Of all the European countries on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean in the 16th and 17th Centuries, none would seem to have a greater advantage in entering the race for North American colonization than England. England was better positioned for maritime exploration than the Spanish, the French or the Dutch.
England enjoyed a westerly position on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean, in addition to a long maritime tradition as well as a young and ambitious new dynasty in the form of the House of Tudor. The new Tudor King, Henry VII, was eager to attach glory and respectability to his kingdom. A series of English expeditions followed quickly in the wake of the voyages of Christopher Columbus, however these expeditions yielded little in the way of results and Henry VII was succeeded on the throne by his son, Henry VIII. Henry VIII would prove to be a spoiled, self-indulgent brat who spent money like it was water and treated the slightest disagreement with rage and tyrannical cruelty.
When Henry’s Queen, the Spanish princess Katherine of Aragon, failed to produce an heir, Henry tried to divorce her. When the Pope proved unwilling to grant Henry’s divorce so he could remarry, He ry announced that he no longer recognized the authority of the Papacy and allowed Royal officials to create a new Protestant Church of England.
All this was confusing enough, however, following the death of Henry VIII, in 1547, Henry’s successor made the confusion even worse. Henry was succeeded by his son, Edward VI, who was a deeply committed Protestant. He instructed the Church of England to perform a complete house cleaning and removed the last vestiges of Catholicism from the Church of England. However, Edward died in 1553 before he could marry and produce an heir. He was succeeded on the throne by his sister, Mary, who was as committed to Catholicism as Edward has been to Protestantism. As a result, she brutally enforced a returned to the Catholic Church and recognized the authority of the Pope. Bloody Mary, as she became known, also died childless and was succeeded on the throne by her younger sister Elizabeth. Upon her ascension, Elizabeth once again swung England’s religious alignment back in the other direction.
England had been left exhausted and distracted by all the constant religious infighting. It was not until Elizabeth had been securely settled on her throne for twenty years that England began to turn its attention back toward exploration. It was that and war that drew England into the great game of North American exploration.
When England turned Protestant for good in 1558, England became an ally of every Protestant country in Europe. At the same time, England also became the enemy of every Catholic country in Europe. Beginning in 1582, Elizabeth readily licensed Protestant sea captains, such as Francis Drake and John Hawkins, to raid the Spanish treasure fleets as they made their way back to Spain from Mexico. For some of Elizabeth’s Sea Dogs, this was little better than legalized piracy. For others, it was practically a crusade against against Catholic Spain. For still others, it was a business venture, with investors financing ships, crews and supplies, as well as payment of dividends from stolen Spanish gold.
Irregardless of their motives, this kind of adventuring required the exploration and mapping of the coast of North America, in addition to the establishment of a supply base for ships raiding the Spanish Caribbean. In 1578, Humphrey Gilbert obtained a charter from Elizabeth for the purpose of establishing a settlement in North America. He even undertook a series of exploratory voyages to find a suitable site for his settlement. Following Gilbert’s death in a shipwreck, in 1583, his charter was passed to his half-brother, another of Elizabeth’s royal favourites, Sir Walter Raleigh. Raleigh was an adventurer’s adventurer. He was witty, courtly, brave, poetic, and most importantly, he was wealthy.
In 1584, Raleigh commissioned a survey of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. In 1585, he sent a core of settlers to build a fort on the Outer Banks, on Roanoke Island, however, the winter on the Outer Banks proved to be more severe than anticipated, and the colony was a failure. In 1587, Raleigh sent a second wave of colonists to Roanoke Island. In 1588, the Spanish built a grand armada for the purpose of invading England. Even though the invasion was a catastrophic failure for the Spanish, it meant that Raleigh lost all contact with Roanoke Island until the invasion crisis was over. It was not until 1590 that Raleigh was able to organize a relief flotilla for the colony. However, when the resupply fleet arrived in August 18, 1590, it found Roanoke abandoned. The only clue as to the possible whereabouts of the colonists was the word “Croatoan,” which had been carved on the fort’s main gate. Croatoan was a nearby island, however, there was no sign of the settlers there either. The disappearance of the settlers from Fort Roanoke has become an enduring American mystery.
The disappearance of the Roanoke settlers also killed off Raleigh’s interest in North American settlement, since the debacle underscored how risky and expensive such endeavours were. However, even if such settlements were beyond the means of individual entrepreneurs, it might be possible for a group of investors to pool their resources. This was known as a joint stock company.
The problem with any individual investment enterprise is that while success means that you reap all the profits, failure means that you have to pay all the bills. However, if you enter into a partnership with another investor, you can increase your financial clout and increase your odds of success, but if you fail, both of you are equally liable for paying the enterprise’s bills. This discouraged people from investing in large enterprises. The reason for this is because if the enterprise failed, all the investors would have been liable for all of the venture’s debts, but without investment pools, it would not have been possible to finance large scale projects such as American colonization ventures.
One possible solution to this problem was to change the rules. Once the financial rules of the Catholic Church had been pushed aside, the English were willing to rewrite the rules of financial lending. Individuals were now allowed to create pools of wealth, but liability was limited only to the extent of the investment. Investors were no longer liable for all of the debt of a failed enterprise. This limitation in liability was key to coaxing investors to invest in pools of wealth large enough to fund New World exploration and settlement.
English merchants quickly established a series of joint stock companies for trade in Russia, West Africa, the Mediterranean and India. In 1600, a group of merchants and promoters based in London and Plymouth received a charter from King James I and established the Virginia Company. The settlement of Virginia would now be managed by a faceless corporation. As if turned out, however, the Virginia Company would not do much better than Raleigh had done.
The Company chose the coast of Maine for the site of its first colony. New England and Britain are on the same latitude, and the Company directors supposed that on this basis, they both must have similar climates. The winter of 1606 immediately dissuaded the colonists of this notion. A second settlement, in the form of Jamestown, was established around the same time. The Jamestown colony was located on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, on the banks of the James River. The Chesapeake Bay was roughly on the same latitude as the Mediterranean, and again the colonists assumed that it would have a similar mild climate to sunny Italy. In actuality, the site chosen for the Jamestown colony by the Virginia Company was marshy, humid and riddled with fever. On top of this, the Powhatan confederation dominated the region and was already hostile to Europeans.
In addition to these obstacles, the lack of focus in terms of what the Jamestown colony was supposed to be also proved to be a problem. Of the initial wave of a hundred and four colonists, half were classified as gentlemen, or minor aristocrats. They believed that the purpose of the colony was to serve as a garrison for raiding the Spanish. As a result, they expected to either be resupplied by supply ship from England, or to requisition supplies from the natives. The problem was that the Virginia Company lacked sufficient capital to send regular supply convoys from England. As a result, half of the colony’s initial settlers died with in the first year, and the colony was only saved from starvation by the arrival of infrequent supply ships. It was also only the imposition of draconian discipline that kept the colony from winking out.
In 1622, the roof fell in on the Virginia colony when the Powhatans staged a skillfully planned mass raid on Jamestown and the other English settlements along the James River. The Powhatans came within a hairsbreadth of wiping on the Virginia colony entirely. The attack resulted in the collapse of the Virginia Company, and in 1624, the King revoked the Virginia Company’s charter, placing the colony under the direct control of the Crown.
Royal control, in this case, did not mean what it sounds like it means. The King was more interested in punishing the Virginia Company than rescuing the colonists and confined his attention to sending a Royal governor to manage affairs in Virginia, or to wind up the settlement, if that was what the colonists wanted. The Governor was given no support from the Crown and had to call together all the colonists in a Assembly of Burgesses in order to wheedle tax money out of them. As a result, without planning or intention, Virginia created the first legislature in America. The Crown also took no interest in reinforcing the Virginia colony with drafts of new settlers, and when it sent anybody at all, they were usually drawn from England’s vast ranks of criminals, the unemployed and the unwanted.
Royal benign neglect did not look on the surface to be all that much different than the incompetent attention of the Virginia Company. In actuality, the benign neglect of the Crown meant that things could happen in Virginia that would not be able to happen in England. As a result, Virginia and the Chesapeake Bay had a number of attractions for various peculiar fringe groups on the margins of English society. On paper, England was a Protestant nation. All English subjects were required to be baptized into the Church of England under pain of law. Despite this however, there were some committed Catholics who refused to be baptized into the Anglican Church. This meant that they were subject to investigation and persecution for their loyalty to the Catholic Church. Loyalty to the Catholic Church was seen as being equivalent to loyalty to England’s enemies. It was a bit like being branded as being loyal to communism, or an international terrorist organization.
Following a series of scares in the 1560s, Elizabeth, and James after her, adopted an attitude of don’t ask, don’t tell. For English Catholics, this attitude was only marginally better than outright persecution. In the light of the even more distant attitude that the Crown took toward the Virginia colony, it began to dawn on English Catholics that it might be possible to get even more religious freedom by establishing a colony on the Chesapeake Bay thanks to the benign neglect practiced toward the settlers’ religion, as well as the settlers’ survival. In 1624, George Calvert, the First Lord Baltimore, converted to Catholicism and devoted the rest of his life to establishing a settlement in North America, where his fellow Catholics could establish a colony and still be loyal Englishmen.
Calvert’s first attempt at establishing a Catholic colony in North America was called Avalon. He made the mistake establishing his colony in what is now the Canadian province of Newfoundland. However, the colony failed when the weather proved to be too harsh. In 1631, Cecilius Calvert, the Second Lord Baltimore, established a settlement name St. Mary’s City on the Chesapeake Bay, in what would eventually be named Maryland. It was not just religious dissidents who took advantage of the Crown’s policy of benign neglect toward its embryonic American colonies. In 1625, King James I died and was succeeded on the throne by his son, King Charles I. Charles would prove to be a bullhead and unreflective monarch who succeeded at outraging every part of the English politic spectrum.
In 1642, Parliament grew tired of Charles. He was overthrown and England briefly became a republic, however, this only lasted until the 1660s, when a much chastened Parliament agreed to recall Charles II from exile in France and installed him on the throne. However, England’s twenty year experiment with republican democracy had left some of England’s most radical political philosophers wondering if monarchy was simply another form of human-created government which could be taken down, re-organized and re-assembled. No-one was entirely sure what an alternative to monarchy might look like, but with its continued policy of benign neglect, and enough financial backing, America might be a good place to experiment with alternate forms of government.
In 1663, shortly after the Stuart Restoration, a group of nobles joined hands with several well placed political radicals and acquired a land charter for a colony to be located south of Virginia. The colony was to be named Carolina. They set out with the intention to establish a colony that was a political, rather than a religious, experiment. The eight proprietors of the Carolina colony hired the radical political philosopher John Locke to draft the colony’s foundational documents, which became known as the Fundamental Constitutions.
While not a popular democratic government, what Locke devised for the Carolina colony was unlike anything that anyone in England had seen before. Locke envisioned a three tiered society for Carolina. At the top were the eight proprietors. Below them were several classes of gentry. At the bottom were the small landowners and planters. The eight proprietors comprised what Locke called the Palatine Court. This meant that they acted as both supreme legislators, and the supreme court all at once. They were to be assisted by the Grand Council, whose job it was to draft legislation. There was also a popularly elected assembly which had the power to veto legislation put forward by the Grand Council. The Church of England was to be the colony’s official church, but anyone who believed in God was allowed reasonably free religious practice.
The technical term for this type of society might be something like a limited oligarchy, but by the standards of the 1660s, Locke’s Fundamental Constitutions looked like anarchy. Despite this, no one in London had much interest spending money meddling in Carolina. Meddling was expensive, and the King was not interested in spending money meddling in America. As a result, the Crown was happy to let the chartered companies and entrepreneurs bear the expense of colonizing North America, however, if you aren’t willing to pay the bills, then you give up control of what goes on in those settlements.
Nothing in Carolina was as strange was what developed in Georgia. Georgia was the last English colony to be founded in North America. Georgia was not settled until 1732. Georgia was founded by General James Oglethorpe, along with twenty others. If Carolina was intended to be an experiment in radical politics, Georgia was intended to be an experiment in benevolence. Oglethorpe embodied the new sensibility of English society in the early 18th Century for social charity, which we would call social justice. Oglethorpe’s plan for Georgia was to essentially create a giant poor farm for England’s homeless and other neredowells. Oglethorpe believed that once they were relocated, these downtrodden people would magically become prosperous and self sufficient.
In order to ensure that this transformation took place, however, the settlers would not need to be governed but managed. Consequently, the title that Oglethorpe and his associates took for themselves was the title of Trustee. They banned the sale of liquor and the use of slaves. They also interviewed potential candidates for relocation to ensure that they were of the deserving poor. Georgia initially did not have a legislative body or elected law makers. The Trustees made all the laws without consulting anyone. After all, if the Trustees know what’s best for everyone, who needs legislators?
In its own way, this was just as strange as Locke’s Fundamental Constitutions, Calvert’s religious colony or the Virginia Burgesses. However, much to the surprise of all outside on-lookers, all of these colonies achieved at least some level of success. There was almost an inverse proportion to the oddity of the colony and the likelihood of its success. The weirder the settlement was, the more likely it was that it would be successful. Virginia was successful after stumbling, almost by accident, on to the discovery that it was possible to grow an outstanding strain of tobacco, which was another highly prized luxury in 17th Century Europe. Carolina discovered that it’s lowland climate was perfect for growing rice and indigo. The colonists were also able to grow these commodities cheaply thanks to the importing of a low cost workforce in the form of large numbers of African slaves.
All this success came at very little cost to the Royal government. However, by the 1680s, it began to be noticed in London that there were hidden costs to the success of its embryonic North American colonies. This included the realization that the colonies were beginning to compete with the products that British manufacturers wanted to sell to the world’s markets. This lead to calls for economic regulation of the colonies and the wheels of revolution ground slowly into motion.
The Crown increasingly looked over its shoulder at the colonies and attempted to use moments of social unrest to grab the reigns of power. In 1676, disgruntled Virginia farm labourers rose in revolt over Governor Sir William Berkeley’s Indian policy. They burned Jamestown and forced Berkeley to flee Virginia. It took direct intervention from London to reinstate Berkley and put down the uprising. The incident served as a useful reminder that despite decades of benign neglect, Virginia was still a Crown colony.
In Carolina, the planters did not get along well at all with the eight proprietors, who were deposed in 1715, as the result of a native uprising, In the wake of these events, the planters offered to return Carolina to the Crown for free. At the same time, the unthrifty poor of Georgia were no more unthrifty under the Trustees of Georgia, and Georgia was returned to the Crown in 1752.
This was not how English settlement of North America had been intended to develop in the collective minds of Raleigh, Elizabeth and the Virginia Company. Very little about the colonization of North American had gone according to the plans made by people in London, and nowhere was that more evident than in New England.
Wordsmith 