Markets had to be visited to buy some items, while itinerants offered both extra labour when required, and additional skills when desired. Surplus? There was little or none and yet, from Virginia, such a village was meant to reward thousands!
THE CONVERSION OF SOULS
Queen Elizabeth famously stated that, as far as religion was concerned, she did not wish to have a window into men’s souls. She may have well included the ‘heathen’ in this rubric because, despite the emphasis that both Richard Hakluyts placed on the idea that ‘this western discovery will be greatly for the enlargement of the gospel’, such an aim did not feature in her Charters. It was present in those awarded by King James but the emphasis varied over time. Thus in the first Charter of Virginia of 1606, paragraph three stated:
We, greatly commending and graciously accepting of, their desire for the furtherance of such noble work, which may through the providence of Almighty God, glorify his Divine Majesty, in propagating the Christian Religion to such people that live in darkness and miserable ignorance of the knowledge and worship of God, and may in time civilize, the infidels and savages, living in those parts, to live in settled and quiet government . . .
In the lengthy and businesslike Charter of 1609, this requirement was moved to the very end, where it set down: ‘Lastly, because the principal effect which we always desire or expect of this action is the conversion and reduction of the native people to the worship of God and the Christianity . . . we should be loathe that any person should be permitted to pass that we suspected to affect the superstitions of the Church of Rome . . .’
Of the two aims it was probably the latter to which the King held most dear. Having managed to wind two threads together, James did likewise in the 1620 Charter of New England, in which he linked the abandonment of the land by the native population (in fact due to the ravages of imported disease) to the need for their conversion:
those large and bountiful regions, deserted by their natural inhabitants, should be possessed and enjoyed by such of our subjects and people who . . . are directed hither . . . that we may boldly go to the settling of so hopeful a work which will lead to the reduction and conversion of such savages as remain wandering in desolation and distress, to civilization.
By the time that Charles I awarded a royal patent to the Massachusetts Bay Company, in 1629, the proselytizing mission had been amended. No longer was there to be a mission of conversion but the guiding text, at least within the Charter, seems to have been Matthew 5:16. ‘Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven.’ This was transliterated into the Charter in the form: ‘whereby our people inhabiting there, may be so religiously, peaceably, and civilly governed, as their good life and orderly conversation, may win and encourage the natives to the knowledge and obedience of the one true God and saviour of Mankind and the Christian faith . . .’
This was the Company whose very seal depicted a naked savage imploring, in the words of Saint Paul’s Macedonian, ‘Come over and Help us.’ The Christians who answered that call came over and helped themselves, aided by the grants graciously bestowed upon them by their sovereign. What the ‘natives of the country’ received were bullets rather than Bibles.
The Virginia Company made sure that, as far as its public face was concerned, it behaved in a way appropriate to the royal wishes and so it was careful to issue with its propaganda an argument to persuade the morally squeamish that the settlements could only improve the lot of the natives from whom no land would be taken unfairly. To this end it commissioned the Reverend Robert Gray to write a book entitled A Good Speed to Virginia, which was published on 28 April 1609, just a month before the Charter was issued, and which assured its readers that, although:
The report goeth, that in Virginia the people are savage and incredibly rude, they worship the devil, offer their young children in sacrifice unto him, wander up and down like beasts, and in manners and conditions, differ very little from beasts, having no Art, nor science, nor trade, to employ themselves, or give themselves unto, yet by nature loving and, gentle, and desirous to embrace a better condition. Oh how happy were that man which could reduce this people from brutishness, to civility, to religion, to Christianity, to the saving of their souls: happy is that man and blest of God, whom God hath endued, either with means or will to attempt this business, but far be it from the nature of the English, to exercise any bloody cruelty amongst these people: far be it from the hearts of the English, to give them occasion, that the holy name of God, should be dishonoured among the Infidels, or that in the plantation of that continent, they should give any cause to the world, to say that they sought the wealth of that country above or before the glory of God, and the propagation of his kingdom.
Massachusetts Bay Company seal. The apotheosis of hypocrisy: the Indian’s plaintive call for help was a travesty of the treatment that they were to receive.
Serendipitous geology led the Spanish to find gold where the landed in the new world. The English refused to believe that they too would not discover similar wealth and chose to ignore the evidence of its absence in the ores with which their ships’ holds were filled. (National Maritime Museum)
Yet, hidden from the public view, the Virginia Company, in 1609, informed the temporary Governor, Sir Thomas Gates, that his four priorities were:
1. To discover either a route to the Pacific or gold mines.
2. To establish trade with distant ports.
3. To exact tribute [i.e. forced payment in goods by the natives].
4. To establish local exporting industries such as glass-making.
The first of these remained the enervating chimera that John Smith railed against Christopher Newport for investing so much impractical energy. Newport had not only tried to portage a great boat over the James Falls at modern Richmond but had ordered the settlers to stop work on building houses and planting crops so that everyone might fossick for gold. ‘There was no talk, no hope, no work but dig gold, wash gold, refine gold, load gold,’ wrote Anas Todkill, while Smith himself in a memorable phrase spoke of ‘Freighting a drunken ship with gilded dirt’. As with Frobisher’s efforts before, the investors chose to ignore Newport’s assayed failure and continued to press for the ground to be opened up to yield its non-existent riches. Acting as an entrepôt was also an impractical aim as long as Spain retained its adamantine opposition to any English settlement in the Americas.
Examples of the ores brought back by Frobisher erroneously thought to contain gold. (National Maritime Museum)
The third priority represented a major geopolitical move. When he had returned to Virginia in 1608, Christopher Newport carried out the Company’s instructions by forcing a crown upon Powhatan’s head and presenting him with a double bed by way of acknowledging his regal status, while Powhatan confirmed his view of his position by stating that, ‘If your king has sent me presents, I also am a king, and this is my land,’ although his return gift of a second-hand pair of worn-out moccasins and a cloak might have just implied what the local ruler thought of this imposed relationship. Now the Company wanted to dispense with and dispel such hypocritical niceties: Powhatan was to be taken captive and forced to pay tribute while lesser chiefs would be forced to acknowledge King James’s overlordship. This was conquest in the Norman style, with each tribe being required to provide corn at every harvest and to labour weekly for the English. Feudalism, dying out
