III. PERMANENT ENGLISH AND FRENCH SETTLEMENTS. For Authorities for this Chapter, see Appendix, page xxiv. The small figures THE THIRTEEN COLONIES. FRENCH EXPLORATION OF THE WEST. WARS WITH THE INDIANS AND WITH THE FRENCH. GENERAL VIEW OF THE COLONIES, 1600-1763. 36. English trading expeditions; the fisheries; Virginia colonies planned. Although Raleigh's attempt to plant a colony in Virginia had failed, yet the English continued to send out occasional fishing and fur-trading expeditions to America. By 1600 the British Newfoundland fisheries employed not less than ten thousand men and boys. 45 Gosnold (1602) and Weymouth (1605) made voyages to that part of Northern Virginia which was later named New England, and carried back favorable accounts. Two commercial companies, known as the London and the Plymouth companies, were formed in England to plant permanent colonies in Virginia, - a territory then extending from Cape Fear to Halifax. 46 Several reasons prompted this undertaking: 1. The companies hoped to discover mines of precious metals in Virginia or to find a passage to the Pacific and the Indies. 2. It was believed that colonies in Virginia would draw off a restless class of disbanded soldiers and of young men out of work, - then numerous in England; that they would employ many idle vessels in carrying out emigrants and freight; that they would open new markets for English goods, and finally that England would be able to get a cheap and abundant supply of ship-timber, tar, and rosin from her American colonies. 3. Some of the promoters of the enterprise had broader views; they looked beyond material gains, and resolved to plant great and growing colonies in Virginia which should secure to England a mighty empire in America. But the plans of the Companies had opponents. Hume says that even in 1606 there were Englishmen who thought it bad policy to plant colonies in Virginia, because such settlements "after draining the mother-country of inhabitants would soon shake off her yoke and erect an independent government.” “ I. VIRGINIA (1607). 37. The Virginia Charter (1606); appeal to that charter.— The charter 48 of the London Company gave them power to establish settlements in Southern Virginia anywhere between the 34th and 38th degrees of north latitude (that is, between Cape Fear and the Potomac). To the Plymouth Company the King by the same charter granted the territory in Northern Virginia between the 41st and 45th degrees of north latitude (that is, between the eastern end of Long Island and the northern limit of Nova Scotia). The intervening country (38th to 41st degrees), embracing what is now Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey and a small corner of New York, was open to colonization by either Company, but neither was to make a settlement within one hundred miles of the other. The charter provided: 1. That each grant should extend one hundred miles inland. 2. That the territory should be free of all tax to the King, save a certain reservation (from a fifth to a fifteenth) of any valuable metals which might be found. 3. The King guaranteed to the colonists and their descendants the same rights and privileges "as if they had been abiding and were born within this our realm of England." 49 This last important concession did not go into effect until the establishment of the Virginia Assembly (1619); later it had unforeseen an result. On the eve of the Revolution (1765), the Virginians in justifying their resistance to the Stamp Act appealed to this clause of the original charter. They declared that the first settlers "brought with them, and transmitted to their posterity, all the privileges . . that have at any time been held . . . by the people of Great Britain." 50 38. Government of the colony; trial by jury; religious worship; community of goods. The colony was to be governed by a resident council, under the direction of a higher council in England, controlled by the King. 51 Trial by jury was to be granted in capital cases, and religious worship according to the usage of the Church of England was to be established.52 For the first five years the colonists were to deposit "all the fruits of their labor" in the Company's storehouse; but the Company was to supply the settlers with food, clothing, and other necessaries. 39. Settlement of Jamestown (1607); instructions to the emigrants; Captain John Smith. In 1607 the London Company sent out one hundred and five emigrants to Virginia. No women or children went. Like the California pioneers of '49 their object was to find fortunes in the soil of the New World. They took out pickaxes to dig for gold. The emigrants had particular orders to search for mines of precious metals, and to seek for a passage to the Pacific. The colonists landed on the banks of a river which they named the James in honor of the King. For a like reason they named their settlement Jamestown (1607). Perhaps the ablest man in the party was Captain John Smith. one of the governors of the colony, and wrote its history. He became Most of the settlers belonged to a class in England who were unused to manual labor, and hence wholly unfit to struggle with the hardships of an American wilderness. Sickness carried off many, and at one time they came so near starving that it was with the greatest difficulty that the breath of life was kept in the colony. A ship-load of glittering earth which they sent back to London, and which turned out to be not gold but simply yellow dirt, completed the disgust of the settlers. He When Smith became Governor, he laid down the scriptural rule that those who would not work should not eat. explored and mapped the country bordering on Chesapeake Bay, urged the cultivation of corn, and endeavored by every possible means to put the settlement on a self-supporting and paying basis.53 Whether Pocahontas saved Captain Smith's life or not, he certainly seems to have saved Virginia. 40. Provisions of the new charter (1609). Two years after the settlement of Jamestown the King granted the London Company (1609) a new charter. It provided: 1. That the government of the colony should be placed entirely in the hands of the Council in England, who were to send out a governor having almost absolute power. 2. Virginia was now made to extend two hundred miles north and the same distance south of Point Comfort; "west and northwest" it ran "from sea to sea," that is, to the Pacific. Event 54 ually Virginia made the "sea-to-sea" clause the basis for her claim to the greater part of that vast region which, after the Revolution, came to be called the "Northwest Territory" (§ 237). 3. The new charter forbade any emigrant's settling in Virginia unless he took the Oath of Supremacy by which he denied the supreme authority of the Pope. This, of course, shut out Catholics. At that time each of the leading nations of Europe maintained its own form of religion. In Southern Europe the established church was Catholic, in Northern Europe it was Protestant. When Spain planted her colonies in America she naturally excluded the Protestants; when England planted hers, she just as naturally excluded the Catholics. 41. The colonists abandon Jamestown; Lord Delaware; Sir Thomas Dale; the third charter (1612). - After Smith's return to England (1609) the colonists became so disheartened that they abandoned Jamestown and set out for their native land. At that moment, Lord Delaware, the newly appointed Governor, arrived and compelled the settlers to remain. |