Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]

1607.]

FIRST SETTLEMENT OF VIRGINIA.

343

especial notice,-the colonisation of North America, and the Charter to the East India Company.

The attempts to colonise North America in the time of Elizabeth had been failures, not from any want of energy or of forethought in the originators and conductors of these great schemes, but as a necessary consequence of the difficulties that must always beset the first settlers in an unknown region. The long voyage by the West Indies and through the Gulf of Florida in vessels of small burthen was then attended with real dangers, of which modern navigation has no conception. The adventurers were generally men unaccustomed to labour, and they went to lands where they believed that the fruits of the earth would merely require gathering, as in the golden age, to find that starvation could only be averted by the most incessant toil. Roanoak, the island which Grenville planted under the auspices of Raleigh, had been deserted in 1590; and whether the few colonists had perished, or had been received amongst the friendly Indian tribes, was always uncertain, although Raleigh had never lost hope of discovering them, whilst he could reward any mariners for the search. He had spent, it is said, forty thousand pounds in his noble efforts to plant an English colony on the northern coasts of the new world. He was a state-prisoner; he was defrauded of his property by his rapacious sovereign; he was filling his declining years with high contemplation instead of heroic action. But the example of his perseverance survived his misfortunes. The colonisation of North America was still the hope of generous statesmen and bold mariners. Voyage after voyage was undertaken. Bartholomew Gosnold, having been the first to cross the Atlantic by a direct course in 1602, discovered the promontory to which he gave no dignified name, Cape Cod; and he laid the foundation of the first New England colony on Elizabeth island. Martin Pring, in 1603, surveyed the coast of Maine. George Weymouth, in 1605, ascended the western branch of the Penobscot. The undying spirit of enterprise which Raleigh had first fostered received at length some encouragement from the government. In 1606, James granted the first Charters for colonising North America, to a London Company, and to a Plymouth Company. That same year, the London or South Virginia Company sent out three ships, with one hundred and five men who were to remain as settlers. The sagacity of Raleigh had pointed out the Chesapeake Bay as a favourable place of settlement. A storm drove these adventurers into that magnificent anchorage. The two headlands were named Cape Henry and Cape Charles; and having ascended a fine river which they named after their king, they planted their colony in a pleasant spot, and called it James Town.

Newport, the commander of the ships, and James Smith, a man whose name will be ever associated with the colonisation of America, ascended the James river, and saw the Indian chieftain, Powhatan. The savages were hostile to the strangers: "the emperor of the country," as Powhatan was styled, protected them. But gradually the colonists, unused to manual labour, perished of want and disease. Newport left for England. Some of the leaders had serious contentions. The evil destiny of Roanoak seemed to be coming on James Town. But Smith, who was endowed with many of the high qualities of the Elizabethan age, rallied the hopes of the dispirited, and calmed the jealousies of the quarrelsome. In the winter of 1607 the colonists

344

PROGRESS OF THE COLONY.

[1608 had secured a supply of food in the abundance of game, and had provided some shelter against the rain and cold. Smith set off upon an expedition to explore the interior. His companions were surprised and butchered by the Indians. He would have perished with them, had not the savages conceived that he was a superior being when he showed them a pocket compass, and told how the wondrous needle always pointed to one quarter. He asked that a letter should be conveyed to James Town; and when it was known that he could so endue a piece of paper with intelligence as to speak to his distant companions from his captivity, he was beheld with superstitious awe. Amongst the tribes was the daughter of Powhatan, named Pocahontas. This maiden saved the life of the Englishman, who had gained her confidence. She hung upon his neck when the tomahawk was raised to destroy him; and she induced her father to receive him in a strict friendship. When Smith returned to his colony, the hundred and five settlers were reduced to forty. Some of these attempted to desert in the pinnace which had been left when Newport sailed to England. The fortitude of Smith never failed. He restored order, and again went forth in the summer of 1608 for new discoveries. In an open boat, with two or three companions, he navigated three thousand miles of the American coasts and rivers. He constructed a map of the country, which is still in existence. He explored the Patapsco and the Potamac. He established a communication with native tribes. He saw the Mohawks,

[graphic][merged small]

"who dwelt upon a great water, and had many boats and many men." On his return a second body of emigrants came to join the Virginian colony.

1621.]

SETTLEMENT OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS.

345

The London Company required that the ship which brought them should return with gold, or laden with commodities. The settlers had accomplished no accumulations. It had been difficult to preserve their own existence. The Company, with the same ignorance of colonial organisation which prevailed for two centuries, had thought that the unskilled and the idle, who would starve at home, might prosper in another hemisphere. Smith wrote to the corporation that when they sent again, they should rather send but thirty tarpenters, husbandmen, gardeners, fishermen, blacksmiths, masons, and even diggers up of the roots of trees, than a thousand such as had last come out. But still the energy of the man triumphed. He taught the gentlemen the use of the axe and the spade; and industry slowly achieved its rewards. A new Charter was granted in 1609. The rage for emigration extended. Other ships arrived, with men of broken fortunes and dissolute gallants. Smith still maintained his authority over the useless members of the community. But he was disabled by an accident, and he returned impoverished and enfeebled to England. When he left, there were four hundred and ninety persons in the colony. In six months they were reduced by their idleness and their excesses to sixty. The settlement was about to be abandoned when, in 1610, a new body of emigrants arrived under the leadership of lord Delaware, who had been appointed governor of Virginia. There was again a glimmering of prosperity; but ill-health compelled the return of the wise governor to England. In 1611 the Council at home exerted itself to prevent the great scheme of American colonisation from utterly failing; and six ships, with three hundred emigrants and abundant supplies, arrived at James Town, under sir Thomas Gates. A distribution of land to each emigrant as his private property gave a new stimulus to industry. The colony prospered. Indian tribes submitted to the settlers. Pocahontas, the beautiful girl who had saved the life of Smith, was married to John Rolfe, a young Englishman. After four years the Indian wife and mother sailed with her husband to England; and there she died. It was not in the natural course of God's Providence that there should be many such unions. The savage man gradually melted away as the civilised man occupied his forests, and in a few years the race of Powhatan was extinct. The Virginian colony went on to prosper. Its members found more certain riches than mines of gold in the cultivation of tobacco. Their prosperity was confirmed by their free institutions. In 1621 they obtained a representative constitution, in which the object of government was declared to be "the greatest comfort and benefit to the people, and the prevention of injustice, grievances, and oppression."

Such were the vicissitudes which attended the first settlement of the Anglo-Saxon race on the North American continent. There was another colony formed fourteen years later, whose planters went to their task in a solemn spirit, which recognised the finger of God pointing the way to a pleasant land where they might enjoy liberty of conscience, and be free from the persecution of the great and the ridicule of the licentious. The congregation of separatists from the Church of England, who, with their pastor John Robinson, had become exiles in Holland in 1608, had thought much of the settlements in North America. They desired to live under the English government, if they could be secure of toleration in the strange land which they desired to colonise. They could obtain no such promise from the

346

CHARTER OF THE EAST INDIA COMPANY.

[1609.

government; but they were resolved upon their enterprise. They had obtained a patent from the London Company, and they obtained funds, on very hard terms, from London merchants. They purchased the Speedwell, a vessel of forty tons: and hired the Mayflower, of a hundred and eighty tons. On the 22nd of July, 1620, having left some of the brethren at Leyden, they embarked at Delft-Haven. Robinson, their pastor, did not accompany them; but he knelt on the shore as the emigrants ascended the decks of the Mayflower, and gave them his blessings and his prayers. This event, so insignificant as it must have seemed at the time, so all-important in the real history of England, now forms the subject of a fresco in the House of Lords. The Pilgrim Fathers, as they are now affectionately called, reached, after a long and stormy voyage, the northern shores of Virginia in November. Their political constitution was a simple one. Forty-one men, whose families amounted to sixty more persons, formed themselves by deed into a civil body politic, for their better ordering and preservation; and agreed "to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of the colony." On the 11th of December, an exploring party landed in Massachusetts Bay, at a spot which they afterwards determined to call Plymouth. "A grateful posterity has marked the rock which first received their footsteps. The consequences of that day are constantly unfolding themselves as time advances. It was the origin of New England; it was the planting of the New England institutions.” *

On the last day of the sixteenth century a Charter was granted by queen Elizabeth to a body of adventurers, styled "The Governor and Company of merchants of London trading to the East Indies." This charter was limited, in its exclusive liberty of trading, to the term of fifteen years; and was to be renewed if the privileges so granted were not found "prejudicial or hurtful to this our realm." A direct commercial intercourse with India had been previously carried on by the Turkey Company; but the maritime trade had been in the possession, first of the Portuguese, and afterwards of the Dutch. The English could not compete with these rivals, whilst the merchandise in which they trafficked was burthened with the heavier cost of an overland route. The trade of England with the East Indies was henceforth to be carried on by sea. During the reign of Elizabeth the success of the new company was very doubtful. Their privileges were invaded by James at the beginning of his reign. But in 1609 their Charter was renewed without limitation of time; several voyages were attended with large profits; and in 1612, the Englishman planted his foot in India, having obtained permission from the Great Mogul to establish a factory at Surat. But the prosperity of the Company was not generally held to be beneficial to the nation. Camden doubted "whether it be for the real advantage of the kingdom to have such a mass of money exported, and so many men lost yearly in the voyage." The loss of mariners by sickness and the perils of the sea was held to be the main cause of the decay of England's navigation. To the complaint of the heavy money payments for Indian produce it was answered that the country

Bancroft, "History of the United States," vol. i. p. 313, ed. 1839. In this brief outline of the first colonisation of North America, we have followed Mr. Bancroft's lucid narrative.

1612.]

THE FIRST ENGLISH FACTORY.

317

saved in the cost of spices alone, 70,000l. a year; and that we exported cloths to the annual value of 14,000l. The intercourse with India had its romantic aspects. The power, the magnificence, the unbounded wealth of the Mogul conquerors of Hindostan had long been familiar to the English mind. Thomas Coryat, whom Fuller described, in the household of prince Henry, as "the courtiers' anvil to try their wits upon," began, in 1608, to satisfy " a very burning desire in him to survey and contemplate some of the choicest parts of this goodly fabric of the world." Having walked over many countries of Europe, and hung up in his parish church as a memorial the one pair of shoes in which he had trudged nine hundred miles, he began a longer march in 1612. He walked from Jerusalem to Agra, the seat of the Great Mogul, having occupied fifteen months in this trip. merchants, he there rode proudly on an his grandeur in his posthumous book.

Being welcomed by the English elephant, and was represented in Having obtained an audience of

[graphic]

Coryat on his elephant. (From a woodcut in his "Crudities.")

Jehangir, who had succeeded the great Akbar in his mighty sovereignty, the pedestrian, having a competent knowledge of the Persian and other oriental languages, thus addressed the emperor: "Lord Protector of the world, all hail to you. I am a poor traveller and world-seer, which am come hither from a far country, namely England, which ancient historians thought to have been situated in the farthest bounds of the West, and which is the queen of all the islands in the world. The cause of my coming hither is for four respects. First, to see the blessed face of your majesty, whose wonderful fame hath resounded over all Europe and the Mahometan countries. When I heard of the fame of your majesty, I hastened hither with speed, and travelled very cheerfully to see your glorious court. Secondly, to see your majesty's elephants, which kind of beasts I have not seen in any other country. Thirdly, to see your famous river Ganges, which is the captain of

« ZurückWeiter »