Virginia's Boroughs before and after 1619
Virginia’s boroughs before and after 1619
New material, deeper research and novel interpretations of
the past inevitably alter the perspectives of historians and their readers. A
good example of this can be found in the work of Paul Musselwhite on the
establishment of urban corporations in the embryonic English colony of Virginia
in the early seventeenth century. He has argued in his Ph.D. thesis, in a
subsequent book deriving from that thesis and in an essay that the reforms
adopted by the Virginia Company of London in the autumn of 1618 envisaged the
extension of Sir Thomas Dale’s 1614 model corporation of Bermuda City to the
three other major settlements of Jamestown, Henrico and Elizabeth City. The
primary goal was to strengthen such corporate institutions in order to control
private landholding and trade within local public communal bodies. This view
has subsequently been reflected in the work of other historians.
It is perfectly true that the wording of the instructions
given to the prospective Governor of the colony, Sir George Yeardley, in that
autumn appears to support this interpretation. Nonetheless, there is some
evidence which runs against this claim about the extension of corporations to
other towns or places in Virginia. In 1898, Alexander Brown published a
document issued on 28th March, 1619 by Samuel Argall, then acting
Governor of the colony, setting out the bounds and limits of Jamestown:
regrettably, Brown did not specify where he had found this source but it did
close with Argall granting permission “for the inhabitants of James-town to
plant as members of the corporation and parish of the same” within those bounds
and limits. The existence of a corporation at Jamestown is clearly implied. Furthermore,
in his report to the General Quarter Court of the Virginia Company held on 17th
November, 1619, Sir Edwin Sandys as Treasurer paid tribute to the work Dale had
done in earlier years in establishing public works in Virginia for the
company’s benefit before moving on to discuss how the instructions issued to
Yeardley had provided for the revival of the common lands of the company for
the support of its officers in Virginia, for the creation of a university there
and a college for the conversion of its indigenous inhabitants. The amount of
land granted for the first of these objectives was for “12000 Acres of Land to
be the Comon Land of the Companie; viztt three thowsand in each of
the ffower old Burroughes.” Sandys evidently believed that there had been four
such bodies in existence prior to the instructions given to Yeardley a year
ago.
This material suggests that, however insubstantial and minute
these boroughs might have been, they existed before Yeardley arrived in
Virginia just after Argall’s departure in April, 1619. Admittedly, apart from a
few references to Bermuda City in Argall’s surviving memoranda, it is not known
how they operated but this is also true for the period after Yeardley took up
his appointment. Either way, the claim that new boroughs were created on the
model of Bermuda City’s foundation in 1614 by means of the company’s
instructions in November, 1618 looks untenable.
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