University of Virginia Library

CHAPTER XVIII

ADMINISTRATION OF SIR JOHN HARVEY

West resigned the office of Governor in March, 1629, and
was succeeded temporarily by John Pott, a physician, and a
member of the Council, who had incurred even in that atmosphere
of relentless hostility to Indians some odium by the
use which he had made of his professional knowledge on the
occasion when he had poisoned, or at least had been strongly
suspected of poisoning, a number of those copper-colored outlaws.
The Governor and Council, as well as the Treasurer
and Secretary of State, were now appointed by the crown.

In 1630, Sir John Harvey superseded Pott, who had been
elected by his fellow-councillors. Harvey's activities as one
of the commissioners in 1624 were not calculated to invest his
person with favor in the eyes of the people whom he was
now called upon to rule; and it is quite possible that his failure
in this capacity had its origin in part in the enmity which
was aroused against him in that year. He left England with
a great respect for the real or supposed prerogatives of the
King, and with a clear perception also that he could only continue
to hold his new office by subordinating the wishes of the
Virginians to the orders of the throne, should the two conflict.
It was inevitable that this practical view of the conditions
of his tenure should, at times, make him unacceptable to
the Council and the General Assembly alike. He was much
more dependent on the good will of the authorities in England,
his superiors, than he was on the favor of the authorities in
Virginia, his inferiors, or at least, not more than his equals.
It was, therefore, natural as well as indispensable to his own

official safety that he should turn his ear more attentively
towards London than towards Jamestown.

But Harvey seems to have been worse than a tactless man.
He was, indeed, of an uncontrolled, unreasonable, and undignified
temper, with a disposition to arbitrariness that irritated
the popular mind as much by its manner as by its spirit. His
first act after his arrival was to remove Dr. Pott from his
seat in the Council, on the ground that he had been putting
his private mark on the buttocks and shoulders of other people's
hogs and cattle. Pott was ordered to remain on his
plantation; but, growing tired of its seclusion, he visited Elizabeth
City, where he was soon arrested at Harvey's command,
and was only saved from the walls of the local jail by the
pleadings of influential friends. He was, however, put on his
trial, convicted, and deprived of his whole estate; and he
would again have been in danger of prison had not Harvey
come forward and asked for his freedom, on the ground, that,
if he was incarcerated, the Colony would be without a physician.
Mrs. Pott was a woman of resolution and energy, and
she hurried off to England to complain to the Privy Council
of the injustice that had been done her husband and his family
by the confiscation of his property. That body was convinced
of the truth of her claims and ordered the restoration of every
thing that had been seized. Pott and all his friends very naturally
became bitterly antagonistic to Harvey.

But Harvey, not satisfied with this new batch of personal
enemies, at one stroke made foes of the entire membership
of his council by declaring that their approval was not necessary
to the validity of his decisions as governor of the Colony;
and that their only function was to give advice, which he was
at liberty to accept or reject as he might choose. This led
them to go to extremes in a spirit of contradiction. They
asserted that his only legal part in the decisions of the council
was to cast a ballot when that body was deadlocked by a tie.
Every obstruction that they could throw in the way of his performance
of his official functions they threw, until he became

so exasperated that he complained of their conduct to the King
and Privy Council; but the only result of this was a warning
to both sides in the controversy that they should keep the peace
with each other, and devote their time, not to quarreling, but
to increasing the Colony's prosperity. There seems to have
been a suggestion of ironical dryness in the Council's reply
to this warning. "We will give the governor," they said, "all
the service, honor, and due respect which belongs unto him as
his majesty's substitute."

The wrangle soon began again; but its initiation does not
seem to have been Harvey's fault. Some ten years before,
Lord Baltimore, a Catholic and courtier of great influence, had
been granted by the King a large area on the island of Newfoundland,
to be used as the site of a colony for persons of his
own faith. A brief personal experience of that gloomy country,
to which he went with his wife and children and numerous
other companions, convinced him that its soil was too infertile
and its skies too inclement for his purpose. Indeed, the ground
was icebound from the middle of autumn to the middle of
spring, whilst the surrounding waters, during this interval,
were either frozen hard or blocked with floating bergs. Only
seasoned fishermen could, endure the penetrating gales over
sea and land.

Baltimore wisely decided to abandon this inhospitable
shore. He petitioned the King for the right to remove his
family and retinue, numbering forty persons, to Virginia, just
as soon as a patent to a definite seat in that Colony could be
issued to him; and this patent he requested should be an exact
duplicate, in the scope of its powers and privileges, of the one
which he had obtained to Newfoundland. These powers and
privileges were those of a proprietary government, and, therefore,
inconsistent with the system which prevailed in Virginia,
which was now that of a crown colony.

Baltimore arrived at Jamestown in October, 1629; Pott
was then at the head of the administration; and he and his
council received the stranger and his attendants with coldness.

George Calvert First Lord Baltimore

It was sufficient cause for inhospitality that he and the
members of his party were Catholics. The division between
Protestantism and Catholicism, at that time, was not simply
one of conflicting creeds. It was chiefly one of political loyalty,
since every Catholic, in that age, considered himself as bound
in his primary allegiance to the Bishop of Rome, and thought
that the orders of the Roman See took precedence of the orders
of the English King. Such at least was the conviction of the
Protestants, and it was a conviction not entirely born of bigotry
and intolerance. As the political and spiritual interests
of the Roman See and those of the British throne were not in
harmony, there were certain to arise occasions when the
Catholic subjects of the English King would be called upon to
subordinate their temporal monarch to their ecclesiastical
head.

Baltimore had proved himself to be a devout Catholic by
his effort to establish a colony of people of his religion in the
storm-beaten North. Virginia was the spiritual offspring of
the Anglican Church, and for that reason, apart from political
suspicions, this new-comer and his following were not wanted
there. He was commanded to take the oath of supremacy,
which was an acknowledgment of the ecclesiastic headship of
the King, and he declined; but he asserted his willingness to
take the oath of allegiance, which admitted the King's political
headship. In the view of Pott and his council one of the oaths
was inadequate without the other. The two in their opinion
were complementary, and both must be taken; and as Baltimore
refused to do this, they ordered him to embark with all
his retinue. They were not satisfied to stop with this act, but
sent William Claiborne to England to combat any attempt on
Baltimore's part to obtain a patent to any portion of the soil
of Virginia.

Baltimore soon died, but his son, in spite of Claiborne's
opposition, acquired in 1632 a grant to all that section of the
Colony which was situated north of the Potomac River. The
Virginians were outraged by this grant because it violated the

provisions of their original charter,[1] introduced an antagonistic
religious sect into their community, diminished the profits
of their Indian trade, and broke up their monopoly in the
exportation of tobacco. Their remonstrances, which were natural,
but unreasonable, because of the vastness of this unoccupied
territory, fell upon a deaf royal ear. The King ordered
Governor Harvey to put a stop to any attempted interference
with Baltimore's taking possession of the region assigned him;
and he was also to give the new colonists all the aid needed in
the transportation of their servants, cattle, and merchandise.
These were specific instructions to Harvey, which he had to
obey, however much more unpopularity it might throw upon
him in the eyes of the Virginians.

Leonard Calvert, representing his brother Cecilius, arrived
at Point Comfort in February, 1634, with a company of several
hundred persons. It is quite probable that Harvey shared
those prejudices against these people as Catholics which were
felt by his enemies in the council, and it was equally probable
that he did not approve of the subdivision of the Colony; but
his tenure of his office was dependent upon his subservience to
the King, and he, therefore, stretched out a hospitable hand to
Calvert and his followers, and even gave them several cows
to form a part of their permanent stock,—perhaps these were
the poorest in his herd,—and he made a loud cackle over the
supposed generosity of this gift in a letter to the King.

These acts on his part increased the hostility of the
councillors towards him. William Claiborne especially was as
bitter as gall. He had, some years before, under a simple
license to trade, made a settlement on Kent Island in the Bay.
Notwithstanding the fact that the patent to Baltimore had
now been granted,—which included this island in its bounds,—
Claiborne declined to recognize its pertinency to his plantation.
Leonard Calvert, on his arrival, had gone so far as to
express his willingness to permit that plantation to remain

precisely as it was, provided the proprietary rights of his
brother were admitted, but Claiborne,—under the influence,
perhaps, of religious prejudices or trade interests,—very
unreasonably rejected this conciliatory message. Jamestown
and not St. Mary's, he said, was the capital of his island colony.
It was soon falsely reported to Calvert that Claiborne was
turning the Indians against the Catholic settlers. This left
such a feeling of uneasiness and enmity in Calvert's mind
that, hastily suspecting Claiborne of carrying on an illicit
trade with the savages, he seized a boat belonging to him, and,
subsequently, ran down a vessel which had been sent to avenge
the previous capture. An engagement between the two
opponents was fought in the broad mouth of the Potomac, and
Claiborne was successful in the battle. The Virginians loudly
applauded his boldness, determination, and courage, whilst
Harvey, in obedience to his instructions, continued to be active
in assisting Calvert to enforce his rights under his patent.