A DISCOURSE OF WESTERN PLANTING.

In all the history of human knowledge there is no more fascinating chapter than that which deals with the gradual expansion of men's geographical ideas consequent upon the great voyages of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is not a tale so written that he who runs may read it, but its events have rather to be slowly deciphered from hundreds of quaint old maps, whereon islands and continents, mountains and rivers, are delineated with very slight resemblance to what we now know to be the reality; where, for instance, Gog and Magog show a strong tendency to get mixed up with Memphremagog, where the capital of China stands a few hundred miles north of the city of Mexico, and your eye falls upon a river which you feel sure is the St. Lawrence until you learn that it is meant for the Yang-tse-Kiang. In the sixteenth century scarcely any intellectual stimulus could be found more potent than the sight of such maps, revealing unknown lands, or cities and rivers with strange names, places of which many marvels had been recounted and almost anything might be believed.

One afternoon in the year 1568, the lawyer Richard Hakluyt was sitting at his desk in the Middle Temple, with a number of such maps and sundry new books of cosmography spread out before him, when the door opened and his young cousin and namesake, then a boy of sixteen studying at Westminster School, came into the room. The elder Richard opened the Bible at the 107th Psalm, and pointed to the verses which declare that "they which go downe to the sea in ships and occupy by the great waters, they see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep;" then he called the lad's attention to the maps, in which he soon became absorbed. This incident determined the career of the younger Richard Hakluyt, and led to his playing an important part in the beginnings of the United States of America. A learned and sagacious writer upon American history, Mr. Doyle, of All Souls College, Oxford, has truly said that it is "hard to estimate at its full value the debt which succeeding generations owe to Richard Hakluyt."[20] In 1570 he became a student at Christ Church, Oxford, and took his master's degree in 1577. His book called "Divers Voyages," dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, was published in 1582. From 1583 to 1588 he was chaplain of the English legation at Paris, and before his return he was appointed canon of Bristol, an office which he held till 1605. Thus for many years he lived in the city of the Cabots, the cradle of the new era of maritime adventure. He came to be recognized as one of the foremost geographers of the age and the greatest living English authority on matters relating to the New World. The year following the defeat of the Armada witnessed the publication of his book entitled "Principal Voyages," which Froude well calls "the prose epic of the modern English nation."[21] In 1605 he was made a prebendary of Westminster, and eleven years later was buried with distinguished honours beneath the pavement of the great Abbey.

The book of Hakluyt's which here most nearly concerns us is the "Discourse of Western Planting," written in 1584, shortly before the return of the ships of Amidas and Barlow from Roanoke Island. It was not published, nor was immediate publication its aim. It was intended to influence the mind of Queen Elizabeth. The manuscript was handed to her about September, 1584, and after a while was lost sight of until after a long period of oblivion it turned up in the library of Sir Peter Thomson, an indefatigable collector of literary treasures, who died in 1770. It was bought from his family by Lord Valentia, after whose death it passed into the hands of the famous bibliophile Henry Stevens, who sold it to Sir Thomas Phillips for his vast collection of archives at Thirlestane House, Cheltenham. In 1869 a copy of it was made for Dr. Leonard Woods, President of Bowdoin College, by whom it was ably edited for the Maine Historical Society; and at length, in 1877, after a sleep of nearly three centuries, it was printed at our New England Cambridge, at the University Press, and published with valuable notes by the late Dr. Charles Deane.

Hakluyt wrote this document at the request of Raleigh, who wished to persuade the queen to invest money in a colonizing expedition to the New World. Such an enterprise, he felt, was too great for any individual purse and needed support from government. No one had studied the subject so thoroughly as Hakluyt, and so Raleigh enlisted his services. In twenty-one brief chapters Hakluyt sets forth the various reasons why England should plant colonies on the coast of North America. The chief reasons are that such colonies will enlarge the occasions and facilities for driving Spanish ships from the Newfoundland fisheries and capturing Spanish treasure on its way from Mexico and the isthmus of Darien; they will be serviceable as stations toward the discovery and use of the northwest passage to Cathay; after a while they will furnish a valuable market for the products of English industry, especially woollen and linen cloths; they will increase the royal revenue by customs duties; they will afford new material for the growth of the navy; and in various ways they will relieve England of its idlers and vagrants by finding occupation for them abroad. In his terse quaint way, the writer emphasizes these points. As for the Spanish king, "if you touche him in the Indies you touche the apple of his eye; for take away his treasure, which is nervus belli, and which he hath almoste [all] out of his West Indies, his olde bandes of souldiers will soone be dissolved, his purposes defeated, ... his pride abated, and his tyranie utterly suppressed." "He shall be left bare as Æsop's proude crowe." With regard to creating a new market he says: "Nowe if her Majestie take these westerne discoveries in hande, and plant there, yt is like that in short time wee shall vente as greate a masse of clothe yn those partes as ever wee did in the Netherlandes, and in tyme moche more." In this connection he gives a striking illustration of the closeness of the commercial ties which had been knit between England and the Low Countries in the course of the long alliance with the House of Burgundy. In 1550, when Charles V. proposed to introduce the Spanish Inquisition into the Netherlands, it was objected that all English merchants would then quit the country, and the English trade would be grievously diminished. At this suggestion, "search was made what profite there came and comoditie grewe by the haunte of the Englishe marchantes. Then it was founde by searche and enquirie, that within the towne of Antwerpe alone there were 14,000 persons fedde and mayneteyned onlye by the workinge of English commodities, besides the gaines that marchantes and shippers with other in the said towne did gett, which was the greatest part of their lyvinge, which were thoughte to be in nomber halfe as many more; and in all other places of his Netherlandes by the indraping of Englishe woll into clothe, and by the working of other Englishe comodities, there were 30,000 persons more mayneteyned and fedd; which in all amounteth to the nomber of 51,000 persons." When this report was given to Charles V. it led him to pause and consider, as well it might.

According to Hakluyt an English colony in America would soon afford as good a market for English labour as the Netherlands. He was impressed with the belief that the population of England was fast outrunning its means of subsistence. Now if the surplus of population could be drawn to America it would find occupation in raising the products of that new soil to exchange for commodities from England, and this exchange in its turn would increase the demand for English commodities and for the labour which produced them, so that fewer people in England would be left without employment. Such is Hakluyt's idea, though he nowhere states it quite so formally. It is interesting because there is no doubt that he was not alone in holding such views. There was in many quarters a feeling that, with its population of about 5,000,000, England was getting to be over-peopled. This was probably because for some time past the supply of food and the supply of work had both been diminishing relatively to the number of people. For more than a century the wool trade had been waxing so profitable that great tracts of land which had formerly been subject to tillage were year by year turned into pastures for sheep. This process not only tended to raise the price of food, but it deprived many people of employment, since sheep-farming requires fewer hands than tilling the soil. Since the accession of Henry VIII. there had been many legislative attempts to check the conversion of ploughed land into grassy fields, but the change still continued to go on.[22] The enormous increase in the quantity of precious metals had still further raised the price of food, while as people were thrown out of employment the labour market tended to become overstocked so that wages did not rise. These changes bore with especial severity upon the class of peasants. The condition of the freeholding yeomanry was much improved during the sixteenth century. Stone houses with floors had taken the place of rude cabins with rushes carpeting the ground; meat was oftener eaten, clothes were of better quality. But it was otherwise with the peasants who held by servile tenures. In the abolition of mediÆval serfdom which had been going on for two centuries and was completed in England so much earlier than in any other part of Europe, it was not all gain for the lowest grades of labourers. Some through energy and good fortune rose to recruit the ranks of freeholders, but many others became paupers and thieves. The change from tillage to pasturage affected this class more than any other, for it turned many out of house and home; so that, in the words of an old writer, they "prowled about as idle beggars or continued as stark thieves till the gallows did eat them."[23] The sudden destruction of the monasteries by Henry VIII. deprived the pauper of such scanty support as he had been wont to get from the vast wealth of the Church, and besides it had let loose upon society a vast number of persons with their old occupations gone and set aside.[24] In Elizabeth's reign, therefore, for the various reasons here mentioned, the growth of pauperism began to attract especial attention as a lamentable if not formidable evil, and the famous "poor law" of 1601 marks a kind of era in the social history of England. Under such circumstances, for men disheartened by poverty and demoralized by idleness, struggling for life in a community that had ceased to need the kind of labour they could perform, the best chance of salvation seemed to lie in emigration to a new colony where the demand for labour was sure to be great, and life might be in a measure begun anew. So thought the good Hakluyt, and the history of the seventeenth century did much to justify his opinion. The prodigious development of the English commercial and naval marine, to which the intercourse with the new and thriving American colonies greatly contributed, went far toward multiplying the opportunities for employment and diminishing the numbers of the needy and idle class. Many of the sons of the men who had been driven from their farms by sheep-raising landlords made their home upon the ocean, and helped to secure England's control of the watery pathways. Many of them found new homes in America, and as independent yeomen became more thrifty than their peasant fathers.

While there were many people who espoused Hakluyt's views, while preachers might be heard proclaiming from the pulpit that "Virginia was a door which God had opened for England," on the other hand, as in the case of all great enterprises, loud voices were raised in opposition. To send parties of men and women to starve in the wilderness, or be murdered by savages or Spaniards, was a proceeding worthy of severe condemnation for its shocking cruelty, to say nothing of its useless extravagance. Then, as usual, the men who could see a few inches in front of their noses called themselves wise and practical, while they stigmatized as visionary theorizers the men whose imaginations could discern, albeit in dim outlines, the great future. As for the queen, who clearly approved in her innermost heart the schemes of Raleigh and Hakluyt, not much was to be expected from her when it came to a question of spending money. Elizabeth carried into the management of public affairs a miserly spirit inherited, perhaps, from her grandfather, Henry VII. When the Armada was actually entering the Channel she deemed it sound economy to let her sailors get sick with sour ale rather than throw it away and buy fresh for them. Such a mind was not likely to appreciate the necessity for the enormous immediate outlay involved in planting a successful colony. That such a document as Hakluyt's should be laid away and forgotten was no more than natural. To blame Elizabeth unreservedly, however, without making some allowance for the circumstances in which she was placed, would be crude and unfair. It was the public money that she was called upon to spend, and the military pressure exerted by Spain made heavy demands upon it. In spite of her pennywise methods, which were often so provoking, they were probably less ill suited to that pinching crisis than her father's ready lavishness would have been.

That Raleigh should appeal to the sovereign for aid in his enterprise was to have been expected. It was what all explorers and colonizers had been in the habit of doing. Since the days of Prince Henry the Navigator the arduous work of discovering and subduing the heathen world outside of Europe had been conducted under government control and paid from the public purse whenever the plunder of the heathen did not suffice. In some cases the sovereign was unwilling to allow private capital to embark in such enterprises; as for example in the spring of 1491, when the Duke of Medina-Celi offered to fit out two or three caravels for Columbus and Queen Isabella refused to give him the requisite license, probably because she was "unwilling to have the duke come in for a large share of the profits in case the venture should prove successful."[25] Usually, however, such work was beyond the reach of private purses, and it was not until the middle of the sixteenth century, and in such commercial countries as the Netherlands and England, with comparatively free governments, that joint-stock companies began to be formed for such purposes. I have already alluded to the famous Muscovy Company, first formed in the reign of Edward VI., and from that time forth the joint-stock principle went on rapidly gaining strength until its approach to maturity was announced by the creation of the English East India Company in 1600 and the Dutch East India Company in 1602. The latter was "the first great joint-stock company whose shares were bought and sold from hand to hand,"[26] and these events mark the beginning of a new era in European commerce.

This substitution of voluntary coÖperation among interested individuals for compulsory action under government control was one of the most important steps taken toward bringing in the modern era. Americans have no reason to regret that the beginnings of English colonization in the New World were not made by an English sovereign. There can be no doubt that the very slight connection between these colonies and the Crown was from the first extremely favourable to their free and untrammelled development. Far better that the worthy Hakluyt's essay should get tucked away in a pigeon-hole than that it should have fired Elizabeth to such zeal for Virginia as Louis XIV. a century afterward showed for New France!

By 1589 Raleigh seems to have despaired of finding the queen disposed to act as a fairy godmother. He reckoned that he had already spent £40,000 on Virginia, although this sum may perhaps have included his contributions toward the Arctic voyages of John Davis. Such a sum would be equivalent to not less than $1,000,000 of our modern money, and no wonder if Raleigh began to feel more than ever that the undertaking was too great for his individual resources. In March, 1589, we find him, as governor of Virginia, assigning not his domain but the right to trade there to a company, of which John White, Thomas Smith, and Rev. Richard Hakluyt were the most prominent members. He reserved for himself a royalty of one fifth of all the gold and silver that should be obtained. The Company did not show much activity. We may well believe that it was too soon after the Armada. Business affairs had not had time to recover from that severe strain. But Raleigh never lost sight of Virginia. Southey's accusation that he sent out colonists and then abandoned them was ill-considered. We have already seen why it proved impossible to send help to John White's colony.

In the pursuit of his various interests the all-accomplished knight sometimes encountered strange vicissitudes. With all his flattery of the crowned coquette, Elizabeth Tudor, the true sovereign of his heart was one of the ladies of the court, the young and beautiful Elizabeth Throckmorton. To our prosaic modern minds the attitude of the great queen toward the favourite courtiers whom she could by no possibility dream of raising to the dignity of prince-consort seems incomprehensible. But after a due perusal of the English dramatists of the time, the romance of Sidney, the extravagances of Lyly, the poetry of Spenser and Ronsard, or some of those tales of chivalry that turned good Don Quixote's brain, we are beguiled into the right sort of atmosphere for understanding it. For any of Elizabeth's counsellors or favourites to make love to any other lady was apt to call down some manifestation of displeasure, and in 1592 some circumstances connected with Raleigh's marriage[27] led to his imprisonment in the Tower. But his evil star was not yet in the ascendant. Within a few weeks one of his captains, Christopher Newport, whom we shall meet again, brought into Dartmouth harbour the great Spanish carrack Madre de Dios, with treasure from the Indies worth nearly four millions of modern dollars. A large part of Raleigh's own share in the booty was turned over to his sovereign with that blithesome grace in which none could rival him, and it served as a ransom. In 1594 we find him commanding an expedition to Guiana and exploring the vast solitudes of the Orinoco in search of El Dorado. On his return to England he found a brief interval of leisure in which to write that fascinating book on Guiana which David Hume declared to be full of lies, a gross calumny which subsequent knowledge, gathered by Humboldt and since his time, has entirely refuted. Then came the great battle at Cadiz in 1596, already mentioned, and the capture of Fayal in 1597, when Raleigh's fame reached its zenith. About this time, or soon after, began those ambrosial nights, those feasts of the gods, at the Mermaid Tavern, where Selden and Camden, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ben Jonson and Dr. Donne, sat around the table with Raleigh and Shakespeare. In that happy time the opportunity for colonizing Virginia seemed once more to have come, and in 1602 Raleigh sent out Samuel Mace on an expedition of which less is known than one could wish, save that renewed search was made for White's lost colony. Otherwise, says the historian Stith, this Mace "performed nothing, but returned with idle stories and frivolous allegations."[28] When he arrived in England in 1603, sad changes had occurred. The great queen—great and admirable with all her faults—had passed away, and a quaint pedantic little Scotchman, with uncouth figure and shambling gait and a thickness of utterance due partly to an ill-formed tongue and partly to excessive indulgence in mountain dew, had stepped into her place. A web of intrigue, basely woven by Robert Cecil and Henry Howard, had caught Raleigh in its meshes. He was hurried off to the Tower, while an attainder bereft him of his demesne of Virginia and handed it over to the crown.

But other strong hands were taking up the work. That Earl of Southampton to whom Shakespeare ten years before had dedicated his "Venus and Adonis" had been implicated in Essex's rebellion and narrowly escaped with his life. The accession of James I., which was fraught with such ill for Raleigh, set Southampton free. But already in 1602, while he was still a prisoner in the Tower, an expedition organized under his auspices set sail for Virginia. It was commanded by one of Raleigh's old captains, Bartholomew Gosnold, and has especial interest as an event in the beginnings alike of Virginia and of New England. Gosnold came to a region which some persons called Norumbega, but was soon to be known for a few years as North Virginia, and always thereafter as New England. It was he who first wrote upon the map the names Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard, and the Elizabeth Islands in what we call Buzzard's Bay. His return to England was the occasion of a fresh and strong renewal of interest in the business of what Hakluyt called "western planting." The voyage of Martin Pring to North Virginia, at the expense of sundry Bristol merchants, followed in 1603, and at the same time Bartholomew Gilbert, son of Sir Humphrey, coasted the shores of Chesapeake Bay, and was slain by the Indians with several of his men. Early in 1605 Captain George Weymouth set out in a vessel equipped by the Earl of Southampton, Lord Arundel of Wardour, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the garrison at Plymouth. After spending a month in North Virginia, Weymouth returned to England with five captive Indians, and the popular interest aroused by his arrival surpassed that which had been felt upon former occasions.

The excitement over Virginia was promptly reflected upon the stage. The comedy of "Eastward Ho," written by Chapman and Marston, with contributions from Ben Jonson, was acted in 1605 and published in the autumn of that year. The title is a survival of forms of speech current when America was believed to be a part of the oriental world. Some extracts from this play will serve to illustrate the popular feeling. In the second act old Security, the money lender, is talking with young Frank Quicksilver about the schemes of Sir Petronel Flash. Quicksilver says, "Well, dad, let him have money; all he could anyway get is bestowed on a ship, nowe bound for Virginia." Security replies, "Now a frank gale of wind go with him, Master Frank! We have too few such knight adventurers. Who would not sell away competent certainties to purchase (with any danger) excellent uncertainties? Your true knight venturer ever does it." In the next act a messenger enters.

Messenger. Sir Petronel, here are three or four gentlemen desire to speak with you.

Petronel. What are they?

Quicksilver. They are your followers in this voyage, knight captain Seagull and his associates; I met them this morning and told them you would be here.

Petronel. Let them enter, I pray you....

Enter Seagull, Spendall, and Scapethrift.

Seagull. God save my honourable colonel!

Petronel. Welcome, good Captain Seagull and worthy gentlemen; if you will meet my friend Frank here and me at the Blue Anchor tavern, by Billingsgate, this evening, we will there drink to our happy voyage, be merry, and take boat to our ship with all expedition....

Act III., Scene 2. Enter Seagull, Spendall, and Scapethrift in the Blue Anchor tavern, with a Drawer.

Seagull. Come, drawer, pierce your neatest hogsheads, and let's have cheer,—not fit for your Billingsgate tavern, but for our Virginian colonel; he will be here instantly.

Drawer. You shall have all things fit, sir; please you have any more wine?

Spendall. More wine, slave! whether we drink it or no, spill it, and draw more.

Scapethrift. Fill all the pots in your house with all sorts of liquor, and let 'em wait on us here like soldiers in their pewter coats; and though we do not employ them now, yet we will maintain 'em till we do.

Drawer. Said like an honourable captain; you shall have all you can command, sir. [Exit Drawer.

Seagull. Come boys, Virginia longs till we share the rest of her....

Spendall. Why, is she inhabited already with any English?

Seagull. A whole country of English is there, bred of those that were left there in '79 [Here our dramatist's date is wrong; White's colony, left there in 1587, is meant]; they have married [continues Seagull] with the Indians ... [who] are so in love with them that all the treasure they have they lay at their feet.

Scapethrift. But is there such treasure there, Captain, as I have heard?

Seagull. I tell thee, gold is more plentiful there than copper is with us; and for as much red copper as I can bring I'll have thrice the weight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans ... are pure gold; and all the chains with which they chain up their streets are massy gold; all the prisoners they take are fettered in gold; and for rubies and diamonds they go forth on holidays and gather 'em by the seashore to hang on their children's coats, and stick in their children's caps, as commonly as our children wear saffron-gilt brooches and groats with holes in 'em.

Scapethrift. And is it a pleasant country withal?

Seagull. As ever the sun shined on: temperate, and full of all sorts of excellent viands; wild boar is as common there as our tamest bacon is here; venison as mutton. And then you shall live freely there, without sergeants, or courtiers, or lawyers.... Then for your means to advancement, there it is simple and not preposterously mixed. You may be an alderman there, and never be scavenger; you may be any other officer, and never be a slave. You may come to preferment enough, ... to riches and fortune enough, and have never the more villainy nor the less wit. Besides, there we shall have no more law than conscience, and not too much of either; serve God enough, eat and drink enough, and enough is as good as a feast.

Spendall. Gods me! and how far is it thither?

Seagull. Some six weeks sail, no more, with any indifferent good wind. And if I get to any part of the coast of Africa, I'll sail thither with any wind; or when I come to Cape Finisterre, there's a fore-right wind continual wafts us till we come to Virginia. See, our colonel's come.

Enter Sir Petronel Flash with his followers.

Sir Petronel. We'll have our provided supper brought aboard Sir Francis Drake's ship that hath compassed the world, where with full cups and banquets we will do sacrifice for a prosperous voyage.[29]

The great popularity of this play, both on the stage and in print,—for it went through four editions between September and Christmas,—is an indication of the general curiosity felt about Virginia. The long war with Spain had lately been brought to an end by the treaty of 1604. It had left Spain so grievously weakened that the work of encroaching upon her American demesnes was immeasurably easier than in the days when Hawkins began it and Elizabeth connived at it. In a cipher despatch from the Spanish ambassador ZuÑiga to his sovereign, Philip III., dated London, March 16, 1606, N. S., mention is made of an unpalatable scheme of the English: "They also propose to do another thing, which, is to send five or six hundred men, private individuals of this kingdom, to people Virginia in the Indies, close to Florida. They sent to that country some small number of men in years gone by, and having afterwards sent again, they found a part of them alive."[30] In this reference to White's colony the Spaniard is of course mistaken; no living remnant was ever found. He goes on to say that the principal leader in this business is Sir John Popham, Lord Chief Justice of England, who is a terrible Puritan; and when reminded that this enterprise is an encroachment upon Spanish territory and a violation of the treaty, this astute judge says that he is only undertaking it in order to clear England of thieves and get them drowned in the sea. I have not yet complained of this to the king, says ZuÑiga, but I shall do so.

It was very soon after this despatch, on April 10, O. S., that James I. issued the charter under which England's first permanent colony was established. This memorable document begins by defining the territorial limits of Virginia, which is declared to extend from the 34th to the 45th parallel of latitude, and from the seashore one hundred miles inland. In a second charter, issued three years later, Virginia is described as extending from sea to sea, that is, from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. It is not likely that the king and his advisers understood the westward extension of the grant, as here specified, to be materially different from that mentioned in the first charter. The width of the continent between Chesapeake Bay and the valley of the St. Lawrence was supposed to be no greater than from one to two hundred miles. It is true that before the middle of the sixteenth century the expeditions of Soto and Coronado had proved the existence of a continuous mass of land from Florida to California, but many geographers believed that this continental mass terminated at the 40th parallel or even some degrees lower, and that its northern coast was washed by an enormous bay of the Pacific Ocean, called on old maps the Sea of Verrazano. The coast land from Virginia to Labrador was regarded as a thin strip separating the two oceans after somewhat the same fashion as Central America, and hence the mouths and lower reaches of such broad rivers as the Hudson and the Delaware were mistaken for straits. After one has traced the slow development of knowledge through the curious mingling of fact with fancy in the maps of Baptista Agnese published in 1536, and that of Sebastian MÜnster in 1540, down to the map which Michael Lok made for Sir Philip Sidney in 1582, he will have no difficulty in understanding either the language of the early charters or the fact that such a navigator as Henry Hudson should about this time have entered New York harbour in the hope of coming out upon the Pacific Ocean within a few days. Without such study of the old maps the story often becomes incomprehensible.

As for the northern and southern limits of Virginia, they were evidently prescribed with a view to arousing as little antagonism as possible on the part of Spain and France. Expressed in terms of the modern map, the 34th parallel cuts through the mouth of the Cape Fear River and passes just south of Columbia, the capital of South Carolina; while the 45th parallel is that which divides Vermont from Canada. English settlers were thus kept quite clear of the actual settlements of Spaniards in Florida, and would not immediately be brought into collision with the French friars and fur-traders who were beginning to find their way up the St. Lawrence.

The Virginia thus designated was to be open for colonization by two joint-stock companies, of which the immediate members and such as should participate with them in the enterprise should be called respectively the First Colony and the Second Colony. The First Colony was permitted to occupy the territory between the 34th and the 41st parallels, while the Second Colony was permitted to occupy the territory between the 38th and the 45th parallels. It will thus be observed that the strip between the 38th and 41st parallels was open to both, but it was provided that neither colony should make a plantation or settlement within a hundred miles of any settlement already begun by the other. The elaborate ingenuity of this arrangement is characteristic of James's little device-loving mind; its purpose, no doubt, was to quicken the proceedings by offering to reward whichever colony should be first in the field with a prior claim upon the intervening region. The practical result was the division of the Virginia territory into three strips or zones. The southern zone, starting from the coast comprised between the mouth of the Cape Fear River and the mouth of the Potomac, was secured to the First Colony. The northern zone, starting from the coast comprised between the Bay of Fundy and Long Island Sound, was secured to the Second Colony. The middle zone, from the lower reaches of the Hudson River down to the mouth of the Potomac, was left open to competition between the two, with a marked advantage in favour of the one that should first come to be self-supporting.

It is a curious fact that, although the actual course taken by the colonization of North America was very different from what was contemplated in this charter, nevertheless the division of our territory into the three zones just mentioned has happened to coincide with a real and very important division that exists to-day. Of our original thirteen states, those of New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut were founded in the northern zone, and within it their people have spread through central New York into the Far West. In the middle zone, with the exception of a few northerly towns upon the Hudson, were made the beginnings of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland. In the southern zone were planted Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia. Between the three groups the differences in local government have had much significance in the history of the American people. In the northern zone the township system of local government has prevailed, and in the southern zone the county system, while in the middle zone the mixed township-and-county system has exhibited various phases, here and there reaching a very high stage of development.[31]

To return to King James's charter, the government which it provided for his two American colonies was such as he believed would prove of the two simple and efficient. A Royal Council of Virginia, consisting of thirteen persons, was created in London, and its members were to be appointed by the king. It was to exercise a general supervision over the two colonies, but the direct management of affairs in each colony was to be entrusted to local resident councils. Each local council was to consist of thirteen persons, of whom one was to be president, with a casting vote. The council in London was to give the wheels of government a start by appointing the first members of the two colonial councils and designating that member of each who should serve as president for the first year. After that the vehicle was to run of itself; the colonial council was to elect its president each year, and could depose him in case of misconduct; it could also fill its own vacancies, arising from the resignation, deposition, departure, or death of any of its members. Power was given to the colonial council to coin money for trade between the colonies and with the natives, to invite and carry over settlers, to drive out intruders, to punish malefactors, and to levy and collect duties upon divers imported goods. All lands within the two colonies were to be held in free and common socage, like the demesnes of the manor of East Greenwich, in the county of Kent and the settlers and their children forever were to enjoy all the liberties, franchises, and immunities enjoyed by Englishmen in England,—a clause which was practically nullified by the failure to provide for popular elections or any expression whatever of public opinion. The authority of the colonial councils was supreme within the colonies, but their acts were liable to a veto from the Crown.

This first English attempt at making an outline of government for an English colony can never fail to be of interest. It was an experimental treatment of a wholly new and unfamiliar problem, and, as we shall hereafter see, it was soon proved to be a very crude experiment, needing much modification. For the present we are concerned with the names and characters of the persons to whom this ever-memorable charter was granted.

The persons interested in the First Colony, in that southern zone which had been the scene of Raleigh's original attempts, were represented by some eminent citizens of London and its neighbourhood, so that they came afterward to be commonly known as the London Company. The names mentioned in the charter are four: the Rev. Richard Hakluyt, who had lately been made a prebendary of Westminster; Sir Thomas Gates, Sir George Somers, and Captain Edward Maria Wingfield. Gates was a Devonshire soldier who had been knighted in 1596 for brave conduct in the battle of Cadiz, and had afterward served in the Netherlands. Somers was a native of Dorsetshire, and had received knighthood for eminent services as commander in several naval expeditions against the Spaniards. Captain Edward Maria Wingfield, of Stoneley Priory, in Huntingdonshire, was of a very ancient and honourable Catholic family; Queen Mary Tudor and Cardinal Pole had been sponsors for his father, which accounts for the feminine middle name; he had served in the Netherlands and in Ireland; among his near relatives, or connections by marriage, were Shakespeare's Earl of Southampton, the lords Carew and Hervey, and John Winthrop, of Groton, afterwards governor of Massachusetts. But the name which, after Hakluyt's, has been perhaps most closely identified with the London Company is that of Sir Thomas Smith, the eminent London citizen who was its first treasurer. From the time of his student days at Oxford Smith felt a strong interest in "western planting," and we have already met with his name on the list of those to whom Raleigh in 1589 assigned his trading interests in Virginia. He was knighted in 1596 for gallantry at Cadiz, was alderman and sheriff of London, and first governor of the East India Company in 1600. He was at various times a member of Parliament, served as ambassador to Russia, and was especially forward in promoting Arctic discovery. He was one of those who sent Henry Hudson in 1610 upon his last fatal voyage, and it was under his auspices that William Baffin was sailing in 1616 when he discovered that remote strait leading to the Polar Sea which has ever since been known as Smith's Sound. Few men of that time contributed more largely in time and money to the London Company than Sir Thomas Smith.

The persons interested in the Second Colony, in that northern zone to which attention had recently been directed by the voyages of Gosnold, Pring, and Weymouth, were represented by certain gentlemen connected with the western counties, especially by Ferdinando Gorges, governor of the garrison at Plymouth in Devonshire, who was afterwards to be Lord Proprietor of the Province of Maine, and to play a part of some importance in the early history of New England. This company came to be known as the Plymouth Company. The four names mentioned in the charter are Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, Thomas Hanham, and George Popham. The name of the first of these gentlemen tells its own story; he was a younger son of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and named for his uncle. William Parker was son and heir of Lord Morley, and commonly known by his courtesy title as Lord Monteagle. It was he who received the anonymous letter which led to the detection of the Gunpowder Plot, in which his wife's brother was concerned. George Popham was a nephew,[32] and Thomas Hanham was a grandson, of Sir John Popham, Chief Justice of the King's Bench. They were a Somersetshire family. In securing the charter incorporating the London and Plymouth companies nobody was more active or influential than the chief justice, whom we have seen singled out for mention by the Spanish ambassador.

Among other persons especially interested in the colonization of Virginia, one should mention George Abbot, Master of University College, Oxford, one of the translators of the common version of the Bible, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury; and Sir Julius CÆsar, member of Parliament for Westminster and Chancellor of the Exchequer, son of Julius CÆsar Adelmare, Queen Elizabeth's Italian physician; his strong interest in maritime discovery and western planting may have been due to the fact that, after the death of his father and while he was still a child, his mother married the celebrated geographer, Dr. Michael Lok. We should not forget Sir Maurice Berkeley, two of whose sons we shall meet hereafter, one of them, Sir William Berkeley, the most conspicuous figure among the royal governors of Virginia, the other, Lord Berkeley of Stratton, one of the proprietors of Carolina. An important subscriber to the company was Sir Anthony Ashley, grandfather of the famous Earl of Shaftesbury, who was also one of the Carolina proprietors; another was William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke, nephew of Sir Philip Sidney and devoted friend of Shakespeare; another was Sir Henry Cary, father of the pure and high-minded statesman, Lucius, Viscount Falkland. Of more importance for Virginian history than any of the foregoing was Sir Edwin Sandys, son of Edwin Sandys, Archbishop of York. Sir Edwin was a pupil of the great Richard Hooker, and learned from him principles of toleration little understood in that age. After his travels on the continent he published in 1605 a treatise entitled "EuropÆ Speculum, a relation of the state of religion in ... these Western Parts of the World;" its liberal opinions gave so much offence that about four months after its publication it was burned in St. Paul's Churchyard by order of the Court of High Commission. At that very time Sandys was one of the most admired and respected members of the House of Commons, and it was on his motion that the House first began keeping a regular journal of its transactions. He was associated with Sir Francis Bacon in drawing up the remonstrance against King James's behaviour toward Parliament. In later years he was an active friend of the Mayflower Pilgrims and gave them valuable aid in setting out upon their enterprise. But his chief title to historic fame consists in the fact that it was under his auspices and largely through his exertions that free representative government was first established in America. How this came about will be shown in a future chapter. For the present we may note that at least half a dozen of his immediate family were subscribers to the London Company; one of his brothers had for godfather Sir Thomas Lucy, of Charlecote Hall, the Puritan knight who figures as Justice Shallow in the "Merry Wives of Windsor;" there were at least two intermarriages between this Sandys family and that of Lawrence Washington, of Sulgrave, ancestor of George Washington. It is pleasant to trace the various connections, near and remote, whether in blood-relationship or in community of interests and purposes, between the different personages of a great era that has passed away; for the more we come to discern in its concrete details the intricate web of associations running in all directions among the men and events of the vanished age, the more vividly is that age reproduced in our minds, the closer does it come to the present, the more keenly does it enlist our sympathies. As we contemplate the goodly array here brought forward of personages concerned in the first planting of an English nation in America, the inquiry as to what sort of men they were, for intelligence and character, is one that can be answered with satisfaction.

In accordance with the provisions of the charter, both London and Plymouth companies made haste to organize expeditions for planting their colonies in the New World. The London Company was the first to be ready, but before we follow its adventures a word about the Plymouth Company seems called for. On the last day of May, 1607, two ships—the Gift of God, commanded by George Popham, and the Mary and John, commanded by Raleigh Gilbert—set sail from Plymouth with a hundred settlers In August, after some exploration of the coast, they selected a site by the mouth of the Kennebec River, and built there a rude fort with twelve guns, a storehouse and church, and a few cabins. They searched diligently but in vain for traces of gold or silver; the winter brought with it much hardship, their storehouse was burned down, and Captain Popham died. In the spring a ship which arrived with supplies from England brought the news of two deaths, that of Chief Justice Popham, and that of Gilbert's elder brother, to whose estates he was heir. The enterprise was forthwith abandoned and all returned to England with most discouraging reports. The further career of the Plymouth Company does not at present concern us. It never achieved any notable success. When the colonization of New England was at length accomplished it was in a manner that was little dreamed of by the king who granted or the men who obtained the charter of 1606.

The expedition fitted out by the London Company was in readiness a little before Christmas 1606, and was placed under command of Captain Christopher Newport, the stout sailor who had brought in the great Spanish carrack for Raleigh. He was one of the most skilful and highly esteemed officers in the English navy. Of the three ships that were to go to Virginia his was the Susan Constant. The Godspeed was commanded by Bartholomew Gosnold, and the Discovery by John Ratcliffe. Besides their crews, the three ships carried 105 colonists. By some queer freak of policy the names of the persons appointed to the colonial council were carried in a sealed box, not to be opened until the little squadron should arrive at its destination. An important paper of instructions was drawn up for the use of the officers on landing. Hakluyt was commonly called upon to prepare such documents, and the style of this one sounds like him. The suggestions are those of a man who understood the business.[33]

"When it shall please God to send you on the coast of Virginia, you shall do your best endeavour to find out a safe port in the entrance of some navigable river, making choice of such a one as runneth farthest into the land.... When you have made choice of the river on which you mean to settle, be not hasty in landing your victuals and munitions, but first let Captain Newport discover how far that river may be found navigable, that you make election of the strongest, most wholesome and fertile place, for if you make many removes, besides the loss of time, you shall greatly spoil your victuals and your casks.

"But if you choose your place so far up as a bark of 50 tons will float, then you may lay all your provisions ashore with ease, and the better receive the trade of all the countries about you in the land; and such a place you may perchance find a hundred miles from the river's mouth, and the further up the better, for if you sit down near the entrance, except it be in some island that is strong by nature, an enemy that may approach you on even ground may easily pull you out; and [i. e. but] if he be driven to seek you a hundred miles the [i. e. in] land in boats, you shall from both sides of the river where it is narrowest, so beat them with your muskets as they shall never be able to prevail against you."

That the enemy in the writer's mind was the Spaniard is clearly shown by the next paragraph, which refers expressly to the massacre of the Huguenot colony in Florida and the vengeance taken by Dominique de Gourgues.

"And to the end that you be not surprised as the French were in Florida by Melindus [i. e. Menendez] and the Spaniard in the same place by the French, you shall do well to make this double provision: first erect a little store at the mouth of the river that may lodge some ten men, with whom you shall leave a light boat, that when any fleet shall be in sight they may come with speed to give you warning. Secondly, you must in no case suffer any of the native people to inhabit between you and the sea-coast, for you cannot carry yourselves so towards them but they will grow discontented with your habitation, and be ready to guide and assist any nation that shall come to invade you; and if you neglect this you neglect your safety.

"You must observe if you can whether the river on which you plant doth spring out of mountains or out of lakes. If it be out of any lake the passage to the other sea [i. e. the Pacific Ocean] will be the more easy; and [it] is like enough that out of the same lake you shall find some [rivers] spring which run the contrary way toward the East India Sea, for the great and famous rivers of Volga, Tanais, and Dwina have three heads near joined, and yet the one falleth into the Caspian Sea, the other into the Euxine Sea, and the third into the Polonian Sea.

"... You must have great care not to offend the naturals, if you can eschew it, and employ some few of your company to trade with them for corn and all other lasting victuals ..., and this you must do before that they perceive you mean to plant among them.... Your discoverers that pass over land with hired guides must look well to them that they slip not from them, and for more assurance let them take a compass with them, and write down how far they go upon every point of the compass, for that country having no way or path, if that your guides run from you in the great woods or desert, you shall hardly ever find a passage back. And how weary soever your soldiers be, let them never trust the country people with the carriage of their weapons, for if they run from you with your shot which they only fear, they will easily kill them [i. e. you] all with their arrows. And whensoever any of yours shoots before them, be sure that they be chosen out of your best marksmen, for if they see your learners miss what they aim at, they will think the weapon not so terrible, and thereby will be bold to assault you.

"Above all things, do not advertise the killing of any of your men [so] that the country people may know it. If they perceive that they are but common men, and that with the loss of many of theirs they may diminish any part of yours, they will make many adventures upon you.... You shall do well also not to let them see or know of your sick men, if you have any....

"You must take especial care that you choose a seat for habitation that shall not be overburthened with woods near your town, for all the men you have shall not be able to cleanse twenty acres a year, besides that it may serve for a covert for your enemies round about.

"Neither must you plant in a low or moist place, because it will prove unhealthful. You shall judge of the good air by the people, for some part of that coast where the lands are low have their people blear eyed, and with swollen bellies and legs, but if the naturals be strong and clean made it is a true sign of a wholesome soil.

"You must take order to draw up the pinnace that is left with you under the fort, and take her sails and anchors ashore, all but a small kedge to ride by, lest some ill-disposed persons slip away with her."

The document contains many other excellent suggestions and directions, two or three of which will suffice for the purposes of our narrative.

"Seeing order is at the same price with confusion it shall be advisably done to set your houses even and by a line, that your streets may have a good breadth and be carried square about your market-place, and every street's end opening into it, that from thence with a few field-pieces you may command every street throughout....

"You shall do well to send a perfect relation by Captain Newport of all that is done, what height you are seated, how far into the land, what commodities you find, what soil, woods and their several kinds, and so of all other things else, to advertise particularly; and to suffer no man to return but by passport from the President and Council, nor to write [in] any letter of anything that may discourage others.

"Lastly and chiefly, the way to prosper and achieve good success is to make yourselves all of one mind for the good of your country and your own, and to serve and fear God, the Giver of all goodness, for every plantation which our Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted out."

The allusion to the Florida tragedy, in this charming paper, was by no means ill considered. For in March, 1607, the King of Spain wrote from Madrid to ZuÑiga in London as follows: "You will report to me what the English are doing in the matter of Virginia; and if the plan progresses which they contemplated, of sending men there and ships; and thereupon it will be taken into consideration here what steps had best be taken to prevent it."[34] A few days after this letter Philip III. held a meeting with his council to discuss measures which boded no good to Captain Newport's little company. We do not know just what was said and done, but we hardly need to be told that the temper of Spain was notably changed in the forty-two years since Menendez's deed of blood. How to ruin the Virginia enterprise without coming to blows with England was now the humbler problem for Spain to solve, and it was not an easy one.

Meanwhile Newport's little fleet was half way on its voyage. It started down the Thames from Blackwall on the 19th of December, but by reason of "unprosperous winds" it was obliged to keep its moorings "all in the Downs," as in the ballad of "Black-eyed Susan," until New Year's Day, 1607, when it finally got under way. A farewell blessing was wafted to them in Michael Drayton's quaint stanzas:[35]—

With rich omen sailed from merry England the men who were to make the beginnings of the United States of America. What they found and how they fared in the paradise of Virginia shall be the theme of our next chapter.