Encyclopedia of Virginia Biography/Volume 1
ENCYCLOPEDIA
of
VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY
UNDER THE EDITORIAL SUPERVISION OF
LYON GARDINER TYLER, LL. D.
President of William and Mary College, Williamsburg; Author of "Parties and Patronage
in the United States," "The Cradle of the Republic," "Williamsburg, the Old
Colonial Capital," "England in America," "The Letters and Times of
the Tylers," etc.; Vice-President of the Virginia Historical
Society, Member of the Maryland Historical
Society, and various other societies.
VOLUME I
NEW YORK
LEWIS HISTORICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY
1915
Copyright, 1915
Lewis Historical Publishing Company
VIRGINIA BIOGRAPHY
The successful planting of an English Colony at Jamestown in 1607; had the meaning that England had become the world power in the place of Spain.
One hundred years previous, Spain became the head of the dominant religious influence and military power of Europe. She had the monopoly of America, and her treasury was filled with the gold and silver of Mexico and Peru. Her title to the whole of the new continent was based upon the great discovery of Columbus in 1492. The conscious rivalry of England with this colossal power did not begin till Elizabeth ascended the throne in 1558. Then it was the rising of a nation instinct with enthusiasm, daring, and activity. For the negation of the exclusive right of Spain to the American continent, the almost forgotten voyage to North America of John Cabot in 1497, under the auspices of Henry VII., an English King, was revived by Richard Hakluyt. The next fifty years were replete with deeds of splendor and glory. Eirst. Sir John Hawkins threw down the barriers which for so long had withheld English ships from the Western continent by sailing to the West Indies and selling negroes to the Spanish planters. Then Drake and Cavendish hurled themselves upon the Spanish settlements on the west coast of South America and plundered them of their gold and circumnavigated the globe. Next, in their eager desire to outdo even Columbus in search for the East Indies, Frobisher and Davis performed their glorious voyages to the Northwest and wrote their names upon the icy waters of Labrador and British America. The grand Armada was overthrown in 1588, and the maritime power of Spain was utterly crushed by another great naval victory won by the English eight years later in the harbor of Cadiz.
Among the schemes to cut into the power of Spain was one contemplating the establishment of an English colony in North America. This noble design was conceived by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and promoted by his half brother Sir Walter Raleigh, and they are the glorious twin spirits that stand on the threshold of American history. Newfoundland and Roanoke are dedicated to their memories. Though the times were not yet ripe for success, their faith soared above all reverses. "We are as near Heaven by sea as by land," said the one as he yielded up his life in the stormy waters. "I shall yet live to see Virginia an English nation," said the other, as he went to confinement in the Tower of London, and eventually also to his death. In 1605, Spain, humbled and shorn of power. made peace with England; and now in the place of private enterprise like Gilbert's and Raleigh's, organized capital, under influences of noble spirits, like Sir Thomas Smythe. Richard Hakluyt. Sir Edwin Sandys, Nichols Ferrar and the Earl of Southampton—worthy successors of Gilbert and Raleigh—undertook the solution of the problem. Raleigh, confined in the Tower, could not take an active part at this time, but his friends and relations were the chief actors and workers in the new colonization schemes.
Two large associations were formed—one composed of lords, knights and merchants of the city of London, and the other of residents in the cities of Bristol, Exeter and Plymouth,—and they obtained from King James I., April 10, 1606, a joint charter which defined Virginia as the portion of North America lying between the 34th and 45th parallel of north latitude, practically the present United States. In this vast extent of territory the first Company, called the Virginia Company of London, was permitted to establish a settlement anywhere between 34 and 41 degrees; and the second, called the Plymouth Company, anywhere between 38 and 45 degrees. The actual jurisdiction of each Company was represented by a rectangle extending fifty miles north of the settlement and fifty miles south, and east and west 100 miles from the coast seaward, and 100 miles from the coast inland. The Plymouth Company was singularly unfortunate in its attempts, but the efforts of the Virginia Company were crowned with success; and by two new charters, 1609 and 1612, its jurisdiction was extended over the entire limit of its original sphere of possible settlement, and from sea to sea.
The subsequent history of Virginia affairs under the Company for nearly twenty years is one of stupendous self-sacrifice both in England and America. The men in England who had the supreme control gave freely of their money and time, and received no return except the satisfaction of having founded in America a fifth kingdom under the Crown. The men in Virginia incurred hardships without parallel in the world's history, and most of them went to the martyrdom of cruel death by climatic disease, starvation and Indian attack. It was but natural that, in those unprecedented conditions, those in England should try to shield themselves from the blame and throw upon the settlers the responsibility. But discriminating history has seen the light at last, and while the motives of the directors of the enterprise were always high and honorable, it is now recognized that in the government of the colony they made many and serious blunders. For fear of making the enterprise unpopular they refused to tell the English public the real truth as to the dangerous climate and the other natural conditions making for evil. Virginia, as a country, had to be "boomed," at all events. Thus the poor settlers, who, for the most part, consisted of the best materials in England—old sailors under Hawkins and Drake, or old soldiers of the Netherlands—were abused and shamelessly villified. The appalling mortality which overwhelmed them for a great number of years is itself a pathetic and passionate vindication. Never did any martyr suffer so patiently, so patriotically, as these devoted settlers did—a prey to Indian attack, martial law, and climatic diseases—influences which, as the records show, left but one settler alive at the end of a single year of residence, out of every five that came over.
Indeed, how can the body of the settlers be made responsible for the calamities that ensued when they lived under a form of government made for them by (Others, productive from the first of discord and faction; when they were not permitted to work for them- selves, but for a present return of profit to the Company, had to give their time and labor to loading ships with sassafras, cedar, and other salable commodities; when they had no choice of the place of settlement, and which was selected in accordance with orders of the council in England: when they had no chance to till the fields, but were required to hunt for gold and silver mines and make tedious discoveries by land and water? Deprived of the opportunity to make their own living, they had to depend upon food sent from England. which, when it reached America, was often unfit for hogs to eat. and introduced all manner of disease. Above all, they had to deal with a climate which was singularly fatal to new-comers, and to fight off numerous bands of fierce and ferocious Indians who surrounded them on all sides.
Thus, the conditions were in every respect the reverse of those of the Plymouth settlement in 1620 on Cape Cod Bay; for there the Pilgrim Fathers had the control of their own government, the advantage of a dry and healthful situation, a sparkling stream of fresh water at their doors, open fields deserted by the Indians, whose nearest town was forty miles distant, a bay teeming with fish and a country abounding in animals whose skins brought a large profit in England. And yet, favored as they were, had they not been succored by Virginia ships, the settlers there might have all perished of famine.
Nevertheless, the settlers in Virginia held grimly to their duty, and. the dying being constantly succeeded by fresh bands doomed also to early death, but as determined as themselves, prosperity at last succeeded to misfortune, and plenty and happiness to poverty and despair. When the civil wars in England broke out in 1642, the tone of society in Virginia was raised by the great influx of cavaliers and other persons of means who sought safety in Virginia. The clearing away of the woods improved the health conditions, and men came no longer over to make tobacco, but to make homes for themselves and their families. Virginia continued to grow and improve until, at the beginning of the American Revolution, she was the leading and most powerful of all the colonies.
The priorities of Virginia may be briefly stated. As the first permanent British Colony. she may claim as her product not only the present Virginia and Southland, but all the other English colonies in America, and indeed all the colonies of the present wide-spreading British Empire. She was the eldest of all, and the inspiration of all. Because her governors kept the New England coast clear of the French, and two ships sailing from Jamestown succored the settlers at New Plymouth, when, in 1622, they were at the point of starvation, she can claim especially to be the mother of New England. She had the first English institutions—trial by jury. law courts, representative lawmaking body, and free school. She was the first to announce the principle of the indissolubility of taxation and representation. She led in all the events resulting in the American Revolution—that is to say—struck the first blow in the French and Indian war. out of which war sprung the idea of taxing America; rallied the other colonies against the Stamp Act; and under the Revenue Act solved the four different crises which arose—proposing as a remedy for the first the policy of non-importation; for the second a system of intercolonial committees; for the third a general congress; and for the fourth Independence!
The life of a State is seen best in the lives of the citizens. The aim of this l)ook will be to give the biographies of all those who had any important connection with the founding of the colony down to the American Revolution. Thus the book will be divided into four parts, under the following headings:
I. The Founders; II. The Presidents and Governors; III. The Council of State; IV. The Burgesses and Other Prominent Citizens.