to whose ‘Company of Cathay’ the canny Queen Elizabeth, refused to give her seal of approval having lost her original investment of £1,000 in Frobisher’s gold prospecting voyages. She was not to repeat that mistake. Henceforward she would always choose the cheapest option, passing off her parsimony as prudence. The publication of royal Charters would ensure that she, and succeeding monarchs, could claim a copyright without investing cash.
So, for a Crown that wished to control but not command, to create but not contribute, a concessionary awarding Charter leading to the creation of a colonial commonwealth was a very clever concept. Through the issue of such documents the monarch could claim rights and rewards without responsibilities, and authority without administration: an arrangement that demanded influence without commensurate investment. So England instilled at the start of its American adventure a system and a relationship whose final logical outcome would be a revolution proclaiming ‘no taxation without representation’. There was another advantage that the Charter system had for its investors – it created a closed market. This was the age of monopolies, the purchase of which guaranteed both the seller, the sovereign, and the selected purchaser a rich return for no investment. It was not until 1624 that Parliament, manned by men of property, felt able to challenge the Crown by declaring monopolies were contrary to the fundamental laws of the land. King Charles ignored their strictures. Thus the produce of America was perceived as being beneficial to existing monopolies, such as glass, soap and silk, as well as creating new ones such as tobacco, sassafras and beaver fur.
As the century developed, and as the concept of a commonwealth matured, successive rulers introduced their own ideas as to how best to manage their overseas infants. Thus Henry VII was content to let a foreign national work speculatively for England’s cause. Elizabeth, an admirer and user of favourites, felt her newfound lands were best when, in Donne’s words, they were ‘by one man manned’, which meant Walter Ralegh. James I, who liked not Ralegh and whose own intimate ‘sweethearts’, Somerset and Buckingham, were not interested in overseas, began by appointing committees over whom, as his confidence waxed and their capabilities waned, he exercised gradually more management until, in 1624, the Crown took direct control of Virginia while still awarding blocks of land to a coterie.
Whoever the beneficiary, the Charter process can be summed up along the lines proposed by Francis Jennings:
1. The Crown was petitioned to lay claim to territories previously outside its jurisdiction and over which it had no true legal claim.
2. The Crown authorized a person or organized group by charter to conquer the claimed territory and to exercise a monopoly over its trade.
3. The successful conqueror became the possessor and governor of the territory, subject to the terms of the charter and the continuing acknowledgement of the sovereign’s overlordship.
4. The charter holder was authorized to encourage settlement through the issues of land, mineral and fishing rights and to raise capital through the issue of shares, estates or lottery tickets to sponsors.
5. The Crown would be a beneficiary but not an investor.
If the state was going to risk little then it had, paradoxically, an interest in offering the grantee much for two very valid reasons. The first was that, having laid claim to these lands, the Crown wished to exclude any other state from either counter-claiming or muscling in on these new domains. The Charters were thus being used like balloons inserted flaccid through a small hole into a large vacuum and then blown up to fill all the space available, providing a thin but taut membrane which, if penetrated, would cause a loud explosion. No matter that the empty space was filled largely with air, it was the boundary rather than what it contained that was important. The second reason was that, by offering much, the Crown hoped that its gift would contain enough, albeit thinly spread, to produce a reasonable return. What the state never comprehended was just how vast America was and how great would be the resources necessary to tame it.
In 1496 Henry VII’s Charter implied that Cabot and his crew were capable of seizing and occupying a land which, by its very description, as having towns and cities, was settled by a civilized people. In response to the King’s horizon-stretching largesse, John Day reported to Spain that Cabot, after he landed in America, ‘Since he was with just a few people . . . did not dare advance inland beyond the shooting distance of a cross-bow’, which was hardly the action of a potential conquistador or even major explorer.
By the time Elizabeth was persuaded to award her first colonial Charters, the government concept of what such grants involved had matured. Thus the letters patent granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, his heirs and assignees in 1578 gave him very similar benefits to those awarded to Cabot, but added permission ‘to build and fortify’ and additional rights for those who came after ‘in a second voyage of conquest’. This document also introduced: a geographical boundary and a timeframe, stating that Sir Humphrey’s jurisdiction would cover those who ‘abide within two hundred leagues of any said place where the said Sir Humphrey . . . shall inhabit within six years next ensuing the date hereof’, and a legal control in requiring that the Secretary, Lord Treasurer and Privy Council be involved in the licensing of the resupply of any settlements. There is also a mention of the paying of duty and other taxes on any gold or silver ore that might be discovered, an acknowledgement of the success the Spanish had had in discovering such wealth, ignoring Frobisher’s constant failure to do likewise.
The geographical boundaries and timeframe for establishing a settlement were obviously felt to be sound, for they remained in the Charter that Elizabeth granted to Sir Walter Ralegh in 1584, which was a redrafting of the Gilbert original, so that it could be rescued from the watery grave that was the unlucky Gilbert’s lot and presented to a man who was both a relative of Gilbert and the Queen’s current favourite. So beloved was he that, unlike either Cabot or Gilbert, his half-brother, Ralegh was not allowed to travel across the ocean in person. This seemingly capricious decision by the enamoured Queen established yet another pattern in the Charters, whereby the investors stayed in England and encouraged others to risk their all on their behalf. This would necessitate the appointment of a leader or governor, who might hold neither the rank nor the relationship with the sponsor to demand undisputed authority over those over whom they had been placed in command in these isolated, strange and dangerous lands. The fatal flaw thus soon emerged; where harmony was essential discord would develop.
Ralegh’s demesne was created to include the shoreline settlements stretching six hundred miles both north and south from the first township he intended to build called, modestly, the City of Ralegh. To encourage wealthy sponsors he offered, the second time around, county-size estates to all who backed his scheme, selling some 8.5 million acres of these in Virginia. Sir Philip Sidney acquired 3 million acres, giving him title to an estate that was as large as the combined area of Devon and Cornwall and half of Somerset. To give just two more comparisons: the National Trust in England and Wales, owns some 550,000 acres, while the Crown estates measure just 384,000 acres. Ralegh and his friends were rewarding themselves with empires hewn from other men’s lands by other men’s efforts. Neither were monopolies on the extractive industries neglected: Sir Thomas Gerard was promised two-fifths of the profit from all the gold, silver, pearl and precious stones extracted from the settlement, which gave him, as it turned out, two-fifths of nothing to increase his fortune. This proposed greedy land grab again illustrates that the English were planning, badly, an invasion of Virginia. Estates of the size being offered covered lands already occupied by native peoples; the English could only claim them as their own by seizing these peoples’ land and imposing their own land grant laws above that of the traditional authority.
For Ralegh, the requirement to have established settlements within six years of his Charter being granted must have seemed at the time just a legal technicality until, after Lane’s colony withdrew in 1586 and White’s was finally reported missing in 1590, it looked as if its term was ending. Desperate to retain his generous award, Ralegh needed to prove both that he had settlers alive in America and that he would confront any who
