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The History of the Virginia Company of London
In this two-part episode, we discuss the politics of colonization in England. England hadn’t successfully set up any New World colonies when Gosnold and Archer started to push for a new attempt, and the colony immediately became the subject of power struggles and political intrigue.
Lord Robert Cecil
Robert Cecil was arguably the most powerful man in England in 1607, including the king, himself. The Earl of Essex had rebelled at the end of Elizabeth’s reign in an attempt to reduce Cecil’s power. The Gunpowder Plot involved some of the same people. Using his vast network of spies and agents, Cecil thwarted both, and used both as a way to round up his political enemies. He was the original “Machiavellian,” and he immediately took control of the Virginia venture.
When his spy, Hugh Price, informed him of negative remarks Gosnold had made about King James at a dinner party in Southampton, Gosnold’s name was removed from all company paperwork. Cecil patron Richard Hakluyt wrote the Virginia Company instructions to make the company answer directly to Cecil. Cecil engineered for Ratcliffe and Kendall to be put on the Council. He then put Brewster in Virginia as a spy. And, it was also he who made Newport admiral of the venture (even though George Somers was one of the original patentees, and every bit as respected as Newport).
The Spanish
The Spanish didn’t want to provoke war by wiping out England’s North American colony, but they also saw English presence in the region as a threat. They worried that the English were setting up a piracy base, but King Philip wanted to avoid confrontation. Philip’s advisors pushed hard for him to attack the colony, but he waited.
His ambassador, Don Pedro de Zuniga, pushed James to end the venture, but James deflected. He feigned ignorance and said he didn’t take the colony seriously, though he didn’t believe the Spanish owned all of North America. His disinterested attitude comforted the Spanish somewhat.
Thomas Smythe
As Virginia proved unprofitable, Thomas Smythe used all the influence he had to keep investors from abandoning the project. He was also the founder of the East India Company.
The Sirenaicals
The Sirenaicals were a secretive London drinking society. Shakespeare, multiple Jamestown settlers (or their families), and many Rebel MPs (who led the Parliamentary opposition to King James) were members. John Smith was a friend of the club’s leader, and he sent a description of Virginia to the club. The club published Smith’s True Relation, and it was an instant success. This book created a wave of interest in colonization and attracted new investors. The Rebel MPs also pushed for a new Virginia Charter, which would give the company expanded rights and privileges. The man who wrote the new charter was the leader of the Rebel MPs, Edwin Sandys.
Prince Henry
James’ 13 year old heir was inspired by Elizabethan explorers, and even befriended Sir Walter Raleigh (who was, at the time, in the Tower for treason against his father). He started leading the push for colonization, fueling public fervor even more than before.
The Third Supply
With a new charter in place, and enough investors to launch a massive new expedition, Virginia seemed to be on the verge of immense success. Henry visited the docks as the ships prepared to leave. Cecil, however, made one last attempt to sabotage the voyage. He recalled Gates to London at the last minute, and made everyone else sit on their ships, waiting, eating their supplies, and risking arriving too late to plant crops. George Somers, the new admiral of the fleet, gave the order for the ships to go, with or without Gates. Cecil quickly demoted Gates and allowed him to return to the docks, and the ships set sail.
England had every reason to be optimistic.
Transcript
By 1606, Bartholomew Gosnold and Gabriel Archer had spent four years touring the taverns and company halls of London, describing the wonders of “the goodliest continent we ever saw.” They’d visited in 1602, on a mission funded by the Earl of Southampton. They’d named Cape Cod, and Martha’s Vineyard, and now Archer had written a description of the continent which helped people truly imagine its exotic wonders.
Gosnold and Archer were serious, and London’s colonial elite had a new mission to rally around. At Richard Hakluyt’s suggestion, the Earl of Southampton sent a man named George Weynmouth on a quick tour to verify their claims. When he came back similarly enthusiastic, a group of high-profile elites submitted an official petition for a North American land grant. The list included Hakluyt, Wingfield, Somers, Gates, George Popham and others.
Introduction
This was a big deal for England for a number of reasons. First, if England didn’t act on this colonization effort, its claim to North America would effectively expire. The Spanish already didn’t recognize England’s title, but the Law of Nations gave the English the title to North America because of the possibility of Raleigh’s Roanoke settlers having survived. Continual habitation was a huge part of possession, and if even one of the Roanoke settlers survived, England had that. If, however, England refused to act further, the Spanish could easily argue that the English right had expired, and England would forever lose the ability to set up colonies in North America.
Second, James was near bankruptcy, and he and his Privy Council were trying to find new sources of revenue. Parliament was both stingy with money and used his financial situation to negotiate for their own reforms. James had the right to levy customs duties, so colonies could help his financial situation.
Clearly, going forward with the Virginia colony was a good idea, but they also had to decide what form the colony should take. The days of Raleigh-style private monopolies were over. Some people wanted to make colonization a fully public effort, fully controlled by Parliament and paid for by taxes. On the other hand, a public colonization venture was a statement that England was staking its claim to the New World, and that might provoke war with Spain. It also opened the government up to criticism if the colony failed.
The middle ground solution was proposed by Walter Cope and John Popham. The Virginia Company would be a private organization which would answer to the crown. It would be autonomous, but James would have the final say in its affairs, and in terms of paperwork, there would be minimal connection between the two. That minimized diplomatic and political risk. They could keep the venture as discreet as possible, and even when it was discovered by the Spanish, James could feign ignorance.
The most difficult thing for a company like this would be raising money, especially given North America’s reputation as a terrible investment. A huge amount of money had been lost in Atlantic exploration since the 1570s, and the only real profitable activity had been privateering, which was now forbidden.
Whatever form the Virginia Company took, though, one man could be counted on to get involved, and that was Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, and James’ right hand man.
Cecil had transitioned from being Elizabeth’s to James’s closest advisor, and even beyond that role, he was prepared to intervene in anything that happened in England. He had spies and agents everywhere, including at a dinner party Bartholomew Gosnold attended in Southampton. And he used that spy to have Gosnold’s name removed from company paperwork.
To give you an idea of Cecil’s character and reputation, he was the first person in England to have ever been described as “Machiavellian.” Some people believed he’d orchestrated the Gunpowder Plot (which he’d then thwarted) as a way to eliminate his political enemies. In fact, the plot had involved a lot of the same people as the Essex Rebellion at the end of Elizabeth’s reign, which was in large part an attempt to eliminate Cecil’s influence. Whether or not Cecil had actually orchestrated the Gunpowder Plot, it’s again a good illustration of his influence, tactics and reputation, and Cecil did use the investigation after the plot to round up his political enemies.
It’s also interesting to note that the person who drafted the Virginia Charter was possibly Edward Coke, a close Cecil associate who had prosecuted Essex, Sir Walter Raleigh, and the Gunpowder Plot participants.
Cecil was one of the most powerful men in the kingdom, but it’s hard to figure out his exact motivations. One thing we do know is that after Cecil’s death, James found out he had been on the Spanish payroll. His motivations weren’t that simple, though. He had his own goals and games going on, and he was good at them. It’s just very hard to know exactly what those were. Regardless, when the 1606 Virginia colonization attempt emerged, Cecil was ready and able to intervene.
On April 6th, 1606, a charter was granted, creating the Virginia Company, and with it a possession which would be the subject of power struggles and political intrigue for the next 20 years.
The charter actually provided for the establishment of two North American colonies. The Southern one, or First Colony, went from modern Cape Fear to the Hudson, and was given to a group of gentlemen, investors, and explorers like Gates, Somers, Hakluyt and Wingfield. They formed the Virginia Company.
The Northern one, was given to a group of merchants, including Hannam, Gilbert and Popham, and went from the Potomac to the modern Canadian border. It was run by the Plymouth Company, and no that’s not a coincidence. There was overlap between the two colonies’ territories, with the idea that the future boundary would develop somewhere within the overlap. To prevent conflict, neither company could set up a town within 100 miles of any of the other company’s towns.
Within a couple months, both companies started working on their colonization ventures. Richard Hakluyt wrote the orders for the colonization of Virginia, and they were mostly similar to the ones he’d written for the East India Company. It is, however, in these orders that we can first see Cecil’s influence.
Hakluyt, in addition to being one of England’s biggest advocates of colonization, was a patron of Robert Cecil, and he’d actually been the person to suggest that Southampton-funded confirmation mission that Weynmouth took. Most colonies at the time had a governor appointed by investors. Instead of a governor, the Virginia Company would be supervised by a 13-person Royal Council which reported directly to Cecil. Within a month, people were complaining that the Royal Council’s interference was making it harder to get investors. Cecil insisted on the utmost secrecy, claiming that was to prevent alerting the Spanish of the mission. Obviously that wasn’t true.
It was also the Royal Council that hired Newport, over the heads of the Virginia Company’s leadership.
About a month before the first ships set sail, the Virginia Company held a meeting to decide the membership of the leadership Council in Virginia. Obviously, they put two Cecil agents, Kendall and Ratcliffe, on the council. Cecil had the records from that meeting seized and they haven’t been seen since. That means we have no idea of exactly how Cecil engineered for Ratcliffe and Kendall to be on the Council.
By December, though, the Colonists had left London, hoping that by leaving in winter, they’d arrive in Virginia in time to plant crops which could feed the settlement the following winter.
Before the colonists even reached the Chesapeake, the Spanish knew about the mission. In fact, the Spanish Ambassador knew exactly what was in the Virginia Charter, and who was on the Royal Council. That list was essentially unknown outside of James’ Privy Council. That means it was most likely Cecil who told them. So much for secrecy. Soon, the Spanish captured a ship which was scouting out settlement locations for the Plymouth company, and took the sailors back to Spain for interrogation. Cecil advised James to leave them to their fate in Spain.
Meanwhile, Cecil prepared to send his own secret delegation to Spain. The delegation included George Weynmouth, the captain Hakluyt had suggested should go to North America to verify Gosnold and Archer’s claims. Because of that mission, Weynmouth knew the coast of North America as well as anyone in England. Cecil truly did have spies and agents everywhere, and at this point in time, it looks like he was sending people to Spain who could lead the Spanish to the colony, so they could wipe it out. The question arises of why. And the answer is, we don’t know.
Fortunately for the colonists, right before Weynmouth left for Spain, Newport returned to England. That put the plan on hold as Cecil and the Spanish re-evaluated the situation.
The sample of ore that Newport had brought back was worthless, which prompted virtually all the backers to abandon the venture – even Newport. It was only the treasurer, Sir Thomas Smythe who managed to pull the company back together, and he had to use every shred of influence he had to do it. As treasurer, Smythe was the London-based leader of the Company, and a founding member. He had been brought in by Gosnold and Archer to organize the venture and help them apply for the charter. He was also the founder of the East India Company. Smythe convinced Newport and others that maybe Newport had just brought back the wrong sample of ore, and highlighted the progress Percy discussed in a secret letter to his brother, the Earl of Northumberland – things looked promising, and the colonists had at least built a fort. The investors agreed to fund another mission.
In Spain, King Philip’s advisors were recommending that he use all necessary force to stop the venture, but Philip himself was reluctant. He had taken the throne just five years before James, and he’d inherited a massive, though fragmented empire which was dealing with economic decline and a plague outbreak, as well as Dutch Revolts in the Low Countries. He also inherited the same volatile political situation which had characterized Europe since the Reformation, and which would in just over a decade pull Spain into the Thirty Years War. Philip himself wasn’t a particularly effective ruler, and was known for being just middle of the road enough to avoid being hated.
So for him, the question was whether destroying the colony was worth ending the newfound peace with England. It looked like the colony might collapse on its own without endangering the peace, and that it might not be a big threat to Spanish interests, anyway. In that case, inaction was best. If, on the other hand, the purpose were, like Raleigh’s colony, to provide English pirates with a New World base, it would be worth risking war to eliminate it. Waiting and seeing was a better option than unnecessarily ending the peace, so Philip ordered his ambassador to England, Don Pedro de Zuniga, to keep him updated.
Zuniga had spies and connections who kept him well informed of developments, but he also asked for a meeting with James, where he pushed hard for the king to stop colonization efforts in Virginia. He said it was against good friendship and brotherliness for the English to go to Virginia, which was part of the Indies, which belonged to Spain. James responded that he didn’t know much about what was going on in Virginia, but he also didn’t know if Spain had a right to it, since it was so far from where they had settled. The private nature of the venture certainly helped his defense. Zuniga then hinted that Spain would risk war to wipe out the colony, and James responded that he wouldn’t risk war to defend it. At a later meeting with Cecil, Cecil backed up what James said. If something bad happened to the settlers, it’d be their own fault. It was a smart deflection on James’ part. The fact that Virginia wasn’t all that important to England meant that it may not be a long-term issue, and it was safe for Philip to wait and see. James wasn’t lying, though. War with Spain would be dangerous, and would force James to rely on Parliament for money, and Virginia wasn’t worth that. He wouldn’t have gone to war to save Virginia.
The first supply mission left in fall 1607, and it was hurried and desperately underfunded. Smythe had to resort to sending moth-eaten supplies left over from a previous East India Company voyage. When Newport returned, not only was there no gold-bearing earth, Wingfield had also returned, and he gave the London Company its first dose of faction fighting. A few weeks later, Francis Nelson also failed to bring anything valuable, just some cedar and iron ore that they sold for four pounds a ton to the East India Company.
Investors had threatened to bail on the colony after one voyage failed to produce returns, and now two had. The colonists had been in Virginia a year with nothing to show for it. Smythe was having a harder time keeping the colony afloat, so he issued accusations and an ultimatum to the colonists. It’s your fault, and if you don’t send us back something of value, we’ll stop supporting you. It was worded as a threat, but the latter part was true. Smythe was the one person who was keeping the company together, and he couldn’t do it forever.
The silver lining was that colonists had discovered that Virginia could grow tobacco. The valuable commodity had been popularized by Sir Walter Raleigh, but it had been virtually impossible to obtain in England since 1606, when Spain had banned tobacco cultivation in South America. Just a few months before the first Virginia colonists had set sail, John Eldred and John Watts had tried and failed to set up a tobacco colony in the Caribbean. A few months later, a second mission supported by Raleigh, failed even more disastrously. The Spanish had captured the ships, demanded a 5,000 pound ransom to return the crew and settlers, and then after receiving the money, hanged the prisoners anyway. England needed a new source of tobacco, but Virginia’s native tobacco was too harsh to be worth much. Still, there was some hope.
In 1609, Philip’s Council was still pushing him to destroy the colony, as was Zuniga. Zuniga was watching more and more ships full of worthless goods return from Virginia, and hearing about how much the colony needed money. Yet, the colony continued, with mostly young men going. He started to believe that the only explanation was that the colony was being set up as a piracy base meant to provoke sectarian war. Philip still didn’t want to stage a dramatic attack, but a rogue Englishman named William Stanley finally convinced him to act. He agreed to send a ship from St. Augustine to the Chesapeake to see what was going on. This was the ship that had turned around after seeing Argall’s ship in the bay.
A few weeks later, Newport returned to England with Ratcliffe and Archer, and nothing of value. By this time, even Smythe’s closest associates, including Alderman Robert Johnson, were preparing to abandon Virginia. Popham had been the highest-ranking person who still supported Smythe’s efforts, and he died.
The Virginia venture was on the verge of collapse, but unbeknownst to the company, John Smith had sent back the document which would save it. Of course he had sent back his letter condemning the company, and demanding a list of changes. He’d also sent back his True Relation, a detailed account of the wonders of Virginia and its local people. The Company would never have published it, because it didn’t portray its management in a flattering light, but one night, Smith’s document ended up on a table in the Mermaid Tavern.
The Mermaid Tavern was the home of a secretive London literary drinking club called the Sirenaicals. Shakespeare may have been a member. In fact, I tend to think he was. John Martin’s father certainly was. Raleigh was, as was future-colonist William Strachey, and members of Henry Spellman’s family. Multiple members of James’s Parliamentary opposition, known as the Rebel MPs, were also members. Another member was a Catholic named John Healey who had been arrested during the Gunpowder Plot investigation, and who had then informed on the activities of John Sicklemore, a Catholic priest who was supposedly plotting to assassinate Cecil. The de-facto leader of the group was Thomas Thorpe, a friend of John Smith, who also had connections to Catholic exiles in Spain. Those details aren’t important to our narrative, but they give some perspective on the club and its relation to Virginia.
What is important is that Smith gave Thorpe a copy of his True Relation, and Thorpe ordered Healey to edit out the most inflammatory parts and publish it. The book was an instant success. It captured people’s imaginations. Soon, people were obsessed enough to buy just about anything Virginia related, and books on Virginia were in such high demand that publishers were trying to get their hands on anything that included Virginia in the title, and even repurposing older works to highlight their Virginia connection. A French book about Canadian exploration, for instance, was translated with the title “Nova Francia: Or, the description of that part of New France which is one continent with Virginia.” A Portuguese work became “Virginia richly valued, by the description of mainland Florida, her next neighbor.” The colony was no longer a secretive Cecil-dominated scheme, it was something that had captured the public imagination.
One of the most important people whose imagination Virginia caught was James’s 13-year-old heir, Prince Henry. Henry, himself, had captured the public imagination, and along with Charles II was probably the only member of the Stuart family the English ever really liked. When he was a kid, he was the kind of young heir who had been rare in England for centuries. As he grew up, he adopted all the Protestant virtues his father seemed to lack, and became so popular he set up his own court, opposite from his father’s in every way – idealistic, bold, austere, virtuous, and drawn to the Elizabethan ideals of heroism and adventure. He even befriended Sir Walter Raleigh.
Henry started to get involved, and he and the Sirenaicals started to rival Cecil’s influence. Henry commissioned Robert Tyndall to bring him back maps and reports, and asked Raleigh to write papers on Virginia. Raleigh even hoped to lead an expedition there. Henry’s chaplain gave a sermon talking about how Henry VII had ignored Columbus’s pleas for support to explore the West, and how England was still behind Spain because of that decision. Other preachers started to echo these sentiments, and soon rhetoric about colonization built to an all-time high. Both religious and secular figures talked about how Virginia would drive the greatness that England was destined for, and said supporting the mission was a religious and civic duty.
In 1609, James was on the verge of bankruptcy, and Cecil was being forced to make concessions to Parliament in exchange for further funding. One of the concessions Parliament asked for was giving the Virginia Company more control over Virginia, a new charter, with expanded privileges. They had Henry’s support, Virginia was a popular subject, Smythe was an MP, and many of the Sirenaicals were also Rebel MPs. It was a concession Cecil was willing to make, and Smythe started to draft the new charter with Edwin Sandys.
Sandys was the leader of the “rebel MPs” who were fighting James in Parliament. He was a dedicated protestant, even working with John Pym on anti-Catholic legislation, and he wanted to see protestant colonization efforts rival Catholic ones. More than a colonial figure, though, Sandys was a deeply political figure in England, and his politics were immediately visible in the new charter.
Most importantly, there was thorough democratization. Anyone at all who gave 50 pounds was appointed to the Royal Council, and that made being an investor in the Virginia Company a great networking opportunity. There were regular meetings of the Royal Council, so anyone who gave 50 pounds got regular access to some of the most powerful people in James’s court. The size of the Council quadrupled, and many of the new members were Sirenaicals and Rebel MPs.
Some of the earliest investors were upset by the politicization of the company and withdrew their money, but some of the rich, Puritan-leaning companies like clothworkers and merchant tailors gave hundreds of pounds. Plus, people started to get involved who wanted to mould Virginia to make it adhere to their own vision, so there were plenty of Puritans and Brownists either going to or funding Virginia.
Cecil’s influence was being replaced by that of a very different group of people.
The Second Charter also clearly incorporated some of John Smith’s recommendations, including with regard to Indian relations.
Finally, Smythe also influenced a lot of the Second Charter’s changes. The faction fighting and failure of Virginia to produce adequate profits had put him in embarrassing situations more than once, so he pushed for consolidation of power there. Now, there would be one governor with full and absolute authority to punish, pardon, govern and rule, and even impose martial law when necessary. There may be democracy in England, but there would be no more disarray in Virginia.
Rejuvenated, the Company was raising money for a huge new mission, the first under the Second Charter, to be launched within weeks. They worried it might not get there in time to prevent the settlement’s collapse into anarchy or famine, but they were really going all-out this mission. The Company was recruiting everybody who was willing to go, and even the Lord Mayor of London was pushing people to help the company. He encouraged parishes to pay to send their undesireables to Virginia, and that was an attractive offer. 30 unruly youths were sent, as well as a handful of vagrants and petty criminals, and 30 unwed women who could become settlers’ wives. For eight months wages, settlers could now get a house, vegetable gardens, orchards, food and clothing at the company’s expense, as well as a share of all the products and profits that resulted from their labor. Obviously we know John Rolfe was one of the people who signed up to go, and it was almost certainly John Watts who gave him a sample of Trinidad tobacco seed from his and Eldred’s attempted settlement.
The Company selected Thomas Gates to lead the mission, and instructed him to find a new settlement location close to what’s now Richmond to act as the capital, and to find the Roanoke survivors. They also gave him a set of secret boxes with “if-then” instructions in case Gates died so that the assembled council could install a new governor without more faction fighting.
By May, the ships were preparing to leave, and even Prince Henry visited the docks to mark the momentous occasion. Suddenly, though, Cecil issued an emergency order recalling Gates to London. Then, he kept Gates there for multiple days while the rest of the company just sat on their ships in the docks. They were going through food stores, which could be potentially catastrophic, and if they delayed too long, they ran the risk of arriving too late to plant crops. It was in this lull that Ratcliffe made out the will which identified him.
Somers wasn’t going to risk the entire future of the mission for Gates. Cecil was by now openly hostile to Virginia, correctly thinking that Henry was trying to use Virginia to revive Elizabethan imperial plans. Cecil was trying to cripple the mission without provoking a direct confrontation with Henry, and Somers wasn’t going to let him get away with it. When Somers gave the order, Cecil quickly demoted Gates to Lt. Governor under Lord Delaware, and sent him back to the docks. The ships set sail, and everything looked great for Virginia. The country had gotten behind the Colony, and turned a struggling, faction-ridden fort into a seed of English civilization in the New World.