Pressure from Below: Origins of the Virginia Company

 

Pressure from Below: Origins of the Virginia Company

 

As England developed economically and moved through the Tudor, Protestant and Reformation periods, she asserted herself against the dominant power of that age, Spain, and developed an intense rivalry with her closest ally, Holland. A complex and interrelated web of aspirations, experiences, and needs took shape, and together they wove an image of England’s place in the emerging European mercantilist system, and England’s particular view of colonization within that system.

No hopes yet of an empire, but with a sure sense of the implications of what we today label as the enclosure-based economic transition from late medieval manor agriculture, the early dominance of the continental cloth-textile trade nexus, and the power of its guild system to shape old occupations into secure business enterprises and a more open and creative workforce, and finally an urban transformation that drove hordes into cities across England, making London the mega city of the period. England by the time James I rolled into town was already riding a roller coaster of change, and the new divine right Scot was seemingly both open and resistant to what and who he found petitioning him for action and favor.

The rude greeting parliament gave him in regards to his “Union of the Crowns” legislation and it carried over into several other issues including plantations-colonization, and the heritage of the Essex Rebellion carrying over into the Gunpowder Plot. For our purposes the most important fracture raised the issue of “free trade”—which did not mean then what it means today—to a major priority of an uncomfortable parliament. Many of the divisions that tore the Virginia Company apart over the next two decades can see the seeds of conflict in the 1604 and 1605 parliaments. Almost certainly, we can see the commitment of Edwin Sandys to free trade, regulated—non monopoly– joint stock companies—and from that point on he never deviated from his attachment to plantation-building in the Americas. The love-fest that was not to be, between him and Thomas Smythe his principal opponent in parliament on these issues, is obvious—as was the personal dislike of the King to Sandys.

 

Plymouth: Birthplace of the Virginia Company and Business Plan: Haklyut the Younger’s Colonization Paradigm

This period of transition, the chief “player” activists were—and ultimately prime proponents behind the Virginia Company—the Earl of Southampton Sir John Popham, chief Justice of the King’s Bench and Sir Ferdinand Gorges. The latter, despite his unusual last name, were descendants of nobility that arrived at the time of the Norman Conquest. His family was, through marriage with the Howards had become deeply involved in Tudor court relationships/matters. Gorges himself was related to the great adventurer Humphrey Gilbert, and he was half-brother to Walter Raleigh.  His parliamentary constituency was Plymouth, an outer West Country port. In my biographic research I picked up “whispers” about the family’s attraction to Puritanism.

Gorges background is strongly military, with experience in action in the Netherlands, and against the Spanish Armada, an expedition against Portugal, and expedition in Normandy led by Essex. That relationship curtailed his career somewhat, and during the “Essex revolt” he was imprisoned. He seemed to have interest in Essex’s Irish ventures, but contented himself with partnership with Popham.

In 1604 he was presented with three Native American’s brought to England by Captain George Weymouth who had just returned from a exploration of northern North America. It is believed  by some, not likely any historian, that one of these Indians was Squanto, of Plymouth Pilgrim fame. His son, Robert was Governor-General of Massachusetts 1623-4. Ferdinando was intensely involved in the affairs of the “second corporation-Massachusetts and Sagadahoc colony”, but rather than distort or overwhelm the reader at this point, I will content myself with a suggestion that his patent from the king in the 1620’s drew him into Sagadahoc and later to his “province” of Maine. In 1607 Gorges would have been near 40.

The former, Oxford educated, former Speaker of the House of Commons, hailed from Bristol, drew from a longstanding affluent landed gentry background, and as a MP recorded votes against “merchant adventurers” monopoly  in trade which restricted Bristol merchants in 1571. Otherwise it seems he did not demonstrate a disproportionate parliamentary interest in foreign trade matters—other than his interest in a patent/plantation in Ireland during the time of Essex’s plantation. He did run afoul of Essex (1680’s) in the course of their mutual Irish aspirations; Imprisoned by him, threatened with death, his escape was secured by a certain Ferdinando Gorges who rowed him to safety. It seems reasonable to assume Gorges and Popham were friends and that this figured in their mutual colonial activities.

 His judicial career, after a long parliamentary one, began in the 1590’s, and he seems to have been well-regarded as a firm but fair. He presided over the 1605 Gunpowder Plot/Guy Fawkes Trial.  His wealth is also noted by his biographers, and he may well have been one of the more wealthy jurists in England.. Their interest in foreign trade and colonization seemed to have brought them together. Popham’s interest was stimulated by an Irish adventure in the mid-1580’s in which Gorges was his investment partner . [99] https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/ volume/1558-1603/member/popham-john-1532-1607; https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/  volume/1558-1603/member/gorges-sir-ferdinando-1568-1647. Popham’s role in the Virginia Company was “curtailed a bit” by his death in 1607 at age seventy-six.

They were together involved in several of Raleigh’s post Roanoke ventures, and seem to have had an interest in fishing and fur trade, as well as timber “and other naval stores”, likely tar. His obvious leadership in the 1606 Virginia Company charter (he likely was the author of its initial draft—which his position as Chief Justice of the Queen’s Bench suggest his strong legal capacity and his access into court policy circles) could have been triggered by his 1605 “hosting” of two of Weymouth’s Native American Natives. Kenneth R. Andrews also suspects that Weymouth’s return to Plymouth from his American expedition in 1605 “set the process in motion” for the Virginia Company charter [99] Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 310, but K. Andrews also ties this to the mechanizations of the Earl of Salisbury, Robert Cecil, and the active backing of ‘Plymouth merchants who backed [Weymouth’s] voyage, and Ferdinando Gorges, who at the time was governor of the Plymouth fort”.

Kenneth Andrews further suggests that the timing was also affected by the signing of the Anglo-Spanish treaty of 1604. He cites Brown [Genesis, p. 50] who suggests Gorges “was well-placed [at that time] to appreciate the dangerous scale of unemployment among soldiers and sailors created by the ending of the war and shared feelings of those who ‘rather chose to spend themselves in seeking a new world’ than servilely to be hired but as slaughterers in the quarrels of strangers’.

At Plymouth too, the sons of Sir Humphrey Gilbert- Sir John and [Walter] Raleigh – were fired by their father’s old ambition, while Thomas Hanham, recorder of Plymouth, added his weight to the local movement. Hanham may well have been responsible for bringing his grandfather, Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of the King’s [?] Bench into the arena. Sir John, who had connections with Bristol, was to be the moving spirit of the West Country effort to colonize New England, and his cousin George—another privateering captain—was to lead the attempt. In Bristol, Richard Hakluyt and Robert Aldworth, the promoters of Pring’s expedition rallied support”.

Osgood suggests the trigger that crystalized action was a report, “a paper was prepared setting forth reasons for raising a public fund to be used in aid of discovery and colonization”. Brown assets it was the work of Edware Haics “who accompanied Gilbert on his last voyage. [99] Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1, p. 25 and Footnote 1. The writer in particular called for “public” or state/royal support as opposed to private endeavor or trading association monopoly. If so we can suggest two thoughts on the initial efforts that led to the Virginia Company 1606 charter: first, it originated from the Gilbert-West Country nexus, which had a decided “northern” tilt to North American colonization, and secondly, the policy proposal was routed through parliament even though parliament was already engaged in an intense struggle with James on monopolies, foreign trade, and colonialization (1603-4).

His strong belief was that colonization in an age of intensive mercantile competition by other foreign powers required the state involvement for legitimacy, protection, and enhance “prestige”. The writer (Haics) further advocated that “commissioners should be appointed under and act of parliament, who should collect money for the purpose … Privileges and license to transport colonists should be procured from the king, and his honor should be pledged to assist and protect the project”.

In this period, an intense period of English urbanization, had transformed London into the prime cluster for merchant adventurers, and the Court and the Crown, particularly in Elizabethan years, had provided the political and economic support for privateering against Spain—which was the cornerstone of the West Country marine industry. The merchant adventurers played an outsized role in the governance of London itself, and their leadership had led to the formation of the East India Company—a proprietary joint stock company that was to bring profits from East India to London and its merchants—as had happened with the Moscow and Levant companies.

These merchant adventurer trading companies, with their restrictive/closed membership, enjoyed extensive rights, characterized as monopolistic by those excluded from participation. All profits went to the few who were members, to be spent to be spent in London, and revenues for its port and the Crown coffers. Five hundred years of history has obscured that this proposal was an obvious effort to bypass the merchant investor associations based in London and to assert the ability and willingness of the outports to enter into colonization of the Atlantic. Kenneth Andrews asserts that the alliance that first advocated for what would be the Virginia Company came from the West Country–not from the Crown or the London-based merchant adventurers.

The Virginia effort was meant to respond to West Country regional needs, pride, and economic growth, and that effort collided with the power of the dominant London maritime cluster.

The energy that produce the Virginia enterprise came not from the state, but from the nation. The desire to exploit American lands and waters was shared by all the interested parties and some were moved [West Country] by zeal to convert the heathen or –like Sir John Popham—by fear of the idle poor and cashiered soldiers ‘whose Encrease threateneeth the state’, but the overriding thrust was nationalistic. Anti-Spanish feeling was still virulent among the sailors and merchants of the southwest, whose complaints about the maltreatment of Englishmen in Spanish ports had aroused fresh anger since 1603 [in which treaty with Spain was signed] and where men like Sir Richard Hawkins found it hard to accept the end of privateering. Gilbert, Parker, George Popham [John’s brother] Somers, Gosnold, Aldworth, Pring, and Gorgas, not to mention Raleigh and scores of other West Country undertakers of the Virginia Project, had been prominent actors in the Atlantic war [with Spain] [99] Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p.313

To support this position he quotes from a letter by Ferdinando Gorgas that he wrote in 1608 [to Salisbury (Robert Cecil) advocating the repudiation of war with Spain and its assertion of its exclusive claim to the New World. Gorgas was advocating for a base in the New World that in the event of war with Spain could be used as a base of operations and support. The need for and advantages of such a “colonization” would be supportive of the West County marine cluster, and in particular to its sailors and to the population of the region:

I beseeche God we repent not to late [or] too soone concluding of peace [with Spain] for (as now the case standeth) our Kinge is by them (as it seemeth) [condemned] our people unjustly …, and generally our Nation of all other, [like] to be debarred from the liberty of making use of the sea, or land; These reports [of Spanish adverse actions] ar horrable [sic] to honeste Natures to beare; and occasions much to grieve our people in generall (sic) to understand of, whose eares ar dayly filled with it by every common mariner, that comes from thence. Which what it has bred among the multitude, I am [afraid] to write. [99] Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p.314

 

In the decades previous to 1606, London became the prime location for the development of the British maritime and English navy and merchant marine—and the “out ports”, that included Plymouth and Bristol in the West County, deeply resented her success, and suffered from it. In 1603-5 they brought their frustration onto the parliamentary agendas of those years and commenced a profound and bitter debate around trading association monopolies. The new king, for his own reasons defended the merchant adventurers. He also pursued a foreign policy that in the view of many English elites and masses, leaned too much to Spain and its Catholic Church. The West County had in the past waged that war against Spain and was in the post-war suffered undue stress on its patriotism and economy.

By the time Weymouth and Edward Haics returned from their voyage in 1605, the parliament had spent the better part of two sessions/years in conflict and negotiation on matters closely associated with the rise of London’s merchant adventurers and corporations structured as was the East Indies Company. Haics in 1605 was attempting to fit the West Country’s own proposal for a colony that would balance out London’s East India trade, and it emanated from the frustration of a treaty that ended a thirty year war with Spain, and adversely hurt the economic needs of the West region, and the economic-political proclivities of its elite, not to ignore the honest patriotic emotions that ran counter to the newly-imposed on the nation by the new treaty.

It seems that at this juncture Popham and Gorges sprung into action and recruiting their allies they spread the word for forming a new corporation and securing support and resources for a permanent settlement—which from their past expeditions was intended to locate in today’s northern-central  New England. Across Plymouth and the West Country the support of key power bases and individuals were convinced to lend support to the venture. The venture was in today’s parlance a regional economic development project, a prospect of jobs for sailors, ships, and land-based maritime infrastructure—not to mention merchants who prospered by involvement in the maritime cluster that existed through the West Country. Their immediate fear was a recession in this cluster induced by end of war with Spain the past year. In addition, the prospect of Plymouth establishing an American colony would mean that profits and trade would flow to the West Country—not to London, and that too would be a burst to the regional economy.

Kenneth Andrews, however, in his listing of those potentially involved opens up a Pandora’s box by mentioning a “gathering” in which all were in attendance , and tying in the parliamentary member, George Somers “who was one of the most important figures in this gathering, for as M.P. for Lyme Regis [?] he was already a prominent spokesmen for West County interest in the House of Commons” [99] Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 310-11 Somers in 1604 was the first-term M.P. for Lyme Regis.

But whatever the motor power that impelled [the English] to cross the seas, neither precursor nor pioneer, profiteer nor promoter, Pilgrim nor Puritan, could have accomplished this purpose without the aid of the funds that had accumulated during this period in the hands of the capitalist classes of southern and southwestern England. It is true that the mercantilist groups were scattered and formed but a small part of the total population of the kingdom. But they were a power in the rising towns of the south–London and the outports of the West Country-and were working together towards common ends–the increase of wealth, the financial solvency of the state, and the glory of the kingdom.  … English-America would hardly had been settled at this tie had not the period of [colonization] coincided with the era of capitalism in the first full flush of its power, an era which dates from the years of Elizabeth’s reign and of which we of the twentieth century may be witnessing the transformation or the end. [99] Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 76-7

His entry into this preliminary gathering of the future Virginia Company requires us to consider the role he played in the 1604 session of Parliament, a session where trading association monopoly regulation dominated the session—and caused a serious dispute with the new King James. The opposition to the king on the regulation of the trading associations was none other than Edwin Sandys.

 [999] Somers will figure significantly in the affairs of the Virginia Company—he is the fellow for whom the Somers Island’s [Bermuda] are named. A former privateer and naval hero, Somers is the founder of the Bermuda colony and would serve as the “Admiral of the Virginia Company of London”. In 1609, he will lead the supply ship fleet to rescue the desperate Jamestown colony, but it will be badly damaged during a storm off the coast of Bermuda—which was unknown to that point—and at the helm Somers put in to shore, and over nine months rebuilt the ship, and then completed his mission to bring the ship to Jamestown—meeting en route on the James the colonists of Jamestown in a ketch on the way to somewhere having previously. abandoned Jamestown. He and Governor De La Warre returned to Jamestown, reestablished the colony, and then Somers returned to Bermuda, where he died in 1610 [999].

To continue on Kenneth Andrews narrative, it would seem that Popham carried the results of the Western Country meeting to London. Working with Salisbury [Robert Cecil 999], arguably the most powerful official of Elizabeth or James’s Court, the two enlisted support from Sir Walter Cope, Westminster M.P.  and Lord Chamberlain of the Exchequer as well as Register-General of Commerce, whose positions would be critical in the formation of the Company. The trio transformed the West Country initiative into a national one, with instant access to the new King.

To yet add to this impressive aggregation of power, Thomas Smythe, perhaps close to being the undisputed leader of the London merchant adventurers, founder and CEO of the East India Company Levant and Muscovy Company also—in fact he had just returned (September, 1605) to London from Moscow and publishing a popular blog-narrative of the fall of Boris Godunov and the retelling of Russia’s Time of Troubles up to 1605]. Smythe, son of the powerful court merchant, Customer Smith, was both an institution as a merchant adventurer-trader, and a power in the London City governance. Riding on the crest of his influence, his inclusion into the prospective Virginia Company alliance brought in the critical merchant adventurers whose expertise and maritime resources was essential, but also gave them a vehicle to form what in their mind what could be the equivalent of the East Indies Company in the West (North America).

[999] Cecil the First Earl of Salisbury. As Secretary of State since 1596 (Elizabeth as Queen), Cecil continued through the succession of James I. He would hold that title adding Lord High Treasurer and Lord of the Privy Seal until his death in 1612. Related to Francis Bacon and to the Coke’s Essex by marriage. Short and hunchbacked, he generated several derogatory names, but his power, access and influence during this period could not be equaled. He was the individual who uncovered the Guy Fawkes Gunpower Rebellion in 1605, over which Popham would preside as Chief Judge. [999]

In the discussion that follows Kenneth Reynolds’ path of events is employed [99] Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 311-13 Kenneth Andrews credits Salisbury for marrying the West Country proposals to the aspirations and demands of the London merchant adventurers. The mechanism was to create one “conglomerate corporation” which housed and oversaw two subordinate sub-joint stock corporations, one each for the West outports and the second for London. Each had their own boards (which were formally appointed by the conglomerate board upon nomination by the sub-joint stock board) which were intended to run the operations of what would be two separate colonies each bounded by latitudes, and leaving an unfilled void in their middle.

 

The conglomerate was to be directed by its own board, directly appointed by the King—in this manner taking a distinctive and unique organizational structure which bypassed the heretofore conventional granting of private monopolies to the joint stock company. The linkage with their rival London merchant adventurers and the existence of the conglomerate board of directors which limited their control over their colony, however, raised an outcry with the West Country advocates almost from the presentation of the draft.

In any event as indicated earlier, it is likely Popham drafted  a proposed charter. Accordingly, while still under internal negotiation, Popham in 1605, representing the City of London, and Gorgas, the outports (Bristol, Plymouth and Exeter) wrote a petition to which a considerable number of activist adventurers (including Thomas Gates, George Somers, Hakluyt, Wingfield, Raleigh Gilbert) added their names. They asked for a charter, incorporating two companies, one for London and the other Plymouth. The petition was probably presented to the King in the late summer of 1605 (before the Gunpowder Revolt). Ultimately, the King would accept it in early 1606, and the Privy Council would negotiate its terms and finalize the charter. [99] see also Charles M. Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 80-1.

James took the plunge [into Atlantic colonization] in 1606, committing the Crown to the colonial enterprise, but he did so only in response to pressure from below and seemed [in his actions regarding the charter] to assert royal sovereignty over the colonies than to govern them—or even to create an effective form of government. For while the [royal conglomerate] council advised, instructed, and supervised the [subsidiary] companies, it left the work of administration, justices, evangelization, exploitation, trade and so forth to them. The crown contributed nothing to the financing of the companies, though it claimed its share of the proceeds in the shape of a fifth of the precious metals produced.

Neither the system of government nor the capitalization of the colonies proved at all adequate [in 1607] and failure forced the wholesale revision of both in 1609 [and again in 1612]. Although it would be unfair to blame King James I alone for the weakness of the initial organization of the Virginia enterprise, the crown signally failed to give a decisive lead and so far shrank from challenging Spain that during the year 1607, Virginia was diplomatically explained as the private business of the king’s subjects, conducted at their own risk. James refused to interfere with [the private companies] activities, but he equally refused to acknowledge responsibility for them at this stage. [99] Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 313