for Virginia sitting in London. He would also appoint the governor of
Virginia with his colonial council. Such a transformation would leave
the joint-stock company in existence, but only as a body of traders
without ascertained rights or privileges and entirely dependent upon
royal favour. No settled policy could thereafter be pursued, and
under the circumstances the change was a deathblow to the Company.
Southampton and Ferrar refused to surrender, and referred the question
to their next quarter-sessions to be held in November. Then the king
brought suit against the Company in the court of King's Bench, and a
writ of _quo warranto_ was served.

[Sidenote: Appeal to Parliament.]

[Sidenote: The king refuses to allow the appeal.]

Then came the most interesting moment of all. The only hope of the
Company lay in an appeal to Parliament, and that last card was boldly
played. Early in 1624 the Spanish match, to secure which the miserable
king had for ten years basely truckled and licked the hand of England's
bitterest enemies, was finally broken off. War with Spain was at hand;
a new policy, of helping the German Protestants, and marrying Baby
Charles to a French princess, was to be considered; and much money was
needed. So James reluctantly issued writs for an election, and the
new Parliament, containing Sandys and Ferrar, with many other members
of the Virginia Company, met in February. In April a petition was
presented in behalf of the Virginia Company, and a committee had been
appointed to consider it, when the Speaker read a message from the
king, forbidding Parliament to meddle with the matter. He distinctly
announced the doctrine that the government of colonies was the business
of king and his Privy Council, and that Parliament had nothing to
do with it. This memorable doctrine was just that which afterwards
found favour with the American colonists for very different reasons
from those which recommended it to King James. The Americans took this
view because they were not represented in Parliament, and intended
with their colonial assemblies to hold the crown officials, the royal
governors, in check just as Parliament curbed the Crown. By the middle
of the eighteenth century this had come to be the generally accepted
American doctrine; it is interesting to see it asserted early in the
seventeenth by the Crown itself, and in the interests of absolutism.

[Sidenote: Attorney-general's argument.]

[Sidenote: The charter annulled, June 16, 1624.]

In 1624 Parliament was not in good condition for quarrelling with
the king upon too many issues at once. So it acquiesced, not without
some grumbling, in the royal prohibition, and the petition of the
Virginia Company was laid upon the table. A few weeks later the case
on the _quo warranto_ was argued before the court of King's Bench. The
attorney-general's argument against the charter was truly ingenious.
That charter allowed the Company to carry the king's subjects across
the ocean to Virginia; if such a privilege were to be exercised without
limitation, it might end in conveying all the king's subjects to
America, leaving Great Britain a howling wilderness! Such a privilege
was too great to be bestowed upon any corporate body, and therefore
the charter ought to be annulled. Such logic was irresistible, and
on the 16th of June the chief justice declared "that the Patent or
Charter of the Company of English Merchants trading to Virginia, and
pretending to exercise a power and authority over his Majesty's good
subjects there, should be thenceforth null and void." Next day Thomas
Wentworth, afterward Earl of Strafford, gave vent to his glee in a
private letter: "Methinks, I imagine the Quaternity before this have
had a meeting of comfort and consolation, stirring up each other to
bear it courageously, and Sir Edwin Sandys in the midst of them sadly
sighing forth, Oh, the burden of Virginia." By the Quaternity he meant
Southampton, Sandys, Ferrar, and Cavendish. On the 26th of June the
Privy Council ordered Nicholas Ferrar to bring all the books and papers
of the late Company and hand them over to its custody.

[Sidenote: Ferrar has the records copied.]

[Sidenote: History of a manuscript.]

Ferrar could not disobey the order, but he had made up his mind that
the records of the Company must be preserved, for its justification
in the eyes of posterity. As soon as he saw that the day of doom was
at hand he had copies made. One of Ferrar's dearest friends was the
delightful poet, George Herbert, a young man of his own age, whose
widowed mother had married Sir John Danvers, a prominent member of
the Company. They lived in a fine old house in Chelsea, that had once
been part of the home of Sir Thomas More. There Nicholas Ferrar passed
many a pleasant evening with George Herbert and his eccentric and
skeptical brother, afterward Lord Herbert of Cherbury; and if ever
their talk grew a bit too earnest and warm, we can fancy it mellowed
again as that other sweet poet, Dr. Donne, dropped in, with gentle
Izaak Walton, as used often to happen. In that house of friends, Ferrar
had a clerk locked up with the records until they were all copied,
everything relating to the administrations of Sandys and Southampton,
from the election of the former, in April, 1619, down to June 7, 1624.
The copy was then carefully compared with the original documents, and
its perfect accuracy duly attested by the Company's secretary, Edward
Collingwood. Sir John Danvers then carried the manuscript to the Earl
of Southampton, who exclaimed, as he threw his arms about his neck,
"God bless you, Danvers! I shall keep this with my title-deeds at
Tichfield; it is the evidence of my honour, and I prize it more than
the evidence of my lands." About four months afterward Southampton
died. Forty-three years afterward, in 1667, his son and successor
passed away, and then this precious manuscript was bought from the
executors by William Byrd, of Virginia, father of the famous historian
and antiquary. From the Byrd library it passed into the hands of
William Stith, president of William and Mary College, who used it in
writing his History of Virginia, published at Williamsburg in 1747,
one of the most admirable of American historical works. From Stith's
hands the manuscript passed to his kinsman, Peyton Randolph, president
of the Continental Congress, and after his death in 1775, Thomas
Jefferson bought it. In 1814 ex-president Jefferson sold his library
to the United States, and this manuscript is now in the Library of
Congress, 741 folio pages bound in two volumes. As for the original
documents, they are nowhere to be found among British records; and when
we recollect how welcome their destruction must have been to Sir Thomas
Smith, to the Earl of Warwick, and to James I., we cannot help feeling
that the chest of the Privy Council was not altogether a safe place in
which to keep them.

It is to the copy preserved through the careful forethought of Nicholas
Ferrar that we owe our knowledge of one of the most interesting
chapters in early American history. In the development of Virginia
the overthrow of the great London Company was an event of cardinal
importance. For the moment it was quite naturally bewailed in Virginia
as a direful calamity; but, as we shall presently see, it turned out to
be a blessing in disguise. Stuart despotism gained not one of its ends,
except the momentary gratification of spleen, and self-government in
Virginia, which seemed in peril, went on to take root more deeply and
strongly than before.

FOOTNOTES:

[98] Gardiner, _History of England_, ii. 251.

[99] Stebbing's _Ralegh_, p. 121; cf. Bates, _Central and South
America_, p. 436.

[100] Some lines in sweet Saxon English, written by Raleigh on
the fly-leaf of his Bible, shortly before his death, are worth
remembering:--

  "Even such is Time, that takes on trust
    Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
   And pays us but with age and dust;
    Who in the dark and silent grave,
        When we have wandered all our ways,
        Shuts up the record of our days.
   Yet from this earth, this grave, this dust,
   The Lord shall raise me up, I trust."

[101] Stebbing's _Ralegh_, p. 386.

[102] Gardiner, _History of England_, iii. 161.

[103] Brown's _Genesis_, ii. 1016.

[104] Neill's _Virginia Company_, p. 413.

[105] Bright, _History of England_, ii. 604.

[106] Neill's _Virginia Company_, pp. 395-401.

[107] Carter's _Ferrar_, p. 71.

[108] Neill's _Virginia Company_, p. 411.

CHAPTER VII.

THE KINGDOM OF VIRGINIA.

[Sidenote: Retrospect.]

[Sidenote: Tidewater Virginia.]

From the busy streets of London, from the strife in Parliament and the
Privy Council, we must turn once more to the American wilderness and
observe what progress had been made in Virginia during the seventeen
years of its government by a great joint-stock company. But for a
correct appreciation of the situation we must qualify and limit this
period of seventeen years. The terrible experience of the first three
years left the colony at the point of death, and it was not until the
administration of Sir Thomas Dale that any considerable expansion
beyond Jamestown began. The progress visible in 1624 was mostly an
affair of ten years' duration, dating from the abolition of communism
and the beginnings of tobacco culture. By far the greater part of
this progress had been achieved within the last five years, since the
establishment of self-government and the greater part played by family
life. In 1624 the colony of Virginia extended from the mouth of James
River up nearly as far as the site of Richmond, with plantations on
both banks; and it spread over the peninsula between the James and the
broad stream next to the north of it, which at that time was called the
Charles, but since 1642 has been known as the York River. There were
also a few settlements on the Accomac peninsula east of Chesapeake Bay.
It would be hard to find elsewhere upon the North American coast any
region where the land is so generally and easily penetrable by streams
that can be navigated. The country known as "tidewater Virginia" is a
kind of sylvan Venice. Into the depths of the shaggy woodland for many
miles on either side the great bay the salt tide ebbs and flows. One
can go surprisingly far inland on sea-faring craft, while with a boat
there are but few plantations on the old York peninsula to which one
cannot approach very near. In the absence of good roads this ubiquity
of navigable water was a great convenience, but doubtless the very
convenience of it may have delayed the arduous work of breaking good
land-routes through the wilderness, and thus have tended to maintain
the partial isolation of the planters' estates, to which so many
characteristic features of life in Old Virginia may be traced.

[Sidenote: Receding frontier.]

[Sidenote: The plantations.]

If in 1624 we had gone up stream to Werowocomoco, where Smith had
broken the ice with his barge fifteen years before, we should probably
have found very little of its strange barbaric life remaining. The
first backward step of the Indian before the encroaching progress
of Englishmen had been taken. The frontier was fast receding to
the Pamunkey region along the line joining the site of West Point
with that of Cold Harbor; and from that time forward a perpetually
receding frontier of barbarism was to be one of the most profoundly
and variously significant factors in the life of English-speaking
America until the census of 1890 should announce that such a frontier
could no longer be definitely located. In the last year of James I.
the grim Opekankano and his warriors still held the Pamunkey River;
in that neighbourhood and to the north of it one might have seen
symptoms of the wild frontier life of the white hunter and trapper.
Returning thence to the great bay, the plantation called Dale's Gift
on the Accomac shore would have little about it that need detain us,
and so sweeping across from Cape Charles to Point Comfort, we should
come to Elizabeth City, named for King James's daughter Elizabeth,
Queen of Bohemia. The only plantation here, standing like a sentinel
to guard the principal avenue into the colony, bears the name of
the last treasurer of the Company, curtailed into Hampton. The next
borough bears the name of Southampton's enemy, the Earl of Warwick, and
opposite are the plantations on Warrasqueak Bay. Passing Jamestown,
we arrive at the mouth of the Chickahominy, above which lies an
extensive territory known as Charles City, with the plantations of
Wyanoke and Westover, while over on the south side of the James the
settlements known as Martin Brandon, Flowerdieu Hundred, and Bermuda
successively come into sight and disappear. Then we sail around the
City of Henricus, and passing the ruins of Falling Creek, destroyed by
the Indians, we come at length to the charming place that Smith called
Nonesuch. Here, a few miles below the spot where Richmond is in future
to stand, we reach once more the frontier. Beyond are endless stretches
of tangled and mysterious woods through which the sturdy Newport once
vainly tried to find his way to some stream flowing into the Pacific
Ocean. Here we may turn our prow and make our way down to Jamestown,
where the House of Burgesses is in session.

[Sidenote: Boroughs and burgesses.]

[Sidenote: Boroughs and hundreds.]

It is called a House of Burgesses because its members are regarded
as the representatives of boroughs, and such a name sounds queer as
applied to little areas of scattered farms in the forest. Still more
strange is the epithet "city" for tracts of woodland several miles
in extent, and containing half a dozen widely isolated plantations.
The apparent absurdity is emphasized on the modern map, where such
names as Charles City and James City are simply names of counties. How
came such names first to be used in such senses? One's mind naturally
reverts to what goes on to-day in the Far West, where geographical
names, like doubtful promissory notes, must usually be taken with heavy
discount for an uncertain future, where in every such appellation
there lurks the hope of a boom, and any collection of three or four
log-cabins, with a saw-mill and whiskey-shop, surrounded by a dozen
acres of blackened tree-stumps, may forthwith appear in the Postal
Guide under some such title as Chain Lightning City. In oldest Virginia
we may perhaps see marks of such a spirit of buoyant confidence in
such names as Charles City or the City of Henricus. No doubt Sir
Thomas Dale, when he fortified the little Dutch Gap peninsula and
marked out its streets, believed himself to be founding a true city
with urban destinies awaiting it. This explanation, however, does
not cover the whole case. Whatever the title of each individual
settlement in oldest Virginia,--whether plantation, or hundred, or
city,--all were alike conceived, for legal and political purposes,
as equivalent to boroughs, although they were not thus designated.
Now the primary meaning of the word "borough" is "fortress," and in
early English usage a borough was a small and thickly peopled hundred
surrounded by a durable wall. A "hundred" was a small aggregation of
townships united by a common responsibility for the good behaviour of
its people; it was therefore the smallest area for the administration
of justice, the smallest social community which possessed a court.
Ordinarily the hundred was a rural community, but that special
compact and fortified form of it known as the borough retained all
the legal features of the ordinary hundred; it had its own court,
and was responsible for its own malefactors and vagrants. In old
English boroughs the responsible men--those who owned property, and
paid taxes, and chose representatives--were the burgesses. Bearing
always in mind this equivalence between the borough and the hundred,
we may note further that in early times the hundred was a unit for
military purposes; it was about such a community as could furnish to
the general levy a company of a hundred armed men. It was also a unit
of representation in the ancient English shire-moot or county court.
Now in oldest Virginia the colonial assembly, when instituted in 1619,
the earliest legislature of civilized men in the western hemisphere,
was patterned after the old English county court, and it was natural
that its units should be conceived as hundreds and in some instances
called so. Moreover, there are indications that at times the hundred
was regarded as a military division, and also as the smallest area for
the administration of justice, as in the law passed in 1624 providing
that Charles City and Elizabeth City should hold monthly courts.[109]
Whatever names the early settlers of Virginia gave to their settlements
individually, they seem to have regarded them all in the legal light of
hundreds, and as they were familiar with the practical equivalence of
the borough as a unit for judicial and representative purposes, it was
natural that when they came to choose a general assembly they should
speak of its members as if they were representatives of boroughs.
They were familiar with burgesses in England, but the designations
"hundred-men" and "hundred-elders" had become obsolete.

[Sidenote: The houses.]

[Sidenote: Labourers.]

[Sidenote: Indians.]

Resuming our pilgrimage through the Virginia of 1624, we find no walls
of massive masonry with frowning turrets encompassing these rudimentary
boroughs, but at the most exposed points we meet with stout wooden
blockhouses and here and there a row of palisades. At some places
there are wharves for the convenient shipping of tobacco, but now and
then, if the tide is not just right, we may be in danger of wetting our
feet in going ashore, about which that ill-disposed Captain Butler has
lately made so much fuss. The wooden frame houses, having been built
without regard to æsthetic effects, with beams here and there roughly
hewn and boards not always smoothly planed, are not so attractive in
outward appearance as they might be, but they are roomy and well-aired,
and the settlers already point to them with some degree of pride as
more comfortable than the houses of labouring men in England. These
houses usually stand at wide intervals, and nowhere, perhaps, except
at Henricus and Jamestown, would one see them clustering in a village
with streets. Here and there one might come across a handsomer and
more finished mansion, like an English manor house, with cabins for
servants and farm buildings at some distance. Of negroes scarcely any
are to be seen, only twenty-two all told, in this population of perhaps
4,000 souls. Cheap labour is supplied by white servants, bound to their
masters by indentures for some such term as six or seven years; they
are to some extent a shiftless and degraded set of creatures gathered
from the slums and jails of English seaport towns, but many of them
are of a better sort. Of red men, since the dreadful massacre of two
years ago, one sees but few; they have been driven off to the frontier,
the alliance cemented by the marriage of Pocahontas is at an end, and
no more can white men be called Powhatans. On this point the statute
book speaks in no uncertain tones: "Ffor the Indians we hould them our
irrecosileable enimies," and it is thought fit that if any of them
be found molesting cattle or lurking about any plantation, "then the
commander shall have power by virtue of this act to rayse a sufficient
partie and fall out uppon them, and persecute them as he shall finde
occasion."[110]

[Sidenote: Agriculture, etc.]

In the plantations, thus freed from the presence of Indians, European
domestic animals have become plenty. Horses, indeed, are not yet so
much in demand as boats and canoes, but oxen draw the plough, the cows
are milked night and morning, sheep and goats browse here and there,
pigs and chickens are innumerable. Pigeons coo from the eves, and
occasionally one comes upon a row of murmurous bee-hives. The broad
clearings are mostly covered with the cabbage-like tobacco plant, but
there are also many fields of waving wheat and barley, and many more
of the tasselled Indian corn. John Smith's scheme for manufacturing
glass and soap has not yet been abandoned; the few workmen from Poland,
brought here by him, have remained, or else others have come in place
of them, for we find the House of Burgesses passing a statute admitting
them to the franchise and other privileges of English citizenship,
because of their value to the commonwealth in these branches of
industry. Skilled workmen of another sort have been sent over by
Nicholas Ferrar from France, for since mulberries grow in Virginia it
has been thought that silk-worms might be profitably raised here, but
such hopes are not destined to be realized.

[Sidenote: Tobacco.]

Such was the outward aspect of things along the banks of the James
River in the year when, amid general grief and forebodings, the London
Company was dissolved; and such it continued to be for many a year
to come, save that the cultivated area increased in extent and the
settlers in number, and that in spite of divers efforts to check it,
the raising of tobacco encroached more and more upon all other forms
of industry, tending to crush them out of existence, while at the
same time the plantations grew larger and the demand for cheap labour
was vastly increased. For some time the cultivation of Indian corn
assumed considerable proportions, so that not only was there enough
for home consumption, but in 1634 more than ten thousand bushels were
exported to Winthrop's new colony on Massachusetts Bay. Nevertheless
the encroachments of tobacco went on without cessation, until the
features of social life in old Virginia came to be those of a wealthy
and powerful community economically based upon one single form of
agricultural industry.

[Sidenote: Literature.]

In the Virginia of 1624 one could not look for any highly developed
forms of social recreation, or for means of education or literary
attainment. Various episodes of farm work, such as the harvesting
of the crops, or now and then the raising of the frame of a house
or barn, seem to have been occasions for a gathering of neighbours
with some sort of merrymaking, very much as in other primitive rural
communities. Among the leading colonists were men of university
education who brought with them literary tastes, and in their houses
might have been found ponderous tomes of controversial theology, as
well as those little thin quarto tracts of political discussion that
nowadays often fetch such fabulous prices. Captain John Smith was
spending his last years quietly in England, making maps and writing or
editing books. His "General History of Virginia," published in 1624,
can hardly fail to have been read with interest in the colony; and the
same ship that brought it may well have brought the first folio edition
of Shakespeare's complete works, which came from the press in the
preceding year. Literary production of a certain sort went on in the
colony. Such tracts as Ralph Hamor's "True Discourse" and Whitaker's
"Good News from Virginia," though books of rare interest and value,
will perhaps hardly come under the category of pure literature. But the
translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses by George Sandys, youngest brother
of Sir Edwin, has been well known and admired by scholars from that
time to our own. George Sandys came to Virginia in 1621 as treasurer
of the colony, fortified with some rather dull verses from the poet
laureate, Michael Drayton:--

    "And worthy George, by industry and use
     Let's see what lines Virginia will produce;
     Entice the Muses thither to repair,
     Entreat them gently, train them to that air;
     For they from hence may thither hap to fly."

On the bank of James River the worthy George entreated the Muses with
success and wrote the greater part of his poetical version, which was
published at London in 1626.

[Sidenote: Education.]

[Sidenote: Project for a university.]

But the Muses could not be enticed to stay long in Virginia without
some provision for higher education there, and this was well understood
by Sir Edwin Sandys and the enlightened gentlemen who supported him. In
1621 the Company resolved that funds should be appropriated "for the
erecting of a public free school ... for the education of children and
grounding of them in the principles of religion. Civility of life and
humane learning," said the committee's report, "seemed to carry with
it the greatest weight and highest consequence unto the plantations
as that whereof both Church and Commonwealth take their original
foundation and happy estate, this being also like[ly] to prove a work
most acceptable unto the planters, through want whereof they have
been hitherto constrained to their great costs to send their children
from thence hither to be taught." Rev. Patrick Copeland, a missionary
returning from the East Indies, raised £70 toward the endowment of
this school, and was busily engaged in doing more for it. It was
accordingly called the East India School, it was to be established in
Charles City, and its courses of study were to be preparatory to those
of a university which was to be set up in the city of Henricus. Great
interest was felt in this university. Like Harvard College, founded
somewhat later, it was designed not only for the education of white
youths but also for civilizing and missionary work among the Indians.
The Bishop of London raised by subscription £1,000 for the enterprise;
one anonymous benefactor gave a silver communion service; another,
who signed himself "Dust and Ashes," sent £550, and promised, after
certain progress should have been made, to add £450 more; this man
was afterward discovered to be a member of the Company, named Gabriel
Barber. The elder Nicholas Ferrar left £300 in his will, and various
contributions were added by his sons. A tract of land in Henricus was
appropriated for the site of the college, and George Thorpe was sent
out to be its rector, or, as we should say, its president. But Thorpe,
as well as others who were interested in the enterprise, perished in
the Indian massacre of 1622. It seems that Copeland was about to be
sent to take his place, and the enterprise was about to be vigorously
pushed on by Ferrar and his friends, when the overthrow of the Company
took away all control over Virginian affairs from the people most
interested in this work. So the scheme for a college remained in a
state of suspended vitality for seventy years, until Dr. Blair revived
it in 1692, and established it in the town of Williamsburg.

[Sidenote: Puritans and Liberal Churchmen.]

Everybody knows that the college of William and Mary is the oldest in
the United States, after Harvard. It is not so generally known that
the former was planned and all but established in 1622, eight years
before Winthrop and his followers came to Massachusetts Bay. It is a
just and wholesome pride that New England people feel in recalling the
circumstances under which Harvard College was founded, in a little
colony but six years of age, still struggling against the perils of
the wilderness and the enmity of its sovereign. Such an event is quite
properly cited in illustration of the lofty aims and intelligent
foresight of the founders of Massachusetts. But it should not be
forgotten that aims equally lofty and foresight equally intelligent
were shown by the men who from 1619 to 1624 controlled the affairs of
Virginia. One of the noblest features in the great Puritan movement
was its zeal for education, elementary education for everybody and
higher education for all who could avail themselves of it. It is
important to remember that this zeal for education, as well as the zeal
for political liberty, was not confined to the Puritans. Within the
established Church of England and never feeling a desire to leave it,
were eminent men who to the political principles of Pym joined a faith
in education as strong as Locke's. The general temper of these men, of
whom Richard Hooker was the illustrious master, was broadly tolerant.
Sir Edwin Sandys was friendly to the Leyden Pilgrims, and it was under
his administration that the Virginia Company granted them the patent
under which they would have founded their colony on the coast of New
Jersey or Delaware, had not foul weather driven the Mayflower to Cape
Cod. It was Sandys and Nicholas Ferrar that were most energetic in the
attempt to found a college in Virginia, and there were some curious
points of resemblance between their situation in 1622 and the situation
of Winthrop and his friends while they were laying the foundations of
Harvard College. In 1622, while James I. was plotting the overthrow
of the London Company, the horrors of Indian massacre, as sudden as
lightning from a cloudless sky, fell upon the people of Virginia. In
1637 the people of Massachusetts had the Pequot war on their hands, and
Charles I. was plotting the overthrow of the Company of Massachusetts
Bay, against whose charter he was on the point of issuing a writ of
_quo warranto_, when in St. Giles's church at Edinburgh one Sunday old
Jenny Geddes threw her camp-stool at the bishop's head, and in the
ensuing turmoil American affairs were quite forgotten.

[Sidenote: Massachusetts and Virginia.]

The comparison reminds us that the Company of Massachusetts Bay knew
how to profit by the fate of its great predecessor, the London Company
for Virginia. In the summer of 1629, when things were looking very dark
in England, the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Company held a meeting
at Cambridge and decided to carry their company, with its charter,
across the ocean to New England, where they might work out their
purposes without so much danger from royal interference. This transfer
of the Company to America was the most fundamental circumstance in
the early history of New England. The mere physical fact of distance
transformed the commercial company into a self-governing republic,
which for more than fifty years managed its own affairs in almost
entire independence of the British government. Difficulty of access and
infrequency of communication were the safeguards of the Massachusetts
Bay Company. If it had held its meetings and promulgated its measures
in London, its life would not have been worth a five years purchase. It
had the fate of the Virginia Company for a warning, and most adroitly
did it profit by the lesson. If the Virginia Company could have been
transferred bodily to America in 1620, it might perhaps have become
similarly changed into a self-governing semi-independent republic; the
interests of the Company would have been permanently identified with
those of the colony, and the course of Virginian history might have
been profoundly affected. As it was, Virginia attained through the fall
of the Company to such measure of self-government as it had throughout
the colonial period, a self-government much like that of Massachusetts
after 1692, but far less complete than that of Massachusetts before
1684.

[Sidenote: Death of James I.]

It was not the intention of James I. that the overthrow of the Company
should contribute in any way to increase the liberties of the colony
of Virginia. All colonizable territory claimed by Great Britain was,
in his opinion, just so much royal domain, something which came to him
by inheritance like the barony of Renfrew or the manor of Windsor; it
was his to do what he liked with it, and for settlers in such territory
no better law was needed than such as he could make for them himself.
A shadow of doubt as to his own omniscience was never one of James's
weaknesses, and no sooner had the Company's charter been annulled than
he set himself to work to draw up a constitution for Virginia. It was
work of a sort that he thoroughly enjoyed, but what might have come of
it will never be known, for while he was busy with it there came upon
him what the doctors called a tertian ague, which carried him off in
March, 1625.

[Sidenote: Effect of the downfall of the Company.]

In the history of England no era is marked by the accession of Charles
I. In its policy and methods, and in the political problems at issue,
his reign was merely the continuation of his father's. But in the
history of Virginia his accession marks an important era. For if James
had lived to complete his constitution for Virginia he would in all
probability have swept away the representative government introduced
by Sir Edwin Sandys; but Charles allowed it to stand. As the situation
was left by the death of James, so it remained without essential change
until 1776. The House of Burgesses was undisturbed, but the governor
and council were thenceforth appointed by the crown. The colony was
thus left less independent than it would have been if the Company,
with its power of electing its own executive officers, could have been
transferred bodily to Virginia; but it was left more independent than
it would have been if the existence of the Company had been continued
in London. The change from governors appointed by the Company to
governors appointed by the crown was a relaxation of the supervision
which England exercised over Virginia. For the Company could devote all
its attention to the affairs of the colony, but the crown could not.
Especially in such reigns as those of the two Charleses, the attention
of the crown was too much absorbed with affairs in Great Britain to
allow it to interfere decisively with the course of events in Virginia.
The colony was thus in the main thrown back upon its own resources,
and such a state of things was most favourable to its wholesome
development. The Company, after all, was a commercial corporation,
and the main object of its existence was to earn money for its
shareholders. The pursuit of that object was by no means always sure to
coincide with the best interests of the colony. Moreover, although the
government of the Company from 1619 to 1624 was conducted with energy
and sagacity, disinterestedness, honesty, and breadth of view such as
history has seldom seen rivalled, yet there was no likelihood that such
would always be the case. Such a combination of men in responsible
positions as Southampton and Sandys and Ferrar is too rare to be
counted upon. The Company might have passed for a weary while under
the control of incompetent or unscrupulous men, and to a young colony
like Virginia such a contingency would have been not only disagreeable
but positively dangerous. No community, indeed, can long afford to
have its affairs administered by a body of men so far away as to be
out of immediate touch with it. On the other hand, even if we could
suppose a commercial company to go on year after year managing a colony
with so much intelligence and sympathy as the London Company showed
in its last days, such a situation would not be permanently wholesome
for the colony. What men need is not fostering or coddling, but the
chance to give free play to their individual capacities. If coddling
and fostering could make a colony thrive, the French in Canada ought to
have dominated North America. From all points of view, therefore, it
seems to have been well for Virginia that the Company fell when it did.
It established self-government there, set its machinery successfully to
work, and then vanished from the scene, like the Jinni in some Oriental
tale, leaving its good gift behind.

[Sidenote: The virus of liberty.]

The boon of self-government was so congenial to the temper of the
Virginians that they would doubtless have contrived somehow to obtain
it sooner or later. Hutchinson tells us that when the second American
house of representatives was instituted, namely, that of Massachusetts
Bay in 1634, the people were well aware that no provision for anything
of the sort had been made in of their charter, but they assumed that
the right to such representation was implied by that clause of the
charter which reserved to them the natural rights of Englishmen;[111]
and elsewhere the same eminent historian quaintly speaks of a House
of Burgesses as having _broken out_ in Virginia in 1619, as if there
were an incurable virus of liberty in the English blood, as if it
were something that must come out as inevitably as original sin. But
if James I. had lived longer, as I have already observed, he would
undoubtedly have made an effort to repress this active spirit of
liberty. The colonists, on hearing of the downfall of the Company, were
in great alarm lest they should lose their House of Burgesses, and
have some arbitrary governor appointed to rule over them, perhaps the
hated Argall himself, whom we have seen King James selecting as one of
a board of commissioners to investigate affairs in Virginia. In 1621,
when for some reason or other the amiable and popular Yeardley had
asked to be relieved of the duties of governor, Argall had tried to get
himself appointed in his place, but the Company had chosen Sir Francis
Wyatt, who held the office until 1626, while Yeardley remained in
Virginia as a member of the council. In 1625, as soon as the assembly
heard of King James's death, they sent Yeardley to England to pay their
respects to King Charles and to assure him that the people of Virginia
were thoroughly satisfied with their government and hoped that no
changes would be made in it.

[Sidenote: Charles I. and the tobacco trade.]

Now it happened that Charles had a favour to ask of the settlers in
Virginia, and was in the right sort of mood for a bargain. He was
no more in love than his father with the many-tongued beast called
Parliament, he saw how comfortably his brother-in-law of France was
getting along without such assistance, and he was determined if
possible to do likewise. But to get along without parliaments a poor
king must have some means of getting money. The Virginia tobacco crop
was fast becoming a great source of wealth; why should not the king
himself go into the tobacco trade? If all tobacco brought to England
from Virginia could be consigned to him, then he could retail it to
consumers at his own price and realize a gigantic profit; or, what was
perhaps still better, having obtained this monopoly, he could farm
it out to various agents who would be glad to pay roundly for the
privilege. Now the only way in which he could treat with the people
of Virginia on such matters was through the representatives of the
people. Accordingly, when Governor Wyatt in 1626 had occasion to return
to England, the king sent back Sir George Yeardley as royal governor,
which under the circumstances was a most emphatic assurance that the
wishes of the settlers should be granted. Furthermore, in a message to
their representatives Charles graciously addressed them as "Our trusty
and well-beloved Burgesses of the Grand Assembly of Virginia," and
thus officially recognized that house as a coördinate branch of the
colonial government. Some arrangements made with regard to the tobacco
trade were calculated to please the colonists. James I., under the
influence of his mentor, Count Gondomar, had browbeaten the Company
into an arrangement by which they consented to import into England not
more than 60,000 or less than 40,000 pounds of tobacco yearly from
the Spanish colonies. Charles I. on the other hand prohibited the
importation of Spanish tobacco, so that Virginia and the Bermudas had
a monopoly of the market. In spite of this friendly attitude of the
king toward the colonists, he never succeeded in becoming the sole
purchaser of their tobacco at a stipulated price. The assembly was
ready from time to time to entertain various proposals, but it never
went so far as that; and if Charles, in sanctioning this little New
World parliament, counted upon getting substantial aid in ignoring his
Parliament at home, he was sadly disappointed.

[Sidenote: The first American legislature.]

It is now time for us to attend a session of this House of Burgesses,
to make a report of its work, and to mention some of the vicissitudes
which it encountered in the course of the reign of Charles I. The
place of meeting was the wooden church at Jamestown, 50 feet in length
by 20 in width, built in 1619, for Lord Delaware's church had become
dilapidated; a solid brick church, 56 feet by 28, was built there in
1639. From the different plantations and hundreds the burgesses came
mostly in their barges or sloops to Jamestown. In 1634 the colony was
organized into counties and parishes, and the burgesses thenceforth
represented counties, but they always kept their old title. At first
the governor, council, and burgesses met together in a single assembly,
just as in Massachusetts until 1644, just as in England the Lords
and Commons usually sat together before 1339.[112] A member of this
Virginia parliament must take his breakfast of bacon and hoe-cake
betimes, for the meeting was called together at the third beat of the
drum, one hour after sunrise. The sessions were always opened with
prayers, and every absence from this service was punished with a fine
of one shilling. The fine for absence during the whole day was half a
crown. In the choir of the church sat the governor and council, their
coats trimmed with gold lace. By the statute of 1621, passed in this
very church, no one was allowed to wear gold lace except these high
officials and the commanders of hundreds, a class of dignitaries who
in 1634 were succeeded by the county lieutenants. In the body of the
church, facing the choir, sat the burgesses in their best attire, with
starched ruffs, and coats of silk or velvet in bright colours. All sat
with their hats on, in imitation of the time-honoured custom of the
House of Commons, an early illustration of the democratic doctrine, "I
am as good as you." These burgesses had their speaker, as well as their
clerk and sergeant-at-arms. Such was the first American legislature,
and two of its acts in the year 1624 were especially memorable. One
was the declaration, passed without any dissenting voice, "that the
governor shall not lay any taxes or impositions upon the colony,
their lands or commodities, otherway than by the authority of the
general assembly, to be levied and employed as the said assembly shall
appoint." The other was the punishment of Edward Sharpless, clerk of
the house. When the king's commissioners to inquire into the affairs
of Virginia asked for the public records of the colony the assembly
refused to show them, albeit they were ready to answer questions
propounded in a becoming temper. But the commissioners practised upon
Sharpless and induced him to furnish them with a copy of the records,
whereupon the assembly condemned the said Sharpless to stand in the
pillory and have half of one ear cut off.

[Sidenote: Martin's case.]

[Sidenote: Education of Indians.]

This general assembly was both a legislative and a judicial body. It
enacted laws and prescribed the penalties for breaking them, it tried
before a jury persons accused of crime and saw that due punishment
was inflicted upon those who were adjudged guilty, it determined
civil causes, assessed the amount of damages, and saw that they were
collected. From sweeping principles of constitutional law down to
the pettiest sumptuary edicts, there was nothing which this little
parliament did not superintend and direct. On one occasion, "the
delegates from Captain John Martin's plantation were excepted to
because of a peculiar clause in his patent releasing him from obeying
any order of the colony except in times of war." A few days afterward
the said Captain Martin appeared at the bar of the house, and the
speaker asking whether he would relinquish the particular clause
exempting him from colonial authority, replied that he would not yield
any part of his patent. The assembly then resolved that the burgesses
of his plantation were not entitled to seats.[113] Such exemptions of
individual planters by especial license from the home government,
although rare, were of course anomalies not to be commended; in some
cases they proved to be nuisances, and in course of time all were got
rid of. From this constitutional question the assembly turned to the
conversion of the red men, and enacted that each borough or hundred
should obtain from the Indians by just and fair means a certain number
of Indian children to be educated "in true religion and a civil course
of life; of which children the most towardly boys in wit and graces
of nature [are] to be brought up by them in the first elements of
literature, so as to be fitted for the college intended for them,
that from thence they may be sent to that work of conversion." Few
enactments of any legislature have ever been better intended or less
fruitful than this.

[Sidenote: Drunkards.]

It was moreover enacted that any person found drunk was for the first
offence to be privately reproved by the minister; the second time
this reproof was to be publicly administered; the third time the
offender must be put in irons for twelve hours and pay a fine; for any
subsequent offences he must be severely punished at the discretion of
the governor and council.

[Sidenote: Dress.]

To guard the community against excessive vanity in dress, it was
enacted that for all public contributions every unmarried man must be
assessed in church "according to his own apparel;" and every married
man must be assessed "according to his own and his wife's apparel."

[Sidenote: Flirting.]

Not merely extravagance in dress, but such social misdemeanours as
flirting received due legislative condemnation. Pretty maids were known
to encourage hopes in more than one suitor, and gay deceivers of the
sterner sex would sometimes seek to win the affections of two or more
women at the same time. Wherefore it was enacted that "every minister
should give notice in his church that what man or woman soever should
use any word or speech tending to a contract of marriage to two several
persons at one time ... as might entangle or breed scruples in their
consciences, should for such their offense, either undergo corporal
correction [by whipping] or be punished by fine or otherwise, according
to the quality of the person so offending."[114]

[Sidenote: Scandal.]

[Sidenote: Clergymen.]

Men were held to more strict accountability for the spoken or written
word than in these shameless modern days. One of the most prominent
settlers we find presenting a petition to the assembly to grant him
due satisfaction against a neighbour who has addressed to him a letter
"wherein he taxeth him both unseemly and amiss of certain things
wherein he was never faulty." Speaking against the governor or any
member of the council was liable to be punished with the pillory. It
was also imprudent to speak too freely about clergymen, who were held
in great reverence. No planter could dispose of so much as a pound
of tobacco until he had laid aside a certain specified quantity as
his assessment toward the minister's salary, which was thus assured
even in the worst times, so far as legislation could go. It was
enacted that "noe man shall disparage a mynister whereby the myndes
of his parishoners may be alienated from him and his mynistrie prove
less effectuall, upon payne of severe censure of the governor and
councell."[115] At the same time clergymen were warned against unseemly
practices in terms so concrete as to raise a suspicion that such
warning may have been needed. "Mynisters shall not give themselves to
excesse in drinking or ryott, spending their tyme idelie by day or
by night playing at dice, cards, or any other unlawfull game, but at
all tymes convenient they shall heare or reade somewhat of the holy
scriptures, or shall occupie themselves with some other honest studies
or exercise, alwayes doinge the things which shall apperteyne to
honestie and endeavour to profitt the church of God, having alwayes in
mind that they ought to excell all others in puritie of life, should be
examples to the people, to live well and christianlie."[116]

[Sidenote: Sabbath-breaking.]

The well-being of Virginia society was further protected by sundry
statutes such as the one which punished profane swearing by a fine
of one shilling per oath. "For the better observation of the Saboth"
it was enacted that no person "shall take a voyage vppon the same,
except it be to church or for other causes of extreme necessitie,"
under penalty of forfeiting twenty pounds of tobacco for each offence.
A similar fine was imposed for firing a gun upon Sunday, unless it
might be for defence against the Indians. Selling arms or ammunition
to Indians was punished by imprisonment for life, with confiscation
of goods. Every master of a family was required, under penalty of
ten pounds of tobacco, to bring with him to church every Sunday a
serviceable gun with plenty of powder and shot.

[Sidenote: Strong drink.]

Stringent legislation protected the rights of thirsty persons. "Whereas
there hath been great abuse by the vnreasonable rates enacted by
ordinary keepers, and retaylers of wine and strong waters," maximum
prices were established as follows: for Spanish wines 30 lbs. of
tobacco per gallon, for Madeira 20 lbs., for French wines 15 lbs.,
for brandy 40 lbs., for "the best sorte of all English strong waters"
80 lbs.; and any vender charging above these rates was to be fined at
double the rate. For corrupting or "sophisticating" good liquor by
fraudulent admixtures, a fine was imposed at the discretion of the
commissioners of the county courts. The inn-keeper who sold wines and
spirits to his guests did so at his own risk, for such debts were not
recoverable at law.[117]

[Sidenote: Forestallers.]

The ancient prejudice against forestalling survives in the following
statute, which would make havoc of the business of some modern brokers:
"Whatsoever person or persons shall buy or cause to be bought any
marchandize, victualls, or any other thinge, comminge by land or
water to the markett to be sold, or make any bargaine, contract or
promise for the haveinge or buyinge of the same ... before the said
marchandize, victualls, or other thinge shall bee at the markett
readie to be sold; or make any motion by word, letter or message or
otherwise to any person or persons for the enhaunsing of the price,
or dearer sellinge of any thinge or thinges above mentioned, or else
disswade, move, or stirr any person or persons cominge to the marquett,
to abstaine or forbeare to bringe or conveye any of the things above
rehearsed to any markett as aforesayd, shall be deemed and adjudged a
forestaller. And yf any person or persons shall offend in the things
before recited and beinge thereof dulie convicted or attaynted shall
for his or theire first offence suffer imprisonment by the space of
two mounthes without baile or maine-prize, and shall also loose and
forfeite the value of the goods soe by him or them bought or had as
aforesayd; and for a second offence ... shall suffer imprisonment by
the space of one halfe yeare ... and shall loose the double value
of all the goods ... soe bought ... and for the third offence ...
shall be sett on the pillorie ... and loose and forfeit all the
goods and chattels that he or they then have to theire owne use, and
also be committed to prison, there to remayne duringe the Governor's
pleasure."[118]

[Sidenote: The kingdom of Virginia.]

Edmund Spenser, in his dedication of the "Faëry Queene," in 1590, calls
Elizabeth the queen of England, France, and Ireland, and of Virginia,
thus characterizing as a kingdom the vast and vague domain in the
New World which she was appropriating. Soon after the downfall of the
Virginia Company, the document containing Charles I.'s appointment of
William Claiborne as secretary of state in the colony mentioned it as
"our kingdom of Virginia;" and the phrase occurs in other writings of
the time. It is a phrase that seems especially appropriate for the
colony after it had come to be a royal province, directly dependent
upon the king for its administration. During the reign of Charles I.
the relations of the kingdom of Virginia to the mother country were
marked by few memorable incidents. In this respect the contrast with
the preceding reign is quite striking. One must read the story in the
original state papers, correspondence, and pamphlets of the time, in
order to realize to what an extent the colony was cut loose by the
overthrow of the Company. The most interesting and important questions
that came up were connected with the settlement of Maryland, but before
we enter upon that subject, a few words are needed on the succession of
royal governors in Virginia.

[Sidenote: A convivial governor.]

The commission of Yeardley in 1626 named Sir John Harvey as his
successor. When Yeardley died in 1627, Harvey had not arrived upon the
scene, and needed to be notified. In such cases it was the business
of the council to appoint a governor _ad interim_, and the council
appointed one of the oldest and most honoured settlers, Francis West,
brother of the late Lord Delaware. After one year of service business
called West to England, and his place was taken by Dr. John Pott, who
held the government until Sir John Harvey's arrival in March, 1630.
This Dr. Pott is described as "a Master of Arts, ... well practised
in chirurgery and physic, and expert also in distilling of waters,
[besides] many other ingenious devices."[119] It seems that he was
likewise very fond of tasting distilled waters, and at times was more
of a boon companion than quite comported with his dignity, especially
after he had come to be governor. A letter of George Sandys to a friend
in London says of Dr. Pott, "at first he kept company too much with
his inferiors, who hung upon him while his good liquor lasted. After,
he consorted with Captain Whitacres, a man of no good example, with
whom he has gone to Kecoughtan."[120] What was done by the twain at
Kecoughtan is not matter of record, but we are left with a suggestion
of the darkest possibilities of a carouse.

After Harvey's arrival ex-Governor Pott was arrested, and held to
answer two charges: one was for having abused the powers entrusted to
him by pardoning a culprit who had been convicted of wilful murder; the
other was for stealing cattle. The first charge was a matter of common
notoriety; on the second Dr. Pott was tried by a jury and found guilty.
The ex-governor was not only a pardoner of felony, but a felon himself.
The affair reads like a scene in comic opera. Some reluctance was felt
about inflicting vulgar punishment upon an educated man of good social
position; so he was not sent to jail but confined in his own house,
while Sir John Harvey wrote to the king for instructions in the matter.
He informed the king that Dr. Pott was by far the best physician in
the colony, and indeed the only one "skilled in epidemicals," and
recommended that he should be pardoned. Accordingly the doctor was set
free and forthwith resumed his practice.

[Sidenote: Growth of Virginia.]

[Sidenote: Other colonies.]

Soon it was Governor Harvey's turn to get into difficulties. How he was
"thrust out" from his government in 1635 and restored to it by Charles
I. in 1637 will best be told in a future chapter in connection with
the affairs of Maryland. After Harvey's final departure in 1639, Sir
Francis Wyatt was once more governor for three years, and then came the
famous Sir William Berkeley, who remained for five-and-thirty years the
most conspicuous figure in Virginia. When Berkeley arrived upon the
scene, in 1642, on the eve of the great Civil War, he received from
Wyatt the government of a much greater Virginia than that over which
Wyatt was ruling in 1624. Those eighteen years of self-government had
been years of remarkable prosperity and progress. Instead of 4,000
English and 22 negroes, the population now numbered 15,000 English and
300 negroes. Moreover, Virginia was no longer the only English colony.
In 1624 there were no others, except the little band of about 200
Pilgrims at Plymouth. In 1642 the population of New England numbered
26,000, distributed among half-a-dozen self-governing colonies. There
was also a community of Dutchmen laying claim to the whole region
between the Mohawk valley and Delaware Bay, with a flourishing town
on Manhattan Island in the finest commercial situation on the whole
Atlantic coast. The Virginians did not relish the presence of these
Dutchmen, for they too laid claim to that noble tract of country. The
people of Virginia had made the first self-supporting colony and felt
that they had established a claim upon the middle zone. The very name
Virginia had not yet ceased to cling to it. In books of that time one
may read of the town of New Amsterdam upon the island of Manhattan in
Virginia. In 1635 a party of Virginians went up to the Delaware River
and took possession of an old blockhouse there, called Fort Nassau,
which the Dutch had abandoned; but a force from New Amsterdam speedily
took them prisoners and sent them back to Virginia,[121] with a polite
warning not to do so any more. They did not.

Still nearer at hand, by the waters of the Potomac and Susquehanna,
other rivals and competitors, even more unwelcome to the Virginians,
had lately come upon the scene. The circumstances of the founding
of Maryland, with its effects upon the kingdom of Virginia, will be
recounted in the two following chapters.

FOOTNOTES:

[109] Ingle, "Local Institutions of Virginia," _J. H. U. Studies_,
iii. 148.

[110] Hening's _Statutes at Large_, i. 176, 193.

[111] Hutchinson, _Hist. Mass. Bay_, i. 37.

[112] Skottowe, _Short History of Parliament_, p. 19; Taswell-Langmead,
_English Constitutional History_, p. 262.

[113] Neill's _Virginia Company_, p. 140.

[114] Cooke's _Virginia_, p. 149.

[115] Hening's _Statutes at Large_, i. 156.

[116] Hening, i. 158, 183.

[117] Hening, i. 194, 219, 261, 263, 300, 319, 350.

[118] Hening, i 194.

[119] Neill's _Virginia Company_, p. 221.

[120] Neill's _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 79.

[121] Brodhead's _History of New York_, i. 254.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE MARYLAND PALATINATE.

[Sidenote: The Irish Baltimore.]

ON the southwestern coast of Ireland, not far from Cape Clear, the
steamship on its way from New York to Liverpool passes within sight of
a small promontory crowned by an ancient village bearing the Gaelic
name of Baltimore, which signifies "large townlands."[122] The events
which transferred this Irish name to the banks of the Patapsco River
make an interesting chapter of history.

[Sidenote: George Calvert.]

George Calvert, son of a wealthy Yorkshire farmer of Flemish descent,
was born about 1580. After taking his degree at Oxford and travelling
for some time on the Continent, he was employed as an under-secretary
in the state department by Sir Robert Cecil, after whom he named his
eldest son Cecilius. His warm advocacy of the Spanish marriage made him
a great favourite of James I., so that in 1617 he was knighted and in
1619 was appointed secretary of state. He seems always to have had a
leaning toward the Roman Church. Whether he was converted in 1624, or
simply made public profession of a faith long cherished in secret, is
matter of doubt. At all events, he resigned his secretaryship at that
time. The next year one of the last things done by James, a few days
before his death, was to raise Calvert to the Irish peerage as Baron
Baltimore.

[Sidenote: A palatinate in Newfoundland.]

The son of Mary Stuart had a liberal way of dealing with his
favourites. In March, 1623, he granted the great southeastern
promontory in Newfoundland--the region now known as Ferryland, between
Trinity and Placentia bays--to George Calvert, to be held by him and
his heirs forever. The government was to be a "palatinate," a statement
which calls for a somewhat detailed explanation.

[Sidenote: Origin of palatinates.]

When that great and far-sighted ruler William the Conqueror arranged
the affairs of England after the battle of Hastings, he sought to
prevent such evils as those against which the newly founded Capetian
monarchy in France was struggling for life, evils arising from the
imperfect subordination of the great feudal lords. To this end he made
it a rule not to grant large contiguous estates to the same lord, and
in every county he provided that the king's officer, the sheriff,
should be clothed with powers overriding those of the local manorial
officers. He also obliged the tenants of the barons to swear fealty
directly to the crown. This shrewd and wholesome policy, as developed
under his able son Henry I. and his still abler great-grandson Henry
II., has profoundly affected the political career of the English race.
But to this general policy William admitted one class of exceptions.
In the border counties, which were never quite free from the fear of
invasion, and where lawlessness was apt to be more or less prevalent in
time of peace, it was desirable to make the local rulers more powerful.
Considerations of this sort prevailed throughout mediæval Europe.
Universally, the ruler of a march or border county, the count or graf
or earl placed in such a responsible position, acquired additional
power and dignity, and came to be distinguished by a grander title, as
margrave, marquis, or count of the marches. In accordance with this
general principle, William the Conqueror granted exceptional powers
and consolidation of authority to three counties, to Durham on the
Scotch border, to Chester on the border of Wales, and to Kent, where
an invader from the Continent might with least difficulty effect a
landing. Local administration in those counties was concentrated
in the hands of the county ruler; they were made exceptionally
strong to serve as buffers for the rest of the kingdom, and they were
called "palatinates" or "counties palatine," implying that within
their boundaries the rulers had quasi-regal rights as complete as
those which the king had in his palace. They appointed the officers
of justice, they could pardon treasons and felonies, forfeitures at
common law accrued to them, and legal writs ran in their name instead
of the king's. The title of "count palatine" carries us back to the
times of the Merovingian kings in Gaul, when it belonged to one of the
highest officers in the royal household, who took judicial cognizance
of all pleas of the crown. Hence the title came to be applied to
other officers endowed with quasi-regal powers. Such were the counts
palatine of the Rhine and Bavaria, who in the course of the thirteenth
century became electoral princes of the Holy Roman Empire. One of their
domains, the Rhenish Palatinate, of which Heidelberg in its peerless
beauty is the crown and glory, has contributed, as we shall hereafter
see, an element of no small importance to the population of the United
States.

[Sidenote: Changes in English palatinates.]

To return to William the Conqueror: in an age when the organization
of society was so imperfect, and action at a distance so slow and
difficult, the possession of quasi-regal powers by the rulers of the
palatine counties made it much easier for them to summon quickly their
feudal forces in case of sudden invasion. In view of the frequency of
quarrels and raids on the border, the quasi-regal authority was liable
at any moment to be needed to prevent war from breaking out, and the
proper administration of justice demanded a short shrift and a sharp
doom for evil-doers. The powers granted by William to the palatine
counties resembled those wielded by the French dukedoms of the same
period, but with admirable forethought he appointed to rule them
priests who could not marry and found feudal families. Durham and for
a time Chester were ruled by their bishops, and over Kent as a secular
jurisdiction William placed his own brother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux.
In course of time many changes occurred. Kent soon lost its palatine
privileges, while those of Chester were exercised by its earls until
the reign of Henry III., when the earldom lapsed to the crown. After
the conquest of Wales the county of Pembroke on its southwestern coast
was made a palatinate, but its privileges were withdrawn by Henry VIII.
For a time such privileges were enjoyed by Hexhamshire, between Durham
and Northumberland, but under Elizabeth that little county was absorbed
in Northumberland. One other northern shire, the duchy of Lancaster,
was made a palatinate by Edward III., but that came to an end in 1399,
when the Duke of Lancaster ascended the throne of England as Henry IV.
Traces of its old palatinate jurisdiction, however, still survive.
Until the Judicature Act of 1873 Lancaster and Durham had each its
own distinct and independent court of common pleas, and the duchy of
Lancaster has still its own chancellor and chancery court outside of
the jurisdiction of the lord chancellor. As for the palatine authority
of the bishops of Durham, it was vested in the crown in the year
preceding the accession of Victoria.

[Sidenote: The bishopric of Durham.]

[Sidenote: Avalon and Durham.]

From this survey it appears that by the end of the sixteenth century
the bishopric of Durham was left as the only complete instance of a
palatinate, or kingdom within the kingdom. In the northern marches
the need for such a buffer was longer felt than elsewhere, and the
old political structure remained very much as it had been created
by William I., with the mitred bishop at its head. The great Norman
cathedral, in its position of unequalled grandeur,

  "Half house of God,
   Half castle 'gainst the Scot,"

still rears its towers in the blue sky to remind us of the stern days
when tartan-clad thousands came swarming across the Tweed, to fall in
heaps before the longbow at Halidon Hill and Neville's Cross and on
many another field of blood. When the king of Scots came to be king of
England, this principality of Durham afforded an instance of a dominion
thoroughly English yet semi-independent, unimpeachable for loyalty but
distinct in its administration. It was not strange, therefore, that it
should have served as a pattern for colonial governments to be set up
in the New World. For such governments virtual independence combined
with hearty allegiance was the chief desideratum, a fact which in later
days George III. unfortunately forgot. From the merely military point
of view a colony in the American wilderness stood in at least as much
need of palatine authority as any frontier district in the Old World.
Accordingly, when it was decided to entrust the work of founding an
American colony to a nobleman with his clientage of followers, an
example of the needful organization was already furnished by the great
northern bishopric. Calvert's province in Newfoundland, which received
the name of Avalon,[123] was to be modelled after the palatinate of
Durham, and the powers granted to its lord proprietor were perhaps the
most extensive ever bestowed by the English crown upon any subject.

[Sidenote: Baltimore's colony in Newfoundland.]

A party of colonists went at once to Newfoundland in 1623, but various
affairs detained Lord Baltimore at home until 1627, when he came with
his wife and children to dwell in this New World paradise of Avalon.
The trail of the serpent was already there. A French fleet came to
attack the colony, meditating revenge for Argall's treatment of the
French at Mount Desert and Port Royal, but Baltimore's ships were
heavily armed and well handled, and the Frenchmen got the worst of it.
Then a party of Puritans came to Avalon, and these unbidden guests
were horrified at what they saw. The Rev. Erasmus Stourton returned to
England with a shocking story of how Lord Baltimore not only had the
mass performed every Sunday, but had even allowed a Presbyterian child
to be baptized by a Romish priest. Then the climate of Avalon proved to
be anything but what had been expected. One Captain Richard Whitbourne
had published an enthusiastic book in which he recorded his memories
of June days in Newfoundland, with their delicious wild strawberries
and cherries, the soft air redolent with the fragrance of red and white
roses, the woods vocal with thrushes and other songsters that rivalled
the nightingale; of wild beasts there were none that were harmful, and
"in St. John's harbour he once saw a mermaid."[124] Lord Baltimore
learned that it was not always June in Avalon. He wrote to Charles
I. in August, 1629, as follows: "I have met with difficulties and
encumbrances here which in this place are no longer to be resisted,
but enforce me presently to quit my residence and to shift to some
other warmer climate of this New World, where the winters be shorter
and less rigorous. For here your Majesty may please to understand that
I have found by too dear-bought experience, which other men for their
private interests always concealed from me, that from the middle of
October to the middle of May there is a sad fare of winter upon all
this land; both sea and land so frozen for the greater part of the time
as they are not penetrable, no plant or vegetable thing appearing out
of the earth until the beginning of May, nor fish in the sea; beside
the air so intolerable cold as it is hardly to be endured. By means
whereof, and of much salt meat, my house hath been an hospital all this
winter; of a hundred persons fifty sick at a time, myself being one,
and nine or ten of them died. Hereupon I have had strong temptations
to leave all proceedings in plantations, and being much decayed in
my strength, to retire myself to my former quiet; but my inclination
carrying me naturally to these kind of works, and not knowing how
better to employ the poor remainder of my days than ... to further,
the best I may, the enlarging your Majesty's empire in this part of
the world, I am determined to commit this place to fishermen that
are able to encounter storms and hard weather, and to remove myself
with some forty persons to your Majesty's dominion Virginia; where,
if your Majesty will please to grant me a precinct of land, with such
privileges as the king your father ... was pleased to grant me here, I
shall endeavour to the utmost of my power, to deserve it."[125]

[Sidenote: Baltimore's visit to Virginia.]

To this letter the king returned a gracious reply, in which he advised
Lord Baltimore, for the sake of his own comfort and peace of mind, to
give up such arduous kind of work and return to England; but before
this reply reached Avalon, its proprietor had sailed for Virginia, with
Lady Baltimore and the children, and a small retinue of servants and
followers. He wished to see that country with his own eyes and learn
if it were really fit for his purposes. On the first day of October,
1629, he arrived at Jamestown, where he found the assembly in session.
That versatile physician, Dr. Pott, so skilled in "epidemicals" and
strong waters and afterward convicted of lifting cattle, was then
acting as governor. The reception given to Lord Baltimore was anything
but cordial. All good Virginians hated Papists, and this particular
Papist was known to stand in high favour with the king, so that he
might turn out to be dangerous. He had been one of the commissioners
appointed by James I. to look into the affairs of Virginia; what if
he were to persuade Charles I. to turn over the colony into his hands
for safe-keeping? There was really not the slightest danger of such a
thing. Baltimore's wish was not to take possession of a colony already
established, but to found one himself in accordance with his own
ideas. It was not his purpose to become lord over the Virginians, but
their neighbour, who might dwell near them on amicable terms. But the
Virginians did not wish to receive him in any capacity or on any terms,
except as a transient guest. There was an obvious and easy device for
getting rid of him. Dr. Pott and the council tendered to him the oath
of supremacy, which of course he could not take. This oath was a sworn
recognition of the English sovereign as the only supreme authority
throughout the British dominions in all matters ecclesiastical and
spiritual. No Catholic could take such an oath. Baltimore proposed an
alternative declaration of allegiance to which he could swear, but
such a compromise was of course refused. Even had Dr. Pott and the
council felt authorized to assume such responsibility, accommodation
was not what they desired, and the royal favourite was told that he
must sail for England at once. It appears that he met with some very
rude treatment at Jamestown, which does not seem to have been publicly
rebuked until the arrival of the new royal governor, Sir John Harvey,
in the following March; for on the records of the assembly for March
25, 1630, occurs the entry: "Thomas Tindall to be pilloried two hours,
for giving my Lord Baltimore the lie and threatening to knock him
down." It is evident, however, that such unseemly conduct could not
have met with approval among respectable people at Jamestown, for when
Baltimore sailed he left his wife and children there. It is clear that
he intended soon to return, and wished to save them the discomforts and
perils of the double voyage. He knew that Virginian hospitality could
be relied on. His purpose of returning must have been well known, for
the secretary of the colony, William Claiborne, was sent to London to
keep an eye upon him and thwart his schemes as far as possible. After
arriving in England, Lord Baltimore found so many hindrances to be
reckoned with that he sent for his family and they followed him by a
later ship.

[Sidenote: The charter of Maryland.]

Baltimore's first request was for a tract of territory lying south of
James River as far as the mouth of the Chowan (or Passamagnus) River
in Albemarle Sound. This province was to be called Carolina, either
in honour of Charles I., or because the name had been given by the
Huguenots in 1562 in honour of Charles IX. of France to a point farther
south on that coast and was vaguely applicable to territory between
Virginia and Florida. A charter conveying this land to Lord Baltimore
had already been made out when Claiborne appeared with his objections,
which were supported by other persons in London who were entertaining
schemes for founding a sugar-planting colony in Carolina. The matter
was discussed in the Privy Council, and Baltimore's attention was
called to the fact that the Dutch were taking possession of the country
between the Hudson and Delaware rivers; would it not therefore be
desirable to found a colony north of the Potomac, and squeeze these
unwelcome intruders into as narrow a space as possible? Baltimore
accepted this suggestion, and a charter was drawn up, granting to him
as lord proprietor the province which received the name of Maryland,
after Charles's Catholic queen, Henriette Marie, in England commonly
called Queen Mary. The charter, which Baltimore drew up with his
own hand, was in the main a copy of the Avalon charter; but before
it had received the royal seal he died, in April, 1632. In June the
charter was issued to his eldest son Cecilius Calvert, second baron of
Baltimore.

[Sidenote: Fate of the Avalon charter.]

In obtaining this new grant of Maryland, the Calverts did not regard
themselves as giving up their hold upon Newfoundland. Cecilius
appointed a governor for Avalon as a fishing station, but in 1637,
with characteristic recklessness, the king granted it to the Marquis
of Hamilton and some other noblemen, on the ground that the charter
had been forfeited by disuse. More or less controversy went on until
1663, when in consequence of a judgment in the courts pronouncing
the Hamilton grant void, Avalon was surrendered to Cecilius. But his
descendants really neglected it, until in 1754 the charter was again
declared forfeited, and the crown resumed its rights over the whole of
that large island.

[Sidenote: Character of the first Lord Baltimore.]

It seems to have been the physical hardships sustained in Newfoundland
that cut off the first Lord Baltimore prematurely in his fifty-third
year and prevented his witnessing the success of the enterprise which
he had so much at heart. His plan was to found in the New World a
commonwealth where Catholics might find a welcome refuge from the
oppressive legislation to which they were subjected in England. It
was a plan that could be carried out only by adopting a policy of
universal toleration utterly unknown in that age outside of the
Netherlands. It called for the utmost sagacity and tact, and was
likely to require on the part of the ruler all the well-nigh royal
powers with which Lord Baltimore had been endowed. Though the scheme
was left for the son to put into successful operation, it was devised
by the father and stamps him as no ordinary man. It is right that he
should be honoured as the first founder of Maryland. His portrait,
painted for Lord Bacon by the illustrious Daniel Mytens, is now in the
gallery of the Earl of Verulam, and there is a fine copy of it in the
state-house at Annapolis. The face is courteous and amiable, albeit
somewhat melancholy, and shows refinement and intelligence, as well as
the honesty for which he was noted. George Calvert's integrity was such
that throughout his public life men respected and trusted him without
distinction of party. Of the sincerity of his religious feelings one
gets a glimpse in such characteristic passages as the following, from
a letter to his friend, the great Earl of Strafford: "All things,
my lord, in this world pass away; wife, children, honours, wealth,
friends, and what else is dear to flesh and blood. They are but lent
us till God please to call for them back again, that we may not esteem
anything our own, or set our hearts upon anything but Him alone, who
only remains forever."[126]

[Sidenote: Cecilius Calvert, second Lord Baltimore.]

Of the early life of the son, Cecilius Calvert, very little is known.
He was born in 1606 and entered Trinity College, Oxford, in 1621,
but there is no record of his having taken a degree. He was hardly
more than eighteen years old when he became the husband of Lady Anne
Arundel, whose name is left upon one of the counties of Maryland,
and whose portrait by Vandyck, preserved in Wardour Castle, shows
her to have been one of the most beautiful women of her time. An
engraved portrait of Cecilius, made in 1657 and now in possession of
the Maryland Historical Society, gives us the impression of great
sagacity and power, with the repose that comes from undisturbed
self-control. There is perhaps more astuteness than in the father's
face, but the look is also frank, as well as lofty and refined.
Through many difficulties the plan conceived by George Calvert was
put into operation by Cecilius, who is to be regarded as preëminently
the founder of Maryland. His strong personality is impressed upon the
whole history of that interesting community; yet singularly enough, the
second Lord Baltimore never visited the colony to which the labours of
his long life were devoted. He cherished at first an intention of going
out with the first party of colonists, but finding that London fairly
swarmed with enemies to the enterprise, he found it most prudent to
stay there and contend with them. This was only the beginning of long
years of arduous work in which the right time for leaving England never
came, and the Moses of this new migration and fresh departure in the
way of founding states was at last gathered unto his fathers without
ever having set foot in the Promised Land.

[Sidenote: A new type of colonial government.]

In two ways the founding of Maryland was a new departure in methods
of colonization. In the first place, it introduced into America a new
type of colonial government. The Spanish and French colonies were
simple despotisms administered by viceroyal governors, sometimes
with advisory councils, sometimes partly held in check by an officer
called the intendant, who was himself a counter-despot. The government
of Virginia after the suppression of the Company was called a crown
government because the governor and council were appointed by the king;
it was not a despotism, because there was an assembly elected by the
people, without whose consent no taxes could be assessed or collected.
The bond of connection with the mother country was loose but real. A
contrast was afforded by Massachusetts, which under its first charter,
from 1629 to 1684, was a true republic, with governor, council, and
assembly all elected within the colony, so that the administration
could move on quite independently of any action in England. In the
proprietary governments, of which Maryland was the first example, the
lord proprietor stepped into the place of the crown, while a charter,
which might be forfeited in case of abuse, made it impossible for him
to become an absolute monarch. The elective legislature of Maryland,
which in point of seniority ranks third in America, next after Virginia
and Massachusetts, was expressly provided for in the charter. The
lord proprietor's sovereignty was limited by this elected assembly of
freemen, but his dependence upon the king of England was little more
than nominal. In token of allegiance and homage he was to send to the
king each year two Indian arrows. His rent was to be one fifth part of
all gold or silver mined in Maryland, but as no precious metals were
found there, this rent amounted to nothing. Moreover, whenever it might
seem necessary, the oath of allegiance might be administered to any
of the inhabitants. Saving this formal recognition of his overlord,
the lord proprietor was virtually king in Maryland. Laws passed by the
assembly became valid as soon as he had signed them, and did not need
to be seen by the king. In case the assembly could not conveniently be
brought together in an emergency, he could issue ordinances by himself,
analogous to the orders of the Privy Council. He could coin money and
grant titles of nobility, he could create courts, appoint judges, and
pardon criminals. It was moreover expressly stipulated that within
the limits of Maryland no taxes could be either assessed or collected
by any British government. Finally the lord proprietorship was vested
in Cecilius Calvert and his heirs, and in point of fact was exercised
by them with some interruptions for five generations; so that the
government of colonial Maryland was really a hereditary constitutional
monarchy.

[Sidenote: Ecclesiastical powers of the lord proprietor.]

Thus Lord Baltimore introduced into America a new and quite remarkable
type of colonial government. But in the second place his attempt to
inaugurate a policy of complete religious toleration was a still
more memorable departure from familiar methods. Among the express
provisions of the charter there was nothing that looked toward such
complete toleration. Any express toleration of Catholics would have
ruined the whole scheme at the start. The words of the charter were
conveniently vague. In the original charter of Avalon the lord
proprietor was entrusted with "the patronage and advowsons of all
churches which, with the increasing worship and religion of Christ
within the said region, hereafter shall happen to be built; together
with license and faculty of erecting and founding churches, chapels,
and places of worship, in convenient and suitable places, within the
premises, and of causing the same to be dedicated and consecrated
according to the ecclesiastical laws of England." This Avalon grant
of 1623 was made when Sir George Calvert was still a member of the
English church; it empowered him to found Anglican churches, but did
not expressly prohibit him from founding Romanist or Nonconformist
places of worship along with the others if he should see fit. Now
exactly the same words were repeated in the Maryland charter, although
it was generally known that Lord Baltimore intended to make that
colony an asylum for such English Catholics as wished to escape from
their grievances at home. The fact that no prohibition was inserted
shows that the king connived at Baltimore's scheme, perhaps through
sympathy with his Catholic queen. None of the Stuarts were fierce
Protestants, and it is worth noting that it was at the king's request
that the colony was named Maryland. Mr. Gardiner's opinion seems well
sustained, that "the phrases of the charter were intended to cover a
secret understanding between Baltimore and the king."[127]

[Sidenote: Religious toleration in Maryland.]

Starting with such a charter, religious toleration in Maryland was a
happy product of circumstances. In view of the regal powers wielded by
Lord Baltimore it was not easy for the Protestant settlers to oppress
the Catholics; while, on the other hand, if the Catholic settlers had
been allowed to annoy the Protestants, it would forthwith have raised
such a storm in England as would have overwhelmed the lord proprietor
and blasted his enterprise. The situation thus created was improved
to the best advantage by the strong common-sense and unfailing tact
of Cecilius Calvert. It is not likely that he had arrived at such
advanced views of the entire separation of church and state as those
which were set forth with such luminous cogency by Roger Williams, but
there was a statesmanlike instinct in him that led him in a similar
direction. In point of religious toleration Rhode Island unquestionably
holds the foremost place among the colonies, while next after it come
Quaker Pennsylvania, with New Netherland, which for its brief season
maintained the wholesome Dutch traditions. There are some respects in
which Maryland's record may vie with the brightest, but her success was
not attained without struggles. We shall presently have occasion to see
how curiously her beginnings were complicated with the affairs of her
elder sister Virginia and with some phases of the Puritan revolution.

[Sidenote: First settlement at St. Mary's.]

If Lord Baltimore felt obliged himself to stay in England, he was
able to send excellent agents to America in the persons of his
younger brothers, Leonard and George Calvert. The former he appointed
governor of Maryland. The most important member of the council was
Thomas Cornwallis, of an ancient and highly honourable London family,
the same to which in later days belonged the Earl Cornwallis who
surrendered an army to George Washington at Yorktown.[128] Leonard
Calvert's ships were the Ark, of 300 tons burthen, with its attendant
pinnace, the Dove, of 50 tons; and his company comprised 20 "gentlemen
adventurers" with about 300 labourers. So alarmed were London people
at the expedition that it took the ships a full month to get away from
the Thames River. All kinds of rumours flew about. It was assumed that
all Catholics must be in league with Spain and that these ships must
be concerned in some foul conspiracy against the English colonies in
America. At the last moment a great fuss was made in the Star Chamber,
and Coke sent an order post-haste to Admiral Pennington commanding the
channel fleet to stop the ships at Dover. The oath of supremacy was
administered, and we hear of 128 persons taking it at one time. It is
generally believed that the majority of the company were Protestants;
the leaders were nearly all Catholics, including the amiable Jesuit,
Father Andrew White, who has left us in quaint and very charming Latin
a full narrative of the voyage.[129] The ships finally started on the
22d of November, 1633, stopped for a while in January at Barbadoes,
and on the 27th of February reached Point Comfort, where a letter from
the king ensured them courteous treatment at the hands of Governor
Harvey. With a fresh stock of supplies they sailed up Chesapeake Bay
and into the broad Potomac, and presently on a little wooded island
which they called St. Clement's--since dwindled to the mere vestige of
a sand-bank--they celebrated Mass for the first time in English America
on the 25th of March, 1634.

[Sidenote: Relations with the Indians.]

[Illustration: THE PALATINATE OF MARYLAND]

On a bluff overlooking the deep and broad St. Mary's River the settlers
found an Indian village, which they bought from its occupants with
steel hatchets and hoes and pieces of cloth. These Indians were a tribe
of Algonquins, who had been so persecuted by their terrible Iroquois
neighbours, the Susquehannocks, that they were already intending to
move away to some safer region; so they welcomed the white purchasers
and the chance for buying steel hatchets. Leonard Calvert was as
scrupulously just in his dealings with red men as William Penn in later
days, and like Penn he was exceptionally favoured by the circumstances
of his Indian neighbours. After the Algonquins had departed from St.
Mary's, the fierce Susquehannocks to the northward were so hard pressed
by their hostile kinsmen of the Five Nations, that they were only too
glad to live on amicable terms with the settlers of Maryland. Thus
one of the most formidable difficulties in the way of American
colonization was removed at the start.

[Sidenote: Prosperity of the settlement.]

At St. Mary's, moreover, there was no Starving Time. The land had
so long been cleared by the Indians for their own cornfields that
Calvert's settlers at once began planting for themselves. Father White
speaks with approval of two native dishes which the Indians call "pone"
and "hominy," and from their squaws the English women soon learned how
to bake and fry these viands to perfection. In the course of the very
first autumn the Marylanders were able to export a shipload of corn to
New England in exchange for a cargo of salted codfish.[130] Cattle and
swine were obtained from Virginia, and soon the neighbourhood of St.
Mary's was covered with thrifty and smiling farms. New colonists came
quite steadily, and presently from St. Mary's the plantations spread
about the shores of the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay. The first
assembly was convened and the first laws were enacted in 1635, and
when Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, died, just forty years afterward, his
Maryland had grown to be a prosperous community of 20,000 souls.

Some of the more important details of this growth will form part of our
story. At present we have to consider somewhat more closely the nature
of this palatinate government, and the modifications which it underwent
in its transfer from England to America.

[Sidenote: Constitution of Durham: the receiver-general.]

The Bishop of Durham was feudal landlord of the territory in his
bishopric, and the most considerable part of his revenue came
from rents.[131] Until 1660 he also received a fluctuating but
not insignificant income from such feudal incidents as escheats,
forfeitures, and wardships. The rents and feudal dues were collected by
the bailiffs, each in his bailiwick, and were by them paid over to the
receiver-general, who was superintendent of the palatinate's finances.
As for Durham's share of the national taxes, Parliament simply
determined the amount; the bishop's government decided how it should be
raised and his constables collected it. The only taxes collected by the
king's officers were the customs.

[Sidenote: Lord lieutenant and high sheriff.]

After 1536 the militia force of Durham, like that of other counties,
was commanded by an officer known as lord lieutenant. Formerly the
command of the militia and collecting and disbursing of revenue
were concentrated in the hands of the high sheriff, who continued
to be nominally the superior officer over the lord lieutenant and
receiver-general, while his actual duties were restricted, like those
of sheriffs in other counties, to enforcing the decisions of the
courts. But whereas all other sheriffs were crown officers, the high
sheriff of Durham was accountable only to the bishop.

[Sidenote: Chancellor of temporalities.]

[Sidenote: The halmote.]

[Sidenote: The seneschal.]

[Sidenote: The bishop's council.]

The only officer of higher dignity than the high sheriff was the
chancellor of temporalities, who exercised a twofold function. He was
the bishop's chief minister and head of the civil government, and he
presided over the bishop's high court of chancery. Below this high
tribunal there were two kinds of courts. The one was like the ordinary
courts of quarter sessions, composed of justices of the peace, save
that these justices were appointed by the bishop and punished breaches
not of the king's peace but of the bishop's peace. The other kind of
court was one that could be held in any manor of the bishopric. It
was the manorial court or "halmote," the most interesting of these
ancient institutions of Durham. The business of the halmote courts
was to adjust all questions relating to the tenure of land, rights
or easements in land, and such other matters as intimately concerned
the little agricultural community of tenants of the manor. They could
also issue injunctions and inflict sundry penalties. These courts were
held by the seneschal, an officer charged with the general supervision
of manors, but all the tenants of the manor in question could attend
the halmote, and could speak and vote there, so that it was like a
town-meeting. When we add that it could enact by-laws, thus combining
legislative with judicial functions, we see its ancestry disclosed.
This halmote in Durham was a descendant of the ancient folkmote or
primary assembly which our forefathers brought into Britain from their
earlier home in the wilds of northern Germany. In this assembly the
people of Durham preserved their self-government in matters of local
concern. But the circumstances in which the palatinate grew up seem
to have retarded the development of representative government. There
was no shire-mote in Durham, attended by selected men from every manor
or parish or township, as in the other counties of England. Instead
of laws enacted by such a representative body, there were ordinances
passed by the bishop in his council, which was composed of the
principal magistrates already mentioned, and of such noblemen or other
prominent persons as might choose to come or such as might be invited
by the bishop. It thus resembled in miniature a witenagemote or house
of lords. The bishops of Durham seem to have been in general responsive
to public opinion in their little world, and it does not appear that
the people fared worse than they would have done with a representative
assembly. The bishop was not an autocrat, but a member of a great
ecclesiastical body, and if he made himself unpopular it was quite
possible to take steps that would lead to his removal.

[Sidenote: National representation.]

[Sidenote: Limitations upon autonomy.]

The lack of representative institutions in Durham, coupled with its
semi-independence, long retarded its participation in the work of
national legislation. The bishop, of course, sat in the House of
Lords, but not until the reign of Charles II. was this county palatine
represented in the House of Commons. The change was inaugurated by
Cromwell, under whose protectorship the palatine privileges were taken
away, and Durham, reduced to the likeness of other counties, elected
its members of Parliament. In 1660 the restored monarchy undid this
change and replaced the bishop, although with his palatinate privileges
slightly shorn. In 1675 Durham began to be regularly represented in
the House of Commons, but that date was subsequent to the founding of
the Maryland palatinate. At the time when Lord Baltimore's charter was
issued, the bonds of connection between Durham and the rest of England
were three: 1. the bishop was a tenant _in capite_ of the crown,
besides being an officer of the Church and a member of the House of
Lords; 2. the county regularly paid its share of the national taxes;
and 3. cases in litigation between the bishop and his subjects could be
appealed to the Court of Exchequer in London. Saving these important
limitations, Durham was independent. The only way in which the king
could act within its limits was by addressing the bishop, who by way
of climax to his many attributes of sovereignty was endowed with the
powers of coining money, chartering towns, and exercising admiralty
jurisdiction over his seacoast.

[Sidenote: The palatinate type in America.]

As I have already observed it was natural that in founding new
governments in America, this familiar example of the Durham palatinate
should be made to serve as a model. In point of fact not only Maryland,
but every colony afterwards founded, except in New England, was
at first a palatinate, with either a single lord proprietor or a
board of proprietors at its head. Of the four colonies older than
Maryland, three--English Virginia and Massachusetts, and Dutch New
Netherland--were founded through the instrumentality of charters
granted to joint-stock companies, organized really or ostensibly for
commercial purposes; one, Plymouth, was founded by the people and
ignored by the crown until finally suppressed by it. Of the four New
England colonies younger than Maryland, all were founded by the people
themselves, one of them, New Haven, was soon suppressed, another, New
Hampshire, was turned into a royal province, the other two, Connecticut
and Rhode Island, were for the most part let alone. The governments
of all the other colonies began as proprietary governments. This was
the case with New York and the two Jerseys after the English conquest
of New Netherland; it was the case with Pennsylvania and Delaware,
with the two Carolinas, and with Georgia. One and all of these were
variations upon the theme first adopted in the founding of Maryland.
All were based upon the palatinate principle, with divers modifications
suggested by experience as likely to be more acceptable to the
proprietors or to the crown. And just as the crown, for purposes of
its own and without regard to the wishes of the people, changed the
governments of Virginia and New Hampshire and extinguished those of New
Haven and Plymouth; so in nearly every case we find the people becoming
so dissatisfied with the proprietary governments that one after another
they are overturned and the palatinates become transformed into royal
provinces. We shall, therefore, find it profitable to trace the history
of the palatinate principle in America through its initial theme and
its subsequent variations.

[Sidenote: Similarities between Durham and Maryland: the governor.]

That initial theme was mainly an echo of the Old World music, but the
differences were not without importance. In administrative machinery
there was a strong resemblance between Maryland and Durham. The
governor of Maryland was Lord Baltimore's chief minister, the head of
the civil administration of the colony. He also presided over its court
of chancery, and in this double capacity he resembled the chancellor
of temporalities. But, as befitted the head of a community planted in
a hostile wilderness, he added to these functions those of the lord
lieutenant and was commander-in-chief of the militia. Laws passed by
the assembly required his signature to make them valid, and thus he
possessed the power of veto; but he could not assent to a law repealing
any law to which the lord proprietor had assented. Such matters had to
be referred to the lord proprietor, whose prerogatives were jealously
guarded, while the extensive powers accorded to the governor were such
as convenience dictated in view of the fact that the lord proprietor
was absent in England. An instance of the principle and its limits is
furnished by the governor's pardoning power, which extended to all
offences except treason.[132]

[Sidenote: Secretary: surveyor-general.]

[Sidenote: Muster master-general: sheriffs.]

The personage next in importance to the governor was the secretary, who
as receiver and disburser of revenues resembled the receiver-general
of Durham, but to these functions he added those of recorder and judge
of probate, and sometimes also those of attorney-general. Next came
the surveyor-general, whose functions in determining metes and bounds
and in supervising manorial affairs, resembled those of the Durham
seneschal. Then there was a lieutenant commander of militia known as
master-general of the muster. In each county there was a sheriff,
who, in addition to such functions as we are familiar with, collected
all taxes, held all elections, and made the returns. These four
officers--the secretary, surveyor-general, muster master-general, and
sheriff--were paid by fees, the amount of which was determined by the
assembly, which thus exercised some control over them; but the governor
received a salary from the lord proprietor, and was to that extent
independent of the legislature.[133]

[Sidenote: The courts.]

Of courts there was one in each county, but besides this a considerable
number of manors were created, and each manor had its court baron and
court leet for the transaction of local business. Small civil cases
involving less than the worth of 1,200 pounds of tobacco, and criminal
cases not involving the death penalty, were tried in the county courts.
Above these was the provincial court, which dealt with common law,
chancery, or admiralty, as the case might be. The judges of this court
were all members of the council, to which the secretary and other chief
executive officers belonged, while the governor presided alike over
the provincial court and over the council. Appeals could be taken from
the provincial court to the council sitting as the upper house in the
assembly, after the analogy of the appellate jurisdiction of the House
of Lords; but this virtually meant that a case once decided could be
tried over again by the same judges with a few colleagues added.

[Sidenote: The primary assembly.]

[Sidenote: Initiative in legislation.]

The assembly, at the mention of which we have thus arrived, was the
principal point of difference between the palatinate of Maryland and
that of Durham. The governor of Maryland, like the bishop of Durham,
had his council, consisting solely, as the other consisted chiefly,
of high officials; but in Maryland there was popular representation,
while in Durham there was not. At first, however, the popular house
was not a representative but a primary assembly, and its sittings
were not separate from those of the council. In the first assembly,
which met at St. Mary's in February, 1635, all the freemen, or all who
chose to come, were gathered in the same room with Leonard Calvert
and his council. They drew up a body of laws and sent it to England
for the lord proprietor's assent, which was refused. The ground of
the refusal was far more than the mere technicality which on a hasty
glance it might seem to be. Cecilius refused because the charter gave
the lord proprietor the power of making laws with the assent of the
freemen, but did not give such power to the freemen with the assent
of the lord proprietor. In other words, the initiative in legislation
must always come from above, not from below. Obviously there could
be no higher authority than Cecilius as to what the charter really
intended. But the assembly of Maryland insisted upon the right of
initiating legislation, and Cecilius was wise enough to yield the point
gracefully. He consented, in view of the length of time required for
crossing the ocean, that laws enacted by the assembly should at once
become operative and so remain unless vetoed by him. But he reserved to
himself the right of veto without limitation in time. In other words,
he could at any time annul a law, and this prerogative was one that
might become dangerous.

[Sidenote: The representative assembly.]

In 1638 the primary assembly was abandoned as cumbrous. For purposes
of the military levy the province was divided into hundreds, and each
hundred sent a representative to the assembly at St. Mary's. At a later
date the county came to be the basis of representation, as in Virginia.
For some time the representatives sat with the council, as at first in
Massachusetts and Virginia; but in 1650 the representatives began to
sit as a lower house, while the council formed an upper house. As there
was a tendency, which went on increasing, for the highest offices to be
filled by Calverts and their kinsmen, the conditions were soon at hand
for an interesting constitutional struggle between the two houses. It
was to be seen whether the government was to be administered for the
Calverts or for the people, and to the story of this struggle we shall
presently come.

[Sidenote: Regal power of Lord Baltimore.]

As a result of our survey it appears that Lord Baltimore occupied a
far more independent position than any bishop of Durham. Not only was
he exempt from imperial taxation, but in case of a controversy between
himself and his subjects no appeal could be taken to any British court.
His power seemed to approach more nearly to despotism than that of any
king of England, save perhaps Henry VIII. The one qualifying feature
was the representative assembly, the effects of which time was to show
in unsuspected ways. From various circumstances mentioned in the course
of the present chapter there resulted a strange series of adventures,
which will next claim our attention.

FOOTNOTES:

[122] Joyce, _Irish Names of Places_, Dublin, 1869, p. 322.

[123] From the so-called isle of Avalon, in Somerset, reputed to be the
place where Christianity was first preached in Britain; the site of
the glorious minster of Glastonbury, where rest the ashes of Edgar the
Peaceful and Edmund Ironside.

[124] Browne's _Calverts_, p. 17.

[125] Browne's _Calverts_, p. 25.

[126] Browne's _Calverts_, p. 29.

[127] Gardiner, _History of England_, viii. 179.

[128] Neill's _Virginia Carolorum_, p. 99.

[129] White's _Relatio Itineris_, publ. by Maryland Hist. Soc.

[130] Winsor, _Narr. and Crit. Hist._ iii. 526.

[131] There is an excellent summary of the institutions of Durham
in Bassett's "Constitutional Beginnings of North Carolina," _Johns
Hopkins University Studies_, vol. xii. For fuller accounts see Surtees,
_History of the County Palatine of Durham_; also _Surtees Society
Publications_, vols. xxxii., lxxxii., lxxxiv.

[132] For an account of the Maryland constitution, see Sparks,

[133] "Causes of the Maryland Revolution of 1689," _Johns Hopkins
University Studies_, vol. xiv.

CHAPTER IX.

LEAH AND RACHEL.

[Sidenote: William Claiborne and his projects].

WE have already had occasion to observe that, while from the outset
Lord Baltimore's enterprise found many enemies in England, it was
at the same time regarded with no friendly feelings in Virginia. We
have seen the Virginians sending to London their secretary of state,
William Claiborne, to obstruct and thwart the Calverts in their attempt
to obtain a grant of territory in America. For Claiborne there were
interests of his own involved, besides those of the colony which he
represented. This William Claiborne, younger son of an ancient and
honourable family in Westmoreland, had come to Virginia in 1621 and
prospered greatly, acquiring large estates and winning the respect
and confidence of his fellow planters. By 1627 he had begun to engage
in trade with the natives along the shores of Chesapeake Bay and the
Potomac and Susquehanna rivers. Such traffic, if well managed, was
lucrative, since with steel knives and hatchets, or with ribbons and
beads, one could buy furs which would fetch high prices in England. To
the enterprising Claiborne it seemed worth while to extend this trade
far to the north. His speculative vision took in the Delaware and
Hudson rivers and even included New England and Nova Scotia. So he
entered into an arrangement with a firm of London merchants, Clobery &
Company, to supply them with furs and other such eligible commodities
as might be obtained from the Indians, and in 1631 he obtained a royal
license for trading in any and all parts of North America not already
preëmpted by monopolies. This was done while he was in London opposing
Lord Baltimore. The place most prominently mentioned in the license was
Nova Scotia, and it was obtained under the seal of Scotland, from the
Secretary of State for Scotland, Sir William Alexander, to whom Nova
Scotia had some time before been granted. On returning to Virginia,
where Sir John Harvey had lately superseded the convivial Dr. Pott as
governor, Claiborne obtained a further license to trade with any of the
English colonies and with the Dutch on Henry Hudson's river.

[Sidenote: Kent Island occupied by Claiborne.]

Armed with these powers, Claiborne proceeded to make a settlement upon
an island which he had already, before his visit to London, selected
for a trading post. It was Kent Island, far up in Chesapeake Bay,
almost as far north as the mouth of the Patapsco River. Here dwellings
were built, and mills for grinding corn, while gardens were laid out,
and orchards planted, and farms were stocked with cattle.[134] A
clergyman was duly appointed, to minister to the spiritual needs of the
little settlement, and in the next year, 1632, it was represented in
the House of Burgesses by Captain Nicholas Martian, a patentee of the
land where Yorktown now stands.

[Sidenote: Conflicting grants.]

When in that same year the news of the charter granted to Lord
Baltimore arrived in Virginia, it was greeted with indignation. No
doubt there was plenty of elbow-room between the old colony and the
land assigned to the new-comers, but the example of Claiborne shows
what far-reaching plans could be cherished down on James River. The
Virginians had received a princely territory, and did not like to see
it arbitrarily curtailed. There was no telling where that sort of
thing might end. According to the charter of 1609, Virginia extended
200 miles northward from Old Point Comfort,[135] or about as far north
as the site of Chester in Pennsylvania; which would have left no room
for Maryland or Delaware. That charter had indeed been annulled in
1624, but both James I. and Charles I. had expressly declared that
the annulling of the charter simply abolished the sovereignty that
had been accorded to the Virginia Company, and did not infringe or
diminish the territorial rights of the colony. Undoubtedly the grant
to the Calverts was one of the numerous instances in early American
history in which the Stuart kings gave away the same thing to different
parties. Or perhaps we might better say that they made grants without
duly heeding how one might overlap and encroach upon another. This was
partly the result of carelessness, partly of ignorance and haziness
of mind; flagrant examples of it were the grants to Robert Gorges in
Massachusetts and to Samuel Gorton in Rhode Island. No serious harm
has come of this recklessness, but it was the cause of much bickering
in the early days, echoes of which may still be heard in silly pouts
and sneers between the grown-up children of divers neighbour states.
As regards the grant to Lord Baltimore, a protest from Virginia was
not only natural but as inevitable as sunrise. It was discussed in the
Star Chamber in July, 1633, and the decision was not to disturb Lord
Baltimore's charter; the Virginians might, if they liked, bring suit
against him in the ordinary course of law. From this decision came many
heart-burnings between Leah and her younger sister Rachel, as a quaint
old pamphleteer calls Virginia and Maryland.[136]

[Sidenote: Claiborne's resistance.]

[Sidenote: Lord Baltimore's instructions.]

[Sidenote: The Virginia council supports Claiborne.]

Viewed in the light of all the circumstances, it is difficult to
avoid seeing in Claiborne's occupation of Kent Island a strategic
move. Considered as such, it was bold and not ill-judged. With his
far-reaching schemes the Susquehanna River was a highway which would
enable him to compete with the Dutch for the northwestern fur trade.
By establishing himself on Kent Island he might command the approach
to that highway. The maxim that actual possession is nine points in
the law was in his favour. If the Star Chamber had decided to uphold
Virginia's wholesale claim to the territory granted her in 1609,
Claiborne would have been master of the situation. Even with the
decision as rendered, his own case was far from hopeless. In the autumn
of 1633 he petitioned the king to protect his interests and those of
Virginia in Kent Island. He contended that Baltimore's charter gave
jurisdiction only over territory unsettled and unimproved,--_hactenus
in culta_,--whereas Kent Island had been settled as a part of Virginia
and heavy expenses incurred there before that charter had been issued.
In sending this petition it was hoped that by resolutely keeping hold
upon the strategic point it might be possible to make Lord Baltimore
reconsider his plans and take his settlers to some other region than
the shores of Chesapeake Bay. But this hope was dashed in February,
1634, when Leonard Calvert with the first party of settlers arrived
in those waters. Claiborne's petition had not yet been answered, but
Lord Baltimore's instructions to his brother were conceived in a
conciliatory spirit. Leonard was to see Claiborne and offer him all the
aid in his power toward building up the new settlement on Kent Island,
at the same time reminding him that the place was in Baltimore's
territory and not a part of Virginia. In other words, Claiborne was
welcome to the property, only he must hold it as a tenant of the lord
proprietor of Maryland, not as a tenant of the king in Virginia. While
the Ark and the Dove were halting at anchor off Old Point Comfort, and
while Leonard Calvert was ashore exchanging courtesies with Governor
Harvey, he communicated this message to Claiborne. At the next meeting
of the council, Claiborne asked his fellow-councillors what he should
do in the matter. In reply they wondered that he should ask such
a question. Was not the case perfectly clear? Was there any reason
why they should surrender Kent Island, more than any other part of
Virginia? No, they would keep it until his Majesty's pleasure should
be known, and meanwhile they would treat the Maryland company civilly
and expected to be so treated by them. Behind this answer there was
much bad feeling. Not only were the Virginians angry at the curtailment
of their domains, not only were they alarmed as well as angry at the
arrival of Papists in their neighbourhood, but they were greatly
disgusted because Lord Baltimore's charter gave him far more extensive
trading privileges than they possessed. Calvert's message to Claiborne
had signified that before trading any further in the upper parts of
Chesapeake Bay he must obtain a license from Maryland. Assured now of
support from Virginia, Claiborne returned an answer in which he refused
in any way to admit Lord Baltimore's sovereignty.

[Sidenote: Complications with the Indians.]

Leonard's instructions had been in case of such a refusal not to molest
Claiborne for at least a year. But soon complications arose. The
settlers at St. Mary's observed indications of distrust or hostility
on the part of a neighbouring Algonquin tribe, known as the Patuxents;
so they appealed to one Captain Henry Fleete, who understood the
Algonquin language, to learn what was the matter. This Captain Fleete
wished to supplant Claiborne in the fur trade and may have welcomed a
chance of discrediting him with the Marylanders. At all events, he
reported that the Indians had been told that the Marylanders were not
Englishmen but Spaniards, and for this calumny, which might have led to
the massacre of the new-comers, he undertook to throw the blame upon
Claiborne. In the substance of this story there is a strong appearance
of truth. On the Virginia coast in those days common parlance was not
nice as to discriminating between Papists of any kind and Spaniards,
and one can easily see how from ordinary gossip the Indians may have
got their notion. There is no reason for casting atrocious imputations
upon Claiborne, who was examined in June, 1634, by a joint commission
of Virginians and Marylanders, and completely exonerated. But before
the news of this verdict reached London, the charge that Claiborne
was intriguing with the Indians had been carried to Lord Baltimore
and evidently alarmed him. Convinced that forbearance had ceased to
be a virtue, he sent word to his brother to seize Kent Island, arrest
Claiborne, and hold him prisoner until further instructions.

[Sidenote: Reprisals and skirmishes.]

This was in September, 1634. News of the message came to the ears of
Claiborne's London partners, Clobery & Company, and they petitioned
the king for protection in the possession of their island. Charles
accordingly instructed Lord Baltimore not to molest Claiborne and his
people, and he sent a letter to the governor and council of Virginia,
in which he declared that the true intention or the charter which
he had granted to Baltimore would not justify that nobleman in any
interference with Kent Island and its settlers. So the winter wore
away without incident, but early in April, 1635, one of Claiborne's
ships, commanded by one Thomas Smith, was seized in the Patuxent River
by Captain Fleete; she was condemned for trading without a license, and
was confiscated and sold with all her cargo. Claiborne then sent out an
armed sloop, the Cockatrice, to make reprisals upon Maryland shipping;
but Calvert was wide awake and sent Cornwallis with a stronger force
of two armed pinnaces, which overtook the Cockatrice in Pocomoke River
and captured her after a brisk skirmish in which half a dozen men were
killed and more wounded. That was on April 23, and on May 10 there was
another fight in the harbour of Great Wighcocomoco, at the mouth of the
Pocomoke, in which Thomas Smith commanded for Claiborne and defeated
the Marylanders with more bloodshed.

[Sidenote: Complaints against Governor Harvey.]

In the midst of these unseemly quarrels the kingdom of Virginia
witnessed something like a revolution. We have already had occasion
to mention Sir John Harvey, the governor who came in March, 1630,
after the brief administration of that versatile practitioner, Dr.
John Pott. Harvey was not long in getting into trouble. It was noticed
at first that his manners were intolerably rude. He strutted about
Jamestown as if he were on a quarter deck, and treated the august
members of the council with as little ceremony as if they had been
boot-blacks. On his own confession he once assaulted a councillor and
knocked out some of his teeth "with a cudgel."[137] But it presently
appeared that arrogance was not his worst fault. He was too fond of
money, and not particular as to how it came to him. He had a right
to make grants of land to settlers for a consideration to be paid
into the public treasury; it was charged against him that part of the
consideration found its way into his own pockets. Nor was this all, for
it happened, after the fashion of his royal master, that some of the
lands which he granted were already private property. Besides this,
he seems to have undertaken to draw up laws and proclaim them of his
own authority without submitting them to the assembly; he refused to
render an account of the ways in which he spent the public money; he
had excessive fees charged, multiplied the number of fines beyond all
reason, and took the proceeds or a part of them for his private use and
behoof. In short, he seems to have been a second and more vulgar Argall.

[Sidenote: Rage of Virginians against Maryland.]

Five years of this sort of thing had driven the men of Virginia to the
last pitch of desperation, when the Claiborne imbroglio brought on a
crisis. In obedience to the king's instructions, Harvey showed such
favour as he could to the Maryland settlers, and thus made himself
the more fiercely hated in Virginia. The Kent Island question was one
that bred dissension in families, separated bosom friends, and sowed
seeds of distrust and suspicion far and wide. To speak well of Maryland
was accounted little less than a crime. "Sell cattle to Maryland!"
exclaimed the wrathful planters, "better knock them on the head!"
From pious people this near approach of the Scarlet Woman drew forth
strong words. We are told that one day Captain Samuel Mathews, that
brave gentleman and decorous Puritan, on reading a letter from England,
dashed his hat upon the ground and stamped in fury, shouting "A pox
upon Maryland!"[138]

[Sidenote: An angry parson.]

[Sidenote: The meeting at Warren's house.]

In such a state of things we can imagine what a storm was raised when
Governor Harvey removed from office the able and popular secretary
of state, William Claiborne, and appointed one Richard Kemp in his
place. One lively gleam of vituperation lights up the grave pages
of the colonial records, when Kev. Anthony Panton called Mr. Kemp
a "jackanapes," and told him that he was "unfit for the place of
secretary," and that "his hair-lock was tied up with ribbon as old as
St. Paul's." We shall hereafter see how the outraged secretary nursed
his wrath; what he might have done in its freshness was prevented by a
sudden revolution. The assembly drew up a protest against the king's
attempts at monopolizing the tobacco trade, and Harvey refused to
transmit the protest to England. About the same time the news arrived
of the seizing of Claiborne's ship in Maryland waters. On the petition
of many of the people, a meeting of the assembly was called for May
7, to receive complaints against Sir John Harvey.[139] In the mean
time, on April 27, an indignation meeting was held at the house of
William Warren, in York, where the principal speakers were Nicholas
Martian, formerly member of the House of Burgesses for Kent Island,
Francis Pott, the doctor's brother, and William English, sheriff of
York County. The house where this meeting was held in 1635 seems
to have stood on or near the site of the house afterward owned by
Augustine Moore, where in 1781 the surrender of Lord Cornwallis was
arranged; and by a curious coincidence the speaker Nicholas Martian was
a direct ancestor both of George Washington, who commanded the army of
the United States, and of Thomas Nelson, who commanded the forces of
Virginia, on that memorable occasion.[140]

[Sidenote: Scene in the council.]

[Sidenote: Harvey deposed.]

Next morning Martian, Pott, and English were arrested, and when they
asked the reason why, Governor Harvey politely told them that they
"should know at the gallows." When the council met, the wrathful
governor strode up and down the room, demanding that the prisoners be
instantly put to death by martial law, but the council insisted that no
harm should come to them without a regular trial. Then Harvey with a
baleful frown put the question after the manner of Richard III., "What
do they deserve that have gone about to dissuade the people from their
obedience to his Majesty's substitute?" A young member, George Menefie,
replied with adroit sarcasm that he was too young a lawyer to be
ready with "a suddain opinion" upon such a question. Turning savagely
upon him, Sir John asked what all the fuss was about. "Because of the
detaining of the assembly's protest," said Menefie. Then the governor
struck Menefie heavily upon the shoulder and exclaimed, "I arrest you
on suspicion of treason," whereupon Captain John Utie, roughly seizing
the governor, answered, "And we the like to you, sir!" Samuel Mathews
threw his arms about Harvey and forced him down into a chair, while
that connoisseur in beverages, Dr. Pott, waved his hand at the window,
and in the twinkling of an eye the house was surrounded by armed men.
Mathews then told the helpless governor that he must go to London to
answer charges that would be brought against him. In vain did Harvey
argue and storm. The sequel may best be told in the words of the terse
and bleak entry in the colonial records: "On the 28th of April, 1635,
Sir John Harvey thrust out of his government; and Capt. John West
acts as governor till the king's pleasure known." When the assembly
met on May 7, these proceedings of the council were approved, and
commissioners were appointed to go to London and lay their complaints
before the king. The indignant Harvey went by the same ship, in the
custody of his quondam prisoner, Francis Pott, whom he had been so
anxious to hang without ceremony.

[Sidenote: Harvey's return.]

Such were the incidents of the ever memorable "thrusting out of Sir
John Harvey," the first revolutionary scene that was acted in English
America. When King Charles heard the story he did not feel quite so
much fondness for his trusty and well-beloved burgesses as when he
had been seeking commercial favours from them. He would not receive
their commissioners or hear a word on their side of the case, and he
swore that Sir John Harvey should straightway go back to Virginia as
governor, even were it only for one day. But when it came to acting,
Charles was not quite so bold as his words. Harvey did not return
until nearly two years had elapsed.[141] Then it was the turn of the
rebellious councillors--Utie, Mathews, West, Menefie, and Dr. Pott--to
go to London and defend themselves, while Harvey wreaked mean-spirited
vengeances on his enemies. The day of reckoning had come for Anthony
Panton, the minister who had called Mr. Secretary Kemp a "jackanapes,"
and had, moreover, as it seemed, spoken irreverently of Archbishop
Laud. Panton's conduct was judged to be "mutinous, rebellious, and
riotous,"[142] his estate was confiscated, and he was banished. A
shameful clause was inserted in the sentence, declaring him outlawed
if he should venture to return to Virginia, and authorizing anybody to
kill him at sight; but Harvey afterward tried to disown this clause,
saying that it had been wickedly interpolated by the vindictive Kemp.

[Sidenote: Harvey's fall and death.]

But Harvey's new lease of power was brief. Enemies to the throne were
getting too numerous for comfort, and we may well believe that Charles,
having once vindicated his royal dignity in the matter, was quite
ready to yield. The statements of the councillors under examination
in London no doubt had weight, for no proceedings were taken against
them, but in 1639 the king removed Harvey, and sent the excellent Sir
Francis Wyatt once more to govern Virginia. Harvey's numerous victims
forthwith overwhelmed him with law-suits, his ill-gotten wealth was
quickly disgorged, his estates were sold to indemnify Panton and
others, and the fallen tyrant, bankrupt and friendless, soon sank into
the grave,--such an instance of poetic justice as is seldom realized.

[Sidenote: Evelin sent to Kent Island.]

[Sidenote: Kent Island seized by Calvert.]

It was in December, 1637, during Harvey's second administration, that
the Kent Island troubles were renewed. After Claiborne's victorious
fight at Great Wighcocomoco, in May, 1635, he retained undisturbed
possession of the island, but a quarrel was now brewing between himself
and his London partners, Clobery & Company. They were dissatisfied
because furs did not come in quantities sufficient to repay their
advances to Claiborne. The disputes with the Marylanders had sadly
damaged the business, and the partners sent over George Evelin to look
after their interests, and armed him with power of attorney. They
requested Claiborne to turn over to him the island, with everything
on it, and to come to London and settle accounts. Claiborne tried to
get a bond from Evelin not to surrender the island to Calvert, but
that agent refused to give any assurances, except to express in strong
language his belief that Calvert had no just claim to it. Nothing was
left for Claiborne but to leave Evelin in possession. He did so under
protest, and in May, 1637, sailed for England, where Clobery & Company
immediately brought suit against him. Evelin then went to Virginia and