The Beginners of a Nation Part 10

[Sidenote: Advent of Puritanism.]

In the very years during which the Ferrars were most active on behalf of Virginia the earliest Puritan movement toward America set in. The attenuated mediaevalism of the Ferrars did not lack a certain refined beauty, but it was hardly suited to the rough work of hewing a road along which civilization might march into a savage wilderness. The Puritans, with their robust contempt for aesthetic considerations--making firewood of organs with delight, and feasting without scruple on the sheep of those whom they esteemed idolaters--were much the fitter to be champions against the American Canaanites.

ELUCIDATIONS.

[Sidenote: Note 1, page 74.]

Two of the chapter heads to Hakluyt's Westerne Planting, printed in 2d Maine Historical Collections, ii, sufficiently indicate the views prevailing at the time:

"V. That this voyadge will be a greate bridle to the Indies of the Kinge of Spaine, and a meane that wee may arreste at our pleasure for the s.p.a.ce of tenne weekes or three monethes every yere, one or two hundred saile of his subjectes s.h.i.+ppes at the fyss.h.i.+nge in Newfounde lande.

"VI. That the mischefe that the Indian threasure wroughte in time of Charles the late Emperor, father to the Spanishe Kinge, is to be had in consideration of the Queens moste excellent Majestie, least the contynuall comynge of the like threasure from thence to his sonne worke the unrecoverable annoye of this realme, wherof already wee have had very dangerous experience."

The heading of the first chapter should be added: "I. That this westerne discoverie will be greately for thinlargemente of the gospell of Christe whereunto the princes of the refourmed relligion are chefely bounde, amongst whome her Majestie ys princ.i.p.all."

It would be foreign to the purpose of the present work to tell the story of Spanish jealousy of Virginia, and of the diplomatic intrigues for the overthrow of the colony. See doc.u.ments in Mr. Alexander Brown's Genesis of the United States. One can not but regret that Mr.

Brown did not give also the original of his Spanish papers; no translation is adequate to the use of the historian.

[Sidenote: Note 2, page 78.]

This method was recommended to the colonists as late as 1753 in Pullein's Culture of Silk for the Use of the American Colonies, and it had probably long prevailed on the continent of Europe.

[Sidenote: Note 3, page 79.]

The authorities on the early efforts to raise silk, in addition to those cited in the text and the margin, are too numerous to find place here. The most valuable of all is, of course, the copy of the Records of the Virginia Company after April, 1619, in the Library of Congress, _pa.s.sim_. See, for example, under date of December 13, 1620, and June 11, 1621. See also A Declaration of Virginia, 1620, and Purchas, pp.

1777-1787, Hamor's True Discourse, Smith's General History, Book II, Anderson's Commerce under 1620, and various state papers abstracted by Sainsbury, with Sainsbury's preface to the first volume of his Calendar, and Hening, _pa.s.sim_. The reader is also referred to Mr.

Bruce's Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century, issued as these pages are pa.s.sing into the hands of the printer. The wildness of some of the proposals for the production of Virginia silk in the Commonwealth period is almost surpa.s.sed by other projects of the time. In Virginia Richly Valued, 1650, perfume was to be extracted from the muskrat, and the James River sturgeon were to be domesticated. Fishes may be "unwilded," says the author. Besides feeding silkworms, the Indians were to be used in pearl fisheries in Virginia waters. Wyckoff on Silk Manufacture, Tenth Census, says that experimental silkworms had been taken to Mexico by the Spaniards in 1531, without any permanent results.

[Sidenote: Note 4, page 82.]

Even in Elizabeth's time efforts had been made to procure naval stores without the intervention of foreign merchants. As early as 1583, Carlisle, who was son-in-law to Secretary Walsingham, had subscribed a thousand pounds toward an American colony, which it was urged would buy English woolens, take off idle and burdensome people, and, among other things, produce naval stores. In 1601 Ralegh had protested eloquently against the act to compel Englishmen to sow hemp. "Rather let every man use his ground to that which it is most fit for," he said. Edwards, Life of Ralegh, p. 272.

[Sidenote: Note 5, page 83.]

Why Germans were sent it is hard to say, as gla.s.s was made in England as early as 1557. Gla.s.s was produced in Virginia, according to Strachey, who says: "Although the country wants not Salsodiack enough to make gla.s.se of, and of which we have made some stoore in a goodly howse sett up for the same purpose, with all offices and furnases thereto belonging, a little without the island, where Jamestown now stands." History of Travaile into Virginnia Brittannia, p. 71. The house appears to have been standing and in operation in 1624. Calendar of Colonial Doc.u.ments, January 30, February 16, and number 20, pp. 38, 39.

[Sidenote: Note 6, page 83.]

Purchas, p. 1777, says that one hundred and fifty persons were sent over two years earlier to set up three iron works, but the statement seems hardly credible. In the midst of the misery following the ma.s.sacre of 1622, and notwithstanding the imminent probability of the overthrow of the company, which was already impoverished, some of the adventurers or shareholders sent nine men to Virginia to try a different method of making iron from the one that had previously been used. Letter of August 6, 1623, in Ma.n.u.script Book of Instructions in Library of Congress, fol. 120. Having "failed to effect" the making of iron "by those great wayes which we have formerly attempted," the undiscouraged visionaries "most gladly embraced this more facile project" of making iron "by bloom," but with a like result, of course.

[Sidenote: Note 7, page 84.]

The raising of tobacco in Virginia was one of the earliest projects entertained. "We can send ... tobacco after a yeare or two, five thousand pounds a yeare." Description of the Now-discovered river and Country of Virginia, with the Liklyhood of ensuing Ritches by England's Ayd and Industry, May 21, 1607. Public Record Office, printed in Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, iv, 59, 62. The paper is supposed to be from the pen of Captain Gabriel Archer.

[Sidenote: Note 8, page 85.]

In 1604 the king had, by a royal commission addressed to "our treasurer of England," arbitrarily raised the duty on tobacco from twopence a pound to six s.h.i.+llings tenpence. He was probably moved to make this surprising change by his antipathy to tobacco; but by increasing the profits of the farmers of customs and monopolists of tobacco, he no doubt contributed to that abandonment of Virginia to tobacco raising which seemed to him so lamentable. The use of Spanish tobacco in England was general before that from Virginia began to take its place. Barnabee Rich says, in 1614: "I have heard it tolde that now very lately there hath bin a cathologue taken of all those new erected houses that have set vppe that trade of selling tobacco in London, ande neare about London, and if a man may beleeue what is confidently reported, there are found to be vpward of 7000 houses that doth liue by that trade." He says such shops were "almost in euery lane and in euery by-corner round about London." The Honestie of this Age, p. 30.

[Sidenote: Note 9, page 86.]

The MS. records of the Virginia Company and the State papers relating to Virginia in the Public Record Office, London, are the most important authorities on the subjects treated in the text. On the commodities attempted at the outset, Ma.n.u.script Book of Instructions, Library of Congress, the first volume of Hening's Statutes, _pa.s.sim_, and Purchas, pp. 1777-1786, _pa.s.sim_. On the inferiority of the Indian tobacco, see Strachey, p. 121.

[Sidenote: Note 10, page 89.]

Peckard's Life of Ferrar supplies many of the particulars in this section. The Records of the Virginia Company and other original authorities do not sustain all of Peckard's statements. The author's view is evidently distorted by biographer's myopia. He often seems to depend on tradition, but in some pa.s.sages his touch is more sure, and he writes like a man who has doc.u.ments before him. Arthur Woodnoth's Short Collection of the Most Remarkable Pa.s.sages from the Originall to the Dissolution of the Virginia Company is of great value. It is a scarce tract, which I met first in the White-Kennett Library, in the rooms of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. It is also in the British Museum, Harvard College, and the Library of Congress. It is to be taken with discrimination, but the view of the inner workings of court intrigue as it affected Virginia is so fresh and detailed that it would be a pity to miss its information. It was printed in 1651. There is a brief sketch of the life of Sandys in Brown's Genesis of the United States, ii, 993.

[Sidenote: Note 11, page 90.]

Hakluyt's Discourse concerneing Westerne Planting, printed first in the Maine Historical Collections, second series, vol. ii, page 11.

"And this enterprise the princes of religion (amonge whome her Majestie ys princ.i.p.all) oughte the rather to take in hande because papists confirme themselves and drawe other to theire side shewinge that they are the true Catholicke churche because they have bene the onely converters of many millions of infidells. Yea, I myself have bene demanded of them how many infidells have bene by us converted."

BOOK II.

THE PURITAN MIGRATION.

CHAPTER THE FIRST.

_RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM._

I.

[Sidenote: Love of display in Elizabeth's time.]

[Sidenote: Note 1.]

[Sidenote: Machyn's Diary, 324, note.]

Not religious disputants only, but the world in general, exaggerated the importance of vestments and ceremonies in the reign of Elizabeth.

The love of formality and display that characterized the Renascence was then at its height. It was a time of pomps and royal progresses.

Great historic characters went about dressed like performers in a show. Some of the queen's gowns were adorned with jewels on every available inch of s.p.a.ce. These bespangled robes were draped over vast farthingales, which spread out like tables on which her arms might rest, and her appearance when thus attired has been compared to that of an Oriental idol. Her courtiers and statesmen were equally fond of dazzling the spectator. Ralegh wore a pendent jewel on his hat feather, and the value of the gems on his shoes was estimated at six thousand six hundred pieces of gold. The love of pomp was not confined to the court; every n.o.bleman and country gentleman kept his house filled with idle serving men, the sons of neighboring gentlemen or yeomen, whose use was to "grace the halls" of their patron by their attendance and to give dignity to his hospitality. High sheriffs and other officials performed their functions with thirty or forty men in livery at their heels, even borrowing the retainers of their friends to lend state to their office. Edward VI set out upon a progress in 1551 with a train of four thousand mounted men. These were n.o.blemen and gentlemen with their retainers. He was obliged to dismiss all but a hundred and fifty of this vast army of display lest it should "eat up the country." The gorgeous progresses of Elizabeth are too well known to need description. A painting of the time shows her to us in the act of making a friendly call on her cousin-german, Lord Hunsdon.