Wilcomb E. Washburn

“ Labor was no longer a privilege allowed the individual by the community, but a precious gift contributed by the individual to the community. In sum, the ordinary people who had removed themselves to the New World soon discovered that they were no longer humble servants of great lords, but were themselves lords of the American earth. ”

“ Freemen who could not qualify as householders, even though they may have been grown sons living in their father's house, could not vote. It is significant that this first restriction on the right to vote in Virginia came not under a royal governor, but under so-called "Parliamentary" rule. So unpopular was this enactment that it was amended by an act of the Assembly of March 1656 on the grounds that "we conceive it something hard and unagreeable to reason that any persons shall pay equall taxes and yet have no votes in elections." ”

“ England, with her five or six millions, was not overpopulated by modern standards. Nor was she overpopulated by comparison with the great nations of the Orient such as China which could even in that period count its population in the hundreds of millions. But her few millions seemed at times to oppress the English soil. On the other hand, America was a relatively new home of the human species. Perhaps less than a million Indians lived within the present bounds of the United States, and the Indians with whom the English in Virginia came in contact numbered less than 10,000. ”

“ Not until a century later did the English realize that Dutch prosperity was caused not so much by hard work as by the policy of freeing trade from unnecessary restraints. As Dutch prosperity increased, Dutch ships appeared in every sea, underselling all rivals and paying better prices for local products. ”

“ But since these commissioners were sometimes the worst offenders against the policies of the Governor, Council, and Burgesses, justice was often sacrificed to interest, especially when Indians were involved. The leaders on the Eastern Shore, like Edmund Scarborough, were among the richest men and greatest landowners of the colony. They conducted the county's business as if it were their own, which indeed it was to a great extent. Their oppression of the Eastern Shore Indians makes a sorry history, despite the efforts of Governor Berkeley to restrain them. ”

“ Governor Harvey's Assembly of February 1632 directed that every man working in the ground should plant and tend at least two acres of corn per head, on penalty of forfeiture of his entire crop of tobacco. Harvey hoped to make Virginia "the granarie to his Majesty's Empire," as Sicily had been to Rome. Another act allowed corn to be sold for as high a price as could be obtained, contrary to the usual European and colonial habit of fixing prices on basic commodities used by the people. ”

“ The existence of a weak executive, dependent on the people for his authority, inevitably brought about a dispersal of power and authority from the center to the outer edges of settlement. [47] The explosive force of expansion was no longer limited by the strong hand of a royal Governor, and each increment of population in the colony and power in the hands of the local authorities added fuel to the combustion.
One of Virginia's frontiers at this time was the Eastern Shore. It was a frontier community because the law of the colonial government in Jamestown rarely extended to it. ”

“ Virginia's most important frontier region in the 1650's was the area along the Potomac River, although settlement went on simultaneously westward up the James, York, and Rappahannock, southward into Carolina, and northward up the Eastern Shore to Maryland. Sometimes individuals obtained grants to explore, settle, and monopolize the trade of these regions. But usually the expansion was catch as catch can. Since land travel was still more difficult than water travel, expansion up the Potomac, the last great unsettled tidewater river, was fastest. ”

“ In such circumstances it was natural that much of the power that remained in the hierarchy of church, state, and society in England should, in Virginia, pass to the ordinary people and be exercised through their representatives—the vestry and Burgesses. The people, not the King, became the patron of the Church of England in Virginia. Popular responsibility replaced clerical responsibility and added one more phase of life to those controlled directly by the people in the New World. ”

“ They insisted upon tendering the oaths of supremacy and allegiance to Lord Baltimore when he arrived in Virginia in October 1629 to consider a possible settlement, and reported to the King that he had refused to take those oaths. Charles I had married a Catholic, Henrietta Maria of France, and, like his father, James I, was not disposed to allow too rigorous penalties against those who professed religious allegiance to Rome. But the Parliament, and the people in general, feared and hated Catholics, believing their religious beliefs to be incompatible with loyalty to a Protestant state. ”

“ It is significant that Patrick Henry, years before the Revolution, should first have asserted the doctrine of popular responsibility and authority in a case—the celebrated "Parsons' Cause"—involving the people's authority over the church.
An even more significant indication of the shift in power in the government was the provision in one of the acts of the Assembly of 1643 that appeals from the General Court (composed of the Governor and Council, all appointees of the Crown) should be made to the Grand Assembly (composed of the representatives of the people plus the Governor and Council) . ”

“ He urged them to choose instead a more vigorous man from amongst their own number. But he did offer to accept the governorship directly from the House of Burgesses if the Council would concur with the Burgesses in offering it to him. He promised that if thereafter any supreme power in England succeeded in re-establishing its authority in Virginia he would immediately lay down his commission and "will live most submissively obedient to any power God shall set over me, as the experience of eight yeares have shewed I have done." ”

“ Opechancanough, King of the Pamunkey Indian confederation, planned and executed the massacre, which most historians attribute to the steadily increasing pressure exerted by the English on the Indians' lands. The white population had increased from 3,000 in 1630 to 8,000 in 1640, and more were pouring in yearly. Nearly four hundred English, living in exposed areas of the colony, reportedly lost their lives in the massacre. The gallant young Berkeley, as proficient a soldier as he was a playwright and courtier, struck back hard at the Indians. The entire colony was put on a war footing. ”

“ The merchants were particularly opposed to the desire of the Virginians to by-pass them and trade with foreign nations directly.
It is hard for us to realize today the immense importance of merchants and traders in influencing the colonial policies of the English government. Virginia was founded by a commercial company. All the early attempts at settlement were made by private persons who were willing to "adventure" their capital or their skill. Behind the great explorers stood private individuals who risked their money on the success of the voyage or settlement. ”

“ He compared the state of England with the state of Virginia, to the disadvantage of the former. The Parliamentary government of England, he asserted, did not represent the will of the people who would not endure their "slavery, if the sword at their throats did not compell them to languish under the misery they howrely suffer." As for Virginia, "there is not here an arbitrary hand that dares to touch the substance of either poore or [43] rich." Berkeley called on the Burgesses to support his stand against the act, asking:
What is it can be hoped for in a change, which we have not allready? ”

“ The English merchants who traded with Virginia formed a tight little group which used its favored position to charge excessive prices for English-made goods, and to give abnormally low prices for Virginia tobacco. Such a policy was not entirely owing to covetousness. The English economy was shackled by a conception of economic life which believed in the necessity of monopolies and restrictive devices of all sorts. The Dutch nation, [15] on the other hand, had thrown off many of the traditional mercantilist restraints on trade. ”

“ But his support came in large measure from the corn and vegetables growing in the fields which adjoined every Indian town. The Indians had a close-knit and harmonious community life. They were only indirectly touched by the white man's money economy and were usually content to raise only what food they needed for their own consumption. They were not infected with the restless, individualistic spirit of the white settler who constantly worked to accumulate a monetary surplus from the returns on his single cash crop, tobacco. ”

“ Men frequently wondered why he chose to waste his talents in the American wilderness when he might have achieved eminence at Court. The mystery will probably ever remain. In Virginia Berkeley had to work with many of the same Councilors who bedeviled Harvey, but Berkeley was able to get along well with them and with the Assembly and people of Virginia. No Governor of Virginia in the seventeenth century was ever so well or so deservedly loved by the people. ”

“ English merchants on purpose to affright and expell the Dutch, and make way for themselves to monopolize not onely our labours and fortunes, but even our persons." The declaration noted the baneful effects on the colony of the greed of the English merchants and pointed out that by ancient charter and right the inhabitants of Virginia were allowed to trade with any nation in amity with the King. ”

“ Had the King been less desirous of taking every planter's tobacco and less concerned with the neglect of staple commodities, he might well have governed the colony without calling the planters together in periodic "assemblies."
Dr. John Pott was elected by the Council on March 5, 1629, to succeed West as Governor, and he governed in Virginia for one year. Few men possess a less savory record than this first representative of the medical profession in America. ”

“ The settlers at Northumberland, on the south bank of the Potomac, were ordered to contribute to the cost of the war on the north side of the James. Chickacoan, as the area was known at first, had served for several years as a rallying point for Protestants disaffected with the government of Lord Baltimore, but this was the first official notice of the settlement by the Virginia Assembly. Settlement along the Potomac was significant, of course, because it placed a body of citizens farther from effective control than any had been in the past. ”

“ In this way the Indians might be kept out of the entire lower portion of the peninsula, the cattle kept in, and the colony provided with a secure base for the development of its economy. After the economy was flourishing, there would be a chance for finding the riches in the mountains to the west and the longed-for passage to the South Sea, so confidently believed to lie just beyond the Appalachians. All these enterprises presupposed the "winning of the Forest" between the York and the James, which Wyatt hoped to accomplish by means of his palisade scheme. ”

“ Tobacco was Virginia's primary economic interest, and the Virginians were willing to go to any lengths to advance that interest. They urged the King not to place any impediment to their "free trade," or right to sell their tobacco wherever they could, and mentioned that they had already constructed several barques and had begun trading with the Dutch plantation on Hudson's River. Governor Harvey asked why the English merchants could not afford to allow them a penny a pound for their tobacco when the Dutch paid eighteen pence per pound. ”

“ The Council had discouraged him from his mission, except in so far as it concerned the production of salt, and Pott had issued an order preventing him from leaving the colony to report to the King.
Another cause for grievance against Harvey was the peace he made with the local Indians. The colonists distrusted the Indians more than they distrusted other Europeans. The great massacre of 1622, when the Indians made a desperate attempt to destroy the English settlement, had placed Indian-white relations on a basis of perpetual enmity. ”

“ Virginia did not develop any cities or even towns during the period 1625-1660. Indeed, the towns, such as Jamestown and Henrico, that had earlier been established, declined in population or were totally abandoned. The immigrants who were funneled into the colony through Jamestown were soon attracted to the ever widening frontier. During the first twenty years colonists had lived in organized farming communities, separated from other such settlements, but strictly supervised by local "plantation commanders." ”

“ A merchant dealing with overseas trade could not be successful unless he had influence at Court. Even after the King took away the charter of the Virginia Company, merchants continued to apply pressure to the committees and commissions set up to advise the King on colonial policy. Although the colonists feared that Charles I might reinstitute a company over them, and the former representatives of the Virginia Company pressed for such a move, the merchants were not able to re-establish direct control over the colony. ”

“ Throughout the 1620's many planters neglected to grow corn or wheat, preferring to obtain their food supply by barter or seizure from the Indians, or by purchase from planters who were willing to divert their labor to such crops. Who would bother with grain when tobacco sold for as much per pound as grain did per bushel? Frenchmen, brought over to introduce vine-growing in the colony, neglected their specialty to plant tobacco and had to be restrained by an act of February 1632. ”

“ The period 1625-1660 in Virginia history is an important one for the study of the fission-fusion process in America. During those years Virginia's population increased perhaps twenty-five or thirty fold, and the settlements spread from a thin belt along the James River to the whole of Tidewater Virginia. Human atoms were propelled outwards in every direction in an uncontrolled and only feebly directed expansion. ”