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covering up the seed. The work of preparing the fields around Fort Charles he gave into the general charge of Captain Davis. He then departed for Jamestown, which he reached on Sunday, the 19th, and there found the inhabitants playing bowls in the streets.[1] Although May was now drawing to a close, Captain Percy, who had been left at the head of the Colony by Delaware, an honorable but weak man, who, like Delaware, would never have been advanced but for his rank, had taken no steps to compel the settlers to plant corn. The gardens had fallen into a
- ↑ Sir Thomas Dale to the Company in England, Brown’s Genesis of the United States, pp. 490, 491. Dale reached Jamestown not only on Sunday, but on Sunday afternoon when the services in the church were over. It is well known that in the early part of the seventeenth century, Sunday was the day on which the English diverted themselves with a great variety of sports. The Book of Sports issued by James I, expressly permitted, after evening service, “dancing, archery, leaping, vaulting, May games, whitsunales, morris dances, and setting up of May poles.” The Statute I Car. I. C. I., “inhibited concourse of people out of their own parishes on the Lord’s Day for any sports and pastimes whatsoever,” the implication being that no objection was to be offered to sports on Sunday in any parish as long as those who took part in them were residents of the parish where the sports were celebrated. It would be improper to draw an inference unfavorable to the industry of the colonists of Virginia in 1611, from the mere fact that on Dale’s arrival at Jamestown they were found amusing themselves with playing bowls. They would have been found thus engaged on that occasion even if they had been remarkable for indefatigable energy as workers. It should also be remembered that Percy, who was left in command by Delaware, was, like Delaware himself, of liberal religious rearing, and, therefore, more disposed to encourage than to repress indulgence in sports on Sunday. As to how far bowling constituted the “daily and usual works” of the colonists at this time, as Hamor asserts, this at least can be said in opposition: Delaware left Virginia on the 28th of March, 1611, seven weeks and four days before the arrival of Dale. During his sojourn in Virginia we are informed “that every man endeavored to outstrip the other in diligence . . . every man knew his charge and discharged the same with alacrity.” Works of Capt. John Smith, p. 502. If the colonists had fallen into habits of laziness, it was confined to the forty-nine days during which Percy was in control.
