governance “tree” in directions distinct to its corporate and royal midwives. If so, let’s shift our attention to the Virginia Assembly (Burgesses)

Regarding the Legislature-Assembly (Burgesses), two thoughts come immediately to my mind: I am amazed how instinctively it understood its role and responsibility, and, how the definition of each was derived from pressures felt “below” the provincial level, not a response to pressures felt on, and by, the provincial level. These impressions no doubt partially reflect hindsight, but I do believe here we are see the effects of a shredded community also. I also see a shift from the corporate reliance on appointees as in the council, to representatives elected by the rank and freeholder (those elected to office had to own property).

This self governance pattern seems to have operated remarkably well through 1629, but  collapsed into a civil war very quickly in 1630, required  a formal peace treaty  negotiated by Harvey for that chasm to be put aside, and the 1631 Assembly held. While I characterize this as intrusion into the established council-governor relationship by Harvey, the outsider, there is much more to it than that. Harvey may have impacted the relationship between the council, and perhaps the Assembly with the governor, but not the development of the Assembly and its administrative counterpart, the county–that development ran on its own track with its own “engine”.

I sense that from its earliest formal beginnings the entities that were the lower forms of government were expanded because they were tasked with more functions that could no longer be provided by the provincial level, headquartered as it were in Jamestown and the James River. This worked well enough through the 1620’s but by the end of that decade, the population had increased from about 1,215 in 1625, to 4,914 in 1635 and doubled over the next four years reaching over 10,000 in 1639. By the late 1620’s settlers were gathering to  crossover to the Middle Peninsula, and even south into what was becoming North Carolina, and north alone the Chesapeake Bay to the Potomac.[99] See Warren M Billings, A Little Parliament (the Library of Virginia, 2004), pp. 20-1

That to me means the empowerment of Virginia’s local levels of government was driven by growth and the consequences of a shredded community writ larger, laced with steroids by the demands of the tobacco economy (lower prices, and replacing exhausted soil).[99] Robert Wheeler, “the County Court in Colonial Virginia” in Bruce C. Daniels (Ed), Town & County: Essays on the Structure of Local Government in the American Colonies (Wesleyan University Press, 1978), pp. 111-113 .

The absence of larger towns and a more balanced economic base meant the provincial level, confronted by Powhatan residence had all it could do to keep up with new indentured immigrants and the need to push deeper into the Virginia “hinterlands”. Accordingly, I feel compelled to link the development of the Assembly-Burgesses alongside with supposedly its  child, the county, the relationship of the two being so intense, the Burgesses in many ways evolved as the “glove” into which the county “hand” was inserted. In this reality, the idea of Virginia inheritance of the English county-shire system is secondary to the need for local government in the shredded Tidewater.

Self-defense,  the realities of more demands on judicial decision-making (law and order), and the simple need to records (land sales and purchases, births, deaths, widows, wills, and tobacco export/quality regulation–and work gangs for infrastructure drove the need for county empowerment just to keep tabs on the shredded community’s continued expansion. One must never forget tax collection, although enforcement of quit rents was neglected, the receipt and collection of fees and exchanges of tobacco were local. So was the religious base in the parish, a subdivision of local government responsible for social behavior and paid for by locals.

What we then see is the development of river-dominated Tidewater, the home-based of the shredded community set in motion a relationship among Virginia’s governmental levels that relied disproportionately on counties for day-to-day existence and order–imposing on the provincial level the burden of coordination and equity among counties as one of its foremost functions, and a prerequisite for its leadership. Small wonder that tobacco was a common bond which all shared, and the need for more land and the patenting and headrights that come with land, not only caused the reliance on local government, but made its management more complex, and maximized its closeness to the population within its boundaries.

Say it another way, the Assembly-Burgesses responded to an engine of development that neither the governor nor the Council of State was dependent upon. As Virginia grew and matured the Assembly-Burgesses acquired greater volume and with its closer link to the citizen-settler and to the increasing and necessary functions devolved to the county it acquired greater authority in ways. Neither the governor nor the council could do more than hope to harness this emerging partnership. Hand and glove the Burgesses and the county were plodding down their own path. To me the breakout was during the thrusting out in 1635 when the newborn counties sent their first Burgesses to Jamestown and sent Harvey alongside its own delegation to London to negotiate directly with Privy and the king. While the Council used the back door, the Burgesses provided the muscle for both entities.

With a functioning legislature, Virginia’s policy system finally had a heart beat and a pulse. That heart beat and pulse meant that Virginia was able to step down on the path to early modern age political and economic development. Good luck with that!

begin here

1. If we want to test out the assertiveness of the locals, however, it is their ill-thought of marriage with the tobacco export economic base, an obsession that meant seizing land from none-too-happy Native Americans and therefore likely raising the risk of Indian war and destruction of the export profits England hoped from the colony’s economic base. Certainly England and both of its early Stuarts wanted tobacco import revenues, but neither sovereign wanted an economic base almost exclusively tobacco-bound. Diversification was a constant policy aim–and a very articulated one which, BTW, was also shared by the Virginia Company corporate leadership. Today we think of Virginia’s tobacco economy, its tobacco monoculture, as defining characteristics of the colony-state. Yet, in this module and the modules discussing the Claiborne New Kent initiative–the most fundamental and path-breaking breakaway from the monoculture–we saw serious and substantial forces arrayed to challenge the monoculture repulsed, and in our last sections we seen the unraveling of the London financing of the venture as the Virginia policy system was born. There were several reasons for this, but the intense opposition of the mainline planter class, and Charles’s incredibly bad decision to found Maryland by tearing it out from Virginia, and letting it be identified with the hated papists, ended that diversification initiative and as we shall see, cemented the monoculture in Virginia’s economic base. Whether Charles inadvertently embedded the tobacco monoculture through his inconsistent policy is certainly a question that needs more thought. By the time the messianic Governor Berkeley arrives in Jamestown in 1642, the tobacco monoculture is growing by leaps and bounds and is the acknowledged and uncontested economic base of the province–and Maryland to boot. That is yet another  First Migration “achievement” that was deeply intertwined with the policy and politics of the thrusting out.
2. Perhaps lost in all this to and fro and complexity of the thrusting out was the simple embedding of the Virginia land-owning, tobacco exporting merchant-planter elite, which by the end of the thrusting out had more of less become a second-generation post-Virginia Company oligarchy. This oligarchy, for reason we hope we revealed, depended on a workforce of indentured servants (slaves were few and far between in these years), whose immigration were hand-in-glove with the colony’s headright immigration incentives-land grants inherited from the Virginia Company period. Former Company officials/shareholders captured a near exclusive monopoly over it, and that monopoly persisted through 1639. Those indentured servants who survived their contract and started up plantations of size and consequence were few and far between (Abraham Wood is always cited as an example); embedded in the tobacco export monoculture was a colony saturated with structural inequities that would in future years institutionalize itself and thereby render the elite planter oligarchy-class with the only meaningful access to the Virginia policy system. This has yet to play out in our history, but we can see in 1639 that at least the first component, the institutionalization of the planter oligarchy, was pretty much established. Thank you First Migration.

So How Does Harvey Fit in All This?

Wertenbaker posits a more conceptual view, but a view congruent with a lesson learned from the Thrusting Out. He asserts that “Harvey based his claims to supreme power on the theory that he was the King’s substitute, and as such should have the unquestioning obedience of the people. The Virginians contended that his power was limited by law. Even had his rule been marked by justice and moderation, they would have denied his pretension. But when he made them the basis for an odious tyranny, they took a step unique in  American colonial history, by laying violent hands on him, and sending him back to his royal master.” [99] Thomas J. Wertenbaker, Give Me Liberty: the Struggle for Self-Government in Virginia, the American Philosophical Society, 1958), pp. 53.

Presented in the style and flamboyance only Wertenbaker could deliver, his assertion boiled down, is the affair linked the governor to claims of abuse and tyranny in many a Virginian mind. To them his administration stood as a precedent for applying limits to a governor’s power, and if the future is any guide, Virginia’s colonial history did strongly suggest that opposing the governor, and carrying the battle to London was an honorable option in the Virginia policy-making process. That Harvey was fired twice, created some sort of precedent; it is not unreasonable that in the minds of many Virginians this became a “right” common to English law which extended rights of Virginians to check the governor through their own advocacy.

Notes for Future Drafts

1. Early on I tasked this module with explaining “the birth of the Virginia colonial policy system”. I demonstrated in simple, commonly accepted historical detail that pre 1635 Virginia self-governance and its political structures were so loosely defined it invited contentious struggle, almost (when combined with the realities of the shredded community) compelled the development of a local (county) government as the front line level of Virginia governance, and compounded the governance of Governor John Harvey in the 1630’s to the extent it finally prodded the sovereign to concede self-governance and move on to other of his interests and needs. That period so confounded many American historians they abandoned any hope of finding durable dynamics and meaningful historical value to incorporate into Virginia’s overall colonial history ( see for example, Jack  P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness (University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p.36, p. 38),.I hope has been challenged by this module.
2. This module series, in particular, faced an almost ideological historiological problem that question the relevance of the First Migration (pre William Berkeley at least) to Virginia history was so damaged-semi-anarchistic to be useless for historical commentary. I took strong exception to this for many reasons, but the obvious one, the First Migration was theoretically compelling to my approach to this history. If our colonial structures were “twigs” that were bent in different ways as they matured into trees, I had to deal with the birth and the warping of these twigs that followed. Twigs are most vulnerable in the early years before they become harder and more durable after all. By removing this period from discussion we lost, arguably, the most important period in which our Virginia twig was bent. I believe these modules have provided the reader with ample support that indeed the First Migration period was important, and that it had bent several main branches of the twig (the limited definition of the governor’s role and powers, the creation of what will become a strong upper house of the legislature (the Council of State), and successful pressure ion an unwilling sovereign to complete the formation of a self-governing  policy system by acknowledging and empowering a provincial legislature. I also detail how the later action “tilted” or decentralized the thrust and procedures of Virginia governance so profoundly it separated the colony from governance patterns found in other colonies. On these items alone, future chapters will demonstrate how Massachusetts and Pennsylvania were bent in different ways.
3. For those who are interested in English-North American evolution of English colonial policy, we have created “the hybrid colonial policy system”. The hybrid colonial policy system distinguished between a dominant, yet uncontrolling London-based policy system, and the yet to be acknowledged as fully legitimate Jamestown/Virginia-based self governance policy system. We were determined to capture the interaction between the two policy systems, exposing the nature of the early Stuart, Charles in this case, policy system and how it impacted Virginia political and economic development. I was not impressed with the London-based policy system, nor with its sovereign, decrying the lack of attention–and support for its colonial development-and for its inability to figure out how they wanted to govern Virginia. Perhaps, we have stumbled on an obvious reality that English colonization was not a “plug in and play” export from London, but in Virginia’s case especially, a multi-generational experiment, conducted without an instruction manual. The story of the Virginia Company in these two modules is central to that–and it played a major role in bending the Virginia twig. The Virginia Company’s role in Virginia during the 1630’s should not be ignored any more than the First Migration period of which it is a part.
4. As to the Virginia self-governance side of the hybrid colonial system, we saw what we were not supposed to see–an emerging Virginia policy system demanding to be heard and legitimized by its sovereign. The Assembly certainly after the 1622 Massacre always had its own mind, and composed with local elites who perceived themselves as autonomous and challenged by local wilderness and tobacco export realities, had their own opinions that contrasted sharply with those of the sovereign, and which, usually they ignored. The Council of State emerged from the thrusting out as at minimum co-equal with the governor–and in 1638 the latter was handicapped by a strong autonomous council that represented the largest, most articulate elements of the emerging planter/conquistador class. While it is hard to discern the “better angels” from the “bad angels” in Virginia policy-making, it is very clear the Virginia elite could manage to overcome its factions and to successfully demand London legitimize its self-governance. The low-class merchant-tobacco land grabbing thugs of the First Migration handed it to their superiors in London (of course the imminent English Civil War played a big role in that).
5. Finally, the story of Brenner’s New Men, at least the pre-English Civil War version, has been introduced and fleshed out a bit. If one is a follower of the now old adage “Follow the Money because its is always about the Money”–which I accept–this tale of New Men is no small matter. The merchant-planter class of 1638 is not the cavalier planter class of the eighteenth century in the golden years of Virginia tobacco plantations. This is a different breed that has not yet been embraced by American historians. The hard and rough form of land-owning expansion, an early version of Go West Young Man, is not the homesteading that we have come to love. The colonels and captains that came out of it, the conquistadors, and their local militias infused these merchant-gentry Brenner New Men with a capable and aggressive entrepreneur and both understood they had to control the larger politics and policy-making to prosper. This is political capitalism as much as it is mercantile-early modern. The alliance between these hard local capitalist entrepreneur and London money will evolve, and evolve fast, but there is no doubt in my mind the New Men and their Virginia compatriots forged a style of early capitalist financing that fed and fostered the tobacco culture-export, and institutionalized the plantation as Virginia’s basic, and core, unit of its economic base. This will have serious implications which we will export later, but again the plantation has achieved that position and role by 1639. When Berkeley arrives in 1642, the first thing he does is found his own plantation. The Virginia plantation, however, is not the Dutch plantation, nor will it be the Pennsylvania–and as everybody know, Massachusetts goes down its own path.

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 “Birth of a Policy System” as a Bad, but useful, Metaphor

As a former professional-educator who dealt with private and public policy-making for decades, I realized the process of making policy reflects the larger policy system in which the policy is “made”. That impact not only creates differences as well as similarities with other policy systems, but also weighs heavily on its effectiveness and evolution over time. Economic development, the policy area of interest in this history, is by our definition a “policy” that is made in a policy system, and in this history we have the rather unusual experience of the birth of an initial policy system overlapping on the making of an important economic development policy (the tobacco monoculture, for example).

In this module we focus on the “birth” of Virginia’s initial policy system in 1639, a policy system which had been nurtured in the wilderness womb of the Chesapeake rivers, and whose delivery was conducted by policy-making midwives, not all of whom had goals and ambitions separate from a successful birth of a policy system. Indeed, the midwives had been nurtured themselves in that womb, and had fixed intentions that the baby being birthed and reared would continue that nurturing experience after its birth thereby sustaining the midwives in the manner to which they had been accustomed. That this experience of the womb should not be replicated, however, and other goals and intentions should result was desired by the doctor who delivered the baby, the King of England in this instance. That his intentions proved of little consequence largely arose because upon birth the doctor handed the newborn to the tender mercies of the midwives.

Some might question that the birth of the Assembly-Burgesses was more properly its first session called in the midst of the Greate Charter reforms of Edwin Sandys. That reform package had many goals on its agenda, and the creation of a representative legislature in Virginia was not one of them. For Sandys, the structures of 1616 were private corporate structures that were forged from a public-private partnership through charter of the king with a joint stock corporation, owned and managed by shareholders-stock owners.

The Greate Charter structures certainly overlapped in function with some government powers, but primarily the Assembly was modeled after the joint stock corporation model of an annual meeting of shareholders. One had to be a shareholder to participate and the Assembly was intended to be the annual meeting for shareholders resident in Virginia–front-line shareholders in the settlement wilderness who needed to be given input into their governance if further investment was to happen. In this sense, the Greate Charter reform was the conception of future representative government, not its birth. Birth came only when these structures were legitimized by the sovereign and empowered by requiring their input and confirming the legality of their land and property ownership–the underling core of individual citizenship. That was January 1639.

In this very tortured metaphor we can see how the controversial economic base which had emerged and fostered during the period previous to the birth of Virginia’s first policy system was embedded into that policy system, despite the wishes of its sovereign. The plantation conquistadores sent of England, who prodded and negotiated London-based policy actors to not only oust Governor Harvey, but to grant to them the right and [land and property] titles to self-govern their colony-settlement centered firmly on their desire to incorporate the tobacco monoculture economic base as primary in their personal goals which were accordingly embedded into the political structures which they dominated.

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