I admire succinct, mostly because my writing is anything but. In his review of Oswyn Murray’s, the Muse of History, Robert D. Kaplan succinctly describes my problem in opening discussion of the Virginia Company civil war. ‘Myth of the past is necessary to justify contemporary preoccupations’. … In an age of media and sensatory-enhancing technologies that obliterate the past, with all of its lessons, we sometimes no longer seem to be part of a human continuum of the living and the dead, taking sustenance from the trials and tribulations of those who have gone before us”. [99] Robert D. Kaplan, Why we are all Athenians”, WSJ, Sept 28-9, 2004, p. C7
My problem is how do I demonstrate contemporary relevance to a obscure early 17th century joint stock corporation that underwent a fatal disruption almost four hundred years ago. The metaphor employed in this history is simple, thank God; Bend the twig of a young sapling and its growth will follow the bend—at least for a while, until it is bent again.
Somehow, the broken-at-birth joint stock corporation that was the Virginia Company survived its first twelve years. It barely survived and did not prosper. But in its twelfth year it made a last ditch effort to overcome its stagnation, but did so at a cost of triggering what would prove to be a five year civil war that resulted in the loss of its Virginia charter.
Succinctly, that loss, the termination of its governance of Virginia, finally bent the Virginia twig of political development in a direction that allowed the colony to survive the “administrative death” of its founder, and persist to the present day.
Let’s not talk about what followed in this module. Let’s put that off for another day.
My task is to present sufficient evidence to the reader they understand my position that the failure of the Virginia Company was the precondition for a new start by something else. That something else would pick up the residue lying around and use it to survive, and persist. In its own way, that something else would rise to the challenge and accomplish, at least in part, what the Company could not. This module then simply describes the collapse of the Virginia Company in the location of the collapse: London England.
There’s got to be some irony that what caused the Company’s civil war, was the macro dynamics of what caused the English civil war a generation later. While accurate to a some degree, the interplay of personalities was also compelling. Only one of the major players in this story will live to have a role in the English civil war (Second Earl of Warwick). That suggests we are dealing with the collapse caused by the generation that dominated the transition from Tudor to Stuart, a generation that was not ready for prime time colonization.
But let’s give credit to those macro dynamics that wreaked havoc on the consensus that underlie the public-private partnership between the Crown, the English foreign commercial trade sector, and the Parliament that wanted in on the colonization fun and profits. Perhaps it would have been better to have simply waited until the English civil war was over and then begin this colonization thing. But time wounds all heels, and there were heels aplenty in our cast of characters. But let’s not make “myths” of any of them. In the next module, we will start creating our own “myth” as to how Virginia was truly “founded” as a successful colony.
There is also some irony that a minor player, Thomas Hobbes, will live on to complete the first volume of American and English future political development: the Leviathan, and one wonders to what extent, the Company’s demise “bent his literary twig” to produce it. But in any event the contract that James I signed in 1606, empowering the Virginia Company to begin colonization in North America, was taken away by him in 1624—with just cause. By then the four wheels of the company car had come off, leaving the chassis three thousand miles away.
My guru in this story, actually there are several, but the one on whose shoulder I stand on yet again is Wesley Frank Craven. Why reinvent his wheel, let’s work to supplement it and make it stronger. Talk about succinct, his opening paragraph sets the stage:
The story of the London Company would be comparatively simple were it limited merely to a study of the failure of Sandys’ economic program. But although considerations of an economic character are fundamental in the interpretation of these famous disputes, it is also necessary to consider all sorts of personal dislikes, jealousies, and rivalries which arose from various causes to irritate the proceedings of the company. There are numerous instances in which the opposition to Sandys was motivated not so much by disagreement with his policies and sincere alarm at the state of the colony as by the simple fact that Smith and Warwick disliked Sandys and were anxious to satisfy some [not so] longstanding grudge. At the same time a bitter of feeling of personal injury was developed in Sandys and must be given due considerations in the explanation of many of his actions. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.105
I think Craven, like most American historians, is too soft on Sandys. His plan for permanent settlement was like a “candle blowing in the wind”. I don’t think he is sufficiently sensitive to the structural failings of the regulated joint stock corporation, failings that led James to pull the plug on the regulated joint stock corporation. Indeed, as we shall see he was not above manipulating the Company’s shareholders. His grandiose hatred of the Tudor heritage of merchant adventurers, obscured a different vision of colonization, populated by new players of a new generation that was actually on stage during the Greate Charter’s aborted initiation. Left largely unmonitored and unaccounted for, they took advantage of the position and access to resources and established what was to become the core of Virginia’s First Migration elite.
That cast of characters used his resources when useful, but had their own plans in mind—and the determination to keep them alive through thick and thin, for good and bad, and never in good health, to lay the foundations of colonial Virginia. To be sure this cast of characters share more with Ralph than Piggy or Jack, their dilemma of being Lords of the Flies in a lost island will be replicated in 1620’s Virginia. For both better and worse they were Virginia’s First Migration.
Like a Snowball Rolling Down a Steep Hill, the Audit Keeps on Going
At least three observations could be made regarding the aftermath of the April-May Annual Quarterly Courts: First Smythe was out, but not down in the Virginia Company, and he was up in the Bermuda Company. So while Sandys was up in the Virginia Company it was not completely his to govern uncounted. Craven reports that the agent of the Pilgrims who was then in negotiation with the Company was unable to advance his negotiations amid the fractured atmosphere of the Company.
His observation was that Smythe felt “he had lost part of his honor”, and in return mobilized his faction to cause Sandys trouble whenever he could. This had to result in noisy council sessions, obstruction in the Magazine, and manipulations in the Privy Council where Smythe had allies besides James. On top of this, of course, the Bermuda Company went on its own way independent of Sandys [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 105-6
Second, there was no mistake that Sandys had aroused Smythe, his deputy Johnson and a not inconsiderable faction of which James I was a member. Generally, not well reported in American comments, Sandys victory mobilized his enemies in the Privy Council, particularly Sir Julius Caesar (no relation to the Roman superhero) who detested Sandys for his own reasons and rivalries, and that body without prodding by James swiveled into positions contesting Sandys. In 1619-20, the reader should understand the Privy Council was the Company’s ‘regulator” as well as the king’s instrument in trade and foreign affairs. Its oversight responsibilities over the Company were to consume much time and effort over the next year as we shall also see.
Thirdly, Sandys’s alliance with Warwick was unstable, and based on little other than Warwick’s convenience. In this period young Warwick had his own pursuits—among which he was very active in the “other” “northern” subsidiary company within the Virginia Company, plus his favorite, privateering in several forms—Warwick, with many balls in the air, played both sides of the Smythe-Sandys fight. A more astute compromiser than Sandys could have played him along, but as we shall see, astute compromiser was not an attribute Sandys held. Improperly handled, Warwick was a powerful and able potential enemy.
Accordingly, while Sandys focused on his implementation of the Greate Charter instructions, he also had to deal with London-based issues and initiatives. Craven wastes no time in reporting that foremost of these London initiatives was to bring the audit to a successful close. Craven senses at the onset of his taking over, Sandys had hopes of getting some money out of Smythe from the audits—money which the Company needed to finance the Greate Charter program. As early as May 12, 1619 Smythe counterattacked and demanded-requested that his position on the audit committee be strengthen by adding three of his friends; Sandys acceded but secured the concession that a quorum required the attendance of his faction members on the committee.
With the audit committee so enlarged it was not likely to be efficient or speedy about completing the final report to which it had been entrusted. Smythe’s allies pressed that an earlier report of the audit committee on the “olde” accounts of the pre 1616 period be accepted and the future activities of the committee be concentrated on the post 1616 period. Smythe also pressed for the location of the committees meeting be held at his house, in view of “his extraordinary business and disability in body”. He also restated his willingness to pay such damages as the olde committee report could require. Smythe won the vote in this effort in that committee meeting, but within days a subcommittee
Smythe backtracked by allowing the review of the olde period to be continued, but the subcommittee took the position that Smythe’s house was out of the question because it “would be very inconvenient for Sandys who was by his experience of much more value in the work [audit] than Smith”. After much discussion, Smythe gave way on this point also. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 107-8. Still as the summer of 1619 rolled on, the audit committee was unable to make progress on the matter. The inability of the audit committee to reach conclusions carried over to the quarterly courts and committees. Craven reports by the fall “the feeling [polarization] within the company reached a greater height than at any time preceding 1623”, and Sandys himself “was forced to recognize that the “matters of Accounts” were the first cause of the “distractions of the Company by partialities and factions”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 108-9.
Sandys himself, along with Danvers, restructured the work task and organized it to achieve more efficient results. The effort proved frustratingly unrewarding—“he and Danvers who were charged with auditing the records … found it a ‘most intricate and difficult piece of work’ because there was “disagreement of the books themselves” … the committee [reviewing] the lotteries reported simply they had been able to find no books”, and a year later the committee was still pressing Smythe for his own records on lotteries. A third committee “could find no record of any goods brought from Virginia, and a request for an explanation was forwarded to Smythe.
On the final matter of Smythe’s accounts, “the committee was at a loss because they could find neither warrants [bills] nor any other records of disbursement of money [payments]. In short, the committees examination of these records and accounts over a year later were unable to make any sort of an acceptable report—nevermind a determination of how much Smythe owed anybody on anything. Sandys himself returned to the audit himself during 1621 and 1622, to no avail—and by the end of 1623, when the King placed a panel to manage the Company in 1623 no report or determination had ever been made. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 108-10
I could also chip in by observing the matter actually dragged on much longer, from November 1616 through to the stripping of the Virginia charter on May 24th, 1624-roughly seven and one-half years. Amazingly, in mid-1624 Sandys finally settled on a number [L800 pounds], but by that time he had lost the ability to commence a collection. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 112. In several instances Craven asserts the drag out and continuous whining about Sandys, not only infuriated Smythe and his followers, but at least on one occasion frustrated a close Sandys follower, Sackville [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 111.
Craven also follows through on the audit of the Magazine. Without going into detail, that audit yielded more insights and useful findings. As early as 1617 specific claims were made of Johnson, the administrator of the Magazine which involved the conversion of company funds into use by the Magazine and from which profit had been forthcoming. Yet even then the matter dragged on, without resolution. The dispute fed into the larger issue of dissolving the Magazine, and a later issue of starting a new one.
A core problem in the Magazine audit was that two sets of books had been kept, by the cape merchant in Virginia which recorded figures on which he bought tobacco, and the London officials who recorded the value of tobacco on what it was sold for in England—almost always lower than Virginia’s. Thus the audit of the Magazine, even thought the accounts were kept much better and more complete, defied reconciliation, and prolonging the audit only produced division and polarization without any real prospects of yielding a number which could be collected upon. Thus the Magazine became yet another battlefront of the audit fight.
None of this would escape the ears of the king or his advisors, and it should be little surprise that by 1624, the former concluded the company had for all practical purposes imploded on itself, and was no suited to continue the administration of the colony. When we later relate events and discussion during 1623-4, the reader might keep in mind the stored frustrations and bad feelings on the audit.
Lastly, I would focus on the how the Virginia Company was in its essence an experiment—indeed the first experiment in its colonization of North America, and how the audit episode reveals how embryonic the English joint stock corporation was to be tasked with this signature national venture. Joint stock corporations had been around since early Tudor foreign adventures.
They had evolved to produce after the 1604 Addled Parliament something called the “regulated” joint stock corporation, which was intended to break the merchant adventurer monopoly over their management and the ability to profit from matters foreign. They did so be allowing any who could pay the price to invest in a share, and be able to involve themselves in the governance of the corporation. The Virginia Company was the first example of this regulated joint stock company, and by 1616, it had at least one thousand known shareholders.
Yet is very unclear to what extent these shareholders attempted or did influence company policy-making previous to 1617-8. Americans constantly have bemoaned its “greedy shareholders” and attributed to them the press that resulted in bad decisions, and immoral activities, yet, the Virginia Company seems to have been plagued by just the opposite: shareholders who did not get involved, did not demand any serious verification of what was going on, did not see or use any published financial records that held company officials accountable, and then only came to life in 1617 and after mobilized by their Deputy Treasurer.
Sandys, an official of the company since 1609 charter, apparently did not raise the issue regarding financial affairs or a misused Magazine for seven years before he launched his shareholder activism. Smythe’s “olde accounts” originated from that period, and it can only be explained that no one in the company, even Sandys an Assistant or Deputy Treasurer, never mind its shareholders, was aware there were no books, and that such accounts as existed were so incoherent as to be un auditable. How did this escape the annual Quarterly Meetings of the shareholders? Where is the Privy Council in all this?
Dare I say it? Where was his royal majesty? Where was Sandy’s Parliament? Here we see the obvious: England was not yet sufficiently mature to launch their colonization effort. It had not yet evolved the underlying culture and institutional capacity, so necessary to lead, monitor, and hold accountable. The new regulated joint stock corporation, as vehicle or instrument to found a colony, lacked a macro and micro policy-making process, any pretense to transparency, and an organizational culture sufficient to the task.
Indeed, the Company’s first expeditions of 1606 an 1607 lacked a map as to where they were going—and had little idea as to whether they got there when they pitched their first camp that was to be colony. Is this a working definition for “premature”. What was it that our colony was to “inherit” from this? It was to inherit an England feeling its way, and responding to events in its larger environment as well as its colony, evolving experience as it fumbled along.
These questions will be even more relevant when we later discuss the Company’s administration of the royal lottery. If Smythe was so busy with so many assignments, offices, and responsibilities, the only thing all the parties associated with the audit could agree on, the question must be asked as to who was actually running this company? In this context, simple criticism of his management style does not get to the heart of the matter. Not only do we need to recognize that shareholder responsibility for company governance was not instinctive to English shareholders until a decade or so into the colonization mission, but one wonders the extent to which, beyond few officials mobilized from time to time on company actions, gave any coherence to the company on a day-to-day level? I would answer this last question by suggesting what coherence the company had was to be found in Virginia, three thousand miles away.
Craven concludes that Sandys ”would have served both the company and himself better had he accepted the fact the books were incomplete, and fixed upon some approximate sum by which he could have bargained with Smith”; he adds “the dragging out of so sore a question over a period of four years, added immeasurably to the feeling which divided the adventurers [shareholders]. The auditors … merely complained of the inaccuracy and confusion of Smith’s books or charged that some accounts either had not been kept or were being withheld … [and Sandys] was never able to arrive at a sum for [Smythe’s] indebtedness .. Smythe greatest offense was probably carelessness, and a tendency, because of his many interests and duties, to rely too much on his lieutenants, even Sandys himself recognized that Smith “neither kept the Accounts, nor made them … further then of neglect and that through multitude of business”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 110
Such division and bad feelings had to poison discussion of other matters, and, at minimum, leave less time for discussion pertaining to Virginia. In support of my thesis that the London Company was unable to focus efficiently or effectively upon its on site (Virginia) difficulties, thereby leaving the latter to chronic unaccountability, or more positively to working out solutions to problems, or responding to feedback from the colony. That this went on for years leaves one with what to me is an inescapable conclusion: that the audit and mal-administration was a higher priority in London than effective colonial management.
That, I would add, is my concluding addendum to Craven’s: that the audit and its non resolution was an open sore in shareholder relations that not simply inhibited compromise, but actually intensified emotions and division as time when on. The direct parties consumed way to much time, for far too long, arguing, even in the streets when they chanced to meet, or at social occasions, never mind at shareholder meetings. It is hard to imagine that four hundred years later so many paragraphs and pages on the Virginia Company are devoted to this issue, but simply put the issue consumed a disproportionate amount of shareholder and company official’s time, emotion, and focus that it would be a grievous omission in the story of Virginia development and the Company heritage on it.
It is amazing our myths on which we base our understanding of the early Virginia colony have failed to take into account sufficiently the heritage that a failed corporation would leave behind. It is amazing that they would seize upon the Greate Charter and think this was a first step to American democracy?
Because Sandys was in charge doesn’t mean he was in charge.
If American historians leave out the noise from London, the rivalries and internal divisions that were evident after the April-May 1619 change in leadership, the American reader could easily assume that Sandys was in charge of the Company after April, 1619. He was—and he wasn’t. As important it would be wrong, I believe, to conclude that noise and division did not reach across the Atlantic and permeate the upper crust of the Company’s provincial leadership. But matters always remained considerably worse in London as Sandys, and his deputies the Ferrar’s (John and Nicolas) were faced with contentious board of director (quarterly court) meetings, the record of which was not faithfully reflected in the minutes—thus intensifying debate in the following meetings.
Feeling between Virginia and Somers Island companies had become so embittered that hearty cooperation was impossible. Neither side was satisfied to let past disputes rest. … the supporters of [Sandys] showed themselves intolerant to the minority. One by one the more prominent members of the opposition were silenced. Canning, a former deputy governor of the Somers Company had been censured as ‘a great disturber of the peace’ … while Woodard who was said to have characterized an official publication of the Company as ‘libel’ was both censured and suspended from attending the courts for three months. A dispute initiated at the instance of Sir Thomas Worth raised a question so fundamental in so far as he challenged the accuracy of the minutes of the court as giving a fair representation of the general tenor of the proceedings. A careful inspection of the copy extant [of the meeting] shows that in the report of the meetings, the speeches of the members of Sandys party are recorded at considerable length, while those of the opposition are dealt with in summary manner. …. [Worth’s question] admitted that Sandys, but chiefly the two Ferrars—John and Nicholas junior—subjected the draft minutes to a considerable amount of editing … It is thus clear that the reliability of the court books is subject to no little suspicion. [99] Scott, Constitution, pp. 273-4
Perhaps not well known today, but the division within the Virginia Company exerted a serious effect on the efforts of the Separatist Puritans to obtain a charter for a settlement in geographies under the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company. Discussions had started as early as 1617 on the matter, and Sandys in particular (probably because of his own innate views, but also because his brother, Samuel who was the lessor of the manor house and mill ‘where for many years the father of William Brewster Jr., had been receiver and bailiff, ordinary keeper and government dispatch agent’ . He and John Wolstenholme (Smythe’s representative) worked within the Virginia Company to forge a consensus for the project, including approval by the Privy Council.
But “Owning to the fact that the progress of affairs was delayed by the dissentions within the company in 1619 … the business of obtaining a patent for the private plantation, could not be perfected, the negotiations dragged on and many messengers passed to and fro between Lyden and London, … in the spring of that year must have watched with dismay the dislodgement of Smythe and the elevation of Sandys and have wondered when the turmoil would sufficiently abate for favorable action to be taken … brought great discouragement to the expectant people in Lyden [the Pilgrims]. … The election of Sandys to the Treasurership [however] brought temporarily at least peace to the Virginia Company [and] the petition for a patent was renewed in “May, but not until June 19th (1619) was the company’s seal finally attached to the patent for a particular plantation such as the Separatists hoped to establish in Virginia [99] Charles M.
Andrews, the Colonial Period in American History (the Coming of the Puritans), pp. 257ff
As a final example of just who was in charge of what after the April-May coup, I call attention to the very divided loyalties of the resident Company leadership in post coup Virginia. In this example the role of the Earl of Warwick enters our story as a very independent actor in intra-Virginia Company office politics. Warwick, I remind the reader, had sent a ship to warn Argall, Warwick’s ally and probably agent, and carry him off before new Governor Yeardley arrived with orders to send Argall packing to London. Warwick had supported Argall as governor of Virginia. Argall (who was Smythe relative) and young Warwick were joint owners of Argall’s ship, the Treasurer), and Smythe’s break with Argall in 1618 generated “much heat” between him and Warwick. Nevertheless Smythe led the London opposition to Argall, an opposition in which Sandys played a major part.
It appears that John Pory’s (Sandys new Secretary of the Colony) who traveled with Yeardley to Virginia on Argall’s ship ostensibly to secure rapid and effective implementation of the Greate Charter instruction, was also retained privately by Warwick to, in the words of Craven, “look after his interests … and keep him informed”. In the cabin next to his, Yeardley, the new governor, had instructions from Sandys to keep an eye on the Warwick-Argall jointly owned ship, the Treasurer which was suspected of illegal privateering, if not outright piracy, both against the king’s wishes and Privy Council regulation. Also of note was that Yeardley’s relations with the discredited former governor Argall, are also ridden with complexity, as evident by Yeardley’s naming of his first son, Argall, born Aug 31st, 1618. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 122 Finally, John Rolfe, of tobacco fame, provided substantial support to Argall, and some discredit to those who criticized him. At that point, Rolfe was Secretary of the Colony. Argall was hated in London, but less so in Virginia.
Warwick sent several letters to Argall previously, letters which alleged certain matters (unknown) about Yeardley; and Yeardley upon his arrival in Virginia acquired them. He also found letters from Porys to Warwick that compromised his relationship with Yeardley and Sandys. Probably still reeling and still upset with Smythe’s knighthood comments, Yeardley no doubt to endear himself with his new master, Sandys, sent the whole caboodle to him.
Porys was the immediate loser in that exchange, and that no doubt placed him and Yeardley in the “no love lost” category. Sandys replaced Porys upon expiration of his term of office. Pory’s effort to keep his position viable resulted in several subsequent letters which exposed the rather fragile and tension-filled relations between the upper crust of Sandys Virginia-based company leadership during the Greate Charter period. London’s internal conflicts replicated themselves in Jamestown impairing the cohesion of the Company provincial leadership during the critical Greate Charter implementation effort of 1620-21.
Rupture of the Sandys-Warwick “Relationship”
Whether or not it was part of the election coup deal, Warwick, Nathaniel Rich (his principal agent), and Nathaniel Butler (Governor of Bermuda) became members of the Virginia Company’s Council of Shareholders (Court and Quarterly Court). Whether or not the Marriage of John Smith affair carried over rather complex and not too subtle overtones to the Rich family, the Second Earl and Smythe were never friends or mutual allies, at least in 1619-20, but yet Warwick worked with Governor Smythe and his Deputy Johnson in both the Somers Island and Virginia Company Magazines. As the months went by, the behavior of Warwick suggests to me at least as being that of an independent actor, taking positions as befitting attainment of advantage to him and thus not particularly a member of Smythe or Sandys faction.
It would seem the nature of the man as drawn from hindsight substantiates Craven’s view that Warwick’s alignment with Sandys in April-May 1619 was not a permanent alliance. If it were to be carried into the future, that alliance would require Sandys to make effort to keep it intact. As Craven also observes, that was not likely given Sandys’ rather focused and rigid pattern of decision-making. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 120-22. Charles M. Andrews describes Warwick in reference to his seeming alliance with Sandys
But the alliance between the two men, even under favorable circumstances could hardly have been permanent. Warwick was of the gentry-merchant class {merchant adventurers], a frequent participator in many commercial enterprises and an adventurer in the world of affairs. He was the largest stockholder in the Bermuda Company, and a heavy investor in the shares of other companies and many private undertakings. He was by instinct dominant, cool and aggressive. It is impossible to think of him as the tool of any man, least of all King James, with whose absolutist ideas and divine right doctrines he had no sympathy, as his later career shows. He was hard-headed and a shrewd business man, practical and scheming, possessed of generous impulses, and always ready to help … but thirty-six years of age.
Sandys, on the other hand, was sixty-two years old, high-spirited, something of a visionary, a tolerationist, and a liberal by temperament. When convinced of the rightness of his course, he could become intolerant and obstinate, and persistent in seeking his ends. He was not a good business man; nor were Nicholas and John Ferrar, his chief allies, as wise as they should have been; and while Warwick was often ruthless and a believer in strong measures, Sandys for the purpose of maintaining his control was willing to resort to devices that savor of political practices. Both he and Southampton seem at times to have manipulated votes in order to gain their point. He was charged by his opponents with suppressing information, and concealing the truth about the condition of the companies and the plantations, though the charge is not well sustained. [99] Charles M. Andrews, the Colonial Period in American History (the Coming of the Puritans), pp. 166-7
Craven, on the whole, would agree with Andrews’ description of Sandys, but would add a very important aspect to the description of young Warwick. To Craven “the second Earl of Warwick … continued throughout a long life [as] the greatest privateer in England. To him the spoiling of Spanish commerce was a legitimate, honorable, and patriotic part of his large commercial interests. He considered the use of colonies as a base for such activities a reasonable privilege belonging to one who had invested heavily in their establishment and partly for this reason he regarded the more southern colonies as of the greatest value. He attempted to divert the Puritan migration to the Caribbean area and he led in the work of the Providence Island Company, its settlement off the Mosquito Coast becoming in the 1630’s the most famous pirates’ base in the West Indies” [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.126.
While popular among many English elite or common citizen, privateering was very much against the ethics and practices of others—as we described in an earlier module. Smythe had already fought with the elder Warwick in 1617 over privateering in Indian waters, with two ships (one owned by the younger Warwick) attacking an Indian ship owned by the mother of the Grand Moghul. That episode set the tone for Warwick who was also at odds with Smythe on the latter’s’ support of a hated governor of Bermuda. Smythe’s termination of Argall as Virginia governor was yet another straw in their conflict-ridden relationship.
Drawing upon previous discussions of the Argall administration and the recall of Argall by Smythe, Sandys and the Virginia Company [shareholder] council, the topic should be brought to an appropriate conclusion. Smythe had indisputably recalled his former protégé, and relative, who had by 1619 been drawn very clearly into Warwick’s corner. Whatever validity the charges and reports from Virginia had—and there were even at that time two sides to the Argall story—Argall was not to be replaced until late spring of 1619, when Yeardley arrived in Virginia on April 18th, he discovered Argall had left on a ship owned by Lord Warwick on April 9 (1619), transferring his authority in the interim to Nathaniel Powell. https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/argall-samuel-bap-1580-1626/
As to Smythe’s charges against Argall in the limbo awaiting for Argall’s relief from governorship and transfer back to Virginia (the last not happening due to Warwick’s intercession (see [999] below) until his relief by Yeardley in April 1619 the charges lay in waiting. With Smythe being replaced by Sandys in April 1619, the latter made active the charges and proceeded to institute an investigation on Argall. As we would expect, Sandys met the active opposition of Warwick to the investigation, and Warwick vigorously defended Argall at shareholder meetings.
Reversing his previous position, Smythe also lent support to Argall. “The [shareholder] council became thus so equally divided that it was impossible to arrive at any decision. On June 26, 1620 (the same quarterly council meeting that elected Southampton to replace Sandys-see below] Nathaniel Rich presented in Argall’s name a petition signed by several [council shareholders] in which [Argall] agreed to submit to a trial before a committee of the council selected by himself [Craven argues this was because Argall did not think he could get a “fair trail” from a committee selected by the Sandys’s faction]. But Sandys, although recognizing he would procure ‘a good deal of ill will and malice’ in so doing, strenuously objected and carried the court [shareholder council] with him. With the failure of this effort the council refused to make any further attempt at an agreement on Argall’s trial, reporting to the court two days later that the question had become such an intolerable bother that they would be troubled with it no more” [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 122-3
The new governor was not willing to let Argall slide, and he formally proposed a new committee to continue the investigation-trial on regarding the Argall charges, which he believed would bring to an end the matters that had consumed the council from the past [implying the audit of accounts] and caused friction and factional fights. Yeardley divided the committee assignment into three parts, to be investigated by a separate committee—with reports to be made at the next quarter court, and a final judgement reached at that court session. But no committee would produce any report or judgement and so by the quarter court of July 1622—three years later—nothing had been done. At that time Sandys again brought up the matter and urged the committees to report “with all expedition and diligence ”but no reports were forthcoming. [99] [Craven, Dissolution, pp. 123-4.
Argall himself, by this time had received several important promotions and assignment, and in 1622 been knighted by the king, and he pursued his career as an adventurer and privateer, physically leaving England to do so. He died in service to his king at sea in 1626.
Craven concludes this matter with an observation that will be repeated in essence with regard to Sandy’s style of leadership and shareholder relations in the future, and which is material to his view of why the Virginia Company was eventually dissolved:
A noticeable point in all these disputes is the peculiar helplessness and impotency of the company. So much of the time the machinery of the company [we call it capacity] as may be seen in the refusal of the [shareholder] council to make any further attempt at the settlement of the charges against Argall was paralyzed by factional distrust and strife. Neither side had any confidence in the good faith of the other. Both [factions] were willing to put themselves to trial by their friends, but apparently had no hope of fair dealing in the hands of any other. The lack of cooperation from Smythe, Johnson and Argall, so often interpreted as a sidestepping of justice, may have been just as well a fear of entrusting their reputations and records to rivals whom they believed not so much disposed to do them justice as to vindicate charges of crookedness which they [their opponents] had already noised [leaked] abroad. Perhaps if Sandys could have approached these problems in the first without the air of one seeking to confirm some foul suspicion, he might have secured a more hearty cooperation, and a quick conclusion of these unpleasant questions. But his first step was unwise, though it might have been just, and in the turmoil of recrimination and abuse which followed, any real cooperation became an impossibility. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 1214
I conclude with this matter by observing how quickly, by June 1620, the Virginia Company shareholder council had disintegrated into paralysis, fragmentation, outright hostility and distrust, which made decision-making fragile at best, and often unlikely as paralysis was already evident and impactful. [999]
The original charges against Argall had initially been assembled by Smythe and sent with the then-current governor of Virginia Thomas West, Delaware (May, 1618). De La Warr (his wife being Cicely as in the Shirley Hundred) traveled over to Virginia to replace Argall and send him to London for review of charges. West died en route, before the Neptune met en route the ship Treasurer, owned by Argall and Warwick, and captained by Elfrith. Boarding the Neptune, Elfrith transferred De la Warr’s body to be buried in England, and his property for transfer to his wife. Governor Argall got involved with the property, and with the transfer of at least forty-two indentured servants West had brought with him. This exchange, and the disposition of said property, resulted in a London, Privy Council investigation in 1621-1622.
It appears a number of the servants were acquired (somehow?) by Argall and either or both, transferred to assignments in Virginia under Argall’s disposition, or sent on the Treasurer to serve on future expeditions. In my opinion, to be developed in a future module, one of these indentured servants, a “Mathewes”, an indentured servant of [Alderman] Johnson, Sheriff of London was selected by Argall to work for him, made Captain, entrusted with several servants, may have served for awhile on the Treasurer, but then was tasked for several assignments in Virginia directly working with Argall, and living with him in the same dwelling. Mathewes was later deposed by the Privy Council to testify in London, which he did in 1622. Mathewes, in my research, is the future Virginia political leader, Samuel Mathews.[See Peter Wilson Coldham, the Voyage of the Neptune to Virginia, 1618-1619 and the Disposition of its Cargo (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 87, No. 1, Jan, 1979), see p. 43, and Mathews, p. 50. In a later module I will more fully develop my position on Samuel Mathews. [999]
It was the residue of the last conflict that we can start our tale of the breakup of the Sandys-Warwick alliance, and the fabrication of a new alliance, with, of all people, Smythe. In that the foundation of the alliance that resulted in the April-May coup, was, in Craven’s words, “their mutual dislike of Smythe”, we are going to see the application of the old dictum, an enemy of my enemy is my friend, we are going to see an alliance come together over two years that will in essence bring an end to the Virginia Company’s governance of Virginia.
The Good Ship Treasurer: the Elfrith Affair
The story has many moving parts, a host of intruding drivers, dynamics and policies, but it will start with the Second Earl’s career as a privateer-pirate. The reaction to a single privateering-piracy episode unleashed a nest of entangling personal alliances that disrupted the internal stability, fragmented shareholder factions, and consumed what little organization capacity the near bankrupt Virginia Company possessed after 1619 until its end in 1624.
The episode was not out of the blue, the privateering proclivities of the Riches beset the Company in 1617, when as earlier described, Smythe, wearing his East India hat, entered into a heated and very extended conflict (not resolved legally until 1628) on the Riches piracy of an Indian ship, owned by the Grand Moghuls mother, a seizure that threatened the East India Company’s budding trade relationship. It was far from a “secret” to anybody even the King that privateering was central to the Rich business model, and Warwick interest in the Somers figured heavily in an intensified plying of that trade.
While [the Second Earl] had been content initially with the management of Sandys and the Ferrars, [after the coup] problems arose with Warwick’s enthusiasm for piracy … In the Western Hemisphere, the Earl invested in the Somers Island Company … that island’s location made it an ideal base for Daniel Elfrith and other skippers affiliated with Warwick tht they used in their attacks against the Spanish; these privateers also called at [i.e. used] Virginia. Prior to 1623, however, this sort of activity ran afoul of the peace policy of James I. It therefore exposed the charters of colonies that harbored pirates to the threat of annulment for violating their corporate privileges. [99] L. H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge University Press, 2017, p. 27
The start of the Thirty Years War in 1618 moreover exposed Spain’s vulnerable position in the West Indies and Caribbean and generated schemes and preparations for English (including Rich) privateers to take advantage of opportunities. The tale of Rich and his co-owned ship the Treasurer, therefore was no surprise to Sandys or alert shareholders, quite the opposite, and Sandys had instructed Yeardley to report the activities of the ship to him previous to his January 1619 voyage to assume governorship and replace Rich’s protégé and ship co-owner, Governor Argall.
While Argall was governor, his ship Treasurer, co-owned with Warwick, under the command of Captain Daniel Elfrith was sent to the West Indies (April, 1618) by Rich with papers issued by Duke of Savoy, to privateer upon Spanish commerce (illegal in England this was common in Rich’s practice of privateering, using a foreign ruler to dodge to bypass James I prohibitions). Elfrith and the Treasurer headed for Virginia and Bermuda for refitting and supplies (provided by Governor Argall), and moved on to the West Indies, joined up in an ad hoc venture with a Dutch man-of-war, and committed several seizures of Spanish and Portuguese shipping, relieving them of the cargo, which included African slaves.
Supplies exhausted, battered from their attacks, both headed for Virginia, got separated in a storm, and separately arrived in August 1619. The Dutch man of war was the ship that landed and exchanged slaves (to Yeardley and the cape merchant, and maybe Rolfe) for Company provisions, which is the basis for the “1619” affair that introduced slavery into Virginia [p. 131].; the Treasurer arrived a few days later, and that was to trigger the series of interchanges that lead to the great disruption between Warwick and Sandys, and subsequently to Warwick breaking whatever alliance he had with Sandys, and allying with Smythe in what turned out to be a four year civil war that culminated in the King suspending the Virginia Company charter for Virginia. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 127-8
Yeardley as his instructions stated sent word to Sandys regarding their activities as he understood them, including “constant rumors, not without many apparent probabilities that this Ship had gone to rob the King of Spain’s Subjects by seeking Pillage in the West Indies and that this was done by direction from my Lord of Warwick.”[99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 129. Also, Yeardley complied with an instruction from Sandys, delivered earlier, June 19th [previous to the incident in August], to seize the Treasurer if it manifested itself in Virginia, and, again, to inform the company. Yeardley attempted to seize the ship, but somehow, Elfrith got away and sailed for Bermuda, very battered, which were seized there, with slaves and cargo it possessed.
Upon receiving this message, Sandys called into session a meeting of the shareholder council (I estimate this in late Oct or early Nov 1619), but to obscure the role of Warwick, blotted out his name. While protecting Warwick, however, he implicitly blamed the co-owner of the ship, former Governor Argall. The Council decided to inform the Privy Council, as they believed they were required to do, but before the message was sent, Sandys contacted Warwick’s agent and relative, Nathaniel Rich (also on the Council), and two meetings followed with Southampton (on the Privy Council at the time) in attendance. The meetings reached an agreement by which key members of the Privy Council would be prepared in such a way as to characterize the episode as insignificant, and not justifying Privy Council action. Warwick, in fact, was tasked to “entreat their favor I Captain Argall’s behalf”.
Sandys, for whatever reason I am uncertain, called for a second meeting of the shareholder council (Rolfe’s letter to Sandys appears in Ferrar’s January 1620 notes), without notification or warning to Warwick (also presumably Rich and his allies), and Sandys informed the council that in his opinion he had to notify the Privy Council; the Privy Council was formally notified on February 25, 1620 with Sandys in appearance and making a statement that the Treasurer incident was in no way an action of the Virginia Company. Perhaps more controversial, he also rendered the Spanish ambassador “full satisfaction” as to the company’s part in the affair—at a time when the Spanish were engaged in a “full court press’ to reestablish influence on James I, and the infamous former ambassador Gondomar was in transit to England.
Nathaniel Rich defended Warwick at the Privy Council meeting observing that since the summer of 1619 Southampton had warranted Yeardley would not interview nor impair the Treasurer upon its arrival., and Rich’s belief Sandys was in agreement. Rich further asserted the affair need not have been brought to the attention of the Privy Council. Rich then complained the Sandys could not and would not return the Treasurer to him, with goods, until he completed his notification of the Privy Council on the matter. Rich concluded that Sandys’ action placed Warwick “in the mercy of our own king, but must have been brought under the clutches of the king of Spain which perhaps would not have been removed till he had crushed [Warwick] to pieces, for God deliver me from the clemency of the Spaniard …” [in essence Rich argued that James I upon hearing of the accusation against Warwick, would be reluctant to support him, and would in turn hand him over to the Spanish, implying Warwick was not in the king’s graces]. [999]
Craven’s interpretation of the Privy Council notification was that despite Rich’s defense of Warwick, the notification itself continued to blot out Warwick’s name, and did not directly link Warwick to the piracy engaged in by the Treasurer and Elfrith, leaving the blame again to Argall, implying the latter was rogue and acting on his own. Craven disputes the allegation against Argall by including later evidence from the Manchester Papers which Craven asserts leaves no doubt about Warwick’s responsibility [p. 134]. Another letter from Bermuda’s governor to Warwick is discussed which also leaves no doubt the governor perceived the piracy as Warwick’s enterprise [p. 135]. Such correspondence, of course, was not available at the time of the Privy Council notification, thus no evidence that tied Warwick to the piracy was presented to the Privy Council. Sandys’ accordingly could claim he had not violated his earlier assurances to Warwick. Warwick as the reader might suspect, was not comforted, and Craven believes Warwick from that point on was deeply concerned Sandys might yet release the evidence of his involvement. [999].
Sandys, however, compounded the Elfrith affair, by linking it to Bermuda where Elfrith had gone to elude his seizure of ship by Yeardley. “Sandys charged that the Somers Islands were ‘infested’ with pirates and in the spring quarter court of the Bermuda Company (1620) Sandys had [personally] raised the whole question of piracy [to the Somers shareholder council]. His efforts were foiled by the dominant party [Smythe—and presumably Warwick]. In fact [Sandys] was not even allowed to deliver his speech, but at the next meeting of the Virginia Company [Sandys] did enter his complaint on the ground that it was a matter vitally affecting the safety of Virginia. It was Sandy’s contention that so long as the Bermudas were safe from attack [that is if the pirates were removed] so also was Virginia.
Thus according to Craven Sandys conflated the Elfrith affair into a two-colony campaign to remove pirates and privateering. Sandys directly questioned the behavior of the governor of Bermuda in assisting the pirates [Elfrith], and at Sandys’ request a Virginia Company committee was created, and tasked with considering if the matter should require the further notification of the Privy Council [an update so to speak] [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 133-140.
Sandys escalation of the Elfrith episode into two colony campaign against privateering-privacy is an excellent example, congruent with his treatment of the audit issue at that time, of Sandys approach to Company governance, and its contrast to that of Smythe—and certainly Warwick. Smythe as Treasurer of the Somers colony, was also being attacked, and while not directly cited, Warwick’s privateering business plan was being tossed out of the entire company’s settlement plan and governance scope of legitimate activities. In this Sandys could reasonably claim he was acting in the better interest of the two colonies, certainly enhancing their exclusion from risky raids against the Spanish, which, BTW, were in conformity to the king’s foreign policy in that period. His was the higher ground, and one, I might add, many historians were attracted to [99] for example, Craven overall supported Sandys on this matter, Dissolution, p. 138.
But however “good government” Sandys was, in this interpretation of the Elfrith affair, at the time the reader might also note it was highly disruptive to the factions composing more than half of the Company’s shareholders—and carried out in such a manner to only polarize them further by leaving no opportunity for negotiation, and simply imposing a zero-sum, “my way or the highway, situation upon all the actors involved. The structure overall, and its processes of decision-making were highly stressed; the time available to its shareholder committees were limited, and these weighty matters of involving its regulator and the king into its affairs, were not inconsequential. To be remembered, anti-Spanish/Catholic fervor split the Jacobean policy culture, and the king’s foreign policy was at its divisive height at this point. Company shareholders were in no way insulated from these inclinations.
Lost in this good government and best policy for the good of the colonies was the Company’s capacity to raise revenues in the furtherance of the colonies, maintenance and enhancement shareholder consensus and attention to the implementation of reform and reorganization in the colonies, and the reality that disputes among multiple policy areas carried over into effective administration of the colonies. Warren despite his good government tendencies did not lose his more dominant perspective regarding the Company factionalism: “To appreciate the importance of this factionalism in the company’s history, it is necessary to understand that it was largely the product of conflicting interests, and not so much the quarrels of men of good intent with those of mean purpose. It must be recognized that widely divergent interests and opinions, introduced into an atmosphere already fraught with distrust and resentment, made it impossible for these men to view any question dispassionately” [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 141-2
I might add, as we have seen in the earlier module, it also place resident company administrators in awkward positions, or worse offered them opportunities that appealed to their worse angels. Three thousand miles away, and with two months distance, their autonomy was increased and their discretion enhanced. While not generally receiving much attention from commentators, this period between 1619-1620 was both active and stressful, and the company was already a boiling pot giving off much heat.
[999] Warwick, however, would have not part of that, and from that point engaged in a furious, and ofttimes personal, reaction against Sandys. Nevertheless, the knowledge of Warwick’s direct link was known only to Sandys, Southampton and Ferrar, and not by the Company shareholders. Thus the link between Sandys and Warwick was not yet broken, and would not be so until a year later when, among other factors, Rich’s 1620 participation in the Lord North expedition against Orinoco (Guiana), a follow up to Raleigh’s 1617 attack which the latter had paid for with his life, imploded and the King required Rich to surrender the patent for the expedition. Rich attacked Sandys for allegedly “prejudicing” both Argall and Lord North, which Sandys denied. [999]
The Ouster of Sandys from Virginia Company Treasurer
Simultaneously at this time, the audit of company finances and Smythe accounts was conducted in the same spirit and manner. Moreover, the reader might be surprise to note that company administrators in the two colonies were not supportive of the Sandys’ thrust against pirates and privateering because, believe it or not, serving as a base for pirates, a place where they could sell the cargos they stole (and repair/supply their ships) brought badly needed goods into the colony that were either cheaper than the Magazine offered, or not available at all. I would add we have not yet tackled the stress injected by ongoing negotiations and royal intentions of imposing a new “tobacco contract”, a policy area of considerable importance of the company finances, and the interests of shareholders.
Try as they would, Nathaniel Rich in the midst of this affair, attempted a compromise that first gave Smythe a month to pay up a number given to him and settle up on the audit, the outstanding issues with Argall settled by impartial arbitration, and the courts of the two colonies “should not meddle with each other”, and believe it or not, the settlement would culminate in Sandys, Smyth, Warwick, Rich and Johnson receiving communion at an agreed upon church [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.141
No surprise that got no where, and with both colonies now contesting the leadership of the other in the spring of 1620, previous to the annual May-June, 1620 Quarterly courts, Smythe carried the battle to new heights by commencing a campaign to oust Sandys from his position as Treasurer, or as Craven more precisely puts it, “to prevent the reelection of Sandys”. Precisely at the point in the Elfrith piracy/two colonies struggle when Sandys was at his lowest ebb in shareholder popularity Smythe launched his campaign with shareholders.
Craven argues that Smythe circulated arguments that Sandys didn’t play fair, and had in the previous 1619 Treasurer election “use[d] [his] powerful friends of the [Queens] bedchamber in effecting this end [i.e. the marriage of John Smythe episode]. Smythe also raised the question regarding Sandys inexperience in trade and organizational management, and, instead of directly running for office himself, Smythe called for the office to be held by a merchant whose background was the best fit for the government of a plantation—which proved to be the issue that was taken by the King when he entered into the fray. In correspondence to the shareholders of the Virginia Company, James advocated for the election of a merchant as Treasurer, providing a list of possibilities, Smythe, Sir Thomas Roe, Alderman Johnson or Maurice Abbott. Delivered to the Quarterly Court on May 17th, 1620; the phrasing of his letter carried with it the king was demanding the Treasurer be one on the list.
The reaction among shareholders was widespread and intense as it, from their perspective, was a serious breach in their charter and their liberty in managing the affairs of their joint stock corporation. At the court session, a committee was formed whose purpose was to “call upon the king and ask for a free election”. The election was postponed. In the interim previous to a meeting, there was considerable discussion, within the shareholder community, and external to the court. Sandys wrote the king directly, pleading his case, and taking strong issue with Smythe and Johnson whose past administration he stated had failed in its purpose of successful colonization and that Smythe had used colonization for his own profit. Sandys called to the king’s attention, his Greate Charter reforms, then in process of implementation, and stated that in his short one year he had generated more growth and prosperity in Virginia than Smythe had since 1607.
Responding, the king, while suggesting the shareholders had misread his letter, that his purpose had been to “recommend”, and if others were more suitable he was open to them. But open as he appeared to be, James then included the order that they may “Choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys”, asserting his authority in accordance with his view of his right to do so as sovereign. To the shareholders it was clear, Sandys was forbidden, and reluctant to press the matter further proceeded to elect unanimously, Sandys closest friend and ally, the [Third] Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, a member of the Privy Council since 1619, and on June 28th, 1620 Treasurer of the Virginia Company. In November of that year he was placed on the New England Council. Smythe was reelected to the Treasurer of the Bermuda Company in its annual Quarterly meeting.
As to why Warwick, and for that matter Smythe’s faction voted unanimously for Southampton, Nathaniel Rich is cited for “belief in the ‘justice and nobleness’ of Southampton, asserting that he was “indifferent between factions”. Craven postulates that while Warwick had broken personally with Sandys, he was not ready for a outright break with him in May-June 1620, and despite his “working with” Smythe as Treasurer of the Somers Island Company, he was at least distant from him. Still Craven then observes that from this point on “The Rich group chose rather to express their resentment [against Sandys] by dropping all connection with the [shareholder] courts and meetings of the [shareholder] council, except when their own interests were involved, and while they joined with Smith at times to support complaints against the [Virginia] company … it was not until the tobacco fight, late in 1622 that the two factions [Warwick and Smythe] joined forces with the purpose of overthrowing the Sandys’ party [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 144-5
[999] Alexander Brown, Genesis of the United States, inserts in his biography of Wriothesley a character citation: “He was a man of no very unusual character in whom several fine qualities were shadowed by some important defects. His understanding seems to have been lively and acute; and his acquired talents united to a competent erudition, an extensive and a correct taste for polite letters and the most highly finished manners. His friendships were ardent and lasting, his personal courage almost proverbial; but his mind was fickle and unsteady; a violent temper engaged him in frequent quarrels, and in enmities injurious to his best interests; and he was wholly a stranger to that wary circumspection which is commonly dignified by name to prudence”, p. 1063. I will extend upon this biography and behavior and role in the Virginia Company and other matters in future modules and the reader to revisit his association with the Essex Rebellion and his close association with Queen Anna, membership on her Council, and close association with the Ladies of her Bedchamber—a not too subtle reminder of his role in the “Marriage of John Smythe’ [999]
The Tobacco Contract of James I: its Role in the Development of the Tobacco Monoculture
By this point the reader recognizes that I have marginalized the traditional reason many commentators have attributed the rise of the tobacco monoculture in Virginia: the geography of many inland rivers penetrating into the Tidewater that accommodated the export of tobacco from plantations scattered along the river, and as a consequence of which the development of a “shredded community” of isolated plantations that inhibited the development of larger settlements, as well as a functional port city. Certainly, geography and its predilection for a shredded community plantation economy played a role, but it was far from casual, and it left more than a few important questions unanswered.
So far we have called out the monumental role John Rolfe played in the development and promotion of tobacco, not to mention his positive contribution (I guess) to more pacific Native American relations, but more central his role as the promoter among the resident company elite that led to its use in the newly granted, Dales Gift plantation-hundreds that spread along the James River previous to Dale’s departure in the spring of 1616. As the Company’s resident elite founded their new plantations, they planted John Rolfe’s seeds as their first intended export crop.
Dale, to whom Rolfe named his first born son with his new wife Rebecca-Pocahontas, took with him the couple to conduct a promotional tour (1616-17) of English upper society dedicated to advertise the success of the colony and the development of a new staple that promised profits to investors and pleasure to those who consume it—tying that product to higher role for England and James in the race for the colonization of North America.
Thomas West, the governor Virginia conducted the tour, even our John Smith now a resident in England played an important role in bringing the promising export, but inspired more as involving the Queen, and through her hopefully the King, into more meaningful support of Virginia, as opposed to other colonies such as Ireland. It was successful as we described, and that success introduced a new element, powerful English aristocrats and courtesans into the ranks of Virginia Company shareholders. Critical to the ambitions and plans of Edwin Sandys, these aristocrats supported his dream of making the Virginia colony more successful than the then-current administration of merchant adventurer oligarchy had yet achieved.
Sandys mobilized other shareholders who recognized the sad state the colony was in, and the near bankruptcy of the Virginia Company. As we have thus far seen in this module, that shareholder rebellion in April 1619 ousted Smythe and his merchant adventurers-somewhat- from the Company, and by that point tobacco export to England had blossomed from a pittance of a few pounds in 1616, to a ton, not literally (44,000 pounds), of tobacco by 1619. There was, it seemed, a tobacco boom already, and for the first time Virginia seemingly had found a n export staple with a promising future as an English import. If nothing else, that export had to be critical in keeping fiscally alive the Virginia colonial effort. That is about where we are when we introduce the term “tobacco contract”.
Thus in mid 1619, two new dynamics entered the tobacco monoculture picture: the entry of his royal majesty, James I, now sixteen years into his English reign, who wanted “in on the action” for his own needs and purposes, and believing foreign export trade to be in his jurisdiction (as opposed to Parliaments’) as an expression of his larger belief in his divine right authority, he began dickering around with imposing a, shall we call it, a tax, on the import-export of tobacco, to the consternation of not only the Company and its settler planters, but others as well; and the role of tobacco in Sandys new vision of permanent settlement and Company reorganization, which came to be called the Greate Charter reform and its failure to thrive in Virginia.
Suffice it to say for the moment, that flow of action from these two dynamics over the next several years (three or four) contributed mightily to the fall of the Virginia Company. But much like Hammerstein & Kehr’s and Paul Robeson’s “Ole Man River” (the Mississippi River) which I will call the “Tobacco River “ that “doesn’t care if the world got troubles, doesn’t care if de land ain’t free, just keeps rollin’, he keeps on rollin’ along”. To say it another way, no matter what I say in the remainder of this section, the chief beneficiary of the interaction of these two dynamics was the continued spread of the tobacco monoculture in Virginia.
The Tobacco Contract
For us the Tobacco Contract is not simply the attempt at or imposition of taxes, fees, commissions and the like on the import and purchase of tobacco in England. They will be briefly discussed but our focus in what underlie the tobacco contract, ie.e what dynamics promoted its use on tobacco and Virginia tobacco in particular. Of mention, I include discussion on how the tobacco contract can be considered as an expression of James’s larger problem of reconciling his “divine right” aspirations into the English“ tweens” policy-making system”.
We are also concerned with the reaction of the various parties affected, and to what extent the net effect of the “tobacco contract” allowed the continued spread of the tobacco monoculture during the tweens into 1622. To the extent that happened, the tobacco contract superimposed itself upon the implementation of the Greate Charter economic reforms, economic diversification in particular, thereby frustrating the restructuring of the Virginia economic base. At root, the king was on one hand rewarding himself and the planter with the proceeds drawn from the raising and exporting of tobacco, while at the same time urging the Company—and he was far from alone—to diversify Virginia’s economy and to draw from Virginia exports of more substance and utility than tobacco.
The problem of reconciling the tobacco contract and the diversification of the Virginia economic base was a problem of “squaring a circle”. Said and done, however, however much the king (and company shareholders) wished tobacco would go away, the thrust of his initiative to impose a tobacco contract compelled colonists to produce more tobacco from which his custom farmers and he could draw exports for their profit and his taxes. In this sense we can see a fundamental flaw in the “tweens” Stuart policy process regarding Virginia was that it set and followed mutually opposed goals and had no means by which of reconciling them. Indeed, as we describe the tobacco contract as it played out through 1624, one wonders if London, at least formally (who knows what they thought privately), ever recognized the policy cul du sac in which London policy had imposed on Virginia.
If the Virginia planter needed to plant tobacco to pay for food, clothes and materials needed for housing and construction, he would need to plant more tobacco to pay for the costs imposed on the production and sale of tobacco in England by the tobacco contract. The problem was compounded enormously by the king’s refusal to allow coin to be minted for distribution and use in the colonies, thus imposing on the colony the need to employ a substitute currency for exchange in Virginia transactions. That currency by 1620 was tobacco. Virginia, of necessity, had to grow and trade its own currency to pay for goods it need to survive, and to provide sustenance for the next year.
As Craven rightly asserted “an essential feature of Sandys’ program had been the restriction of tobacco with a view to diverting the planter’s attention to more wholesome commodities” [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.176. The irony, if such is the right word, is that Craven observes that “It is impossible to read through the records of the famous fight over the tobacco contract in 1622 and 1623 without recognizing that even Sandys had accepted the Company’s dependence upon tobacco. From the first of his administration to the last, despite that all he could do, the chief interest and energy of the Virginia planter was devoted to his tobacco crop [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.178. “Two years after his election, Sandys was still searching for some means of restricting that ‘smoky weed’ declaring that the present growth was displeasing ‘ to the king and scandalous unto the Plantation, and unto the whole Company [as we]]” [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.177.
The Tobacco Contract as Linked to James Royal Prerogative—As introduced in our analysis of the Addled Parliament, the Tobacco Contract overlapped and was subsumed by the issues and problems associated with “monopolies” that included trading companies, the initial policy and bureaucratic mechanisms that England was applying to increasing foreign trade and colonization, and the differing perspective of king and parliament that fed into what I call the “drift to the English Civil War. In turn the positions assumed by James reflected his perception of the Crown’s authority and scope of jurisdiction that by the end of the tweens had widely separated from those of many in parliament.
In the instance of the proposed Tobacco Contract, which included initiatives such as forbidding the planting of tobacco in England (which had a small tobacco industry), the creation of bureaucracy to administer the import of trade of tobacco to England, the regulation of other tobacco trading parties such as Spain, and the proposed creation of a monopoly of tobacco import for the Virginia Company, and in accordance of which the various taxes and fees applied to the importation of tobacco.
It is obvious the Tobacco Contract was a large and complex set of initiatives, involving a goodly number of “institutional actors—such as concessionaires (farmers), as well as the individual and usually rival ports, the largest of which was London by far, which would be the sites of administration, with overtones that impacted consumers and those who did not want the product to begin with, and we can see this was not an insubstantial policy nexus of importance to the English economy and the business companies that were involved.
The Virginia Company was a major actor in this nexus, but it was not an especially powerful one. Engaged as its was by charter from the king as a public private partnership in the initial English North American colonization effort, the Company, was by no means a free or independent actor, despite its incorporation as a monopolistic trading and colonizing company. We must remember that in less than five years, the king by his Prerogative would suspend the Virginia Company charter, and assume His Prerogative to govern directly Virginia.
The 1619 coup, and the intensifying civil war within the Company, fragmented the Company’s dealing with the king and other actors; for example Smythe was Treasurer of the Somers Company, Sandys (and after June 1620 Southampton who sat on the Privy Council) the overall Virginia Company. Individual shareholders in both had their own points of leverage in the various controversies. We certainly do not need to go into the detail for our purposes, but we ought to recognize the Contract was a huge political battle that was textured by the king’s core assertion that it was all within his authority—with little to no parliamentary involvement.
This was recognized at the time, as supported by a speech of Sir Francis Bacon that served as a sort of legal precedent on the matter:
The Queen [Elizabeth], as she is our Sovereign, hath both an Enlarging and Restraining Liberty [as elements] of Her Prerogative; that is, She hath Power by her patents [i.e. awards and gifts] to set at Liberty Things restrained by Statute-Law, or otherwise: And by her Prerogative, She may restrain Things that are at Liberty. [99] Tawney and Power (eds), Tudor Economic Documents, II, 271 as cited in Ashton, the City and the Court, p. 83
James I upon ascension as king continued his exercise of this authority. The response he received, from Parliament, but by many English elites, was qualitatively different from that given to Elizabeth. In this sense we see this as an extension of a transition of England from the Tudor to James’s Stuart dynasty. In any event, the Tobacco Contract policy nexus was considered by him to be within his “royal prerogative” (i.e. jurisdiction). That prerogative, which for hundreds of years, has been labeled as his “divine right” position on royal authority.
Hence, the reader can see that every royal action usually generated a non-royal, parliamentary, or business reaction—and in some instances a potential reaction by the most powerful naval force of the period, Spain, who from its West Indies and Central American possessions was in a position to take action on southern geographies such as Virginia and Bermuda. I offer as a pithy and convenient summary the following “summary” provided by Robert Ashton:
[C]concessionaires of one sort or another formed a significant part of the business elite of London. During the last two parliaments of Elizabeth’s reign, one type of concessionaire, holders of internal patents of monopoly [East India, and other trading companies for example] had been the object of bitter attacks, and as the debate on monopolies in 1601 had made abundantly clear, monopolies raised issues which transcended [mere] considerations of economics. …
The debate on monopolies in 1601 thus highlighted the fact that concessionaires of the crown had everything to gain from the maintenance of the royal prerogative intact, and everything to fear from determined parliamentary assaults upon it. And this this attitude was common to a much wider variety of concessionaires than the actual patentees … Bacon’s arguments … were equally applicable to those great charted companies which dominated foreign trade. …
The peace which finally concluded between England and Spain in August 1604, [under James I] opened up the prospect of the revival of English trade with the Iberian peninsula. But the problem of what sort of trade this was to be still remained to be solved …. Was it to be strictly controlled and limited trade in the hands of a regulated company [such as the Virginia Company] … Or was the trade to be open to all … [as] vigorously advocated by the merchants of southwestern ports, who feared that any chartered company for trade with Spain would be dominated by Londoners [99] Robert Ashton, The City and the Court, 1603-1643 (Cambridge University Press, 1979, 2008), pp. 83-4
Sandys in reaction to all of this, filed a bill in parliament in 1621 to ban the importation of tobacco except from Virginia and the Somers Island, and to patent that tobacco to entities composed of his supporters in both companies. As Ashton comments, these was “strange conduct for a supporter of free trade” [99] Robert Ashton, the City and the Court, p. 115.
Greate Charter Economic Reform Doesn’t Take Root
In the past module, we discussed the “implementation” of the Greate Charter. In this section we discuss “its failure to thrive”. I leave out of the discussion the issues created by the Second Powhatan War, instead concentrating on the issues associated with or encountered by the implementation of initiatives.
A cornerstone of Sandys’s economic strategy was to diversify the Virginia economic base beyond planting tobacco, and to that end a number of other staples and exports were introduced, the intent of which was to export them for the benefit to England or the sale in England the net effect of which was to relieve the fiscal burden of a permanent settlement strategy, and beyond that the lessening of the enormous debt burden of the Company that placed it on the edge of survival and bankruptcy.
Bluntly put, if economic diversification could not produce revenues that the Company could both pay costs of settlement and pay down existing debt, it was not likely Virginia could sustain itself much longer. To accomplish these purposes, his strategy required sufficient time both to implement, so to produce revenues at a volume sufficient to these purposes. “Since the development of other commodities on a profitable basis was a long process which offered to the colonists no immediate prospect of a livelihood, it was especially necessary that they be well provided with the requisite supplies of food and clothing [I add tools and labor availability], in order that they might have both the time and will to devote their labors to Sandys’ newly projected industries”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.176.
To that question Craven wastes no time in providing an answer and conclusion. The next sentence of the above quotation reads:
But, instead his plans were foredoomed to failure by his policy of leaving to the colony the responsibility in the all important question of supply. From the first to the last, the chief and most urgent concern of the Virginian was an immediate supply of food and clothing … there was little time to think of the future when the provisions for the next year were a pressing and imperative question of the moment. As a result most of their time was given to corn, from which must come their food, and to tobacco, the only crop offering any promise of ability to purchase clothes [again I would add tools and materials needed for housing, planting, livestock, and gunpowder/muskets for self-defense] upon the arrival of the company’s magazine. There was thus, of course, little time to experiment with new staples. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp.176-7.
In short since Virginia did not yet produce its own staples to eat, clothes to wear or tools for housing, livestock maintenance, planting, harvesting, storage, basic infrastructure-logistics, and gunpowder and weapons for self-defense, how was she supposed to provide all this while still be required to export tobacco to pay for past debt and the costs incurred by the Company to supply her, and for exchange transactions in Virginia? This was the classic chicken or egg syndrome, and it lay at the core of Sandys reform settlement strategy.
To be sure the simple answer was the Virginia Company, near bankruptcy as it was, could not pay for the strategy to begin with. There was hope the association-hundred investment would transfer the costs to the volunteer non-Company investor, but that did not account for the costs the Company still possessed in paying for the immigration program required to import the workforce necessary and sufficient for the task, and the pace of the change—not to mention those costs necessary to supply the existing resident workforce which were primarily Company-owned, indentured servants.
While fundamental to the overall strategy the above situation, we must also admit there were other illogic that need to be considered as well. How did Sandys get himself into this situation?
The Economic Developer in Me
Think of Sandys’ plan as an exercise in seventeenth century national industrial planning—because that is pretty much what it was. Let’s see what can go wrong with central planning in London and implementation in Virginia—because if it can go wrong there is a high risk it will.
[999] Of course we have to substitute the Virginia Company, as the agent of England, Virginia as a country, and the individual plantation as the functional equivalent of company, but otherwise using either of the definitions cited here, the Greate Charter settlement instructions as an aggregate were tasked to achieve goals such as defined in these definitions. A Google created AI definition of national industrial policy is “National Industrial Policy is a set of government policies that aim to shape a country by focusing on specific industries, firms or economic activities. The goal is to change or maintain a particular pattern of production and trade”. We can compare this with a definition offered by International Monetary Fund: “Industrial policy refers to a set of policies that governments use to bolster national industries or companies deemed strategically important for economic competitiveness, social outcomes, or national security”, https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/Series/Analytical-Series/industrial-policy-and-the-growth-strategy-trilemma [999]
Sitting in London, approximately 3727 miles from Virginia (not the usual trope of 3,000), and conversely Jamestown to Los Angeles or Seattle about 2,800 miles we can see the inherent difficulty of applying a national industrial policy across continents. Sandy’s feedback time from Virginia to England ranged, dependent on winds, weather and routes, around two and one-half to four and one-half months. As described previous, the London-based Company was itself consumed with its civil war, the negotiations and impositions of the king’s tobacco contract which were congruent with the Greate Charter implementation, and the implications of both as their exerted impacts on the policy-making of each actor involved in the colony’s affairs.
As we might expect, with each passing month the situation deteriorated in London, and likewise in Virginia. Thus, compared to a more casual description of the Greate Charter implementation offered in many commentaries, the actual state of affairs was more chaotic, ill-defined, perceived differently by the actors, and feedback was minimal. To demonstrate the actual implementation of specific instructions sent in the Greate Charter Yeardley governor’s instructions, Craven cites what was happening “on the ground” in Virginia. We can cite his feedback to London and then assess the response.
The following “picture” is not pretty, and we can more accurately see how the huge transformation implied by the diversification of the Virginia economy in conjunction with the colony’s need to provide the bulk of supplies and resources needed to perform the transformation simply overwhelmed the locals during the roughly two and one-half years of Greate Charter implementation. The ideas may or may not have been good-useful, but the implementation was from the beginning pretty much a disaster.
An early diversification initiative, iron (discovery and making) is easily an excellent example of the difficulty of starting a new commodity-staple from scratch. Since 1606 sporadic attempts had been made to find iron and export it. None were successful; mostly these meant a search of exposed iron ore. There was no systematic attempt to find a site(s) that actually showed promise. Still in May 1620 the first carpenters intended for the construction of mines arrived in Virginia. Unfortunately, “the chief men for the iron works” had already died on seas in transport over. Without their expertise, any survivors had neither the direction nor expertise to proceed. John Porys wrote this back to Sandys, and indicated the best he could not under the circumstances was to build housing and storage areas for the project. It was of little consequence as by the end of the year (1620) all souls associated with the mining initiative had died in Virginia of one disease or another. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 178-9
Silk, which was the special project of James, not only in terms of interest but also sending over some of his cocoons. The cocoons did not survive the trip over, in either 1619 or 1620. Wine planting, never mind production did not prosper as the directions for site location and planting provided by the company were deficient, or did not respect the realities found in Virginia. Wine did have one exception, however; on site of the university an ample workforce had successfully planted 10,000 vines by 1621—but none ever bore fruit. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 180
Other targeted company commodities, salt, pitch, tar, soap and ashes—which the company supported with servants–languished, probably because of proper attention and priority by Virginians, which likely reflected their lack of known sites for which they could be found, developed and exported profitably. Pory’s, who seems to have been the coordinator on site for the diversification effort, did not believe they could be produced in volume, and likely were not profitable exports.
This was true of lumber, which Virginia did have plenty of, but their weight meant, given the few ships in transit to Virginia, no sufficient volume could be sent back to England to maintain profit—in his words “profit would be almost nothing”. As to pitch and tar, “the trees from which they they came were so scattered that the cost of production would make impossible any competition with Poland where the trees were found in compact groups” [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 180.
As to “flax, hemp, and ‘silke grasse’—“all of which the company had held to be of great hope’—had not materialized by the end of 1621. “Officials in London attributed [this] entirely to negligence and inexperience”, based on reports sent to them from Virginia which asserted the “difficulties of these industries were to great to be overcome”. The same could be said for ship-building and fishing. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 180 My suspicion is there was a lack of suitable skillsets in Virginia, the quality of background of Company indentured servants proved no match for later Puritan artisans who settled in New England. The relative simplicity and more easy profit of tobacco, likely was far more attractive to Virginia indentures.
In fact the only material commodity sent for Virginia to England in the Greate Charter period was tobacco. The few proceeds from tobacco combined with the net proceeds from the lotteries for the only material receipts-revenues the company had to pay its bills. Several factors combined to make even tobacco a loss to the company. Virginia tobacco in this period was so inferior in quality and taste (in part because Virginia processing was deficient and need investment and proper treatment by planters), and the cost and complexity of logistics from Virginia to England was sufficiently higher than competitive tobaccos, and the concessionaires-farmers mechanizing the product could not sell in Europe –and that is where Virginia tobacco mostly went. In 1620 the Company resorted to send tobacco direct to Holland— not to the king’s liking, and did not resolve the taste differential that cheapened the price when sold there.
Frankly, the entire diversification initiative seemed nearly insane in hindsight because during the
Greate Charter period—at least into late 1621, the Company’s Magazine—indeed had three Magazines, two competing Magazines in the Virginia Company (one controlled by Smythe, and the other, a Sandys creation of which we don’t even have a relatively firm date as to its founding), therefore little more than a magazine on paper, not a functioning magazine), and the other also under Smythe’s control in the Somers Company. On top of this, prices in the overall tobacco market were falling, due to the glut in cheap Virginia tobacco supplemented by West Indies tobacco.
Smythe’s Magazine was under attack for the excessive prices it charged, and setting a low price for tobacco purchase for what little high quality tobacco Virginia had from Virginia’s and its sale abroad at a considerably higher price—despite the fact Sandys had set the Company ceiling on Magazine profit at no more than twenty-five per cent. The effect was, as described above, that the Company purchased tobacco from the planters at a high price, and sold it to final user at a loss. By the time, Sandys was able to shut down the Smythe Magazine, its assets had been reduced by more than half relative to the investment of the Magazine shareholders.
In that the market of 1621 fell even lower than 1620, put Sandys now functioning Magazine in a position to either subsidize the Virginia planter (through the Magazine purchase) by continuing to purchase in excess of what it could expect on final sale. This Sandys was unwilling, perhaps better said, unable to do. His reply to the colonists who advocate pricing sufficient to compensate the Virginia planters was typical of Sandys, and while it exposes an aspect of his personality, it also set a tone little to the planters liking:
The Company flatly refused to entertain the suggestion lest ‘we should maintain the Colony in their overweening esteem of their darling Tobacco to the overthrow of all other Staple Commodities, and likewise continue the evil will they have conceived there, and the scandalous reports here of oppression and exactions from the Company selling all their Commodities for three times the value of what they cost, upon which found and unjust surmises they think it lawful to use all manner of deceit and falsehood in their tobacco that they put in the Magazine. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 182
Say this another way, the Magazine as a vehicle of import of supplies and export of tobacco had simply broken down to the point that the Company lacked the ability to either provide supplies in Virginia, and export goods to the English and European markets—especially tobacco whose price had fallen sufficiently, because of a glut on the market and the lack of quality in Virginia tobacco that could only result in its sale at the lowest prices the market offered.
Finally, much will later be made of Sandy’s sending ship after ship, full of Virginia immigrants to provide the workforce with which Virginia was to accomplish its economic development tasks. There were, in fact, two problems we encounter with this workforce supply—which on its face is a positive action taken by Sandys in support of his economic plan—but these two problems were fundamental to the ultimate failure of his plan. The first problem is macro, he sent an oversupply of indentured servants in particular that the colony simply did not have the capacity to absorb, in particular to feed and cloth until they became productive. We shall deal this macro problem shortly.
The second problem was those servants sent, intended by Sandys to work on company lands for the achievement of company economic diversification initiatives, were often diverted (almost half) to the holdings of other company officials. We are aware of this problem through the research of David R. Ransome [99] David R. Ransome, “Shipt for Virginia: the Beginnings in 1619-22 of the Great Migration to the Chesapeake (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 103, No. 4 (oct, 1995), p. 450. Ransome using the records of John Ferrar, who upon Sandy’s election of Treasurer, moved his company headquarters from Smythe’s Philpot Lane, at St Sithes Lane a half mile west in his great house in which vastly improved company records were kept, and which are available to understand in more detail such matters as who immigrated into Virginia during the Greate Charter period. [99] David R. Ransome, “Shipt for Virginia: the Beginnings in 1619-22 of the Great Migration to the Chesapeake (the Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 103, No. 4 (Oct, 1995), p. 445
In those records, both Ransome and Craven find the records particular to an association-hundred company, headed by William Weldon that arrived in Virginia in the fall of 1619 on the ship Bona Nova. Various of his immigrants were “farmed out” by Yeardley. Yeardley in pleading his reason to Weldon that he “put” half of Weldon’s immigrants out to servants of others “because their supplies [supplies in Virginia] were so inadequate” they would, in effect, not be able to be fed. Arriving after the harvest of that year, they had not planted their own sustenance for the winter, and the only way they could be fed was to live off the harvest of others.
Weldon negotiated the best deal with Yeardley he could, but had to suspend his indenture rights for a year. Interestingly, Craven notes the transfer to another master, while disturbing, nearly caused a rebellion when the transferred servants were told they could not, in compliance with restrictions placed upon the amount of tobacco that could be grown (in order to encourage diversification into corn and other edible staples) [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 177
At this point, we can more clearly see the second problem mentioned above: the macro issue. Sandys had not notified Yeardley or anyone of their coming. Even if he had, if it did not follow the planting schedule how could Virginia supply its new-found immigrants if Sandys did not send supplies from England; there was no way other than to trade for Indian corn, and someone had to pay for that in some way—or, of course, they could raid and steal it.
Say this another way, again, Sandys had made his plans oblivious of the realities in Virginia.
That meant when his immigrants arrived, if the arrival was not time so they could “successfully ‘season’ [survive] and plant in the year’s harvest, then they would have no food-clothes and possibly housing until the next harvest. Craven’s explanation seems very fair and reasonable for the failure, more precisely the inability, to implement successfully his grand Greate Charter scheme in Virginia: “Sandys exhibited a tendency to rush with too much haste and enthusiasm into plans that were not well thought out, and for which the necessary preliminary study and preparations had not been made”.[99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 178 The final observation to be added in this discussion was that during this time Sandys and the headquarters staff fully anticipated that Virginia would make some profit from its exports—and it never did.
1621: It Gets Worse
Let’s remember the point being made in this module. I am presenting the case that the Virginia Company, headquartered in London during the Sandys’ administration, was stressed and beleaguered by the internal court-parliament-economic-social change politics reflecting its drift into the English civil war; the fragmentation-polarization and the shifting of the configuration, behavior, and goals of the evolving power elite bled into the company’s shareholder civil war. The aging of James I, the death of Queen Anna, the growing salience of religion as a driving factor in the court-parliamentary schism, the early twenties allowed more autonomy, but the absence of a parliament in session gave birth to a younger generation of aristocrats, merchants, and merchant adventurers that were “coming of age” during this period.
The Thirty Years War created fears and opportunity for those engaged in foreign trade, privateering, and colonization, 1620 proved in hindsight to be a turning point in the fortunes and priorities of the Virginia Company, with Virginia sunsetting and the all but prostrate Plymouth Company rising from the dead. The London Company of the Virginia Company (or subject and focus) was a mess in 1620, and it only got worse each year following.
Harried by the opposition, ranging from Smythe to Warwick, and in 1621 by the king directly, the abortion that was the first phase (1619-1621) of Sandys permanent settlement/economic development strategy—as opposed to its company reorganization strategy—demanded and consume whatever free time Sandys had to launch a second phase as quickly as he could. He expected, and got, little cooperation on this from his opposition. It seems apparent to me that compromise, even by 1620 was unlikely and after 1621, impossible. It is tempting to place our hopes of Sandys second launch of his economic development initiative, the “good ship Virginia Company, in mutiny, listing from too much debt and too little revenues, is heading for the rocks.
More interesting is how these two phases of economic development and the early effects of the company reorganization and shift in investor-association settlement in Virginia congealed into a more diverse “domestic or resident political elite” whose immediate success, if not existential future was tied to the plantation and tobacco as the near-exclusive export product, and the gathering about of this forming political elite around the structures of company decision-making. They will be kickstarted, jump-started if the reader prefers, by the events of 1622.
What will be evident during 1620 and 1621 is the London Company’s profound involvement in its own affairs, conflicts, rivalries and ambitions were highly prioritized; such episodes as described below, above and beyond those associated with the tobacco contract, consumed much attention from shareholders, but more important higher levels of the Company’s leadership. As an example the next section briefly describes a few of the many bickering’s between the Sandys-Southampton Virginia Company and its rival the Smythe-Johnson-Warwick Somers Company.
The Lottery Goes Bye-Bye, Inter-Company Rivalries, Sandys New Leadership for Virginia, and Second Phase of Greate Charter plan: 1621-March 1622
The Lottery Is Revoked—Since 1619 the lottery was the bulk of whatever discretionary revenues the Company had. To finance the settlement plan as best he could, Sandys used the lottery on a scale more intensified than the Smythe administration had. In Craven’s words he used the lottery so much that it became “a general nuisance to the kingdom. … The lottery with its doubly effective appeal to the gambling instinct and philanthropic spirit of the people had rendered valiant service to the company, but there was a limit to the total revenue that could be derived from this source. And … by two years of energetic ‘surveys through England’ had well reached that limit [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 183
Not at all understood in America, and under researched in England, the lotteries in this period generated a good deal of suspicion, scandal, corrupt practices, and incompetent admiration that resulted in “foul aspersions unjustly cast upon it by malignant tongues” across the country—especially where the lotteries were conducted, and people could see for themselves what was going on. Certainly, some of these accusations were directly or indirectly coming from Sandys internal opposition, but that was mostly in 1623. At that time they focused on their chief administrator, Barbor, who was the lightning rod for the incompetent conduct of many lotteries. But he also was accused of diverting up to L8,000, a very large sum, for his own use, and then bribed the auditors to keep it secret.
With the loss of the lottery it was evident “that from the summer of 1621 the company was for all practical purposes bankrupt. Every crop since Sandys’ election had been sold at a loss, every magazine had been returned without a profit, the deputy had incurred a considerable indebtedness in the performance of his office, and in the following spring was still behind to the sum of L1,400 …[99] Craven, Dissolution, , pp. 189-90. The most obvious casualty had to be the Company’s inability to finance ships and supplies associated with new immigrants. If any were to be sent in 1622, the funds had to be raised previous to their voyage over.
With tobacco prices falling, and a still firm conviction that tobacco sales should be the last resort, Sandys was at a loss of how to supply Virginia during 1622. When he sent over his last 1621 supply ship he warned the colony that if it could not make the economic initiatives profitable, including the new ones included in his future instructions to a new governor, “it is vain ever to hope for like supplies from hence [here-England];”. But, in the manner we have come to expect from Sandys, any deficiency of staples and supplies for residents was the fault, not of him or the London HQ, but of the colony and Virginians. Continuing on from the above warning he made no uncertainty as to where responsibility and blame lay for any failure to supply the residents of Virginia:
for any want [that befell the colony], it the Colony fall upon any calamity or misery, theirs be the shame, and guilt whose fault it is; as for us [the London Company] it will be our comforts neither to have failed in abundance of charities, hitherto, nor in timely advice and warnings now given [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 192-3
To add to this burden Sandys further made clear to Yeardley (and the future governor) that he had to make his local economy work sufficiently well to provide supplies to those who lived in Virginia, but as to the paying out of the Company debt the produce of the colony should be profitable, and from those profits “nothing less than the principal [of the debt] laid out [returned to the Company to pay off the debt] [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 193. He wasn’t done with that last burden-responsibility but went on to warn that without debt being paid off, the likelihood of future investment hinged on the repayment of existing debt—which the reader might remember came from Sandy’s London-based shareholders and debtors. Sandy’s constituency would be unhappy if the colony could not pay its bills.
When in December 1621, it became evident to both London and Virginia that the Spanish were active, and in part based on a rumor from our friend Captain Elfrith, that they were in preparation for an attack on Virginia (generated by attacks of privateers like Elfrith). As described by John Rolfe, this alarmed Virginians greatly, as they were well aware if attacked they had no place to run or hide, so they had to strengthen their shore defenses with fortifications and militia. Alerted to this London responded that Virginia “should give no offense to the Spaniards”, by which I suspect he meant no support or sympathy for privateers or pirates, and the colony should build such forts, blockhouses and fortifications “at the mouth of the [James River]”, and wherever needed.
To this end, London authorized a new office in Virginia, the Marshall, for whom was entrusted the responsibility for Virginia defense, and to that position in late 1621, Captain William Nuce was appointed. He was provided, as was customary at that time, 1,500 acres and allotted fifty servants and tenants and authorized L400 to cover the expenses of these individuals. Nuce, however, did not leave England until late in 1622.
In the meantime, of course, much was to happen, and that generated much correspondence on Virginia’s need for military and defense assistance from London immediately—asking for instance for engineers to be sent over so that “the principal city” could be relocated to a more secure location. All of this predated the March 26th Great Massacre attack by the Powhatan. Indeed, it was the fear of the Spanish that prompted this call for defense. What I might add is the defense of the colony was paramount, existential (even though no Spanish attack occurred), but London’s response was limited, and again placed responsibility on the colony for the greatest part of its defense. If Virginia was to be defended, it was up to the Virginians
The take away has to be that London as a support for Virginia settlement was so exhausted and limited by the end of 1621 that whatever English colonization meant in theory or in the classroom by 1621, in practice and in reality its first colony, Virginia was on its own. I will reiterate a point made in a previous module that the leadership of the Company was more than distracted by their intensive participation in the Parliament of 1621.
Sandys played a major role in that session, which by the nature of the institution was primary to his agenda and time management. I add both he and Southampton (who was not an M.P.) were by order of the king issued through the Privy Council. Confined to the jail of the Sheriff of London for the better part of two months over the summer, Sandys and Southampton no doubt had plenty of time to design and execute the second phase of the Greate Charter economic development implementation.
Obscured in the margins, it should be noted that in 1620, both ran against each other for M.P. in the same election district. Smythe lost, a seat he had held for years. Smythe’s brother procured (bought) a seat in the Cornish borough of Saltash—not a riding one would have thought the richest merchant in England would have gotten. Virginia was not an important topic in that session. Sandys in the meantime used his seat to occupy a central place in the session. After the session Smythe announced his retirement from the East India council, due to his “weakness of body”..
I find all this rather remarkable. For all his brilliance and his progressive ideas, Sandys displayed an enormous capacity to transfer responsibility to the Virginians, without providing them the resources that hitherto had been the responsibility of the London Company. While he took, and was given, the respect and praise for the formulation of a Greate Charter permanent settlement plan whatever he could send over in the remainder of 1621 was what the colony could expect for his doubling down on the first year and one half failure to deliver. His Greate Charter settlement plan had not produced profits, despite the resources sent over from England through 1621 was all that he could do; it was up to the colony to assume responsibility for whatever was required in the next year—and thereafter?
This position is congruent with that presented by Craven, who, after describing the inability of London to offer any serious assistance to Virginia in the aftermath of the Greate Massacre, and its written responses to the colony to that affect came to the same conclusion as I did by the end of 1621.
The plea of a stricken colony came to a [London] company which was in no wise prepared to offer any immediate and sufficient remedy. For a year the company’s leaders in every communication to the colony had been proclaiming its bankruptcy, and calling attention to the disappointment and waning interest of its adventurers [shareholders and investors]. They had seen no hope for the future except in a profitable trade with the colony, and had quite definitely shifted the responsibility in this upon the shoulders of the planters. With the supply of the previous fall [1621] had gone the warning that should this fail, as had all former supplies [from London], they could hope for no further aid from England. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 200-1
Shady Deals in the Somers Company Bring Victory to Sandys-Southampton—In May, 1620, Sandys made the by now infamous ballot box available to the Somers Island Company. Upon its receipt, the Smythe administration impounded and then hid it. Smythe won yet again, and the minority Sandys faction complained loudly ‘that the courtesies of debate were not observed. During the following year, Southampton and Johnson got into a heated argument concerning the Magazine, in which Johnson in effect called Southampton a liar. With intercompany relations so bitter and dysfunctional, Sandys took action against the Somers Company using his control over the Virginia Company.
In July 1620, the company was notified by the two patentees for the sole importation of tobacco from Virginia to England that they were imposing a quota limiting to 55,000 pounds of tobacco from the two colonies. “Sandys himself proposed that since the Somers Island subsisted solely on this crop and stood ‘in need of all the help which in that kind may be given them’ the whole amount specified should be assigned to the [Somers] company”. The Virginia Company, Sandys then placed itself on the English markets for whatever price it could warrant. He did so knowing he had a deal to import the Virginia Company tobacco with the town of Middleburg at a rate of 1/12th of the patentee’s custom rate.[99] Scott, Constitution, p. 274
But the most interesting action was taken by the Virginia Company in November, 1620 when it approved a land distribution in Virginia of 40,000 acres to Somers Company shareholders whose land distribution in Bermuda was smaller than what they would have gotten in Virginia. This was in effect a land bonus to overlapping shareholders, which, of course, was considerable. The approved bill was then not acted upon until seven months later when in May 1621 at the Somers Company annual quarterly court, during which the annual election to Treasurer was held.
With the prospect of such bonus now open to shareholders, Southampton was able to unseat Smythe in the election that year, and John Ferrar was elected as his Deputy—by only a few votes. [99] Scott, Constitution, p. 274. He did so, because as suggested by Scott that “Since Smythe had been narrowly defeated in 1621 at the election for governor of the Somers Island company” in which Warwick had abstained from voting [99] Scott, Constitution, p. 278 that the land distribution deal secured the support of Warwick for Sandys faction’s dominance over the Somers Company.
Scott describes yet other deals and cross-company actions that Sandys employed., again presumably enlisting Warwick’s support in the Somers Company that reveal a degeneration in the quality and integrity of both company’s decision-making in the later years of 1622-23.The one element of the strategy Sandys had some control over was sending immigrants over—and that is what he concentrated on. This worked only so long as the lottery generated revenues sufficient to do so. In November, 1620 minutes of the company council meeting admitted that nearly every last pound raised by the lotteries had been spent. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 183. Then, in 1621, the king revoked the company’s right to conduct a lottery.
New Leadership—Governor Yeardley had got off to a rough start before he even left England. The knighthood affair cut him loose from Smythe, which probably was a blessing. Adopted by Sandys and Southampton Sandys pledged himself to the implementation of his London instructions. His relations with John Porys, the Secretary of the Colony, were “not close” and both had ties with Warwick that rendered them as rivals to each other. Porys was much of the mastermind in the implementation of the company reorganization, presiding over the first session (and the others that follow, I assume) of the new General Assembly.
Yeardley on the other hand had a role in the set of a judiciary “circuit court”, and handle all matters tobacco. From his arrival, frequent associations of Yeardley with his private investment association, the Southampton (formerly Smythe) hundred probably consumed much of his time. Of some temper, his background being military, Indian fighting, and Gates’ body guard, his ambitions, expressed through his marriage, and acquisition of a large estate, his closeness with Argall, all suggest he had some rough edges; he is oft criticized by others in their private letters.
Still he seems to have been faithful as Virginia conditions and realities permitted to good-faith implementation of his instructions. He was not inhibited in giving good advice to Sandys, and he took a consistent risk in telling the latter than Sandys’ immigration program caused a great deal of trouble for the colony—and making it clear too many people in Virginia meant famine, hard times and sickness. He wanted more supplies from England, regularly sent—including to those on the first voyage over who usually arrived in Virginia sick, mal-nourished, depressed, or buried at sea. At some point early on, he wrote to Sandys that he wanted to be replaced, citing his “unhappy duties” and wanting to spend more time on his plantation, which he felt was suffering from his neglect. He nominated a replacement, who was ignored by Sandys. Sandys appointed Sir Francis Wyatt, a son-in-law, a well-thought of aristocrat of competence, to replace Yeardley effective on November 18th when the three year term expired. Wyatt did replace Yeardley and we will discuss him below.
Second Phase–Sandys simply could not send over immigrants whenever it was possible to finance and send a ship from England; he had to time the immigrant to match the seasons, otherwise he was condemning them to encounter mortality rates that stunned England, never mind Virginians. This last mistake, so apparent to others, would very quickly come back to haunt him.
So, if the initial phase of the Greate Charter economic development and diversification plan as constructed by Sandys, Smythe and the Virginia Company shareholders previous to the 1619 coup, had largely come to little positive result, despite the immigration of several thousand settlers and artisans, Sandys, probably during the spring and summer of 1621, decided to redouble his efforts to commence a second phase. From all appearances the design of this second effort was wholly devised in London, and probably by those close to Sandys.
In Sandys mind, the key driver of Virginia growth was an increase in its population, and the importation of a larger workforce able, almost by definition, creating the capacity to produce more, thereby increasing the volume of exports, and reducing costs by the planting of more staples, food, supplies and such, thus relieving the Company of that burden. Craven asserts that priority was made not to amass sufficient supplies to keep the new settlers fed on the voyage, and then to support their existence until the sale of its produce, but rather get the crowd on the boat and send them quickly to Virginia, “creating an impression deliberately encouraged by the company that new arrivals must quickly become self-supporting”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 194. If so, it seems Sandys was insensitive to Yeardley’s previous correspondence, insensitive to the treatment of the settlers, and in general had learned little from the failure of the first phase.
Accordingly, summing the last of his available monetary resources, in the fall of 1621 provision and effort was made to send over a thousand settlers “under the terms of several patents issued to private associations” created specifically for the purpose of conducting each and various elements of the economic development plan”. The use of this organizational device, specific function investor-company owned entities, created a mechanism by which funds could be raised to pay such costs as the company encountered.
The fiscal effect of “paying for the costs” was of course illusionary as this was little more than a funding by issuing more debt to be paid in the future. Having accomplish such feats in my own economic development career, I feel qualified to assert such financial innovation is risky, can easily be short-sighted, and that whatever its good intentions can backfire through unforeseen events—like the Greate Massacre of 1622. These poor folk were to pay the costs over the next year.
The elements of the second phase were essentially replication of the first phase. If all the iron workers had died in the first phase, then send over another batch. Under the supervision and command of John Berkley a new group of ‘twenty skilled men” were recruited. Because the king really wanted silk, that element of economic diversification got special attention. More cocoons purchased from Europe were sent over during 1621. Mulberry trees, whose leaves the silkworms loved, were planted in many plantations. “Excellent books” were sent over by the Company to guide the Virginia planters. This dovetailed into some orchard and vineyard planting as well.
The new signature project, glass production, was staffed with skilled Italians, with a manager-commander Captain William Norton. Under his direction furnaces would be built to produce beads for the final making of various glass and pottery items. “Great stress was made on the possible production of naval stores” that produce silke grasses for roping, hemp and flax. Sandys instructions required all indentured or contract servants to stick to their original assignments, forbidden to migrate to “useless commodities” (tobacco).
Overseeing these economic development adventures was a newly created office or department headed by the the Treasurer of the Colony. Previously entrusted to the governor, the responsibility for economic development initiatives would after 1621 rest with that office and its occupant. To ensure the job would be done as intended by London, Edwin Sandys appointed his brother, the poet, George to voyage over and assume the office. His faithfulness and knowledge of ‘our intentions and counsels whereunto he hath been from time to time privy’ and committed to ‘the execution of all our orders, charters and instructions, tending to the setting up, increase and maintaining of the said Staple Commodities. George was also tasked with the collection of outstanding quitrents. He was granted by London fifteen hundred acres and fifty tenants, of which twenty-five were sent on the first ship in 1621.[99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 187-9
In the short time left to the Greate Charter permanent settlement plan implementation, only a few mulberry trees were planted, and more vineyards were planted. They produced literally one barrel of the stuff by early 1622, and the reaction to it in London was that it was a “musky cask, that the long voyage had spoiled it, that, in the true Sandys’s spirit the cask was a scandal and of no credit to the company The response ended with a “request” for some good wine. Nothing had come of the signature glass-making initiative, and the older in process iron-making initiative had yet to produce iron, saving “a little bar of iron”, which Sandy’s opponents used as support for their claim that Sandys’s plan had failed outright. The last shipment of settlers in the fall seems to have been more successful, fewer were sick, or got sick upon arrival (the fall, not spring or summer), but supplies were minimal, food was not plentiful
But as we enter into 1622, Craven describes Virginia as “a hopeless situation. Tobacco alone was produced in sufficient quantities to offer any possibility of payment [for the supplies sent over], and its poor quality together with marketing conditions at home [England] offered little prospect of profit … The situation in the colony was essentially the same as before 1621. … In truth, the only hopeful feature of the company’s finances was its inability to send colonists. This would have proved a real blessing to the colony had it not been that a large emigration continued to private plantations at the charge of individual associations of [investor] adventurers”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 193-4
Ron W. Coan 