The rise in Virginia's population from 1618 to April, 1619 and the implications for the 'public stores' of cattle and corn
Migration
to Virginia in 1618-1619
The instructions given by the Virginia Company in November,
1618 to George Yeardley, its newly chosen prospective Governor of its
transatlantic colony, survive in more than one version. The first formal set
can be found in Volume 3 of the company’s records edited by Susan Myra
Kingsbury and published in 1933.[1]
The second related set of instructions for the restoration of the company’s
store of cattle and corn is located in the Ferrar Papers held in Magdalene
College, Cambridge and much more recently transcribed by David Ransome.[2]
They are not identical but they do share common characteristics.
That edited by Kingsbury begins with the proposition that
“our trust being that under the Government of you Captain Yeardly with the
advice and assistance of the said Council of State [to be established in
Virginia] such public provisions of Corn and Cattle will again be raised as may
draw on those Multitudes who in great Abundance from diverse parts of the Realm
were preparing to remove thither if by the late decay of the said public Store
their hopes had not been made frustrate and their minds thereby clene
discouraged.”[3]
This connection between the decay of the public store blamed
on the acting Governor in Virginia, Samuel Argall, and the slackening of
emigration to the colony was made even more explicit in the document in the
Ferrar Papers. Yeardley was instructed to investigate Argall’s activities and
then “for=asmuch as the publique and notorious fame of his wasting of the wholl
store of the Comon provisions of Corn and Catle belonging to the said Colonye
and Companye; and of converting the same wholly to his private and unlawfull
lucre, hath wrought here that grievous and miserable effect, as to dishearten
and keep at home many hundreds of good people, who out of divers parts of this
Realme were providing to remove to Virg wth their wives and
famelyes; whereby that Plantation was in a prosperous coorse of growing to a
very great height in strength and multitude in a very short time, to the great
honore of the Kings Matye, and benefit of this his
Realme: Whereas contrarywise by the destroying of the said publique store (by wch
the Loan of some good proportion whereof granted in ore Coorts, the
particular Plantations remooving thither were at their first coming to have
been relieved) the former feares and feares of hunger and starving are renued
and revived in the mynds and mouthes of all men to the utter disgrace and
ouerthrowe of the wholl Plantation, and of all ore former charges,
unless by very extraordinarye and dexteritye some speedy coorse be taken for
the restoring and setting up of the said publique store and provisions, as
farr forth as wthout breach of Justice may be effected:”[4]
These charges against Argall made by Sir Edwin Sandys and his
supporters have figured prominently in the historiography of Virginia from that
day to the present. There is, however, no extant evidence currently available
to corroborate this indictment against Argall over his alleged misappropriation
of the public store of lands and provisions in the colony. No further details
were given or sources provided even at the height of the struggle for control
of the Virginia Company in the period from 1622 to 1624. Some material does,
however, survive regarding the population of the colony against which the
claims of Sandys and his allies on the inhibiting effects of Argall’s actions
on migration to Virginia can be checked.
John Rolfe, for example, in his A True Relation of the
state of the colony in May, 1616 estimated that there were 351 English people
in Virginia.[5]
Sir Edwin Sandys later claimed in May, 1620 that there were about 400 colonists
there in April, 1618. More interestingly still, Sandys told the Virginia
Company’s annual Quarter Court on 17 May, 1620 that “att the cominge away of
Captain Argoll at Easter 1619 there were Persons in the Colony neere – 1000”,[6]
an estimate endorsed by his critic, Alderman Robert Johnson, early, perhaps, in
1623.[7]
Other, slightly later, estimates put the population at the time of Argall’s
departure in April, 1619 in a range between c.800 and c.1200-1300 people.[8]
It looks, prima facie, as though the number of people from England (and Wales?)
migrating to Virginia and resident there had grown significantly in the preceding
twelve months or so. This point, if sound, calls into question the validity of
the claims made in the instructions to Yeardley given in November, 1618.
Fortunately, there is a little more information admittedly
from a partisan source on the ships and people crossing the Atlantic in this
period. Argall recalled in 1623 that the following vessels had brought to
Virginia:
The Gift of God 250
The William and Thomas 150 (both in 1618)
and, in 1619, before his departure
The George 100
Mr Lawne’s ship 100
The Sampson 50
The Edwin 30
John Pountis’s ship 50
The Diana 80
making a total of 710 migrants.[9]
Sir Edwin Sandys and John Ferrar, two of the adventurers involved in the private
plantation of Smith’s Hundred, had been planning to send 35 men there in May,
1618 undeterred, so it appears, by the decay of the public store and its
provisions.
Given these figures, it is difficult to accept that migration
to Virginia had been inhibited for the reasons indicated in the instructions
given to Yeardley in November, 1618. If such claims were untrue, why were they
made? The most likely explanation is that they were part of the polemical
attack launched by Sandys and his supporters on the Treasurer of the Virginia
Company of London, Sir Thomas Smith and his allies then in charge of the
company and wer designed to appeal to the small investors attending the
company’s Courts. These allegations also indicted Samuel Argall, an ally of
Lord Rich, as the principal malefactor in the colony’s affairs. Attacks like
these and on Smith’s accounts as Treasurer were part of Sandys’s stock in trade
inside and outside the House of Commons. In this case, it is doubtful whether his
and his allies’ claims were tenable.
[1] The
Records of the Virginia Company of London, edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury.
(Washington, USA) Volume 3, Pp.98-109. The quotation can be found on P.
[2]
Ferrar Papers 91.
[3] VCR,
Volume 3, p.98.
[4] Ferrar
Papers 91.
[5]
See, for example, the copy of this tract formerly in Public Record Office
30/15/208. It was dedicated to Sir Robert Rich who became Lord Rich in August,
1618 when his father purchased the title of Earl of Warwick and 2nd
Earl of Warwick on his father’s death in March, 1619.
[6] The
Records of the Virginia Company of London, edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury
(Washington, USA. 1906) Volume 1, p.350. Cf. ibid., p.309.
[7] The
Records of the Virginia Company of London, edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury
(Washington, USA. 1936), P.4
[8] Ibid.,
Pp.130, 133, 159, 183, 215, 520.
[9]
The Records of the Virginia Company of London, edited by Susan Myra Kingsbury
(Washington, USA. 1936) Volume 4, Pp.94-95.
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