CHAPTER II. the first plantations and colonies, 1607 - 1630. THE SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA.
21. The Virginia Company.—At the beginning of the seventeenth century England undertook in earnest to plant colonies in North America. Her only important rival was France. Efforts were first directed toward the vast unoccupied stretch of country between Canada and Florida. The upper part of this region was explored, with favorable results, by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602, by Martin Pring in 1603, and by George Weymouth in 1605. These enterprises were encouraged by the new king, James I., and Raleigh was soon out of favor. The work of colonization required coÖperation; and the example of the Muscovite and East India companies led certain important citizens to obtain a charter authorizing them, as the Virginia Company, to promote and govern colonies in the unsettled region. It was a favorable time for such an undertaking, since changes in agricultural methods and other economic causes had created a spirit of unrest and filled England with men eager for employment. Besides, the passion for discovery and the energy that marked Elizabeth’s reign had by no means died out, and fortune seemed beckoning from the new shores.
22. The Sub-companies.—The Virginia Company’s charter covered a region extending from the thirty-fourth to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude. This was not to be controlled by one set of men, however, for there were two sub-companies, one consisting of the charter members living in or near London, and the other of those living in or near Plymouth. The Londoners could colonize from the thirty-fourth to the thirty-eighth degree; the Plymouth people from the forty-first to the forty-fifth, while the intervening space was left to whichever company should first colonize it, with the proviso that neither company should settle within one hundred miles of the other. This idea of competition between the companies led to nothing, and indeed the whole scheme of the charter was a cumbrous one that promised little permanent success.
Ruins of the Old
Church at Jamestown.
23. The Settlement at Jamestown.—In 1607 both sub-companies began operations. The Plymouth men sent a fleet to the coast of the present state of Maine, but the colony they tried to plant was a failure. The London Company was more fortunate. Their colonists reached Chesapeake Bay in the spring, and settled about fifty miles above the mouth of a large river, since then known as the James, in honor of the English king. They called their new settlement Jamestown, and at once began to build huts and fortifications.
24. Captain John Smith.[21]—Their leading spirit was Captain John Smith, an adventurous and able man, who in spite of jealousies put himself at the head of affairs and saved the colony. The men sent out were mainly gentlemen adventurers seeking to mend their fortunes, and even some of the real workers followed callings not required in the wilderness. There was consequently much bickering, and soon a scarcity of provisions caused great suffering. The site of the town proved unhealthy, and the Indians encountered had to be watched. Altogether the situation was a wretched one, and but for the energy of Smith and a few others, Christopher Newport, the captain of the fleet, who had gone back to England for supplies, might have found few vestiges of a settlement on his return in 1609. Newport brought stores, but also a number of undesirable colonists. He speedily sailed back to England with a cargo of shining earth, which did not yield the gold it promised to credulous eyes. Smith besought the Company to send out good workmen to cultivate the rich soil; and after a while the promoters of the colony learned not to expect vast discoveries of gold and silver. In October, 1609, owing to an accident to his eyes, Smith left the colony, never to return.
25. Smith’s Character.—Smith’s relations with Virginia have been the subject of much hostile criticism. Discrepancies have been found between his earlier and his later accounts of his exploits, and some historians have been led to regard him as little more than a braggart. This is an untenable view. His management of the refractory colonists, his dealings with the Indian chief Powhatan, his wise and manly remonstrances with the London Company,—all go to show that he was an able and unselfish leader to whom the life of the struggling settlement was mainly due. On the other hand, there can be little doubt, save in the minds of his partisans, that he frequently embellished his accounts of his adventures, and that he is not the most reliable of historians. It is not at all impossible that he was really saved by Pocahontas,[22] yet the story may be as mythical as the coat of arms granted to him by the king of Hungary.
26. Annulling of the Virginia Company’s Charter.—In 1609, the year of Smith’s departure, King James gave the Virginia Company a new charter, which defined the limits of its territory in a very vague way and increased its power over its colonists. In 1612 he gave another charter, which took in the Bermuda Islands and allowed the shareholders of the Company to hold general meetings in London. Twelve years later, when the king’s Puritan opponents had got control of these meetings and used them for political purposes, he caused the charter to be annulled by a decree of court, which was a legal though not a justifiable act. The records of the Company were preserved in a romantic way,[23] and are now in the possession of the government at Washington.
27. Growth of Virginia.—Meanwhile the colony had had various ups and downs under several governors,—Lord Delaware, Sir Thomas Dale, the tyrannical Samuel Argall, Sir George Yeardley, and Sir Francis Wyatt,—but had on the whole become firmly established. Dale was strict, but successful in controlling the rougher elements; he also encouraged the policy of allowing settlers to become individual proprietors of land. Argall was speedily recalled for his misconduct. Liberal sentiments then prevailed in the colony, and its inhabitants were allowed, during Yeardley’s administration, to hold a yearly representative assembly, or legislature (1619), the first of its kind in America. This long step toward self-government, together with the increasing importance of the tobacco crop, gave Virginia a decided impetus, which the contemporaneous introduction of slavery, in the persons of twenty blacks landed and sold at Jamestown by a Dutch ship in 1619, did not at first affect. The presence of white slaves in the persons of indentured servants—a class recruited from convicts, vagabonds, and kidnapped children—produced some confusion. But colonists of position and means soon began to exert an influence opposed to disorder, and through Sir Francis Wyatt the Company promised to stand by its grant of free institutions.
28. Charles I. and the Virginia Burgesses.—In 1622 the colonists endured a loss of three hundred settlers, from an attack by the Indians whom they had maltreated. The collapse of the Company (1624) made Virginia a crown colony, dependent on the king, who was succeeded the next year (1625) by his son, Charles I. Charles, needing money in order to be able to govern without his Parliament, tried to get a profit out of a monopoly of the tobacco trade, but the colonial assembly, or Burgesses, as they were called, withstood him (1629). The convening of this assembly to discuss such a matter was an important precedent in the government of the crown colonies; but the assembly, although it could resist the king’s demand, could not prevent a royal governor like Sir John Harvey from making himself obnoxious.[24]
THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK.
29. Hudson and New Amsterdam.—In the autumn of 1609 Henry Hudson,[25] an English seaman employed by the Dutch East India Company, sailed up the river now called by his name, as far as the site of Albany. He was searching for a northwest passage to India; he found instead a good opportunity to trade with the red men, which the Dutch afterward cultivated. By 1615 houses were built on the site of Albany and of the present New York. The fur trade of New Netherland, as the region was named, was turned over to a corporation organized for that purpose, called the New Netherland Company. Politically no steps were taken at first against the English title to the country. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company took up the rÔle of the New Netherland Company, and three years later sent over a number of colonists. These settled mainly near Albany; but there were other centers of population, all of which did a thriving fur trade with the Indians.
30. Organization of the Dutch Colony.—In 1626 Peter Minuit, director for the Dutch West India Company, purchased the Island of Manhattan from the Indians for a trifling amount (about twenty-five dollars), and made the town of New Amsterdam, afterward New York, the center of government. In 1629 the Company obtained a new charter and proceeded to develop a semi-feudal system of land tenure among the colonists. Individuals, styled “Patroons” (patrons), were allowed to buy tracts of land from the Indians and to settle colonists upon them. For every colony of fifty persons the Patroon was granted a large tract for himself; and as he was given political and judicial power over his colonists, New Netherland was soon in the hands of a powerful landed aristocracy, some families of which have retained a certain prestige down to the present time.
THE PILGRIMS AT PLYMOUTH.
31. The Plymouth Colony.—The London Company and the Dutch West India Company had now established promising colonies, but the Plymouth Company had done nothing since their unsuccessful attempt in 1607. Seven years later, Captain John Smith had made a voyage along the northern coast and given the region the name of New England. Other voyages added to geographical knowledge and developed the fisheries, but the more southerly colonies for some time attracted all intending settlers, and the reorganized Plymouth Company of 1620 might have fared poorly had not accident favored them. This accident was nothing less than the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers at Plymouth Rock instead of somewhere within the jurisdiction of the London Company, as they at first intended.
32. The Pilgrims in Holland.—The causes that led the Pilgrims to the New World were briefly as follows. There were large numbers of English Protestants who thought that the Established Church of England had not sufficiently broken away from the Church of Rome, especially in regard to the forms of worship. Such dissatisfied Protestants were called Puritans, and those of their number who refused to commune with the Church of England were further known as Dissenters. Those Dissenters who were ruled by elders, according to the system of Calvin and Knox, were known as Presbyterians. Such as desired each congregation to be independent were called Separatists, or Brownists, or Independents. The Pilgrim Fathers were Separatists who, in order to escape persecution, had fled from the village of Scrooby to Holland. The emigrants, headed by their pastor, John Robinson, and their elder, William Brewster, numbered about one hundred. Settling first at Amsterdam, then at Leyden, they were joined by other refugees, and lived peacefully by their labors.
33. Movement of Pilgrims to America.—These Pilgrims naturally did not wish their children to become Dutchmen; so their minds turned to America. Securing a grant of land from the London Company and financial aid from London capitalists who became partners in the enterprise, they collected their effects and sailed to their new home in the Mayflower.[26] They sighted Cape Cod on November 9, 1620. The captain, for some reason, would not sail farther southward; so after exploring the coast, the emigrants, who had already formed themselves into a body politic under a very liberal written agreement, landed at Plymouth (December 21, 1620).
34. Experiences of the Pilgrims.—Although the winter was mild, the colonists had much difficulty in obtaining shelter and food, and great loss of life was the result, Deacon John Carver, the first governor, being among the victims. William Bradford, one of the finest characters in our history, succeeded him as governor. His courage and that of his people, who believed firmly that they had the support of God, enabled the colony to pull through the crisis. Huts and a fort were built, land was cleared, and provisions and fuel laid in for the next winter. In November, 1621, fifty more of the Leyden people arrived. These were a burden to the colonists for a time, since the supply of food was small; and distribution was made, as at Jamestown, from the common stock. Settlers continued to be sent out by the London partners, but as a rule they came empty handed.
35. Success of the Pilgrims.—The colony nevertheless flourished under a patent it had obtained from the Plymouth Company. It owed much of its success to Bradford, who was often elected to the governorship, and to Captain Miles Standish, a brave soldier, not a Separatist, who was especially useful in managing the Indians. Various neighboring settlements of Englishmen who ridiculed the strict customs of the Pilgrims could not be easily dealt with; but finally the chief offenders, Thomas Morton and his associates at Merrymount, who had furnished the Indians with firearms, were put down with a stern hand. Meanwhile the communal system was abandoned for individual allotments of land. At about the same time (1627) the colonists purchased the share of the London capitalists in the enterprise.
36. Government of the Pilgrims.—They governed themselves at first by a primary assembly, then by a general court composed of two delegates from each township, elected by popular vote, together with the governor and representatives, called assistants. In 1636 a special code of laws was adopted; but on the whole the government remained as simple as were the habits of the God-fearing, thrifty people, who in many ways set an example of steadiness and perseverance to all the other colonists. It was, however, a very small settlement, and after various failures to secure its perpetuation through a royal charter, it was finally merged, in 1691, with Massachusetts[27] (§ 60).
THE SETTLEMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS.
37. The Puritans and the Founding of Massachusetts.—In 1623 some merchants of Dorchester, England, sent out a colony to the coast of Maine, which for some reason was diverted to the site of the present Gloucester in Massachusetts. Three years later the colony was almost abandoned; but John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church, Dorchester, fearing the aggressions of the Crown in ecclesiastical matters, advised the remaining settlers to continue at Salem, whither they had migrated, and immediately laid plans in England for planting a permanent colony. Two years later a patent was obtained from the Plymouth Company for a strip of coast land, and John Endicott[28] led sixty persons to Salem. In 1629 the owners of the patent, who still lived in England, were organized as a Company and given a charter by the king. This charter provided for popular election of the governor and other officers, for a “general court,” or assembly, as well as for the passage of laws not conflicting with those of England.
38. Government of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay.—The new “Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England” was ostensibly to engage in trade, but in reality its founders intended to form a religious commonwealth. This could be easily done, since somehow or other no proviso that the Company should have its headquarters in England was inserted in the charter. Thus it was possible to transport the Company bodily to New England, and this a number of prominent Puritans, at a meeting held at Cambridge in 1629, agreed to do. There was to be no violent separation from the Established Church except such as was caused by distance; but uncongenial practices would be avoided, and the heavy hand of Archbishop Laud, then the strenuous Primate of England, would hardly reach across the sea. Thus many men of wealth and education, whose conservatism would naturally have prevented their taking rash steps in their opposition to the Crown, were led to join in the Massachusetts enterprise. In April, 1630, eleven vessels sailed for America, and by the end of the year about a thousand persons had emigrated to the new colony and founded such towns as Boston, Charlestown, and Watertown. They chose as governor a wealthy and highly educated Suffolk gentleman, John Winthrop,[29] and under his able administration the colony began a career of great prosperity and importance.
References.—General Works: To the list already given may be added: Bryant and Gay, Popular History of the United States; H. C. Lodge, Short History of the English Colonies in America; Richard Frothingham, Rise of the Republic of the United States.
Special Works: J. Fiske, Beginnings of New England; J. Fiske, Old Virginia and Her Neighbors; J. G. Palfrey, History of New England; W. B. Weeden, Economic History of New England; P. A. Bruce. Economic History of Virginia; A. Brown, Genesis of the United States; J. E. Cooke, Virginia (“American Commonwealths”); R. C. Winthrop, Life and Letters of John Winthrop; E. Eggleston, Transit of Civilization.
Standard state and colonial histories, such as Hutchinson’s Massachusetts and Belknap’s New Hampshire, may also be used, as well as biographies of colonial worthies. For documents, consult Macdonald’s Select Charters Illustrative of American History, 1606–1775. Illustrative specimens of the earliest historical writings, such as Bradford’s “History of the Plymouth Colony” and Winthrop’s “History of Massachusetts” will be found in Old South Leaflets, Hart’s American History told by Contemporaries, Stedman and Hutchinson’s Library of American Literature, and Trent and Wells’ Colonial Prose and Poetry. See Channing and Hart’s Guide. Many books relating to colonial life and manners have been published recently, but Edward Eggleston’s articles in the Century Magazine (Vols. III.–VIII.) will probably be sufficient for most purposes. Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish should be read in connection with this chapter.
