University of Virginia Library

General Character of the Records

The character of the documents of the company after 1619 is fundamentally
the same as in the preceding decade. Virginia was still a proprietary province
with a commercial company as an overlord, and therefore the company was still
the immediate source of all government in the colony. To it came all appeals
from colonial authorities; it exercised control over all commerce, both from and
to Virginia; it granted all land and all privileges. Although the number of doc-
uments emanating from the Crown[76] —that is, of the first class—is large, they are
rather an indication of the increasing wealth and importance of the company, than
of royal interference. They concern the regulation of trade, complain of the
abuse of power by the company, or provide for the investigation of its acts
rather than assume any authority in the direct administration of its affairs. In
them interference in the management is foreshadowed, but it is not until the
dissolution of the company that the Crown again becomes the proprietor.

The mass of materials which form the records for this period is much
greater than in the earlier decade. This is due on the one hand to their
preservation in two or three collections, and on the other especially to the vast
growth of business in the company and the rapid development from a colony
for exploitation into a colony for settlement. Thus the minutes of the company,
forming the second class of documents, show that it conducted a larger amount
of business than any other proprietary company.[77] These minutes comprise two
large volumes of the court book, and fill 741 manuscript pages.[78] In the third
class there are nine letters from the company to the governor and council in the
colony, and twelve from the latter body to the company, in addition to a large
number of receipts, commissions, instructions, and laws.[79] A mass of material
belonging distinctly to the plantation serves as a part of the records of the

company and at the same time furnishes the story of the beginning of the
political unity of the colony. This group consists of the "court booke" of the
council of the colony during the last year of the authority of the company,
covering about 65 pages; 54 commissions, orders, proclamations, and warrants to
subordinates in the colony issued by the governor and council in Virginia, and
35 petitions to the same body from the members of the colony.[80] The publica-
tions of the company for this final period of its existence number 3 large
broadsides, 11 declarations containing 168 printed pages, and 4 sermons and
treatises made up of 150 pages.[81] The supplementary official material found in
the correspondence between individuals of the company and of the colony or
between members of the company in England, in addition to the records of the
private companies within the larger body, includes many documents and memo-
randa.[82] Sixty-six of these are preserved in the Manchester papers, while 78 are
from the Ferrar papers, which are now first made known and published. The
unofficial material, consisting of records of other companies, of towns, and of
correspondence touching on the affairs of the company or colony, numbers about
40 documents.[83]

The relative value of the various classes of the records for this period has
been altered by the preservation of the court book which has made the other
material supplementary, or even subsidiary, with the exception of the correspond-
ence; for in it is either recorded or summarized the information which the
company had received from all other sources, or which it imparted to individuals
or to the public by other means. But the fact that the other records are
supplementary does not decrease their value, for they often furnish the data
which are the basis of the acts and conclusions of the company, while some of
them also reveal the legal or political processes of the company, of the colony,
of the courts, or of the sovereign authority, and others are of great value in the
light which they throw on the dissenting party within the company.

The subject-matter of the court book, as well as the character and contents
of the various documents, proves the changed condition which the increase of
business had brought about, since a large proportion of the records deal with the
founding and conducting of private enterprises, and many of them are really
documents of a private nature. It is apparent that the company still looked upon
the colony as a source of income for the investors, but that the ulterior object

had become the development of the resources of Virginia instead of the produc-
tion of wealth through mines and the opening of new trade routes. As a result
of this change in commercial object had come the need of larger, more numerous,
and more scattered settlements in the colony, and of greater co-operation on the
part of the settlers, although it may well be claimed that the latter necessity had
been urged upon the leaders by the mismanagement of Captain Argall during
the three years previous to the change in administration. In order to increase
the number of planters, concessions of privilege had been made to private parties
or groups as early as 1618, since such investments were doubtless easier to secure
when the adventure was under the immediate control of the undertaker. Simi-
larly, for the purpose of stimulating capital and gaining the co-operation of the
planters, the division of land, promised in 1609, was proclaimed in 1616. Free
tenancy was now guaranteed to all individuals, even to indented servants, at the
expiration of seven years. The organization of joint stock companies for the manage-
ment of trade, which supplanted the magazine, was a movement toward private enter-
prize. Hence it is that these subjects, together with those which concern the impor-
tation and sale of tobacco, occupy the greater part of the court book, and must have
consumed most of the attention of the corporation. The burden of discussion in the
courts concerned the best means of marketing the products, whereas in the earlier
decade it must have related to the increase of capital. The records of the colony
were no longer simple reports to the company and instructions from the proprietor,
but assumed the character of political documents, since liberty of land and trade, and
the creation of numerous plantations and scattered settlements resulted in the growth
of "political conditions and forces side by side with the commercial and economic."
The minutes of the colonial legislative assembly, the records of the colonial court, the
petitions to the governor and council, and the commissions and orders granted by that
body are all distinctively new features in the records. Here is evidence of the crea-
tion of the colony, with its body of free citizens, out of the plantation, with its body
of half-servile laborers.