out of territory that the Virginians believed to be their own. When Charles published the Charter it proclaimed Cecilius Calvert, Baltimore’s son and heir, to be a person who possessed ‘laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith’.
The trials and tribulations of dissenters proposing to settle in New England were to be famously overcome and in a way that demonstrated that the days of the royal Charter were numbered. America had not yet sent out a cry to be given England’s huddled masses, and dissenting illegal and penniless exiles were not obvious shooins for one of the parcels of land, called hundreds, which the Virginia Company was trying to sell. Yet, few other pre-formed communities showed willing to travel across the Atlantic to an uncertain future, and even King James indicated that, although he would not approve, neither would he obstruct the passage of Puritans to the new world.
Thus, after much turmoil, misunderstanding and/or double-crossing, the Mayflower passengers pioneered the passage of people of faith. They did so as part of a new London-based joint-stock company, the indenturing terms of which they were still arguing over as they sailed. Yet, having managed to depart from Plymouth, charterless, on the day of the first disembarkation at Provincetown, Cape Cod, they produced a document, far shorter and much more useful than any Charter, which would reform not only the whole manner under which such ventures would be undertaken in future, but the way that incoming communities would regard themselves – less servility more self-worth. The Mayflower Compact must surely rate as the shortest revolutionary document ever scribed. Not that it appears, at first reading, to deserve that accolade, but what it introduced into the settlements for the first time was the concept of ‘mutuality’ and local democracy. Gone is the governing structure imposed from abroad, relying on the presence of ‘gentlemen’; gone is the desire to grub up the earth for gold or to seek for ways to Cathay; gone is the overarching requirement to create wealth for absentee investors; gone, in a word, is greed.
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.
The very brevity and simplicity of the Compact make it a truly American text. The English Court was just not capable of such incisiveness: its Charters rolled on for page after page, often repeating the same lists and phrases. The Compact, in its entirety, was shorter than the part-paragraph of the third Virginia Charter quoted above, covering just the one topic of defaulting payments. On 11 November 1620, off Cape Cod, American public prose spoke its first words and what this infant Hercules chose to say was short, precise and clearly understandable. It was to remain so. The Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and many more seminal documents are, in their clarity and pithiness, descendants of the style adopted in the Compact. And, like the Charters it superseded, the Compact had a dual role, for the fact that all the settlers signed it ensured it would be nailed to the door of democracy through which, eventually, all who entered the new world would pass.
Down in Virginia change was also afoot. In April 1619 Sir George Yeardley, the new Governor arrived under instruction to reform its dysfunctional governance. He started by abolishing the ghastly ‘Laws Divine, Moral and Martial’ and in their place established democracy, or almost. London retained control by appointing the six members of the Council of Estate but below this was established an Assembly whose twenty-two members were to be elected, two from each of the eleven settlements that lay along the James River. ‘Two from each’ – a form of representative government which exists in America to this day.
A mixture of fantasy (the mermaids) and reality (the Amerindian dwellings) are shown in this depiction of Walter Ralegh’s mythical welcome to the new world. Both fact and fiction needed to be employed to convince would-be settlers to emigrate; neither was a powerful enough persuasion on its own. (National Maritime Museum)
Thus in the space of one year a youthful, but differing, form of democracy was introduced into both halves of English America. However, like twins separated at birth by their original Charter into ‘two several Colonies and Companies’, Virginia and New England were to adopt different and divergent outlooks on life so that, like characters from the Bible, which they both held in high regard, they would commit matricide and fratricide until, war weary, they came together ‘one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all’.
There was one more step needed before the weight of the Charters could be lifted off the colonists’ backs, and this came about when it was agreed that the Massachusetts Bay settlement should be self-administered, which removed the need to meet the unrealistic expectations for a return on capital held by English-based shareholders.
The great difference between the founding Charters and their new world successors was not the belief in God, the ideal of liberty and the concept of justice, not even the pursuit of happiness, but that settlers could choose what enterprise to pursue and that, taxes to one side, the wealth which they gleaned from their labours would be theirs to retain within the boundaries of the land which they now considered to be their own. However, after over a century of deployment, those arriving in the new world would still have to conquer before they enjoyed their land in comfort.
In England, King James had lived up to his sobriquet of being ‘the wisest fool in Christendom’. Sandwiched between the fame of his predecessor, Elizabeth, and the fate of his successor, Charles I, this monarch, with his unhygienic personal habits and strange vices, has not been accorded the accolades deserved by the man who established the British Empire and had commanded the Authorized Version of the Bible to be translated and distributed. His wisdom is very apparent, even within the extremely verbose American Charters, for most of the near-fatal errors that affected the colonies were introduced by the Companies and not the King. The peculiar method of appointing and electing the original Council of Virginia, the emphasis on seeking for gold, the time spent in looking for a passage to the Pacific, the coronation of Powhatan, the demand for goods – all stemmed from the investors’ greed and not the King’s grant. In one thing only was James unhelpful, and that was in his objection to the ‘noxious weed’, tobacco, the production of which saved Virginia. Yet, even here, history might uphold the wisdom of the King: tobacco was to kill more of his successors’ subjects than ever did the Amerindians.
For as long as he felt able so to do, James indulged the Virginia Company and its investors, even altering their Charter: to impose better government; to provide more opportunities for settlers; to pursue bad debts; to include Bermuda, and, through its lottery, provide additional ways of raising money. In return he had seen nothing but bad management, bankruptcy and great loss of life. When the latter made headline news with the report of the massacre of 1622, the King was minded no longer to reform but to revoke. Following his reading of Nathaniel Butler’s exposé of Virginia at the time of the massacre, the critical views of which were independently supported by advisors whom he trusted, the King ordered, in May 1623, a Crown Commission to be established to investigate the Company’s affairs. There could only be one result, and on 24 May 1624 the Virginia Company’s Charter was revoked.
