Listen on: iTunesSubscribe on Android, Stitcher and more
How did things ever get so far? Royalists, and indeed Presbyterians, in every colony were probably asking themselves that in 1644, but nowhere moreso in Bermuda, Virginia and Maryland. In slightly different ways, but at the same time, those royalist-dominated colonies became the first in the Americas to really feel the effects of the war in England.
Introduction
The context is the same as the context we discussed last week. Parliament was starting, though not irreversibly at the beginning of the year, to beat the King. A new Parliamentary commission to govern the colonies was led by the Earl of Warwick, and it had already issued some declarations, though it was in no position to enforce any of them until the King was fully defeated. It announced that Colonization would be done to further the Protestant religion, no surprise there, and it ordered colonists to refrain from implementing reforms until Parliament had decided on the future political and religious course England and its colonies should take.
In Bermuda, though, the colony’s problems started when its ministers expressly disobeyed that last order. The colony had four ministers, one of whom was either a Presbyterian or an Anglican, it’s virtually impossible to tell which, and it’s actually pretty irrelevant. The other three, though, were Congregationalists. In fact, they were close followers of New England Congregationalists, regularly corresponding with ministers there. Their names were William Golding, Nathaniel White, and Patrick Copeland.
And, in 1644, Bermuda had just undergone a governor change, this time to William Sayle, another staunch advocate of the Congregationalist cause. Sayle also helped ensure his Council was controlled by Congregationalists, so though the majority of Bermuda’s population was royalist, and though at least half of its Puritan population were Presbyterian, as of the end of 1643, Congregationalists held the majority of all positions of power in the Colony, and their English overseers were preoccupied with the war at home. So empowered both by Puritan ascent within England, and the distraction of Presbyterians who would otherwise control the Company, they took control.
So, at the end of January, the three Congregationalist ministers withdrew from the Church of England, formed their own covenant modeled after those of New England, and announced that they would only administer the sacraments to those who both submitted to their covenant, and were approved by them. Overnight, the vast majority of the colony’s population found itself cut off from access to any religious services.
People were appalled. The New England model Church was unbearably radical for Bermuda’s relatively conservative population. In fact it wasn’t just radical, as if it was pushing something they may fundamentally have agreed with too far. They felt that the principles guiding the movement were simply wrong, drawn from the worst sorts of movements in England and Europe. Presbyterians and Anglicans suddenly felt they had a lot more in common with each other than they did with the Congregationalists who now controlled their religious life. They formed a huge majority of the population, but it made no difference. There was no room for compromise, discussion or toleration.
Governor Sayle threw his civil powers wholly behind them, supporting their movement of religious exclusion with a policy of civil pressure to submit, and the island was soon dominated by a leadership which can only be described as tyrannical. Anyone who so much as questioned the Congregationalist ministers was summoned and interrogated before the Governor’s Council, a council on which some of the Congregationalist ministers actually sat.
They quickly made life unbearable for the fourth minister, and he left Bermuda, cutting off the last remaining access to religious services for any colonists outside the congregation. Even marriages stopped for the vast majority of the Islands’ residents.
The most infamous victim of the Congregationalist tyranny in Bermuda was a man named Richard Beake. Beake was a 74 year old Presbyterian teacher. When told by one of Bermuda’s citizens that Nathaniel White “was the supreme head of their Church next to Christ, and none above him,” Beake told the man that he was treating White like a demi-god, and giving him credit and praise which was due to God alone.
Beake found himself arrested, and put in the colony’s jail for five days, with no protection from the winter cold or rain. Granted, Bermuda doesn’t get that cold by the standards of most places, but it does get down to about 60 degrees fahrenheit, and a 74 year old man trying to sleep with nothing to keep him warm or dry on a 60 degree night – is not a good thing. They kept him like this for five days, until White came by the jail to confront him personally about his error. Evidently, White’s manner was outwardly pleasant, but he ended his lecture with “and it is for this that you will smart,” so the charm was only skin deep.
The next day, a warrant was served, summoning him to come officially before the council, and there he was sentenced to prison for 5 weeks, after which he was put under bond for good behavior for the foreseeable future, which ended up being through the end of Sayle’s governor term over a year later.
“I have suffered and am suffering,” Beake wrote to Presbyterian lawyer William Prynne. He called White a “most seditious, turbulent and hateful malicious person, as crafty and subtle as the devil,” and said that any colonist who had tried to tell the company what was going on had been prosecuted by the court. “If Christians in Grief and distraction of soul and conscience shall sue our rulers for some relief, then we shall presently be summoned to an Assizes and there undergo such penalties as shall be censured upon by the court.”
Richard Norwood was another Presbyterian, and headmaster of a highly esteemed school on Bermuda. In fact, people had funded his school from England, and had sent their children from England to Bermuda to study with him. And he tried to stay out of the controversy. He didn’t want to jeopardize his teaching work, and he was also dealing with a pretty horrible situation involving his daughter, who had eloped with a physically abusive, bigamist sailor, and he was trying to get her out of that situation. So, he just kept his mouth shut, until he was confronted and ordered to explain and defend his own religious opinions. And when confrontation came, he didn’t lie or back down.
And he was, of course, summoned before the Council. But he didn’t go. A friend warned him before his meeting that they were planning to punish him physically, so he skipped his appointment and instead wrote a complaint to the governor. Norwood was esteemed in England, and a prominent citizen in Bermuda, so if Sayle, who had ignored a letter from Beake, did the same for Norwood, it could turn into a scandal. So, Sayle did stop his prosecution.
But, the Council then accused Norwood of neglecting his school and forced him to resign. So, they got him anyway.
Those are only two examples, but they’re representative of the Island’s situation. Norwood also wrote to William Prynne, explaining not only his own situation, but the situation in general. He said that the Congregational rule had split Bermuda into two factions, those who supported the government, and those who didn’t. And he said that there were genuinely religious people on both sides of the divide. William Prynne worked to compile a pamphlet on Bermuda’s plight to push for change and to boost the faltering Presbyterian cause within England itself, but change was slow, and colonists just had to wait for change to be imposed from above, knowing the Earl of Warwick was, himself, a Presbyterian. But change was slow, and nothing happened for almost two years. In the meantime, there were beatings, interrogations, jailings and firings. No marriages, no baptism, no communion. So that was Bermuda’s situation in 1644 and 1645.
In Virginia, April that year began with a naval skirmish between Parliamentary and Royalist ships. Parliament had authorized a fleet of 11 ships to go to Virginia to give supplies and weapons to its Puritan colonists, who were growing more and more restless. One of these ships was Richard Ingle’s Reformation. The ships evidently made their delivery, and at the same time, they captured a small Royalist vessel. At the same time, English newsletters reported that New England was amassing an army of 10,000 to invade Virginia. Obviously that wasn’t true, but Parliament was clearly starting to pay attention to Royalist Virginia. And clearly, if they were strong enough to do that, things weren’t going great for the Royalists.
William Berkeley declared that Good Friday, which fell on April 18, be a day of fasting and prayer for the King’s cause in England. Did I mention that he was beside himself with worry? Everyone in his family, and everyone he’d considered friends in England were now fighting a faltering cause. His brothers were Royalist leaders, including military officers, and his closest mentors from his courtier days had been Viscount Falkland, Edward Hyde and Thomas Roe, all leaders of the Royalist party. In fact, it had been them along with his family members who had invested in the Virginia Company, and died in the 1622 Massacre, who had encouraged his interest in Virginia in the first place. He himself had participated in some of the earliest conflicts leading to war, including uncovering evidence of the secret Scottish alliance, and participating in the Army Plot to break Strafford out of jail.
All of his personal relationships, all of his personal history, all of his personal loyalties – supported a cause that seemed to be losing a war, while Berkeley was powerless to help it. Sure, he and the Assembly had tried implementing a policy which only allowed trade with Royalist ships, but that had never been feasible. By 1644, there was only one Royalist port left, Bristol, and Parliamentary ships far outnumbered and outpowered Royalist ones.
But, a day of prayer, that could work. And on Good Friday, a holiday the Puritans tended to disapprove of.
But, it never happened. Before dawn on April 17, Maundy Thursday, a small group of Powhatan warriors knocked on the door of a house around the outskirts of Northern Virginia. When one of the men living there opened the door, without a word they smashed his skull. Then, they jumped over his body and tomahawked everyone in the house before they even had a chance to respond. The warriors then set fire to the house, and moved on to the next. At the same time, multiple other groups of warriors were doing the exact same thing, and before the morning was over, 4-500 people were dead, and though the colonists had organized to fight back, the fight continued for several days with more casualties, and more captives taken. Numerically, the death toll was even higher than the 1622 massacre, but the colony was stronger, and the colony was eight times as populous, so there was no question of total abandonment in the colonists’ eyes.
But, prayers for the King would have to wait. Berkeley ordered an emergency meeting of the General Assembly, and the Assembly ordered a militia muster by the beginning of June, including every male in the colony from 16-60 years old. It chose leaders, each of whom were given 400 acres of land for their service. Roger Marshall, William Claiborne, Abraham Wood, and, and here’s the most interesting name on the list, Lieutenant Thomas Rolfe. Each took command of a different Fort or region, with 60 men under their command, and the Assembly organized and raised money for clothing and medical care for soldiers, and care for the widows and orphans of anyone who was killed in the fighting. They ordered anyone living in a vulnerable area to abandon their properties and move to where they could be protected. And, when some ignored the order, preferring to take their chances and protect their little farms and gardens, they sent an armed force to bring them to safety.
So, two years after Berkeley had signed the peace treaty with the Powhatan, Virginia was yet again at war. And Opechancanough, by now 95-102 years old, carried around on a portable bed and needing others to open his eyes for him, had orchestrated his second major surprise attack on the English. Berkeley strictly ordered that colonists not harm the Indians of the Eastern Shore, who hadn’t participated in the massacre and who wished to remain at peace, and those orders seem to have been obeyed. Toward the Powhatan, though, the colonists revived their age-old tactic of corn burning raids.
The problem was, though, that it was virtually impossible that the timing of the attack was a coincidence. An Anglican holy day. The day before a day of fasting and prayer for the Royalist cause. After a period of peace, and at a time when the colonists couldn’t expect help from England?
Some Puritans had an explanation for this. It was God’s judgment for pushing out the New Haven ministers the previous year, and the Puritan areas had been spared because they had supported the ministers.
Royalists had a much more tangible explanation. Puritan settlers had invited an attack by telling the Powhatan that the colonists were alone, and vulnerable, and couldn’t expect support from England, so if he wanted to destroy Virginia, it was now or never. The Powhatan no longer posed an existential threat to the English in Virginia, but Parliament might, and if someone had intentionally invited a massacre, that was a huge problem. To make matters even more suspicious, the only outlying area which had been spared bloodshed was one dominated by Puritans.
John Winthrop offered an explanation much more similar to that of the Royalists, but one which absolved the colony’s Puritans of any culpability. He said that when the Powhatan had observed the naval skirmish and figured out that the colonists were vulnerable. And meanwhile, Parliamentary newspapers reported that the attack had prevented the further expulsion of Puritans from Virginia, which they said would have led to armed rebellion. So, they said, the attack had actually, though damaging, prevented even worse violence.
But, regardless of the exact how, the massacre happened, and war followed, and to circle back around to something I said earlier, Thomas Rolfe helped lead English forces in that war. And, because this is one of the very few times he actually does appear in the historical record, I want to take a brief minute to look at his life, because how could I not? He was, after all, the son of John Rolfe and Pocahontas.
Last time we discussed him, it was 1617, his mother had just died, and he’d been left with family as his father returned to Virginia, where he himself died five years later. Now, Thomas is 29, married, an increasingly wealthy landowner and clearly one of the leading citizens of Virginia.
Thomas had grown up in England, Suffolk, to be precise, raised by his uncle. His uncle had petitioned the Virginia Company for financial compensation for having raised him, but they had refused, so his uncle had taken some of the land he’d inherited from his father in England as payment. It wasn’t quite legal, wasn’t quite right, but Thomas had always wanted to go to Virginia anyway. The land where his mother was born, where his father had died, where his half sister lived, and where he himself had spent his first two years.
He didn’t fight his uncle’s property grab, just left England as soon as he could, when he was 20 years old, in 1635. He moved to the part of his father’s estate which hadn’t been left to his sister, and began growing tobacco. He had always maintained an interest in his Powhatan heritage, and in the 1630s, he had asked for permission to visit the Powhatan, and in particular his uncle, Opechancanough. The petition was accepted, and though we don’t know exactly what happened or what was said at their meetings, we know he did get to spend at least some time with his mother’s people, and with Opechancanough. Some people say he actually grew to have a relationship with members of the tribes, and that he was given land by them, but no documentation of that exists. As he grew older, he became extremely wealthy, and a prominent citizen, and he died at about 60, presumably at his Virginia plantation, though there’s a rather odd rumor that after his wife died, he moved to Carolina. And that’s about all we do know, though we know about his descendents and if you want discussion about that, I’ll post it to the website.
But, back to the main story, after the war was safely underway, Berkeley went to England, leaving Richard Kemp as his deputy governor. There, he would get help for Virginia if he could, and give help to the King if he could.
And, that’s where we’ll leave Virginia for now, and we ourselves will go north to Maryland. Not too long after Berkeley left for England, Calvert returned from there, bringing his wife and two children, and a new commission from Lord Baltimore, confirming the continuation of the Proprietary government. He also brought a commission from the King, declaring that colonial imports were helping to fuel the war against the King, and authorizing Calvert to go to Virginia and seize Parliamentary ships from there, on the condition that they gave the King half of anything they got.
Calvert arrived, though, to find the colony in even more chaos than when he’d left. The Susquehannocs had launched a series of colony-threatening attacks, again sensing the weakness of an isolated and in this case divided colony. Richard Ingle had been in England, recounting the story of his arrest, attributing it to the fact that he was a Londoner in a stronghold of Papists and Royalists, and accusing Brent, Lewger and Cornwallis of being the people behind his arrest. And worst of all, Claiborne had retaken Kent Island. The colonists there had always supported him, and the chaos had given him the opportunity to walk in and declare his ownership.
So, apart from the continuing war with the Susquehannocs, the first order of business was to try to expel Claiborne. It turns out that the Commissioners for Plantations under the Earl of Warwick had defined one of the goals of colonization as being the furthering of the Protestant religion, and though Parliament itself hadn’t acted on this commission, it legitimized any Puritan attempts to take over Maryland in Parliament’s eyes. Calvert declared him a public enemy, and sent a reconnoitering party to evaluate the strength of his settlement and what it would take to push him out. They just weren’t strong enough to push him out, though, so Claiborne remained on Kent Island. Through the winter, Calvert tried repeatedly to eject Claiborne, but with no success.
When Calvert explained the King’s commission to the Assembly, they worried that it would damage trade and harm the colony, but Calvert assured them that he would never allow a commission to be enforced which harmed the colony. The vessel seizure would only occur in Virginia, the King’s possession, and he supported a policy of free trade in Maryland. The Assembly declared that it would maintain such a policy, and Calvert personally sent a letter to Ingle declaring that Maryland had no qualms with Parliament and wanted to maintain free trade. And Thomas Copley, one of the Jesuit priests, wrote a similar message.
But, Claiborne also contacted Ingle, and told him about the King’s authorization of privateering against Parliamentary ships. And, though that commission was only for Virginia, simply allowing Calvert to participate, Claiborne suggested that he and Ingle join forces for a “Man of War cruise” to Maryland. And if Ingle participated, Claiborne offered him a sixth of any plunder they got.
Ingle agreed, and in February of 1645, they sailed to Maryland.
Ingle arrived there on the 24th. When he came across a Dutch ship trading with the English, Ingle raised his white flag and approached. Then he ordered the Dutch captain, in the name of King and Parliament, to come aboard his ship, to explain what he was doing in Maryland, and the man obeyed. After he explained the trading purpose of his trip, though, Ingle refused to allow him or the four Englishmen who had accompanied him to leave the Reformation. Then he fired four guns at the Dutch ship, and took some of his men to board it before the Dutch could organize and resist. No one did resist until he tried to enter the cabin, and found the doors locked. So, he called for axes, but on hearing that, the men opened the door.
Inside, they found a couple of Englishmen, one of whom was Giles Brent. They seized him, put him under armed guard on the Reformation, and then Ingle put one of his own mates in command of the Dutch ship. They ran across another London-based Parliamentary vessel, but though Ingle assumed the ship would join his fleet, it left to return to England. But, with two ships, and a combined 23 cannons between them, Ingle sailed to St. Mary’s City.
And there, Ingle and Claiborne continued their rebellion, ushering in a period of Maryland history known as the Plundering Time. And next week, we’ll continue that story.