Chapter 7 SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC CONDITIONS OF VIRGINIA

(1634-1652)

During the vicissitudes of government in Virginia the colony continued to increase in wealth and population, and in 1634 eight counties were created;1 while an official census in April, 1635, showed nearly five thousand people, to which number sixteen hundred were added in 1636. The new-comers during Harvey's time were principally servants who came to work the tobacco-fields.2 Among them were some convicts and shiftless people, but the larger number were persons of respectable standing, and some had comfortable estates and influential connections in England.3 Freed from their service in Virginia, not a few attained positions as justices of the peace and burgesses in the General Assembly.4

The trade of Virginia was become so extensive that Dutch as well as English ships sought the colony. The principal settlements were on the north side of James River, and as the voyager in 1634 sailed from Chesapeake Bay he passed first the new fort at Point Comfort lately constructed by Captain Samuel Matthews. About five miles farther on was Newport News, chiefly remarkable for its spring, where all the ships stopped to take in water, at this time the residence of Captain Daniel Gookin, a prominent Puritan, who afterwards removed to Massachusetts. Five miles above Newport News, at Deep Creek, was Denbeigh, Captain Samuel Matthews's place, a miniature village rather than plantation, where many servants were employed, hemp and flax woven, hides tanned, leather made into shoes, cattle and swine raised for the ships outward bound, and a large dairy and numerous poultry kept.

A few hours' sail from Denbeigh was Littletown, the residence of George Menifie. He had a garden of two acres on the river-side, which was full of roses of Provence, apple, pear, and cherry trees, and the various fruits of Holland, with different kinds of sweet-smelling herbs, such as rosemary, sage, marjoram, and thyme. Growing around the house was an orchard of peach-trees, which astonished his visitors very much, for they were not to be seen anywhere else on the coast.5

About six miles farther was Jamestown, a village of three hundred inhabitants, built upon two streets at the upper end of the island. There the governor resided with some of his council, one of whom, Captain William Pierce, had a garden of three or four acres, from which his wife a few years before obtained a hundred bushels of figs.6 The houses there as elsewhere were of wood, with brick chimneys, but architecture was improving.

In 1637 the General Assembly offered a lot to every person who should build a house at Jamestown Island; and in pursuance of the encouragement given, "twelve new houses and stores were built in the town," one of brick by Richard Kempe, "the fairest ever known in this country for substance and uniformity." About the same time money was raised for a brick church and a brick state-house.7 As to the general condition of the colony in 1634, Captain Thomas Young reported that there was not only a "very great plentie of milk, cheese, and butter, but of corn, which latter almost every planter in the colony hath."8

Such a "plentie of corn" must be contrasted with the scarcity in 1630, for the current of prosperity did not run altogether smoothly. The mortality still continued frightful, and "during the months of June, July, and August, the people died like cats and dogs,"9 a statement especially true of the servants, of whom hardly one in five survived the first year's hardships in the malarial tobacco-fields along the creeks and rivers.10 In 1630 tobacco tumbled from its high price of 3s. 6d. to 1d. per pound, and the colony was much "perplexed" for want of money to buy corn, which they had neglected to raise. To relieve the distress, Harvey, the next year, sent several ships to trade with the Indians up Chesapeake Bay and on the coast as far south as Cape Fear.11

Tobacco legislation for the next ten years consisted in regulations vainly intended to prevent further declines. Tobacco fluctuated in value from one penny to sixpence, and, as it was the general currency, this uncertainty caused much trouble. Some idea of the general dependency upon tobacco may be had from a statute in 1640, which, after providing for the destruction of all the bad tobacco and half the good, estimated the remainder actually placed upon the market by a population of eight thousand at one million five hundred thousand pounds.12

The decline in the price of tobacco had the effect of turning the attention of the planters to other industries, especially the supply of corn to the large emigration from England to Massachusetts. In 1631 a ship-load of corn from Virginia was sold at Salem, in Massachusetts, for ten shillings the bushel.13 In 1634 at least ten thousand bushels were taken to Massachusetts, besides "good quantities of beeves, goats, and hogs";14 and Harvey declared that Virginia had become "the granary of all his majesty's northern colonies,"15 Yet from an imported pestilence, the year 1636 was so replete with misery that Samuel Maverick, of Massachusetts, who visited the colony, reported that eighteen hundred persons died, and corn sold at twenty shillings per bushel.16

Sir Francis Wyatt arrived in the colony, November, 1639, and immediately called Harvey to account for his abuse of power. The decree against Panton was repealed, and his estate, which had been seized, was returned to him, while the property of Harvey was taken to satisfy his numerous creditors.17 The agitation for the renewal of the charter still continued, and Wyatt called a general assembly January, 1640, at which time it was determined to make another effort. George Sandys was appointed agent of the colony in England, and petitions reached England probably in the autumn of 1640. The breach between the king and Parliament was then complete, and Charles had thrown himself entirely into the arms of the court party. Sandys, despairing of success from the king, appealed to Parliament in the name of the "Adventurers and Planters in Virginia," and "the Virginia patent was taken out again under the broad seal of England."18 To what extent the new charter established the boundaries of Virginia does not appear, and the subsequent turn of affairs in Virginia made the action of Parliament at this time a nullity.

To offset these proceedings, the king commissioned19 Sir William Berkeley, a vehement royalist, as successor to the popular Wyatt, and he arrived in Virginia in January, 1642, where he at once called an assembly to undo the work of Sandys. A petition to the king protesting against the restoration of the company was adopted, but although it was signed by the council and burgesses, as well as by Berkeley, the preamble alludes to strong differences of opinion.20 The change of position was doubtless brought about by the issue made in England between loyalty and rebellion; and, while desirous of a recharter, the majority of the people of Virginia did not care to desert the king. The petition was presented July 5, 1642, to Charles at his headquarters at York, who returned a gracious reply that "he had not the least intention to consent to the introduction of any company."21

While loyal to the king, the people of Virginia had never been wedded to the views of the high-church party in England. Among the ministers the surplice was not usual, and there was a Puritan severity about the laws in regard to the Sabbath and attendance at church. As the strife in England became more pronounced, the people in Nansemond and lower Norfolk counties, on the south of the James, showed decided leanings towards Parliament and to the congregational form of worship.

Soon they began to think of separating from the church of England altogether, and they sent for ministers to New England in 1642. In response, the elders there despatched three of their number, who, arriving in Virginia, set zealously to work to organize the congregations on the Nansemond and Elizabeth rivers. According to their own account, these ministers met with much success till they were suddenly stopped in the work by Berkeley, who persuaded the assembly, in March, 1643, to pass severe laws against Nonconformists; and under this authority drove them out of the land in 1644.22

In the same year occurred an Indian attack which these preachers and John Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, thought to be a special visitation of Providence. After the massacre in 1622 the war with the Indians had continued in a desultory way for over twelve years. Year after year squads of soldiers were sent in various directions against the different tribes, and by 1634 the Indians were so punished that the whites thought it safe to make peace. Now, after a repose of ten years, the fierce instincts of the savages for blood were once more excited.

April 18, 1644, was Good Friday, and Governor Berkeley ordered it to be kept as a special fast day to pray for King Charles; instead, it became a day of bloodshed and mourning.23 The chief instigator of the massacre of 1622 was still alive, old Opechancanough, who, by the death of his brother Opitchapam, was now head chief of the Powhatan Confederacy. Thinking the civil war in England a favorable occasion to repeat the bloody deeds of twenty-two years before, on the day before Good Friday he attacked the settlers, and continued the assault for two days, killing over three hundred whites. The onslaught fell severest on the south side of James River and on the heads of the other rivers, but chiefly on the York River, where Opechancanough had his residence.24

The massacre of 1622 shook the colony to its foundation, and it is surprising to see how little that of 1644 affected the current of life in Virginia. Berkeley seemed to think so little of the attack that after making William Claiborne general of an expedition against the Pamunkey tribe he left the colony in June, 1645.25 He was gone a whole year, and on his return found that Claiborne had driven the Indians far away from the settlements. In 1646 he received information which enabled him to close the war with dramatic effect. At the head of a body of cavalry he surprised old Opechancanough in an encampment between the falls of the Appomattox and the James, and brought him, aged and blind, to Jamestown, where, about three weeks later, one of his guards shot him to death.26 A peace was made not long after with Necotowance, his successor, by which the Indians agreed to retire entirely from the peninsula between the York and James rivers.27

One of the most remarkable results of the massacre was the change it produced in Rev. Thomas Harrison, Berkeley's chaplain at Jamestown, who had used his influence with the governor to expel the Nonconformist ministers of New England. He came to the belief of John Winthrop that the massacre was a Providential visitation and turned Puritan himself. After a quarrel with Berkeley he left Jamestown and took charge of the churches on the Elizabeth and Nansemond rivers with their Puritan congregations. Berkeley would probably have set the law-officers upon him at once, but among his councillors was Richard Bennett, himself of Harrison's congregation, and his influence held the governor back for a time.

Three years passed, and at length Harrison and his elder, William Durand, were peremptorily directed to leave the colony. Harrison went first to New England and then to old England, while William Durand emigrated to Maryland, where, aided by Bennett, he made terms with Governor William Stone for the emigration of his flock; and in the year 1649 more than one thousand persons left Virginia and settled on the Severn and Patuxent rivers. The settlement was called Providence, and was destined to play a remarkable part in the history of Maryland.28

When the civil war in England was fairly on, emigration to Virginia was much improved in material, and for many years was very large. The new-comers came to make homes, not merely to make tobacco, and they no longer consisted of servants, but of the merchants and yeomanry of England. "If these troublous times hold long amongst us," wrote William Hallam, a salter of Burnham, in Essex County, England, "we must all faine come to Virginia."29

Hitherto the uncertainty resulting from the overthrow of the charter made it difficult to secure a good class of ministers. Those who came had been "such as wore black coats and could babble in a pulpet, and roare in a tavern, exact from their parishioners, and rather by their dissolutenesse destroy than feed their flocks." Now these "wolves in sheep's clothing" were by the assembly forced to depart the country and a better class of clergymen arrived.30 In 1649 there were twenty churches and twenty ministers who taught the doctrines of the church of England and "lived all in peace and love";31 and at the head of them was a roan of exemplary piety, Rev. Philip Mallory, son of Dr. Thomas Mallory, Dean of Chester.32

The condition of things about 1648 is thus summed up by Hammond, a contemporary writer: "Then began the gospel to flourish; civil, honorable, and men of great estates flocked in; famous buildings went forward; orchards innumerable were planted and preserved; tradesmen set to work and, encouraged, staple commodities, as silk, flax, potashes attempted on.... So that this country, which had a mean beginning, many back friends, two ruinous and bloody massacres, hath by God's grace outgrown all, and is become a place of pleasure and plenty."

Later, after the beheading of King Charles in 1649, there was a large influx of cavaliers, who, while they raised the quality of society, much increased the sympathy felt in Virginia for the royal cause. Under their influence Sir William Berkeley denounced the murder of King Charles I., and the General Assembly adopted an act making it treason to defend the late proceedings or to doubt the right of his son, Charles II., to succeed to the crown.33 Parliament was not long in accepting the challenge which Berkeley tendered. In October, 1650, they adopted an ordinance prohibiting trade with the rebellious colonies of Virginia, Barbadoes, Antigua, and Bermuda Islands, and authorizing the Council of State to take measures to reduce them to terms.34

In October, 1651, was passed the first of the navigation acts, which limited the colonial trade to England, and banished from Virginia the Dutch vessels, which carried abroad most of the exports. About the same time, having taken measures against Barbadoes, the Council of State ordered a squadron to be prepared against Virginia. It was placed under the command of Captain Robert Dennis; and Thomas Stegge, Richard Bennett, and William Claiborne, members of Berkeley's council, were joined with him in a commission35 to "use their best endeavors to reduce all the plantations within the Bay of Chesopiack." Bennett and Claiborne were in Virginia at the time, and probably did not know of their appointment till the ships arrived in Virginia.

The fleet left England in October, 1651, carrying six hundred men, but on the way Captain Dennis and Captain Stegge were lost in a storm and the command devolved on Captain Edmund Curtis.36 In December they reached the West Indies, where they assisted Sir George Ayscue in the reduction of Barbadoes. In January, 1652, they reached Virginia, where Curtis showed Claiborne and Bennett his duplicate instructions. Berkeley, full of fight, called out the militia, twelve hundred strong, and engaged the assistance of a few Dutch ships then trading in James River contrary to the recent navigation act.

The commissioners acted with prudence and good sense. They did not proceed at once to Jamestown, but first issued a proclamation intended to disabuse the people of any idea that they came to make war.37 The result was that in March, 1652, when they appeared before the little capital, the council and burgesses overruled Berkeley, and entered into an agreement with Curtis, Claiborne, and Bennett, which proves the absence of hard feelings on both sides. The Virginians recognized the authority of the commonwealth of England, and promised to pass no statute contrary to the laws of Parliament. On the other hand, the commissioners acknowledged the submission of Virginia, "as a voluntary act not forced nor constrained by a conquest upon the countrey"; and conceded her right "to be free from all taxes, customs, and impositions whatever, not enforced by the General Assembly." In particular it was stipulated that "Virginia should have and enjoy the antient bounds and lymitts granted by the charters of the former kings."

The articles were signed March 12, 1652, and the commissioners soon after sailed to St. Mary's and received the surrender of Maryland. They returned in time to be present at a new meeting of the assembly held at Jamestown in April, at which it was unanimously voted that until the further pleasure of Parliament was known Richard Bennett should be governor and William Claiborne secretary of state. To the burgesses, as the representatives of the people, was handed over the supreme power of thereafter electing all officers of the colony.38 Then Virginia, the last of the British dominions to abandon the king, entered upon eight years of almost complete self-government, under the protection of the commonwealth of England.

In 1652 the settlements in Virginia were embraced in thirteen counties, of which Northampton, on the Accomack Peninsula, extended to the southern boundary of Maryland. On the James River were nine counties: Henrico, Charles City, James City, Surry, Warwick, Warascoyack, or Isle of Wight, Elizabeth City, Nansemond, and Lower Norfolk. On York River were York County on the south side and Gloucester on the north side.39 On the Rappahannock was Lancaster County, extending on both sides of the river from Pianketank to Dividing Creek in the Northern Neck; and on the Potomac was the county of Northumberland, first settled about 1638 at Chicacoan and Appomattox on the Potomac, by refugees from Maryland.40

Towards the south the plantations, following the watercourses, had spread to the heads of the creeks and rivers, tributaries of the James, and some persons more adventurous than the rest had even made explorations in North Carolina.41 Westward the extension was, of course, greatest along the line of the James, reaching as far as the Falls where Richmond now stands. The population was probably about twenty thousand, of whom as many as five thousand were white servants and five hundred were negroes.

The houses throughout the colony were generally of wood, a story and a half high, and were roofed with shingles. The chimneys were of brick, and the wealthier people lived in houses constructed wholly of home-made brick.42 "They had, besides, good English furniture" and a "good store of plate." By ordinary labor at making tobacco any person could clear annually ￡20 sterling, the equivalent of $500 to-day. The condition of the servants had greatly improved, and their labor was not so hard nor of such continuance as that of farmers and mechanics in England. Thefts were seldom committed, and an old writer asserts that "he was an eye-witness in England to more deceits and villanies in four months than he ever saw or heard mention of in Virginia in twenty years abode there."43

The plenty of everything made hospitality universal, and the health of the country was greatly promoted by the opening of the forests. Indeed, so contented were the people with their new homes that the same writer declares, "Seldom (if ever) any that hath continued in Virginia any time will or do desire to live in England, but post back with what expedition they can, although many are landed men in England, and have good estates there, and divers wayes of preferments propounded to them to entice and perswade their continuance."

In striking contrast to New England was the absence of towns, due mainly to two reasons-first, the wealth of watercourses, which enabled every planter of means to ship his products from his own wharf; and, secondly, the culture of tobacco, which scattered the people in a continual search for new and richer lands. This rural life, while it hindered co-operation, promoted a spirit of independence among the whites of all classes which counteracted the aristocratic form of government. The colony was essentially a democracy, for though the chief offices in the counties and the colony at large were held by a few families, the people were protected by a popular House of Burgesses, which till 1736 was practically established on manhood suffrage. Negro slavery tended to increase this independence by making race and not wealth the great distinction; and the ultimate result was seen after 1792, when Virginia became the headquarters of the Democratic-Republican party-the party of popular ideas.44

Under the conditions of Virginia society, no developed educational system was possible, but it is wrong to suppose that there was none. The parish institutions introduced from England included educational beginnings; every minister had a school, and it was the duty of the vestry to see that all poor children could read and write. The county courts supervised the vestries and held a yearly "orphans' court," which looked after the material and educational welfare of all orphans.45

The benevolent design of a free school in the colony, frustrated by the massacre of 1622, was realized in 1635, when-three years before John Harvard bequeathed his estate to the college near Boston which bears his name-Benjamin Syms left "the first legacy by a resident of the American plantations of England for the promotion of education."46 In 1659 Thomas Eaton established47 a free school in Elizabeth City County, adjoining that of Benjamin Syms; and a fund amounting to $10,000, representing these two ancient charities, is still used to carry on the public high-school at Hampton, Virginia. In 1655 Captain John Moon left a legacy for a free school in Isle of Wight County; and in 1659 Captain William Whittington left two thousand pounds of tobacco for a free school in Northampton County.

1 (return)

[ Hening, Statutes, I., 224.]

2 (return)

[ Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, pp. 201, 231, 268.]

3 (return)

[ William and Mary Quarterly, IV., 173-176, V., 40.]

4 (return)

[ Virginia's Cure (Force, Tracts, III., No. xv.).]

5 (return)

[ De Vries, Voyages (N.Y. Hist. Soc., Collections, 2d series, III., 34).]

6 (return)

[ Smith, Works (Arber's ed.), 887.]

7 (return)

[ Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 288. In 1639 Alexander Stonar, brickmaker, patented land on Jamestown Island "next to the brick-kiln," Tyler, Cradle of the Republic, 46, 99.]

8 (return)

[ Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 4th series, IX., 108.]

9 (return)

[ De Vries, Voyages (N.Y. Hist. Soc., Collections, 2d series, III., 37)]

10 (return)

[ William and Mary Quarterly, VII., 66, 114.]

11 (return)

[ Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 117.]

12 (return)

[ Hening, Statutes, I., 225.]

13 (return)

[ Winthrop, New England, I., 67.]

14 (return)

[ Mass. Hist. Soc., Collections, 4th series, IX., 110.]

15 (return)

[ Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 184.]

16 (return)

[ Winthrop, New England, I., 228.]

17 (return)

[ Va. Magazine, V., 123-128.]

18 (return)

[ Virginia and Maryland, or the Lord Baltimore's Printed Case, uncased and answered (Force, Tracts, II, No. ix.).]

19 (return)

[ Va. Magazine, II., 281-288.]

20 (return)

[ Hening, Statutes, I., 230-235.]

21 (return)

[ Manuscript Collection of Annals relating to Virginia (Force, Tracts, II., No. vi.).]

22 (return)

[ Latané, Early Relations between Maryland and Virginia (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII., Nos. iii. and iv.).]

23 (return)

[ Winthrop, New England, III, 198, 199].

24 (return)

[ Ibid.; Beverley, Virginia, 48.]

25 (return)

[ Va. Magazine, VIII., 71-73.]

26 (return)

[ A Perfect Description of Virginia (Force, Tracts, II., No. viii.); Beverley, Virginia, 49.]

27 (return)

[ Hening, Statutes, I., 323-326.]

28 (return)

[ Latané, Early Relations (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XIII.).]

29 (return)

[ William and Mary Quarterly, VIII., 239.]

30 (return)

[ Hammond, Leah and Rachel (Force, Tracts, III., No. xiv.).]

31 (return)

[ Perfect Description (ibid., II., No. viii.).]

32 (return)

[ Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 238; Tyler, Cradle of the Republic, 90.]

33 (return)

[ Hening, Statutes, I., 359-361.]

34 (return)

[ Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 343.]

35 (return)

[ Md. Archives, III., 265-267.]

36 (return)

[ Cal. of State Pap., Col., 1574-1660, p. 393.]

37 (return)

[ See report of the commissioners, Va. Magazine, XI., 32.]

38 (return)

[ Hening, Statutes, I., 363, 371.]

39 (return)

[ Virginia Land Grants, MSS.]

40 (return)

[ Md. Archives, IV., 268, 315.]

41 (return)

[ Bancroft, United States (22d ed.), II, 134.]

42 (return)

[ Tyler, "Colonial Brick Houses," in Century Magazine, February, 1896.]

43 (return)

[ Hammond, Leah and Rachel (Force, Tracts, III., No. xiv.).]

44 (return)

[ Tyler, "Virginians Voting in the Colonial Period," in William and Mary Quarterly, VI., 9.]

45 (return)

[ "Education in Colonial Virginia," William and Mary Quarterly, V., 219-223, VI., 1-7, 71-86, 171-186, VII., 1-9, 65, 77.]

46 (return)

[ Neill, Virginia Carolorum, 112.]

47 (return)

[ "Eaton's Deed," in William and Mary Quarterly, XI, 19.]