Restructuring: Third Pivot to 1612 Third Charters
Gates and De La Warr Expeditions: Jamestown’s Stabilization
First, Virginia Company’s initial formal request for investors to purchase shares-debt was made in mid-March. It appears the first, and most successful, was from that point to early June. The king issued the charter document, the Avalon project, on May 23, and he gave his final ok sometime in June. https://avalon.law.yale.edu/17th_century/va02.asp#:~:text=The%20Avalon%20Project%20%3A%20The%20Second,of%20Virginia%3B%20May%2023%2C%201609&text=JAMES%2C%20by%20the%20Grace%20of,these%20Presents%20shall%20come%2C%20Greeting.
The Gates Expedition to Virginia was assembled. Sir Thomas Gates, a military hero, left for Virginia in July 24, with 500 hundred colonists–a large number, eight ships with considerable supplies, and a new leadership for the colony. Even by today’s standards this was a quick sendoff, with new shareholder purchase money coming in one door and shortly out the recruitment and supply back door. One important issue need be mentioned; previous debt was still due on some bonds, actually a lot of the pre-1609 bond issuances, and that debt was not meaningfully extinguished by the 1609 campaign.
It seems from the records available that a second shareholder installment phase followed in November, which was less successful because news that Gates and Somers ship, along with the redoubtable Captain Newport had been lost. By that time it was clear the first phase had NOT been sufficient to pay for the costs of the departed Gates expedition. Previous to and during this period, Company officials were still managing and mitigating the effects of the past accumulation of debt and promised investment. making every effort to reduce the deficit. The Virginia Company had a debt issue, the 1609 initiatives and charter did not resolve it—indeed likely the opposite.
If the original shareholder campaign had paid off much of the Gates expedition, the second November effort was not applied to older debt, but used to send a relief expedition to boost London hopes and reduce their fears concerning the colony. Nevertheless, there was a new infusion of money, and a new supply expedition was assembled, under the command of Governor De La Warr, along with 150 new immigrants, an increasing, but still small number of artisans, farmers and professionals. More on this expedition shortly.
the Immediate Aftermath
The fleet ran into serious trouble on the shoals of an undiscovered-uninhabited island—today’s Bermuda, yesterdays Somers Island named after the fleet admiral who would later lose his life establishing a colony on that island. Most of the fleet made it through the storms and shoals, but the ship which carried Thomas Gates, George Somers and was captained by Christopher Newport, and most of the heavyweights and high status folk, ran up on the rocks and was lost to the main body—who presumed their sinking and the loss of life.
The main body delivered its immigrants and what supplies they had, and returned, with a badly burned John Smith to England, carrying news of a still unsettled colony, John Smith, never at a loss for disparaging and dramatic news, reinforced a decidedly negative narrative concerning the colony. In response the Virginia Company sent a small three ship fleet with the colony’s Governor, Thomas West, Baron De La Warr off to Jamestown in hopes of mitigating what had to have been a leadership vacuum, that could easily prove fatal to the barely existing colony. Accordingly, De La Warr was empowered with sufficient authority, status, and experience, to command obedience and enforce the Company’s vision on the residents. De La Warr was to be the first governor in residence, whose past experience and official powers bordering on a military commander, was sent over to govern the affairs of the colony. Underneath him a local council, more advisory than elective, would provide that governor a capacity to create order and stability.
… the decision was reached, probably at the end of 1609, to alter fundamentally the manner of governing the colony in Virginia, and instead of a local president and council which had been the form of organization until this time, to appoint a single head entrusted with exceptionally large powers. The company made up its mind to try a new experiment by sending to America a single and absolute governor, with authority so extensive as to make him almost a dictator for life … He was called Lord Governor and Captain General [99] Andrews, the Colonial Period in American History: the Settlement, Vol. 1, p. 107-108
Logical at the time, and in light of future events seemingly the right move, De La Warr, Thomas Gates, and his successor Thomas Dale were all cut from the same cloth. That cloth elevated one thread of Elizabethan merchant adventurer-privateer-military commercial trade-colonization pre-history at the expense of the Company’s budding permanent settlement innovative experiment. From chaos came control at the cost of minimal individual enterprise. For the next seven years, at minimum, Virginia struggled to find a way to both decentralize order, and to introduce some measure of economic opportunity from which individual settlers could prosper.
From 1610 to the end of 1616 the Jamestown colony would be administered by former soldiers and admirals, whose view of order and discipline was beyond harsh. Their governance did restore order and was able to stabilize—thus saving—the colony—at a cost of creating an image of a military colony back in England. That image plagued recruitment, and created a permanent frost in investor hopes for the Virginia Company. The merchant adventurer founders like Smythe saw more favorable opportunities in the unsettled raw Somers Islands. Unlike Smythe who stayed on, many left the Company for other trading opportunities. The old-style merchant adventurers, and their investment base became the first casualties of the a broken engine of Virginia growth.
Those factors, and the reaction to them, over the next decade, drove London corporate policymakers toward a form of colonial development that led to the formation of a tobacco monoculture and an oligarchical economic political elite that “lorded” it over a workforce saturated by an inequality from which few could escape. Strong letter to follow, written by the Powhatan. The First Powhatan War began, in my view, with De La Warr in late 1610. .
Moreover, the harsh control regime removed any incentive Jamestown indentured servants had to remain in Virginia if they were able to survive their term of indenture. While serving their indenture, the harsh treatment they received did little to inspire creativity and hard work—even in the planting and harvesting of staples for their consumption. For them to stay in Virginia they would need to discover some “opportunity” sufficient to their hopes and dreams. Gentlemen fared little better, and that put a damper on the willingness of other gentlemen to travel, or allow themselves to be sent by their families to achieve what had formerly been better opportunities than those in England. With some, perhaps great exaggeration, in essence, the original business recruitment plan of the Company effectively shattered on the rocks and shoals of Bermuda and the starving winter of 1610..
Jon Kulka carries this theme into what it was in reality, the establishment of a regime whose purpose was to maintain not just order but “control”. For him this will be the first “stage” in what would be a four-stage political development evolution of Virginia. “First came the disorder of the initial settlement, then between 1612 and 1630, the military regime of Lord De La Warr and the councilor-commander oligarchy [I will in later modules refer to them as ‘plantation conquistadors] [99] Jon Kulka, “Order and Chaos in Early America: Political and Social Stability in Pre-Restoration Virginia”, the American Historical Review, Vol. 90, No. 2 (Apr, 1985), pp. 281-2”.
Under a new charter issued on May 9, 1609, the company gave charge of the colony to ‘one able and absolute governor” and imposed martial law. De La Warr, Sir Thomas Gates, and Sir Thomas Dale, soldier-governors chosen from the circle of English officers experienced in Ireland and the Low Countries brought garrison government to Virginia and military regimentation stabilized the colony’s day-to-day existence” [99] Kukla, Order and Chaos, pp. 283
For the moment, it is sufficient to observe that the events in 1609-10 Jamestown—and the reaction of the Virginia Company decision-makers to them—prompted the imposition of political order in Virginia that strongly impacted not only local governance, but also the characterization of such by American historians. Herbert Osgood devotes considerable pages and discussion on this matter [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 1 pp. 63-73. He disagrees with my assertion that the change of regime occurred with De La Warr, arguing that Gates was similiarly empowered, but he then goes on to demonstrate in considerable detail how the military regime was imposed on the colony, and continued through the succession of Gates and Dale.
Gates in July 1609 had indeed been empowered as the “sole and absolute governor”, but rendering Virginia into a military colony was entrusted to and implemented by De La Warr. Nevertheless, the governor’s dominance over court administration, policy-making, trade, and Indian affairs was complete, and whatever semblance of democracy that had existed in the 1607 local governance framework was removed. The Jamestown “plantation system” whereby the settlers worked in gangs with overseers, ate at common tables and lived in a common barracks all were compatible with Gate’s instructions.
It is with De La Warr, however, that new instructions, issued by the new governance council set up by the 1609 charter that the title was transformed into “governor, commander, and captain general both by land and sea over the said colony, and all other colonies planted or to be planted in Virginia” [99] pp. 65-6) Upon De La Warr’s arrival “for the first time at Jamestown appears the elaborate official system of a military type [as] which [had] been instituted at Sagadahoc. Of the six members of the Council [he appointed]. One held the special title of lieutenant general, another of admiral, and still others that of captain of fifty, master of ordinance,[and] vice-admiral. Only one bore the title of a civilian … who was secretary and recorder. The other officials of the settlement were almost wholly military in character. [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 1 pp. 68-9
While several harsh military codes were issued in the years that followed, it must be said that most historians concede they were not implemented with the same spirit of harshness. The bark was worse than the bite; nevertheless the colony was run as a military post with its inhabitants under military command. So while twenty crimes were listed as punishable by death, ordinary operation of the colony and its various tasks and activities minimized individual freedoms and action, and treated the settlers as as a military unit.
Behavior and response to commands were similar to a military unit, to the extent that Sunday church attendance was required and settlers were assigned to a military unit for defense purposes—and constantly trained for military actions. The daily work routine was posted, and “the beat of a drum” marked their timing. That this period coincided with the First Powhatan War, the first large military action being ordered in 1610 by De La Warr, this military period was very much linked to both military attack and self-defense against the Powhatan.
As we shall shortly describe, Governor Dale, particularly after 1613, tempered the tone and tenacity of military governance, and introduced what became Virginia’s first most significant economic, political and social change in his last three years, the reader ought understand the period from 1610 to 1616 could not even be described as stagnant. Virginia’s population contracted. “So great was the mortality that in April 1616, out of a total of more than 1,000 who were in the colony in July 1610, or had landed there since that date, only 351 survived” [99] Herbert L. Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol 1 pp.73. It was only with Dale that a serious attempt was made to counter the mortality rate; Dale (1612) dispersed the Jamestown population into a series of new settlements, beginning with Henrico, than up and down the James.
To be sure it is difficult to conceptualize the colony as being so small in number as a small high school today would be, I think it important to remind oneself of this small military unit we call today a colony—we cannot expect much from it, and should not be surprised how fundamental social relationships, an oligarchy, for example can easily emerge. That this smallness should persist for the entire first decade of the colony’s existence has to have exerted impact and left a heritage as it developed incrementally in the late teens.
Back in London
1609-10 was the worst year the colony ever endured, although 1622 was no winner either, and so the colony’s viability was open to question. In the spring Gates, after his ten month sojourn getting back from his shipwreck, arrived in Jamestown in the spring after the “starving time”, the 1610 winter, during which of the 500 Jamestown residents, only about 60 made it through. Devastated Gates decided to abandon Jamestown in hope of finding a better location. What follows demands a movie be made, a movie which has never been made With the survivors escaping on small scoops, sailing down the James, they ran into De La Warr’s small fleet. We can imagine who would have played the De La Warr; my vote is John Wayne who while hopelessly out of character, would have conveyed what had to have been one of the more dramatic rescues in American history. De La Warre ordered everyone back to Jamestown, and restored the city, and its devastated survivors to the colony’s second burst of colonization.
Osgood summaries this period: “When the vessels reached England, the full extent of the misfortune [of the Gates Expedition] became known. It was also seen that the colony was left in a precarious position. Some who had returned with the vessels [Captain John Smith for instance] began also to spread evil reports concerning the colony and the mismanagement of its affairs. This caused discouragement among the adventurers [investors], and many now ceased any longer to support the enterprise. But the group among the [active investors and management], whose hearts were wholly in the work, devoted themselves all the more to its prosecution. [A pamphlet] The True and Sincere Declaration was issued to show what the situation was, how it had come about, and that there was no grounds for discouragement. In a broadside the appeal was renewed for assistance, and for an additional supply of artisans and farmers as colonists. Sir Thomas West, Lord Delaware, a slow and formal man, selected because of his rank was appointed governor [the Gates Expedition governor, i.e. Gates, was presumed dead as his ship was presumably lost at sea], and preparations were at once made to send him out at the head of a [second] relief expedition [99] Herbert Osgood, the American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, Vol. 1, p.65
[999] It is worth note that Lord Delaware, whatever his failings, was the George Washington of this Valley Forge. He would personally restore the colonists to Jamestown, and stabilize the situation there before bad health sent him back to England; he did retain the office of governor, and exercised its powers while in London. His would be the very first plantation, and it was he that introduced Rebecca (“Pocahontas”) to the King. He died in route in 1617, a trip intended to repair the damage caused by a resident Deputy Governor, Argall. His brothers, resident in England assumed leadership functions, and upon the termination of the Virginia Company. The label “Delaware”, often attributed to an Indian word, was first used as a derivation of Lord Delaware’s formal title: Lord de la Warr. The state of Delaware owes its name to him. [999]
1612 Third Charter; Stuart Version of “Put a Man on the Moon”, “ a Colony in North America”
The push for a Third Charter really begins, I think, six months of so before the March 1611 Dales Expedition—or late 1610. London, late 1610 as far as the Virginia Company was concerned was bleak at best. Jamestown was still very much in an existential survival mode, made worse by its active campaign against a hostile Powhatan. The installation of a military colony run by an absolute high status governor such as De La Warr promised at a bare minimum order out of chaos, and a hopefully competent “circle the wagons” effort by the Virginia colonists.
Hindsight suggests any worries felt at that time were appropriate. In Virginia, the “workforce, tasked to both export and feed itself—and push back the close neighboring Powhatan–was not noted for its exuberance toward an eight hour workday, and the hostile military culture drained from their soul as much the mosquito sucked their blood, and the swamp evacuated from their bodies. It was evident by the end of the 1610 the problems persisted and a third charter fix was in order. A strong governor had asserted authority and its imposition brought order and the semblance of stabilization, but how long would that hold?
So few in London believed any illusions that Virginia was on the upward trail; it was the reverse. The Company had one more chance to get it right—or likely it would have to close down the Virginia colony. If that happened no one would look good, and England would be shamed as unable to compete with its mercantilist rivals. But in no way was the fundamental challenge that rocked the Company, its bums rush to fiscal collapse, and its inability to sustain a permanent settlement had in no meaningful way been alleviated.
The Second Charter, whether a good start or fumbled pivot, needed more—a lot more structural and fiscal change, and a commitment to a new approach/strategy to make the permanent settlement work. But it all revolved around money and the resources it could buy. To bring in more investment, the Company’s push had to “shove” investor’s willingness to commit more pounds under strict, much more realistic time frames but payouts that were also more real and believable. That realistic payout turned out to be land grants, and workforce incentives.
Taking advantage of the 1609 Gates expedition, a heavy public relations campaign continued to produce more share subscriptions but to little effect. Accordingly, the Company’s fiscal position continued to deteriorate, and the colony’s dependence upon Company-financed recruitment and supplies/transportation made it evident that the Company could not long sustain the venture. Shareholders, the king entered into yet another discussion when Gates, leaving De La Warr behind as governor, returned to England (September 1610). His report was perceived as so negative that it caused the shareholders “to consider whether the project should be abandoned”. [99] Craven, the Virginia Company of 1604, pp. 16.Gates, however negative his report was taken, took the imitative and vigorously pressed hard to keep the colony and find a way to pay its bills. Amazingly, there was an opportunity that fell out of the earlier described discovery and inadvertent colonization of the island of Bermuda (Somers Island).
Share Subscriptions Could Not Pay the Bills: To avert the crisis seemingly induced by Gates’s loss at sea in 1609, Scott reports that Smythe “was forced to borrow largely on the the security of unpaid calls [share subscriptions], and from the funds raised in this way the expedition of 1610 under Lord De La Warr was supplied”. [99] Scott, p. 251. So company advocates turned to the king and pressed him to authorize a national lottery for the benefit of the Virginia colony and all that represented. Lotteries were popular, controversial, and prone to scandal and rumor allegations, but with the king’s permission they could start immediately. But if a lottery, or lender and shareholder investment for that matter, was to achieve the scale needed, a burst of momentum and enthusiasm had to be injected into the campaign and lottery.
It was not to be publicized as support for the Company and its wealthy subscribers, or a tax for the king/parliament, but to finance a national initiative that would carry England far in prestige, respect, pride, honor, power, and yes wealth for all. While historians may not like the allusion, it was an effort much like JFK launched at the height of the Cold War: put a man on the moon in the next decade. In this case it was put an Englishman in North America and keep him there. For this a national campaign to buy the lottery, buy a share in the company, had to be devised and conducted—public relations was one thing, but this was way more than that.
Sir Thomas Smythe was now quite definitely the chief … [he] had he courage to launch the new campaign for funds to which the adventurers committed themselves in the fall of 1610. The estimated need ran to L30,000. All former subscribers were urged to subscribe another stock purchase at L37, 10s, on agreement that the subscription would be paid at the rate of L12, 10s per year over the next three years. Others were invited to subscribe on the same terms. The Lord Mayor [of London] appealed once more to London companies, and plans were made for inviting the other towns of England to contribute … [99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624, p. 16
They were able to muster some additional L18,000 in stock subscriptions through a variety of measures—and holding in place the gentry recruited in 1609. In March 1611 Sir Thomas Dale left London with 300 settlers, soldiers, craftsmen—and the usual preponderance of the old 1606 motley crue—more tweaks but not reversal of the settlement pattern. In May, Gate sailed with another three ships, with 300 more settlers and a literal horde of livestock, fowl, and seed grain. The latter was hoped to encourage self-sufficiency and to mitigate the reliance on the Powhatan for food to survive.
[999] An excellent soldier, likely with aristocratic background, a very close friend of James’s heir apparent Prince Henry (who would sicken and die in 1612), was available and, with the return to England of a sick De La Warr, and our 1609 hero Thomas Gates returning also, Dale, as military commander, was sent of to carry out this mission impossible: find an export crop and get it to market—and if that meant ending the Indian war by conquest or peace treaty—so be it. Alternating with Gates as Lieutenant Governor, Dale would be a dominant force through 1616. [999]
In this post-1609 scramble “the company had dispatched to Virginia no less than 22 vessels, and close to 1,400 colonists” and Craven sensed the company leadership may have felt proud and felt they had the situation under some measure of control [99] Craven, the Virginia Company, p.17. But again, hopes were soon dashed. The reality of Virginia had not changed due to these efforts. Little had changed when both fleets landed” “one half to three fourths of every shipload failed to survive the seasoning period … After five years and [sending over] 1,600 colonists, two-thirds of them were already in their graves” [99] D. Alan Williams, Introduction, p. xxxvii
Also within days of Gates’ departure in May 1611, De La Warr returned, and carried his report to a shareholder meeting on June 25, 1611: he spent much time describing his ill health wrought by Virginia, which carried him to death’s door. Brought back to health in warm baths of the West Indies, and the fruits of the Azores, he had survived. De La Warr a two years earlier had been the hero that was tasked to save the colony, the public relations effort that accompanied the subscription effort had embraced him—but now the hero was saying Virginia had nearly killed him. Public as the meeting was, his report was released. How could it not have been anything but negatively received.
“Early in 1611 it was recognized that, unless a large amount of capital could be procured, the situation was desperate. It was estimated that L30,000 was required to be paid in two years. Of this sum [only] l8,000 had been promised [but not yet paid]”. [99] Scott, pp. 251-2. With the debt as bad, or even worse than it ever was, with sufficient new funding unlikely from shareholder subscription, it is at this point, revenues from other sources than investors had to be fabricated. By mid 1611 the Company had to consider new directions in finance and public support if the fiscal crisis was not to reach its final conclusion. One could attach a modern term to describe the fiscal state of the Company: it was by 1611, by its own accounting, a “going concern”.
We summarize the sections in the module thus far. By no later than early 1611 the Virginia Company was facing its existential crisis of survival. The reader should have noted in our discussion at least three primary reasons, the most basic and crippling of all was that its financial plan, if there ever were such a thing, was irreparably broken. The Company by that point was broke, with no immediate prospects of funds to close the deficit,
In some measure, this problem was traceable to the initial use of the older merchant investment “closed” joint stock corporation and traditional merchant adventurer financing. The switch to a regulated joint stock corporation in mid 1609, had either not yet taken effect sufficiently to alleviate the fiscal crisis that developed from the pre-1609 period, or it too was not suitable to the permanent settlement mission—at least not without substantial funds from either the king, or other identified sources. Bluntly, the joint stock corporation, either regulated or not, was not a natural fit vehicle for colonization-permanent settlement.
That leads us to the third primary cause of the 1611 going concern: a poor understanding of the difference between a trading factory settlement, and a permanent settlement set in a wilderness three thousand miles distant with natives not willing or not able to provide trading sufficient to sustain the plantation. Plantation-building in such a location was not understood, and previous English experience in colonization lent few useful lessons or expertise that could be followed.
To cope with this crisis several important short and long-term solutions were devised at this point: tobacco, a national lottery, the Somers Island opportunity, and a “man on the moon” public-private initiative to save England a humiliations in foreign affairs by demonstrating it too could sustain a colony in Virginia. Again, another effort was made to adjust the structure and organization of the joint stock corporation. The net effect of these solutions necessitated the king reassess his role and forms of participation in the Virginia initiative, updating and making more realistic the public-private partnership.
the Solutions:
Lotteries: That meant the Virginia Company had to face the prospect of raising its own funds desperately needed to finance the supply ships and population recruitment, Each new debt issuance meant new investors and the potential for new members to the board of directors. Hence, the prospect of dilution in the power of the London board of directors was going was now on the table. The charter reorganization had to devise a company structure that allowed each relief expedition to form its own subsidiary “company” while leaving the “conglomerate holding” company more or less in the hands of Smythe and his initial London board of directors. By the time of its dissolution (1625), some fifty-six subsidiary companies were formed. Smythe wanted to avoid this scenario at all costs, and so he also desired the “holding company” be authorized to raise funds without recourse to debt (i.e. no new members to a board of directors)—in 1600 that meant holding public “lotteries”.
The second sources of financing was third charter’s authorization for the Company to conduct lotteries to directly raise revenues for the Company and all its various activities and debts. These lotteries as we shall see were not wildly successful, but they were sufficiently large to support the Company until its demise in 1625. Because lotteries were an important revenue source, they also became a vital tool in the financing of joint-stock companies was they expanded in the New World.
They became a centerpiece economic development financing tool that lasted through to the second quarter of the 19th century. Lotteries were an important source for the venture capital raised by the embryonic railroads of that period. It is worth our while, therefore, to briefly describe a lottery and see how it was instrumental in raising funds for the Virginia province for more than a decade following.
For the reader there is no great violence done to compare contemporary lotteries with the 1612 English-style lottery. Probably the most important difference is today the average individual goes to the store and buys her ticket; in the 1612 period affluent individuals participated, and the proverbial Molly Malone (the oyster vendor) did not. A subscription ticket was still too much for the everyday citizen. So lotteries then were more a class thing than today.
The other exception is many voluntary joint stock corporations (guilds, trade associations, ad hoc investment groups, and some municipal-based entities did participate. In regards to the Virginia Company, the last groups were well represented, as the reader will remember in this period, cities competed among themselves for advantage in participating and sharing in the glories and prosperity of the New World. Municipalities franchised lotteries, and the Virginia Company would send in its team to organize, promote and distribute the winnings–a portion of which went to the home town.
In either case participation in the lottery did not entitle one to be a “member”, voting or not, in the joint stock corporation. Lotteries did award prizes to the winners drawn, and the drawing of the winner was an event followed and reported on. Selling of lottery tickets were a serious organizational activity and in the case of the Virginia Company hired vendors promoted sales, and these vendors went on circuits through towns/cities thought likely markets. Interestingly, a fair way to promote lotteries was to write ballads (songs) that linked the lottery to exciting ventures, finding gold, or other things of popular interest)—sort of like the famous Coke commercial “Like to Teach the World to Sing in Perfect Harmony”. Boy did that work well!
The first Virginia Company lottery (March 1612), the Great Lottery it was called, was at the public area of London’s St Paul (the old one, not Wren’s post-fire tourist and skyscape fame). They drew from London’s middle and upper classes, and were held in the country’s largest marketplace. Ticket price was 2 .6 shillings (half a crown), very affordable if one wanted to wager, and the prizes totaled 5,000 pounds, which included a “fayre (fair) plate worth 1000 pounds.
The sale period was extended a month because sales were not as expected—and trust was obviously lacking as rumors of corruption abounded. The Virginia Company, a creature of royalty and wealthy London merchants, generated a “populist-style” reaction we associated with today’s Wal-Mart in a small town, Chic-fil-A, or grapes/wine in the old Cesar Chavez days. The sales campaigns by the Company were not at all without serious controversy:
Barbour’s way [Virginia Company chief official of the lottery sales] way of conducting the lottery wrought its evils for the people of the towns in which his agents were at work complained at the demoralizing effects upon trade and industry that were caused by the popular excitement which the lottery aroused. The complaints were brought to the attention of Parliament, where the master of the wards, and later lord treasurer … reported from the King that the latter had never liked the idea of the lottery, and had only agreed to it because he was informed that the colony could not subsist without it. … Therefore, in March 1621 at the request of the House of Commons, the Privy Council ordered ‘that the further execution of these lotteries bee suspended” [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol. 1. p. 138
The Virginia Company lotteries needed to be marketed for extended times (the next lottery, “the Little Standing Lottery” was hawked for nearly a year. The Second great Lottery, started in summer of 1612 and the drawing and prize was held in November 1615. After 1616 the Company just conducted “running lotteries”. Individual lotteries were run in several larger cities throughout the decade, and such lotteries employed individuals who would, like traveling sales, work their districts. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/virginia-company-of-london/
I might add the back of the barn tale that whatever its faults the lottery lingered on through from 1612 thru 1620. It had to wait for a suspended Parliament to be called into session. Lotteries in general possessed an aura of corruption (they benefited enterprises of the rich and were viewed as quick rich schemes that exploited the “gambling” instincts of “certain” people). Over the decade, pressures built first on Parliament, and return when the King reconvened Parliament after 1619. Eventually, the King issued an edict against them in 1621. By that time as we shall soon see, the Virginia Company after 1618 shifted away from lottery revenues and based its revenue raising on selling of land in Virginia.
Tobacco, the Commodity that Could Pay the Bills: There was a huge need to find an export that could be sold at profit in England. Fools gold and timber, and whatever else the colonists dragged into the ship’s hold had to change and fast. Fortunately, one of their on-site Company officials had an idea that be believed could work in time: a better tasting tobacco. Committed to growing tobacco before he ever left England, he sailed to Virginia on Gates’ ill-fated voyage and spent ten months in Bermuda—where his wife died.
With events in so much flux when he got to Jamestown he did little more than experiment. With Dale in country in 1611 he set up his first plantations, distributed his seed to his company companions, and planted. Williams reports that in 1613, he sent “a small amount to Sir Thomas Smythe for appraisal” [99] Jamestown Colony, xliii. 1613 proved a busy year for Rolfe; he was married by Dale to Pocahontas. Rolfe named his son Thomas after Dale, and Dale named his first settlement after Prince Henry. By 1613-14 he was ready to start mass-scale production launched by the Company. Rolfe became the Company’s Secretary of the Colony and sat on the Governor’s council in 1614. When Dale returned to England in 1616, he brought with him Rolfe, Rebecca and Thomas to conduct a promotion campaign for tobacco and the colony. In England, De La Warr, the first recipient of a Dale’s Gift hundred plantation on which he had already planted and was able to ship to England, introduced the family to English society and the court. Only Rolfe would immediately return to Virginia. Rebecca died on the ship back, in sight of England—where she was buried and her young son raised..
While historians have always, correctly, noted that tobacco never fit the preferences of the Company leaders, nor the King, and that both almost instinctively preferred a diversified economy, their actions as early as 1611 in conjunction with Rolfe strongly support our sense that of all the potential for quick export profits, tobacco from the start was high on the list—with an entrepepreneur within their ranks–and realistic in its aspirations for a market. In this early period, there was probably little thought as to how fast tobacco could achieve its exclusivity of export, nor that it could easily become the “way of life” for the colony. There was no plan behind the spread of tobacco, other than the need for quick profits to pay the Company bills; that proved sufficient to plant the monoculture in early Virginia.
In this early years, the fear that tobacco would take over everything it touched, likely was not central to anyone. But as little as five years later (by the mid-teens), the “disgust” with the stampede to tobacco was noticeable—even Smythe—and the concern that a diversified economy was at risk would prompt a decided counter effort in the Greate Charter instructions. It is no wonder, however, why the explosion in tobacco planting occurred: it was promoted intensely by the Virginia company officials-ship captains, and their young entrepreneurial freeman business associates—and was firmly pursued by post-1612 investors willing to set up plantations outside the company-owned framework, on their private land, granted by the company, along with a workforce.
At this point in our history it is wise we prepare the reader for the inevitable, and soon to be felt, need to install an economic base in the permanent settlement. Tobacco waste no little time becoming the defacto currency, medium of exchange in a wilderness colony that lacked access to the standard currency of England. To an economist, the lack of a currency is an obvious massive problem to overcome—and Jamestown had no currency for the better part of a decade, Partially in a semi-socialist military colony it had become, there was less need for an monetary exchange system, but that meant there was not practical way the Jamestown residents could generate capital, besides their sweat labor, necessary for their own infrastructure.
Moreover the lack of currency only intensified the subordination of the Jamestown “unpaid” employees. Just how were these folk supposed to set up a colony when their term of indenture left them no compelling tools with which to set up their opportunity. Understanding the impact of an economy without a currency we can better understand why tobacco took of like wildfire in the early “teens”.
First, the Virginia Company, in its desperate fiscal need, preempted that any need for currency because the 1609 charter set up the Company Magazine. Exports and imports to Virginia went through this distinguished organization, led by Alderman Johnson. He dedicated himself to wring out whatever he could for [himself ?] and the Company coffers. His goal was to buy in Virginia for the lowest price possible, and sell in London for the highest. In this manner the debt for the supply ship bond issuance and shareholder dividend were to be paid. As we know the Company insisted that Jamestown’s economy (so to speak) was tasked with paying for its own supplies.
That set off Jamestown’s company employees to scuttle about finding goal, timber, and whatever to send back to England for sale. They did this instead of planting their own staples and making their own tools, to the degree possible. Exports to pay debt only hollowed out the sustainability of the colony. The problem was aggravated by the London belief that “more was better” and it sent over more colonists than the economy could handle and support. Their deaths during seasoning time only generated another large number of immigrants sometime previous to the winter—without sufficient stores, staples or tools to feed them while they died. This is a horror show that the company played through 1611—when they finally slowed immigration down (because London was broke, BTW).
Putting aside the problem that those exports didn’t come close to paying the bills, and ignoring that Virginia-based discretionary income (which could be used for infrastructure, for example) was reduced to nil, and since payment to its indentured workforce and employees was deferred to the future, and day-to-day expenses were assumed by the company, there was no need for a local, or even English currency, to be used. We can begin to see what seldom enters into Jamestown’s historic tale: that as long as Jamestown was enmeshed in this Company-imposed military colony, semi-socialist “economy”, the permanent settlement economic essentials were simply ignored.
As alluded to earlier, the King in 1606 had no money to bring into the Company project, and so if he was to retain a dominant a role he needed to inject something besides his signature to this public private initiative. What the King had in Virginia, and he had it all (a monopoly of it), was ownership of all land in the area claimed for England. The reader, of course is aware, “this ownership” was assumed without regard for its Native American inhabitants as no provision was made for its purchase—or even a fiction of purchase.
Nevertheless, by making land grants to the Company (which the Company could sell or use as a valuable incentive for a desired action/ initiative) the Company got an equivalent to money for its use in the development and growth of the colony. Land became a commodity that functioned as a currency of exchange. By 1613, the Company would be paying its employees with a land grant to establish a plantation whose goods could be sold for payment.
We shall see shortly the Company was not empowered to issue its own Virginia currency, so English coin, hard to export to Virginia, was always going to be very scarce. Without coin, bartering prevailed, and an alternative currency developed about land, its sale and use, and even trading of indentured servant contracts, and amassing property through marrying newly made widows. While it lacks sex appeal, this failure to address how economic transactions were to be made in Virginia, was, if you care to think about it, a very serious incumbrance.
Say it another way, instead of the King issuing orders for his mint to coin/ more English pounds for use in his colonial ventures, the company had to find an equivalent. This would set up what proved to be a major issue and chasm between England and the colonies: how the colony was to finance its debt issuance, lending practices and how its citizens were to pay for its wants and needs. In empowering the Company to do this, in its time the province itself, its legislature most specifically would inherit the company’s obligations and power. That was not the issue in 1609. The Company would rely exclusively on its semi-joint stock individual subscriptions/companies for financial resources for a little while longer. But the financial die had been cast.
Somers Island—The shipwreck of the Gates Expedition command vessel on the rocks of Bermuda, aka Somers Island partially caused the 1609-10 near disaster, but the survivors had prospered and demonstrated the island could be a suitable candidate for English colonization. Somers was an intense promoter of the islands potential, as a colony in and of itself, and a sources of tradeable staples (fish and wild hogs) that could help Virginia sustain itself. What to call this island shed insight into how this subsidiary colony could survive while Virginia languished is apparent, as Scott [99] p. 260 suggests, Somers name (summers) broke the chain of Virginia’s death climate, and reopened settler/investor interest in emigrating/investing there. It was a new start. So the Somers Islands it was.
Little time was wasted, and from the non-existent capital yet another ship was fitted out, but this time to Somers Island. Sixty persons went over to start Bermuda’s first plantation (mid-late 1611). But in so doing, the venture no doubt got the lawyers involved, and they pointed out the 1609 charter gave the Virginia Company jurisdiction of 100 miles from its coast—Somers was nore than that. With a few winks of the eye, the Company went forward, but it knew this was yet another reason to push for the next charter. Meanwhile, the Company decided its close proximity to Spanish ships and islands, necessitated a defense, and that forts should be built.
I suspect this was the work of wealthy merchant-adventurer-privateers, like the First Earl of Warwick—who were interested in the development of this new colony, not only to establish a plantation, but to use the island as a base of operations against the Spanish. As the following decades of colonial experience reveals, the reader might note there is a signficant difference in the development of a permanent military base-plantation than a permanent settlerment.
A new group of investors, powerful and wealthy investors, had been attracted into the Virginia Company and they did not share the same ambitions or conceived the settlement in different terms than the more scarred merchant adventurers of the Virginia Company. The gap between the two groupings became ever so apparent only five years later when Captain Samuel Argall became governor of Virginia—and that was the straw that started to break the Virginia Company’s back.
Coupled with the need to separate investment from the debt of the Virginia Company, a subsidiary company was incorporated in November 1612, after the king had signed the 1612 new charter. With a knack for names, the new colony was entitled “Undertakers for the Plantation of the Somers Islands. The new corporation purchased the Virginia Company’s rights for L2,000. That was the second debt issue and shareholders were capped at 400 and 117 subscribed. That the Somers Island enjoyed a more successful colonization—at least in its opening decades—offers an insight of Virginia’s chief woes when compared to the young upstart Bermuda.
The ill-fortune which dogged the plantation in Virginia did not pursue that in the Somers Islands. The younger enterprise had the benefit of the experience gained since 1607 and there was not the same temptation to divert the energies of the settlers from agriculture to the search for mines. In another respect also this company [Somers] was fortunate at the beginning of its history. Many of the difficulties that had already been experienced by the Virginia Colony were financial, through the shareholders refusing to pay the instalments until they saw some return from the plantation. Such a return was forthcoming from the Somers Islands within a year after the company had been formed, through the discovery of a great quantity of ambergris .. At this period ambergris was a valuable commodity, being used both in medicine and a perfume [99] Scott, p. 260-1
Unsettled, undiscovered by even Native Americans, it was open to plantation-building. Initial allotments of land were made and an early start in Somers Island plantation development yield a number of positive stories that suggested whatever Virginia’s deficiencies, the Somers Island could be turned into a money-making venture. Smythe took the lead on this, and led a renewed effort for another shareholder subscriptions and pressed the king for a new charter.
When the charter adjusted the Virginia Company jurisdiction to include the Somers Islands [March 12, 1612], and allowed for the formation of a subsidiary corporation, Smythe apparently sent letters to the “chief towns in England, and even to the Netherlands [and] pressure was directed against the [Virginia Company] shareholders who were in arrear, and a number of Chancery suits were instituted against some of those who had refused to pay the [share] instalments [99] Scott, p. 252. Somers Island proved to be a gamechanger. It opened up new ways to think of Virginia and the Virginia Company, and apparently revitalized Smythe’s energy to extend the base of its supporters. That logically opened up an expanded campaign to attract investment and develop popular interest in colonization and Virginia—the point of which was to bring the king on board for signing off on the new charter—and stepping up to the plate to make a deeper royal commitment to the colonization effort.
A Colony in North America: Richard Rich [999] published, probably at the suggestion of the Company, his “Newes from Virginia, the Lost flock Triumphant”, a poem celebrating the shipwreck of the Sea Adventure [Gates, Somers, Newports’ ship that ran aground] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/primary-documents/newes-from-virginia-the-lost-flocke-triumphant-by-lord-robert-rich-1610/ . William Strachley followed up with his own version of the wreck and the stay on Somers. “A True Reportory of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight” became the talk of the taverns—and the court. [Strachley was Secretary of Virginia and a participant in the expedition on the Sea Adventure]. Almost overnight, Company promoters made the lemon of the Gates Bermuda disaster into lemonade. It seems to have been an instant hit. Everybody seems to have read it—even a playwright named Shakespeare.
[999] There is some confusion as to whether it is Richard or Robert, but the difference is considerable. Robert is the First Earl of Warwick, a figure of considerable importance to the Virginia Company—and English colonial history. Warwick did in fact become a shareholder in the Company in 1612, and was to play a major role in the founding and development of Somers Island Colony, a derivative of the Third Charter. His future rivalry with Smythe, the marriage of his son to Smythe’s daughter, and a his subsequent alliance of convenience with Smythe against Sandys testifies to his centrality in our story. For those unfamiliar with English history, the First and Second Earl of Warwick heavily impacted, and a times dominated, English colonial history into the Restoration.[999]
Evidence exists that Shakespeare read Strachey’s work, and there are also suggestions an original “letter” on correspondence from one of Strachey’s sources had been provided to Shakespeare through the covert agency of Edwin Sandys. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tempest; [99] Charles Mills Gayley, Shakespeare and the Founders of Liberty in America (1917), pp. 75-6; https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/sea-venture/ . However, it attracted Shakespeare’s attention, the bard wrote his new play, the Tempest, modelled on that experience. Called the Tempest, the play was performed with the King in attendance on November 1, 1611, with the members of his court also in attendance.
While long believed by many that the Tempest was a play profoundly linked to early English colonial experience, it was never associated with a specific Virginia Company “campaign” or promotional effort. The symmetry of the campaign and the play’s opening is too strong for me to ignore its implications. My sense is the play certainly raised the interest on Virginia, and set it apart from the Ulster Plantation. During this period, a wide-spread series of blogs/pamphlets and publications converted the Virginia initiative from a settlement for the benefit of wealthy investors in a joint stock corporation, to a national endeavor-one paramount to asserting England’s position in foreign affairs and preserving English benefits derived from mercantilist trade. Without Virginia, England would be at the tender mercies of its neighboring European competitors—especially Spain and Portugal. This was the angle that of necessity appealed to James, whose relations, despite the recent peace, with Spain were still fragile, highly controversial, and soon to prove largely unsuccessful. With some exaggeration, one
J.P. Conlon, among others, makes a case it was anti-colonial in its intent. [99] J. P. Conlon, The Tempest and the King’s Better Knowledge” (Edinburgh University Press, Ben Jonson Journal, Vol. 6, Issue 1, pp 161-188, 2016 If I must take a position, I would state that anti-colonialism was not in vogue in 1611, and Virginia was the first successful, if 1611 Jamestown could be called successful, colonial venture. That the Second and Third Charters fit neatly into James’s foreign policy of the time, it it gave credence to the private nature of the colony’s operations, but, in no way could his participation in it be wished away.
Democratization of Company Governance
The 1612 charter addressed several serious Virginia Company needs. These needs were long-standing and related to the lack of salient experience in permanent settlement, and carryover of past practices and strategy paradigm that proved inadequate to the Company’s mission. To repeat the theme we have developed in this module series, the Virginia Company was broken at its birth in 1606-so was the Jamestown colony. Charles Andrews does not pull his punches on this matter either: “Thus, at the very outset the form of control provided by the charter [s] was not well adapted to promote a successful colonization movement and it is not to be wondered at that the first attempt should have been a failure”. [99] Charles A. Andrews, Colonial Period of American History, Vol. 1, p. 88.
The form of joint stock corporation existing at the turn of the seventeenth century, and the attitudes of its investors, in my hindsight, predestined the Company’s failure The policy system set up in England by James, and followed, more of less, by the Stuarts through 1689 proved to be inconsistent, preoccupied with other matters, and unsupportive of a colonization which cost it monies it wanted for other purposes. In the hands of another royal policy system who knows if the Virginia Company could have made it through?
But James and certainly Charles I did not want to directly manage colonization. They delegated it to the Virginia Company (and others), but the “structural vehicle” that was the Virginia Company—a joint stock corporation of which there were several varieties at that time—was not developed or matured sufficiently to conduct an effective and sustainable colony. As I said in my opening paragraphs, the Virginia Company was not ready for prime time colonization in 1606, and by 1612 it was a basket case going concern. We have already seen in the Second Charter that the Company tried seriously and meaningfully to repair its broken parts; it would do so again in the Third Charter of 1612.
In its charter and in the attitudes, values and ambitions of its shareholders and board of directors, the Company had its vision of what the colony should be and develop into. The problem from the start was the vision of Virginia governance and economic development was seriously different from that of its London corporate masters. Hence “a separate reality” existed in London and Jamestown from their beginning in 1607 and try as they may the two realities never synchronized. The intention of the Company was to set up a permanent settlement—but they had little sense of what that meant, nor what it entailed.
The crew sent to Virginia to create and install that vision during its first five years were overwhelmingly not settlers, but adventurers, well-meaning opportunists, and a indentured “workforce” that was little more than company property. That the latter were intended to work as company employees with the sketchiest of ties to the mission of permanent settlement. That the others, usually men of means, by no means, were in their own unchartered waters, governed by their own ambitions, character and reaction of corporate governance. This is a human relations management problem of the first order, which, not surprisingly was put into the backburner due to the wonderful location of death-causing swamps that was Jamestown.
If the Company was fatally flawed at its birth, an equally strong case could be made that Jamestown was fatally flawed by its location. That Jamestown is no more, an archeological site, and not a province capital for over three hundred and fifty years now. But the problem I am dancing around in all this description and many words is the “separate realities” interacted, and each made the world of the other more desperate and seemingly unfixable—and they were forever changing, making them unpredictable to a considerable extent. In this present instance, as the Company attempted to repair itself in London, it really had no idea what the consequences would be in Jamestown. In the end it did not matter; each went about coping with their own realities and coped with, or ignored, the realities of the other.
The Jamestown Reality
By 1610 Jamestown had imploded, and Gates, De La Warr and especially Dale were tasked to reestablish the settlement to the point it was sustainable—which to their credit, I suppose they did. But that stabilization was not pretty and it mired the Virginia colony in a penal colony image that limited its growth. The pre-1613 company officials in residence in Jamestown were firmly grounded in the military metaphor, restoring cooperate order, authority, or what we could call site-control over its far-flung distant colony in which sending a letter, memo or instruction and getting its return could entail the better part of four to six months. By the time each received their letter, the separate reality of the other was changing. It may seem to the reader obvious that colonization necessitates self-governance in the colony, but until 1611 or so there was little of that in Jamestown. Sending over the military to restore order and stabilize the colony meant they were the ones entrusted to “construct, found a village” and amazingly they began to do so.
As for the London investor and colonial policy-making activists, even more than the Jamestown adventurers, were over their head. The 1612 Charter, the third attempt, had only the flimsiest chance to inject vigor into Virginia—though the 1612-14 pivot led by Dale did succeed in founding a colony. But the Third Charter was never sufficient to the corporate mission, and while it functioned for a decade, until it collapsed in a mass of scandal, politicization, shareholder revolt, and the complete inability to provide any oversight and management of the colony in its years of greatest need after the 1622 Second Powhatan War.
But in 1612, the ultimate aim of the charter’s organizational reforms was “to give the rank and file of the adventurers [investor-shareholders] a larger voice in its control [of the Virginia Company]” [99] Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, p. 100; see also Andrews, Vol 1., pp. 116-118. y, p. xl. They were the ones who were to, in the mind of James and his advisors, run that colony—and their interests and observations had to be incorporated into its policy-making as well as the king’s. The reader, I suspect, can easily see how the two “separate realities” of reform in 1612 were on their own path already.
However, it seems to me the Company’s decision to negotiate a Third Charter also includes the company’s sincere wish to establish a more effective local governance, as well as improve their own larger governance capacity. The Company was grappling with a somewhat better sense of what permanent settlement entailed. While they might not have fully appreciated the complexity and implications of self-sufficiency or settlement, the Company knew it had to be in for the long haul, and it had better organize itself, and its fiscal plan, to do so. Virginia’s so-called permanent settlement or plantation was not just a simple trading factory writ large, rather; it involved populating a far away wilderness province, creating a brand new economic base in a hostile and endless forest.
To some extent it, the balance between the two separate realities, all came down to finding some way to reduce the dependence of Jamestown on company-financed supply ships populated with a constant stream of colonists intended to replace those who had died. Good fortune provided a respite from that model. By 1611, the Company could no longer send in the ships with immigrants that would overwhelm the local governance, leaving them little more than gravediggers and palisade builders.
The “Tennessee Ernie Ford Company town” metaphor, which had been the image by which London ran Jamestown, had to give way to a bit of local and individual autonomy, accompanied by the inevitability of personal interests and ambition. So far so good—but there was one big problem: the First Powhatan War. The success of the first initiative nexus necessarily involved establishing site control, which meant some combination of Indian removal and a peace treaty. The 1612 charter revision impetus came from the Company, clearly a reaction to the succession of bad news that had followed the launch of the 1609 Gates expedition, and the negative dynamics it unleashed: fiscal crisis, disaffected investor core, and the lack of a plan that translated into claims of perceived mismanagement.
With De la Warr returning to England, the local deputy government position fell to Gates, and then to Dale. In this period, the London-based finally recognized its actions caused the colony to dig itself deeper into a hole in the ground; Gates, De La Warr and Dale led the first efforts to stop digging a deeper hole that made things worse. Gates and Dale’s 1611-12 mission was to stabilize economy and population, and develop some version of local self sufficiency and sustainability. This, as we shall see in the nest mini module series is what Dale did–and well. It was a frank recognition that new questions had risen, for which the Company needed to develop capacity to answer.
In London, however, in order to carry out the decentralization and self-governance in Jamestown required the Company leadership to get its own house in order. In that house was owned by CEO Thomas Smythe: One could hardly tell the difference between the Virginia and the Somers Companies. Smythe was the Treasurer of one and Governor of the other. Both held their meetings in his London townhouse”[99] Grizzard Jr., and Boyd Smith, Jamestown Colony: a Political Social and Cultural History, p. xl .
Ironic isn’t it. To my way of thinking, the Third Charter reflected more of Thomas Smythe, but, as the company needed to decentralized created seeds for the rise and empowerment of Edwin Sandys. Decentralization was not in Smythe’s skillset. At heart he was multi-tasking merchant adventurer trader, whose roots were firmly lodged in the short-term profits derived from the trading factory. In 1612-13 Somers Island colony offered more return to Smythe—and that is where he place his Virginia Company attention—delegating much to the generals in the formulation and implementation of their vision on how to build a village/
I see more of Smythe than Sandys, as the third charter gives expression to Smythe’s tendency to throw balls into the air–the more the better, each being an opportunity to find some niche to make profits. Smythe, I sense, lacked focus. With all his positions, jobs, and responsibilities, the man had more irons in the fire than one man, without a personal bureaucracy could handle. He was willing to throw off day-to-day management to Sandys who, for his own reasons, seemed to have a taste for it. For the moment at least, with Parliament suspended, Smythe closely tied to the King, was not threatened by any Parliament in session–therefore investors, dissatisfied or not, were away from London and quorums in the governing master corporation board seemed to boil down to the minions that he and Sandys could generate.
More to the point, the Company, Smythe for certain, finally decided could not be managed (or controlled) through its “holding company” board or directors (then called the ‘council’). More realistic governance had to be constructed–“democratizing”—company governance and placing it in the hands of the entire membership, not just Smythe or his original investment cohort. Of all the changes made by the Third Charter, this was the most fundamental of all. The Company would ultimately by governed by its membership. Colonialization was playing a major part in the initial evolution of the English private corporation.
The final change from the Third Charter was a rather abrupt and transformative reorganization that followed from the Charter’s revision of the 1609 Charter’s termination of the Royal Council, and the placing of its powers and responsibilities to the King in the positions of the Treasurer (actually CEO) and his Deputy (Sandys). These two company officials had been elevated with authority superior to the other directors and investors of the Virginia Company.
The Third Charter took back the powers it had placed on the Treasurer and Deputy, and lodged them in a “court” that was required to meet four times annually “for the handling order and disposing of matters and affairs of greater weight and importance” {with fifteen members considered a quorum]. It also allowed the creation of “lesser courts” made up of at least five members of the corporation’s “council” (i.e. board of directors) plus the mandatory membership of the Treasurer or his Deputy and fifteen members of the . “These lesser courts might meet as often as they pleased for the transaction of ordinary business” [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History: the Settlements, Vol. 1. p. 117
One change the Third Charter made was also to include in its provisions that no dividend would be paid for seven years, and that settlers and employees of the company in Virginia worked for food and boarding for that period. With that one bold stroke, financing stabilized for a longer period allowing the settlement to be stabilized without financial damage, and simultaneous reduced expenses of populating the colony by suspending employment costs derived from importation of settlers. This was in effect shoved down the investor membership’s throat, and it left its residues. What we are seeing is that investors, members of the corporation, owners of the corporation had regulations imposed on them which restricted their return of investment and the term of their investment. Settlers on the other hand had imposed on them terms, which in a few short years would be transformed into an indenture contract between company and the individual. Both had their impact on the general perception of the Company, and its perception by Parliament, and the non-London elites.
In 1609 the promoter of the [Virginia] company succeeded in obtaining a new charter vesting complete control of government as well as trade in the company on the ground that otherwise people [investors] would not supply the funds, ‘the sinews and moving instruments … By the amended charter of 1612. The source of all power was nominally in the generality of ‘freemen’—the General Court [of the Company]—who were the shareholders, plus any others admitted to the right of freemanship by the company. Voting was by person, ‘voice’ not by share. But as in all [joint stock] companies vast powers were given to or taken by the officers, that I the council [board of directors] and the executive officers—the treasurer and deputy treasurer [99] Joseph Dorfman, the Economic Mind in American Civilization, 1606-1865 (Book One) (Viking Press, 1946), p. 15
In essence the immediate result of the 1612 Charter was the empowerment of a few powerful directors who presided over a distant investor cadre. It seems this “oligarchy” managed through the next few years—maybe as far as 1617. After that the wheels began to come off—but that will be dealt with later. In any case, the 1612 charter change engendered considerable disaffection within the Virginia Company and its multiple investors and subsidiary corporations. The Company still carried a whiff of royalty about it, and its internal decision-making was authoritarian at its best, and an infringement of the rights to shareholder-investors, the members of the Company at worst. The Company appeared to be as mindful of investor-member interests, but in practice it had not. This tension would have its effects on the colony, of course, but it would eventually erupt in a 1618-19 leadership coup.
“The third charter added the privilege of admitting new adventurers [investors-members], a direct control in the selection of all officers for both the Company and the colony, and the fundamental right to draft ‘such Laws and Ordinances for the Good and Welfare of the … Plantation .. shall be thought requisite and meet’“. As Craven further observes over the next decade these shareholder assemblies came to meet as often as weekly so long as a quorum of twenty along with either the Treasurer or his Deputy and four other members of the Court (board of directors). It was further required by the third charter to meet formally at least four times a year– a session that was usually larger and handled more weighty matters. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 111-112.
Smythe and Sandys, however, in the meantime had their powers sufficiently enhanced to make and implement decisions that permitted Jamestown and the Virginia Colony to begin its pivot to self-sufficiency and permanent settlement. For very different reasons, each of these two powerful individuals had made and imposed a transformative decision probably over the objections of many of its members.
The history of the Virginia Company includes several questions of political alignment … which historians in the main have accepted as mere fact, scarce important enough to detain them, which still await their complete explanation. The first of these is the virtual surrender by Smythe and his faction of the colonizing and governing functions of the Company. Sir Edwin Sandys, the very antithesis of Smythe, was made ‘assistant to the Treasurer’, and apparently given a free hand in the matter of colonizing and governing. [99] N. W. Stephenson, “Some Inner History of the Virginia Company” (William and Mary Quarterly Vol 22, No. 2 (Oct 1913) Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture), pp. 90-1
The two men worked out a relationship for half a decade and we have little support that friendship and mutual respect underlaid it. We will return to this relationship, however, in a few paragraphs, but in 1612, with the King still on top, Smythe was the chief internal policy-making who set the tone and direction of Sandys initiatives and strategies:
Sir Thomas Smythe, during nearly ten years of the Virginia Company was its directing spirit. And ever there was an out-and-out plutocrat, in our modern sense, it was Sir Thomas. With a finger in nearly every bold venture of his time, he literally ranged the world in search of dividends. The image of him who goes up and down seeking whom he may devour inevitably comes to mind [a robber baron, I insert]. We are not surprised that Virginia under Sir Thomas’s rule, resembled a penal settlement rather than a colony, justifying the modern account of the earliest Virginia as ‘a plantation system … with great rigor, the colonists working in gangs with officials as overseers, eating a common tables, and living in common barracks. It was only natural that the Company maintained both an absolute monopoly of land and trade as long as Sir Thomas ruled it
[99] N. W. Stephenson, “Some Inner History of the Virginia Company” (William and Mary Quarterly Vol 22, No. 2 (Oct 1913) Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture), pp. 90-1; Stephenson’s article is one drawn from a genre that operated on the fringe of American historians at the time. The more prominent historians of the time (Osgood, for one) did not challenge the thesis of this group (that the Virginia Company was Jamestown’s primary policy system for the first decade and only after 1612 did the local council exercise its own autonomy and initiative to define the Company policy to confront local realities as the council saw them). As we shall see the appointment of a company Captain-Governor, whatever else it did, created order and authority that we see lacking in the memoirs of John Smith, and the actions of its local council.
Ron W. Coan 