University of Virginia Library

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE—MANCHESTER PAPERS

A class of documents, very similar in character but of quite different spirit is
the Manchester papers, now in the Public Record Office, London. Robert, Earl of
Warwick, and his cousin, Sir Nathaniel Rich, were both members of the company.

Sir Nathaniel was a leader in the Warwick faction, while Earl Robert, after the
dissolution of the company in 1624, became a member of the council for Virginia.
The third wife of the Earl was Eleanor, Countess of Sussex, daughter of Richard
Wortley, and she, after the death of the Earl of Warwick, married, as her fourth
husband, Edward Montague, second Earl of Manchester. Thus it is that the
Kimbolton manuscripts, which are the records of the Duke of Manchester, contain
a large collection of petitions, declarations, memoranda, letters, and lists which
emanated from the Warwick faction of the Virginia Company.[139] Many of these are
holographs of Nathaniel Rich and Alderman Johnson, prime movers in that conflict.
Henry Montague, Viscount Mandeville and later Earl of Manchester, was at one
time lord president of the Privy Council. Therefore many of the Manchester papers
may have belonged to him. The autographs, however, identify those which concern
the Virginia Company as having belonged to Nathaniel Rich.

The Manchester and the Ferrar papers therefore present the two sides of this
conflict, not in open court or even in private contest, but in the private documents
and memoranda of the leaders. The collections are of about the same size, there
being sixty-six papers in the Manchester series, to seventy-eight in the Ferrar group.
These, also, are unbound, but since the greater part are rough notes of documents,
or drafts of propositions or speeches, they are much more difficult to decipher than
the Ferrar papers. Indeed many of them are almost illegible, and not a few are
unintelligible, having no connecting thought.

A dozen of these papers may be considered documentary; that is, rough copies
of letters, petitions, and declarations, or of acts of the company, or of its members
and officers in an official capacity. A few of these only are to be found among the
other records of the company. Like the rest of the set, they, almost without
exception, concern the accusations against the Sandys-Southampton management.
Three of them are petitions or letters concerning the extent of the tobacco trade,
but the rest are petitions to the King against one faction or the other, and answers
to those petitions. Of these, one of the most important is a copy of the opinion
of counsel concerning the powers conferred on the Virginia Company by the
several letters patent.[140] Accusation and defense are set forth in these documents,
but the headings of speeches, the drafts of propositions, and the notes from docu-
ments on which the arguments are based proclaim the motives and methods of the
accusers. No proof could be clearer than these memoranda by Alderman Johnson
and Nathaniel Rich that the company was to be overthrown by fair means or foul.
In two or three papers are carefully prepared lists of alleged evil deeds of Sir

Edwin Sandys and catalogues of the faults and errors of the company, while the
criticisms of the policy and of the management of the company are set down in
order, based on letters from colonists, of which there are eleven in the collection.
In these criticisms and drafts of propositions much information is afforded
concerning the management, organization, and condition of the colony and com-
pany. Thus, various books kept by the company during Sir Thomas Smythe's
time, and not otherwise known, are mentioned.[141] Five or six rough drafts of
propositions concerning the tobacco and salary question are also to be found
here, as well as numerous statements of sums adventured, of the number of men
sent to the colony, lists of members favorable to one faction or the other and
candidates for office from both parties. Many of the rough notes of both Johnson
and Rich furnish the only source of information concerning the directions given
to the commissioners appointed by the Crown to investigate the condition of the
company and of the colony and their acts and reports, but a fact of greater sig-
nificance is this, that the Warwick collection contains a dozen rough drafts of
directions to those commissioners, of charges against the company to be sent to
that body, of preliminary reports concerning the government of Virginia, and of
projects for the settlement of the government and the colony. The source of the
schism is here revealed, and the accusation by Sandys that accuser and judge were
one is justified.[142]