New World, Inc.

by John Butman

  To seize this opportunity, Smythe embarked on a new plan, which he promoted with a pamphlet entitled A Briefe Declaration of the present state of things in Virginia. It described how the Virginia Company would distribute lands “in our actual possession” to private individuals and groups.50 The idea was to build on the success of the decision to privatize part of the colonial estate. In 1614, several colonists who had arrived in 1607 as indentured servants for a seven-year stint had finally achieved their freedom. Some went back to England, but some stayed, and they were rewarded with small plots of land—in effect, becoming tenant farmers. Until then, the settlers had supposedly worked together for the common good. But, inevitably, there were slackers who managed to avoid doing their fair share of the work. “Glad was that man that could slip from his labour,” noted one disgruntled observer.51 Now these tenant farmers were able to enjoy the fruits of their own labor.

  Under the terms of the deal they struck with Thomas Dale, they only had to work one month a year for the colony and contribute two and a half barrels of corn for the communal storehouse. The rest of the time, they could gain all the benefits of their own private plot of land. As a result, noted one senior colonist, the colony “thrived” because there was “plenty of food, which every man by his own industry may easily, & doth, procure.”52

  By the end of 1614, there were about eighty tenant farmers in Jamestown.53 Two years on, Smythe and his associates could see a way of expanding this experimental initiative, thereby transforming Virginia into a land of personal opportunity. In a new offer, they announced that an adventurer—whether a stay-at-home investor or a settler—would receive fifty acres for each share in their possession. To get this allocation, they had to register their names in a book held at Sir Thomas Smythe’s house along Philpot Lane in London, and they had to pay twelve pounds and ten shillings—the cost of another share.54

  Several investors came together to pool their landholding and create vast new private plantations known as “Hundreds”—the name long given to land divisions in England and derived from the fact that they could support a hundred soldiers. Leading the way, Smythe and a group of associates established the Society of Smith’s Hundred. This joint-stock group came to control more than 80,000 acres on the north bank of the James River.

  As these private plantations grew in popularity, the Virginia Company authorized a major expansion of the privatization reforms. In November 1618, George Yeardley, Jamestown’s new governor, was issued with some special instructions.55 Investors who had settled in Virginia or supported the colony before 1616—known as the “ancient adventurers and planters”—were to be given one hundred acres per share, while those who arrived or started supporting the colony after 1616 were to get fifty acres per share. And, significantly, the Virginia Company introduced what became known as the “headright” system, in which those who paid for themselves—or for others—to go to Virginia would receive fifty acres for each person or “head.”56

  The success of these private plantations required the recruitment of ever more indentured servants to farm the land and produce the commodities for sale back in England. Some were sent by poor families, eager to give their children a future. Others were condemned men, released from the prisons, with their sponsors rewarded by the Virginia Company. In 1617, a condemned man, Stephen Rogers, was saved from the gallows after Thomas Smythe personally requested his release “because he is of the Mystery of the Carpenters.”57

  But the instructions to Yeardley did more than simply inaugurate the headright system—they introduced the ground rules for what was, in effect, a new commonwealth. “We have thought good to bend our present cares and consultations,” Smythe and his associates wrote, “to the settling there of a laudable form of government by majestracy and just laws for the happy guiding and governing of the people.” Through a separate commission, Yeardley was authorized to establish the House of Burgesses, a representative assembly for handling local issues. It included members of a new council of state, selected by the leaders in London, and burgesses who were elected by “free” inhabitants in the various towns and hundreds of Jamestown.58

  This remarkable document became known as the Great Charter, a deliberate reference to the medieval Magna Carta, the four-hundred-year-old document that provided the foundation for English individual rights. As one historian noted, this House of Burgesses was “the first freely elected parliament of a self-governing people in the Western World.”59 Introduced by Smythe and his fellow merchants, it was a logical extension of the process of privatization that transformed the colony into a patchwork of private property. In the space of twelve years, the leaders of the Virginia Company had turned what had originally been a royal colony, run by the King’s Council, into a thriving private enterprise.

  Smythe, however, did not oversee the introduction of the Great Charter. In April 1619, he was forced out of power by Sir Edwin Sandys, who masterminded a corporate coup, seized control of the company, and became its treasurer. With his associates, Sandys, who had been acting as Smythe’s assistant, accused Smythe of mismanagement. The fact was that Virginia was becoming valuable property. Tobacco and land had become the prized commodities.

  At long last, English merchants had founded a colony they thought was worth fighting for.

  19

  A WEIGHTY VOYAGE

  NEWS OF THE Virginia Company’s search for colonists for private plantations spread far and wide. Eventually it reached a group almost completely unconnected to the network of merchants and courtiers, dreamers and mythologizers who had been working toward America for nearly seven decades.

  In the fall of 1617, two Englishmen, Robert Cushman and John Carver, left the Dutch coastal city of Leiden, a university town and important hub of textile manufacture, to travel across the English Channel to London. Cushman, a wool comber about forty years old, and Carver, a merchant aged about thirty, were acting on behalf of a group of reformist English Protestants—so-called religious “separatists”—who had been living, working, and worshipping as a congregation in Holland for nearly a decade. In due course, they would come to be known as Pilgrims—the name the most celebrated of the congregants, William Bradford, first gave them in his book Of Plymouth Plantation.1

  The two men, both deacons of the Church of Leiden, as the separatist group was sometimes called, had been dispatched on a critical mission: to approach the Virginia Company of London to seek a patent that would allow the congregation to establish a plantation within the company’s jurisdiction in America. It represented a big step for the religious group. To bolster their case, the two men carried with them a document called Seven Articles which the Church of Leyden sent to the Councill of England to be considered of in respect of their judgments occasioned about their going to Virginia Anno 1618. This document asserted the Leiden Church’s “spiritual communion” with all members of the Church of England and acknowledged King James as “supreme governor.”2 It was signed by the congregation’s leaders, two Cambridge men who would have commanded respect among the members of the King’s Council: John Robinson, the revered pastor of the group, who had begun his career in the established church as deputy to the minister at St. Andrew’s Church in Norwich;3 and William Brewster, the elder of the separatists’ congregation, who had served in Elizabeth’s court in the 1580s, working on the staff of Sir William Davison, one of her secretaries of state.

  Carver and Cushman felt compelled to carry the Seven Articles because the loyalty of the Leiden group to the crown was far from obvious. It was in 1606, when religious tensions were running high in England, that leading members of the separatist congregation had first come together in the village of Scrooby, in the county of Nottinghamshire.* Like Puritans, another group of radical Protestants, the separatists wanted to purge the Anglican Church of Catholic elements—especially the powerful bishops who, they believed, indulged in sexual licentiousness and looted the riches of the church for their own ostentatious living. But whereas the Puritans sough
t reforms from within the existing church, the Separatists concluded that they had no choice but to detach themselves completely from the corrupt church.

  The Scrooby congregation renounced the church hierarchy and began worshipping privately, separately, and in secret. Such clandestine meetings, or conventicles, were illegal. The archbishop of Canterbury waged a campaign of persecution against separatist groups, imposing harsh penalties on anyone over the age of sixteen who deliberately and defiantly refused to attend an authorized church: a three-month prison sentence in the first instance; banishment from the realm for those who continued to resist; execution for those who left the country and returned without royal permission.4

  William Bradford was just sixteen when he joined the group in Scrooby. By then, he was deeply devout and committed in his rejection of the Anglican Church. Born to a local family of tenant farmers, he was orphaned at the age of one and later suffered a grave illness that left him bedridden and housebound. According to his celebrated biographer Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister, it was this experience that probably accounted for his early and deep devotion to his religion and his willingness to cast his lot with the separatists. Through sickness, he avoided being caught up in “the vanities of youth,” Mather wrote, which “made him the fitter for what he would afterwards undergo.” When he was about a “Dozen Years Old,” Bradford began to read scripture, and this made “great impressions upon him.”5

  According to Bradford’s own account, written many years later, the Scrooby congregation was tormented, “hunted and persecuted on every side.” Some of their members were “clapped into prison, and others had their houses beset and watched night and day.” That is why a number of the Scrooby people at last agreed, “by joint consent,” to leave Scrooby, flee England, and “go into the Low Countries.”6

  There was a precedent for their move. In the 1550s, of course, many notable Protestants became exiles during Queen Mary’s reign—notably Sir Francis Walsingham. But they were not separatists. The earliest champion of separatism was Robert Browne, a member of a well-to-do family and yet another Cambridge alumnus. In 1582, he led a group of followers out of England, crossed the Channel, and settled in the Dutch city of Middelburg, south of Leiden. His adherents were often referred to as Brownists—and, over time, that epithet came to be applied in a general way to other radical Protestants.

  In 1608, following Browne’s example, the Scrooby separatists left everything and, risking their lives, departed England in the dead of night and sailed to Amsterdam, finally settling in Leiden. There, they were able to establish themselves, form a community, work, and hold their religious meetings in peace and without harassment. Now, in 1617, nine years later, the Leiden separatists contemplated another, even more dramatic, move in seeking permission from the Virginia Company to establish a settlement somewhere in America.

  It was not that they faced religious persecution in Holland. On the contrary, the Dutch province was famed for its religious tolerance. One visitor to Amsterdam declared that, on the street where he was staying, he counted as many religions as there were houses, and “one neighbor knows not, nor cares not much, what Religion the other is.”7 For the Leiden group, the pressing problem was economic. They were simply unable to make a decent living. Although most of them had been farmers in England, they had to turn their hand to cloth manufacture, since Leiden was a clothmaking city. The eighty-six members of the English separatist community followed fifty-seven different occupations, most of them associated in some way with the weaving and making of cloth. Bradford apprenticed with a French maker of silk before setting up his own operation as a producer of fustian.8

  With economic hardship came other problems. With no lands, estates, offices, or inheritances to pass to the next generation, many of the separatists were seeing their older children abandon their religious way of life and fall into dissolute behavior. Meanwhile, some of the younger children—those born in Holland—were taking up the habits of the Dutch, having grown up knowing nothing of England.

  And there was one other concern: the prospect of war. Back in 1609, Spain and the Low Countries had signed a twelve-year truce, which brought peace to this corner of Europe. But with the truce set to end in 1621, the members of the Leiden group were anxious to find another home, another place where they could pursue their worship of God in peace.

  As all of these concerns started to coalesce, the leaders of the Leiden Church began to consider the idea of a colony in the New World. They, better than most, knew it would not be easy. As Bradford wrote, it had been hard enough for them to adjust to Holland, which was a “neighbor country” to England and a “civil and rich commonwealth.” Making a go of it in the New World would be almost unknowably more difficult. They knew of the famous failures, the “precedents of ill success and lamentable miseries.”9 Nevertheless, the Leiden group turned their minds to “those vast and unpeopled countries of America.”10 For all its risks, there really seemed no other place to go.

  THE SEVEN ARTICLES that Cushman and Carter presented to the Virginia Company may have had some positive effect. In the end, however, it was personal contacts that unlocked the door to the Virginia Company. Although they were exiles from England, the Leiden group still had important connections in England. William Brewster had a link with Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the leaders of the Virginia Company. Edwin’s brother, Samuel Sandys, held the lease to the great manor house of Scrooby, where Brewster’s father had been bailiff (rent collector) and where the separatists had held their early conventicles. Thanks to this connection, Cushman and Carver were able to engage with the Virginia Company and put their case to the Privy Council.

  During the negotiations, the leaders of the Virginia Company declared that they were “very desirous” for the Leiden group to “go thither” to America. Indeed, they were “willing to grant them a patent” and give them the “best furtherance they could.”11 It was a big vote of confidence for the Leiden group.

  Cushman and Carver returned to the Dutch city with the encouraging news. But then no sooner had the separatists celebrated than a letter was sent with news from the Privy Council, forwarded to them by Sir John Wolstenholme, one of the leaders of the Virginia Company, and a principal investor in one of Jamestown’s privately run plantations—Martin’s Hundred and its central conurbation, Wolstenholme Town.12

  The letter reiterated that the Virginia Company would do its best to forward the separatists’ enterprise but requested further details about the group and their plans. Robinson and Brewster swiftly responded and made the case for their commitment and capabilities. “We are well weaned from the delicate milk of our mother country,” they wrote, “and inured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land, which yet in a great part we have by patience overcome.” The Leiden group, they said, was “knit together as a body” and were not like other people “whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again.” In short, they were not likely to follow in the footsteps of colonists in Roanoke, Sagadahoc, and Jamestown. They would not quarrel among themselves, become factionalized, or abandon the settlement when the going got tough.13

  But the Leiden group needed more than the go-ahead from the Virginia Company—they also needed to seek the king’s approval and secure from him the right to practice religion as they saw fit in America. The delicate assignment of sounding out James on this matter fell to Sir Robert Naunton, a royal official who was then in the running to be named, at age fifty, Secretary of State. Naunton had a fair amount of experience beyond England, having served in various roles in Scotland, France, and Denmark. He was known for his anti-Catholic, pro-Protestant views, and had little love for either Spain or France. He had endured a number of ups and downs in his life, including the loss of his family inheritance, and given this experience and his closeness to the king, it seemed that he might have some empathy with the separatists’ situation.14 In his presentation to the king, Naunton appears to have focused on the commer
cial impulse behind the venture, because James asked about the group’s plans for achieving a profit. Naunton replied that the goal was to generate revenue through fishing and James remarked approvingly that this was “an honest trade” and “the apostle’s own calling.”15 In the end, the king gave his blessing to the patent but he refused to issue a formal decree granting the Leiden group religious freedom in America. Even so, he assured Naunton that he would not “molest” them so long as they “carried themselves peaceably.”16

  Just as it seemed that the way had been cleared, the group encountered one more delay, caused, according to Robert Cushman, by “dissensions and factions” within the Virginia Company. This was the time when Edwin Sandys seized control of the company, forcing Sir Thomas Smythe to step aside.17 It took several weeks for the Virginia Company to sort out its governance problems, “but at last,” Bradford wrote, “after all these things and their long attendance,” the long-awaited patent was granted to the Leiden group “and confirmed under the Company’s seal.”18

  No copy of the patent survives, so we do not know all the details, but it was probably for land somewhere between the Delaware and Hudson rivers—although the exact location was not specified.19 The settlers were expected to travel to Jamestown and, once there, discuss possible locations for their settlement.20

  The patent was sealed on June 9, 1619, almost two years after the Leiden group had first approached the Virginia Company. The process had taken so long and been so tedious that many members of the Leiden group had given up and dropped out, frustrated by all the delays.

  IF, AT LAST, the Leiden group had their patent, they still needed something else: capital. As they soon learned, the Virginia Company’s promise of “furtherance” would not take the form of money. It could allocate land—but not ready resources. For this, the separatists would have to look elsewhere. As it turned out, there was no shortage of suitors. These included the New Netherland Company, which was planning a colony around the Hudson River. Its representatives approached the Leiden congregation with an attractive offer. The Company would supply free transport to America, an allotment of cattle, and grants of land at New Amsterdam. The settlers would, of course, also have total religious freedom.