A Century Too Soon Part 3

SEEKING BETTER FORTUNE.

On peace and rest my mind was bent, And fool I was I married; But never honest man's intent As cursedly miscarried.

--BURNS.

In Virginia's colonial days, no man was better known than John Smith Stevens. His father was one of the original founders of Jamestown and, it was said, had felled the first tree to build the city. John Smith was his first born, and was named in honor of Captain John Smith, a personal friend.

John Smith Stevens was born about the year 1625, the same year that Governor Wyat defeated the Indians. He was four years of age when John Harvey became colonial governor in 1629, and a year later, 1630, Sir George Calvert came to Jamestown on his way to colonize Maryland under the charter of Lord Baltimore. He was old enough to remember the stormy days in the a.s.sembly, when, on the "28th of April, 1635, Sir John Harvey thrust out of his government, and Captain John West acts as Governer till the king's pleasure is known." He never knew exactly why Sir John Harvey was thrust out; but he heard some one say he was interfering with the liberties of the people.

He knew that the king replaced him, however. Then the people said that all Virginia was divided into eight _s.h.i.+res_: James City, Henrico, Charles City, Elizabeth City, Warwick River, Warrosquoyake, Charles River, and Accawmacke, and that a lieutenant was appointed over each to protect them against the Indians. John Stevens remembered when William Claybourne, the famous rebel of colonial Virginia, tried to urge the people, against the will of the king, to drive the colonists out of Maryland, which they claimed as a part of their domain.

Claybourne established a colony at Kent Island, from whence a burgess was sent. Leonard Calvert was governor of Maryland, and a misunderstanding arose between him and Claybourne on Kent Island.

Claybourne must go, for the island was part of Maryland, although the right of his lords.h.i.+p's patent was yet undetermined in England.

Claybourne resisted. He declared that he was on Virginia territory by the king's patent, and was the owner of Kent Island, and that he meant to stay there. He would also sail to and fro in his trading s.h.i.+p, the _Longtail_, to traffic with the Indians. If he were attacked he would defend himself. He soon had an opportunity to make good his boasts.

Leonard Calvert seized the _Longtail_, and Claybourne sent a swift pinnace with fourteen fighting men to recapture her. This was in the year 1634, when John Stevens was nine years of age; but the affair was the talk of the time, and consequently was indelibly stamped on his young mind. Two Maryland pinnaces went to meet Claybourne, and a desperate fight occurred on the Potomac River. A volley of musket-b.a.l.l.s was poured into Claybourne's pinnace, and three of his men fell dead.

Calvert captured the pinnace; but Claybourne escaped. He was driven from Kent Island and escaped to Virginia; but Sir John Harvey refused to surrender him, and John Stevens saw the rebel when he embarked for England, where he made a strong fight before the throne for Kent Island.

Although he seemed for a while about to triumph, the lords commissioners of plantations finally decided against his claims, thus dispelling the rosy dreams of Claybourne.

In 1642, there came to Virginia as governor of the colony Sir William Berkeley, then almost forty years of age, when John Stevens was only seventeen. Berkeley was a man of charming manners, proverbially polite, and he delighted the Virginians, who had a weakness for courtliness. He belonged to an ancient English family, and believed in monarchy as a devotee believes in his saint, "and he brought to the little capital at Jamestown all the graces, amenities, and well-bred ways which at that time were characteristic of the cavaliers. He was a cavalier of the cavaliers, taking the word to signify an adherent of monarchy and the established church," and thoroughly hated anything resembling republicanism. For his king and church, this smiling gentleman, with his easy and friendly air, was going to fight like a tiger or a ruffian.

Under his glove of velvet was a hand of iron, which would fall inexorably alike on the New England Puritans and the followers of Bacon.

With the courage of his convictions, he was ready to deal out banishment for the dissenters; shot and the halter for rebels. He lived on his estate of about a thousand acres at Greenspring, not far from Jamestown.

"Here he had plate, servants, carriages, seventy horses, fifteen hundred apple trees, besides apricots, peaches, pears, quinces and mellicottons.

When, in the stormy times, the poor cavaliers flocked to Virginia to find a place of refuge, he entertained them after a royal fas.h.i.+on in this Greenspring Manor house. As to the Virginians, they were always welcome, so that they did not belong to the independents, haters of the church and king."

From the very first, John Stevens did not like Governor Berkeley and in a short time learned that he was a tyrant. Berkeley issued his proclamation against the Puritan pastors, prohibiting their teaching or preaching publicly or privately.

John Smith Stevens partic.i.p.ated in the Indian war in 1644, and saw Opechancanough, at this time almost a hundred years of age, captured and brought to Jamestown, where he requested his captors to hold open his eyes, that he might see and upbraid Sir William Berkeley for making a public exhibition of him. A short hour afterward the aged chieftain was treacherously wounded by his guard.

In the year 1648, John Stevens married Dorothe Collier, the daughter of a clergyman of the church of England. This naturally united him to the cavalier or church party, while his mother, brother and sister were Puritans. Sometimes John thought he had the best wife living, at others he was almost persuaded that she was intolerable. She was a beautiful brunette, with great dark eyes which smiled when the sky was fair, but in which appeared the l.u.s.tre of a tigress when enraged. Love in its full strength and beauty seldom dwells in the heart of both husband and wife through all the vicissitudes of life. It was so in John's case. When the honeymoon waned and practical existence began, the wife became ambitious for a more showy manner of life and more pleasures than the husband could afford. He was prosperous; but his wife's extravagance, in which he indulged her at first, kept him poor. Poverty became a burden and marriage a mockery. He who had been insanely in love, and who was unable to live out of her presence, proved an indifferent husband before the honeymoon was over. Why? John had thought his wife an angel, and marriage had shattered his idol. His ideal woman had fallen so far below his expectations that disappointment drove him to indifference. His wife thought herself his superior, and John, to her, was more a convenience than a husband.

Gradually Dorothe grew indifferent toward her husband's mother and young sister, who idolized him, and though they bore her no thought of ill, she came to despise them. John's mother saw that her son's wife was ruining him by her extravagance, yet she dared not interpose as it would make the rupture complete. Dorothe was a haughty cavalier and despised all Puritans and, most of all, her husband's mother; but the cavaliers were in trouble. King Charles was tried, condemned and beheaded in 1649, and a protectorate (Oliver Cromwell) ruled over England a few months after the execution of the king. John Stevens' wife gave birth to a son who was named Robert for his wife's father.

Though England was a commonwealth, Virginia remained loyal to the wandering prince, who slept in oaks and had more adventures than any other man of his day. Berkeley, it is said, even invited him to come and rule over Virginia, a.s.suring him of his support; but Parliament took notice of the saucy colony and, in 1650, ordered a fleet to conquer it.

The fleet did not reach Jamestown until 1652, when, after a little fl.u.s.ter, Sir William Berkeley retired to Greenspring, and the government was turned over to the roundheads, who chose Richard Bennet, Esquire, to be governor of the colony for one year. On the day of Bennet's inauguration, John Steven's second child, a daughter, whom he named Rebecca, was born. These two links of love made his wife more dear to him. At times she was pleasant; but usually she studied to thwart his will. She was humbled with the cavaliers and hated the Puritans. Ann Linkon, an old woman given to gossiping, incurred the displeasure of Dorothe Stevens, because she gossiped about her extravagance. She had her arrested, condemned and ducked as we have seen. There was no open rupture between Dorothe and her husband's relatives. She still greeted them with half-smiles; but those half-smiles were cold and uncongenial, and there seemed to be a settled purpose on her part as well as theirs to dislike each other. To no one did Dorothe express this dislike save to her husband, and to him she never lost an opportunity for doing so.

In 1654, Claybourne, who was in possession of Kent Island, was threatened by the Catholics from Maryland, and John Stevens, with his friend Hugh Price and half a dozen more, went to aid in the defence of the island. They camped at the mouth of the Severn, in the vicinity of the present city of Annapolis, where they were joined by Claybourne and a body of three hundred men.

On the 25th of March, 1654, Stone sailed with a force down the river, landed and attacked Claybourne. At early dawn the sleeping Puritans were awakened by the boom of cannon and volleys of muskets. They arose, formed their lines of battle and poured a tremendous fire upon the enemy. The Marylanders landed and tried to storm their fort; but after an hour retreated, leaving twenty killed and twice as many wounded on the field. Claybourne had conquered and, for a brief s.p.a.ce of time, was to hold sway over the Severn and Kent Island.

John Stevens returned to his home to find that his wife's extravagance had impoverished his estates and almost brought him to beggary. He had remonstrated with her without avail. She wrecked her husband's fortune for a few weeks of vain show.

"Were you more prudent, Dorothe," said John, "we could soon live at ease. I have fine estates and earn money sufficient to make us comfortable for life and leave a competency for our children."

"Peace, man! Do you disdain to labor for your wife and children? Do not other men support their families, and why not you, pray?"

"But other men have helpmates in their wives."

This was the spark which ignited the hidden fires. Her black eyes blazed, and her breast heaved. She upbraided him until he withdrew and, mounting his horse, rode away. At night he returned to find his wife silent and morose, and for nine days they scarcely spoke. This life was trying to John.

After a few days she grew more amiable and expressed sympathy with her husband in his financial straits.

"I am going to economize," she declared. "I will take no heed what I shall eat, nor what I shall drink, nor wherewithal I shall be clothed."

Again for the thousandth time he took heart. After all, Dorothe might become a helpmate. She was so beautiful and so cheerful in her pleasanter moods that he thought her a treasure. When he took his baby on his knee and felt her soft, warm cheek against his own, he realized that life might be endurable even in adversity.

One evening, as they talked over his financial troubles, he said:

"Our family has a fortune in Florida."

At the name of fortune, Mrs. Stevens' head became erect, and she was all attention like a war-horse at the blast of a trumpet.

"If you have a fortune there, why don't you go and get it?" she asked.

"We would, I trow, did we know we could have it for the going," he made answer.

"And wherefore can you not?"

"St. Augustine is under the Spanish rule, and we know not that they will permit an Englishman even to inherit property there. My grandfather was a Spaniard and died possessed of valuable property."

"Can you not get it? Can you not get it?" she asked.

"I do not know."

"Try."

"We have thought to try it."

His brother was sent to Florida, but failed, though a.s.sured by the lawyers that they might in time recover it.

There is no business so unprofitable as waiting for dead men's money.

Fortune flies at pursuit and smiles on the indifferent.

The prospects of John Stevens were certainly at a low ebb, and he found his affairs daily growing worse. Large consignments of tobacco sent to England remained unpaid for, and he stood in danger of losing all. He thought of making a voyage to London for the purpose of looking after his accounts. John Stevens had never been away from his family, save in the short campaign on the Severn, and he dreaded to leave home. He loved his children and, despite her faults, he loved his wife. As he held his baby in his arms and listened to her gentle crowing and heard the merry prattle of his boy at play, he asked himself if he should ever see those children again, were he to go away.

John had three friends in whom he reposed great confidence. They were Drummond, Lawerence, and Cheeseman. One evening he met them at the home of Drummond and, relating his condition, asked:

"Knowing all as you do, what do you advise?"

"By all means, go to London," answered Drummond.

"Ought I to leave my wife and children?"

"Wherefore not?"

"If I perish on the voyage, they will be wholly unprovided for."

"Your father was a sailor."

"But his son is not."