Effects of Somers Island on the Virginia Company—and Virginia
Craven ventures a thought that after 1612 Virginia had lost its luster, and in the minds of many in London all that was required of them was to “keep the Jamestown colony alive” ( p.19) In its largest sense, the Virginia Company, in the English territorial framework, was England’s North American colonizer, and if not Virginia as primary, it could be elsewhere in North America. Massachusetts was still in the doldrums as far as the Company was concerned, but the newest colony, Somers Island, was the rising star.
Aside from a few commentators (Osgood, Scott, and Charles Andrews in particular), the Somers Island-Virginia Company shared experience is perhaps mentioned, but usually reduced to an insignificant commentary. Off to the margins, Bermuda itself has not been incorporated into the Virginia Company decision-making process as it affected Virginia. This may fit well in an “American” perspective, but in point of fact, what happened in Bermuda would prove to exert a critical and overall negative effect on the Company and its Virginia operations. For this reasons, the reader should consider the below discussion as central to Virginia, and not a tangent.
Aside from the obvious comparison between two separate colonies concurrently administrated by the Virginia Company through separate corporations, a comparison which could, and does, shed some light and enhanced understanding of each colony. That overlap will be most apparent in the next module, but in this module we can observe the rather noticeable distinction between the policy-making in the two colonies, and in Bermuda some instability and chronic change in its provincial management. The latter show allows some comment as to the capacity of the Virginia Company during this period, and it will also confirm the shared approach in settling the plantation through shareholder land grants—an approach which profound implications for the political and economic development of both colonies.
We will come to see the Bermuda Company played was probably triggered the drift toward the 1619 Virginia Company organizational coup that commenced the final disintegration of the Virginia Company and the loss of its Virginia charter. That disintegration did not affect Bermuda as the Virginia Company continued its colonial management; for Virginia, however, it was page-turning.
We start our Bermuda discussion with its inclusion in the politics and negotiations that led to the the Third Charter, mostly after the Gates Expedition shipwreck. 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.
It had a powerful advocate well placed in the Virginia Company: Admiral George Somers was credited with its discovery—not hard because he was in command of the fleet in which the Sea Venture was a member. Somers was a former privateer who led noted invasions of the Spanish possessions in West Indies and South America. He was associated with the “Bristol privateer community” discussed earlier in this series. Somers was shipwrecked along with Gates—with whom he discussed vigorously what they should do.
The 1609-10. a near disaster, but survivors 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 offered a promising new start.
Somers wanted priority placed on Somers Island. He pressed hard for formal designation of a colony, and its own (subsidiary) joint stock corporation. He achieved both in the Charter of 1612, but in fact, he was not involved in that charter at all. After he returned with Gates to Jamestown, he shortly went back to the Somers Island on orders from De la Warr. His mission was to find and send to Jamestown badly needed supplies and food. While in Bermuda, he became ill, and died there in November (1610). [99] https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/somers-sir-george-1554-1610/
His writing and spirit motivated support in London for development of the Island, and funds were raised to send over a few settlers to create a planation and forts (July, 1612). I suspect Somers was an inspiration to develop Bermuda, but it was Smythe who smell opportunity during the pre and post charter period. Painted not as a zero-sum ,i.e. Somers Island vs. Virginia, Somers Island was to be a crutch to assist Virginia’s development—but it also presented an opportunity to serve as port and home base for adventures against the Spanish West Indies and American possessions.
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 1612). 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 more 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.
The plantation in Virginia At this time was largely dependent on supplies sent from home [England], and it was reported that, in an emergency, both hogs and fish could be obtained quickly from the Bermuda. Moreover, the strategic importance of [Bermuda] began to be recognized as one, which, when fortified, would protect Virginia against the attacks of Spain which were believed to be imminent [99] Scott, Vol II, p. 259
Inclusion of the Somers Island into the Virginia Company jurisdiction was an element of the Third Charter, and it went into effect with a second agreement in July 1612. The key to understanding why a new cadre of investors took an active interest in Bermuda, leaving aside Virginia was the new investors had plans, ideas and their own ambitions for profit which they did not want constricted by the obvious plight of the Virginia Company, and the effects that plight had on its membership and decision-making.
That the Somers Island enjoyed a more successful colonization—in its opening decades—offers an insight of Virginia’s chief woes when compared to the young upstart Bermuda. Unsettled, undiscovered by even Native Americans, Bermuda was open to plantation-building and whatever initiatives seemed appropriate. Initial allotments of land were made to kickstart a settlement, and an early start in Somers Island plantation development yielded a number of positive stories that suggested whatever Virginia’s deficiencies, the Somers Island could be turned into a money-making venture.
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
Ambergris, picked up from the beaches, and easily exported to England yielded immediate profit (despite some embezzlement by Somers officials) on a scale sufficient to “grow” Somers in this early period.. Pearls quickly added to the exports While Virginia had not built a respectable fort by this point, such an critical piece of infrastructure was started construction on Somers in 1613. Investors were quite willing to buy shares in the Somers corporation—at a time when they were not for the Virginia Company itself. Scott asserts that as much as L20,000 were expended on Somers Island by the end of 1614—and the population had grown to six hundred settlers—a multiple of those in Virginia, if one nets out those who died.
Smythe took an early lead on this, and led a renewed effort for another shareholder subscription and pressed the king for a new charter. He was joined in this effort by Sir Robert Rich, later the First (Third Baron) Earl of Warwick. Charles Andrews credits Rich to be the leader of the early Bermuda movement within the Company (to which he became a member in 1612). Initially, a subsidiary corporation was incorporated within the Virginia Company, with considerable overlapping members from the Company. The signing of the 1612 charter, however, was the catalyst for a bewildering, and somewhat dysfunctional series of governance/leadership changes that produced a mixed bag of governance for Bermuda, and considerable instability within the Virginia Company—an instability that did not benefit Virginia in the long run.
Not all of the Somers opportunities were congruent with the permanent settlement mission of Virginia. and for a number of other reasons. Once the 1612 Charter was in place this subsidiary sold its rights to Bermuda (L2000) in November, 1612 to an independent, yet operating within the Virginia Company (meetings were held on the same day, place, and time, with appropriate presiding officers) joint stock corporation, the “Undertakers for the Plantation of the Somers Island”. Shareholders were capped at 400 and 117 subscribed.
Though literally the equal of and distinct from the parent [Virginia Company] company, the Bermuda Corporation was in practice closely interjoined with the other. Its [the Bermuda Company] membership was only one hundred and twenty, with an average attendance of seventy or eighty, but it occupied the same quarters and with few exceptions all its members were members also of the other body. The head of the one was called “treasurer” and the other “governor”, but at first the two offices were filled by the same person, Sir Thomas Smith [Smythe]. Each company had four general [shareholder] courts with similar powers and forms of procedure. These courts met at the same time and in the same place for the transaction of business
…. After 1619, when Sir Thomas Smith ceased to be ‘treasurer’ [of the Virginia Company], but continued to be ‘governor” [of the Bermuda Company], and the two companies [therefore] had different heads, the Bermuda Company was looked upon as the lesser and inferior corporation, and in all that concerned the common welfare did little more than follow the lead of the elder body [the Virginia Company], and adopt for itself the latter’s’ decisions. [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. 1, p. 120
Small and rudimentary, the Bermuda plantation seems to have gradually established itself, introduced tobacco, and began construction on its fort. In December 1613 the first annual quarterly council was held. A decision made in 1614 to start a land survey as a prerequisite for a “division of land” among the shareholders. Affairs seemed to be proceeding in good form, and accordingly another key decision, to apply to the king for a charter which separated the Bermuda colony from Virginia—but not from the Virginia Company—was also made. Approval was obtained and on June 29th, 1615 a new incorporation, “the Governor and Company of the City of London for the Plantation of the Somers Island” replaced the previous corporation, and its jurisdiction was set in accordance with the terms of the 1615 charter.
A Governor with twenty-four assistants (councilors), one of which was to be chosen as deputy governor constituted its governance. Thomas Smythe assumed CEO office and his deputy was William Canning, a slave trader. In 1615, however, incidents and complaints made it known that the administration of its first deputy governor, Richard Moore had gotten off to a rather bad start, Moore’s administration, and the colony, degenerated through his neglect and lack of diligence, becoming a resort, complete with financial maladministration. [99] Robert Scott, Vol. 1, pp. 262-3
Moore was abruptly terminated. His termination was followed by even more disorganization, caused it seems from the failure of its local council, and the choice of settlers seems to have been poor. Commentators suggest Bermuda was in a “perpetual Christmas”, with crop production and stores management negligent. Charles Andrews describes Moore as a good carpenter, but poor governor” who became jealous or “peevish” in regards to Company oversight and direction; Andrews also describes the subsequent governance by the council as “misrule of the six”. At this point Thomas Smythe “determined to put an end to “this state of affairs, and convinced that the ‘originall [beginning] of these gamboleinge times proceeded from the miserable insufficiencye of the commanders there” selected as the new governor Captain Daniel Tucker, brother of the head customs searcher at Gravesend, and a resident of five years as cape-merchant in Virginia’ [99] Charles Andrews, Vol. 1, pp. 217-8
How Bermuda’s Land Distribution Entered into the Virginia Company’s Politics: an Introduction to the Earls of Warwick
Not until February 16, 1616 was the new deputy governor, Daniel Tucker, then a ship captain and planter in residence in Virginia arrived in Bermuda in May, and successfully continued the construction of the fort, and opened up direct trade with the West Indies. A stock issuance to finance whale-fishing was conducted, with mediocre results.. the “land division (survey) that was intended to be Tucker’s signature project in accordance with his instructions from Smythe.
In 1617, the corporation decided to issue land grants to its 400 investors, twenty-five acres per share, with remaining land to be dedicated to public use and which profits should support the colony’s expenditures:
First of all the 400 shares and 10,000 acres to be divided were arranged in multiples of 50 shares and 1,250 acres which were known as tribes. Each of these was named after one of the original adventurers of position who held ten shares. These were the Countess of Bedford, Sir Thomas Smythe (the governor), Lord Cavendish, afterwards Earl of Devonshire), Lord Pagett Earl of Pembroke, Sir Robert Mansefield, the Earl of Southampton, Sir Edwin Sandys, [and to Robert Rich who succeeded to the Earl of Warwick] [99] Scott, p. 263-4
The detail is provided because it is a “who’s who” in colonization circles, and several will play a critical role in the forthcoming modules. It seems as a variation of Virginia’s Dale’s Gift, which seems mostly to have been locally determined into 1616. Not so with Bermuda as London’s fingerprints are al over it. Each tribe compared to a “hundred” and each were expected to send settlers to found plantations. Tobacco was by the mid-teens the crop of Bermuda. Bermuda, it seems was also heading off in the direction of a tobacco monoculture.
For me at least the most confusing and at points almost bewildering problems with understanding the Virginia Company period is its overlapping inclusion of Bermuda as a sort of sub-colony within the Company. Discovered in the famous shipwreck of 1609-10, Bermuda became a separate focal point within the Virginia Company until 1612, and its policy-making was lodged in the Company leadership until the Company allowed its rights in Bermuda to be “bought out “ by a limited number (one hundred and twenty) of its shareholders who then formed their own corporation, which although separate from the Virginia Company, met in back to back shareholder meetings changing only the presiding officer. In 1615, with a clearer focus, a new company was formed, and it secured from the king its own charter commencing on June 29, 1615.
Smythe was still the primary official of the new company(with his deputy Alderman Robert Johnson), and to him befell what was the day-to-day administration and governance of the new subsidiary company in England. Smythe appointed his own residential governor, as he did in Virginia, and whatever supervision he rendered to the local official is problematical. Once one crossed over the Atlantic, the local governor was the driving force and Smythe seems to me almost invisible. I saw that in my research on Dale’s militiary policy system in Virginia and thus I conclude whatever else he was Smythe was not a micromanager, and he left a considerable amount of discretion in the hands of his appointed local governor. This observation might be noted by the reader because it assumes a greater importance in later sections of this module. The London shareholder board also was not hands-on in these years.
The active membership of the Virginia and Bermuda companies was so nearly the same that the two courts [shareholder board of directors] sat virtually as one body, and more than one historian has experienced difficulty in disentangling their records. Indeed it is necessary only to notice the names by which Bermuda’s parishes are known-Sandys, Southampton, Warwick, Paget, Pembroke, Devonshire, Smith, Hamilton-to appreciate that the founders of that colony were for the most part the same men who have been honored for their leadership in the settlement of Virginia. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, p. 117
Bermuda Developed Differently than Virginia in the Tweens
Governance of Bermuda in these years then was problematic, but economic and population growth was remarkable compared to Virginia. The years between 1612 and 1615-16 witnessed some remarkable economic growth and, compared to Virginia, faster population growth the politics was uneven, to a large extent due to the personality of the Smythe-appointed governor. Even beyond this the disposition of the Bermuda settlers to authority and direction was a difficult matter, while the local governor seems diligent in his projects and priorities, forts, land distribution, exports to England, and the planting of tobacco, the relations with his settlers, who by 1615 were entirely sent over by the owners of each plantation and the investment of which to a degree was a precursor to the association of investor-owners, only more informal, i.e. there was no association joint stock corporation.
That meant the investor shareholders in the Somers Island Company were individually more hands on than those of the Virginia Company, and with little surprise their priorities were mixed, and their local relations in the island a societal maze. There was no equivalent to Thomas Dale and his military policy system in Bermuda. So while “the older colony [Virginia] wasted well-nigh away, the younger [Bermuda] attracted a total of six hundred settlers by 1615, and in its continued growth would hold a marked superiority in numbers for three years thereafter”, In short, Bermuda developed into a rival of sorts to Virginia.
The reason for the disparity seemingly was the hands on investor management of its London-based shareholders. In 1615 Bermuda started to implement a survey on which the “public lands” of the Somers Company would be allocated and distributed to the individual shareholders on the Somers Company court (board of directors). In proportion to their shares owned land would be allocated to “tribes”, each associated with a major shareholder. In the course of conducting the survey, which for all sorts of reasons, was not completed until the spring of 1617 [for reference, this is when Argall assumed Virginia’s governorship], the individual shareholders continued their development of their respective holdings in Bermuda—in anticipation of a soon to be title of land. Their initiatives in these years were not exclusively tobacco-related, but all sorts of economic diverse activities and projects, reflecting the early writing and strategy of Hakluyt, were attempted. Over time, most would fail, and tobacco would become dominant—but not in these years.
Therefore, in early 1617, the local governor of Bermuda allocated the company’s public land to each of the eligible tribes. Then as we shall see the troubles really began—and it was those battles that would deeply affect the London-based boards of shareholders, which would in its turn inter-related with battles in Virginia (against Argall) that would lead to the the Virginia Company coup of 1619. We shall return shortly to the battles-issues in Bermuda, and tie them in with the departure of Smythe as the Virginia Company Treasurer, but first, we must wrap up the discussion of this section, by observing that it the pattern by which the Virginia Company (and its subsidiary the Somers Island Company) distributed its public lands after 1615 was primarily responsible for a different path of political development in the two colonies. That distribution was
The pattern of Bermuda land distributed after 1615 was not being replicated in Virginia. Rather as we seen with Dale’s Gift, land grants were made to company officials primarily or those very closely associated with the company’s activities in Virginia (I have Ralph Hamer, a sea captain in mind as an example, as well as those described earlier to the cape merchant). Attached to the land grant and the immigration of settlers on that land, a headright to additional acreage was linked. As noted this pattern of land grants through company officials combined their political advantages with their new-found Dales’ Gift economic meant a decided “First Advantage” over all other settlers, a First Advantage that would persist for decades. It is worth note that most of the beneficiaries were shareholder administrators tied to the Thomas Smythe and his merchant adventurer faction. The opposite was developing in Bermuda.
Tucker’s administration struggled to clean up the muddle, ineptitude, and laxity of the former governor (he hanged at least one settler). His management style, as well as its intent to secure efficient production and local order, was similar to that of Jamestown’s John Smith, and was in many ways similar to that employed by the Dale military administration [99] Charles Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 220]. Likely, the style of this policy system, implemented by a governor of some temper and insistence, affected the implementation of the land division once it was completed in 1617. (
Tucker was accused of “slow-walking” the implementation, carving out land for his personal benefit, and less than equal allocation of quality land among the beneficiaries). In the course of this implementation, Tucker inflicted alleged “indignities” on agent, a relative retained by the Rich family to handle Bermuda affairs. Among other matters, the quality of the Rich allocated land was judged to be deficient (Scott seems to agree), and the matter elevated into a confrontation in which Tucker imprisoned the Rich family agent. Charles Andrews described the matter as follows:
Tucker’s methods of government were not conducive to a long continuance of peaceful conditions. Tucker was an able and experienced man but he had a violent temper and made short shrift of those who were obstinate and lazy. His course of action aroused so much discontent and led to many jealousies that he finally determined to return to England [in late 1617]. There he was charged before the company with vainglory and presumption, with oppression and cruelty, and with using his position and the company’s property to his own profit. [99] Charles Andrews, Vol. 1, p. 221
Succession Politics: Let’s Appoint a new Governor
The company discussion and debate occurred in 1618 in London company offices, and Tucker’s term of office formally did not end until 1619. By that time a second incident in Virginia involving a Warwick associate, Governor Argall, compounded the intensity of the opposition. “Warwick and his supporters were opposed to the continuance of Tucker in the Somers Islands, while they advocated the cause of Argall in Virginia” [99] Scott, Vol II, p. 267] Scott picks up the discussion by adding “Tucker was supported by Smythe, and a breach thus began between Smythe and the Earl of Warwick “[99] Robert Scott, Vol. II, p. 266. Scott adds “Smythe who was in favor of the reelection of Tucker, according to the account of an adherent of Warwick, refused peremptorily ‘and with much heate and passion’ to accept this motion. After the lapse of some months, Smythe abandoned Tucker and decided to support Captain Southwell, while Warwick fixed on Nathaniel Butler [As his candidate [Sandys initially advocated his brother, George, and then was himself a candidate for Bermuda governor. The final decision was made in May 1619 with the election of Butler as Deputy Governor, but Thomas Smythe retained his position as governor. It is worth comment that Scott’s narrative interweaves both Virginia and Bermuda matters, such as the Magazine. It is very evident to me this interchange and the exchanges made during the 1618 and 1619 company discussion support my inclusion of this matter at this point. The 1619 coup, when it was completed and matters settled involved both Virginia and Bermuda.
Scott also reports in this section that in 1616 “Smythe had a serious illness” [p. 267]. If so, from this point on reference to Smythe’s health will be reported, in Smythe’s decision not to stand for election to Virginia Company treasurer in 1619. and in the 1621 parliamentary election which Smythe and Sandys contested a Kent M.P. district. The latter detail is included for reader consideration, but Scott suggests Smythe’s health may have been a factor in the keeping of Virginia Company records after 1616,
This was the incident that escalated over the next two years (which will later be discussed) and culminated in the company “coup” of 1619, and the series of shifts in company investor factions that, in its turn in 1621, led to the several year war between almost everybody against Edwin Sandys and his faction. The result of nearly five years of what was a Virginia Company civil war, the King (James I) suspended the Virginia Company charter’s rights of administration over Virginia—but not Bermuda, as irony would have it. The Company would continue its Bermuda charter rights into the 1650’s.
A succinct summary of post-third charter Bermuda is provided by D. Alan Williams:
The London Company [our Virginia Company] promptly sold Bermuda to a subsidiary association of company investors, who in turn founded the Somers Island (Bermuda) Company, under a separate royal charter in 1615. 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. The pleasant climate, the absence of Indians on the isles, and quick farming profits made Bermuda a flourishing colony. Eventually, the Somers Island Company came to an unprofitable end. With only 11,000 acres of land, the Bermuda Islands could not sustain a commercially viable agricultural economy. Unfortunately, before this became apparent, the scramble for Bermuda profits created conflicts among the Virginia investors that proved fatal to the London [Virginia] Company. Ironically, while England focused its attention on Bermuda, the colonists in Virginia stumbled onto their economic salvation—they became tobacco farmers. [99] D. Alan Williams, “Introduction”, in Grizzard Jr. and D. Boyd Smith, “Jamestown Colony: a Political, Social, and Cultural History (ABC CLIO, 2007), p. xl.
the Earls of Warwick, Privateering and the Somers Company
The fluidity of the shareholder membership is not new or novel topic. As early as 1914, the British scholar Arthur Percival Newton called attention to how it critical it was to the Company, and how it would affect the creation of a third subsidiary company: the Bermuda colony’s Somers Island Company.
The two branches of the Virginia Company received their patents from the king in 1606, and the London Company [one of the subsidiaries], among whose members were most of the merchants in whom we are interested [i.e. the merchant adventurers, but not those merchants associated with the traditional cloth and textile trade], and notably Sir Thomas Smythe and the Riches at once took steps to fit out a pioneer expedition …. The London Company succeeded by 1609 in enlisting in their work the sympathies of almost every rank of society. Englishmen saw in the new colony the only means open to them of continuing the efforts to curb the overweening power of Spain that had been abandoned by King James and his advisors [in his 1604 Treaty ending the war with Spain], but this widespread interest soon failed before the prosaic difficulties of the undertaking, and before long the management fell into the hands of a small number of well-to-do London merchants[the Smythe wing], many of whom had long been interested in privateering enterprises [Accordingly] the Spanish ministers regarded the Virginia colony as a perfidious device of the English government for continuing English piratical enterprise in defiance of the recently concluded treaty… Lying directly in the path of ships northward bound through the Florida channel, the Bermuda Island had an evil reputation through the sixteenth century. … Their importance [however] was so little appreciated, however, that the active members of [the 1612 Virginia Company] bought out the Virginia Company’s rights [to Bermuda] and formed a fresh company of only one hundred and twenty adventurers to undertake the plantation. The new company entered on its operations with vigor and secured a fresh charter one June 19, 1615. [99] Arthur Percival Newton, the Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans: the Last Phase of the Elizabethan Struggle with Spain (Yale University Press and Oxford University Press, 1914, pp. 19-20
With the audit in process, 1617-18 became a very vexing year for the chief players and factional leaders within the Virginia Company. The problem for Virginia scholars and American-focused readers is that the main battle, the most disruptive one, was waged in the Company’s Somers Company subsidiary, and it involved the administration and governance of Bermuda. By 1618 Virginia’s governance problems made their appearance. The overlap of the key players meant that disputes about Bermuda carried over to Virginia and vice versa. In these intra-company battles, Sandys was not the main contender (but make no mistake he played around in Bermuda as well as Virginia), the main arena was the increasingly open split between merchant adventurer allies, Smythe and the soon-to-be Second Earl of Warwick. As we shall also see, that battlefield reached into the seas of the East Asia and the East India Company—who CEO was, of course, Smythe. It also embraced the marriage of their children to each other. But it was the Somers Company that is our chief focus in this discussion. Still, in 1618, that fight reached into the Virginia Company as the disruption caused by Argall in 1617-18 gave opportunity to Sandys to replace Smythe and Warwick’s appointee first with Delaware and then Yeardley. We shall take each in their turn.
Bermuda-Somers Company—The issue at hand was the distribution of company land to the principal investors, each of which had been designated as a “tribe” and allocated land (not very dissimilar from the association-investor land distribution ongoing in Virginia, save from the latter’s use of independent joint stock corporations) on the basis of the number of shares each owned. The process was direction by the governor of Bermuda, Captain Daniel Tucker, on the basis of a land survey carried out over the previous two years. Tucker, a successor to the first Bermuda governor, Richard Tucker, had been imported from Virginia in May 1616. A former sea captain, shareholder, and settler of Virginia in 1608 and served as cape merchant during the horrific starving times of Jamestown.
A stern man, and administrator, he found the pace of Bermuda a bit slow and did not get along with its residents. Within days of his arrival he hung one of them for speaking ill of him. Tucker, remembering the starving times, insisted that Bermudans plant staples for their consumption—rather than the previous preferences of the settlers. Tucker, entrusted with the ongoing land distribution process, on his own volition appropriated several hundred left over, but well positioned acres for himself. He immediately built a mansion for himself on it.
Tucker’s seizure of this land offended the Rich family, a tribe, whose allotted land was alleged to be of inferior quality and location and so perceived Tucker’s arbitrary seizure to be an appropriation of land which should have gone to them. The Rich family’s local agent in Bermuda contested Tuckers’ seizure and for his resistance Tucker put him in jail. Tucker had been appointed by Thomas Smythe, and when the Rich’s furiously condemned Tucker’s treatment of the Rich agent, Smythe defended Tucker—thus presumably being the first thorn in the relationship of the two powerful allies. When Tucker left Bermuda to return to England to defend himself before the Somers Company shareholder meeting in early 1618, a battle ensured to replace Tucker and send over a new governor. Smythe defended Tucker, Sandys inserted his brother George as a candidate, a privateer investor Nathaniel Butler
Virginia—Argall
Governor Dale left town in mid-1616 (May 1616) and left his deputy, George Yeardley, in charge until the newly appointed Governor arrived—which turned out not until May 15, 1617. He left (fled) on April 9 1619, and his replacement, again Yeardley arrived on April 18, 1619. In the last module we described the outlines of Argall’s administration. Disliked by most Virginians, Argall was disruptive at best, but as his supporters would argue, the place was already a mess and Argall’s tyrannical, self-absorbed, and arbitrary governance was in some ways what the doctor ordered.
Perhaps, but in most ways, Argall was a step back, as he reversed key Dale initiatives, indeed tearing the guts out of his reforms. Instead he lined his own pockets, polarized Virginia, and caused a real stir in London—exposing the fractures in the Company’s shareholder community. During the Argall administration, the affairs in both England and Virginia, not to ignore Bermuda, exposed serious rifts within the Company leadership, the creation and incremental polarization of factions, and the overthrow of CEO Thomas Smythe by Edwin Sandys his Treasurer since 1612.
During the Argall administration period, the bottom piece by piece fell out of the Virginia Company policy-making/leadership, culminating in a coup that ousted Smythe from his Virginia CEO position in the April 28th 1619 [99] Scott, Vol II, p.269]..
A … division grew out of a personal quarrel between the Treasurer, Sir Thomas Smith, and a prominent shareholder, Lord Rich, [appointed in 1618 as the First] Earl of Warwick [by the king] … At first, he and Sir Thomas Smith were on very friendly terms. Samuel Argall was closely connected by marriage with Smith’s family, and it was Lord Rich and his friends who in 1617 secured Argall’s appointment as deputy-governor of Virginia. The appointment turned out to be far from credible. Argall’s rule was as stern as Dale’s, but it was not public spirited. Dale’s severity could be endured; with the self-seeking and unscrupulous Argall it was quite the otherwise.
He was so loudly accused of peculation [by Sandys—see p. 184 Fiske] and extortion that after one year, the Company sent Lord Delaware to take personal charge of the colony once more… Among [Delaware’s] private papers was one that instructed him to arrest Argall and send him to England for trial … [Delaware died in transit]… When the ship arrived in Virginia this document fell into Argall’s hands. Its first effect was to make him behave worse than ever. … [When Yeardley arrived he was] ordered to send Argall home, but [Argall] being privately notified, it is said by the Earl of Warwick, loaded [Warwick’s] ship and sailed for England before the [new] governor arrived [99] John Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors, Vol. 1 (Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1897), pp. 182-3, 185.
Accordingly, 1617-8 was consumed by divisive, disruptive and intensified factionalism. During this time new and even more disruptive events hit the subsidiary Somers corporation, such as Bermuda’s leadership collapse, a contested appointment of a new governor that pitted Smythe against his former ally, the son of the Earl of Warwick, along with charges of corruption of its land patent initiative, and the entrance of George Sandys, Edwin’s brother as a candidate. If Smythe felt besieged, Sandys/Southampton, and outer ports M.P.s, felt under attack as their friend and political associate, Walter Raleigh, created an international incident in Guyana against Spain that resulted his the reinstitution of the death penalty by James. and his subsequent beheading.
From Virginia, reports of Argall’s rogue behavior, and his treatment of the Company’s agent, fed into a Sandy’s/Southampton full-court press for a new approach to colony governance and economic development, an approach that contrasted sharply with Smythe’s past administration. By 1618 decisions were made, with Smythe still very much in office as Treasurer, to develop new instructions for Argall’s replacement. The first copy of these instructions went with De La Warr, and then after his death months later, to his replacement Yeardley. Yeardley, who had a history of serving the past governors during the Smythe administration, may have been a compromise and timely available replacement for De la Warr. No doubt his knighthood was secured through Smythe’s influence, but whose instructions for reform and colonial restructure reflected Sandys’s radically different approach.
It was at this time (1619) that Smythe’s eighteen year old, rather entitled and adventurous son fell in love with a daughter of Warwick’s first wife; they eloped and got married [Warwick was divorced from her but afterwards his first wife Penelope became a member of the Queen’s Council]. Smythe bitterly opposed the marriage and imposed serious restrictions on the couple upon their return. For a time relationships were poor between the families, and in 1619 when the First Earl’s son, also a Company shareholder, and half-sister of the bride, became the Second Earl of Warwick in 1619 upon the death of his father in that year. Smythe in early 1619 entered into a very public disagreement with the Second Earl, leading to the latter to enter into a [temporary] alliance with Sandys creating the opportunity and the votes to oust Smythe as Treasurer. Either deciding that enough was enough or realizing after counting the likely votes against him, Smythe declined to run for Virginia Company Treasurer in 1619 thereby opening the way for Sandys to become Treasurer [CEO] in April 1619 [99] See Fiske, p. 184
Ron W. Coan 