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THE TOBACCO CONTRACT

149

persuaded the House of Commons to pass the bill for free fishing in its most uncompromising form, although it was defeated in the Lords where the advocates of colonisation were stronger. The matter was regarded by the Commons as in the forefront of the grievances that precipitated the quarrel with the King over free speech and led to the abrupt dissolution of Parliament in 1621.

Parties were differently aligned on the other acute colonial question of the time, the importation of tobacco, for here the private interests of Sandys and his friends favoured the setting up of a strict and exclusive monopoly. The Privy Council began to give close attention to the tobacco question in 1619, and thenceforward for a quarter of a century discussions and negotiations between the various interests concerned were both incessant and intricate. The controversy1 was really at the centre of a prolonged series of experiments in economic statecraft. The colonies were newcomers in the body politic, and Englishmen had to find gradually by a process of trial and error the way to construct a new economic system to include them. The King's subjects, whether at home or overseas, had a like right to look to him and his Government for measures to foster their prosperity. They were all parts of the realm that he had sworn to govern well. In 1621 the Crown consented to prohibit the growing of tobacco in England and Ireland, but required in return that the colonists should bring all their tobacco to England for sale. The importation of Spanish tobacco was greatly restricted or forbidden in order to leave the market clear. Thus English consumers had to pay high prices for an inferior article to foster the interests of the planters, but Virginia was never satisfied. When the new English colonies were settled in the West Indies repeated petition was made that all tobacco-growing should be prohibited there, though without success until sugar came to replace it after 1640.

The troubles over the tobacco contract in 1621-2 added fuel to the fires of faction that were raging in the Virginia and Bermuda Companies, and Sandys and his friends were unmeasured in the accusations of corrupt practices that they heaped upon their rivals and government officials alike.2 They showed no scruples in suppressing complaints from Virginia that would be damaging to their management and in editing the official records of proceedings to favour their arguments.

The results of the Southampton-Sandys régime were of great importance in the political field, as will be seen later, but this could not be realised at the time. In the economic field they fell so lamentably short of the promises that had been held out that the Privy Council was obliged at last to take action, in much the same way as in the case

1 See Beer, Origins, chap. iv.

* See Scott, W. R., Joint Stock Companies, II, 271 seqq.; Osgood, H. L., American Colonies in the Seventeenth Century, III, 41-53.

of later chartered companies. It was moved by the news of the most serious calamity that Virginia had suffered. The colonists had generally lived in peace with the Indians whose hunting grounds lay upon the borders of their scattered settlements, but on Good Friday, 22 March 1622, war parties of the tribes suddenly descended on the plantations with fire and slaughter. Scores of the outlying houses were burned, great numbers of cattle were destroyed, and 347 persons were killed with all the atrocities of Indian warfare.1 As this was about a quarter of all the white inhabitants in Virginia the blow was crushing. The survivors were left in grievous straits, but the ruling faction in the Company did little to relieve them or to give information to the public of what had happened. Nathaniel Butler, late Governor of Bermuda, shocked the authorities with a highly coloured account of the conditions he had found prevailing in Virginia, and Warwick and Smythe appealed to the Crown for a commission of enquiry. It was declared that of the 10,000 persons who had been shipped to the colony less than a fifth part survived in a desperate condition, so that there was danger that "other nations would term Virginia a slaughter house both odious to ourselves and contemptible to all the world".2

Things had come to such a pass that an enquiry was obviously in the public interest, and in April 1623 a strong commission was appointed including various respected men of affairs who had had experience of plantations in Ireland. At the same time a special committee of the Privy Council was appointed to consider the reform of the government of Virginia, and the appointment of the three lords (Grandison, Chichester and Carew) who had had most experience in governing Ireland indicates the direction in which precedents were sought for future action. The report of the commission of enquiry showed that the affairs of the Company had been badly mismanaged by the Southampton-Sandys administration and that the colony was suffering severely. In 1618, when Smythe resigned the treasurership, there were more than 1000 persons in Virginia and 4000 emigrants had since been sent, but in 1623 only about 1200 remained, the rest having perished. On such a showing alone it was clear that something must be done, and the Privy Council proceeded to demand the surrender of the charter with a view to the assumption by the Crown of more direct responsibility for the government and probably the confining of the Company to private functions. Many of the members were in favour of compliance, but Sandys and his allies were entirely recalcitrant, and, being in possession, they denied to the mass of the shareholders any opportunity of voting. The Council therefore in November 1623 entered upon the regular legal course of a suit of

1 Neill, E. D., Virginia Company, pp. 307-21; narrative in Smith, John, Works, pp. 572-94. 2 Butler, N., The Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia as it was in the Winter of the year 1622, printed in Records of Va. Co. II, 374-6.

QUARRELS IN THE VIRGINIA COMPANY

151

quo warranto for the annulment of the charter and it ended in favour of the Crown's contention.

When Parliament met in February 1624 Sandys attempted to carry the Virginia case directly into the political arena. In April 1624, Nicholas Ferrar, his principal lieutenant, presented a petition to the House of Commons setting forth their case. Ferrar practically invited the members to take their side against the Crown in the dispute, as they had done in the controversy over free fishing with the New England Council. But the sense of the House was distinctly against any such interference, and the petition was referred for examination to a committee including members of both factions.1 The Government was not prepared to have the acrimonious dispute fought over again, and the House welcomed with a sense of relief2 a message from the King stating that he was taking steps for the better government of Virginia and desiring the Commons not to proceed. The course taken was certainly the best to fit the immediate circumstances, but incidentally it marked again the view of constitutional propriety expressed by Secretary Calvert in 1621 that the affairs of the King's dominions in America lay beyond the province of the English Parlia

ment.

The revocation of the charter only terminated the Company's governmental functions, and it was allowed to continue as a trading corporation. It tried to carry on till about 1632, but the whole of the capital of more than £200,000 that had been subscribed since 1606 was irremediably lost, the Company was bankrupt, and it finally disappeared. The commission of enquiry into the affairs of the Somers Islands Company reported more favourably, and it was allowed to continue its administration. Many of the Bermuda colonists left the islands after 1625 to pass to new colonies in the West Indies, and those who remained settled down to an obscure and uneventful life. The existence of the chartered Company continued until 1684 when upon its own motion it was allowed to surrender its functions to the Crown. 5

4

The change of government made no alteration in the legal position of the colonists in Virginia, but rather afforded them security against excessive interference. The transfer, in fact, aided in the gradual growth of confidence, and the prosperity of Virginia began to increase steadily. Immediately after the massacre of 1622 the population numbered only 894 persons, but by 1636 it had risen to over 6000. The excessive rate of mortality was checked, and Virginia

1 Stock, Proc. and Debates, 1, 63-8.

Cal. St. Pap. Col., Am. and W. I. 1574-1660, p. 61. Chamberlain to Carleton, 30 April 1624.

St. Pap. Dom., Jas. I, CLXII, no. 71.

* See Newton, A. P., Colonising Activities of the English Puritans, chap. i.

Lefroy, J. H., Memorials of the Bermudas, II, 527-41.

Brown, A., First Republic in America, p. 464.

received her full share of new settlers from the great flow of emigration that marked the years of Charles I's personal government.

Meanwhile after Smythe's displacement, clear signs appeared that the despotic commercial management of the colony, under which the settlers were treated like labourers on a detached English estate, must give place to one in which they would at least share in framing decisions on their local concerns. The new administration had a free hand, and to remove the grievances of monopolist government it turned to the parliamentary methods in which it trusted. It desired to elicit the full co-operation of the colonists in carrying out its policy, and one of its first decisions was to summon a General Assembly in Virginia to consist of the council of state and two burgesses chosen by the planters or freeholders from each town, hundred or other particular plantation. An instruction to this effect was sent out by the new governor, Sir George Yeardley, and the first Assembly was convoked in the church at James Town in July 1619.1 The union of the separate districts as parts of one colony government was thus assured and the first offspring of the ancient Mother of Parliaments came into being. It was followed by the summoning of a similar Assembly in 1620. The Somers Islands Company also directed its governor to call the colonists into council at the same date,2 and the Bermuda Assembly thus convoked has an uninterrupted connection with the island legislature of to-day.

The acts of the Virginia Assembly were sent to England to be considered by the Company in 1620, but the result has not been recorded; the second Assembly sat in 1621 and the third in 1624.just before the Company's charter was resumed. The first list of acts that has been preserved comes from this third Assembly and the acts mostly relate to the organisation of local government and to economic matters. One important echo of current political controversies in England appears. The sole taxing power of the General Assembly was affirmed, and it was declared that no taxes should be laid in the province except by its authority or expended except as it should direct. When Sir Francis Wyat was sent out as the first royal governor of Virginia in 1624, he received instructions to continue the Assembly in the same form as in Yeardley's time, and the burgesses were given free power to consult and conclude on matters concerning the public weal of the province and to enact general laws for its government. Thus the assumption by the Crown of direct control involved no restriction of the political liberties of the colonists, but rather placed them on a more secure and permanent footing.

While the troubles over Virginia were at their height Sir Ferdinando Gorges was pushing on his northern schemes. Theoretically the grant to the Council of New England covered the whole coast

1 Osgood, I, 92.

2 Lefroy, Mems. of Bermudas, 1.

3 Hening, Statutes of Virginia, 1, 121; Osgood, 1, 96.

SCOTTISH COLONIAL SCHEMES

153 between Newfoundland and Virginia, but the Dutch set a southern limit by the foundation of their colony of New Amsterdam at the mouth of the Hudson River in 1621. The grant of the site of New Plymouth to John Pierce in June 1621 on behalf of the Mayflower Pilgrims1 was the first assignment of lands by the new council, and the next was to one of the King's old followers, Sir William Alexander, who was projecting a colony of Scotsmen. His interest in colonising schemes was aroused by Captain Mason who had been governor of Guy's colony in Newfoundland and wrote thence in 1617 to a friend in Edinburgh to commend it as a place of settlement for the Scotsmen who were then flocking over to the new plantations in Ulster.2

Alexander's grant of September 1621 covered the whole northern part of the territory assigned to the New England Council, which he called "New Scotland" and divided with his friend Sir Robert Gordon of Lochinvar who proposed to found a colony of "New Galloway" in Cape Breton Island. Small expeditions with a few emigrants were sent out by Alexander at his own expense in 1622-3, but they had no success.

Scattered parties of settlers went out from time to time to various places on the New England coast and met with uniform failure, and the only real colony before 1629 was that at Plymouth. There has been a tendency among historians of the period to belittle the efforts of Gorges and his coadjutors and to attribute their failure to the incompetence of the court party, possibly with the unconscious aim of showing the success of the Puritans in sharper relief. They class the formation of the New England Council among measures of Stuart "tyranny", whereas, if we look beyond the boundaries of a single area and consider what was happening elsewhere at the time, it appears rather as an experiment in the unexplored art of managing distant dependencies. The failure of the early attempts both in Maine and in Newfoundland was really attributable to the trouble over the fisheries and to lack of consistent financial support. The association of the names of well-known courtiers with the New England Council does not warrant us in attributing its failure to a court party any more than the success of St Christopher and Barbados can be attributed to the Earl of Carlisle, the most prominent courtier of his time. In reality, the most active noblemen associated with the work of the Council, like Lords Warwick, Brooke and Saye, were identified in the political struggle with the party of opposition. Most of the other men of rank who lent their names, like Hamilton, Lindsey and Goring, did so in pursuit of a passing fashion.

The projectors and patrons of most of the colonising schemes of the time were neither persistent enough nor, which is more important, able to furnish the regular supplies of capital that were necessary. The only 1 See "Records of the Council of New England", Proc. of Amer. Antiq. Soc. April 1866, pp. 91-93. 2 Published in 1620 as A Brief Discourse of the New-found-land.

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