Second Powhatan War Compels the Birth of the Local Virginia Policy System
The spark that jump-started a Virginia local Company policy system that was at minimum autonomous from the London Company policy system was the Greate Charter Second Instructions to the Governor in 1618. That created the institutions which were necessary for such a system. It was the Great Massacre and the Second Powhatan War, however, that served as a whack in the system’s butt to motivate the local Company elite to use these institutions without London Company validation, to enter into activities, set taxes for instance, and operate on its own agenda and conduct such activities as it deemed necessary without London Company approval.
Accordingly, it is necessary for us at this point to review the impact of the Massacre and War not just to understand the local elite’s use of the Greate Charter Company institution’s, but to understand how the War served as the forge in the formation of the Company elite that used these institutions.
A noted and respected authority on Indian-Early Virginian Relations, J. Frederick Fausz states early, pre-Greate Charter Indian policy was heavily impacted by Company (i.e. London) policies and mind set. The Second Powhatan War, he suggests, liberated Virginians from “inhibiting Virginia Company policies” and incrementally during the 1620’s they were able to set up their own relations with the tribes. Such relations evolved in the early twenties from perpetual war with the Powhatan to more trade friendly relations with the Susquehannock that led to trade ventures and actual alliances in the 1630’s. “In Virginia’s first decade and a half, Englishmen suffered under a double dependency that precluded friendly relations with Indians [and] crippled local initiative in policy-making … [that] jeopardized their very survival”. [99] J. Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds: Anglo-Indian Interest Groups and the Development of the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake”, in Lois Green Carr, Philip D. Morgan, and Jean B. Russo, Colonial Chesapeake Society (Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 50
Whatever the First Powhatan War accomplished or not, the tone of Virginian-Indian relations in that early period was the former viewed themselves as more superior and able to exert impact upon the neighboring tribes to the extent they made demands upon Indian lands and seized ahold of field that had been abandoned, or actually establishing site control as necessary to allow for the spread of tobacco planting during Dale and Argall periods. Immediately preceding Yeardley groups of investor-hundreds acquired patents from the Company and settled establishing their own plantations receiving from the company “a free hand in administering their enterprises almost as if they had planted a separate colony” did little but intensify the pressure by Virginians on Indian land thought to and including the Greate Charter period. [99] Lorena S. Walsh, Motives of Honor, Pleasure and Profit (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 2010), p. 19
A streak of missionary ethos did little to impress the Indians as English sought to anglicize them in culture and religion. Greate Charter initiatives, particularly those centered around the college project intensified the missionary element of English policy (ironically inspired by the Pocahontas-Rolfe trade mission). Dales’ policy of population dispersal from Jamestown led to colonists “dispersed among dozens of seemingly safe plantation “islands” segregated from, and oblivious to the sea of native neighbors surrounding them… Complacent about the disruptive ‘antient quarrels’ with the ‘treacherous’ Powhatans, most colonists maintained their ethnocentric insularity and concentrated on their profitable tobacco fields”. [99] J. Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 51 That changed in late 1621 when Sandys sent over a new governor with an enhanced group of his supporters who were to serve as the new local government of Virginia.
The instructions of this fine band of Sandys’ men, which include the likes of Governor Francis Wyatt (his son-in-law), his brother, George, his Kent gentry friend Reverend Haute Wyatt, his uncle by marriage and new Treasurer, Henry Fleet, and a young, freshly minted college grad, William Claiborne the new surveyor-general. This new infusion of Londoners-Kentish Sandys appointees was meant to replace Yeardley who had not impressed Sandys with his implementation of the various initiatives, and in particular had not countered, indeed reinforced London’s belief that Virginians and Virginia Company officials had spent more time on their plantations and hundreds, and had diverted workforce from the company lands to increase their own personal prosperity and profits.
From the new administration the expectation was a more focused and aggressive diversification of the economy and successful development of company lands for consumption and signature projects such as the college. That enthusiasm and optimism, however lasted less than five months when the March Greate Massacre reshuffled the power equilibrium and internal stability of the colony, pushing it into what we would call an existential crisis for survival.
From that crisis there emerged a new local elite which soon discovered that the Virginia Company in London was “bankrupt”, without resources or will to assist them, “discredited and divided” its internal leadership, and James’s court “distracted with European affairs”, left the day-to-day administration and leadership of the colony to resident elite led by “the inexperienced governor and his new councillors” who “were evenly divided between ‘men of Contemplation and discourse … and “men of action or experience. … They derived their strength by unifying diverse talents under adverse conditions. This motley crew of poets and profiteers, scholars and soldiers, quickly developed into an effective, if unlikely, oligarchy based on their common acquisitive ambitions. By fairly distributing the bountiful spoils of office and considering it ‘ill nature or worse nurture, to desire contention’ with their fellow oligarchs, Wyatt’s councillors successfully merged public service with private gain, and established the prototype for the [unit of government] the seventeenth century Virginia Council [99] J. Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds, p. 53
It was the Second Powhatan War which united this elite against a common enemy, the Powhatan, and drew from the population the support necessary to survive and to wage a war of survival and retribution. There emerged a class of the elite, what I call the “plantation conquistadores”, who transformed a non-existent militia into almost a plantation-based private army that became the dominant power in the respective large plantations and hundred. From these larger forces could be assembled by the Governor and his designees to conduct special campaigns whose goal was to push the Powhatan back and regain plantations lost during the Greate Massacre. Once having stabilized the power balance between the two opposing forces, these private militias functioned as entities utilized to secure foodstuffs and the like from the nearby natives. None of this was sanctioned, much of this was not known by the London authorities, either by the Company leadership, its divided shareholders, not even his royal Majesty and his Privy Council.
Although successful military campaigning enhanced the councillors [military conquistadores] reputations as guardians of public safety, the raids against the Powhatans were also key sources of personal wealth and influence. Rejecting the holy war of genocide called for by the Londoners as too impractical and unprofitable, Virginia’s leaders preferred to conduct modest harvest raids on nearby tribes so as not to interfere with tobacco production. These ‘harshe visitts’ and ‘feedfights’ for appropriating Powhatan maize provided the councilor-commanders with vast corn profits … and permitted their English servants to grown tobacco exclusively. By never dealing a deathblow to the Powhatans, Wyatt’s warlords were assured of capital for financing other projects and continuing justification for exploiting servant labor under their ‘[protection’. With captured Powhatan maize keeping them alive, and fear of Powhatan attacks keeping them in line, English laborers cultivated record amounts of tobacco for the Council oligarchs throughout the 1620’s. [99] J. Frederick Fausz, “Merging and Emerging Worlds, pp. 54-5
The Policy Environment of the Virginia Company in this Period
As we enter this period in 1621, Francis Bacon was Lord Chancellor. Known to us today as a great philosopher, scientist and intellectual, Bacon was, and had to be, a political powerhouse who spent a great deal of his life in and around the close circle of James I. His personal life was unknown to me previous to this research, but I would offer it was “complicated”, multi-dimensional, controversial, and his financial honesty and integrity was publicly questioned during his later life when he accumulated titles, land, and was in a position to greatly influence affairs. As a central member of court politics, he was deeply caught up in the rivalries and intrigues. All these factors came to a head when he came under attack in the 1621 Parliament.
Whatever stability a strong intelligent and long-standing confidant to the king provided over the past twenty years ended after the 1621 Parliament. Bacon got caught up in the crosshairs of parliament, Coke in particular, and the bitter divisive debate on monopolies and patents. By the beginning of 1622 on his way out of power, Bacon’s departure opened up the paths and passages of policy-making to two courtiers of prominence, Lionel Cranfield, the Exchequer, and George Villers, the Duke of Buckingham. Cranfield was promoted to Earl of Middlesex, a magnificent title for a former merchant.
A capable administrator, close at this point, 1622 to the king, Middlesex stepped into the tobacco contract negotiations, and carved a policy passageway out so the Virginia Company could preserve the revenues of tobacco export and achieve some measure of liquidity. The effort came to naught, indeed the opposite as Sandys used the escape policy to his own ends, or so it seemed, to many shareholders and the opposition faction. Accordingly events in 1623 became chaotic, Cranfield withdrew to the margins, and in the vacuum that followed an in-and-out Buckingham involved himself with the King as the King called forth an investigation and a crown commission to deal with the matter.
The point of this brief interlude is to alert the reader that in his last days, James’s court politics was in transition, flux, and even a bit of turmoil. The Virginia Company matter was not center to court intrigues and concern, but it it did occupy a position on its agenda. James, himself, always in-and-out on policy-making, operated more through staff, and by 1624 the Company had navigated between a number of intermediaries, until it would fall into the purview of yet another, Lord Mandeville. The succession of names in the below discussion serves our purposes in proving to the reader than the Company was beset on a stormy sea of court politics and courtiers during the declining and last days of James. James would pull the plug on the Virginia Company Virginia charter, but the process was on the whole capably managed by the succession of names.
Caught up in the rough waters of London politics, itself caught up into the drift of the English civil war bled into the Virginia 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 intrigues and events of the Thirty Years War created fears and opportunity for those engaged in foreign trade, privateering, and colonization. While 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 tossed about unable to set its own course.
In some ways most ominous to the future of the Virginia Company was the king’s decision in January 1621 to call Parliament into session. The king had an agenda, and so did Parliament. Both Sandys and John Ferrar were elected as M.P.s, and off to Parliament they went. So did Nathaniel Rich. So did Smythe, who had been defeated by Sandys in a Kent election, but then the King found him a spot and he too attended. Most ominous was the reality that followed the debates in the parliament which both confirmed and intensified the drift to an English civil war. The chasm between King and Parliament widened and the issue of monopolies, of which the Company and tobacco were examples, was an important theme of that disrupted parliament.
Less commented on, but as far as Virginia itself was concerned was the hollowing out of the Virginia Company organization which shattered its little remaining capacity to act and manage, leaving it simply unable to provide even an illusion of management in regards to Virginia affairs, no matter how desperate and existential they seemed to be. While off to London parliamentary sessions the Company’s key leaders went, the central office of the Virginia Company was stressed, focused to meeting the requirements of the Greate Charter initiatives, the single most critical of which was sending more, and more, settlers to Virginia—and then there was economic diversification.
To me, the 1621 Parliament was an auger of things to come. Hence I include an extended description and summary of it offered by Peter Ackroyd:
It was time to call a parliament; it assembled in the middle of 1621. It did not auger well that the king had to be carried to its opening in a chair. His legs and his feet were so weak that it was believed he would soon lose the use of them. He did not in any case desire to consult with the Commons on matters of policy. He was there to deliver his demands. He ordered them not to meddle with complaints against the king, the church of state matters. He himself would ensure that the proposed Spanish match between his son and the infanta [the daughter of the King of Spain] did not endanger the Protestant religion of England; he also stated that he would not allow his son-in-law’s Palatinate to be broken up. And that he needed money. It was the only reason he had summoned them … It was the first meeting of the Parliament for almost seven years, and as such became a clearing house for all the complaints and problems that had accrued in the interim… The weather outside was bitter.
His statement at the last session in December, 1621—On December 18, 1621, by candlelight in the evening, the Commons issued a ‘protestation’ in which they asserted that their privileges and indeed their lives, are the ancient and undoubted birthright and inheritance of the subjects of England. They had every right to discuss foreign affairs. Any matter that concerned the defense of the realm, or the state of religion, came within the scope of their counsel and debate. They demanded freedom of speech and freedom from arrest. He {James] called for the Journal [daily record] of that Commons, and with his own hand ripped out the ‘protestation. It now had no status. ‘I will govern” he said, ‘according to the commonweal but not according to the common will’. He then consigned Coke and Phelips to prison and confined Pym to his house [likewise Edwin Sandys–all leaders of the Commons] [99] Peter Ackroyd, Rebellion, the History of England from James I to the Glorious Revolution (Thomas Dunne Books, 2014), pp. 70-1, 74
In England at the time [1621] legal sovereign, that is the supreme authority in the government, was in a condition of unstable equilibrium. The Stuarts not only insisted upon the prerogatives they inherited from the Tudor monarchs, but even sought to amplify them, basing their claims to legal omnipotence upon an extramundane sanction. On the other hand Parliament strenuously opposed this contention, and relying mainly on precedents established before the Tudor era, claimed rights that tended toward its ultimate supremacy in government. The constitutional struggles of the age were fundamentally concerned with this conflict of view, but the Crown in the beginning held the advantage that long-established possession of power conferred. The close connect of the colonies with the Crown arose from the fact, that the King stood as the embodiment of the sovereignty of the English state.
The union of colony and metropolis was in no sense a personal one. In such a relation each community is self-sufficient and, through often influences the other, works out its destiny by means of its own resources. The English colonies, however were not sister colonies of England, but dependent local jurisdictions for whose welfare and safety the mother country had assumed responsibility. The Crown’s claim to this exclusive jurisdiction over the colonies was opposed by Parliament, which asserted that it had authority to legislate for the Empire.
In 1621, in the course of the debate in the House of Commons on the bill for the freedom of the American fisheries [at the center of which was the Virginia Company] the Secretary of State denied the competency of Parliament ‘to make any laws here for those Countries which are not yet annexed to this Crown’ and asserted that ‘this Bill was not proper for this House because it concerneth America’. In answer thereto, it was contended that Parliament could legally ‘make laws here for Virginia; for if the King will Consent to this Bill, passed here and by the Lords, this will control the Patent’. The Crown was able to resist such claims, and during the entire period until the eve of the Civil War, Parliament passed no act, directly affecting the colonies. [99] George Louis Beer, the Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578-1660 (Chapter X, p. 3 (estimated) Made in the United States, North Haven CT, 28 October, 2024)
1622: Company Polarization intensified into a Company civil war
Let’s remember the point being made in this module. I am presenting the case the Virginia Company, headquartered in London during the Sandys’ administration, was stressed and beleaguered to the point in 1620 that Sandys did not possess control over the Bermuda colony, and as we shall see had lost in the 1620 annual shareholder meeting his position as Treasurer of the Virginia Company. Working through his friend-proxy Southampton, the Sandys faction could achieve dominance over quarterly shareholder meetings of the Virginia Company, it had lost control over the Magazine, and was unable to set up its won viable alternative.
By that point the two colonies had also degenerated into warfare with each other. It was also apparent that James and the Privy Council had entered into the fray. As we enter into 1620, it will be demonstrated that what had been a limited warfare between the factions evolved into a full-fledged civil war, a war that led Sandys to mount what was an effective second coup in which using various voting practices, and ostracizing opponents from voting, he was able to dominate such shareholder meetings effectively becoming what was essential a dictatorial power that led the opposition shareholders to cease attendance at the shareholder meetings and instead appealing to the king to bring order to the Company.
The remainder of this module describes the key events and dynamics asserted above, and concluded in 1624 with the suspension, by the king, or the Virginia Company charter over Virginia (but not Bermuda).
The reader is reminded, yet again, the main point this history is making is that during this period until 1624 the Company was unable to effectively govern Virginia, consumed as it was with its own internal warfare in London. Thus by default the local Virginia Company elite, indeed compelling this elite, to assume local authority through use of the Greate Charter Company institutions to survive against Indian attack, and to do such activities and functions as were necessary to literally survive,(in particular to raise funds to do so) therefore compelling it to manage its economic base, essentially tobacco export, and conduct its war against the Powhatan without London Company support or even approval.
Indeed, for a noticeable portion of this period, it was very unclear how well the London Company and its shareholders, understood what was going on in Virginia, nevermind the conduct of the war which London demanded unrestricted warfare, while the colonists did not.
Finally before we enter into the detail of this period, I believe it helpful to lower the expectations of the readers regarding the capacity of the Virginia Company as a seventeenth century bureaucracy. To fully appreciate the state of the Virginia Company in this period, we must make the assertion that as a early modern, with more emphasis on the early, the Virginia Company was, as I have consistently stated, a bureaucratic experiment: a regulated foreign trade joint stock corporation chartered as a public partnership with James I and tasked for the first time with the permanent settlement of North American colonies, of which Virginia was first to take root.
What needs saying at this point is size or scale of the Company is very small indeed, and its mode of operations was as such considerably more personalistic, than formal. Beyond its shareholder organizational structure, its executive corporate bureaucracy, pretty much unstudied, was lodged in the private houses of first Smythe and than the Ferrar family. The latter was very large, and the former sizeable, but in both cases only a handful of clerks and administrators are known.
To the extent there were specialized structures we are not aware; we do know major bureaucratic functions, such as the lottery administration were “contracted or delegated out” to entitized outside of the Company formal structure. Smythe probably handled whatever his fiscal and audit functions in the same manner, likely bringing on board such expertise he could assign from other entities under his control. The word hap-hazard comes to mind. The very first Jamestown expedition seems to have been conducted by a handful of Smythe’s operatives and relatives, who were inexperienced in anything resembling the founding of a settlement, and who were probably under some pressure to launch the Virginia expedition in some haste.
The lack of resources through to 1613 seriously inhibited the Company’s ability to hire additional personnel, in particular its financing was through debt issuance for each supply ship and then expedition, with no ongoing revenues of scale other than the selling of shares in the company. I would not estimate the size of its formal bureaucracy during this period but I would be surprised if they exceeded the fingers of both hands.
On top of this, for those of us who think of bureaucrats or the civil service, as I am wont to do, the Virginia Company simply was not populated by any. Relatives of Smythe, friends of the Sandys’ faction and the occasional family members, such as Smythe’s ever-ready second in command Alderman Johnson, a very busy fellow and Mr. Fix It, were brought on board and left as their lives evolved or they were assigned other tasks elsewhere. Small bureaucracies of this size by nature were extremely personalistic.
Sandys in particular during this period populated the Company bureaucracy with some friends he recruited, such as Thomas Hobbes a young college graduate, to serve as audit clerk, and no doubt detailed with many other tasks, including becoming a voting shareholder. By 1623, it seems to me Company apparatus was confined to one Ferrar and what clerks he could muster. In this period the expression “blood out of a turnip” comes to mind.
It is also worth note to comment on the confusing and volatile political activities of the young Earl of Warwick during the early and middle twenties. His active and impactful involvement in the “northern’ Plymouth-Bristol Company, the sister company within the macro Virginia Company have already been commented on in other modules, but we also should be sensitive as to how young Warwick moved in circles quite different from his father. Arthur Percival Newton, coming from his interest in Puritan groupings in this period, discerned that “the breach with Spain in 1623 threw George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, the all-powerful favorite of James and Charles, on to the side of the anti-Spanish and Puritan party, and in 1625 he [Buckingham] became an adventurer along with Warwick for the discovery of the Northwest Passage. This alliance of Buckingham with the Puritans was marked by Warwick’s appointment as lord lieutenant of Essex; his brother Henry had been since 1618 in high favour at court and was one of Buckingham’s most intimate friends. In 1623 Henry was created Baron Kensington, was sent with Carlisle to France in 1624 to arrange Charles’s marriage with Louis XIII’s sister Henrietta Maria, and on his return was created the Earl of Holland. Holland henceforward became the Queen’s mouthpiece in English politics as was always hostile to the Spanish party at court … Warwick [himself] sided with Buckingham in the parliament of 1626” but he did not vote with the king later that year in the latter’s plan to pay for his intended war. Still in 1627, Warwick was able to engineer a commission from the king that permitted privateering against Spain and the founding of colonies in territories of his jurisdiction. His subsequent aggressive settlement and privateering agenda that followed further reinforces our concern that Warwick is a sort of Elon Musk like adventurer engaged in a number of seemingly incompatible adventures and contradicting politics. [99] Newton, the Colonizing Activities of English Puritans, Yale and Oxford University Presses, 1914), pp. 37-9
Reduced to one statement all this description can be summarized as it would not take much to consume the bureaucratic resources of the Virginia Company in a period after the lottery ceased to bring in revenues for the corporation. Whatever was available seems to have been employed to recruit immigrants, contract with ships and sea captains, sign contracts with representatives of association joint stock corporations, and supply ships to send immigrants over to the colonies. In between they probably provided service to the various shareholder councils and committees, and prepared reports and communications to outside bodies such as the Privy Council. I suspect figuring out what was going on in Virginia, was not in their job description to any great degree.
1622-23: The Bottom Falls Out of the Virginia Company
Simply put, with the exception of one issue, dealing with the king’s tobacco contract, the Virginia Council lost its policy-making coherence during 1622. Imploding in 1623, it was stripped of its right to govern Virginia, in effect placed in receivership, and continued on as a shell of itself, with its formal leadership hollowed out, reduced to thunderous cannons firing at each other. Given the desperate straits Virginia was in during these two years, the plight of the colony was mostly used by the warring parties against each other.
Scarce little effort was made to address the colony’s needs, or to actually provide assistance. If there is such a thing as organizational bankruptcy, the Virginia Company was there. The actual suspension of the Company charter in 1624 as far as Virginia governance went was of little significance other than it recognized reality and, surprisingly, assigned that responsibility to his royal Majesty. The age of the regulated joint stock corporation was over. Of the thirteen original colonies, Virginia was to be the only one; the age of the proprietary joint stock corporation were to begin.
The reader might assume that by these years, any pretense of the Company, as a coherent entity, was gone, and from these years we can think of the colony as almost totally reliant on itself. During these years the resident Company elite and its plantation conquistadors were running the colony, seizing ahold of the company structures to assume and carry out their governance. We are at that point where the Virginia narrative actually shifts to Virginia, with London an after-thought.
The Tobacco Contract of 1622-23
Of special interest to Americans, historians and otherwise, is why and how a tobacco monoculture established itself in colonial Virginia. What is more remarkable to me is the monoculture embedded itself so quickly. I will argue in this module that its essential development, social, political, as well as economic were well in place by the end of the Virginia Company tenure, certainly by 1630. That monoculture remains to this day a defining characteristic of the state’s early history, at least to, and through, the civil war, if not into the twentieth century through its production of cigarettes’.
Thus far in this history I have asserted several reasons for the monoculture, but I have finally reached a point in Virginia’s chronology that I can point to a significant episode that, in hindsight, is arguably the turning point in the institutionalization of tobacco in the Virginia economic base. It is the 1622-23 Tobacco Contract Episode.
As we begin the tale of that episode I offer the reader some insight at to what to expect. Tobacco was its own worst enemy. Few if any wanted it to be the primary export crop of Virginia. Virtually all company officials and shareholders, not to mention the King of England, wanted a lot more exports, a balanced economic base, and more consistent profits out of Virginia. That stinky weed was more than disliked. That England established a colony and all the benefit it got out of it was a stinky weed was disgraceful, shameful, and humiliating. But that is what the Virginia Company wound up giving them.
Why? Because tobacco was also its own best friend. Simply put, without tobacco in the 1620’s Virginia would likely have failed, and if so its tale would have been yet another story in alternative history. That stinky weed saved Virginia, only because it was the only economic friend Virginia had—and would have—that paid the bills. The tobacco contract episode of 1622-3 explains how that happened.
There was nothing inevitable, or planned, that led to the development and dominance of the Virginia tobacco monoculture. In my view we need not overthink its causes, nor should we embrace a single main cause for the monoculture as there were many, and the interplay among the factors adds to the blurring and blending that best explain why Virginia became so dominated by the stinky weed. To me the the interaction of multiple drivers interacting created an atmosphere or “policy environment” characterized by multiple pulls to create the monoculture and many counter pushes that tried to stop it.
The Virginia Company was buffeted internally and externally in its policy initiatives that attempted its installation of an sustainable economic base that the locals, left to themselves, found tobacco the only effective and realistic opportunity available to them to grow the colony, and more important survive from one year to the next. Ironically, the Virginia Company itself was unable to achieve its goal, a diversified economic base, primarily because it needed to fiscally survive and attract sustained investment in Virginia. As the settlers discovered on their own, tobacco was the only resources available to them the second half of the tweens, and the first half of the twenties.
Arthur Pierce Middleton summarized that position in his classic work, Tobacco Coast [99] Arthur Pierce Middleton, Tobacco Coast: a Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953).
Among the objectives of the Virginia Company in planting a colony … was to secure a fruitful land from which England might import all necessary commodities she then had to buy from foreign countries … With this in view the Virginia Company urged the colonists to send home a great variety of products—lumber, naval products, wine, skins and fish besides roots and herbs to be used medicinally or as dyestuffs. As none of these products commanded a sufficiently elastic market in England to make them suitable staples for Virginia [export], the colony languished during its early years. Eventually, as a result of experimentation, the Jamestown settlers stumbled upon a commodity that proved economically feasible … Becoming the rage almost overnight, tobacco captured the colonists imaginations like precious metal during a gold rush. They planted it in every available clearing … and by 1619 Virginia which three years before had sent eleven commodities to England, now sent nothing but tobacco and a little sassafras. [99] Arthur Pierce Middleton, Tobacco Coast: a Maritime History of Chesapeake Bay in the Colonial Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1953), pp. 105-6 .
In Middleton’s view, the main reason this was possible was “the [Chesapeake] Bay and its hundreds of miles of navigable tributaries made adoption of the staple possible, [thus] eliminating the need for cities and towns, and perpetuated a social and cultural dependence on Great Britain. [99] Gregory A. Stiverson, Forward: Tobacco Coast, p. ix. Making it “possible” for tobacco to spread through Virginia [and Maryland], however, is not the driving factor for the initial adoption of the crop by Virginians. In that Middleton focused primarily, if not overwhelmingly, on eighteenth century Virginia, his study becomes a classic in understanding the operation and dynamics of an economic base, a tobacco monoculture, that was already in place. I argue that monoculture, for all practical purposes, was founded previous to the Company’s loss of its charter to govern Virginia (1625).
Rather, as I shall argue in this section, a variety of drivers combined to force the Company to rely on tobacco to export—with the support of the King who hated it and who truly desired a diversified economic base for his colony—thus making it the best alternative for colonists to pay their bills and buy the foodstuffs and staples necessary to survive the year of planting, and offer opportunity for the attainment of resources for the next year. Those multiple drivers, as well as the fiscal and organizational implosion of the Virginia Company came to a culmination in the “tobacco contract” episode of 1620-22).
The Tobacco Contract-Defined
The so-called tobacco contract is little more than imposing customs duties and fees on tobacco to be imported into England. The duties and fees was by no means a crippling addition to the market price of tobacco in the period previous to 1621 or so. Determining the market price was more a function of the quality of the tobacco (i.e. demand), and the volume of . If tobacco placed in the market. Volumes rose after 1618 and the market price fell accordingly. If one were to chose the single most important factor tobacco profitability, it would be the dire effect increasing volumes of tobacco had on the price to be paid for tobacco upon export. Little known, most Virginia tobacco imported into England was reexported to Turkey and the various African markets, and sold at lower prices than paid in England.
Of note was that Virginia tobacco competed unfavorably with the more popular, better quality Spanish tobacco also imported into England and other markets in Europe. By 1620 it was evident that if Virginia tobacco were to enjoy success in England, the availability of Spanish tobacco needs be limited, and price of Spanish tobacco increased. Some form of protectionism could be employed to enhance the position of English colonies in the tobacco competition. As the reader shall soon see, protectionist tools such as volume quotas for import by the various parties, and the imposition of tariffs entered into the tobacco contract negotiations.
Still other costs and actions had a series effect on price as well as market demand. Previous to 1621, the most damaging action taken on market price was the decision of the 1618 shareholder court [board of director meeting] previous mentioned that set the price the company magazine would pay for both quality and inferior lots of tobacco. From the perspective of the planter, the price set at 3shilling for the better grade, and 18d or pence for the lesser grades.
In either case the Magazine was competed by its shareholders to buy Virginia planter produce at prices above the overall market level. With market prices falling, the company set price protected the Virginia planter but further crippled the Magazine. The shareholder action was set aside in 1621 when it became obvious the Magazines were effectively driven into near bankruptcy. A noticeably lower purchase price was set at that time—which of course when the negotiations for the king’s tobacco contract escalated.
To a certain extent, competition among the various British ports, and various farmers and commercial dealers did vary, and in its fashion opened up the overall system to smuggling. The Virginia Company under Sandys, despite the opposition of the Privy Council and the king, did send on occasion its export directly to Amsterdam Netherlands, bypassing any export to England. This, however, proved to be temporary because the low quality Virginia tobacco could not compete with the much preferred Spanish. From year to year, the Amsterdam market price suffered accordingly. In essence, the reader should sense a fluid market in which price volatility existed, but the advantage gleaned from this, relative to the inferior quality of Virginia tobacco, was small—and not looked with favor from English officials or the Crown.
The price of Virginia tobacco was further affected by England’s requirement that colonial tobacco be exported sole to England for both sale, including resale to other countries, and the imposition of fees and duties. Previous to 1618, Virginia enjoyed a tax and customs abatement by virtue of its royal charters. As luck would have it, when tobacco volumes increased, the abatement expired (1618, or 1621 for Bermuda). England did impose several fees on top of the customs duties; these fees were linked to the practice of contracting with “customs farmers” employed in the required purchase of tobacco upon arrival in England and the “farmer” would impose the levies on the price of the transaction.
Custom duties were imposed on weight, called at the time “subsidy”, and a second duty levied by the Crown, known as the imposition. The former lent itself to some manipulation of its methodology; the latter went directly to the King and bypassed the royal treasury—and Parliament. Impositions, therefore, given the king’s need for funds, and his distaste for tobacco, were a hard rock to break, and its impact on the price for Virginia tobacco was felt. To preserve his own flow of funds from the imposition the King and Privy Council by 1621 were willing to negotiate the rates for tonnage, and to sweeten the negotiation offer with various protectionist actions. Early on, one action was to forbid the planting and sale of English and Irish tobacco—which believe it or not, was of sufficient volume to offer new markets for Virginia import into England.
In January, 1620 the king through the Privy Council informed the Company of an increase in the subsidy rate. The increase generated discussion within the Company and there was a number of calculations made on various rates in the months that followed. The king did not back down and given its standing with the king at the time, the Company felt compelled to accede to the king’s proposal. Thus the first negotiations on the royal tobacco contract had started. The king did in fact sweeten his proposal by prohibiting English tobacco planting and sale. On the other hand, small fees were imposed for inspection (“garbling”).
The farming “monopoly” was sold to a group headed by Sir Thomas Roe for L16,000. From the Company’s vantage point, there was a fear the monopoly could push the sale of Spanish tobacco whose high price could support the cost of the farming group. In July, 1620 the Company complained, but the monopoly only granted the Company a quota of 55,000 pounds of tobacco to import into England, a reduction from the previous year.
The Virginia Company, led by Sandys, offered the quota poundage to the Somers Company (as we mentioned earlier), and itself took the risk and advantage of selling its tobacco directly to Middleburg (Netherlands) at a higher rate than the English monopoly paid. This practice, however, was not liked by either the Somers Company nor the Privy Council and clearly was a one time escape. The Company than turned to forces inside Parliament for legislation against the despised “monopoly; Parliament, however, got carried away with its reformist inclinations and only a combined effort of Sandys himself, Warwick and Smythe was able to persuade it to back off, and the proposed legislation failed.
The close call did impress the Privy Council of its need to step in, recall the Roe monopoly, and issue a new farm patent in December that placed import quotas only on Spanish tobacco and allowed the colonies, Virginia included, to import to England such volumes as the could and would. The Privy Council did make note of its opposition of direct sale to Holland in the future—and reasserted that all colony tobacco be sent directly to England. Thus the 1621 tobacco trade was settled, much to the dissatisfaction of the Company which the Privy Council took note.
The prospect of Virginia Company bankruptcy, the Virginia-Somers Companies civil war fuse with Tobacco Contract (June 1622-April 1623)
Surprisingly perhaps, in early 1622 the Privy Council made a “deal” to the two subsidiaries of the Virginia Company—a deal which proved to be a the final straw in Sandys’s governance of the Virginia Company. The context for the June 1622 Privy Council Tobacco Contract offer to the Virginia Companies (London and Somers) seems to have lay with the damaging effect of the 1621 ending of the Virginia Company lottery.
Left visible to all was the virtual bankruptcy of the companies magazines, and the reality that neither could make a profit from the purchase of planter tobacco, export to England, and sale at 1621-22 prices and custom duties-import quotas and market prices. In that tobacco sale seemed to be the only source of funds remaining available to the Company, the Lord Treasurer Lionel Cranfield proposed (secretly) to Sandys a tobacco-related initiative that promised, at least in theory, a financial solution to avoid bankruptcy and a continuation of Virginia settlement.
By 1622 it was obvious to all the ending of the lottery brought the Company to the literal brink of bankruptcy. Its outstanding debt of L2000 could no longer be serviced (paid), and the only discretionary funds available to conduct Company operations and the settlement of the colony were restricted to all practical purposes to those raised by private investors in association joint stock corporations beyond the direct control of the Company—and which were declining precipitously. That the bankruptcy of the Company served neither of the faction’s interest, and was a situation that embarrassed the king and was not congruent with this wishes demanded some sort of solution.
To this end, and recognizing the only future revenue sufficient for Virginia (and Bermuda) operations and settlement lay with tobacco revenues and some sort of reconciliation with the king’s need/desire to arrive at some contract for its importation to England. Lord Treasurer Cranfield, an appointee to the Privy Council (1619), a long-time (at least since 1613) member and participant in the affairs of the Virginia Company and the settlement of Virginia, and since 1613 surveyor-general of the customs seems to have been the author of a proposed solution to the Company’s dilemma.
Recently having married to a Earl of Buckingham family member (Buckingham being arguably the dominant faction in court politics of that period) he had acquired appointment as Earl of Middlesex, Cranfield was in a position of considerable strength and influence to broker a behind the scenes deal that could save the Company. By career Cranfield had been a gentry merchant, but his standing as Earl elevated him to the aristocracy that allowed him considerable access to the king as well.
According to Craven (p. 232, Dissolution), Cranfield also enjoyed friendly relations with Sandys which allowed him to directly deal with Sandys who at the time as the auditor of the Virginia Company, who for personal reasons (his wife’s illness) had left London, leaving Company affairs to the Ferrars. The actual date of their initial discussions is unknown precisely but it overlapped with the surprise attack of the Powhatan in March 1622 which, of course, was unknown to either party. Their discussions, which amounted to negotiations, took sufficient form only by June 5th, 1622 when Sandys brought to the shareholder court meeting a “proposed contract” with the government for a tobacco monopoly.
In this proposed monopoly the Virginia Company (the conglomerate joint stock corporation within which were the two subsidiaries (London/Virginia and Somers Companies)) would form a third joint stock corporation to manage the affairs of such a monopoly. Included in its terms were a tobacco contract congruent with the king, and the Privy Council. In essence, the larger Virginia Company would become a customs (farmer) monopoly exclusively empowered to trade and import tobacco into England.
The proposal was a major departure from the established practices of the period, as well as a creative innovative solution to a truly fractured but significant national project. In that the Virginia Company would be transformed into a customs monopoly, a structure that Sandys had devoted his parliamentary career in its opposition, the proposed deal was also no small departure from his previous and existing political positions. William Robert Scott makes note that “Sandys, the determined critic of exclusive privileges for foreign trade in 1604, by 1622 becomes the propounder of a monopoly much more far reaching than any of those he condemned” [99] William Robert Scott, the Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint Stock Companies to 1720 (Alpha Editions, Cambridge University Press, 1910), p. 276.
The essentials of the proposal, agreed to only in principle at that point, was that the larger company would be empowered to import all tobacco, including Spanish tobacco, and in return for that award by the king, would pay to the king an annual amount of L20,000 (or as later changed to a one-third ownership of the annual tobacco imported), in addition to the customary 5% subsidy for import. The Company would pay the costs of its transportation, and the king’s share of cost (subsidy and transportation) would be borne by the king. The June 5th proposal required importation of 80,000 pounds of Spanish tobacco which placed the Virginia Company in the awkward position of managing import and sale of its chief market competitor, but which in return allowed it to recognize profits associated with its sale. The king on the other hand had creatively arrived at his “tobacco contract’.
At the sparsely attended (more on that later) June 5th, 1622 shareholder meeting, Sandys was able to secure approval to set up a committee to negotiate the specific terms of the agreement, which upon the satisfaction of the parties would be brought to the shareholders of both the Somers and Virginia Companies for approval. After several weeks of negotiation a more formal proposal was resubmitted to both shareholder councils on July 1, 1622. In that session, the document was discussed, amendments made and offered, and the committee was tasked with continuing negotiations on points of disagreement and restructuring.
From that point on several months went by before a more final proposal was brought to the shareholder councils on November 27th, 1622. Sparsely attended (with Warwick faction not in attendance), the vote on November 27th was 21-20, even though the meeting was called in a special session with many of those who attended in Sandy’s faction [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 241. After explosive discussion it was approved and sent to Cranfield for his signing and execution.
The approved document disappeared from view, thrust into limbo through to February 12, 1623. The cause was an eruption in Virginia Council shareholder factions. The company’s civil war saturated the tobacco debate and reacted intensely against the agreement and aspects of the monopoly, especially salaries to Sandy’s officials. While the Second Powhatan War raged on in Virginia, London was consumed with the tobacco monopoly still unsigned agreement.
The reader should note that at this point, the literal future of the Virginia Company as a chartered joint stock corporation empowered to conduct the settlement of Virginia had entered into jeopardy, and a full scale internal war erupted ostensibly on the tobacco contract proposal, but in reality encompassing the totality of the disruption that had been developing since 1619.
What happened between November 27th, 1622 and February 1623? – First of all, it seems clear that both Smythe and Warwick factions had largely stropped attending shareholder meetings by 1622. The opposition to Sandys transitioned into the Somers Bermuda colony where their strength was marginally less than Sandys, and with a very slim majority, Sandys pretty much let them run their plantations and conduct their affairs as they wanted.
he himself was not heavily involved with either, delegating his deputy and family member, Alderman Johnson as his Virginia and Somers company delegate. Warwick relied on Nathaniel Rich, a close relative to do the same. The absence of the opposition left Sandys in control over the shareholder councils, and his use of them in June and July 1622 to introduce, discuss and approve of the proposed tobacco monopoly simply did not stir an interest quick enough for oppositional reaction to the initiative.
This also could explain why the extent to the Second Powhatan uprising did not permeate through the London shareholders. Whatever was known about the proposed tobacco monopoly or the true story of the Indian war was kept to a pretty closed circle. In that the companies lacked organizational capacity and had totally exhausted discretionary funding there was little the London companies could effectively do anyway. Existing on the razor’s edge, it is easy to sense the few in on the know within the Sandys faction played both matters close to their vest—the tobacco contract in particular because it was the lifeline for saving the company from what appeared to be a certain imminent fate. Craven provides support for the almost catatonic state of the companies in this period:
The terms of the tobacco agreement had not been concluded without strong opposition in the [shareholder] courts. It is true that the vote in the Virginia court of November 27, at which time final ratification of the contract was given, is reported as unanimous. But a few of those who later were so outspoken in their opposition were present at that court. For some time Sandys’ leading opponents had dropped regular attendance at courts, taking an active part in the company’s affairs as their own interests or those of their friends were affected, and they were frequently charged in succeeding months with having completely abandoned the courts except on occasion of trouble. During the tobacco negotiations they seem not to have been greatly concerned, and it was only with the announcement of plans for the management of the new monopoly (after November 27th) that they returned to raise their voices in the most bitter denunciation of the provisions for management and later of the contract itself [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 335
Judging by their initial bitter and vociferous reaction, the catalyst was their realization that the contract, as agreed to, included the creation of a new joint stock corporation, a subsidiary of the Virginia Company, whose officials would be paid rather high salaries ([99] confirmed by both Scott, p. 277 and Craven, pp. 235-6), and that the corporation would be able to dominated the policies and awards-benefits of the monopoly apart from the existing company shareholder councils. Further, it was pretty much known that Sandys himself was in rather dire financial situation (apparently accurate), and the perception was he was being paid off. In that each Virginia and Somers Company shareholder would have to sell their plantation’s tobacco to this body for export and import to England, the potential disruption that Sandys could exert on their own plantations and estates, seemed rather threatening. Through their domination of the Virginia Company and Somers company shareholder meetings, it was obvious that appointment to the new company would be restricted to member of the Sandys faction.
It is not surprising that there should have been strong opposition to these salaries. For their represented an extraordinarily large sum, amounting to L500 more than the company’s total indebtedness, which was large enough in itself to cause the greatest worry to the [shareholders]. It [also] would entail an additional burden on the tobacco of the plantations, which in the minds of its opponents was not only unnecessary, but a burden the planters were not able to bear. Within the next few months numerous counter proposals designed to reduce the cost at least by half, and some even more, were pressed upon the [shareholder] courts with utmost vigor by lieutenants of Warwick and Smythe. This excessive compensation of the managers [of the monopoly joint stock corporation] seemed proof enough that the leaders of the dominant party [Sandys’ faction] had endeavored to allocate to themselves all the benefits expected from the contract. … The manner in which the appropriation [new contract] had been passed gave grounds for the chief complaints of Smythe and Warwick, whose spokesmen quickly and loudly declared the measure had ben carried ‘foully and surreptitiously’ by those who were to benefit thereby. The salary schedule had been decided upon by the Sandys’ faction in committee, and there was no mention of the sum to be allowed until the extraordinary court of November 27th [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 236-7
The reaction started on December 4th 1622, the first shareholder council meeting after the contract was approved on November 27th. Samuel Wrote and Alderman Johnson led the attack and ‘expressed in a most violent manner their opposition to the arrangements”. With accusations of slander and dishonesty abounding, charges and expressions against particular persons, the meeting no doubt became a catharsis of all the resentment that had accumulated over the past several years. Scott takes particular umbrage regarding the salary issue, comparing Ferrar’s with that of Smythe’s aggregate recompense for his multi-year Treasurer, and he goes on to play with shareholder council voting patterns in 1620-1 and after 1622 to argue that the impact was quite negative within the aggregate shareholder community, to the extent that Scott questioned that a more honest voting system would have potentially ousted Sandys from his positions in the Company. His thrust, detailed in several pages uses many examples of shareholder abuses and schemes that accompanied the Company’s intensified civil war generated by the “deal’s salaries” [99] Scott, Constitution, pp. 278-84. Without doubt, Scott parts from Craven’s more restrained take on the the implosion of shareholder behavior, practices, and consequences.
Still in control of a majority of the council, however, the Sandys’ faction was able to focus the council upon the viciousness and uncivil behavior of their opponents, and turned the council into a body seeking to charge and suppress the opposition. The punishment of these two speakers in its turn carried over to the discussion of further shareholder councils through to February 5th 1623 when the former was expelled from attending future meetings of the council [with loss of vote, of course] for a year, and could only return with approval by the council. In February, 1623 the disruption increased even more at shareholder meetings, and by the end of that month a total of thirteen active shareholders [all being members of the opposition] were suspended from the Bermuda [shareholder] court alone. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 241.
It took the Virginia courts all of two months to agree on just what he [Wrote] had said, and what punishment was due his contemptuous words. Through the whole of January all business was set aside while the [shareholders] endeavored to verify the minutes of December 4th. Final sentence was not passed until February 5th [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 238
In the course of this struggle, the Warwick and Smythe factions formally joined, developed a combined strategy and committed to joint action. Sandys, more precisely, the opposition to, a mutual hatred of, Sandys was the core of their unity. “There had not been hitherto any strong alliance between Smythe and Warwick. They had embraced every opportunity to express their common dislike of Sandys, and had united to bring about his fall from office in 1620. But through a mutual hatred of Sir Edwin provided the basis for a coalition of these two groups, their union seems not to have been cemented until they joined hands in an attempt to overthrow the tobacco patent [of 1622]. Their plan of management affected deeply their chief interest in the American plantations, which was Bermuda tobacco. Their heaviest investments since 1619 … had been in the Somers Islands, where their interests now far outweighed those of their opponents … it is apparent that most of the tobacco from the younger plantation belong to members of the Smith-Warwick coalition. On the other hand the chief interest and investment of the Sandys’ party was undoubtedly in Virginia [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 238-9
During this contested period that ran from November thru February, Sandys (and Warwick on at least one occasion) took advantage of the Company shareholder voting on the basis of share ownership only, i.e. not a weighted vote of the basis of total shares held, by donating a single share to a friend, without payment, so he could attend and vote in a future council. Using this technique, Craven reports that Sandys was able to totally overwhelm shareholder voting in the Virginia Company, thus forcing the opposition to make their stand in the Somers Company council where Sandys was limited by Smythe’s and Warwick’s faction [both councils had to approve the future contract] [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 241-2
Finally, the tobacco contract came to a vote on February 20, 1623 in the Bermuda shareholder council, and the final tally left the Smith-Warwick coalition still in the minority, although they had twenty-four votes. Sandys election tactics had secured for him the approval of both councils. Immediately from that point, the Smith-Warwick coalition took their battle directly to the Privy Council, where they accused Sandys of rigging the vote. This done, they headed straight for a direct meeting with king.
As Craven then reports the shareholder councils were in ruin, totally in the control of Sandys: “After their defeat in February [20, 1623] Smythe and Warwick made no serious attempt to contest an issue in the courts of either company. … Their resentment was greater by virtue of the fact that they had much more at stake in the settlement of the tobacco question than their more numerous [shareholder] opponents. In the minority were found the larger number of the heaviest investors, men who in the number of shares held a decided majority. Had the franchise been based on the shares rather than the head, Smythe and Warwick would have controlled a clear majority. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p.242; see also p.243.
What The Hell Happened? – Well …Obviously, the Virginia Company imploded. It collapsed upon itself. Not only were its shareholders driven into frozen polarization, but the chief investors and landowners driven literally out of the shareholder meetings, into the arms of the King. Even more incredible, the immediate cause of the collapse, the approval of a contract transforming the company into a export-import tobacco monopoly, was an outcome nobody had not only never dreamed of, but absolutely didn’t want. A colony built around tobacco smoke was no one’s dream of a robust colonial economy. And yet that is exactly what would survive out of this mess.
Again, what had happened? To me at least four factors had come together to create a perfect storm of policy disorganization that manufactured not policy but chaos. (1) While many Americans have considered Edwin Sandys as a sort of John the Baptist, a precursor to American democracy and exceptionalism, Sandys at least as regards the tobacco contract episode, had undone whatever positive he had attempted with the Greate Charter reforms. (2) In part this was a reflection of England’s underlying drift into the English civil war. The parties involved reflected the tears into England’s social, economic and political fabric from which England’s early colonial venture could not escape; (3) Not entirely visible in this episode is the dynamics that played out within the opposition: a generational change in “merchant adventurers” had passed the torch with Warwick replacing Smythe, opening up a new path for England’s overseas commercial trade and colony-building; (4) and finally, we can see the well-intentioned first experimental joint stock corporation constructed-devised at a time when England lacked experience in overseas colonialism, and had not yet evolved a reasonably functional vehicle, a more modern structurally coherent corporation that could adopt a reasonably coherent settlement policy and tie both into investment capital suitable for that purpose.
There are more factors about but this is a good start. Ah well … Times do a’ change!
So What Happened after the Merchant Adventurers Walked Out? – In order to access the king on this matter, the merchant adventurers had to deal with the author of this tobacco contract monopoly deal, the Earl of Middlesex, our former merchant adventurer, Lord Lionel Cranfield.
On February 24th, these folk along with customs officials chief Sir John Wolstenholme (who will play a serious role in Virginia’s London politics leadership well into the 1630’s) met with Middlesex.
According the Craven, Cranfield was initially reluctant to change the deal, and he apparently pressed Southampton (still Treasurer and co-Administration of the Sandys’ faction) to press on and start importing Virginia tobacco into England. But over the next three weeks, the Privy Council abruptly rescinded the contract. The deal was cancelled. What likely caused the 180 degree turnaround was the merchant adventurers told him a little known secret that Sandys, over the last two years despite orders of the king through the Privy Council that the Company ship its export tobacco directly to England, had in fact continued Sandys old practice of shipping it direct to the Netherlands. Sandys had not acted in good faith on this matter.
Accordingly, when the Privy Council met to rescind the deal, Sandys, Cavendish and Nicholas Ferrar were taken out to the woodshed and severely spanked. About a week or two later the Privy Council reissued their order for direct import of Virginia tobacco to England. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 243-4; I would also urge the reader to review Cranfield’s parliamentary biography reveals a larger picture of Cranfield-Sandys/Southampton relationships during this time period beginning with the termination of the lottery previous to the company’s tobacco contract affair. The two were not the best of friends. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/cranfield-sir-lionel-1575-1645
However critical the sale of Virginia tobacco to the Netherlands might have been, Craven also credits the role of Warwick’s delegate, Nathaniel Rich, in making the case of the tobacco contract opponents to the Privy Council. Rich pressed hard on the impact the monopoly and its operation would negatively affect the colonies, especially Bermuda. In this argument the negative fiscal and trade repercussions of the monopoly, and the viability of the Company itself, and inhibit further settlement as well.
He frankly pointed out that those who had invested heavily thus far in the colony would find their plantations under fiscal attack, and certainly would be hard-pressed to invest further and grow the colony. Of course all of this centered around maintaining the sustainability of the tobacco trade as central to both. This is further evidence that despite the long-term desire of all for a more balanced and diversified colonial economic base, the non-diversified economic base was all they had at this point, and only through it could funds be raised to develop a non-diversified base. Rich also did not ignore the excessive salaries of those who were to operate the monopoly, and developed estimates that showed the monopoly would not benefit the king much more than the existing state of quotas and customs rates. More threatening to all, Rich suggested, was Spanish tobacco whose quota should be cut in half.
Rich’s argument seemingly carried much weight on the Privy Council. On March 25, 1623, the Privy Council “after due deliberation considered the [proposed tobacco monopoly contract] ‘prejudicial unto the Companies’, [and ordered] tobacco was now to be delivered to” the customers and farmers that had purchased it in accordance with rates than in effect. This was a blow to the king’s expectations of what he could harvest out of the tobacco export-import. Moreover, as Craven observed, “the long wearisome tobacco question [king’s contract] finally concluded upon the most advantageous terms enjoyed by the Virginia Company since 1619. All tobacco from the planters was to be brought into England, and after the payment of 9d duties was left to the free disposal of its individual owners. In addition to the benefits of reduced tariff rates, the tobacco of the plantations was to enjoy a virtual monopoly of the home [England] market except for a limited quantity of Spanish tobacco. The credit for these more favorable terms belongs to Nathaniel Rich as spokesman for the Warwick party”.[99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 249-50
The obvious reverse of the above summary was that Sandys and his faction had just underwent a serious pushback that in effect threatened his ability to maintain control, and the artificial dominance of his faction over both companies. Technically at the end of the day (March 25th, 1623) his majority votes still existed in the company, but the appeal of his opposition to the king and Privy Council had been completely successful. Equally obvious that outside the fragile majority of his votes within the Companies, the Privy Council and King were now arrayed against him.
By this time, the news of the Second Powhatan had permeated a larger audience, and whether or not they reflected the true or comprehensive state of affairs in Virginia at the time, they were not in the least favorable and, to a large extent, it was clear and obvious that Sandys’ Greate Charter reforms had not yielded the effect intended. Thus, it was likely no surprise to Sandys, that the next step was for the king to order a royal investigation of what the hell was going on in Virginia and the Virginia Company.
The Royal Investigation of 1623 – As the disruption caused by the final votes on the tobacco contract settled down in March 1623, hindsight allows us to realize that behind the scenes much was going on. Alderman Johnson was putting ink to parchment preparing a petition for the king, a former governor of Bermuda, Captain Nathaniel Butler, who, having spent the winter of 1622-23 in Virginia left the colony in January and arrived in England, “full of information”, sometime in March. He apparently wasted little time in drafting his version of affairs there entitled “Unmasked Face of Our Colony in Virginia as it was in the winter of the Year 1622”. A copy of the report was received by the Company on April 23, but earlier it had been officially sent, joined with Johnson’s completed petition, to the King and his Privy Council at some point previous in early April 1623.
The Chronology–The petition beseeched the king for the appointment of a royal commission to look into the condition and affairs pertaining to the then-current colony of Virginia commencing with the departure of the Smythe administration in 1619. The ostensible quest was to determine how much funds had been expended in the colony, to what purposes they had been put, and to determine the “true estate and condition of the plantation at this present”. Alderman Johnson also requested an “inquiry into all abuses and grievances arising from the conduct of the business as well as all wrongs and injuries’ done to any adventurers or planters”. From these investigations, Johnson called for recommendations as to how they may be corrected and the colony’s management be improved, differences reconciliated, injustices punished and unity and peace restored. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 258-9
The motives which prompted this appeal [the royal investigation of 1623] for royal interference were born not of one consideration alone, but of a strange mixture of personal jealousies and dislikes with an honest concern for the welfare of Virginia. It was to them both a duty and a labor of hate. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 251
The folks in Sandys faction reacted quickly and called for an immediate meeting scheduled on April 12. Bermuda’s Governor Cavendish convened the shareholder council of the Somers Corporation as well. They did not have a copy of the petition in their possession, but Edward Sackville, who was acquainted with “the general substance” briefly conveyed its contents and intents. Smythe, Warwick nor Johnson were present, but several of their faction were; the latter urged the shareholder council’s to defer their response until they could obtain a copy of what had been submitted. This request was rejected and the council instructed the company’s leadership to being preparing a formal rebuttal which should be sent to the Privy Council. Two reports were sent immediately to the Privy Council. The intent was that the Privy Council would have before it their own petition alongside Johnson’s.
The Privy Council called into order its first meeting on the petitions on April 17, 1623. The meeting generated “much heat and bitterness between [the parties] at first, fitter to perplex than to settle the business”. “Sir Edward Sackville carried himself so insolently that the king [who was in attendance] ‘was fain to take him down soundly and roundly’, but by aid of the lord treasurer [Cranville] he was able to make ‘his peace’ the next day. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 266-7.
Despite this rather bad start, the Privy Council decided to establish a commission, headed by Sir William Jones, the Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and appointed Sir Nicholas Fortesan, Sir Henry Bourchier, Sir Henry Spiller, Sir Francis Gofton, Sir Richard Sutton, and Sir William Pitt. The scope of the commissions action was extended to include the period under the Smythe administration. They further instructed the parties that their submittals, letters and materials be limited to relevant matters, and not include attacks upon the various parties. A letter was sent by the Privy Council to the “colonists” to notify them of the proceeding, a letter that sent on April 28th. Final approval of the commission, its scope and jurisdiction was issued on May 9, 1623.
Discussion and Proceedings of the Commission—That the matter was expedited, with follow through is evident at the pace of the response to the petition. The reader is free to make his or her own interpretation, but my suspicion was that Johnson-Smythe had prepared the ground within the king’s court, and that Warwick was involved due to the submission of Butler, a member of Warwick’s faction. Smythe did participate but the yeoman work for him was done by Johnson; as to Warwick, his delegate was Nathaniel Rich.
That the king attended the first meeting is also noteworthy as James, now well into his reign, was never noted as being firmly focused for any period of time on policy issues. Craven comments that “Of his personal interest in the colony there can be no doubt, but the attention given by him to its problems has probably been exaggerated. He was never noted for constant application to business, and here, as with so many other problems of his reign, his attention was probably only fitful and spasmodic. The actual work involved in hearing and deciding upon the petitions … and directing its labors devolved upon the lords of the Privy Council [and the appointees to the commission] [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 266
The mission of the commission was not to repair the Virginia Company, but to assess the state and condition of the Virginia colony, determine what had transpired in the settlement of the colony, and to make recommendations of what should be repaired and what changes should be made. To a considerable extent the mission was a reflection of the competence and success of the Company, but the Company itself was not the focus.
Having made this last point that the Company itself was not the focus rather it was a subset of its leaders, we must also observe that the Commission, commonly referred to as the Jones Commission, was so empowered, its jurisdiction so wide, its mission so fundamental that during its period of operation, the Jones Commission effectively usurped the power of the Company to manage affairs in Virginia on its own. Craven reports “The appointment of the Jones Commission ended, for all practical purposes, the control of the Virginia Company over the colony. The company lingered on as an agency chiefly through which the Sandys’ faction prepared its briefs for the attention of the commissioners, or through which orders from the commissioners might be implemented. All of the company’s records were impounded by the commission, which also took charge of all correspondence with the colony. The records of the company demonstrated all too clearly the bankrupt state of its finances” [99] Wesley Frank Craven, The Virginia Company of London, 1606-1624 (Virginia 350th Celebration Corporation, 1964), p. 37 In that it will conclude its task with the suspension of the Company’s Virginia charter, the Jones Commission stayed on to administer the colony, both in the period before the final judgment, and after. Historians have accordingly often referenced the Commission as acting as the receiver in a receivership.
The King’s missive to the colony emphasized his commitment to the colony and meant to encourage the colonists to do as well as possible, and to correct “misunderstandings and dissentions may be prevented … [so to] rebound to the particular contentment and benefit of every honest person”. Thus the royal investigation was conducted from the higher ground of policy-making, not as a hatchet job, nor an obvious taking of one side over the other.
As to the two parties involved in the civil war, they approached making their case differently. Smythe-Johnson’s petition made the case that Virginia was in disaster, the Company bankrupt and grossly indebted, stressed the high mortality rates which stood in the way of growing and developing the colony further—and stressed that each of these had been made worse over the last four years due to the mismanagement of the Company and its leadership. The case, in accordance with Craven’s perspective, was led and presented by Warwick’s Nathaniel Rich. As with the negotiations regarding the tobacco contract, the Warwick camp was the dominant partner in the attack on Sandys.
This position forced Sandys and his allies into a defensive reaction to the charges and conditions. Instead, they painted a picture far more positive, and stress an optimistic future for the colony. To the extent faults were too obvious to ignore or refute, the blame lay with the earlier Smythe administration. That proved to be a difficult task because the focus of the commission was on the here and now; if things were disasters when Smythe was replaced four years previous, the question as to why the problems had not been resolved, or at least a positive trend line demonstrated clearly reflected the strategies and governance of the Sandys administration.
In particular, the various aspects and elements of the signature Greate Charter reforms were called into question. Rich was able to demonstrate the Greate Charter reforms were “wild and vast projects” that consumed at least L5,000 and had not by 1623 returned a dime toward payment of debt or their own investment. Iron mining was a case in point; four years in the attempt literally nothing had been manufactured and the facilities themselves in ruins from the Indian war. The silk-making project was in little better state.
Rich would make the case Sandys had been warned that he rushed these projects, underfunded them, and watched their inconsistent implementation. Worse, Rich contended Sandys concealed the performance of his initiatives by “a regular system of ‘double and contradictory’ letters, having the leaders in the colony compose one letter for the public reading at the shareholder courts, and another for conveying to Sandys the true facts”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp, 272-4
As it became more apparent as the investigation developed that Virginia was in a terrible state and that the Greate Charter initiatives had come to no good end, the public reports, private writings and letters release by the Sandys administration stood in stark contrast to Virginia’s reality. Rich strongly pressed the point that Sandys had distorted the shareholder franchises and manipulated shareholder voting to the extent it was impossible to present and approve reforms and corrections. Even Craven was forced to admit the issue had validity (p. 275).
Rich further turned Sandys 1619 position that Virginia to that point only had tobacco to look to for export; four years later the dependence on tobacco was even more complete. Despite his attempt at a tobacco contract, the attack on the tobacco monoculture reflected what appears to have been a serious, if inconsistent, principle and objective of the king-one that could not be ignored by the Privy Council. Once again the irony of the dislike of tobacco and a determination to alter the tobacco monoculture was in this instance turned against Sandys who had made such a point four years previous.
Such was the character of the testimony presented by the Warwick party in support of its request for some reorganization of the Virginia Company. From beginning to end it was an indictment of Sandys management of the economic interests of the company and colony [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 276
As to the defense by the Sandys faction, Craven alerts his readers to a subtle but crucial distinction. It is his belief the attackers of the Sandys’ faction were just that—attackers of the Sandys’ faction and not attackers of the Virginia Company. The mistakes were made by the incumbent leaders of the Company, and the opposition made it abundantly clear that the faction was able to dominate the Company by means of manipulating the ballot box, the distribution of shares to friends to increase the number of shareholders, and finally by suppressing important and timely information so that the greater membership of the Company were not aware of what was transpiring in Virginia. The wish of the opposition was to retain the Company as the administrator of the colony, through the authority granted it by its charter.
Craven alerts us that from the beginning of the investigation by the royal commission, the majority of the Company shareholders at their various meetings did not draw a distinction between the Company and its leadership—they were one and the same. The attack therefore from their perspective was against the Company, and by implication wanted the Company separated from governance. That this was not the case was of little matter in that the Sandys’ defense was that opposition was attacking the Company, and wanted to replace the Company with something (a reorganized entity) the opposition could control. Whatever the state or substance of what was to be was never specified, largely because the opposition simply wanted the Sandys faction removed from the leadership of the Company. Still in the minds of many, including presumably a majority of Company shareholders the opposition was attacking the Company.
As noted earlier the Company had submitted two documents that constituted their initial petition to the king for an investigation by a royal commission. The first was a report ordered by Southampton in December, 1622. The report compared the state of Virginia with the present state of Virginia as of that time. It was entitled “a Declaration of the present state of Virginia with conditions in the past”. “The second document was a paper prepared by Lord Cavendish entitled “A Relation of the late proceedings of the Virginia and Somers Island Companies”. It addressed several of the attacks made by the opposition, and proposing a remedy. Both of these documents were read item by item during the investigation.
By May 7th a third document was delivered to the Commission, An Answer to a Petition delivered to his Majesty by Alderman Johnson in the names of sundry Adventurers and Planters of the Virginia and Somers Islands Plantations. Also, on the same date, a reply was submitted to the report of Nathaniel Butler, alluded to earlier, which was joined with the Johnson petition. In Craven’s Dissolution the thrust of these reports were completely economic in nature “and that there had been much improvement since Sandys’ election, and that the condition of the colony, contrary to their opponents claim was now more than hopeful” [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 287
As such the core of their defense lie in the sad state the opposition under Smythe had left the colony at the time of Sandys’ election. The history of the colony, sad, riven with high mortality rates, sickness, and a policy system we described earlier as a military colony, not to ignore the reality the Company was already near bankruptcy and indebt at that time. The Sandys’ program, the Greate Charter structures and initiatives, however, had reverse the sad state of affairs left to Sandys by Smythe. The shareholder councils during the Sandys period were better attended, at least doubled from the Smythe period, and excepting the outbursts of the opposition they were productive and efficient. Whatever disruption the Company governance had experienced during the Sandys’ administration were caused by the opposition. As to the opposition …
Their clamorous claim of injury to the old adventurers [shareholders] was entirely false, for the company had dealt in justice with all alike. The [Powhatan] massacre alone had given excuse for their accusations, and had it not been for this unhappy event, ‘these opposers must have been mute having nothing else wherewith to disgrace the Plantation. For the business had proceeded with steady improvement, as might be seen in the grant of forty-four land patents for private plantations in contrast to about six such grants in the previous administration, and in the employment of forty-two sail of ships, as opposed to not above twelve. Their good work had also been frequently attested to by benevolences amounting in all to L1500 [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 288-9
The obvious distress existing in Virginia at the time of the Commission, and the disruption in the reforms and economic initiatives introduced by Sandys since his ascent to leadership, were all attributed to the Indian attack and subsequent war. As to the course of that war, the defense stated that the future protection of the colonists would be secured upon the construction of a ‘fort at some good location’.[pp.289-90].
The defense finished up with a direct attack, written by Cavendish, on the motives and actions of the opposition. The maladministration of the colony and their own plantations by Sandys’ opposition, had driven them to transfer blame to the present administration they divert any attention that they were the authors of their own misery. The brunt of Cavendish’s attack fell on Warwick and his privateering, which raised potential dangers to the colonies, as well as scandal and loss to the Company.
The problem with this defense was that given the observable reality of Virginia’s then current condition, accompanied as it was by an Indian war for which the colony was totally unprepared, and a starvation that followed over the previous winter, any maladministration by Smythe and Anderson previous to 1619 added to it only meant that Virginia’s colonial experience had been a complete unmitigated failure, a failure shared by both competing administration.
On top of this the company when pressed by the Commission and Privy Council to provide a complete census of how many living colonists remained in Virginia as of 1624. As reported by the Company (Sandys faction) the total population of the colony was 1275, a number which was even worse than Butler’s estimation of 2000, and one-half of that claimed in the Company reports to the Commission. However, computed the mortality rate hovered around seventy-five percent of those who had settled in recent years [p. 302].
Craven asserted “the appallingly high death rate cut the ground from under the whole case for the company, and gave to its opponents their strongest point. It alone was sufficient to establish the basic truth in their charges of mismanagement, negligence, pestilence, and starvation. It was impossible for [the Sandys leadership] who were forced to admit that more than half the population had died to prove that [the Virginia settlers] had led a happy and prosperous life” as claimed in their reports to the Commission. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p302, 303.
Sandys’ defense, the Massacre and the Second Powhatan War had without doubt disrupted, if not crushed his initiatives to diversity the economy and deliver locally produced staples for the colonists’ benefit, it is, as we have demonstrated in previous modules, fairly evident from contemporary historical research that exclusivity of tobacco had not been reduced, and that the bulk of local staple production came from the Natives, either by trade or raiding. For all sorts of reasons, the iron collar of tobacco monoculture had not been broken or even threatened during the Sandys administration. These last conclusions made evident by the reports, data, and commentary, including from Virginians, submitted to the investigatory commission conducted by “Sir William Jones and his associates, the facts of the company’s maladministration could not long remain hidden” [If so, The result of the investigation was practically a foregone conclusion. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 303-4
The Decision–The commissioners continued their investigation until the end of June. At that time they informed James, “it was already apparent, especially by letters recently come from Virginia, that the colony’s state was most ‘weak and miserable’, and unless fast action were taken to improve the situation, ‘the whole plantation lay in danger of ruin’. … Their poverty and famine could be relieved only by sending corn and other provisions, ‘not by way of merchandise as had lately been used … but either of free gift or at reasonable rates’. It would also be necessary to send competent leadership to settle the Indian confrontation. They also noted that the public lotteries had provided some L30,000, the company’s funds were ‘entirely exhausted’, and the company remained heavily in debt.[99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 304
From their submission to James, in late June, it was evident the facts as they stated them meant there was little hope the present company could provide needed solutions to the current situation, if only for fiscal reasons. What followed their submission, however, was that in the months after while the king considered his options, the hostility between the two factions degenerated to incredible intensity, that Craven calls it a “white heat”. He places the blame mostly on Sandys who on Easter eve “attempted to steal a court” [shareholder council at the annual shareholder meeting, an attempt that was leaked to Warwick’s friends who ‘presented themselves unwelcomed’, and who were declared as traitors by Lord Sackville, who was followed up by Lord Cavendish, Sandy’s principals. The focus of their attack continued to be Warwick.
On May 7th this attack was followed up at another shareholder meeting by a letter written and read by Lord Cavendish, entitled “A Declaration made by the Council for Virginia and principal Assistants for the Somers Islands of their Judgements, touching one original great cause of the dissentions in the Companies and present oppositions”. In written form that Craven labels “as a long and malicious indictment of Warwick”. Every possible action taken by Warwick that could in any way be construed as damaging to the company or the colony were presented in terms and language so intense as to leave no doubt that Warwick was the great Satan of both. The reaction was predictable: “This disingenuous and distorted account of Warwick’s activities in the colonies constituted a severe indictment of his character and his record as an adventurer and naturally aroused him and his friends to great wrath”. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 305-6
In the shareholder meeting, the galleries’ had been stacked with women whose task was to spread out the news of this attack. It is possible this was a pale imitation of the staged marriage of John Smythe back in 1619. If so, this is almost certainly Southampton in action. Warwick, Craven later asserts, was particularly disturbed by this. He subsequently complained to the Privy Council that the episode was in violation of the instructions imposed on the parties by the Privy Council and the Commission.
The four offenders, including Sandys, Cavendish, and Sackville, were on May 13, 1623, “restrained of their Liberty, and confined to their several Lodgings or Housings, as persons guilty of a Contempt against the directions and commands of this Table, where they are to remain until His Majesty or this Board shall given further order. They were under house arrest that at least until the third week in June remained in effect. During that time street arguments occurred and “as the summer advanced the two courts [shareholder council meetings] became more turbulent and factious than ever’. The climax came at a meeting of the Somers Company council where Sandys “fell fowl of the Earl of Warwick”, strongly followed up by Cavendish, which led to Warwick and Cavendish agreeing to a duel.
The two lords both set out from London on July 17th where they could lawfully conduct their duel. Well publicized , and no secret the affair in progress was ordered to stop, the ports were closed to them, and orders issued they be returned to London. Cavendish apparently got sick en route and was rounded up and sent back. Warwick, dressed as a fisherman, did get to Holland in a small boat, but was found by an English embassy official in Brussels, and carried him back to Ghent, where King James issued an order for his return.
The publicity of the event brought shame upon all, but degraded the company and the dispute in a much larger public opinion. That only served to reinforce its June submission to the King, by adding to its jurisdiction a determination of what future actions should be taken in regards to the Company and the Colony. It is at this time, late summer 1623, that we can see the trend toward repudiating the current charter with the Company.
On July 28th the Attorney General was instructed by the Privy Council to issue a description of the process “recalling the patent [charter] and issuing another”. It was responded to on July 31st by the Solicitor-General, in a memo detailing how it may lawfully be accomplished. The problem would appear if the Company objected, as it would, and how that could be resolved.
Discussion then followed [actually it seemed to have started on July 22], and it was determined the Company should be pressed to agree to the dissolving of the charter, but it was also determined that before any action be taken by any party, the future government of the colony should be agreed upon by the Privy Council. Accordingly, a special commission of Privy Council was announced composed of Lords Chichester, Carew and Grandison to make a study of the matter. These lords were leaders of some note and had in common their governorships of Ireland. “Their understanding of the Irish problems was obviously expected to give them special qualification for deciding upon the future government of Virginia [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 311-12
Interestingly, the first issue they considered was the appropriateness of the regulated joint stock corporation as a vehicle for English colonization. Its early consideration strongly suggests that as the dispute within the companies and the reports to and findings of the royal Commission were in process that many in the king’s court, and in general had wondered the extent to which that form of corporation was compatible for effective and successful colonization—and that its inappropriateness was a prime cause of the present situation.
As the complaints of Warwick and Smythe suggested “that small [in number] and inexperienced adventurers [shareholders] were enabled to secure control of the [shareholder] courts to the injury of the plantations, and of more substantial investors”. Such complaints were also congruent with those of our old adventurer, Captain John Smith, and powerful members of the Privy Council such as Sir Julius Caesar. Indeed, earlier in 1620, a major reorganization of the moribund northern company (Bristol and Plymouth) had occurred previous to its issuance of the Plymouth patent. That reorganization did not employ the regulated joint stock corporation in any of its major bodies. In any event, the findings of the special committee were issued on October 8, 1623, and Ferrar was called before the Privy Council. He was informed that …
Having taken into his Princely consideration of the distressed estate of that Colony and Plantation occasioned as it seemeth by miscarriage of the government in that Company, it appeared the remedy could be had only ‘ by reducing the Government into the hands of a fewer number of governors near to those that were in the first Patents [charters] of the Plantation”. It was proposed that there should be issued a new charter under which the king would select a governor and twelve assistants to take over from the company all responsibilities of government. All future selections were to be made in the following manner: the assistants were to nominate three men from whom the king would choose one for governor, and vacancies in the ranks of the assistants were to be filled by the principle of cooptation with the king holding the power of veto. The governor and six assistants wre to be changed in this fashion every two years. As summarized by Craven “The machinery of government in London was to be duplicated in Virginia where there were to be a resident governor with twelve assistants selected by the governor and assistants in England subject to the approval of the king. The authorities in the colony were to be directly responsible to their superiors at home [England] who would be held responsible by the king [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 313-4
Let’s stop for a moment to assess this action delivered to the Company and its leadership in particular. First, while most historians stress the date of the return of the charter seals to the King on May 24th, 1624, the date by which the king determined the existing Virginia Company would cease its operations regarding Virginia is really October 8th, 1623. It was hoped the Virginia Company would voluntarily surrender its seals at that point, but as we shall very soon discover it chose to dispute the king’s decision both in the judicial courts and in Parliament.
Secondly, it is quite clear that the belief the Company had deteriorated to the point that its policy-making, hence governance of Virginia, was in a state of paralysis—a conclusion which we hoped to have demonstrated was evident a full two years or more previous. This deterioration is demonstrated by the incredibly chaotic “election” or “appointment” of Thomas Smythe as Virginia Company Treasurer on or about February 11, 1624. The events of this action were detailed by Scott [p. 286]. While the events in his narrative are a bit confusing, difficult to interpret, but it is fairly certain “something happened” and Smythe was indeed returned to his previous office by the Commission, and his confirmation by the Crown. It might be added that during this period, Sandys was engaged in actions, described in this module, regarding parliamentary bills and actions which were not successful, thanks in part to the king’s active opposition to parliament’s involvement in the matter. To be sure it is very likely most historians avert their eyes, and restrain their attention to this final period because it serves little purpose in their larger themes, and will certainly befuddle the reader. But its absence in the literature tempers the internal deterioration that had enveloped the Company by 1624, and the spread of its decay into parliamentary relations and its role in policy.
Thirdly, by reference to the reform of the problem being a corporate government “into the hands of a fewer number of governors” can be reduced into a simple statement too many unconstrained shareholders rocked the boat to the extent it could not achieve its purposes. Unconstrained shareholders could allow minorities to impose their will over the majority through manipulation of elections to control policy making bodies. This issue, as we shall also see shortly, was what the Commission determined destroyed the functionality of the Virginia Corporation.
Finally, I offer an observation that whatever I or the reader thought of the character, if not nature of the Stuart governance processes, the process by which the fate of the Virginia Company was decided was through sound legal investigation by a duly appointed neutral body that conducted itself properly, exercised responsible due diligence, and arrived at conclusions amply supported by the evidence. There was little that was arbitrary about it, even though it is equally obvious that the faction in charge of the Virginia Company was, if not hostile to the king, certainly opposed to many, if not most, of his policy preferences. In this instance, the King may not have given Sandys any favors, but he rendered him no injustice in process or decision.
The Aftermath, a Delaying Action—Ferrar was instructed by the Privy Council to hold a shareholder court within a week. The shareholder court was instructed to make a speedy decision, and was warned that any delay in handing over to the Commission the existing Company charter the government would take action against the Company. On October 15th, 120 shareholders, absent of which were Smythe, Warwick, Johnson and Rich and most shareholders associated with their factions. With 8 dissenting votes, the court requested a delay, and the Privy Council responded with the order to make a decision on surrendering the charter, in their words, ‘a cleare direct and finall Aunswere’.A second shareholder meeting, with 70 in attendance, and with nine dissidents, said it would not,
The normal course of action, the issuance of quo warranto, was issued from the King’s Bench on November 4th 1623, and the suit commence on November 28th. As such warrants were served only to those deemed to have used authority granted to them improperly. “The suit … was not issued against the company itself, nor against the whole body of [shareholders], but rather against that part of them which followed the leadership of Sandys”. Those shareholders who had not participated in the courts made clear they were willing to hand over the charter. This meant the Company’s existence, in particular its governance of the Somers Island Corporation, was not affected by this action. While the Company may have had to surrender is Virginia patent, it could continue to exist and manage the affairs of the other subsidiaries within its corporate structure. The interests of the private investors were assured there would be no action against them. Craven suggests that many hoped for a replication of the organization used in the 1620 reorganization of the northern subsidiary of the larger conglomerate Virginia Council. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 315-6
A company shareholder council held on November 12 received an update on the prospective judicial action, who had been served with a quo warranto. The council voted that these individuals were “the company” and hence could hire counsel paid for with company funds. The opposition shareholders petitioned the court against this and the court issued a dictum (December 8th) forbidding the use of company funds for defense by those who had received a quo warranto. With that the trial proceeded. The court reached a judgement day as early as April 11, 1624, but granted a delay until May 24th when the final judgement was issued. The court decided that the defense had provided “insufficient proof of their right to the privileges claimed and, therefore, convicted of usurpation of the said privileges, which were now assumed by the king. [p. 318]. Hence, the last session of the London Corporation of the Virginia Company was held on June 7, 1624, and that session concluded the formal records of the [London] Virginia Company.
In the interim Sandys turned for support from the Parliament which was in session. Lord Middlesex was in process of being impeached and Sandys endeavored to attach a remedy to the Virginia Company trial to the proceedings. A committee was formed, and the alleged injustices brought about on Sandys and the Company during the process of the royal investigatory commission were cited as actionable and an abuse. The petition was referred to a committee of the whole in parliament on May 28 1624 [four days following the final decision of the King’s Bench Court regarding the Company].
James responded by issue a letter to the Parliament on the 29th, informing the Commons that a final decision had already been made concerning the Virginia Company, and the Privy Council was in process of reviewing the Bench Court’s issuance. “And since interference by parliament would serve only to bring a renewal of factional feeling, all further discussion in the House was to be prohibited”. Choosing to pick a better battlefield for their objectives, parliament declined any further action on the Virginia question. [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp 319-321.
In the interim before the king assumed direct authority and management of the colony, the Privy Council placed Virginia under, in today’s terminology, receivership—which BTW the Jones Commission had been functioning as during the Commission proceedings—under the Jones Commission. A second commission was formed in October 24, 1623 to research and assess the situation in Virginia. That second commission composed of John Harvey, John Pory, Abraham Piersey, Samuel Mathews, and John Jefferson [pp. 322-3]. The activities and consequences of the second commission will be considered in a future module.
The decision on the questions of the company’s [future] charter and of the machinery of government in England came more slowly. In the end events did not proceed exactly according to plan. The new charter for the company was never issued. And while it continued on in the lose form of a trading company until after 1630, its importance ceases in 1624. Its stock of more than L100,000 had been irreparably lost, and completely bankrupted the company in time disappeared. [99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 329
The Jones Commission Hands Off to A Fact-Finding Commission
The Jones Commission, even after the departure of of Jones, continued in existence. It acted in many ways like a receivership and kept as best as it could the management of the colony together while it foreclosed on the Virginia Company after its suspended the Virginia Charter, and even after the suspension went into effect by court order, the King’s Bench, on May24th, 1624. The Privy Council, its parent, also remained involved;
On October 24th, 1623 the Privy Council created yet another commission which was in nature a fact-finding body tasked with directly ascertaining the state of affairs in Virginia. John Porys (former Secretary of the Colony who ran afoul of Sandys), a figure by this time in his own right, was its chief. Also appointed was John Harvey, later to be governor, Abraham Piersey, the former Smythe-Sandys cape merchant (and probably richest man in Virginia by that point), and Samuel Mathews, at that time a member of the Assembly, a plantation conquistador, former Argall protégé, and then planter (who was destined in my eyes as being the single most important leader of the First Migration). Another individual, John Jefferson was also appointed—but we do not know who he was, and he apparently was not active. Over the course of the First Commission, John Harvey assumed the most prominent role.
The task of the commission was to conduct a “a personal investigation of the fortifications, provisions, boats, public works, and general conditions of the colony. The [Virginia] governor (Wyatt) and Council [of State] was ordered to give them all possible assistance in their work” [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 322-3. With nothing but good intentions to discover what the hell was going on in Virginia so they could keep the place going, the commission members set off to Virginia to achieve their mission [Mathews was already in Virginia]. In this most treacherous of times, however, the folk in Virginia, no matter what faction they were, were extremely suspicious of what the “real” task and mission of the commission was—and they trusted it not at all. When the commission members arrived or started their job in Virginia they were given the least cooperation possible.
Interestingly, the chief Company officials in residence, naturally enough, had been members of the Sandys faction. Wyatt was married to Sandys’s daughter, and George Sandys, his brother. It is not likely they had any substantive connections with the Warwick-Sandys opposition, but there is an important “BUT”. The reaction by Sandys and the Ferrars to the desperate situation since March 1622 had generated in them a severe disappointment with Sandys and the London Company under his leadership. The external threat of royal action, however, prompted them to put aside these feelings and circle the wagon to protect Sandys from the onslaught amassed against hm.
Without making a point of it here, they had been on their own and had survived—with little help from them George Sandys during this time attempted to mobilize his family in England to get Edwin’s attention and to get help for Virginia. There is little evidence I uncovered to support any serious reaction from Sandys and Ferrar on that request. Craven asserts they had fears in 1624. However, that a return to the military colony state was in the cards, and no sense of where this Jones Commission takeover was going and how it would affect them. So their paranoia affected those around them, and the reaction again the second commission was intense.[99] Craven, Dissolution, p. 322
Harvey, after he arrived on February 14, 1624, was tasked specifically at determine the reliability of Captain Butler’s “Unmasked Face of our Colony”, which had been an element of Johnson’s petition and subsequent testimony that impacted the Jones Commission greatly. The Assembly which had been convened for Harvey’s due diligence, was already engaged in preparing its defense of conditions in Virginia which they believed was, a hatchet job on the colony.
Their report defended the performance of the Sandys administration and did everything possible to undermine the Johnson and Butler argument that things were going to hell in a hand basket. They did so, Craven asserts, because they wanted to safeguard the existence and autonomy of the Assembly. A certain degree of their fear was that Harvey himself was hugely distrusted . During the period Harvey had lived in Virginia, he created a ton of bad feelings, and he demonstrated at that time little sympathy for the House of Burgesses in particular
So on March 2, 1624 when Harvey attempted to secure the Assembly’s agreement with a draft of what he was to report to the Privy Council, the Burgesses would have none of it. To a considerable degree that was a natural reaction to what Harvey had written in the draft. It was an unqualified endorsement of the the king, and his takeover of the charter and governance of Virginia. Tossed in for good measure, was his recommendation that land patents made during the Sandys period be revoked—that meant taking away a huge body of land from the existing leaders, Burgesses and freeholders, and leaving a number destitute if not homeless. His explanation was that these land patents stood in the way of the king regaining rightfully land given away by the Company. Without out any doubt, this activated what would become the third rail of Virginia post-company politics; it was the nuclear bomb of Virginia policy-making for a generation later.
Rejected on this matter, Harvey continued his mission to develop information on the condition of the colony at that time. He sought info on where to locate future fortifications, the state of relations with the Powhatan, the future of the plantations still in existence, and “the best means for attaining the hope of a prosperous colony”. He did suggest a fortification location (Point Comfort); he concluded relations with the Powhatan had deteriorated to the point of no return, and the “greatest problem in securing a revenge on them was the shortage of man power. His assessment of Virginia’s future, however, was as unqualified as could be:
[Virginia was] the goodliest parts of the earth, full of rivers, good soil, fruits, and other gifts of nature. … And there was of little doubt of the early development of Virginia into a prosperous state, provided they were given adequate support from home against the natives, and newly arriving colonists came well equipped with cattle, food, and clothing. Special care should be had that’ ships come not over pested [too frequently] and with that plentie and goodness of diet which is provided in England, but seldome performed’. [Further] immigrants should first provide themselves with good houses, and for the first year should plant only corn, and a little tobacco to pay for their clothing. A supply of malt for the making of small beer would prevent physical disorders, resulting from the unaccustomed drinking of water. When by the guidance of these rules, the colony was well-settled with people and provisions, they might proceed to the discovery of the land and possible products for [England] [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 324-5
From the mouth of a improvident fool had come a rather sound policy for Virginia settlement, and siren call to save the colony and not abandon it.
During the summer [August] of 1623, the Privy Council had sent over a magazine of food valued at L700. They had been warned to produce staples and not tobacco. To this landed shareholders had invested L1,800 in their plantations to rebuild them. Unfortunately, a good deal of this was canceled out by the landing of about 300 new colonists, without any excess food supplies. To this the Virginia government had complained, yet again, in January, 1624 that “the company’s ships had come ‘pestered (too frequently] Contrary to your agreements. Victualed with mustie bread, the relics of former Voyages, and stinckinge beer, heretofore so ernestly Complained, in great parte the cause of that mortalitie, which is imputed alone to the Countrey” [99] Craven, Dissolution, pp. 325-6
Virginia had survived by raiding Indian fields and villages and fishing. Except for a shortage of powder and ammunition, there was no starvation and the colony had survived the winter. Harvey reinforced this state of affairs with a letter to Nathaniel Rich (April, 24, 1624), and he asserted that a decisive defeat of the Powhatan had been rendered, and that “the Plantation with good government would undoubtedly flourish
The Third Commission (Mandeville Commission), Death of James &Ascension of Charles–
Harvey’s report was placed in the hands of a third commission established by the Privy Council on June 24, 1624. Chaired by Lord President, Mandeville, and including Lords Paget and Chichester, with Secretaries Calvert (of future Maryland fame) & Conway; Attorney-General Coventry; Solicitor-General Heath, Sir Richard Weston, Chancellor of the Exchequer; Sir Thomas Edwards, the Treasurer of the (King’s) Household; Sir John Suckling, Controller of the Household; Sir Robert Killegrew, Sir Thomas Smythe, Sir Francis Gofton, Sir John Wolstenhome, and Alderman Johnson. From this list of names, the reader might think of it as a “who’s who” in James’s “get things done right” in his near death Rolodex.
James would die on March 25th 1625, but he was already in failing health when the Mandeville Commission was set in place. From a king not noted for his attention to detail, and sometimes casual, at least intermittent commitment to quality policy-making, James attached a preface which included his intention for the Third Commission to reform the structure and affairs of Virginia, and the reconstruction of a new Virginia Company charter to replace the one taken away. It is worth note that the Virginia Company retained the right to govern the colony of Bermuda, and did so to 1684. Thus the reader ought keep in their mind that the Virginia Company was still ongoing to that point and still occupied a role in the post 1624 Virginia policy environment. That role, quite impactful at times, suggests to me that I consider the Virginia Company heritage on the political and economic, if not social development of Virginia continued at minimum to 1639, if not 1643.
Recognizing the who’s who nature he specified a quorum of six, with a minimum of two on the Privy Council. He tasked the Commission to propose and impose its reforms and reorganizations as expeditiously as possible (possibly because of his ill health), and instructed it to work closely with the Privy Council and report their actions to it. The preface which, I believe, was issued on July 15th, 1624 was clear the king was discouraged most by the reality “that most of the [people sent to Virginia] were dead, and that those that remained alive were living in great want”, although the land itself showed great promise. “The blame for its misfortunes … laid upon the company … in which much trouble had resulted from placing the government in the hands of too many men” [which I interpret as the adverse consequences of shareholder democracy perverted when placed into the hands of a few rival factions].
That was why the company charter had been “dissolved”. In its place the Third Commission was to replace the company and manage all the affairs of Virginia. Rectification of these errors once completed, the king reiterated his past intention of issuing an new charter and returning Virginia to the “adventurers”. Interestingly, the reform of government in Virginia was identified as the most immediate problem to be addressed. Craven offers his insight into this with a summation that concludes his book, Dissolution:
The story, as we [Craven] have found it, is essentially one of commercial disappointment. Frequent mistakes in policy, and in execution though years of unsuccessful pioneering in the field of colonial adventure had contributed to a heavy indebtedness under which the company languished without much prospect of relief. The difficulties of the situation, and the conflicting interests of the adventurers [Virginia Company shareholders] had bred faction and distrust among them and left little disposition to cooperate for the removal of this burden. The [economic] failure in Virginia, the bankruptcy of the joint stock [corporation], and the bitter strife within the courts [company shareholder meetings] seemed sufficient proof to the king and his councillors of the incapacity of the company’s leadership under existing conditions [in 1624], and organization to achieve the high purposes for which the business [colonization] was designed. For a corporation thus bankrupted in purse and in morale, it was both natural and desirable to establish a receivership as the first step towards some reorganization, whereby the affairs of the colony might be placed in a more secure footing.
On August 26th1624 , the king appointed that Virginia government: Francis Wyatt to be continued as governor, and to his Council of State he appointed Francis West (of the De la Warr), former governor George Yeardley, former Treasurer still in residence George Sandys, Roger Smyth, Ralph Hamor, John Martin, John Harvey (who was not in residence and did not attend), Samuel Mathews, Abraham Piersey (both of the Second Commission) Isaac Madison, and Surveyor General, William Claiborne—all “subject to such instructions as were given by the king or by his commissioners. No mention was made regarding the Assembly or its role. Craven after some review of the implications of this, concluded with the observation:
Under such circumstances [as existed at that time] it is not impossible that the assembly received little thought or, if it did, that it was considered advisable to leave its position in the new scheme to be determined upon more deliberation … if the assembly was deliberately left out of all plans, the decision was dictated not primarily by objections to the assembly itself, but by the problems nearer home [England] [99] Warren, Dissolution, pp. 331-2
As events turned out, no new charter to the Virginia Company was issued, but as the reader will discover that option did not disappear from impacting the course of Virginia-relevant policy-making, hence its potential exerted serious and negative impact on the political culture and the policy positions of the Virginia elite through 1639.
Ron W. Coan 