Puslapio vaizdai
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pits than courts." "If that society be not dissolved the sooner or cast into a new mould, worse effects may follow than the whole business is worth." A duel between the leaders of the rival factions was with difficulty prevented, and it may well have seemed reasonable that the Privy Council should intervene. A grave charge has been made against James's government, that the Company was suppressed in order to satisfy the Spanish Court. That the settlement of Virginia had given great dissatisfaction to Spain is of course certain. The very valuable collection of Simanca documents first collected in Mr Brown's Genesis of the United States, enables us to follow in detail the intrigues and plots of Spain against the young Colony, for the first ten years of its existence. We now recognise that a ceaseless diplomatic war was carried on by Spain against the interests of the Colony. She is found screwing up her courage to make an end, once and for all, of the intruder, but for one reason or another postponing the effort. It was hoped in Spain that the death of Prince 1612. Henry would make the business grow cooler, while at another time, the Colony appears dying of itself. In 16131 we hear of a formal claim made to Virginia under the Papal Bull, and a hot dispute between the English ambassador and the Spanish Secretary of State. And an expedition from Lisbon to destroy the Colony was on the point of starting.

The author of the pamphlet,3 A perfect description of Virginia,' published in 1649, states that "it is well known that our English plantations have had little countenances, nay, that our statesmen, when time was, had store of Gondemore's gold to destroy and discountenance the plantation of Virginia; and he effected it in a great part, by dissolving the Company, wherein most of the nobility, gentry, corporate cities, and most merchants of England were interested and engaged; after the expense of some hundreds of thousands of pounds. For Gundemore did affirm to his friends that he had commission from His Master to ruin that plantation. For,

1 Nov. 3, Sainsbury, Cal. of S. P.

2 Feb. 21, Sainsbury, Cal. Add. 1574-1674.
'Force's Hist. Tracts, Vol. II.

said he, should they thrive and go on increasing as they have done, under the government of that popular Lord of Southampton, my master's West Indies and his Mexico would shortly be visited by sea, and by land, from those planters of Virginia. And Marquis Hambleton told the Earle of Southampton that Gundemore said to King James that the Virginia Courts were but a seminarie to a seditious Parliament."

The conclusion one gathers from the papers collected by Mr Brown is that James I. showed himself a good deal more of a diplomat than of a statesman, though it was well that the strength of his real disposition was not put to the test. Happily for the world, the misfortunes of the Colony were such as to enable the Spanish power half to delude itself into the belief that it was rather the unimportance of Virginia than its own inherent incapacity, which allowed the egg to be hatched from which was to arise a cockatrice to Spain's American Empire. As, however, the charge of yielding to Spanish intrigue is taken seriously by Mr Doyle,1 it is necessary to ask what benefit Spain got by the suppression of the Company. Gondemar was no fool, nor would he have assisted at so one-sided a bargain. To substitute the Royal supremacy for that of a Trading Company was in fact only further to commit England to a policy of expansion by Colonies. Moreover, if James was so under the influence of Spain, how came it that other charters were given to other trading Companies during this time to start new Colonies which would equally interfere with the asserted rights of Spain? In truth, this view entirely misinterprets James' whole foreign policy. That policy was, as Professor Seeley2 has shown, at a time when dynastic relations counted for much, deliberately to marry his daughter to the most zealous of Protestant sovereigns, and his son into the House of Spain. Whatever may be thought of the wisdom of such a policy there can be no question that the motives actuating James were not those of complete subserviency to the Spanish power. 1 English in America. Virginia, &c., p. 227. 2 Growth of Br. Policy, Vol. II.

Historians have written too much under the bias suggested by the relations of Charles II. with the Court of Versailles.

Indeed, the motives actuating James appear plain enough. On the one hand he wished to avoid the factions, and what a contemporary terms the "popularness," of the Virginia Company. On the other hand, he may well have believed that the Colony would prosper more under the direct government of the Crown. Every care appears to have been taken not to interfere with the pecuniary rights of the members of the Company. In October 1623 an order of the Privy Council was made, resuming the Charter, and announcing a new constitution. The affairs of the Colony were to be managed by an English Council consisting of a governor and twelve assistants, itself dependent on the Privy Council, such Council being empowered to appoint a governor and twelve assistants to act in the Colony. The Virginia Company did not surrender without a struggle. It was not till July 1624 1624. that its patent was revoked in an action quo warranto, in which the decision was doubtless dictated by grounds of policy rather than of law. The case for the Crown was that the patent was bad on account of its unlimited character. Under the clause, permitting the transporting of as many loving subjects as were willing to go, it would be possible to denude England of all its inhabitants. It was to such reasoning that C. J. Ley 2 assented. On the merits of the question it is only fair to consider the solemn declaration,3 in the form of an Act, drawn up by the colonists in 1640, in which, comparing the state of things under the rule of the Company and under that of the Crown, they say "that our present happiness is exemplified by the freedom of annual assemblies ... by legal trials by juries in all civil and criminal causes, by His Majesty's royal encouragement, upon all occasions, to address ourselves unto him by our humble petition, which so much distinguishes our happiness from that of the former time, that private letters to friends

1 Nethersole, July 3, 1624. Sainsbury, Cal. of S. P.
2 See Mass. Hist. So. Publications, 4th series, Vol. IX.

3 Force's Hist. Tracts, Vol. II.

were rarely admitted a passage." It has been pointed out that the chief authority for the great improvement in the last years of the company's management is the testimony of interested parties, and certainly there is no evidence whatever that, so far as the interests of the colonists were concerned, the action of the Crown was in any way a retrograde step.

CHAPTER III

IT must be confessed that hitherto the amount achieved Character of first by English colonization had not been much. The main fault Virginia lay probably, neither with Trading Company nor with royal settlers. treachery, but with the material out of which the Colony was formed. The theory which has wrought such misery in all times, that the new world is the fit resort for the failures of the old, had been tried and found wanting. The evidence as to the general bad character of the Virginia immigrants is from a variety of sources. Prisoners were released on condition of proceeding to the Colony. In 16181 we hear of the City of London "shipping thither one hundred young boys and girls who lay starving in the streets," and young women were in some cases 'pressed' to emigrate. As late as 1638 out of the hundreds who arrived every year, we are told 2 that scarcely any came but those "who are brought in as merchandise to make sale of." Sir Josiah Child's account has been often quoted 3—“ Virginia and Barbadoes were first peopled by a sort of loose vagabond people, vicious and destitute of means at home, being either unfit for labour, or such as could find none to employ themselves about, or had so misbehaved themselves by whoring? thieving, and debauchery, that none would give them work, which, merchants and masters of ships (being agents or 'spirits' as they were called), gathered up about the streets of London and other places, to be employed upon Plantations." But, more striking is the contemporary testimony of the customer of the Port of London, who writes with regard to the Proclamation of 1637 -"Most of those who go to Virginia have ordinarily no habitation, can bring no certificate, and are better out than within the kingdom." 1 Oct. 14, Sainsbury, Cal. of S. P. Ap. 6, ibid.

3 A New Discourse of Trade. 1698.

2

41637. Sainsbury, Cal. of S. P.

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