Chapter 2

But all was not well in the government of the colony. Harvey found the Council members constantly opposing him, disputing his authority, resisting his attempts to administer equal justice to all men. The royal Governor was not supreme as we now sometimes mistakenly assume. He was first among equals only. Decisions at this time were made by majority vote, and the Governor was frequently outvoted. Moreover the Councilors, who could devote more of their time to their private affairs, tended to be better off financially than the Governor himself, who found it next to impossible to get his salary from the King, and who was forced to entertain at his own expense all who came to James City. Harvey complained that he should be called the "host" rather than the "Governor" of Virginia. In contrast, Samuel Mathews, one of Harvey's enemies on the Council, owned the finest estate in Virginia. William Claiborne, another of Harvey's enemies on the Council, besides a large estate, had a royal commission and English backers for his powerful trading company.

Harvey made every effort to reconcile the differences which arose between him and the Council members, and on December 20, 1631, all signed an agreement promising to work in harmony and to mend their discontent.

Fortified by this agreement, Harvey went forward with his efforts to put Virginia's agricultural economy on a sound basis. The principal problem was to force the planters to diversify. Many tears are shed for the poverty of the planters of Virginia, and their customary indebtedness to English creditors is usually cited as proof of their poverty. But this "poverty" was not based on the inability of the planter to raise enough food to support himself and his family, but on the fluctuations of the market price of the crop--tobacco--to which he had devoted most of his energies as a speculative venture. Strange as it may seem, the planter had to be forced to raise enough food for his own support, so avid was his desire for quick tobacco profits.

Governor Harvey's Assembly of February 1632 directed that every man working in the ground should plant and tend at least two acres of corn per head, on penalty of forfeiture of his entire crop of tobacco. Harvey hoped to make Virginia "the granarie to his Majesty's Empire," as Sicily had been to Rome. Another act allowed corn to be sold for as high a price as could be obtained, contrary to the usual European and colonial habit of fixing prices on basic commodities used by the people. The reason given for this freedom from price fixing was that the precedents of other countries did not apply to America, "for none are so poore heere, as that they may not have as much corne, as they will plant, havinge land enough."

The Assembly of 1632 did, however, fix a price on tobacco, requiring that it not be sold at less than six pence per pound, a law they went to great pains to justify to the King. Tobacco was Virginia's primary economic interest, and the Virginians were willing to go to any lengths to advance that interest. They urged the King not to place any impediment to their "free trade," or right to sell their tobacco wherever they could, and mentioned that they had already constructed several barques and had begun trading with the Dutch plantation on Hudson's River. Governor Harvey asked why the English merchants could not afford to allow them a penny a pound for their tobacco when the Dutch paid eighteen pence per pound.

The English merchants who traded with Virginia formed a tight little group which used its favored position to charge excessive prices for English-made goods, and to give abnormally low prices for Virginia tobacco. Such a policy was not entirely owing to covetousness. The English economy was shackled by a conception of economic life which believed in the necessity of monopolies and restrictive devices of all sorts. The Dutch nation, on the other hand, had thrown off many of the traditional mercantilist restraints on trade. Holland soon enjoyed a level of prosperity that made her the envy of the rest of Europe. Her rivals attributed Dutch success to the energy of her people. "Go to beat the Dutch" became a byword which has persisted to this day. Not until a century later did the English realize that Dutch prosperity was caused not so much by hard work as by the policy of freeing trade from unnecessary restraints. As Dutch prosperity increased, Dutch ships appeared in every sea, underselling all rivals and paying better prices for local products. The complaint that the London merchants allowed only one penny a pound for the Virginians' tobacco while the Dutch gave eighteen strikingly illustrates the measure of Dutch commercial superiority. No wonder that the London merchants should demand that the Dutch be excluded from the Virginia market! For the same reason Virginians, whether Governors, Councilors, Burgesses, or planters, were, throughout the seventeenth century, almost unanimously opposed to the English government's policy of restricting trade with Virginia to English ships and confining that trade to English ports.

Although Governor Harvey supported the Burgesses and Council in their strong defense of tobacco production, he privately wrote that he had not only endeavored to have reduced the amount of tobacco planted "but if it might have been, to have utterly rooted out this stinking commodity." He reported that only the powerful hand of the King and his Council could, however, effect such an end, so "indeared" were the planters to the traffic. Moreover, Harvey admitted that until some more staple commodity could be developed, tobacco could not be prohibited without the utter ruin of the colony. Virginia was rooted to tobacco--seemingly for ever.

The Virginia planters' proposals, of course, met the opposition of the London merchants, who complained to their powerful friends and associates in the government and urged the King and his Council to nullify the restrictions which the Virginians tried to place on the sale of their tobacco. The merchants were particularly opposed to the desire of the Virginians to by-pass them and trade with foreign nations directly.

It is hard for us to realize today the immense importance of merchants and traders in influencing the colonial policies of the English government. Virginia was founded by a commercial company. All the early attempts at settlement were made by private persons who were willing to "adventure" their capital or their skill. Behind the great explorers stood private individuals who risked their money on the success of the voyage or settlement. The "government"--perhaps it would be truer to say the Kings and their advisers--did not have the funds or the foresight to support these ventures. They were perfectly willing to sign papers granting lands they did not own to those who were willing to attempt the settlement, but they were reluctant to put up their own money except on a sure thing.

Once the settlements were functioning, once revenues were patently obvious, the monarchs showed more concern with their government. Merchants still, however, continued to provide the link between the King and colony to a great extent. In an age of state regulation and monopolies, in an age which did not provide fixed salaries for men in high position, there was a close relationship between the Exchange and the Court. A merchant dealing with overseas trade could not be successful unless he had influence at Court. Even after the King took away the charter of the Virginia Company, merchants continued to apply pressure to the committees and commissions set up to advise the King on colonial policy. Although the colonists feared that Charles I might reinstitute a company over them, and the former representatives of the Virginia Company pressed for such a move, the merchants were not able to re-establish direct control over the colony.

VIRGINIA UNDER HARVEY, 1632-1634: PROSPERITY AND DECENTRALIZATION

In September 1632, under Governor Harvey's direction, the first revisal of Virginia's laws was made. Twenty-five years of experience under varying forms of government lay behind the revisal. All previous laws were examined and brought into conformity with existing conditions. Most of the legislation concerned the Church, tobacco, and the Indians, good indications of what most concerned the early settlers. Highways were also authorized to be laid out in convenient places, the first sign that settlement was spreading from the rivers--the traditional highways of Virginia--into the interior. Virginia was becoming more than a military outpost. It was becoming a "home."

The success of Harvey's attempt to stabilize and diversify agricultural production is confirmed in the account of Captain Thomas Young of his voyage to Virginia and Delaware Bay in 1634. Sailing up the James River he noticed that "the cuntry aboundeth with very great plentie of milk, cheese, butter and corne, which latter almost every planter in the country hath." The grim threat of starvation that had in former times hung over the colony had been dispelled. Although there had been a rapid increase in population, the food supply more than kept up with the increase, and thousands of bushels of corn were even transported and sold to the New England colonists.

The year 1634 also marked the establishment of the county form of local government in Virginia. The scattered plantations and settlements, rapidly expanding and hence more difficult to govern from James City, were now organized into eight counties. For each a monthly court was established by commission from the Governor and Council. Provision for separate courts in outlying areas had been made as early as 1618. Now the shift to decentralized government was formalized.

THE "THRUSTING OUT" OF GOVERNOR HARVEY AND ITS AFTERMATH, 1635-1641

In 1635, in one of the most famous incidents in Virginia's early history, Governor Harvey was deposed by his Council. Many historians have assumed that Harvey was deposed by a spontaneous uprising of the people no longer able to bear his oppressive government. There is, however, little justification for this view. Many more accusations have been hurled at Harvey by later historians than by his contemporaries, and it is undoubtedly Harvey's position as a royal Governor and his quick temper that have caused historians to take such a hostile view of him. Ever since the successful American Revolution of 1776, American historians, in interpreting the events of the colonial period, have jumped at any evidence of discontent as an anticipation of, and justification for, the War for Independence. They have not stopped to determine whether the charges hurled at the royal Governors were true or not. It is enough that someone accused them of oppression.

The causes of the revolt against Harvey were various. Of first importance was the continual opposition that existed between the Governor and his Council. The revolt was not primarily a revolt of the people but a revolt by certain members of the Council who attempted to give their particular insubordination the appearance of a general rebellion.

Harvey's commission was such that he could do nothing except by majority vote of himself and the Council sitting as a single body. The Council frequently outvoted him, effectively blocking his proposals. Harvey bitterly disputed the Council's power to thwart his will. He pointed out that the King had sent him to Virginia not only as the new Governor but with the specific duty of correcting the abuses that were reported to have existed under previous Governors, especially those abuses for which members of the Council were responsible. Previous to his arrival the government had been in the hands of Francis West and Dr. John Pott, elected to office by the other members of the Council. Pott, whose reputation has been mentioned earlier, was not pleased to be brought to justice for his dishonest actions. Nor was Samuel Mathews, an important member of the Council, pleased to be brought to justice for withholding the cattle and property of other men. (Mathews, the richest man in the colony, successfully resisted all legal attempts to divest him of this property.) Nor were the Council members pleased when, in accordance with His Majesty's commands, Harvey attempted to punish those responsible for the ill treatment of William Capps, sent earlier by the King to start production of tar, potash, salt, pipe staves and other commodities. The Council had discouraged him from his mission, except in so far as it concerned the production of salt, and Pott had issued an order preventing him from leaving the colony to report to the King.

Another cause for grievance against Harvey was the peace he made with the local Indians. The colonists distrusted the Indians more than they distrusted other Europeans. The great massacre of 1622, when the Indians made a desperate attempt to destroy the English settlement, had placed Indian-white relations on a basis of perpetual enmity. Legally, the Indians had never been considered to have the same rights as the English. English law throughout the seventeenth century maintained the doctrine that between Christians and infidels there could exist nothing but perpetual enmity, a view which was a hangover from the period of the Crusades, wars against the Turks, and expansion by militant Christian nations into heathen lands during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is true that practical co-operation and on-the-spot recognition of Indian rights had developed in Virginia in the early years. The massacre of 1622, however, gave Virginians an excuse for abandoning all forms of co-operation with, and respect for, the Indians. Deceit and breach of faith were elevated into acknowledged instruments of policy. The right of the Indians even to occupy the land of their forefathers was denied. They were admitted to exist and to hold land _in fact_, but the English refused to recognize _in law_ either their existence or their title to land. Total extirpation was resolved against those Indian nations which had taken part in the massacre. "Marches" were periodically ordered against the various tribes with the purpose of destroying or seizing their corn, burning their shelters, and killing as many members of the tribe as possible.

Governor Harvey reversed this policy and made peace with the Indians against the advice of Dr. Pott and other Councilors. He also attempted to see that some measure of equity was extended to Indian-white relations. As a result, the more aggressive planters accused him of promoting a second massacre.

What really set off the revolt against Harvey, however, was the injection of the hottest issue of the day into the controversy: whether Harvey was "soft" on Catholicism. This issue was brought to a head because of the grant of a portion of Virginia's original territory to George Calvert, first Lord Baltimore. Harvey had extended a helping hand to Baltimore's colonists. Although his actions in this regard were specifically required of him by the King, and although he received especially warm commendation from the English government for doing so, the Virginia colonists objected. The King's grant, for one thing, had been carved out of the Virginia Company's old bounds which had been left undisturbed when the Company lost its right to govern the area. Already Virginians were beginning to eye the benefits of settlement in the northern reaches of Chesapeake Bay. One, Colonel William Claiborne, Secretary of the colony, had obtained a royal commission to trade in the area and had established a settlement on Kent Island, opposite the present Annapolis, far up Chesapeake Bay. By acting on the King's instructions and supporting Baltimore's authority in the area against Claiborne's claims, Harvey turned the second most important man in the colony against him.

Harvey at first backed the Virginia Council's assertion that Kent Island was a part of Virginia, and not part of the supposedly uncultivated wilderness granted to Baltimore by the King. But in the face of Charles's obvious desire to take the area away from Virginia, and because Claiborne's patent authorized trade rather than settlement, Harvey soon accepted Lord Baltimore's position that Claiborne's trading post lay within the limits of Baltimore's jurisdiction. Irritation between the two men increased when Harvey attempted jointly with the Maryland authorities to conduct an examination of charges that Claiborne was stirring up Maryland's Indians against the new settlers. Claiborne was accused of telling the local Indians that the new settlers were not Englishmen but Spaniards. The investigation which ensued was hampered at every turn by Claiborne and his friends on the Virginia Council.

The Virginians were most concerned not by the apparent violation of Virginia's territorial integrity, but by the fact that the new settlement was being established and settled by Roman Catholics. The Virginians were less tolerant than the King in wishing success to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic, and his fellow religionists, in establishing a colony on their northern border. The Virginia Council wrote Charles in 1629 thanking him for "the freedome of our Religion which wee have enjoyed," and asserting proudly that "noe papists have beene suffered to settle amongst us." They insisted upon tendering the oaths of supremacy and allegiance to Lord Baltimore when he arrived in Virginia in October 1629 to consider a possible settlement, and reported to the King that he had refused to take those oaths. Charles I had married a Catholic, Henrietta Maria of France, and, like his father, James I, was not disposed to allow too rigorous penalties against those who professed religious allegiance to Rome. But the Parliament, and the people in general, feared and hated Catholics, believing their religious beliefs to be incompatible with loyalty to a Protestant state.

By means of the oaths of allegiance and supremacy Catholics were required to recognize the English sovereign as their rightful ruler in matters spiritual and ecclesiastical as well as temporal, to repudiate the papal claim to depose heretical princes, to promise to fight for the King in case of rebellion caused by a papal sentence of deposition, and to denounce the doctrine that princes, being excommunicated, could be deposed or murdered, or that subjects could be absolved from their oath of allegiance. The oaths were based on a real fear which identified Roman Catholicism with treason. Protestants felt that Catholics owed their highest allegiance to a foreign power, and hence were not good Englishmen. The problem was a complicated one, and much debated at the time and since. Now it is generally accepted that one can owe spiritual allegiance to Rome while remaining a faithful subject of a non-Catholic state. In England in the seventeenth century, however, the Church of Rome was too closely identified with England's mortal enemies to allow her freely to tolerate Catholics in her midst. For a long period England had feared Spain as the greatest threat to her existence. Even after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588 this fear persisted and to a certain extent was transferred to France, another Catholic power. The measures taken against the Catholics in England were similar to those taken against Communists in this country today, and they were taken for the same reason: the fear that the followers of a universal ideology would turn against their local allegiance if the two ever came in conflict.

Eventually Charles's easy attitude towards Catholics helped bring about his downfall. In a similar way Harvey's compliance with the King's instructions to aid and respect Baltimore's colonists weakened his popularity in Virginia.

As the locus of power in England shifted from the King and his lords towards the Parliament and the people, a stronger Protestant and democratic policy became necessary. The eventual result of this shift in power became evident with the beheading of Charles I in 1649 and, later, with the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the crowning of William and Mary as constitutional symbols of the power of the English nation.

So great was the popular feeling in Virginia against the "Papists" in Maryland that many, in casual conversation, exclaimed that they would rather knock their cattle on the head than sell them to Maryland. To accommodate the needs of the new settlers in Maryland, Harvey sent them some cows of his own and did his best to ease their early struggles, in accordance with the King's commands. He could not do all he wished, however, because he was frequently outvoted at the Council meetings on anything that had to do with Maryland.

The deposition of Governor Harvey had its origin on April 27, 1635, in a mutinous gathering held in the York River area, Virginia's first frontier settlement outside the James River. The ring-leader seems to have been Francis Pott, brother of Doctor Pott, who harangued the meeting about the alleged injustice of Governor Harvey, and about the Governor's toleration for Indians, which he said would bring on another massacre. Francis Pott had formerly been commander of the fort at Point Comfort but had a short time before been discharged by Harvey for misbehavior.

Harvey ordered the principals in the York meeting arrested, and called the Council together to consider what action should be taken against them. The Council opposed Harvey's desire to proceed against them by martial law, and began to excuse the dissidents on the grounds of the many complaints the people had about the government. Harvey thereupon demanded opinions in writing on what should be done with the mutineers. George Menefie, the first Councilor of whom Harvey demanded such a written statement, said he was but a young lawyer and dared not give a sudden opinion. A violent debate ensued. The rest of the Council also refused to put their opinions in writing. At the next meeting of the Council, Menefie began to recount the grievances of the country, naming Harvey's detention of the Assembly's letter to the King as the principal one. The original of this letter, refusing the King's propositions concerning a tobacco contract, Harvey had retained, as likely to infuriate the monarch and do the country no good. Instead he had sent a copy of the letter to the Secretary of State. At Menefie's words, Harvey, in a rage, brought his hand down sharply on the Councilor's shoulder and said, "Do you say so? I arrest you on suspicion of treason to his Majesty." Then Capt. John Utie and Capt. Samuel Mathews seized Harvey and said, "And we you upon suspicion of treason to his Majesty." Secretary Richard Kemp immediately stepped between the men and told Utie and Mathews that Harvey was the King's Lieutenant and that they had done more than they could answer for. Mathews and Utie released their hold on the Governor but demanded that he go to England to answer the people's complaints. To emphasize their demand Dr. John Pott signaled forty soldiers who had been concealed outside the Governor's house (where the meeting was held) to march up to the door, apparently as a form of threat, although the mutineers protested that the guard was for the Governor's safety. More days of negotiations passed. The rebellious Council called an Assembly to hear charges against Harvey, and chose Capt. John West to be Governor until His Majesty's pleasure might be known. Finally Harvey agreed to return to England. Francis Pott went on the same ship home.