TERRITORY AMONG THE PATENTEES PRIETORS' NAMES 1 PLAN OF DIVISION - PROROYAL SANCTION OBTAINED - - LORD SHEFFEILD'S DIFFERENCES having arisen between the councils of Northern and Southern Virginia, Sir Ferdinando turned the royal dissatisfaction to the service of the North. Irritated against the London Company, by their election of the Earl of Southampton, as their treasurer, in bold defiance of his will, the jealous monarch was not unwilling to promote a rival to the refractory company, and readily 1 See "order in council on the difference between the Northern and Southern Plantations," June 18, 1621, and another, Sept. 28, 1621,"relative to encroachments on the grant to the New England Company," both published in "Documents" of "Colonial History of New York," 1853, vol. iii. pp. 4, 5. 2 Nor was his revenge- steadily pursued under the forms of law - consummated until full four years had passed. One of Sir Thomas Wentworth's newsmongers, Mr. Wendesford, wrote to him on the 17th of June, 1624, "Yesterday Virginia patent was overthrown at King's Bench, so an end of that plantation's saving. Methinks I imagine the fraternity have before this had a meeting of comfort and consolation, stirring up each other to bear it courageously, and Sir Edwin Sandys in the midst of them, sadly sighing forth, Oh! the burden of Virginia!" Strafford Papers, i. 21. Nicholas Ferrar caused a certified copy of the records to be made; Stith says that they hand down "the full conviction of King James' arbitrary and oppressive proceedings against the company, and of his having acted with such mean arts and frauds, and such little tricking, as highly misbecoming majesty." Hist. of Virginia, vi. vii. The secret of James' hostility was the Spanish jealousy and intrigue, through Gondomar, the Spanish ambassador, whose influence over the king was almost absolute. This appears in Peckard's Life of Ferrar, Cambridge, 1791, pp. 85, 89-168, a work indispensable to the history of that company. Read also note 1, p. 101, vol. i. Holmes' Annals. THE PLYMOUTH COUNCIL, ITS OBJECTS, ETC. 9 listened to the suggestions of his "trusty and well-beloved servant, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Knight, Captain of our Fort and Island by Plymouth, and by certain, the principal knights and gentlemen adventurers" of the second colony, who had lost much "in seeking to lay the foundation of a hopeful plantation,"1 and had also taken actual possession of that territory "to his name and use as Sovereign Lord thereof." They assured him that there were no subjects of any other Christian power having any title or possession in America, between the fortieth and forty-eighth degrees of north latitude, and that the country had been recently nearly depopulated by a wonderful plague. "Thankful for the divine favor of this prior discovery and occupancy," and for an opportunity for the "conversion of such savages as remained wandering in desolation and distress, to civil society and Christian religion,” and probably not less grateful for a plea for enlarging his dominions, his majesty granted the absolute property of that vast territory, extending from sea to sea, to Gorges and his associates, whom he incorporated under the title of "The council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering, and governing of New England, in America.” The order for the patent was issued by the king in council, on the third of November, in the year 1620. It was passed under the great seal, on the third of July following, 1 The old term for Colonies. Bacon's Essays, "Of Plantations,” xxxiii. In the "Tempest," 1623, act 2, scene i., " Plantations of this Isle ; " so used by Milton, about 1650. Prose works, Bohn's edition, 341, 344, 345, 347, and in the state papers generally. 2 This was generally assigned in the early charters, as a prominent design; it was in the Virginia charter. The enemies of the Puritans often reproach them with delay and indifference in the work of civilizing and Christianizing the Indians, but if this were just, which it is not, the charge comes with an ill grace from those who prefer it. What colony out of New England can show an Eliot, a Mayhew, a Brainard, or a Kirkland? 10 VIRGINIA COMPANY. 1 2 and was the only civil basis of all the subsequent patents and plantations which divided this country. This charter conferred the usual powers of corporations, and special authority to make laws and ordinances; to dispose of their lands; to appoint and remove governors and other officers of the plantations; to establish all manner of order, laws, and directions, instructions, forms, and ceremonies of government and magistracy, not contrary to the laws of England; to rule all inhabitants of the colony by such laws and ordinances, and, in cases of necessity, according to the good discretion of their governors and officers respectively, in capital, criminal, or civil cases, as near as conveniently might be agreeably to the laws of England. The charter further gave extraordinary powers as in cases of rebellions and hostile invasions. By this movement the infatuated and unwary king opened a new source of complaints against himself, for no sooner had the patent been executed, than the members. of the London, or Virginian Company, took various exceptions to it,3 and their objections were willingly entertained by the patriots in both Houses of Parliament, between whom and the king were gathering the controversies, which were bequeathed by James to his son Charles a fatal legacy. It is remarkable that, under this charter, the creature of absolutism, and intended as one of its supports, grew up those colonies which were the very nurseries of re 1 Except De Mont's, from Henry IV. of France, 1603; Haliburton's Nova Scotia, i. 11-29; Hazard's Hist. Coll. i. 45. 2 Belknap's Hist. of New Hampshire, ed. 1831, p. 3; Holmes' Annals, i. 164. 3 The Patent for New England was the first named in the list of "Publick Grievances of the Kingdome." See also the "Declaration" in Mass. Hist. Coll. xix.; Purchas' Pilgrims, iv. 1827-1832; Hazard, i. 390. MONOPOLIES. OPPOSED BY PARLIAMENT. 11 ligious and civil liberty, affording refuge and security even to the regicides.1 2 3 While the injustice of the king toward the Virginia Company gained for it the popular favor, his rigid enforcement of the most odious exclusive privileges of the New England Company, was to the latter a prolific source of legal and parliamentary difficulties and popular dislike, seriously embarrassed its proceedings at home, impaired its authority in the colonies, and ultimately led to the surrender of the royal patent, in the year 1635.* Among the reasons assigned by the council for the resignation of their charter, they said that, "At home they were assaulted with sharp litigious questions before the Lords of his Majesty's most Honorable Privy Council, by the Virginian Company, and that in the very infancy thereof, who finding they could not prevail in that way, they failed not to prosecute the same in the House of Parliament, pretending our said Plantation to be a grievance to the Commonwealth, and for such presented it unto King James of blessed memory, who, although his justice and royal nature could [not] so relish it, but 1 President Stiles' History of Whalley, Goffe and Dixwell. Hartford, 1794. 2 Even the king's favorite Dean of St. Paul's, Dr. John Donne, preached a sermon before “the Honorable Company of the Virginian Plantation, 13th November, 1622," commending it to the public favor. This discourse is omitted in the folio collection of his sermons. 3 As, a monopoly of fishing and curing fish, or of cutting timber and wood for the use of the fishing vessels on the New England shores; but the Virginia Company was not less grasping in its claims; indeed their similar claims furnished an argument for the creation of the N. E. Company. The charter of the Northern Company recites that one of the reasons for its incorporation was the "differences between themselves, and those of the said first colony." I suppose this was a principal procuring cause of the enactment of the Statute of Monopolies, 21 James, 1623. Gorges' Brief Relation, pp. 11, 12, 14. It is a curious fact, that to exclude all intruders, the Massachusetts Company voted, July 28, 1629, to solicit the king to renew the proclamation of Nov. 6, 1622, enforcing the monopolies. 4 Commons' Journals, 1, 673, 688; Gorges' Brief Narration, chap. xvi. in Maine Hist. Coll. ii, 31, 32; Rymer's Foed. xvii. 416, 490. 12 CONFLICT OF GRANTS. DIVISION OF TERRITORY. was otherwise pleased to give his gracious encouragement, for prosecution thereof, yet such was the times, as the affections of the multitude were thereby disheartened." 1 These facts furnish some apology for the loose and immethodical transactions of the company, and, in a degree, for the confusion and conflict of their grants. This subject has been involved in deep obscurity. Dr. Belknap says, "That either from the jarring interests of the members, or their indistinct knowledge of the country, or their inattention to business, or some other cause which does not fully appear, their affairs were transacted in a confused manner from the beginning, and the grants which they made were so inaccurately described, and interfered so much with each other, as to occasion difficulties and controversies, some of which are not yet [1784] ended. As the collisions with the Virginia Company, the elements of political discord involved in the granting of this charter, and the direct attacks of the House of Commons, discouraged any considerable action of the council in their corporate capacity, they perhaps sought to avoid this by a division of the territory among the individual members, with all the incidental privileges requisite to the establishment and government of colonies. Though the charter created a corporation, one of its provisions seems to have contemplated, at the option of the patentees, a division of the territory "as well among Adventurers as Planters," reserving merely a general supervisory authority in the council. They were authorized from time to time, under their common seal, to distribute among themselves or others, the lands "by these presents 1 This important paper is in Hazard's Hist. Coll. i. 390. Compare it with the "Brief Relation," 1622, in Mass. Hist. Coll. xix. |