"And worthy George, by industry and useLet's see what lines Virginia will produce;Entice the Muses thither to repair,Entreat them gently, train them to that air;For they from hence may thither hap to fly."
"And worthy George, by industry and useLet's see what lines Virginia will produce;Entice the Muses thither to repair,Entreat them gently, train them to that air;For they from hence may thither hap to fly."
"And worthy George, by industry and useLet's see what lines Virginia will produce;Entice the Muses thither to repair,Entreat them gently, train them to that air;For they from hence may thither hap to fly."
On the bank of James River the worthy George entreated the Muses with success and wrote the greater part of his poetical version, which was published at London in 1626.
Education.
Project for a university.
But the Muses could not be enticed to stay long in Virginia without some provision for higher education there, and this was well understood by Sir Edwin Sandys and the enlightened gentlemen who supported him. In 1621 the Company resolved that funds should be appropriated "for the erecting of a public free school ... for the education of children and grounding of them in the principles of religion. Civility of life and humane learning," said the committee's report, "seemed to carry with it the greatest weight and highest consequence unto the plantations as that whereof both Church and Commonwealth take their original foundation and happy estate, this being also like[ly] to prove a work most acceptable unto the planters, through want whereof they have been hitherto constrained to their great costs to send their children from thence hither to be taught." Rev. Patrick Copeland, a missionary returning from the East Indies, raised £70 toward the endowment of this school, and was busily engaged in doing more for it. It was accordingly called the East India School, it was to be established in Charles City, and its courses of study were to be preparatory to those of a university which was to beset up in the city of Henricus. Great interest was felt in this university. Like Harvard College, founded somewhat later, it was designed not only for the education of white youths but also for civilizing and missionary work among the Indians. The Bishop of London raised by subscription £1,000 for the enterprise; one anonymous benefactor gave a silver communion service; another, who signed himself "Dust and Ashes," sent £550, and promised, after certain progress should have been made, to add £450 more; this man was afterward discovered to be a member of the Company, named Gabriel Barber. The elder Nicholas Ferrar left £300 in his will, and various contributions were added by his sons. A tract of land in Henricus was appropriated for the site of the college, and George Thorpe was sent out to be its rector, or, as we should say, its president. But Thorpe, as well as others who were interested in the enterprise, perished in the Indian massacre of 1622. It seems that Copeland was about to be sent to take his place, and the enterprise was about to be vigorously pushed on by Ferrar and his friends, when the overthrow of the Company took away all control over Virginian affairs from the people most interested in this work. So the scheme for a college remained in a state of suspended vitality for seventy years, until Dr. Blair revived it in 1692, and established it in the town of Williamsburg.
Puritans and Liberal Churchmen.
Everybody knows that the college of William and Mary is the oldest in the United States, after Harvard. It is not so generally known that theformer was planned and all but established in 1622, eight years before Winthrop and his followers came to Massachusetts Bay. It is a just and wholesome pride that New England people feel in recalling the circumstances under which Harvard College was founded, in a little colony but six years of age, still struggling against the perils of the wilderness and the enmity of its sovereign. Such an event is quite properly cited in illustration of the lofty aims and intelligent foresight of the founders of Massachusetts. But it should not be forgotten that aims equally lofty and foresight equally intelligent were shown by the men who from 1619 to 1624 controlled the affairs of Virginia. One of the noblest features in the great Puritan movement was its zeal for education, elementary education for everybody and higher education for all who could avail themselves of it. It is important to remember that this zeal for education, as well as the zeal for political liberty, was not confined to the Puritans. Within the established Church of England and never feeling a desire to leave it, were eminent men who to the political principles of Pym joined a faith in education as strong as Locke's. The general temper of these men, of whom Richard Hooker was the illustrious master, was broadly tolerant. Sir Edwin Sandys was friendly to the Leyden Pilgrims, and it was under his administration that the Virginia Company granted them the patent under which they would have founded their colony on the coast of New Jersey or Delaware, had not foul weather driventhe Mayflower to Cape Cod. It was Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar that were most energetic in the attempt to found a college in Virginia, and there were some curious points of resemblance between their situation in 1622 and the situation of Winthrop and his friends while they were laying the foundations of Harvard College. In 1622, while James I. was plotting the overthrow of the London Company, the horrors of Indian massacre, as sudden as lightning from a cloudless sky, fell upon the people of Virginia. In 1637 the people of Massachusetts had the Pequot war on their hands, and Charles I. was plotting the overthrow of the Company of Massachusetts Bay, against whose charter he was on the point of issuing a writ ofquo warranto, when in St. Giles's church at Edinburgh one Sunday old Jenny Geddes threw her camp-stool at the bishop's head, and in the ensuing turmoil American affairs were quite forgotten.
Massachusetts and Virginia.
The comparison reminds us that the Company of Massachusetts Bay knew how to profit by the fate of its great predecessor, the London Company for Virginia. In the summer of 1629, when things were looking very dark in England, the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company held a meeting at Cambridge and decided to carry their company, with its charter, across the ocean to New England, where they might work out their purposes without so much danger from royal interference. This transfer of the Company to America was the most fundamental circumstance in the early history of New England. The mere physical fact of distancetransformed the commercial company into a self-governing republic, which for more than fifty years managed its own affairs in almost entire independence of the British government. Difficulty of access and infrequency of communication were the safeguards of the Massachusetts Bay Company. If it had held its meetings and promulgated its measures in London, its life would not have been worth a five years purchase. It had the fate of the Virginia Company for a warning, and most adroitly did it profit by the lesson. If the Virginia Company could have been transferred bodily to America in 1620, it might perhaps have become similarly changed into a self-governing semi-independent republic; the interests of the Company would have been permanently identified with those of the colony, and the course of Virginian history might have been profoundly affected. As it was, Virginia attained through the fall of the Company to such measure of self-government as it had throughout the colonial period, a self-government much like that of Massachusetts after 1692, but far less complete than that of Massachusetts before 1684.
Death of James I.
It was not the intention of James I. that the overthrow of the Company should contribute in any way to increase the liberties of the colony of Virginia. All colonizable territory claimed by Great Britain was, in his opinion, just so much royal domain, something which came to him by inheritance like the barony of Renfrew or the manor of Windsor; it was his to do what he liked with it, and for settlers in such territory no betterlaw was needed than such as he could make for them himself. A shadow of doubt as to his own omniscience was never one of James's weaknesses, and no sooner had the Company's charter been annulled than he set himself to work to draw up a constitution for Virginia. It was work of a sort that he thoroughly enjoyed, but what might have come of it will never be known, for while he was busy with it there came upon him what the doctors called a tertian ague, which carried him off in March, 1625.
Effect of the downfall of the Company.
In the history of England no era is marked by the accession of Charles I. In its policy and methods, and in the political problems at issue, his reign was merely the continuation of his father's. But in the history of Virginia his accession marks an important era. For if James had lived to complete his constitution for Virginia he would in all probability have swept away the representative government introduced by Sir Edwin Sandys; but Charles allowed it to stand. As the situation was left by the death of James, so it remained without essential change until 1776. The House of Burgesses was undisturbed, but the governor and council were thenceforth appointed by the crown. The colony was thus left less independent than it would have been if the Company, with its power of electing its own executive officers, could have been transferred bodily to Virginia; but it was left more independent than it would have been if the existence of the Company had been continued in London. The change from governors appointedby the Company to governors appointed by the crown was a relaxation of the supervision which England exercised over Virginia. For the Company could devote all its attention to the affairs of the colony, but the crown could not. Especially in such reigns as those of the two Charleses, the attention of the crown was too much absorbed with affairs in Great Britain to allow it to interfere decisively with the course of events in Virginia. The colony was thus in the main thrown back upon its own resources, and such a state of things was most favourable to its wholesome development. The Company, after all, was a commercial corporation, and the main object of its existence was to earn money for its shareholders. The pursuit of that object was by no means always sure to coincide with the best interests of the colony. Moreover, although the government of the Company from 1619 to 1624 was conducted with energy and sagacity, disinterestedness, honesty, and breadth of view such as history has seldom seen rivalled, yet there was no likelihood that such would always be the case. Such a combination of men in responsible positions as Southampton and Sandys and Ferrar is too rare to be counted upon. The Company might have passed for a weary while under the control of incompetent or unscrupulous men, and to a young colony like Virginia such a contingency would have been not only disagreeable but positively dangerous. No community, indeed, can long afford to have its affairs administered by a body of men so far away as to be out of immediatetouch with it. On the other hand, even if we could suppose a commercial company to go on year after year managing a colony with so much intelligence and sympathy as the London Company showed in its last days, such a situation would not be permanently wholesome for the colony. What men need is not fostering or coddling, but the chance to give free play to their individual capacities. If coddling and fostering could make a colony thrive, the French in Canada ought to have dominated North America. From all points of view, therefore, it seems to have been well for Virginia that the Company fell when it did. It established self-government there, set its machinery successfully to work, and then vanished from the scene, like the Jinni in some Oriental tale, leaving its good gift behind.
The virus of liberty.
The boon of self-government was so congenial to the temper of the Virginians that they would doubtless have contrived somehow to obtain it sooner or later. Hutchinson tells us that when the second American house of representatives was instituted, namely, that of Massachusetts Bay in 1634, the people were well aware that no provision for anything of the sort had been made in of their charter, but they assumed that the right to such representation was implied by that clause of the charter which reserved to them the natural rights of Englishmen;[111]and elsewhere the same eminent historian quaintly speaks of a House of Burgesses as havingbroken outin Virginia in 1619, as if there were an incurablevirus of liberty in the English blood, as if it were something that must come out as inevitably as original sin. But if James I. had lived longer, as I have already observed, he would undoubtedly have made an effort to repress this active spirit of liberty. The colonists, on hearing of the downfall of the Company, were in great alarm lest they should lose their House of Burgesses, and have some arbitrary governor appointed to rule over them, perhaps the hated Argall himself, whom we have seen King James selecting as one of a board of commissioners to investigate affairs in Virginia. In 1621, when for some reason or other the amiable and popular Yeardley had asked to be relieved of the duties of governor, Argall had tried to get himself appointed in his place, but the Company had chosen Sir Francis Wyatt, who held the office until 1626, while Yeardley remained in Virginia as a member of the council. In 1625, as soon as the assembly heard of King James's death, they sent Yeardley to England to pay their respects to King Charles and to assure him that the people of Virginia were thoroughly satisfied with their government and hoped that no changes would be made in it.
Charles I. and the tobacco trade.
Now it happened that Charles had a favour to ask of the settlers in Virginia, and was in the right sort of mood for a bargain. He was no more in love than his father with the many-tongued beast called Parliament, he saw how comfortably his brother-in-law of France was getting along without such assistance, and he was determined if possible to do likewise. But to get alongwithout parliaments a poor king must have some means of getting money. The Virginia tobacco crop was fast becoming a great source of wealth; why should not the king himself go into the tobacco trade? If all tobacco brought to England from Virginia could be consigned to him, then he could retail it to consumers at his own price and realize a gigantic profit; or, what was perhaps still better, having obtained this monopoly, he could farm it out to various agents who would be glad to pay roundly for the privilege. Now the only way in which he could treat with the people of Virginia on such matters was through the representatives of the people. Accordingly, when Governor Wyatt in 1626 had occasion to return to England, the king sent back Sir George Yeardley as royal governor, which under the circumstances was a most emphatic assurance that the wishes of the settlers should be granted. Furthermore, in a message to their representatives Charles graciously addressed them as "Our trusty and well-beloved Burgesses of the Grand Assembly of Virginia," and thus officially recognized that house as a coördinate branch of the colonial government. Some arrangements made with regard to the tobacco trade were calculated to please the colonists. James I., under the influence of his mentor, Count Gondomar, had browbeaten the Company into an arrangement by which they consented to import into England not more than 60,000 or less than 40,000 pounds of tobacco yearly from the Spanish colonies. Charles I. on the other hand prohibitedthe importation of Spanish tobacco, so that Virginia and the Bermudas had a monopoly of the market. In spite of this friendly attitude of the king toward the colonists, he never succeeded in becoming the sole purchaser of their tobacco at a stipulated price. The assembly was ready from time to time to entertain various proposals, but it never went so far as that; and if Charles, in sanctioning this little New World parliament, counted upon getting substantial aid in ignoring his Parliament at home, he was sadly disappointed.
The first American legislature.
It is now time for us to attend a session of this House of Burgesses, to make a report of its work, and to mention some of the vicissitudes which it encountered in the course of the reign of Charles I. The place of meeting was the wooden church at Jamestown, 50 feet in length by 20 in width, built in 1619, for Lord Delaware's church had become dilapidated; a solid brick church, 56 feet by 28, was built there in 1639. From the different plantations and hundreds the burgesses came mostly in their barges or sloops to Jamestown. In 1634 the colony was organized into counties and parishes, and the burgesses thenceforth represented counties, but they always kept their old title. At first the governor, council, and burgesses met together in a single assembly, just as in Massachusetts until 1644, just as in England the Lords and Commons usually sat together before 1339.[112]A member of this Virginia parliament must take his breakfast of bacon and hoe-cake betimes, for the meeting was called together at the third beat of the drum, one hour after sunrise. The sessions were always opened with prayers, and every absence from this service was punished with a fine of one shilling. The fine for absence during the whole day was half a crown. In the choir of the church sat the governor and council, their coats trimmed with gold lace. By the statute of 1621, passed in this very church, no one was allowed to wear gold lace except these high officials and the commanders of hundreds, a class of dignitaries who in 1634 were succeeded by the county lieutenants. In the body of the church, facing the choir, sat the burgesses in their best attire, with starched ruffs, and coats of silk or velvet in bright colours. All sat with their hats on, in imitation of the time-honoured custom of the House of Commons, an early illustration of the democratic doctrine, "I am as good as you." These burgesses had their speaker, as well as their clerk and sergeant-at-arms. Such was the first American legislature, and two of its acts in the year 1624 were especially memorable. One was the declaration, passed without any dissenting voice, "that the governor shall not lay any taxes or impositions upon the colony, their lands or commodities, otherway than by the authority of the general assembly, to be levied and employed as the said assembly shall appoint." The other was the punishment of Edward Sharpless, clerk of the house. When the king's commissioners to inquire into the affairs of Virginiaasked for the public records of the colony the assembly refused to show them, albeit they were ready to answer questions propounded in a becoming temper. But the commissioners practised upon Sharpless and induced him to furnish them with a copy of the records, whereupon the assembly condemned the said Sharpless to stand in the pillory and have half of one ear cut off.
Martin's case.
Education of Indians.
This general assembly was both a legislative and a judicial body. It enacted laws and prescribed the penalties for breaking them, it tried before a jury persons accused of crime and saw that due punishment was inflicted upon those who were adjudged guilty, it determined civil causes, assessed the amount of damages, and saw that they were collected. From sweeping principles of constitutional law down to the pettiest sumptuary edicts, there was nothing which this little parliament did not superintend and direct. On one occasion, "the delegates from Captain John Martin's plantation were excepted to because of a peculiar clause in his patent releasing him from obeying any order of the colony except in times of war." A few days afterward the said Captain Martin appeared at the bar of the house, and the speaker asking whether he would relinquish the particular clause exempting him from colonial authority, replied that he would not yield any part of his patent. The assembly then resolved that the burgesses of his plantation were not entitled to seats.[113]Such exemptions of individual planters by especial license from the homegovernment, although rare, were of course anomalies not to be commended; in some cases they proved to be nuisances, and in course of time all were got rid of. From this constitutional question the assembly turned to the conversion of the red men, and enacted that each borough or hundred should obtain from the Indians by just and fair means a certain number of Indian children to be educated "in true religion and a civil course of life; of which children the most towardly boys in wit and graces of nature [are] to be brought up by them in the first elements of literature, so as to be fitted for the college intended for them, that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion." Few enactments of any legislature have ever been better intended or less fruitful than this.
Drunkards.
It was moreover enacted that any person found drunk was for the first offence to be privately reproved by the minister; the second time this reproof was to be publicly administered; the third time the offender must be put in irons for twelve hours and pay a fine; for any subsequent offences he must be severely punished at the discretion of the governor and council.
Dress.
To guard the community against excessive vanity in dress, it was enacted that for all public contributions every unmarried man must be assessed in church "according to his own apparel;" and every married man must be assessed "according to his own and his wife's apparel."
Flirting.
Not merely extravagance in dress, but suchsocial misdemeanours as flirting received due legislative condemnation. Pretty maids were known to encourage hopes in more than one suitor, and gay deceivers of the sterner sex would sometimes seek to win the affections of two or more women at the same time. Wherefore it was enacted that "every minister should give notice in his church that what man or woman soever should use any word or speech tending to a contract of marriage to two several persons at one time ... as might entangle or breed scruples in their consciences, should for such their offense, either undergo corporal correction [by whipping] or be punished by fine or otherwise, according to the quality of the person so offending."[114]
Scandal.
Clergymen.
Men were held to more strict accountability for the spoken or written word than in these shameless modern days. One of the most prominent settlers we find presenting a petition to the assembly to grant him due satisfaction against a neighbour who has addressed to him a letter "wherein he taxeth him both unseemly and amiss of certain things wherein he was never faulty." Speaking against the governor or any member of the council was liable to be punished with the pillory. It was also imprudent to speak too freely about clergymen, who were held in great reverence. No planter could dispose of so much as a pound of tobacco until he had laid aside a certain specified quantity as his assessment toward the minister's salary, which was thus assured even in the worst times, sofar as legislation could go. It was enacted that "noe man shall disparage a mynister whereby the myndes of his parishoners may be alienated from him and his mynistrie prove less effectuall, upon payne of severe censure of the governor and councell."[115]At the same time clergymen were warned against unseemly practices in terms so concrete as to raise a suspicion that such warning may have been needed. "Mynisters shall not give themselves to excesse in drinking or ryott, spending their tyme idelie by day or by night playing at dice, cards, or any other unlawfull game, but at all tymes convenient they shall heare or reade somewhat of the holy scriptures, or shall occupie themselves with some other honest studies or exercise, alwayes doinge the things which shall apperteyne to honestie and endeavour to profitt the church of God, having alwayes in mind that they ought to excell all others in puritie of life, should be examples to the people, to live well and christianlie."[116]
Sabbath-breaking.
The well-being of Virginia society was further protected by sundry statutes such as the one which punished profane swearing by a fine of one shilling per oath. "For the better observation of the Saboth" it was enacted that no person "shall take a voyage vppon the same, except it be to church or for other causes of extreme necessitie," under penalty of forfeiting twenty pounds of tobacco for each offence. A similar fine was imposed for firing a gun uponSunday, unless it might be for defence against the Indians. Selling arms or ammunition to Indians was punished by imprisonment for life, with confiscation of goods. Every master of a family was required, under penalty of ten pounds of tobacco, to bring with him to church every Sunday a serviceable gun with plenty of powder and shot.
Strong drink.
Stringent legislation protected the rights of thirsty persons. "Whereas there hath been great abuse by the vnreasonable rates enacted by ordinary keepers, and retaylers of wine and strong waters," maximum prices were established as follows: for Spanish wines 30 lbs. of tobacco per gallon, for Madeira 20 lbs., for French wines 15 lbs., for brandy 40 lbs., for "the best sorte of all English strong waters" 80 lbs.; and any vender charging above these rates was to be fined at double the rate. For corrupting or "sophisticating" good liquor by fraudulent admixtures, a fine was imposed at the discretion of the commissioners of the county courts. The inn-keeper who sold wines and spirits to his guests did so at his own risk, for such debts were not recoverable at law.[117]
Forestallers.
The ancient prejudice against forestalling survives in the following statute, which would make havoc of the business of some modern brokers: "Whatsoever person or persons shall buy or cause to be bought any marchandize, victualls, or any other thinge, comminge by land or water to the markett to be sold, or make any bargaine, contract or promise for the haveinge orbuyinge of the same ... before the said marchandize, victualls, or other thinge shall bee at the markett readie to be sold; or make any motion by word, letter or message or otherwise to any person or persons for the enhaunsing of the price, or dearer sellinge of any thinge or thinges above mentioned, or else disswade, move, or stirr any person or persons cominge to the marquett, to abstaine or forbeare to bringe or conveye any of the things above rehearsed to any markett as aforesayd, shall be deemed and adjudged a forestaller. And yf any person or persons shall offend in the things before recited and beinge thereof dulie convicted or attaynted shall for his or theire first offence suffer imprisonment by the space of two mounthes without baile or maine-prize, and shall also loose and forfeite the value of the goods soe by him or them bought or had as aforesayd; and for a second offence ... shall suffer imprisonment by the space of one halfe yeare ... and shall loose the double value of all the goods ... soe bought ... and for the third offence ... shall be sett on the pillorie ... and loose and forfeit all the goods and chattels that he or they then have to theire owne use, and also be committed to prison, there to remayne duringe the Governor's pleasure."[118]
The kingdom of Virginia.
Edmund Spenser, in his dedication of the "Faëry Queene," in 1590, calls Elizabeth the queen of England, France, and Ireland, and of Virginia, thus characterizing as a kingdom thevast and vague domain in the New World which she was appropriating. Soon after the downfall of the Virginia Company, the document containing Charles I.'s appointment of William Claiborne as secretary of state in the colony mentioned it as "our kingdom of Virginia;" and the phrase occurs in other writings of the time. It is a phrase that seems especially appropriate for the colony after it had come to be a royal province, directly dependent upon the king for its administration. During the reign of Charles I. the relations of the kingdom of Virginia to the mother country were marked by few memorable incidents. In this respect the contrast with the preceding reign is quite striking. One must read the story in the original state papers, correspondence, and pamphlets of the time, in order to realize to what an extent the colony was cut loose by the overthrow of the Company. The most interesting and important questions that came up were connected with the settlement of Maryland, but before we enter upon that subject, a few words are needed on the succession of royal governors in Virginia.
A convivial governor.
The commission of Yeardley in 1626 named Sir John Harvey as his successor. When Yeardley died in 1627, Harvey had not arrived upon the scene, and needed to be notified. In such cases it was the business of the council to appoint a governorad interim, and the council appointed one of the oldest and most honoured settlers, Francis West, brother of the late Lord Delaware. After one year of service business called West to England, and his place was taken by Dr. John Pott, who held the government until Sir John Harvey's arrival in March, 1630. This Dr. Pott is described as "a Master of Arts, ... well practised in chirurgery and physic, and expert also in distilling of waters, [besides] many other ingenious devices."[119]It seems that he was likewise very fond of tasting distilled waters, and at times was more of a boon companion than quite comported with his dignity, especially after he had come to be governor. A letter of George Sandys to a friend in London says of Dr. Pott, "at first he kept company too much with his inferiors, who hung upon him while his good liquor lasted. After, he consorted with Captain Whitacres, a man of no good example, with whom he has gone to Kecoughtan."[120]What was done by the twain at Kecoughtan is not matter of record, but we are left with a suggestion of the darkest possibilities of a carouse.
After Harvey's arrival ex-Governor Pott was arrested, and held to answer two charges: one was for having abused the powers entrusted to him by pardoning a culprit who had been convicted of wilful murder; the other was for stealing cattle. The first charge was a matter of common notoriety; on the second Dr. Pott was tried by a jury and found guilty. The ex-governor was not only a pardoner of felony, but a felon himself. The affair reads like a scene in comic opera. Some reluctance was felt about inflicting vulgar punishment upon an educated man of good social position; so he was not sent to jail but confined in his own house, while Sir John Harvey wrote to the king for instructions in the matter. He informed the king that Dr. Pott was by far the best physician in the colony, and indeed the only one "skilled in epidemicals," and recommended that he should be pardoned. Accordingly the doctor was set free and forthwith resumed his practice.
Growth of Virginia.
Other colonies.
Soon it was Governor Harvey's turn to get into difficulties. How he was "thrust out" from his government in 1635 and restored to it by Charles I. in 1637 will best be told in a future chapter in connection with the affairs of Maryland. After Harvey's final departure in 1639, Sir Francis Wyatt was once more governor for three years, and then came the famous Sir William Berkeley, who remained for five-and-thirty years the most conspicuous figure in Virginia. When Berkeley arrived upon the scene, in 1642, on the eve of the great Civil War, he received from Wyatt the government of a much greater Virginia than that over which Wyatt was ruling in 1624. Those eighteen years of self-government had been years of remarkable prosperity and progress. Instead of 4,000 English and 22 negroes, the population now numbered 15,000 English and 300 negroes. Moreover, Virginia was no longer the only English colony. In 1624 there were no others, except the little band of about 200 Pilgrims at Plymouth. In 1642 the population of New England numbered 26,000, distributed among half-a-dozen self-governing colonies. There was also a community of Dutchmen laying claim to the whole region between the Mohawk valley and Delaware Bay, with a flourishing town on Manhattan Island in the finest commercial situation on the whole Atlantic coast. The Virginians did not relish the presence of these Dutchmen, for they too laid claim to that noble tract of country. The people of Virginia had made the first self-supporting colony and felt that they had established a claim upon the middle zone. The very name Virginia had not yet ceased to cling to it. In books of that time one may read of the town of New Amsterdam upon the island of Manhattan in Virginia. In 1635 a party of Virginians went up to the Delaware River and took possession of an old blockhouse there, called Fort Nassau, which the Dutch had abandoned; but a force from New Amsterdam speedily took them prisoners and sent them back to Virginia,[121]with a polite warning not to do so any more. They did not.
Still nearer at hand, by the waters of the Potomac and Susquehanna, other rivals and competitors, even more unwelcome to the Virginians, had lately come upon the scene. The circumstances of the founding of Maryland, with its effects upon the kingdom of Virginia, will be recounted in the two following chapters.
THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.
The Irish Baltimore.
Onthe southwestern coast of Ireland, not far from Cape Clear, the steamship on its way from New York to Liverpool passes within sight of a small promontory crowned by an ancient village bearing the Gaelic name of Baltimore, which signifies "large townlands."[122]The events which transferred this Irish name to the banks of the Patapsco River make an interesting chapter of history.
George Calvert.
George Calvert, son of a wealthy Yorkshire farmer of Flemish descent, was born about 1580. After taking his degree at Oxford and travelling for some time on the Continent, he was employed as an under-secretary in the state department by Sir Robert Cecil, after whom he named his eldest son Cecilius. His warm advocacy of the Spanish marriage made him a great favourite of James I., so that in 1617 he was knighted and in 1619 was appointed secretary of state. He seems always to have had a leaning toward the Roman Church. Whether he was converted in 1624, or simply made public profession of a faith long cherished in secret, is matter of doubt. At all events, he resigned his secretaryship at that time. The next year one of the last things done by James, a few days before his death, was to raise Calvert to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore.
A palatinate in Newfoundland.
The son of Mary Stuart had a liberal way of dealing with his favourites. In March, 1623, he granted the great southeastern promontory in Newfoundland—the region now known as Ferryland, between Trinity and Placentia bays—to George Calvert, to be held by him and his heirs forever. The government was to be a "palatinate," a statement which calls for a somewhat detailed explanation.
Origin of palatinates.
When that great and far-sighted ruler William the Conqueror arranged the affairs of England after the battle of Hastings, he sought to prevent such evils as those against which the newly founded Capetian monarchy in France was struggling for life, evils arising from the imperfect subordination of the great feudal lords. To this end he made it a rule not to grant large contiguous estates to the same lord, and in every county he provided that the king's officer, the sheriff, should be clothed with powers overriding those of the local manorial officers. He also obliged the tenants of the barons to swear fealty directly to the crown. This shrewd and wholesome policy, as developed under his able son Henry I. and his still abler great-grandson Henry II., has profoundly affected the political career of the English race. But to this general policy William admitted one class of exceptions. In the border counties, which were never quite freefrom the fear of invasion, and where lawlessness was apt to be more or less prevalent in time of peace, it was desirable to make the local rulers more powerful. Considerations of this sort prevailed throughout mediæval Europe. Universally, the ruler of a march or border county, the count or graf or earl placed in such a responsible position, acquired additional power and dignity, and came to be distinguished by a grander title, as margrave, marquis, or count of the marches. In accordance with this general principle, William the Conqueror granted exceptional powers and consolidation of authority to three counties, to Durham on the Scotch border, to Chester on the border of Wales, and to Kent, where an invader from the Continent might with least difficulty effect a landing. Local administration in those counties was concentrated in the hands of the county ruler; they were made exceptionally strong to serve as buffers for the rest of the kingdom, and they were called "palatinates" or "counties palatine," implying that within their boundaries the rulers had quasi-regal rights as complete as those which the king had in his palace. They appointed the officers of justice, they could pardon treasons and felonies, forfeitures at common law accrued to them, and legal writs ran in their name instead of the king's. The title of "count palatine" carries us back to the times of the Merovingian kings in Gaul, when it belonged to one of the highest officers in the royal household, who took judicial cognizance of all pleas of the crown. Hence the title came to be appliedto other officers endowed with quasi-regal powers. Such were the counts palatine of the Rhine and Bavaria, who in the course of the thirteenth century became electoral princes of the Holy Roman Empire. One of their domains, the Rhenish Palatinate, of which Heidelberg in its peerless beauty is the crown and glory, has contributed, as we shall hereafter see, an element of no small importance to the population of the United States.
Changes in English palatinates.
To return to William the Conqueror: in an age when the organization of society was so imperfect, and action at a distance so slow and difficult, the possession of quasi-regal powers by the rulers of the palatine counties made it much easier for them to summon quickly their feudal forces in case of sudden invasion. In view of the frequency of quarrels and raids on the border, the quasi-regal authority was liable at any moment to be needed to prevent war from breaking out, and the proper administration of justice demanded a short shrift and a sharp doom for evil-doers. The powers granted by William to the palatine counties resembled those wielded by the French dukedoms of the same period, but with admirable forethought he appointed to rule them priests who could not marry and found feudal families. Durham and for a time Chester were ruled by their bishops, and over Kent as a secular jurisdiction William placed his own brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux. In course of time many changes occurred. Kent soon lost its palatine privileges, while those of Chester were exercised by its earls until the reign of Henry III., when theearldom lapsed to the crown. After the conquest of Wales the county of Pembroke on its southwestern coast was made a palatinate, but its privileges were withdrawn by Henry VIII. For a time such privileges were enjoyed by Hexhamshire, between Durham and Northumberland, but under Elizabeth that little county was absorbed in Northumberland. One other northern shire, the duchy of Lancaster, was made a palatinate by Edward III., but that came to an end in 1399, when the Duke of Lancaster ascended the throne of England as Henry IV. Traces of its old palatinate jurisdiction, however, still survive. Until the Judicature Act of 1873 Lancaster and Durham had each its own distinct and independent court of common pleas, and the duchy of Lancaster has still its own chancellor and chancery court outside of the jurisdiction of the lord chancellor. As for the palatine authority of the bishops of Durham, it was vested in the crown in the year preceding the accession of Victoria.
The bishopric of Durham.
Avalon and Durham.
From this survey it appears that by the end of the sixteenth century the bishopric of Durham was left as the only complete instance of a palatinate, or kingdom within the kingdom. In the northern marches the need for such a buffer was longer felt than elsewhere, and the old political structure remained very much as it had been created by William I., with the mitred bishop at its head. The great Norman cathedral, in its position of unequalled grandeur,
"Half house of God,Half castle 'gainst the Scot,"
"Half house of God,Half castle 'gainst the Scot,"
"Half house of God,Half castle 'gainst the Scot,"
still rears its towers in the blue sky to remind us of the stern days when tartan-clad thousands came swarming across the Tweed, to fall in heaps before the longbow at Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross and on many another field of blood. When the king of Scots came to be king of England, this principality of Durham afforded an instance of a dominion thoroughly English yet semi-independent, unimpeachable for loyalty but distinct in its administration. It was not strange, therefore, that it should have served as a pattern for colonial governments to be set up in the New World. For such governments virtual independence combined with hearty allegiance was the chief desideratum, a fact which in later days George III. unfortunately forgot. From the merely military point of view a colony in the American wilderness stood in at least as much need of palatine authority as any frontier district in the Old World. Accordingly, when it was decided to entrust the work of founding an American colony to a nobleman with his clientage of followers, an example of the needful organization was already furnished by the great northern bishopric. Calvert's province in Newfoundland, which received the name of Avalon,[123]was to be modelled after the palatinate of Durham, and the powers granted to its lord proprietor were perhaps the most extensive ever bestowed by the English crown upon any subject.