Savage Kingdom: Virginia and The Founding of English America

THREE The Adventurers

AS A FOUNDING DOCUMENT, providing the legal basis for what became English America, the Virginia Charter that received the royal seal on 10 April 1606 was no Magna Carta or Declaration of Independence. In return for a 20-per-cent share of any precious metal they discovered, the King merely offered certain ‘Knights, Gentlemen, merchants and other Adventurers’ – the so-called ‘patentees’ – permission to ‘make habitation, plantation and to deduce a Colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia’.

Lip service was paid to the mission having a higher religious purpose ‘in propagating of Christian Religion to such people as yet live in darkness’, meaning the Indians, but it was clear that the true motive was monetary, the charter focusing heavily on the ‘commodities and hereditaments’ to which the patentees, as well as the Crown, would be entitled.

‘For the more speedy accomplishment of their said intended plantation and habitation,’ the patentees were split into two groups, each given a different region of North America to colonize. The region between 38 and 45 degrees latitude (from modern Philadelphia to the Canadian border) came under the control of a group of merchants from the West Country ports of Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth, led by Chief Justice Sir John Popham. ‘Undertakers [i.e. investors], gentlemen, merchants &c’ of London made up the other group, who formed what became known as the Virginia Company. They were to develop the region between 34 and 41 degrees, the 450-mile stretch of coastline running from modern Cape Fear to Philadelphia.1

Most of London’s trading companies were managed by a governor, appointed by investors. The Virginia Company was to be different. Instead of a governor, Cecil set up a ‘Royal Council’ of thirteen grandees to supervise the company’s affairs, which reported directly to him. Its powers were modelled on those of the royal councils long established to deal with strategically sensitive royal possessions, such as Ireland and the North of England.2 Sir Thomas Smythe, the City’s most powerful merchant and one of the royal exchequer’s most generous creditors, was made company treasurer, responsible for day-to-day business.

These arrangements soon caused problems. Within a month, there were complaints that the council’s interference had ‘exceedingly cooled the heat’ of investors.3 Matters were made worse by Cecil insisting that preparations for the expedition be undertaken in complete secrecy, so as not to alert the Spanish.

Even without such impediments, finding backers was difficult. North America had a reputation as a financial slough. Since the 1570s, many a merchant’s fortunes had been sunk in the middle of the Atlantic, or been lost at the hands of the Spanish or Indians on a distant shore. Those missions that had returned a profit had done so by engaging in ‘privateering’, raiding stray Spanish treasure ships in the Caribbean, a practice that had been officially sanctioned in Elizabeth’s time, but banned since the signing of the Somerset House Peace Treaty with Spain.

By the summer of 1606, there were few signs of progress, and gloom about the project’s prospects intensified with news that the West Country group had managed to equip and dispatch a ship called the Richard in August, to reconnoitre a suitable place to settle in the region of Sagadahoc, Maine.

By the autumn, the pressure was intense. If an expedition was not dispatched soon, it would arrive in Virginia too late to plant crops to feed the settlement the following winter.

On or soon after 20 November, a meeting of the London Virginia Company was called at Smythe’s offices in Philpot Lane, an inconspicuous alley just north of Billingsgate, London’s fish market. Smythe’s Great Hall, decorated with souvenirs from his other trading ventures, including an Indian canoe suspended from the ceiling, was a hub of his various global trading interests, and was now inaugurated as the headquarters of the London company’s American venture.

There is no record of that meeting. All the relevant paperwork was later seized by order of the Privy Council, and it has not been seen since.4 Nevertheless, it is likely that the motley crew of ‘principal adventurers’ that gathered together for the first time that day would not have inspired confidence, nor the final tally of resources that Smythe had managed to assemble.

Smythe had called the meeting because at last there were signs of progress. Three ships had been hired for the expedition, which were now ‘ready Victualled, rigged and furnished’ for the forthcoming voyage. The government had also decided upon the leadership of the mission, and issued the ‘articles, Instructions and orders’ finalizing the way the colony would be run.

The document specifying these crucial matters was not, according to later complaints, ‘so much as published’ by Smythe, who apparently kept certain key details to himself. However, he must at least have now delineated some of its main points.5

The settlement in Virginia, the government had decided, would be run not by a single governor, but, as one settler later put it, ‘aristocratically’, by a local council. This council was to govern the settlement according to laws set down by the Royal Council for Virginia in England, with powers to adjudicate over ‘the offences of tumults, rebellion, Conspiracies, mutiny and seditions in those parts which may be dangerous to the estates there, together with murther, manslaughter, Incest, rapes, and adulteries’, defendants being given the right to be tried before a jury of ‘twelve honest and indifferent persons’.6

The membership of the local council, Smythe revealed, would not be chosen by the adventurers, or the wider membership of the Virginia Company, but by the Royal Council for Virginia in England, from among those he had invited to the meeting. The identity of those nominated, however, would not be revealed until they had reached America.7

This news must have prompted some speculative glances around the room, as each adventurer sized up those who might soon determine his fortune and fate. Those destined to go on the first mission were ‘strangers to each other’s education, qualities, or disposition,’ one participant noted.8 Many were ‘cashiered captains’ in the afternoon of faltering careers, the average age being forty. Most would have described themselves as gentlemen of the Shires, members of a ‘middling’ class who, relative to their urban counterparts the merchants and lawyers, had not prospered in recent years.

The most senior was a 56-year-old veteran of the Irish and Low Countries campaigns, Edward Maria Wingfield. Of those about to sail, he was the only patentee, the only one whose name appeared on the Virginia Charter as one of the ‘humble suitors’ given permission to colonize North America.

To many, Edward Maria’s distinguishing feature was his middle name, which prompted the impressive explanation that it had originally been given to his father, in recognition of being godson to Henry VIII’s sister, Mary Tudor. Edward was the second of many generations to adopt the affectation, proudly showing off the family’s ancient lineage and royal connections. Some of his forebears had been loyal to Queen Mary, Henry VIII’s Catholic daughter, and were implicated in her suppression of Protestants in the 1550s. This has led to accusations that the family had Papist leanings. But another relation, Sir Edward Wingfield of Kimbolton, had taken part in the Essex Rebellion of 1599, usually considered a distinctly Protestant affair. There is no evidence that Edward Maria veered strongly in either direction. He seems to have adopted the religion of many conservative members of the gentry: pragmatic Protestantism, emphasizing social conformity over religious piety.

His father had died when he was seven, and aged 12 he became the ward of an uncle. When he was in his twenties, he studied law at London’s Inns of Court, but preferred soldiering, and served in the Low Countries. In 1586, he fought with distinction alongside his brother Thomas Maria at Zutphen, hailed by English Protestants as a landmark battle in the fight against Catholic oppression. Later, he was briefly prisoner of the Spanish along with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who would later become a leading promoter of American colonization.

In the 1590s, Edward Maria had served in Ireland, where members of his family were leading English attempts to ‘colonize’ areas under Gaelic control. There he would have met Sir Ralph Lane, who had been governor of Raleigh’s ill-fated Roanoke colony, and it was perhaps from Lane that he developed an interest in colonial adventures further afield.9

By 1604 he was back in England, and soon after became involved in the revived Virginia project, providing not only desperately needed financial support, but helping to secure the royal patent. He had also recruited some of the key personnel, including the mission chaplain, a 38-year-old Sussex vicar called Richard Hunt, and the ‘surgeon general’, Thomas Wotton. How he came to acquire such a prominent role so early on in the venture is unclear, but a decisive factor was likely to have been his family connection with the famous explorer and privateer Bartholomew Gosnold.10

Gosnold had led the 1602 mission to Norumbega which had first challenged Raleigh’s Virginia monopoly. His return to England with profitable supplies of cedar wood and sassafras had also demonstrated the potential of North America as a source of natural commodities.

Since then, he and his shipmate, a silver-tongued lawyer called Gabriel Archer, had toured the taverns and company halls of London agitating tirelessly for a full-scale expedition, brandishing a persuasive tract written by Archer about their experiences of the ‘goodliest continent that ever we saw’.11 Their efforts resulted in Gosnold later being described as the ‘first mover’ of the Virginia venture,12 and attracting the valuable support of at least one prominent member of the Fishmongers’ Company.13

However, Gosnold’s name had been conspicuous by its absence from the Virginia patent, and this seems to have been because it had become politically unacceptable. In 1604, a ‘Captain Gosnell’, probably Bartholomew, had made some intemperate remarks about King James at a dinner party held on the Isle of Wight. One of Cecil’s intelligencers happened to be among the guests, and he reported the remarks to his master, prompting a full-scale investigation by the Privy Council. No record remains of the council’s conclusions, but following such an episode, it was wise for someone bearing the Gosnold name to keep a low profile.14 For this reason, Gosnold might have drafted in Wingfield as his proxy, the two families having connections going back generations.15

By the time of Smythe’s November gathering, Gosnold was able to adopt a more public role in the venture, and had secured a place for Archer in the forthcoming expedition. But as he and Wingfield were now to discover, neither was to be trusted with the role of mission commander. That role was to go to the formidable 46-year-old, one-armed veteran of the Spanish wars who now joined them: Christopher Newport.

Newport had been hired over the heads of the Virginia Company by the Royal Council. He had no previous connection to the Virginia venture, but was certainly qualified for the job. A war hero who had lost his right arm fighting in the West Indies, his reputation reached as far as Spain, where he was known as ‘un caballero muy principal’, a very great knight.16 In 1592, he had helped in the capture of the Portuguese carrack the Madre de Dios, the most magnificent prize of the Spanish war, estimated to be worth £150,000.17 Since the signing of the Somerset House Peace Treaty, he had continued to tour the Spanish Main, but for peaceful purposes, undertaking trade missions on behalf of a number of London merchants. He had returned from one trip with two baby crocodiles, which he presented to the King.

Unlike the other leading members of the venture, Newport was not expected to make any sort of investment in the company, nor to stay in Virginia. He would be responsible for commanding the expeditionary fleet, and leading the initial reconnaissance of the territory. In return, he was to be given sole ownership of any discoveries he made, including deposits of minerals and precious metals.18

Such terms caused widespread resentment, because the other men of rank who had volunteered to go, many at this late stage in the preparations, were far more exposed. They were expected to pay not only their own way, but to recruit from their own estates the servants and labourers who would make up the bulk of the settlement’s workforce. They were also expected to pay the costs of sending these workers to America, and maintaining them while they were there.

In return for this investment, they were not even to take personal possession of the land upon which they settled. Instead, they were to receive a share in the Virginia Company’s overall profits. Their fortunes therefore rested principally on the speedy discovery of some valuable commodity, such as gold, copper, spices or medical ingredients, rather than the long-term development of the colony.

As most of these gentlemen well knew, the odds were unfavourable. The pages of Richard Hakluyt’s Principall Navigations were filled with horror stories of foreign ventures ending in slaughter or ruin. Just this month, Hakluyt had received reports of yet another disaster. A base set up in Guyana by the English captain Charles Leigh had been deserted following a series of mutinies, and a supply ship sent to relieve him had been forced to abandon sixty-seven passengers on the island of St Lucia, where they had all died of starvation or at the hands of the natives.19 Such were the risks faced by these planters. But then, in most cases, they were going not because of how much they had to gain, but how little they had to lose.

Despite his elevated status, George Percy was typical. Born on 4 September 1580, he was the sickly, epileptic runt of a litter of eight children fathered by Henry Percy, the eighth Earl of Northumberland. George’s family was renowned for its rebellions, which were being replayed every night on the London stage in Shakespeare’s history plays. Henry IV featured that ‘mad fellow of the north’ Henry Percy (the first Earl of Northumberland), and his son Harry Hotspur. ‘Zounds! I am afraid of this gunpowder Percy,’ says one character – a line written before the Gunpowder Plot, so acquiring uncomfortably prophetic force since the revelation that one of George’s kinsmen, Thomas Percy, was a ringleader.20 George was no Hotspur. In fact, he was a disappointment to his family and peers. Someone whispered into King James’s ear just before he succeeded to the English throne that George was hated ‘damnably’ by his brother the Earl, and one official in the Earl’s household was moved to describe George’s infirmities as ‘grievous and tedious’.21

George had received the conventional education for a man of his class: Eton College, Oxford University, and the Middle Temple, for legal training. When he was sixteen, his mother had died, leaving him an annuity of around £60 a year, paid by the Earl’s staff. This was enough for a comfortable though not lavish standard of living for those who could keep within their means. However, George insisted on extravagance. He had a compulsion for keeping an impressively aristocratic wardrobe and table, having no title or property of his own to demonstrate his elevated rank.

Then came the discovery of the Gunpowder Plot. George was not implicated, but his elder brother and patron Henry, the current Earl of Northumberland, was found guilty of conspiracy, and committed to the Tower. Fined £30,000, Henry no longer felt in a position to support his aimless younger brother, so decided to send him to Virginia. As well as keeping him a safe distance from the political fray, the expedition also promised some alleviation of George’s epilepsy, for, as he would later write, ‘my fits here in England are more often, more long and more grievous, than I have felt them in other parts nearer the line [equator]’.

He had to pay a high price for a place in the venture. He was apparently forced to hand over his annuity to his brother, and to borrow £8 16s from another adventurer to help cover his costs – a debt which he had still to repay years later. Meanwhile, his expenses were far from modest. He subsequently sent home requests to his brother for ‘diverse suits’ (£32 14s 7d), knives (3s), books, paper, ink and wax (£1 14s 9d), biscuits (£3 5s), cheese (8s 2d), butter (£1 17s), soap, lights and starch (13s 6d), storage chests (12s), assorted boxes (10d) and casks (6s 2d). He even asked for a feather bed, complete with bolster, blankets and a covering of tapestry.22

Percy was a name of French origin going back to the Norman invasion of England, breathed in the rarefied atmosphere of royal courts. In contrast, the name that was to become most closely associated with the Virginia story, and intimately linked to the legend of the Indian princess Pocahontas, carried a whiff of the Anglo-Saxon village forge: John Smith.

A wide, barely navigable ocean divided Smith’s world from Percy’s. Percy was the product of generations of aristocratic breeding and refinement; the stout, bearded Smith prided himself on being a self-made man. ‘Who can desire more content that hath small means, or but only his merit to advance his fortunes, than to tread and plant that ground he hath purchased by the hazard of his life,’ Smith wrote.23 Nevertheless, Smith had one thing in common with Percy: a feeling of social exclusion, of otherness, that made the prospect of starting afresh in the New World irresistible.

According to Smith’s vivid, if sometimes incoherent and unreliable autobiography, True Travels, he was ‘born in Willoughby in Lincolnshire’. His father was ‘anciently descended from the ancient Smiths of Crudley in Lancashire; his mother from the Rickards at Great Heck in Yorkshire’. He was christened with that most ordinary of names at Willoughby by Alford on 9 January 1580. The ceremony took place in the local parish church, which, like many others in a region of reclaimed marshland that could be treacherous to travel, was dedicated to St Helen, patron saint of travellers.

He described these as ‘poor beginnings’, so poor as to earn the scorn of his high-born adversaries. But he was not quite as humble as he sometimes claimed. His father, George, was among the better-off farmers in the region, owning the freehold of several acres of pasture in Great Carlton and property in the market town of Louth. He also leased fields off the local lord, Peregrine Bertie, Baron Willoughby of Eresby. Young John was brought up in a substantial farmhouse comprising a hall, three chambers, a ‘milkhouse’ and a ‘beasthouse’, and with several servants.24

The next stage in John’s life, according to his autobiography, was ‘his parents dying when he was about thirteen years of age’. They left him with ‘a competent means, which he not being capable to manage, little regarded’.25 This is a curious passage, as both parents were very much alive when he was ‘about thirteen’: his father died when Smith was sixteen, and his mother many years later, having remarried.

His mind being ‘even then set upon brave adventures’, he was apprenticed to a merchant in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. Bondage to a master did not suit his restless spirit, and soon afterwards he tore up his seven-year indenture and headed off to find new adventures. This probably happened around the time his father died, and produced a rift with his mother, which would explain his decision to write both of them prematurely out of his life.

The elective orphan, free of family ties and the responsibilities of having to manage his father’s farm, went to the Low Countries. Unfortunately for Smith, his arrival coincided with a lull in hostilities, a side effect of Cecil’s peace treaty with Spain. This forced an early return to England. Smith then embarked on a tour of France in the company of Peregrine Bertie, the son of his father’s patron. Returning again to the Low Countries, and finding the opportunities for military glory still limited, he ended up in Eastern Europe, where war between the Holy Roman and Ottoman empires raged more reliably. Though the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II was Catholic, this was of no consequence to an English Protestant with military ambitions.