Office Politics: the Audit, Sandys, Smythe and Shareholders Negotiate the Greate Charter Permanent Settlement Pivot
Firing the First Shot of the Company’s Civil War: the Audit of 1616
From Sandys and his coalition’s perspective, Smythe and his brand of adventurers were tied to the king’s priorities, and in payment drew their share of the colonization largesse as justified reward. The entire system offended the Sandys’ bunch. Theodore Raab complicates matters. His strongest motivation is that Sandy’s and his gentry M.P.s allies at least wanted in on the action. I suspect he was correct, and that Sandys also likely believed the administration of the Company to that point had been what Ferrar would later refer to as a “tyranny”. That position is supported by a consistent opposition to merchant adventurer “monopolies”—a condition which the Virginia Company as a regulated joint stock corporation should have had removed, but in point of fact, up to 1616 much of the old merchant adventurer monopoly still infested the Company’s decision-making, and its settlement goals and practices. The Magazine, which we will shortly refer, was a real sore point in that sentiment.
However logical the audit, they might not have expected Smythe’s reaction. He initially resented the audit. It fueled Smythe’s defensiveness and he blamed Sandys personally. Then he resisted the investigators of the November 1616 audit and severely impeded its application. That reaction in turn may well have intensified Sandys’s feelings about Smythe and Johnson, and during 1617 and 1618 the audit became weaponized to oust Smythe. The pivot in Virginia Company’s business plan and settlement strategy, given new energy by easy success in Bermuda, infused in the 1617 (see p. 125) audit inspection the need for …
an adequate explanation of previous failures in Virginia. It took time to overcome this difficulty, but a beginning was made in 1617, when adventurers [Smythe] became agitated by charges of mismanagement against the Company leadership. [On the other hand] Men who had recently regarded Virginia as worthy of scorn now found her worth quarreling about. Demands were made for a closer look at the books, and under the leadership of Sandys, whose own interest in the colony had been unflagging, an audit was undertaken.
The accounts probably needed auditing. Some of the adventurers had invested as early as 1606, others in 1609, others only in 1611, and still others for the first time in 1616. Some had paid only in part or not at all, and some claimed their shares in lieu of prizes from the lottery. Debts had accumulated and officers had frequently advanced funds from their own pockets. In a corporation whose history had been marked by such varied transactions and by so many turns of fortune, the books might well show a certain confusion [in particular in regards to who was still a fully paid shareholder entitled to vote, and the blurring of personal and corporate funds—which worked in two ways, to personal profit as well as personal infusion of funds to keep the company going]
To provide for an equitable distribution of Virginia’s land [as was in process in Bermuda] undoubtedly required that they be put straight. As the audit proceeded, however, the need for proof of Virginia’s promise apparently overcame all other considerations. Suggestions of dishonesty were added to those of carelessness. Feelings were aroused and men found it increasingly difficult to cooperate. Thus did the company enter upon a period of sharp controversy that would end in its own destruction
[99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, pp. 124-5
Craven concludes [99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Southern Colonies, p. 125) the effect of the audit process (not the audit findings) was to polarize the shareholder base and to mobilize the protagonists to use and manage the shareholder democracy permited in the regulated joint stock corporation. He was more specific and shines some light into the more emotional and bitter exchanges that built up with each passing year and shattered whatever passed for consensus in Company decision-making in his earlier work “Dissolution”:
Differences arose in auditing the accounts, and these disputes spread into the company. The thoroughness with which the auditors fell to their task carried implications displeasing to Smith. He ‘believed they meant him noe good by their earnest requires for all old bookes of account’. He disliked their refusal to do the auditing at his house, which hitherto had been used as the company’s office. And most galling of all were Sandy’s repeated complaints in the courts [shareholder meetings] that the auditors were not receiving the proper cooperation from the officers, and unless they did it would be impossible ‘to attaine to any perfect account’. Smith’s reply was the fault la y in the inexperience of the auditors, and he directed his attacks at Sandys. The result of these disputes was a breach between Smith and Sandys that was never healed. Parties formed on either side, and there followed much controversy and many accusations … and around this rallying point there grew a party of opposition which looked to Sandys for leadership.[99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, p. 44.
1617 debate among all shareholders, including members of parliament, the shareholder association joint stock investors, and Virginia planters (virtually all being shareholders and company officials or in the employ of the Company such as sea captains) became involved and thus enabled to point the Company in the direction of their own ambitions, time frames, and object of investment. Scapegoating is age-old, and in the prism of their own interests and aspirations, it was also easy for the larger events and topics of national and royal politics to enter into the interchange of views.
Little of this was likely to the benefit of Smythe, although in this period the numbers did not yet work in Sandys’s favor. Factions formed and hardened in the fire of conflict. Each of the groupings were riven with their own fragmentation, and the key in any case required physical attendance at the shareholder meeting. Today’s reader should recognize in this period, even in England travel was inconvenient and time-consuming at best, and expensive as well. You couldn’t mail in your ballot, and so those centered about London had a natural advantage—and that did favor Smythe through 1618, until the April 1619 coup, allowed by the split from Smythe by Warwick, allowed Smythe to retain his Virginia Company Treasurer position.
As to the audit, it seems to have got nowhere fast. The records were not placed in any central depository, and those kept by its Treasurer, a goodly share to be sure, were kept at his house-where the shareholder meetings were held. This was possible before 1616, but not after. As we indicated before Smythe was an indifferent accountant, and record-keeping was not even close to today’s standards.
Readers ought reduce expectations. There were no uniform set of standards, and definitions were flexible. Moreover as will be shortly stated, Smythe had a track record of being a hero-funder for the Company, and he injected his personal funds in the most difficult circumstance. That Smythe and Alderman Johnson found ways to line their pockets, I have no doubt. But whether Smythe was “net-net” an exploiter or benefactor there is no known conclusion. Since he lost in his battle for control of the Company, it is Sandys whom we associate with the failed experiment. Smythe gets a pass, but he may not need one.
In his day, he was well-respected, a very prominent philanthropic, and without doubt was able to maintain the king’s support by lining his pocket—talk about a “war of all against all”. The blurring of personal, business and public wealth was not pretty, and the Company audit became divisive and bitter very quickly—Smythe would not allow records to be taken from his home, and that meant copied. Later in this story, the great philosopher who uttered that above phrase (Thomas Hobbes), would be one of those copiers of the Company records.
In any case, efforts to reconstruct relevant Company finances have attracted several historians (who, usually, are rather indifferent accountants) have not produced any screaming outrages. Smythe claimed Company expenses during the period in question at about L70,000, and the most serious estimation, by William Robert Scott [99] came in around L67,000. They also revealed the shareholders, by not paying their subscription bills, had themselves caused a bit less than L10,000 at one point in outstanding debt (and L16,000 by 1620)—which Smythe covered with his own personal funds. [99] William Robert Scott, the Constitution and Finance of English and Irish Joint Stock Companies to 1720 (Vol. II) (Cambridge University Press, 1910), pp. 257-9
The real shortcoming was the Company, especially after it began its land grants after 1614, had no assets, hence no collateral in the New World. One asset and one expenditure, indentured servants, their transportation and food supplies, was more easily exploited than lent against. In this rather fluid fiscal atmosphere accusations were cheap, loud, and hard to prove or disprove. One fact was indisputable, and worked to Sandys’s benefit”: the Virginia Company, had not made a profit ever, held incredible amounts of debt with which it had few assets for collateral, and was in perpetual day-to-day crisis to pays its bills. If Smythe hadn’t got rich, no one else had either. This is a recipe for bankruptcy, and as I have been saying for so many pages, the Company was a “going concern” from Day One in 1606.
Smythe was forced into an audit of his administration through 1617. Indeed, the audit process became very protracted, “interminable, whether because of the complexity of the accounts, or by blocking tactics by Smythe”—who during 1616 had become seriously ill [unknown causes]. From the start of the audit, Smythe took the position that if there were deficiencies, he would make up the losses. He eventually would pay L800. On the other hand, it seems evident Smythe’s skillset did not include accounting. He ran the Company from offices in his own mansion-home, and lacked the staff that the East India Company had. Although he held regular meetings of the shareholder executive committee, as many as forty, previous to 1612-13, he dominated the agenda and decision-making. A major parliamentary leader with a personality and predispositions of Sandys, is likely to have felt his administrative style was autocratic
Virginia (and Somers) Company shareholders who were upset with the 1616 dividend, the start of Dale’s Gift, the whack a doodle politics that wracked Bermuda since its settlement after the 1612 charter, and the plans for a new Magazine that were likely bandied about. Crossing over several shareholder factions Sandys and his allies navigated their way seeking an entry point whereby they could commence their agenda:
In the years since 1614, Virginia had drifted into a disorderly and unsettled state, in which many uncertainties of a political, economic and social character vexed the colonists’ life Economic conditions rendered their food and any benefits they hoped to derive from their labor, the severity of martial law made insecure both their rights and property and produced a general discontent, and there was need for the settlement of some definite and permanent policy regarding tenure that would define and guarantee their rights in the land. Complaints at these conditions had engendered faction among both adventurers and planters, and had sadly reduced the “reputation of the business” which now must be restored to enlist the support either of new capital [investor-associations] or of new colonists [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, p. 48.
In this period the character of the Company meetings changed, and increased shareholder attendance and participation in shareholder meetings was a radical departure from pre-1612 charter shareholder meetings. Since that charter, a new cadre of “aristocratic/gentry” with strong links to court factions (like Southampton, Pembroke, Cavendish, even Warwick) was diluting Smythe’s status position, and exposed his dependence on the king. Given a large body of M.P.’s that were shareholders—with most in alliance with Sandys–their involvement in such meetings created momentum amid a cacophony of chatter that in some quarters was characterized as sedition. That activist clamor contained anti-trading merchant adventurer monopoly overtones , and a loud, and disruptive anti-Spanish element, that seemed to be advocating something a akin to privateering in Bermuda had to disturb the previous domination of Smythe as he conducted shareholder meetings in the downstairs of his London house.
The Chronology in Drafting the Greate Charter
Shareholder meetings during 1617 must have been contentious and because of Bermuda and Argall even more so in 1618. If we rely on Craven’s Dissolution analysis (which I believe to be the single most reliable source) during this period, I do not sense much emotion or cussedness, which he himself asserts characterized the period. Rather what we get is his distillation of what seems to have come out of that discussion, but that is shaped by what we know of the “instructions’ for the new governors (De La Warr and Yeardley) that upon arrival in Virginia were launched in a revamp we now call “the Greate Charter”.
Logic suggests De La Warr’s instructions were completed previous of his setting sail in May 1618. This implies a final major discussion in the annual committee and shareholder meetings in late March and April 1618 were salient and impactful in constructing the core of the Greate Charter. Smythe is very much still in charge, and he signed off of them and with one exception in the fall, he supported them into the future. Nearly all commentators attribute the content to Sandys, but I am inclined to see him and his allies as the advocates for a new view of settlement policy and corporate reform that somehow and to some degree achieved a relative consensus in these meetings.
Both Sandys and Smythe had to agree to whatever was included in De La Warr’s instructions, but it is also of note that the governor’s instructions were signed off by the Treasurer. Of note, I have been unable to find any reference to negative action or statement from James—other than his exasperated quote about the discussion in the shareholder meetings at times bordered on seditious. The matter never came up in post-1623 investigations, scandals, and court-privy council decisions.
It is not likely James or Charles would have signed off on the creation of a potential independent “little parliament”. This 1618 representative body instituted by the instructions that constituted the Greate Charter was a purely corporate-shareholder body that extended the ability of Virginia resident shareholders, including their investor associations, to exercise their rights in corporate governance. Of note, the Company itself noted that this structure of corporate governance was essential and proper in the conveying, protection and enforcement of individual rights as English citizens, and in particular allowed Virginia shareholders opportunity to exercise their shareholder rights and interests without having to travel to London to vote.
In any event De la Warr died at sea (June), probably around Nova Scotia (sickness) which struck the boat’s passengers, and his body was transported to Virginia—where De La Warr was buried. The ship, Neptune, had further problems with wind and storms and did not arrive in Virginia until Aug 16th. At some point the Neptune returned to England, presumably with the instructions unopened; Likely this was around October, 1618. Given Argall’s personality and the fact he did know that he was recalled to London, we might suspect he got some ideas as to what direction the instructions included. His ally in London, Earl of Warwick, had time to warn him, and send over a ship for his use. London’s fragmentation was already affecting Virginia policy-making. Argall would begin an extended investigation-hearing which culminated in his knighting by the King. Credit Warwick for that, I and others suspect.
We do not know when specifically London knew of De La Warr’s death and when specifically it started to focus on his replacement and nominate him. We know Yeardley was knighted by the King on November 24th, and officially appointed governor on November 30, 1618. We do not know whether any changes were made to De La Warr’s instructions, but given the bruhaha regarding Yeardley’s knighting [999] any major disputed change would have been made public, or expressed at some point in the four year battle that ensued. Yeardley set sail in January 1619, and arrived in Virginia in April. Smythe was not replaced as Treasurer until late April 1619, and so was still in charge of the Virginia Company when Yeardley left London.
The change in Company leadership was known at the first session of the Virginia Assembly in July 30, 1619. The presiding officer was a Sandy’s ally, former Speaker of Parliament John Porys who came to be known as not an admirer of Yeardley. Yeardley’s departure from the Smythe camp likely came while Yeardley was in Virginia. The two had traveled together in January. This may be an important suggestive insight on the compromise reached in London’s that two sides had come to an agreement and both provided comfort to those in London the instructions would be carried out as intended. I have no specific confirmation on this observation.
This is the time line for the Greate Charter introduced by Yeardley in Virginia during 1619-21. The instructions were written previous to May 1618 and would have been shaped by London shareholder meetings previously, and the instructions, whoever wrote them (likely I think Sandys) and signed by Smythe as the Governor’s CEO with direct line authority. The instructions were not written in a formal “constitution-like” format, but rather were a set of specific instructions pertinent to a specific topic issued to the governor to direct his actions and priorities in Virginia.
Understanding the Making of the Greate Charter: The Twig is not Bent Towards Representative Democracy:
American historical commentators have, in my opinion, focused too heavily on Edwin Sandys, sometimes for good reasons, but all too often to create in the reader the impression the Virginia Company corporate transformation, captured and led by Sandys, was the initial notes of the song of American democracy. Awhile back in the past, historians were consciously drawing a direct line to Sandys and his Greate Charter, to the House of Burgesses, then to the Virginia leadership in the Revolution, followed by the making of the Constitution, and then holding the Office of Presidency through thirty-one of the first thirty-five years of the Republic. Without any doubt that should put Massachusetts in her proper place.
The circumstantial evidence is impressive. Virginia did exercise an crucial impact in the development of American democracy. But, to me, that requires we understand what that impact was, and how it shaped Virginia’s developmental impact on the formation of the Republic—and Virginia as a state.
Understanding the what, why and how of the Virginia Company’s singular initiative, the Greate Charter was, and how it set the stage for the political development of Virginia, how it bent Virginia’s economic and political development twig is the task at hand. For a start, the Greate Charter was not the first step to American democracy, nor was Sandys the personification of America’s first true democratic instincts. The simple reality was the Greate Charter was composed, if that is the right word, by an internal shareholder rebellion, led by Sandys and a rather large and diverse grouping of shareholders, which to a considerable degree altered the permanent settler strategy, the corporate structure, and replaced Virginia’s governor with a new one empowered by a compromise with the previous merchant adventurer CEO, Thomas Smythe, who embraced such strategy and made earnest effort to see to its implementation in Virginia.
By May 1618, the first replacement governor was on his way to Virginia armed with instructions on the what and how of the “Greate Charter”. That things didn’t work out exactly as intended then, the Greate Charter did reach Virginia a year later and were implemented by another new governor, also sent over with instructions signed by Thomas Smythe. Then, stuff really began—but we get ahead of ourselves. More on that later.
The story of the Greate Charter is vastly more complicated in the telling, but simple in its conclusion. The Company was to fail and be stripped of its charter to govern Virginia because of its own internal failures as development vehicle in an England heading down a path to civil war. The reality that Greate Charter implementation was crushed by a war with the Powhatan became a secondary factor to the dramatic implosion of the Company in London.
For me the Greate Charter was a creature of the processes worked out within the Virginia Company, and how the Virginia Company, itself a creature of the early Stuart colonial and politics and its drift into the English civil war combined to fabricate a transformational corporate pivot that was intended to “save the company” and thereby preserve the first experimental North American colonial colony from what seemed in 1616 to be a near-certain fiscal collapse caused in many ways by a misconceived and badly implemented permanent settlement program.
This occurred in the mid to late teens and early twenties while minimizing its complexity, and reducing the pages. He has become the contemporary personification of the Company, with Smythe pushed off into the shadows. I fear an ideological, anti-divine right, “hook” yanked Smythe off the stage, leaving Sandys the best lines in the play.
As we shall see there were larger issues, indeed a different generation’s world view separated Smythe from Sandys, but sources are consistent that Smythe had a closed mind on many issues, and his administrative style labeled as autocratic, or more charitably personalistic. That he blurred his personal search for wealth with corporation purposes and decisions is indisputable—but was very characteristic of his age, and was a tendency that even Sandys shared. Contemporary notions regarding corruption and conflict of interest, however moral they may be, are out of place in this time period.
Virtually all his critics stressed Smythe constantly juggled too many jobs of great responsibility [the East India Company demanded more from Smythe, and the assignments for the Crown, and his positions as a M.P., and Commissioner of the Navy]; Likely spasms of activity were interspersed with period of absence and cursory involvement. He seems never have come close to today’s image of a corporate CEO. These concerns persisted throughout the next eight years and were included in Nicholas Farrar’s “Sir Thomas Smythe’s Misgovernance of the Virginia Company published in the last days of the viable Virginia charter.
[Smythe] was rightly described as ‘primus motor’ in the Virginia Company [after 1608]. It was indeed his energy that lay behind the successive fund raising schemes, including the joint stock subscriptions at the relatively affordable L12.10 a share, and later lotteries. Subscribers were invited to pay in their shares at his house in Philpott Lane; when new settlers with key skills were sought in 1609, they were told to report to Smythe’s house, where they would be registered as adventurers. It seems to have been Smythe’s idea to sweep the streets of London clear of idle youths and ship them off to Virginia at a cost of L500. He was closely involved in the schemes of governance reform, including the revised charter arrangement of 1609, which allowed for the nomination of [Virginia] governor in London, but reduced the power of the Privy Council over the council responsible for Virginia affairs. He was also as his critics alleged behind the new disciplinary code … which brought about conditions of near martial law in the colony. [99] “Sir Thomas Smythe, 1558-1625, lecture delivered at Skinners Hall, 26 November 2007, by Ian W. Archer, Keble College and Faculty of History, Oxford. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4a1c5a8a-78f1-4dfa-9c79-6f94a6161659; https://skincaremoz.academia.edu/IanArcher
Likely, as Archer asserts, Smythe’s critics reflected “the lack of returns on their investment produced a great deal of resentment among the smaller investors, many of them gentry from provinces [that is non-London geographies] increasingly chaffed at the dominance of the London tycoons. Others felt the Company was not taking a sufficiently forward policy against Spain”. [99] “Sir Thomas Smythe, 1558-1625, lecture delivered at Skinners Hall, 26 November 2007, by Ian W. Archer, Keble College and Faculty of History, Oxford. This was certainly possible as many who had invested in the Company were gentry investors looking for some return on their investment. But there were other motivations prevalent within the shareholder community.
To some degree, more aristocratic shareholders, such as those who purchased shares inspired by and associated with Queen Anna advocacy and Pocahontas promotional campaign, were not impressed by what they found as they looked into the Company and its administrative reality. Of these new shareholders, Southampton and his friends, perhaps as a heritage of the Essex affair, were never predisposed to Thomas Smythe. Sandys, since the beginning had probably owed his appointment to the Queen’s Council back in 1603, to Southampton as likely as not filled them in with Company deficiencies, and likely as not reminded these high-placed, courtiers of a bigger picture of England’s losing its opportunity in foreign affairs, and not using the colony to the advantage of England’s economic growth. Roper, in an early discussion on Southampton, paints the role of Southampton as having his own perspective and objectives:
According to Roper, between 1615 through 1617 especially the Queen’s Council was active and influential. “This new political atmosphere made the time propitious for revisiting Anglo-American colonization and, as they advanced [their protégé and court influencer] Villiers … Southampton and his associates turned to advancing Virginia … [where] the Southampton group remained unconvinced of the [past] administration of Sir Thomas Smythe. In November 1616, Southampton, Sandys, Danvers and others [Ferrar] demanded a review of the accounts of the Virginia Company, the leadership of which to their minds, had spent a lot of money with little to show for that expenditure [99] L. H. Roper, the English Empire in America, p. 77
Craven concurs that it was Sandys and his Southampton group “after sundry private meetings among themselves”, that followed the disruption of the 1616 dividend being paid in land not cash. At a shareholder court session the accusers secured their appointment, and added several allies, to the committee entrusted with the audit.
Differences arose in auditing the accounts and these disputes spread into the company. The thoroughness with which the auditors fell to their task carried implications displeasing to Smith. He ‘believed they ment (sic) him noe good … he disliked their refusal to do the auditing at his house, which hiterto had been used as the company’s office, and most galling of all were Sandys’ repeated compliants in the courts [shareholder meetings] that the auditors were not receiving the proper cooperation from the officers and that unless they did [cooperate] it would be impossible to attain any perfect account. Smith’s reply was the that the fault lay in the inexperience of the auditors and he directed his attacks particularly at Sandys. The result of these disputes was a breach between Smith and Sandys that never healed. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, pp. 43-4
Thus the November “audit” initiative exposed and aggravated concerns regarding the previous Smythe administration, and shareholder meetings in 1617 and 18 were increasingly well-attended, passionate, and mostly impacted by shareholders outside of Smythe’s merchant adventure allies. It should be remembered that in these years very disruptive shareholder meetings in the Somers Corporation ensued, followed by bitter controversy over reports regarding Argall as administration as governor of Virginia. If the meetings previous to the 1616 land dividends had been poorly attended and somewhat docile, the meetings after 1616 were full scale multi-front battles.
Even so, it was not Smythe’s style to backdown, and as the November 1616 audit, with preliminary results and rumors permeating shareholder emotion, motivated Smythe to circle his wagons and to require those who wanted to audit the books do so at his house—apparently prompting Ferrar and the Earl of Cavendish (who conducted the audit) to bring in his assistants, one of which a young Thomas Hobbes, to make copies that were fed into the Sandys, Southampton and their M.P. allies.
To this it must be added that the 1617 through 1622 period was the period in which the investor-association-hundreds were most active, when their contracts were written and signed, and when they shipped numbers of new settlers to Virginia. Craven asserts that in April 1618 about 400 settlers resided in Virginia, but in the following spring (1619) the population had increased to “around 1000”. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, pp. 45. That most of the investor-association-hundreds groupings were not merchant adventurers, but gentry shareholder associations, it may be inferred the disruption in London and the rise of association hundreds benefited Sandys, and not Smythe—who nevertheless did not oppose the movement and duly signed off on the contracts.
Craven posits that Smythe in 1618 came around to the need for a revamp and reform of the Company’s settlement program and strategy. It seems likely to me that Smythe in turn reconsidered his position and role in the Company and that probably led to his April 1619 decision to desist from running as the Virginia Company CEO-Treasurer, but to insist on his maintaining those positions in the Somers Company, and on the board of the Virginia Company Magazine.
As to the audit itself, Craven suggests that Sandys and others were looking for an explanation to the long string of failings and succession of crises that characterized its existence since 1607. While many were engaged in Bermuda’s settlement and politics, its geographic limitations meant Virginia was the opportunity for wealth, profit and colonial mercantile positioning. By 1616 it was apparent that land was the new dividend and fairness in the awarding and implementation of land grants and headrights were salient themes worth paying attention to.
Having watched Smythe (and Alderman Johnson) for years, their failings, including their limited time in company affairs, the host of other obligations, and the lack of attention to detail, financial, accounting or otherwise, not to ignore their ties to James, his Privy Council, and the annoying and greedy merchant adventurers, the Smythe years were not years of unbridled success and so a review of their accounts seemed a logical start to a revamp of the company, its settlement and trade strategies, and if their suspicions were correct offer a scapegoat to be sacrificed so a new administration could take over.
Craven’s take on the motivations of the audit advocates (the Sandys coalition) was that “they were representative of that part of the adventurers with whom the desire to render a public service was especially strong in their support of colonization. … they were not alone disturbed by considerations of personal profit and loss” [which does not mean they didn’t care, but they had several factors in the colonization decision-making]. “They began with a demand upon the officers [the Smythe crew] for an account of their stewardship, and proceeded then to plans for reform and reorganization that would enable them one again to present Virginia as an enterprise worthy of every Englishmen’s support”. Craven than alludes to another grouping of support, the small investors, again mostly gentry merchants/lenders-artisans-professionals who were profit-seekers but who were especially turned off by the simple consistent track record of failure, which to them suggested either incompetence or profit exploitation. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, pp. 42-3 In short, we got a severe case of shareholder rebellion.
I would not explain their “public service” obligation in those terms. To me they reflect an orientation that M.P.s had been stressing in their parliamentary debate in 1604, and again in 1614. They saw colonization and trade, which the king considered as an elements of his prerogative, a policy area within foreign policy, and one from which he could, and should, derive revenues for his expenditure priorities. This was precisely what Parliament had been fighting James about since he came in from Scotland. The Parliament saw foreign policy, colonization and trade as part of their responsibility, a responsibility intensified by the bias in James foreign policy that tilted to Catholic and Spain that sent spasms of rage into many Parliamentarians.
There is little reason, I suspect, to think that the Virginia Company was exempted from that confrontational position, and the parliamentarians were sincere and consistent in their including it into their mental framework regarding the Company. If so, I provide some level of support for historians that have asserted the king increasingly in these years perceived shareholder debate and opposition to Smythe as “seditious” and shareholder meetings a raging bastion of parliamentary-inspired opposition. To associate that royal comment as evidence of an early Tory-like ‘court” orientation is way premature, and simply unreasonable chronologically. The battle within Parliament had simply carried over to the Company, and what we are seeing is an expression of the politics associated with “the drift to civil war”.
The Period of Company shareholder debate on the pivot of the Company and Settlement: 1617-19
Thirdly, it was Bermuda, the disruption caused by Virginia’s Deputy Governor Argall, and the groups behind the investment of the hundreds associations that wanted Smythe and his grouping to leave these “colonies within a colony” alone. They wanted to impose their own version of a permanent settlement strategy—a strategy that could be no worse than the hap-hazard settlement strategy of the merchant adventurer factor—and on top of that wanted to remove the incompetence and blurring of private with corporate wealth within the Company that had taken over the Company practices and initiatives, i.e. Dale’s Gifts.
While the Dales’ Gift initiatives opened up Virginia and created a facilitative opportunity to those who invested in the hundreds associations, their lack of structure and accountability pitted resident company officials against the new investors, and also left undealt with provincial-wide needs for infrastructure, a diversified economic base, a more helpful policy to the Powhatans and tribes, not to mention their outright Christianization, and tossed in for good measure, a college. These investors saw their individual hundred as a unit of local government, and sought to create provincial structure to tie themselves into a coordinated and fair law-making that could grow the colony.
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
Sandys Settlement Business Plan: the Plans of Mice and Men …
The timing for reform seemed ripe in 1618–in fact absolutely necessary if the Company had any hopes to avoid bankruptcy. Despite their personal views of tobacco, for once, Smythe and Sandys realized the Company had caught a break: tobacco export was a cluster breakthrough, with a promise for a core sector in a larger productive economic base that promised revenues of some consequence sufficient to cope with the Company’s fiscal needs (when combined with the lottery). As the reader will soon discover, tobacco had unfortunate negative implications; while Smythe and Sandys both opposed its use and its then-dominance in the economy, and the King was also developing his own ideas on the matter, tobacco was the tool and product available at the moment on which to make the corporate pivot–and for Sandys and his crew an opportunity to limit Smythe’s and the merchant adventurers hold on corporate policy-making. They had to play the (card) hand dealt them.
Both sides agreed that Virginia’s economic base had to be extended beyond tobacco. The opportunity for joint action for each seems to have been triggered around the coping with the Argall disruption—and by 1618 the need to get him out of Virginia. So De la Warr reasserted his position—and responsibility for dealing with Argall his lieutenant governor—by agreeing to return and clean up his mess—in so doing implementing the matters agreed to in the joint discussions during Company shareholder meetings, and the more private sessions that no doubt also accompanied them. The agreed upon actions were then set to paper in the traditional form of “instructions to the governor” which in mid-1618 was De La Warr with intentions to leave London in May. The below are description of the instructions given to De La Warr—and later to Yeardley [99] See for First Division “London Company Instructions to George Yeardley, 18 November 1618” in Frank E. Grizzard Jr., and Boyd D. Smith, Jamestown Colony. 2007, p. 335-342; See for Second Division, Warren M. Billings, the Old Dominion in the Seventeenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 1975, “Beginning of Representative Government: the London Company Creates a General Assembly, pp. 37-8 —.
The First Division of Instructions
So in 1618 the two drafted (Sandys primarily) a new economic development strategy and incorporated within it a new land use and people-recruitment policy (the Greate Charter) that promised a realistic effort to break the permanent settlement logjam [99] See Osgood, Vol 1, p. 83. Craven opens up the subject of the content of the discussions by asserting the “acrimonious debates of the two years had by 1618 clarified the opinion of the courts [shareholder meetings] concerning the remedies necessary to the reestablishment of the company’s fortunes. There were sharp differences of conviction as to the responsibility for the previous errors, but there was little disagreement on the policies now to be followed” [in the gubernatorial instructions, and presumably agreement on the selection of Yeardley] [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, p. 47.
There were two divisions or parts in the instructions, which the second being more “political instructions” outlining corporate provincial institutions to be created to allow resident Virginia shareholders access to participating in Virginia Company policy-making, and the first a variety of topics ranging from corporate housekeeping, pulling back from the previous military policy system with concern for civil rights and secure land tenure for eligible settlers, integration of investor-hundreds-association plantations and settlements, setting up a more defined system of “local”, i.e. non provincial entities, requirements, and relationships, and setting parameters for Virginia’s economic base.
By dictum included in the Greate Charter instructions tobacco planting should be regulated and “efforts must be directed to the production of food and a large variety of staple commodities [produced and exported] for which the English market was dependent on foreign countries”. Virginia’s self-sufficiency was linked to English mercantile needs, both of which produced revenues necessary for sustaining and growing the colony. Yeardley was expressly ordered to stop “the excessive applying of Tobacco, and the neglect to plant Corn which of all other things is most necessary for the increase of that plantation [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, p. 50. This order was extended to the association-hundreds which were tasked with planting of many staples, orchards and livestock importation.
Craven calls attention that London had little taste for Virginia tobacco as its prime justification and benefit derived for and from Virginia and its colonial footprint had to be known as more than a mere “cloud of smoke”. If Americans have any thought that London or even the Company wanted tobacco above all else, and that blame for the monoculture rests upon them, the record is pretty clear—they didn’t. The problem was, as we assert as central to my thesis in this history, England did not have sufficient control over the day-to-day in Virginia that they were able to alter in any significant way what the Virginia’s did during this period of time. The Virginians continued to plant tobacco, and extend the plantation system into the hinterland still further.
So long as the colony for all practical purposes was concentrated in Jamestown, the body seemed as a “local council”, but Dale’s dispersion of the settler population required the council be updated to reflect that fact. Accordingly, to integrate these four new entities (Jamestown, Henrico, Charles City, and Kecoughtan (later Elizabeth City) into the emerging corporate provincial policy system, and offering a potential orderly administration that could be developed these Dale-created jurisdictions, formerly called hundreds, were instead called boroughs and congruent with the role of boroughs in England were intended to enjoy special status as a level of corporate governance, and was provided 3,000 acres for its use to pay its costs. In addition, acreage was set aside to pay for costs associated with the parish and its vestry. These were the initial company-related “Dale’s Gift” hundreds for the most part, or were defense and trade sites that had been used after 1606. All situated along the James River and/or Chesapeake Bay, they proved to be the economic and settlement core of the First Generation settlement—at least through the 1620’s.
The practices relied on by Dale to pay for the salaries and costs of resident company officials, including and especially the governor or his lieutenant, were reconfirmed in the Greate Charter instructions, as was the practice of augmenting these lands granted with company indentured servants, who were defined as “tenant by halves” with the governor receiving one half their produce or labor. Workforce access was the critical ingredient in the growth of a plantation and its access to capital and export markets. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, p. 55.
I have already commented these practices impacted the political and economic development of the future colony greatly, and were important to our explanation as to why Virginia evolved differently than other colonies. Most important was that these practices consciously blurred public and private responsibility of its Virginia officials and governance, provided them “first advantage” in the setting up of their own plantations, and provided them a workforce which was of immense value in a Virginia characterized by a continuous shortage of labor. That indenture magnified this first advantage dynamic.
One other, in my opinion likely consequence, given the relatively small number of individuals involved, and the very large number of settlers excluded for one reason or another, the first advantage nexus created an informal “small club” atmosphere, not unlike the proverbial J. R. Ewing (Dallas TV Show) “cattlemen’s club” (with Rolfe’s tobacco as a substitute and a shared bonding) where rivals came together to the benefit of all and formed a powerful protective forum that was both a sanctuary, a place to make deals and seize opportunities, and to express status. Admittance to this forum was aspirational to ambitious outsiders and therefore served as a model and created a deference to those in the club. What would a historian call these club members? An elite. This was a kernel of a once and future elite that will guide and shape the behavior and proclivities of the First Migration movers and shakers, adding to the Virginia Company a little-noticed, but critical aspect of its heritage to Virginia.
We will also understand how an unequal workforce and society was semi-consciously established by the Virginia Company—and how many observers, including Craven, thought the plantations they established were akin to a “manor”. While many commentators have credited other factors as responsible for these developments, I do not believe the Virginia Company’s role, which is fundamental to this question, can be ignored. The Greate Charter confirmed existing practice and legitimized the practices so they, by default, became incorporated not only in individual expectations, but as traditions of office and service in local and provincial government.
Because Argall had interfered with Dale’s dispersion and his settlement of indentured and former indentured settlers, Jamestown would for two years be sent new settlers to enable it to set up its corporate plantation. One might observe that a known deficiency regarding colonial Virginia was its lack of urban settlements, including a capital and port city, but it cannot be said that was a deliberate or conscious policy of the Virginia Company. To the contrary the Virginia Company desired to found larger urban-like settlements, and for that matter, so did the royal government after it took over in 1624.
The instructions also were intended to repair Argall’s damage done to Dale’s Virginia plantation settlement dispersal, the implementation of indentured servant land grants, the use and specifics of headrights. Clarifications were inserted into particular hundred’s contracts and an implicit approval for further hundred-association plantation investment underlie the instructions. A stress on increasing the size of the workforce was also stated, and the Company committed itself to send over workforce and to work with individual hundred-association investors to do so also.
Craven further states the Company committed itself to work with the associations and with the resident shareholders to work with them to resolve their concerns and criticisms. “Complaints at these conditions had engendered faction among both adventurers and planters, and had sadly reduced the reputation of the business [the Virginia Company] which must now be restored to enlist the support either of new capital or of new colonists” [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, p. 48. If shareholders as individuals and groups were to settle in Virginia on their own dime then the Company had to make land and opportunity secure and accessible if these investors were to take the risk and to create an atmosphere where potential English settlers and other investors could be recruited.
Virginia’s reputation in 1618 worked against this and concrete pivot from the military policy system and a flexibility to each investor association to set up and grow its own plantation-hundred had to be offered. Incentives had to sweeten the deal, as well as a policy structure in Virginia that was capable of dealing with Virginia concerns close at hand, not in London. In short a capital attraction and economic development plan had to be created and implemented in short order. Necessarily, since these plans required policy and economic structures to be established in Virginia.
I would also add, the Company had accepted the donations from the Episcopal Church, made after the death of Pocahontas, mentioned above, to commence an Native American conversion program, which was included in the instructions to start at a location near Henrico. A “reservation” of 10,000 acres for the endowment of a college in which Native American children might be trained in religion [i.e. converted] and European values and occupations [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, p. 55.
It is with these concerns, a concerted movement away from Argall’s military style command and gubernatorial predominance of Virginia’s governance, the confirmation and support of private land titles, grants and their ability to manage their individual plantations and investment, and the setting in place of the company’s role in the growth of the economy and the management of the corporation’s affairs in Virginia which stood at the core of the second section of the instructions sent to the governors.
?? ll were important as the Company in these instructions intended to fashion an integrated and somewhat comprehensive revamp of its administrative practices and structures and provide the parameters of their authority necessary for integration, coordination and regulation. In that providing comfort and security to both future individual settlers and older ancient settlers, as well as to the new kid on the block, the private investor settlers with their plantations and hundreds-association contracts [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, p. 57.
The Second Division of Instructions
Because there is some dispute, and several meanings, intentions and purposes attached to the institutions created in the second divisions, I thought it best to provide the reader with the exact (somewhat) of the relevant instruction, as cited in Billings. The second division opens up by stating it was sent from
the Treasuror (sic), Council [shareholder quarterly meeting held on November 28,1616)] and Company of Adventurerers and planters of the Citty of London [the formal name of the Virginia Company]. … Knowe yee That wee the said Treasuror, Council and Company takeing into our Careful Consideration the present state of the said Colony in Virginia: and intending by the divine assistance of settle such a forme of government ther as may bee to the greatest benefit and comfort of the people, and whereby all Injustice, greviance and oppression may bee prevented and kept of as much as is possible from the said Colony have thought fitt to make our Entrance by ordayning and establishing such supreame Counsells as may not only bee assisting to the Governor for the time being in the administration of Justice, and executing of other duties to his office belonging, but also by their vigilent Care and prudence may provide as well as for remedy of all inconvenyencies groweing from tyme to tyme, As also for the advancing of Encrease strength, satabillitie and prosperytie of said colony [.]
Wee therefore the said Treasuror Counsell and Company, by authoritie directed to us by his Majestie under his greate seale upon mature deliberation doe hereby order and declare, That from hence forward ther bee towe [two] Supreame Councells in Virginia for the better government of said Colony as aforesaid. The one of which Counsells to be called the Counsell of State and whose office shall Cheiflie bee assisting with ther Care advise and circomspection to said Governor shall be Chosen, nominated and displaced from tyme to tyme by us the Treasuror Counsell and Company … [names followed setting in place the new Council of State] …
The other Counsell more generall to be called by the Governor and yeerly of Course, and no oftener but for very extreordynarie and Important occasions shall consist for the present of the said Counsell of State and Tow [two] Burgesses out of every towne hunder [hundred] and other particuler plantation to bee respetially [i.e. especially] Chosen by the inhabitants. Which Counsell shall be called the generall Assemblie, wherein as also in the said Counsell of State all matters shall be decyded determined and ordered by the greater part of the voyces [voices] then present, Reserving alwaies to the Governor a negative voice [veto]. And this generall Assembly shall have free power to treat Consul and conclude as well as all emergant occasions concerning the publique [public] weale of said Colony and the good government thereof
In another statement the London Company stipulates that it may issue no order to the new General Assembly which is binding to it, unless it is ratified by the Virginia General Assembly—and vice versa. The London Company further orders such actions and decision of the Virginia General Assembly must conform to English law, and administrative and legal custom. There is, of course, no reference to any sovereignty other than the King, to which both London and Virginia are subject. For the record, that also does not include orders of Parliament—which in several decades will be very important.
As to whether or not this is a “little Parliament” in the making, or a representative democracy with an electoral franchise of its citizens who elect the Burgesses there is no mention or suggestion. Others such as Charles Andrews and Herbert Osgood imply and flirt with the notion this was an “democratic experiment ([99] p. 182 Andrews, Vol. 1)—before finally conclude that “the drafting of the charter of grants and liberties [the instructions] was the company’s reply to the complaints that had been accumulating of Argall’s way of managing affairs in Virginia. In essence he summarizes the intent as:
It was a long document, a veritable code of privileges, orders and laws, that dealt with the affairs of the colony … and was designed to bind the members of the colony and their heirs forever. It put an end and introduced a system of POPULAR [?] [mine] control that was undoubtedly copied from the practice of the company itself in its quarterly gatherings of the generality to the rule of Gates and Dale [our military policy system] [i.e. Company] [99] Charles A. Andrews, the Colonial Period of American History, Vol. 1, p. 182
To the extent that the Company’s right and power as an regulated English joint stock corporation to set for itself its own approved measures of decision-making in open shareholder meetings during which eligible shareholders can exercise voice vote, and to which the Company extended that right to shareholders in Virginia unable to participate in London meetings to have their own such body is nothing more than a form of corporate ‘shareholder democracy’. I fully agree with Craven’s assertion that the Virginia Company “attempted in 1618 … to attribute to [the instructions] any idea of creating a body politic either politically or economically independent of the company and of England is to credit [the Company] with an idea that is compatible neither with contemporary theories of colonization nor with reason. … To one who thus surveys the whole field of attempted reforms in 1618, that year assumes its proper place in the history of Virginia as the period in which the company endeavored to clear the deck for action and to prepare the way for the application of those economic policies whereon Sandys in after years labored to build a prosperous and thriving colony [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, pp. 49-50.
In this spirit just as the company had altered the first policy system in Virginia to create a second, the military policy system, it was in 1618 creating yet a third policy system that more precisely reflected its own corporate policy system extended to colonists-shareholder in Virginia. The reforms in Virginia were followed by a similar setting in order of the affairs and machinery of the company [as existed in England, and were lacking in Virginia]. The rights and duties of all officers and official bodies within the corporation were restated and set down in a long document drawn up and ratified by the [London] adventurers in quarter [shareholder] court [99] Orders and Constitutions, in Force, Tracts, III, No. 6; and “Instructions to Governor Yeardley, 1618, Virginia Magazine of History, II (1894), p. 154; See pp. 53-4, footnote 9]. Their desire was to reduce confusion to order, to replace uncertainty to certainty, and to settle upon definite policies which would serve not only as the foundations of an expanding and prosperous colony, but to eliminate all possible opportunities for disagreement and factional strife that had for some time hindered the advance of the business [99] Wesley Frank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 1932, pp. 48-49.
The unusual attention devoted to the political side of these reforms [Virginia Assembly, including the House of Burgesses and Council of State in particular] has somewhat beclouded the real intentions of the adventurers [Smythe and Sandys and the London shareholders]. Arguably, the best support Craven provides that these instructions were agreed to by both Sandys and Smythe is an undisputed fact: only one year later (1619), Bermuda (Somers Island Company), under Sir Thomas Smythe its Treasurer and CEO, created its own General Assembly, replicating much of the earlier Virginia reform structure. The relevant background feature was its accommodation to previous land distribution actions to private shareholder investor groupings {aka tribes as they were called in Bermuda, and corporation-association-hundreds in Virginia] and logically movement from monopoly company ownership of the land to contract-driven private ownership of the Company’s land and the coexistence of retained public-Company-land as well.
One can hint the Company had stumbled upon land redistribution in both colonies and by 1618 it was evident a need had been created a need for correcting errors in contracts, confirming individual rights as well as obligations, filling in the gaps, clarifying ambiguities, and setting in place relationships between the Virginia Company/Somers Company provincial level authority, and the private actions and requirements of a colony within a colony. Both reforms clearly retained final authority for the corporate body in London. One final point after a year in operation the Bermuda General Assembly, having passed thirty-two approved actions, sent them to London corporate body for their final ratification. The Treasurer and CEO in that year, 1620, was Edwin Sandys.
They had set for themselves an ambitious program and they were engaged in nothing more than an attempt to set their house [i.e. the resident Virginia Company] in order with the hope of providing the most favorable circumstances for the success of that program. There was much talk of making Virginia into a regular and well-ordered state. It had been the purpose of the company, read Yeardley’s instructions, ‘to lay a foundation whereon a flourishing state might in process of time by the blessing of Almighty God be raised”. While such statements, when considered alone and unrelated to the movement from which they sprang, can be given an interpretation that is especial political, to do so is to lose the full scope of what the London adventurers attempted in 1618. To attribute to them any idea of creating a body politic either politically or economically independent of the Company and of England is to credit them with an idea that is compatible neither with contemporaries theories of colonization nor with reason. ..
Yeardley, as Governor, (and Porys, the Speaker) was instructed to establish and call into session two new and potentially powerful institutions: a House of Burgesses, and an Assembly. These of course were added to the existing governance institutions, the governor/lieutenant governor and his Council of State [the latter body enjoyed multiple names and for clarity I refer to it as the Council of State). Members of the council were appointed by London through action of its executives and the shareholder quarterly meeting (court). Appointment was for life, subject to several serious situations.
The council of state was the council set in place in the original 1606 instructions and which was formed in the first days of Jamestown as the governor’s council. Up to 1618 its function was certainly advisory, but in practice actively engaged in policy-making, and in the absence of the governor would assume authority, even to the point of electing a replacement governor who would conduct affairs until ratified or replaced by the London authorities. The council carried over to the military policy system and in that period performed civil duties as well as manage units of the military. governor from 1606 onward had appointed a “council” which served as his advisors, and in the interim between the governor’s absence serve and or elect his successor subject to London ratification. The Greate Charter extended this body and specified its role and scope of authority to some degree.
The real troublemaker is the creation of the Assembly, in particular the House of Burgesses, and the inclusion of the Council and the Governor in one grand body that meets at least, and preferably no more, than one meeting a year. I and certainly Craven, argue that it is a replication of the Company’s own shareholder annual meeting that engaged its individual shareholders in an annual election of its leadership and a consummate decision-making body for major decisions and courses of action.
As such it is a corporate decision-making body, but certainly its application to a far-away colony without an active government system in place as there was in England invites what ought to be thought of is decisions that overlap into governmental function. Usually, the word used in this is “self-government”—and to the extent that the colony is directly under the authority of a royal governor that would be more appropriate. In Virginia’s instance under the Company, the better term would, I suggest, be “self-administration”.
The distinction may be semantic, but it does have the virtue of tempering ones aspirations. It taps into injecting a geographic decentralization in the Company’s organizational structure rather than creating a seed of the central decision-maker in a far away geographic location. The first instance of English colonization in North America it may be, but that venture was entrusted to a public-private partnership in the form of a privately-controlled and managed joint stock corporation that through increased “regulation” was itself governed and managed by its own shareholders. In 1618 it is hard to think anyone, especially James I thought otherwise (although Edwin Sandys is another matter to be sure).
Entrusted by its charter, that corporation had the right to exercise limited governmental powers, but was never contemplated to be a government itself. That possibility was probably contemplated in 1630 Massachusetts, with its charter safely stowed away in Massachusetts. But if Thomas Smythe, still very much in charge of the Company, had thoughts similar to Winthrop is very hard to believe.
It was his signature on the instructions to the governor. And whatever his English governmental dreams might have been, Sandys likely did not intend his corporate reforms to be hardened into self-government for the colony, at least in 1618, when he was not yet in position to control the Company, nevermind the English government; it is at least premature, and likely a bridge too far in governance in this period. That events over the next decades could make such thoughts possible, even if unlikely, is another matter. For this module, at least, we live in 1618 to the extent possible.
The Virginia Assembly in 1618, and after during the Company hegemony, was a Virginia joint stock corporate body in a mutual agreement entrusted with administering it oversight and conveying its input into the London corporate headquarters. On this basis the investors and settlers could feel comfortable in their rights and in a policy-making process to which their interests and ideas could be considered and dealt with. This conforms to the goals in evidence during the 1628 discussion in London, and to the agreement no doubt negotiated between Smythe and Sandys.
I also have to confront the reality that the instructions in that they are based upon a geographical representation at the annual meeting are not a mirror image of the London policy corporate system might need some explanation. We forget the London Company was only one of two sub-companies in the Virginia Company. The Company founded in 1606 was structured around a geographical basis, one company established to represent the interests of Bristol and the outer ports, and the other, London.
In 1618 the other sub-company was off in the northern wildernesses of New England primarily, and outside of our purview in this module. But geography played a role in the larger Virginia Company structure and policy-making, and the injection of geography in the instructions regarding the House is an acknowledgement that the geography of Virginia’s settlement pattern and the different actors (association-hundreds) associated with that settlement pattern were all effectively shareholders and had to be included in its Virginia corporate policy-making structure.
Finally, Craven offers several relevant observations that complete our discussion of the nature of the Assembly as conceived in the instructions of 1618:
Martial law [especially considering the recent actions by Argall] had become the most objectionable feature of the old government, and there is good reason for the statement that the introduction to the common law was considered the most valuable part of the political changes provided in 1618. … In papers submitted by the colonists [in the 1623 London trials-investigations of the Company] their chief complaint of the old regime was the harsh and cruel law under which they had been forced to live, and their main argument in behalf of the new [Greate Charter policy system] was the justness and mildness of its government. [Craven then inserts the emphasis on the application of justice through mobile circuit and then fixed jurisdiction judicial bodies was further evidence of the importance of the creating a common law infrastructure in Virginia—a important priority and achievement of the Greate Charter period]
[ ME: In this manner we can see the “inheritage” of English common law in early Virginia was not by osmosis or by memory, but by semi-conscious institutionalization by the parent body through allowance-establishment of self-administration]
[Accordingly,]There was a marked similarity between the government of the colony, and that of the Company after 1619, which suggests that the latter’s organization may have been a model. The Company was governed by a treasurer, council, and assembly of adventurers. In the public statements of the company, especially in appeals for colonists, there was much talk of Virginia’s resting upon the support of two groups of adventurers, those in London who adventured their capital, and the planters in Virginia who adventured their lives and labor, both equally contributing to, and enjoying the honor of its success. The establishment of the [Virginia] assembly may have been partly due to an effort to build up the spirit of the planters by the feeling that like the adventurers at home they too enjoyed a voice in the government. [99] Wesley Frank Craven, the Dissolution of the Virginia Company, pp. 70-1.
Tobacco and the Magazine in the Greate Charter Instructions
Interestingly, instructions also specified actions regarding the controversial Magazine. P.50-1 link up with Magazine section below!!!
The rapid rise of tobacco and its export after 1616, and the amazing demand it found in England, placed the company “Magazine”, and its chief official, the Cape-Merchant, in the proverbial sweet spot. In theory—but from practice, the Magazine had a near-monopoly over the colony’s exports and import, it was Virginia’s only department store—with its Amazon like access to the settler household-housing-tools supplies/goods needs. The Magazine, a bastion it seems of the Smythe group, took an early lead in pressing for the export of the processed product, and its sale in England.
Its central position over the Virginia domestic economy could have been the chief counter for the spread of the tobacco monoculture–except for three “buts”:
(1) profits from its sale was about the only source of real income for the Company and its investors other than the lottery, but its exclusive planting incurred dangerous and unstable conditions caused by the confiscation of Indian lands-field, and reliance on Indians for its exchange of food stuffs and
(2) the dispersed nature of the tobacco diffusion into the Tidewater meant considerable autonomy for tobacco growers to cut their own deal with purchasers. With the increasing prominence of autonomous investor association-owned hundreds plantation-settlements, the Cape Merchant and the Magazine was increasingly seen as an intrusive and exploitive body, tainted by ineptitude and corruption in Virginia as well as England;
(3) With the entry of the Sandys alliance and a larger non-merchant adventurer shareholder base many shareholders, still interested in profits of course, wanted a more stable economic base than one based on tobacco. Staples-livestock-orchard production and local manufacturing and artisan entrepreneurship, not to mention mining and resources export from Indian trading all were potential opportunities for a truly robust permanent colony that could attract on its merits a more diversified settler population. Further, this line of thinking was often shared by those who held some contempt to the weed, and were reluctant to think that Virginia’s road to tobacco led to a colonization that produced little more than a “cloud of smoke” that promised on unstable pricing and as well as a “stink” upon the company’s reputation.
In short, if Virginia’s short term use of tobacco seemed ordained for the moment in London, there was little taste for its dominance over the Virginia economic base over the long term. Thus in 1618 the need and desire for a much more diversified economic base ingrained itself into the mainstream London investor. The discussion of permanent settlement matters in 1618 revolved around its sincere commitment to stress non tobacco priorities to develop and foster. As we saw in the first division of the instructions the solutions were in making land more accessible to landowners whose title was secure and predictable. The second priority was to diversify the planting and production of staples and to venture into non agricultural, certainly basic material extraction, and alongside improved relations with the Powhatan developing more trade, fur trading in particular with them.
The Reform of the Magazine—The final nail I want to pound in my answer to support my argument that the negative heritage of the Virginia Company profoundly bent the Virginia political and economic development twig while for better or worse laid the foundation from which Virginia evolved during the colonial period is the failure of the Virginia Company Magazine. The Magazine was the Virginia Company’s primary EDO (economic development organization); it should be the entity entrusted with the pivot being made in the economic development strategy in London during the discussion period—and to a degree it was.
In the currency discussion we saw how it was given the responsibility to turn tobacco into a currency for investors and for Virginia consumers—not to mention the revenue for its Virginia Company operations in Virginia. But now we move onto its core role in the management of both exports and imports. A creation of the Company’s merchant adventurer period, its structure and function rested on the flawed initial approach which insisted the Company enjoyed a monopoly over Virginia resources and production, and was responsible as the provider of residential consumption and tools-staples required for development and population sufficiency. The monopoly created a semi-socialist cooperative in Virginia that was carried over into the second military policy system.
After 1616, tobacco export on the horizon, and with the rise of independent investor-hundred plantations, the Magazine risked becoming a sort of fifth wheel. With the privatization of land ownership, the development of plantations outside the company jurisdiction, and the spread of private plantations along the James and Chesapeake coastline and river banks, the last bastion of the Magazine was resident Company officials’ Dale’s Gift plantations. While tasked with its success, the Magazine could not compel these officials to follow its lead, and as the Magazine leadership owned their own plantations, their willingness to dedicate the time and commitment to the Magazine instead of their own plantations increasingly became an issue in this period.
Always dogged by serious complaints on its mixture and availability of critical goods imported and prices for which it sold these goods, plus allegations of corruption in its decisions, and the natural push back from its being the only “game” in town, the Magazine did not enjoy any support from those that relied upon. Still the London shareholders had little else to rely upon in its pivot into a new permanent settlement strategy. Smythe started it off with some reforms and a new young Cape Merchant, Peirsey in 1616 [999], but his approach played off of the old approach, and tobacco became its victim, with tobacco purchase price in Virginia set artificially low, while sales in England went for higher prices after it was sold to custom farmers that were investors in the Company, and its top leaders (Smythe and Alderman Johnson) were beneficiaries. It was for Smythe, as we observed earlier, a way for him to recapture his investment in the Company, if not to make a profit as well—he was a trader by occupation after all.
[999] Peirsey, sent over in 1616 as Cape Merchant to oversee the Magazine reforms of that year, was thus made into the powerhouse broker in the colony. It is no accident that by 1624 he is cited as being the second wealthiest man in Virginia, second only to George Yeardley, at that time the former governor. https://www.jamestowne.org/blog/abraham-peirsey-burgess-from-peirseys-hundred-prince-george-county. Peirsey controlled the Magazine, Yeardley had to sign off on all land grants and headrights, Rolfe, the colony’s Secretary, was a major source of tobacco seeds, and the Company surveyor, after 1621 was William Claiborne. One can see how a company official had the inside track into the tobacco monoculture, and how the so-called “first advantage” that led to their dominance of the evolving Virginia elite materialized. With Virginian company leadership so profoundly tied to tobacco, and with so little oversight from London, the reader can see how a shift from tobacco had a hard time gaining traction.
Previously before this instruction, the colony under the first two policy systems had little practical need for the colony since they were employed by the company which possessed a monopoly of coin, credit and product produced—and by the fact that indentured servants were treated as “property” that enjoyed English civil liberties, a curious contradiction. Trade, with the Powhatan employed “copper”, sea shells made into jewelry, as well as corn. The Company Magazine had exclusive rights for trade and finance and with the introduction of tobacco products that product dominated trade with England. When London made tobacco an exchange medium, a commodity currency, it did so at the request of Virginia company officials who argued there was not coin nor metal avail in Virginia at the time. [99] Daniel Goldberg, Money, Credit and Banking in Virginia, 1585-1645 , Yale Department of Economics, 2015 [999]
The Magazine was a compromise creature of the merchant adventurer’s approach to Hakluyt’s approach to colonization, or permanent settlement. It sought stable and speedy profit from what was a long term venture that in the 1606 beginning was an aggregate of multiple individual expeditions, each expected to pay their own way and whatever dividends were incurred from the debt issued. It depended on the exceedingly rapid discovery of exports that could be profitably sold in England that would pay off that debt. It relied, more than it realized, on trade with the native tribes, and it confined itself more with the economics than with the politics and community entailed in a permanent settlement.
The Magazine was the internal instrument of the company that conveyed its monopoly over Virginia’s resources and the production and profits there were realized from it. By 1616 none of this was intact, and while not everybody knew what had to be done, everybody knew something had to be done. The shareholder conflict and debate of 1617-18 fashioned, forged and compromised the “quo vadis” of a future Virginia Company permanent settlement—and the Magazine did not fare well
Accordingly as London shareholder debate in 1617 and into 1618 forged its criticism into policy for a more effective permanent settlement in Virginia, the Magazine played an important element. London shareholders reached agreement on reform of the Magazine in its October 18th 1618 set of decisions. The Magazine’s right to trade was continued through its previously agreed term of operation, but from 1618, its profits were to capped at 25%, and the governor was to be provided with an invoice of all its sales.
While the monopoly of the Magazine, however conceptual it actually was in practice, was continued, exceptions were made for the investor-association-hundred’s production which was to be determined by the owners association itself. If they could find a better deal than the Magazine they could take it—also they handled much of their own imports. A second exemption was for items not accessible to the Magazine, buyers could make what deal they could with whomever they could. To the Magazine’s benefit, a final ruling was that otherwise a monopoly were retained by the Magazine.
The Magazine, however, had been made into a very leaky bucket indeed. The opportunity for smart Virginia shoppers to take advantage of the Magazine could not be resisted. As might be expected, the rich became richer, and the first advantage of resident company officials increased. In this way the Magazine, whatever the intentions of London investors, became part of the Virginian Company establishment. The best example of this is Cape Merchant Peirsey’s sale of his large and prosperous plantation to former governor Yeardley in 1624. With the sale went not only tobacco exports but indentured workforce.
Of little note since until 1618 or so Virginia had little to note to export, the rise of tobacco exports after that year elevated in importance a tax abatement that was included in the various King-issued charters. The first complete abatement of customs duties for the colony expired after seven years (1619) and a second abatement which applied only a 5% duty, which was a considerable benefit to Virginia exporters.
With so much dependent on tobacco in this period, we are on the threshold of rising opportunities that many many adventurers, including the king, began to take notice. For the reader’s benefit we look ahead a year or two just to set the stage for the grand arrival of king tobacco. The Company, thinking its so-called monopoly was being bypassed, contested the matter to the King and Privy Council. There followed a series of discussions, proposals, agreements, back aways from the agreements all of which (1) sharpened the attacks of the various Company factions on the others, and (2) discredited the Company in the eyes of many, including the King and Privy Council, especially as key elements of this discussion involved profiteering by the Sandys faction then in control of the Company.
With all these dynamics afoot in this very volatile period, it became more obvious the Magazine was not working well, had been captured by Virginians, no longer enjoyed anything approaching a monopoly, and in general could not get out of its own way. So Sandys in 1618 attempted to put it out of its misery. He proposed several initiatives more radical than those adopted. But here we see Smythe recognizing during early 1619 the rising power of Sandys, the ongoing escalating fight with his former ally Earl of Warwick (Rich) that his reelection in 1619 (April) was likely in jeopardy, decided not to contest the election, leaving the Treasurer position open to Sandys, but fighting hard—and largely successfully—to retain his CEO Treasurer position in the Somers Island Company, and his control over the board of directors of the Virginia Company Magazine. [999]
The Magazine had been interwoven with national politics as well as those associated with corporate succession precisely at the time when tobacco transformed into the opportunity of a decade. Perhaps, at this point, Sandys was thinking along the lines of putting the Magazine out of its misery, but as Smythe saw it, the Company Magazine, he believed could regain its former monopoly, not of the colony, but rather tobacco export-import. Smythe reorganized the Magazine to ensure in his absence as Treasurer, it would. Sandy’s efforts to recast it more radically or shut it down were frustrated by Smythe’s takeover over its board. Sandys, accordingly bypassed the Magazine and substituted his own.
So just before Smythe seemingly counted his votes and “retired” as Virginia Company Treasurer, but before he left the Virginia Company Treasurer position, Smythe created a new economic development entity to replace the existing Company trade bureau (the “magazine”) with a new one called “Adventurers of the Magazine”. Smythe’s long-time ally and deputy, Alderman Johnson was placed in charge. One can assume the motive was personal profit, and a backdoor way to continue to exert a major impact on the day to day affairs of the colony and Company. [999]
[999] The method, however, by which Virginia acquired its “monopoly” was that Spanish tobacco was not “banned”, but laden with a very high tariff. That high tariff, however, did not end English consumption of Spanish tobacco; it was of higher quality and “tasted better” than an improved post-1619 Virginian product. Many English simply paid up and smoked Spanish. The Spanish competition was compounded by an excess of Spanish product imported into England, which had the effect of reducing the price of Spanish tobacco and increasing its English sales.[999]
This meant that whatever Sandys did, there was some check to Sandys’s impact within the Virginia Company. Not congruent with Sandys approach and policy the Magazine became an early battlefield in the final throes of the Virginia Company. Predictably, Sandys never cooperated with the new entity and it fell into bankruptcy by 1621 [99] See Andrews, Vol.1, p. 127]. Sandys, however, would fall victim to his own approach to the tobacco opportunity-but that is a tale to be told later in the next module. In the meantime, for a year of so, Smythe had moved his corner office to the Bermuda Somers Company. From their competing corner offices the fight got worse each passing day. Over the next couple of years the two competed and each became the vehicle for separate visions of how tobacco could be recast into a company monopoly.
Bypassing the Magazine, I might add, counter-intuitively affected, i.e. reinforced, the spread of tobacco and strengthened the role of the plantation elite in marketing that product. Why? The inability of the Magazine to manage the tobacco export trade left the matter in the hands of the plantation owner. At the least, the export of tobacco increased owner autonomy, and transformed him into the only effective intermediary for the export of tobacco raised by renters and small homesteads in his isolated hundred. In that this dynamic was evident at the birth of the tobacco monoculture, it will not be surprising it was built into the the plantation enterprise and tobacco business model. In this respect the reader can see how these several dynamics we discuss in this section flow and interweave in ways one could not imagine.
These discussions rattled around through 1622, and deep into 1623. They are included here to alert the reader that it was these discussion that caused the final breakdown between the Company, its various factions, and the King-Privy Council. Investigations were ordered pertaining to internal records and actions of various of the Company leadership, the end result was the King order revoking the Charter of the Virginia Company and all its subsidiaries. But before we go we have one more interesting tale to tell: the 1619 Company Coup
Ron W. Coan 