University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XVII

REVOCATION OF THE CHARTER

There was now no step possible for the King and Council
to take but to recall the old charter summarily. Both the
majority of the members of the Company and the General
Assembly in Virginia had refused to assent to its revocation.
On November 22nd, 1623, the deputy treasurer, Ferrer, was
served with a notice to respond to an action brought in the
King's Bench to restore the Colony to the direct control of
the King. The spirit of the popular party was not to be broken
even by this extreme proceeding and attorneys were named to
represent the Company in that court; and not content with
this act, that party drafted a petition to Parliament praying
for its intervention. This petition was submitted on May 6th
(1624), and the 8th was appointed for a hearing upon this
document. But, on the following day, a letter arrived from
the King giving warning to that body that the Company's
affairs were within the royal province alone, and that a plan
for their permanent settlement had already been adopted. A
deep silence at first followed the reading of this missive, and
then there were heard "some soft mutterings of discontent,"—as
one of the persons who was present has recorded,—
"because, by the same means and example, any business of
Lord Treasurer Cranford (a member officially of the Privy
Council and the leader in the attack on the Company) might
be hindered of Parliament." The royal command was obeyed,
not from pusillanimity, but perhaps from the reluctant recognition
of the fact that the King was constitutionally right in
asserting his claim of supremacy in all colonial affairs. Pory,
the representative of the commissioners sent to Virginia,

handed in his report on the thirteenth of June, and on the
twenty-sixth of the same month the letters-patent of the
London Company were finally recalled by the judgment of
Chief-justice Ley.

How keen was the feeling of indignation which swayed the
minds of the disappointed popular party in the Company at
that bitter hour was afterwards revealed in a memorandum

of Ferrer's, which was not published until many years after
his death. "The King," he said, "was at the bottom of the
whole proceeding, which, from beginning to end, was a despotic
violation of honor and justice, which proved him to be a man
void of every laudable principle of action; a man who, in all
his exertions, made himself the scorn of those who were not
in his power, and the detestation of those who were; a man
whose head, indeed, was encircled with the royal diadem,
but never surely was head more unworthy or more unfit to
wear it."

Pertinent as these words were to the general character of

James, they were perhaps too strong when applied to his
conduct towards the London Company in its last years. In
the first place, his supreme jurisdiction over the colonies of
England was undeniable. Had Sandys and Ferrer succeeded
in giving that jurisdiction to Parliament, there would have
been no legal excuse for the uprising in the next century
against the Stamp Act. In taking over control of Virginia's
affairs in 1624, he was simply resuming functions which he
had, in 1609, for temporary political and financial reasons,
given up to a deputy power. However responsible he may
have been for the dissensions in the Company after 1622, by
showing sympathy with the court party, it was indisputable
that those dissensions were unsuppressible, and that they
were retarding, and would continue to retard, the growth of
the Colony. This fact alone was a justification for the revocation
of the old charter; and the prosperity of Virginia under
the crown's control, after James's death, is a strong confirmation
of the wisdom of that act, however ruthless it may have
appeared to be at the moment of its occurrence.

In the long run, it was not to England's advantage that so
important a division of the kingdom as Virginia,—destined as
it was to expand in wealth and population with each passing
decade,—should remain under a different system of administration
from the rest of the English possessions. It is true
that proprietary governments were afterwards set up over a
large area of the original North and South Virginian domain,
—Maryland, Pennsylvania, and the Carolinas,—but there was
in none of these governments any of that spirit of separatism
which was suspected, not without ground, to linger in the
administrations of the last treasurers of the London Company.
It is quite possible that, had the advanced political principles
of these men been allowed to ripen without restriction from
the beginning of Sandys's control down through the years that
followed, the independence of Virginia would have been
declared half a century before that event actually took place.
The revocation of the charter was essential to the permanent

unity of the kingdom even as the kingdom existed at that time.
That it was a wise measure in itself was revealed by the
positive refusal of the Virginians at the end of a few years to
countenance the rehabilitation of the London Company.

But this fact should not diminish our appreciation of the
value of the work performed by that Company in settling the
primæval wilderness along the Powhatan, and in making it
the first seat in the New World of the great political and religious
principles of the English race. The perseverence which
the Company displayed, during so many years of perplexing
disappointment, in sending out a constant stream of supplies
and emigrants has no parallel in the history of English colonization.
Starvation, pestilence, massacre,—not one of these
terrible evils made any permanent impression on the resolute
zeal of its controlling members. The loss of vast sums in
upholding the enterprise from year to year failed to dampen
their interest in its success; nor were the attacks on the wisdom
or uprightness of their purposes ever allowed to enfeeble
their energies in its behalf. If the London Company had no
other claim on our national respect and gratitude, it would
still be entitled to both because, (1) it planted the first permanent
English colony within the area of the modern United
States, the beacon to every subsequent colonial enterprise;
(2) it drafted and put in force the first written constitution
for the government of an American community; (3) it called
together the first legislative assembly to convene in the western
hemisphere, and thus laid the foundation for all the civic
and political rights which we now enjoy as an independent
nation; and (4) it was the first to divide the soil into private
holdings, which alone made possible the erection there of
innumerable homes and the establishment of myriads of
families.

One great experiment which the Company undertook was
to obtain by separate assignments of land ample income for
the support of the public offices, the church, the college, and
the university, and thus relieve the people of the chief burden

of taxation; and this measure only failed of permanent success
because the revocation of the charter left the Company
no time to remove the malignant consequences of the massacre.

The board of commissioners who had been empowered by
the King to take over the complete control of Virginia and its
people assembled at Sir Thomas Smythe's house in July, 1624;
and here it was decided that they should, from that time on,
convene once a week. One of their first injunctions was to prohibit
the sailing of any ship to the Colony until they had
adopted for it a new political framework. This was to prevent
the confusion which would follow at once should the news of
the charter's recall reach Jamestown before instructions had
been received as to how the affairs of Virginia were to be
administered in the future. How ignorant the officers there
were of the great change which was about to occur is revealed
in a letter from the General Assembly to the Privy Council,
in which they prayed for the continuation of their present
form of government. This was one of the documents which
Pountis had been delegated to carry to England, but he died
before he could deliver it. A copy of it had been obtained, as
already stated, by bribing Sharpless, the clerk; and this was
one of the papers read by the commissioners under Sir Thomas
Smythe's roof, and perhaps in his presence,—a fact that
could not have been agreeable to him, since the General Assembly
had, in that paper, implored the King not to consent to
their being returned to the rule of the former treasurer and
his confidants. Possibly Smythe would not have been taken
so intimately into the consultations of the commissioners had
they not considered it to be important that the English merchants'
support should be secured in the efforts to obtain new
supplies of goods and emigrants for the Colony. Indeed, as
we have already pointed out, it was James's plan to erect a
merchants' corporation for purposes of trade, under the general
direction and supervision of the commissioners, while he
reserved to himself and the Privy Council the control of the
political government.

In August, 1624, a commission was sent to Sir Francis
Wyatt to continue in office, but no provision was inserted for
the retention of the General Assembly. The only light created
for the guidance of Wyatt, in the performance of his duties,
was the instructions accompanying the commission. Apparently
the King had no intention of keeping the General Assembly
in existence. Fortunately, he soon died, (April 6, 1625);
but even if he had lived it would have been found impossible
to govern the Colony exclusively from London as it grew in
wealth and population.

In May, Charles the First, James's successor, issued a
proclamation in which he stated that he was resolved that
there should be a uniform framework of administration
throughout the English monarchy; that Virginia, like every
other part, must depend on the King in state affairs; and that
it was only in matters of trade and commerce that the people
of the Colony were to be subject to the management of a corporation.
Although thus enunciating precisely the same political
principles as his father, he was, nevertheless, much more
friendly to Sandys, Southampton, and Ferrer. It was to
them that he addressed the two questions: what was the best
form of government for Virginia? What kind of contract for
the monopoly of its annual tobacco crop would be most conducive
to the increase of the colonists' prosperity, and the
revenues of the royal treasury? It was to these questions that
the Old Company replied in an elaborate "discourse," the
swan song of that great association as it proved to be, for it
made no real impression on the inherited policy of the throne.

In October, 1625, Sir George Yeardley, the representative
of the General Assembly, arrived in London, and, in a few
days, submitted a petition of that body to the King, in which
it was affirmed that the people of Virginia, at the time of its
writing, were in a state of great distress, not only on account
of the lack of indispensable clothing and other articles equally
necessary, but also because of their apprehension lest all the

profits of their tobacco crops would be swallowed up by monopolists
in England. They also feared lest the validity of their
titles to their private holdings in land should be destroyed,
and they prayed that these titles should be confirmed by an
Act of Parliament. But it was about the continuation of "the
liberty of their General Assembly" that they were most deeply
concerned, as this, they said, was the only means that they
possessed of preventing their governors' oppressions and of
transacting public business with promptness. Before any
reply had been returned to this petition, a letter dated October,
1625, was sent to Virginia with instructions for the Governor
and Council, but containing no provision for the retention of
the General Assembly. This was simply a repetition of the
communication despatched in August, 1624.

In March, 1626, Sir George Yeardley himself was appointed
governor, and there was also named a council to advise him,
composed, amongst others of less prominence, of Sir Thomas
Wyatt, Sir John Harvey, Francis West, George Sandys, and
John Pott. Wyatt, then filling the office of governor, set out
for England before Yeardley arrived at Jamestown, and his
place was temporarily taken by West. It was not until Yeardley
assumed control of the administration of affairs in Virginia,
that the Colony passed,—nominally at least,—from the
Company's management to that of the crown. In reality, the
power of the Company had been superseded two years before.
In the interval between 1625 and 1626, no House of Burgesses
could be legally elected. In the place of the General Assembly,
conventions were held made up of the Governor, Council,
and the most influential citizens; and by these bodies all public
business was transacted, under the title of "Governor, Council,
and Colony of Virginia, assembled together."

It was not until the autumn of 1627 that Charles would
consent to the rehabilitation of the House of Burgesses;[1] and

he did this only after an urgent petition had been received
from the people of Virginia. The instructions from the King
to Governor West to call an assembly in the spring of 1628
were carried to Jamestown by William Capps.