Virginia 1619

 

The essays in ‘Virginia 1619’ and the 2nd Earl of Warwick

Robert Rich was born in 1587 or 1588 and was the eldest son of the 3rd Lord Rich and his wife, Penelope, the sister of the 2nd Earl of Essex. Following King James VI of Scotland’s accession to the English throne in 1603, he became one of the Knights of the Order of the Bath in July of that year and, in August, 1618, when his father purchased the title to the Earldom of Warwick, the titular Lord Rich. When his father died in March, 1619, he succeeded to his title as the 2nd Earl of Warwick.i For reasons that are not entirely clear the authors of this volume of essays refer to him as “Warwick” at dates ranging from 1614 to 1618.ii

His colonial aims in Virginia and Bermuda are described in a number of critical ways. In Virginia, his purposes were allegedly those of plunder, of exploiting the colony’s stock of cattle, lands and servants, of aiming to establish a ‘manorial’ structure comparable to that in Bermuda, and of using the English settlement there as a base for attacking Spanish vessels carrying precious metals and slaves.iii In pursuing these aims he had the help of his ally, Samuel Argall, the Deputy and then acting Governor of Virginia between 1617 and April, 1619.iv Warwick was, moreover, one of a group of aristocratic investors in the Virginia Company of London allied to a merchant faction led by its chief officer, the great London merchant, Sir Thomas Smith.v Much the same indictment was offered about his role in Bermuda which he regarded as a base to be developed for anti-Spanish privateering by its Governor and ally, Nathaniel Butler, from his arrival there in October, 1619.vi As a Protestant zealot, he was regardless of the potential diplomatic repercussions for England’s relations with the Iberian Habsburg regime. All in all, Warwick was no more than a bellicose Puritan and and unscrupulous grandee.vii

This charge sheet is, however, difficult to sustain. There is, for example, no surviving evidence to support the claim that ‘Warwick’ envisaged plundering the colony of Virginia. Nor is there any material to suggest that he aimed to exploit the settlement’s stock of cattle, lands and servants. Since there was never any attempt to establish a ‘manorial’ structure in Bermuda the accusation that he tried to emulate this process in Virginia is unfounded. No documents were cited to certify these assertions. As for the creation of a privateering enterprise located there the evidence is again largely lacking. Only one of the vessels in which ‘Warwick’ and Argall were partners – the Treasurer – came to Virginia in 1618 and, again, briefly in August, 1619.viii Two visits by one ship hardly sustain this argument. The one thing Warwick was not in those years was a member of a group allied to a merchant faction led by Sir Thomas Smith. Nathaniel Butler’s Historye of the Bermudaes gives chapter and verse for the Rich family’s involvement in the arrangements for Smith’s removal from the post of Treasurer of the Virginia Company of London in April, 1619.ix

The comments made on Warwick’s role in Bermuda are equally fragile. No manors were ever created there. There were no manorial bailiffs or stewards, no freeholders or copyholders, no entry fines or heriots. It is true that privateers had called there before Butler arrived as Governor and that vessels carrying letters of marque did so later. But there is no evidence to support the contention that Warwick had advised or instructed him to convert Bermuda into an anti-Spanish raiding base. There was, in fact, no privateering fleet operating in the Caribbean on the behalf of this peer or his man-of-affairs in the late-1610s or early-1620s. The implications arising from attacks on Spanish or Portuguese vessels were clearly understood and expressed by Sir Nathaniel Rich when he penned his defence of the Earl of Warwick for submission to the Privy Council in 1620.x It was only in April, 1626 when anti-Spanish hostilities had begun that Sir Nathaniel brought forward in the House of Commons proposals for creating a West India Company with a fleet of 200 vessels to be stationed in Bermuda’s harbours: they were to be armed ships capable to intercepting the Spanish plate fleet rather than privateers.xi

This catalogue of factual errors probably derives from the charges brought against Samuel Argall before and after his departure from Virginia, charges made principally by Sir Edwin Sandys and his allies in the Virginia and Somers Island companies. The heroic status accorded to the latter in their own writings and in more recent historiography is highly dubious. There is, moreover, very little surviving evidence on the Rich family’s dealings with Argall or Butler before 1619. Interestingly enough, these accusations never brought any kind of retribution: Warwick and Sir Nathaniel Rich, Argall and Butler lived to see their enemies defeated in the struggle for control of the Virginia Company and, indeed, in Bermuda. The assumption that the accusations made against these men were true in the absence of supporting evidence is not a legitimate procedure.

iFor a recent account of the 2nd Earl of Warwick’s life and career, see Andrew Thrush, ed., The House of Lords 1604-1629 (Cambridge University Press, 2021), Volume III, Pp.470-493.

iiVirginia 1619. Slavery and Freedom in the Making of English America. Ed. By Paul Musselwhite, Peter C.Mancall and James Horn. (University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill, 2019) References to its contents below are made in the form, e.g., “ibid., p.72”.

iiiIbid., Pp.7, 10,11, 15,18, 174, 176, 189 n.3.

ivIbid., P.160.

vIbid., P.50.

vi Ibid., Pp.112, 122.

vii Ibid., Pp.18,188.

viiiThe Records of the Virginia Company of London, ed. by S.M.Kingsbury (Washington D.C., USA. Government Printing Office. 1933), Volume III, Pp.219-220, 251, 418-423. No one has yet suggested that the arrival of a single privateer owned by the Earl of Warwick in 1643 indicated his aim of establishing a privateering base there. Engel Sluiter’s claim in 1997 that the San Juan de Bautista had almost certainly been attacked by the Treasurer and the White Lion was an assertion lacking specific support: it was an hypothesis and should have been advanced as such.

ix[Nathaniel Butler] The Historye of the Bermudaes or Summer Islands. Ed. By J.H.Lefroy. (Hakluyt Society. London, 1892), Pp.128-132.

xSee The Rich Papers: Letters from bermuda 1615-1646. Ed. By Vernon A.Ives (University of Toronto Press. Toronto, 1984), Pp.140-146.

xi Cambridgeshire Record Office (Huntingdon) dd M32/9/6. Cf. William B.Bidwell and Maija Jansson, ed.,

Proceedings in Parliament 1626 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), Volume II, P.441.