[1622 A.D.] came to an end. The colony still remained a losing concern. The disputes between the adherents of Sir Thomas Smith and the present administration grew every day more vehement. The stockholders had become quite numerous, and the affairs of the company gave rise, in the courts of proprietors, to very lively debates. The king wished to dictate the choice of a treasurer more courtly than Southampton, and less an opponent of royal prerogative. The farmers of the customs attempted to levy an excessive duty on tobacco, and the company, to escape it, sent theirs to Holland. An order in council forbade the exportation of colonial produce to foreign countries unless it had first paid duties in England - the first germ of that colonial system afterward sanctioned by parliamentary enactment, and one of the principal features in the subsequent relations of the mother country to the colonies. Other orders in council, more favourable to Virginia, but having in view the same object of augmenting the royal revenue, prohibited the importation of Spanish tobacco, or its cultivation in England.

Southampton and his adherents in the Virginia Company belonged to the rising party in favour of parliamentary and popular rights as opposed to the royal prerogative. With more conformity to their principles than is always displayed in like cases, they induced the company to confirm, by special ordinance, the privilege of a general assembly, already conceded to the colony by Yeardley, probably at their suggestion. This ordinance, sent out by Sir Francis Wyatt, appointed to supersede Yeardley as governor, granted a constitution to Virginia, modeled after that of the mother country, and itself the model, or at least the prototype, of most of the governments of English origin subsequently established in America. For the enactment of local laws, the governor and council appointed by the company were to be joined by delegates chosen by the people, the whole to be known as the general assembly. For many years they sat together as one body, but for the passage of any law the separate assent of the deputies, the council, and the governor was required. Even enactments thus sanctioned might still be set aside by the company. The governor and council acted as a court of law, and held quarterly sessions for that purpose; but an appeal lay to the general assembly, and thence to the company. The laws of England were considered to be in force in the colony, the colonial legislation extending only to local matters.

Simultaneously with this civil constitution an ecclesiastical organisation was introduced. The plantations were divided into parishes, for the endowment of which contributions were collected in England. A glebe of a hundred acres, cultivated by six indented tenants, was allowed by the company to each clergyman, to which was added a salary to be paid by a parish tax. The governor was instructed to uphold public worship according to the forms and discipline of the Church of England, and to avoid "all factious and needless novelties" a caution, no doubt, against Puritan ideas, at this time much on the increase in England, and not without partisans even in Virginia.

Wyatt, the new governor, was instructed to restrict the planters to a hundred weight of tobacco for each man employed in its cultivation; to turn the attention of the colonists to corn, mulberry trees, vines, and cattle; and to look after the glass and iron works. He was also to cultivate a good understanding with the natives; but this injunction, unfortunately, came too late.

THE INDIAN MASSACRE (1622 A.D.)

Powhatan was dead. His successor was Opechancanough, a bold and cunning chief, always hostile to the English. Blood had several times been

[1622-1624 A.D.]

shed on both sides, especially in the earlier years of the colony, but as yet there had been no formidable or protracted hostilities. The colonists, confident in their firearms, regarded with contempt the bows and clubs of the Indians. The Indian villages, with their cornfields of cleared lands, fertile spots along the banks of the rivers, offered tempting locations to the new comers. Quite unsuspicious of danger from a people whose simplicity they derided, and whose patience they despised, the colonists had neglected their military exercises, and had dropped all precautions for defence. In disregard of the proclamations which forbade teaching the Indians the use of firearms, they were employed as fowlers and huntsmen by the colonists, and freely admitted to the plantations. Provoked by the murder of one of their principal warriors, and taking advantage of this carelessness and familiarity, at an hour appointed beforehand they fell at once upon every settlement (March 22nd, 1622). A converted Indian gave warning the night before, in season to save Jamestown and a few of the neighbouring plantations, otherwise the massacre might have been much more extensive. As it was, three hundred and fifty persons perished in the first surprise, including six councilors. Several settlements, though taken unawares, made a brave resistance, and repulsed the assailants.

A bloody war ensued, of the details of which we know little. Sickness and famine added their horrors, and within a brief period the colonists were reduced from four thousand to twenty-five hundred, concentrated, for convenience of defense, in six settlements. The university estate was abandoned, the glass and iron works were destroyed. But the white men soon recovered their wonted superiority. The Indians, treacherously entrapped, were slain without mercy. Driven from the James and York rivers, their fields and villages were occupied by the colonists. Greatly reduced in number, they were soon disabled from doing much damage, but no settled peace was made till fourteen years had expired.

The breaking out of this war and the threatened ruin of the colony served to aggravate the dissensions of the company, which presently reached a high pitch. The minority appealed to the king, who ordered the records to be seized, and appointed commissioners to investigate the company's affairs. Other commissioners were soon after appointed, to proceed to Virginia, to examine on the spot the condition of the colony, the control of which the king had determined to assume.

About the time of the arrival of these commissioners (March, 1624), the first extant colony statutes were enacted. Thirty-five acts, very concisely expressed, repealed all prior laws, and shed a clear and certain light upon the condition of the colony. The first acts, as in many subsequent codifications of the Virginia statutes, relate to the church. Absence from public worship, "without allowable excuse," exposed to the forfeiture of a pound of tobacco, or fifty pounds if the absence continued for a month. The celebration of divine service was to be in conformity to the canons of the English church. The ministers' salaries were to be paid out of the first gathered and best tobacco and corn; and no man was to dispose of his tobacco before paying his church dues, under pain of paying double. The proclamations formerly set forth against drunkenness and swearing were confirmed as law, and the church wardens were to present all such offenders.

The governor was to lay no taxes of any kind, except by authority of the assembly; and the expenditure, as well as levy of all public money, was to be by order of that body only. The governor was not to withdraw the inhabitants from their private employments for any work of his own, under any

[1624 A.D.] colour; and if, in the intervals of the assembly, men were needed for the public service, the whole council must concur in the levy. The old planters, before Sir Thomas Gates' last coming, "and their posterity," were to be exempt from personal service in the Indian war except as officers a provision afterward several times re-enacted, with the omission, however, of the hereditary clause The burgesses were privileged from arrest going to, coming from, and during the assembly. For convenience of "the more distant parts," Elizabeth City, at the mouth of James river, and Charles City, at the junction of the Appomattox, monthly courts were to be holden by special commissioners, as an intermediate tribunal between commanders of plantations and the quarterly courts held by the governor and council.

Every dwelling house was to be palisadoed for defence, and none were to go abroad, except in parties and armed, not even to work; and watch was to be kept at night. No powder was to be spent unnecessarily at drinking frolics or other entertainments. At the beginning of July, the inhabitants of every plantation were to fall upon "their adjoining salvages," as they had done the last year. Any persons wounded in this service were to be cured at the public charge, and if permanently lamed were to have a maintenance suitable to their quality. To pay the expenses and debts occasioned by the war, ten pounds of tobacco per head were to be levied on each male colonist.

THE VIRGINIA COMPANY DISSOLVED BY JAMES I (1624 A.D.)

Evident allusion appears in this code to the controversy then pending between the king and the company. No person, upon rumour of supposed change, was to presume to be disobedient to the present government, nor servants to their masters, "at their uttermost peril." The last law of the code levies a tax of four pounds of tobacco per head, to pay the expense of sending an agent to England to look after the interests of the colony and to solicit the exclusion of foreign tobacco. The king's commissioners to examine into the state of the colony seem to have been looked upon with some suspicion; and the clerk of the assembly, for betrayal of his trust in furnishing them with copies of certain papers, was punished with the loss of his ears. The colonists had some reason to fear lest the recall of the company's charter might deprive them of their share in colonial legislation, so recently granted, or might even endanger their titles to land.

a

The reports of the commissioners were as unfavourable as the king could desire. In vain the stockholders appealed to James' fourth parliament, then in session, little sympathy being felt in that body for monopolies or exclusive corporations of any sort. The action of the company suspended by proclamation, it was soon called upon to answer to a process of quo warranto legal inquiry, that is, into its conduct and pretensions. The respondents had little to hope from judges who held office at the pleasure of the royal complainant, and the proceedings were soon closed by a judgment of forfeiture. Thus fell the Virginia Company, after spending £150,000, nearly $750,000, in establishing the colony. This did not include the expenditures of private individuals to a large amount, some of whom obtained, perhaps, a return for their money, while the outlay of the company was a dead loss.d

Dr. Alexander Brownc calls Virginia "the first republic in America," and endeavours to show that Virginia had so large a measure of liberty that she was in fact a republic, but William Wirt Henry controverts this theory as "a remarkable blunder," and comments: "The colonists by their charters were guaranteed the civil rights of Englishmen, but they never in fact enjoyed

[1624-1625 A.D.]

them in full measure during the period of which Doctor Brown writes, and Virginia was not during any part of that time a republic. A republic is a state in which the supreme power is vested in representatives chosen by the people. This was never the condition of the colony of Virginia. During the existence of the Virginia Company of London, that company governed the colony, appointed its officers, and gave it its laws. Even after the allowance of a representative legislative body in Virginia, in 1619, the acts of the body were of no force until approved by the council in England, which still appointed the governor and council in Virginia, parts of the legislative body. The granting of that assembly was a great advance in the development of free institutions in Virginia, it is true, but it did not constitute Virginia a republic. Neither did the incorporation of the London Company, in 1612, with power to govern the Virginia colony without interference from the crown, except in matters touching the state, make the colony a republic. Indeed, the government of the colony by the London Company afterwards, was much more despotic than it had been under the first charter, when the company was controlled by the king; for then the council in Virginia had the privilege of choosing its own president, who was the governor. All this appears of necessity in Doctor Brown's book, for he could not entirely suppress the administrations of Gates, Dale, and Argall, nor the bitter complaints of the colonists as shown even in papers issued by the assembly. We have to look further north for the first republic in America." s

The fate of the London company found little sympathy; in the domestic government and franchises of the colony, it produced no immediate change. Sir Francis Wyatt, though he had been an ardent friend of the London Company, was confirmed in office (August 26th, 1624); and he and his council, far from being rendered absolute, were only empowered to govern "as fully and amplye as any governor and council resident there, at any time within the space of five years now last past." This term of five years was precisely the period of representative government; and the limitation could not but be interpreted as sanctioning the continuance of popular assemblies. James I, in appointing the council in Virginia, refused to nominate the imbittered partisans of the court faction, but formed the administration on the principles of accommodation. The vanity of the monarch claimed the opportunity of establishing for the colony a code of fundamental laws; but death (March 27th, 1625), prevented the royal legislator from attempting the task, which would have furnished his self-complacency so grateful an occupation.

POPULARITY OF YEARDLEY AND THE IMPEACHMENT OF HARVEY (1625–1634 A.D.)

Ascending the throne in his twenty-fifth year Charles I inherited the principles and was governed by the favourite of his father. The plantation, no longer governed by a chartered company, was become a royal province and an object of favour; and, as it enforced conformity to the Church of England, it could not be an object of suspicion to the clergy or the court. The king felt an earnest desire to heal old grievances, to secure the personal rights and property of the colonists, and to promote their prosperity. Franchises were neither conceded nor restricted; for it did not occur to his pride, that, at that time, there could be in an American province any thing like established privileges or vigorous political life; nor was he aware that the seeds of liberty were already germinating on the borders of the Chesapeake. His first Virginian measure was a proclamation on tobacco; confirming to Virginia and the Somers Isles [Bermudas] the exclusive supply of the British market, under

[1627-1629 A.D.] penalty of the censure of the Star Chamber for disobedience. In a few days, a new proclamation appeared, in which it was his evident design to secure the profits that might before have been engrossed by the corporation.

There is no room to suppose that Charles nourished the design of suppressing the colonial assemblies. For some months, the organisation of the government was not changed; and when Wyatt, on the death of his father, obtained leave to return to Scotland, Sir George Yeardley was appointed his successor. This appointment was in itself a guaranty that, as "the former interests of Virginia were to be kept inviolate," so the representative government, the chief political interest, would be maintained; for it was Yeardley who had had the glory of introducing the system. Representative liberty had become the custom of Virginia. The words were interpreted as favouring the wishes of the colonists; and King Charles, intent only on increasing his revenue, confirmed, perhaps unconsciously, the existence of a popular assembly. The colony prospered; Virginia rose rapidly in public estimation; in one year (1627), a thousand emigrants arrived; and there was an increasing demand for all the products of the soil.

The career of Yeardley was now closed by death, November 14th. Posterity will ever retain a grateful recollection of the man who first convened a representative assembly in the western hemisphere. The day after his burial, Francis West was elected his successor; for the council was authorised to elect the governor, "from time to time, as often as the case shall require."

But if any doubts existed of the royal assent to the continuance of colonial assemblies, they were soon removed by a letter of instructions, which the king addressed to the governor and council. After much caviling, in the style of a purchaser who undervalues the wares which he wishes to buy, the monarch arrives at his main purpose, and offers to contract for the whole crop of tobacco; desiring, at the same time, that an assembly might be convened to consider his proposal. This is the first recognition, on the part of a Stuart, of a representative assembly in America. Hitherto, the king had, fortunately for the colony, found no time to take order for its government. His zeal for an exclusive contract led him to observe and to sanction the existence of an elective legislature. The assembly, in its answer, March 26th, 1629, firmly protested against the monopoly, and rejected the conditions which they had been summoned to approve. The independent reply of the assembly was signed by the governor, by five members of the council, and by thirty-one burgesses. The Virginians, happier than the people of England, enjoyed a faithful representative government, and, through the resident planters who composed the council, they repeatedly elected their own governor. When West designed to embark for Europe, his place was supplied by election.

No sooner had the news of the death of Yeardley reached England, than the king proceeded to issue a commission to John Harvey. It was during the period which elapsed between the appointment of Harvey and his appearance in America that Lord Baltimore visited Virginia. The zeal of religious bigotry pursued him as a Romanist; and the intolerant jealousy of popery led to memorable results. Nor should we, in this connection, forget the hospitable plans of the southern planters; the people of New Plymouth were invited to abandon the cold and sterile clime of New England, and plant themselves in the milder regions on the Delaware Bay; a plain indication that Puritans were not then molested in Virginia.

It was probably in the autumn of 1629 that Harvey arrived in Virginia. Till October, the name of Pott appears as governor; Harvey met his first assembly of burgesses in the following March. He had for several years been