15

TWO VIRGINIAS

IN MAY 1604, eleven government officials representing England and Spain convened at the resplendent Denmark House, a short boat ride up the Thames from the Tower, where Ralegh now spent his days. The purpose of the conference was to negotiate peace between the two countries, after almost two decades of undeclared war.

The move toward negotiation had begun soon after James took the throne, when a Spanish diplomat was sent to congratulate the new king. He found, perhaps to his surprise, that his mission was looked upon with favor at the English court and that he was “most amicably received.” Spanish diplomats were accustomed to much worse treatment, as was the case when Elizabeth kept Bernardino de Mendoza cooling his heels during the dispute over Drake’s treasure haul in the early 1580s. Pretty quickly, one thing led to another, and the Spanish and English diplomats agreed that there “was no reason why they should have an Enmity at one another” and that negotiations should begin.¹

Denmark House, named after Anne of Denmark, James’s queen consort, had been specially prepared for the event, the walls hung with tapestries and greenery arranged before the windows. A fine carpet, possibly from Henry VIII’s grand collection, adorned the long table where the dignitaries faced each other, dressed in somber gowns with ruffed collars, all sporting tidily trimmed beards.² The English delegation included Charles Howard, the Lord High Admiral, Thomas Sackville, the Earl of Dorset, and Robert Cecil.³ After eighteen sessions, the delegates came to terms, and spelled them out in a document entitled A Treaty of perpetual Peace and Alliance between Philip III King of Spain, and the Archduke and Archduchess Albert and Isabella on the one side, and James I King of England on the other side. Made in the Year 1604.

The breakthrough was testimony to the fresh thinking of the two kings. James had been keen to bring an end to the debilitating and unnecessary conflict with Spain and come to a peace. Likewise, the young King Philip III of Spain, twenty-six years old and nearly five years into his reign, was just as ready to bring the war to an end. Since 1555, his country had been waging war almost continuously, fighting battles on land and sea in the Narrow Seas, the Mediterranean, France, the Netherlands, Africa, and on the Iberian Peninsula—and dealing with the constant harassment of English privateers. Only in one six-month period, from February to September 1577, had Spain not been prosecuting a war or conflict somewhere in the world.⁴

“Know all and everyone,” the treaty announced, “that after a long and most cruel ravage of wars, by which Christendom has for many years been miserably afflicted,” God “has powerfully extinguished the raging flame” of conflict. With the treaty, “It was and is concluded, settled and agreed, that from this day forward there be a good, sincere, true, firm and perfect friendship and confederacy, and perpetual peace” and that it should be in force “by land as by sea and fresh water.”⁵

The delegates signed the document on August 18, 1604, and its thirty-six articles spelled out what is essentially a free-trade agreement. People of both kingdoms would be free to “go to, enter, sail into, import or export, buy and sell merchandise” everywhere, without any need for a license or passport.⁶ No letters of marque, essentially a license for privateering, would be issued henceforward. All past infringements would be overlooked, and no party would seek restitution of any goods or valuables lost or taken to date.

The Treaty of London, as it came to be known, seemed to swing open the gates to long-closed ports and shipping lanes. However, there was something missing from the agreement: there was no mention of the enormous, largely overlapping, territories that the Spanish referred to as Florida and that the English called Virginia. In other words, the treaty avoided the tricky, unresolved, and potentially contentious issue of who had the rights to claim, inhabit, and develop America. As it later transpired, Spain’s negotiators had been reluctant to raise the issue because they fully believed that England’s Roanoke colonists were alive and living somewhere in Virginia and that, as they put it, the English had been “in peaceful possession” of the land “for more than thirty years.”⁷

Meanwhile, in the Tower of London, the man who had been involved in almost all of England’s New World initiatives for a period of twenty years—from settlement at Roanoke to gold-seeking in Guiana to colonization in Ireland to trafficking in sassafras in northern Virginia—tried to adjust to life in prison. Thanks to the relative freedom that gentlemen with no fixed term were afforded there, Ralegh kept busy, displaying his many talents as a Renaissance man. He built a smelting furnace, grew and cured tobacco, investigated methods for distilling fresh water from salt. Above all, he wrote and wrote, sitting down at his desk in the morning to make entries in his diary, compose poetry, and pen his monumental History of the World. Indeed, he became a kind of celebrity tourist attraction. Passersby sometimes caught sight of the famous Sir Walter as he exercised his six-foot frame along the crest of a Tower wall.⁸

IN RALEGH’S ABSENCE, a young man named George Waymouth declared his intentions to be one of the next generation of New World pioneers. Waymouth was no Ralegh in status, style, or worldview. He came from a seafaring and fishing family that had long lived in Cockington, Devon, not far from the coast. George’s grandfather, William, had accumulated enough wealth to leave his son, also William, a half share in a ship, the Lyon, worth some fifty pounds. The younger William expanded his activities, acquiring a number of vessels for plying the waters of the Newfoundland fishery, progressing to the purchase of larger ships and, finally, to shipbuilding. Also, he had invested in overseas ventures, plowing money into Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s mission to “annoy” Spain in 1578. George, described as a navigator, probably learned the skills of his profession, and gained his passion for adventure, on his father’s vessels.⁹

Although he was no courtier, Waymouth managed to secure an audience with King James, who was only a few months into his reign and as yet had no track record of sponsoring or rejecting proposals for overseas ventures. No one knew what James really thought about his lands in the New World and perhaps he had not yet formed an opinion on them. But, apparently to encourage the king, Waymouth presented him with an elaborate, leather-bound volume called The Jewell of Artes, a title that provided little clue as to its actual contents. The young seaman and would-be adventurer wrote that his book was intended for anyone who wanted to undertake the “discovery of any strange countries.” It was essentially a handbook filled with instructions and advice about how to create a fortified town in a wilderness setting.¹⁰

No previous English book had contained this kind of practical detail. Humphrey Gilbert’s plans had focused on how millions of acres of land might be divided, leased, and turned into profitable estates. Richard Hakluyt had put forward the intellectual arguments and emotional pleas, selecting stirring narratives for the delectation of his stay-at-home readers. By contrast, Waymouth’s Jewell delivered the how-to, contained in a beautifully designed volume fit for a king. The brown calf cover is decorated with a field of hand-tooled gold flowerets and emblazoned with King James’s coat of arms. The text is handwritten, in English, by a single scrivener in a looping, flowing font.¹¹ The book contains many illustrations—“demonstrations” as Waymouth calls them—including engineering drawings, colored diagrams, functional volvelles, and cut-paper pop-ups of the kind more commonly found in a modern children’s book.

The production of such an elaborately lettered, copiously illustrated, and richly bound book must have been time-consuming and expensive. It was obvious that Waymouth fervently wanted to enlist James’s support for a New World venture and sought to convince him that he was the right man to lead it. In this regard, Waymouth carried some baggage. Although he was in his early twenties, this was not his first attempt to gain support for an overseas expedition. In July 1601, he had sought to revive the search for the Northwest Passage, petitioning the East India Company for sponsorship.

Remarkably, given the magnitude of Waymouth’s proposal and his youth and relative inexperience, the general court of the East India Company gave serious consideration, forming a six-man committee “for the Northwest passage,” led by John Watts, the merchant-privateer who had collaborated with Ralegh and who financed the ship that took John White back to Roanoke on his last fateful expedition.¹² It took some time to hammer out the deal. To start with, the East India Company had to gain the permission of the Muscovy Company, which still held monopoly rights to the territory. Eventually, after much negotiation, the two companies agreed to collaborate on Waymouth’s venture. Then the East India Company drove a hard bargain. They agreed to invest three thousand pounds to purchase and outfit two pinnaces and to provide one hundred pounds for Waymouth’s “instruments and other necessaries.” But they would pay the handsome sum of £500 if, and only if, he successfully discovered the passage. If he failed to do so, he would get “nothing for his pains and travail.”¹³

He failed. Waymouth’s two-ship fleet departed London on May 2, 1602, provisioned for sixteen months. In mid-September, however, the ships returned to England. It seems that Waymouth, like other commanders before him, had suffered a mutiny and been forced to turn back. Nevertheless, he expressed his belief that the passage was there.¹⁴ The East India Company even considered making another attempt, but at last came to the conclusion that they should focus their energy on the conventional, well-established route to the East Indies—around the southern tip of Africa, not through the Northwest Passage.

After that crushing blow, Waymouth, still young and full of ideas, turned his attention to colonization and to the Jewell of Artes. For all the book’s ornate flourishes, the actual content is rather rudimentary. Readers were told that the leaders of colonial voyages needed technical knowledge of navigational instruments and a good grasp of shipbuilding, as well as an understanding of the art of surveying so that they can “make choice of the most fit and commodious place” to settle—a discipline not mentioned by other advocates. Devoting much of the book to the “practice of fortification,” he recommended specific types of guns that had a dual purpose: effective on ships against “rovers” and other attackers and yet easily taken ashore to protect a fort.

Waymouth went on to address the creation of entire towns and how to lay out settlements with “fair and large” streets, sturdy foundations, and protective ditches and bulwarks. His designs look a bit like mandalas—a square, a cogged wheel, a rosette, a circle. Within the walls, he depicted neat villages of regular housing blocks, some with straight streets, some with curved. One plan looks like a formal garden, another like a maze. Each of these cozy habitations bristles with ordnance, cannon aimed in every direction.¹⁵

GEORGE WAYMOUTH COULD not persuade James to fund his proposed venture, but his appearance at court may have led to his introduction to a potential sponsor: Sir Thomas Arundell. Aged about forty-five and the scion of a noble family with a long history of military and political service, Arundell was attracted by the idea of an American refuge for English Catholics—in effect, reviving the plans first developed by George Peckham and Thomas Gerrard with Humphrey Gilbert. His interest came after James authorized a tightening of anti-Catholic legislation, including new restrictions on the sale of certain books and the creation of a revised catechism.¹⁶

But Waymouth did not rely on just one or two main sponsors. Like Gilbert before him, he presented his case to other investors—in particular, the merchants of Devon. They valued the proposed American plantation for a different purpose: fishing. These backers included William Parker, a Plymouth trader and privateer, and possibly John Gilbert, Humphrey’s eldest son, who lived near Dartmouth.¹⁷ Perhaps it was Gosnold’s report of abundant fishing grounds close to shore—untroubled by many, if any, competitors from other countries—that led Parker and others to conclude that fishing outposts could be established to manage the catch and process fish all year round. Such settlements would be purpose-built and could quickly begin producing revenue, just as the fishing fleets of Iceland and Newfoundland had done for decades. The fishing trade, while not glamorous, was reliable and the demand was steady. People had to eat, and the English were devoted to their stockfish.

It is not clear how much money Waymouth raised from these different investors, with their contrasting aspirations—as a Catholic refuge and as a fishermen’s outpost. But by the time he sailed out of Dartmouth on the last day of March 1605, he no longer had the support of Arundell, who seems to have bowed out of the venture. Commanding a single ship, the Archangell, with twenty-eight men, Waymouth led what was in effect a reconnaissance voyage, much like Gosnold’s to Norumbega.¹⁸

Six weeks later, the Archangell reached Monhegan Island, one of the jewels of the Maine coast—a craggy mound of rock, topped with scrub and fir, set in the sea well out from the mainland but still within its sight, with an anchorage that opens to the southwest providing shelter from northeast storms. Unlike Gosnold, who had sailed south to Cape Cod and the Massachusetts islands, Waymouth lingered in Maine, exploring the islands and the coastal inlets, and venturing on foot, tracking along a great river, probably the St. George, whose mouth lies just north of Monhegan.

During the course of the expedition, Waymouth and his crew engaged with the local Indians, probably members of the Eastern Abenaki tribe, one of the Algonquian people. The relationship developed in a familiar pattern. At first, the wary Indians kept their distance. They appeared on an islet adjacent to the ship and made gestures. Eventually they came aboard ship. Trading began. Then they smoked tobacco—the Indians sometimes used a lobster claw as a pipe—and took meals together. There was singing and dancing, and eventually Englishmen and Indians had sleepovers, in camp or aboard ship.

Over time, this increased familiarity led to easier relations, and the more the English observed the Indians the more impressed they became, admiring their abilities and attributes. They especially marveled at the Indians’ canoes. According to James Rosier, a young Cambridge-educated Catholic convert who was hired to write the official account of the voyage, the boats defied belief.¹⁹ They were made “without any iron,” consisting instead “of the bark of a birch tree, strengthened within with ribs and hoops of wood, in so good fashion, with such excellent ingenious art, as they are able to bear seven or eight persons, far exceeding any in the Indies.”²⁰ Birch trees of the requisite circumference to build such a canoe—a single sheet of bark formed the hull—grew plentifully in Maine, but not much farther south. As such, Rosier was reporting on a highly specialized, localized craft.²¹

Another “especial thing,” Rosier wrote, “is their manner of killing the whale, which they call Powdawe.” He described how the English watched as a whale, twelve fathoms long—a daunting seventy-two feet, if his estimation was correct—surfaced and cleared its blowhole. The Abenakis set out in a flotilla of boats and skewered the whale using a harpoon-like weapon, a sharpened bone fastened to a long rope, made from twisted tree bark. They let out the line as the whale plunged, and when it resurfaced “with their arrows they shoot him to death,” Rosier wrote.²² He took time to make these observations because he knew investors would be interested in the potential for whaling, which was growing in importance as a commercial activity for European merchants, especially after the Dutch got involved in the trade in the late 1590s.²³ Whale blubber was particularly prized by cloth manufacturers, since it produced train oil, which was used in the finishing process.

Rosier proved to be an astute choice as chronicler. He went beyond the recounting of noteworthy events, choosing to make observations of commercial and ethnographical value, as Thomas Harriot had before him. He paid particular attention to the Indian language. When he went ashore with Waymouth and two Abenakis to spend some time fishing with a net, he began asking the Indians to tell him their words for various items. Rosier would point to something, ask for the Indian word, and then write it down, employing, as Harriot had done, a phonetic system of his own devising. The Indians found this so intriguing that they began to fetch things—everything from fish to fruits—just to watch as Rosier wrote down their words.

The bond that seems to have developed between Waymouth’s men and the Indians—at least as the English understood it—might have provided the foundation for a future peaceful English settlement. But then Waymouth committed an act of betrayal that shocked the local people and soured relations. One evening in early June, Waymouth’s men brought a platter of peas ashore to share with several Abenakis. One of the Indians, suspecting treachery, walked away. At that moment, the mariners “suddenly laid hands” on two others, grabbed hold of the “long hair on their heads,” and wrestled them aboard ship, along with their bows, arrows, and canoes.²⁴

It seems that the kidnapping—a total of five Indians were ultimately seized—had been one of the primary goals of the reconnaissance mission all along. As Rosier later noted, the capture of Indians was “a matter of great importance for the full accomplishment of our voyage.” He insisted, however, that after this violent encounter the Abenakis received “kind usage” from the English and, once aboard ship, concluded that no further harm would befall them. They never seemed “discontented with us,” Rosier wrote, but rather were “tractable, loving, & willing by their best means to satisfy us in anything we demand of them.”²⁵

Whether this is how the kidnapped Indians actually felt and behaved is impossible to say, but it is certain that the Indian who avoided the kidnapping, and those who heard about it, had a different view. News of the event traveled quickly through the region and, as it spread, the details were exaggerated. A party of French explorers was travelling through Maine that July and met an Indian named Anassou. He told them about a fishing vessel that had lain off the coast and how the men aboard had killed five Indians “under cover of friendship.” From Annasou’s description, the French concluded that the ship must have been English and its position squares with Rosier’s accounts of the location of the Archangel.²⁶ The memory of this incident of calculated violence against Indians lingered and affected relations between northern Indians and Europeans for years to come.

Waymouth arrived in England in July and Rosier’s account, A True Relation of the most prosperous voyage made this present yeere 1605 by Captain George Waymouth, in the Discovery of the land of Virginia, appeared soon after, probably before the end of the year.²⁷ The little book does not contain the standard dedication, which authors and their sponsors typically inserted to acknowledge, praise, and flatter their investors and royal patrons. Instead, the account begins with a preface titled “To the Reader.” In this, Rosier mentions Arundell—now first Baron Arundell of Wardour—and the “honourable gentlemen” and “merchants of good sufficiency and judgment” who had undertaken the project at their own expense. Also, he mentions that the investors had been “encouraged” by “the gracious favor” of His Majesty as well as “divers Lords” of the Privy Council. In other words, the Waymouth venture had been a private undertaking with informal support from James and his advisers.

Whether the timing was right or the writing particularly enticing, the book captured the English imagination and created great excitement about potential plantations in north Virginia. Rosier was effusive about the new land, claiming that the St. George river was superior even to the Loire, Seine, and Bordeaux rivers in France—although he stopped short of favoring the American river over “our river of Thames,” which he hailed as “England’s richest treasure.”²⁸

Nothing, however, proved more compelling than the living proof: the Indians themselves, whom Rosier identified and described as Tahánedo, a sagamo, or commander; Amóret, Skicowáros, and Maneddo, all gentlemen; and Sassacomoit, a servant. All five survived the voyage and once in England were treated like visiting dignitaries. Two of them, Tahánedo and Amóret, were sent to the country residence of Sir John Popham. The three others, Skicowáros, Maneddo, and Sassacomoit, went to Plymouth, where they were welcomed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges and his family: his wife, Ann, and their two sons, John and Robert, aged about twelve and ten, respectively.²⁹

THERE ARE A few clues in Ferdinando Gorges’s history that perhaps explain why he took such a keen interest in the three American Indians. As commander of the Plymouth fort, he spent much of his time monitoring the ships and mariners in the city’s vital harbor, including those returning from far-off lands. Now that England was formally at peace with Spain, Gorges had plenty of time on his hands to consider projects beyond his day-to-day military duties. He was well-connected, since his family was related by marriage to many of the prominent Devonshire families, including the Gilberts, Raleghs, and Champernownes. Also, several members of his extended family had participated in a variety of overseas ventures: one cousin had sailed with Grenville on the first Roanoke voyage; another had been with Walter Ralegh on his search for the golden city of El Dorado in Guiana.³⁰

Born around 1568, Gorges was a second son, with no great reputation or fortune to his name, so perhaps he saw an opportunity for a signal achievement in his connection with the Indians. His elder brother inherited the family estates, while he received a relatively modest manor house, a gold chain, and one hundred pounds. In 1587, at the age of about nineteen, Gorges began a career as a gentleman-volunteer soldier fighting in France and the Netherlands. In 1591, he was knighted on the battlefield at the French cathedral city of Rouen by the Earl of Essex, but although Gorges had acquitted himself with valor, this honor was not exceptional: he was one of twenty-four men that Essex bestowed with a knighthood, largely to motivate them rather than to reward them for their bravery.³¹ In 1595, Gorges succeeded Sir Francis Drake as captain of Plymouth Fort, where his primary responsibility was to keep the fort and its garrison ready to defend England, particularly against the Spanish. It was an important position, although not a glorious one. Gorges was constantly dealing with tedious administrative matters, struggling to keep cordial relations between the crown and the town, and scratching together enough money to pay for soldiers’ salaries and repairs to the crumbling castle.

It would not have been surprising if Gorges had merely hosted Waymouth’s Indians for a few days until they could be sent to London for an audience with the king or shipped back to America. It was normal practice for foreign visitors and dignitaries to be housed by leading courtiers and wealthy merchants. But Gorges became fascinated by the three Abenakis, noting with particular interest that they displayed “great civility,” well beyond the “rudeness” of the common people of England. This was a strikingly progressive view. Although Thomas Harriot had done much to help the English understand that Indians came from organized societies, spoke complex languages, had political and social networks, and were skilled in various crafts and disciplines, the English nevertheless continued to regard them as primitive people, calling them country men, wild men, naturals, savages, salvages, and heathens.

The Abenakis stayed on with Gorges. He questioned them extensively and learned a great deal from them—about the people and geography of the New World, about the potential for trade and sustainable settlements, all of which he recorded, along with material supplied by Rosier, in a brief document called The description of the Countrey of Mawooshen.³² Above all, the Indians ignited his passion for colonial enterprise in the New World. Reflecting on this many years later, he observed that the arrival of the five Indians had to “be acknowledged” as an event of divine providence that ultimately gave “life to all our Plantations.”³³

While Skicowáros, Maneddo, and Sassacomoit lodged with Gorges and his family, Tahánedo and Amóret lived in Sir John Popham’s household. It is not clear how the two Abenakis fared there, because Popham was a hardheaded pragmatist, quite different from Gorges, who was an impassioned dreamer. A large, heavyset man described by one chronicler rather bluntly as “ugly,” Popham, in his seventies, had fashioned a notable career as a barrister, member of Parliament, and later as Lord Chief Justice, one of the top judges in the country.³⁴ He had presided over the trial of Sir Walter Ralegh, and condemned him to a traitor’s execution: to be hanged almost to the point of death, then castrated and disemboweled while still conscious, then beheaded and chopped into four pieces. It was only through the clemency of James that Ralegh was spared this ghastly execution and sent to the Tower.

It may have been the arrival of the Abenakis from Maine that further opened Popham’s eyes to the opportunities for colonization across the Atlantic. He had already shown interest in colonial activities, receiving a grant of land in Ireland in the mid-1580s. But he was not so much interested in increasing his own already substantial wealth as countering the scourge of poverty and idleness in England. Popham knew that, with the ratifying of the Treaty of London, large numbers of English soldiers fighting abroad would be released from duty and would flood back into England. He feared that this influx of “infinite numbers” of discharged soldiers would lead to greater unemployment throughout the land—and a rise in idleness, vagrancy, and thievery. As a result, there could be rebellion. The very state of England might even be threatened.³⁵

Popham, nearing the end of his life, decided to take bold action to prevent the crisis that he foresaw and secure his legacy. He knew that he would need royal approval for any colonial initiative, and so in early 1606 he contacted Sir Walter Cope, who was Robert Cecil’s right-hand man and also famous across Europe for his fascination with New World affairs. Cope had been collecting exotic novelties for years and displayed them in a “cabinet of curiosities”—actually an entire room—filled with natural wonders, such as the horn of a rhinoceros, feathered headdresses, Virginian fireflies, and a Native American canoe.³⁶

Popham presented his plan to Cope and explained that his great aim was to do some social good by establishing a colony in north Virginia. Unlike Gilbert, Popham had the funds to support his mission. He pledged the fantastic sum of five hundred pounds per year for a period of five years to the American venture, the largest commitment in England by a single individual to such an enterprise at that time. Cope soon took Popham’s petition to his boss, Robert Cecil. Popham simply sought permission to call a meeting with merchants and other “undertakers” to discuss the American plantation, which suggests that he hoped the venture would also be a profit-maker in the long run. After conferring with the merchants, Popham would then develop a more detailed plan and present a formal proposal to the Privy Council.³⁷

Popham was not the only one thinking about American colonization at this time. The idea of a plantation in Virginia seems to have been in the air. The release of Rosier’s narrative coincided with a flurry of proposals for new expeditions. Indeed, talk of America was so widespread that it entered the popular imagination: Ben Jonson, Shakespeare’s friend and rival, cowrote a popular stage play, Eastward Hoe, that lampooned speculators and their dreams of making a fast buck in Virginia. Its characters claimed there was so much gold to be had there that it was used for making chamber pots, and so much venison—one of the preferred viands of the wealthy—that it was eaten like mutton.³⁸

JAMES ACCEPTED POPHAM’S proposal and signed a new charter—now known simply as the Virginia Charter, or, the First Charter for Virginia—on April 10, 1606. The charter provided investors with the same kind of authority granted to Gilbert and Ralegh: namely, to inhabit, plant, and create a colony in the territory defined as “that part of America commonly called Virginia” as well as any other parts of America “not now actually possessed by any Christian prince or people.”³⁹ The chartered region ranged from 34 degrees north—South Carolina’s location today—to 45 degrees north—where Maine is today: in other words, between the northern limit of New Spain and the southern limit of New France.

The charter made provision for two colonies, each with its own seal. The so-called First Colony was to encompass the region between the 34th and 41st parallel north, the Second Colony the region from the 38th to the 45th parallel north. Although this created an overlap, the charter specified that whichever company managed to establish the first settlement would be able to choose their preferred location. The other colony would not be permitted to make a plantation within one hundred miles of the first one. Once established, each colony would be entitled to claim the land around it, stretching fifty miles to the north and south, one hundred miles inland to the west, and to all islands within one hundred miles out to sea.

By creating two companies, the architects of the charter were making a compromise between the two groups of investors: the merchants and courtiers of London and the men of the western outports of Plymouth, Bristol, and Exeter. For more than one hundred years, since John Cabot and his son Sebastian set off from Bristol, the merchants and seafarers from the West had pioneered the route across the Atlantic. It was not until the 1550s, and the collapse of the cloth market, that London’s merchants had begun the search for new markets that eventually led them to support expeditions to Muscovy, the Levant, and the Northwest Passage.

Now the two groups were brought together—under the auspices of Robert Cecil—in an uneasy alliance that reflected their quite different interests. The London, or First Colony, investors wanted a permanent base in the same latitudes as the lands of the Mediterranean, where they could produce dyes for the cloth industry and access the other products of this region: wines, currants, sugars, spices, silks, and other luxury commodities. The Second Colony merchants sought a permanent location to conduct a year-round trade in fish, fur, timber for shipbuilding, and the train oil—derived from whale and seal blubber—used in the cloth industry. After peace with Spain, it had been expected that a busy trade with the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of the Mediterranean, accessed through the Straits of Gibraltar, would recommence. In 1605, a new charter for the Spanish Company was drawn up, and more than 550 merchants from London, Bristol, Exeter, Plymouth, and various other towns and ports were listed as members.⁴⁰ But in 1606 this collapsed, dashing the hopes of merchants ready to renew their trade with the Mediterranean. It meant that the plans for a colony in Virginia took on a new importance.⁴¹

Considering the great number of listed investors in the charters of the Spanish and other companies, it is striking how few names are registered in the Virginia Company charter: just eight, and none of those were great merchants or great courtiers. The First Colony was chartered to Richard Hakluyt, a clear reward for his advocacy of Virginia over so many years, as well as to George Somers, a privateer, and two soldiers, Sir Thomas Gates and Edward Maria Wingfield. The Second Colony was chartered to Raleigh Gilbert, Sir Humphrey’s son, along with George Popham and Thomas Hanham, Sir John’s nephew and grandson respectively, and William Parker, the privateer, former mayor of Plymouth, and investor in Waymouth’s 1605 colonial expedition. These men, however, were not the real organizers, the actual owners, of the enterprise. Seven months later the names of the true architects of the Virginia Company were unveiled. In November, James issued “articles, instructions and orders” for establishing “the good order and government” of the two colonies, and with these, he created a royal council, comprising fourteen “trusty and wellbeloved” gentlemen, who would take charge of governing Virginia in his name.⁴²

The King’s Council of Virginia, as it was called, represented a major change in the way colonial enterprises were to be run. Elizabeth had approached foreign ventures in a cautious way. She articulated no clear strategy, preferring to support individuals and their private enterprises rather than proactively pushing forward her own vision. Now James signaled his intention to do things differently. With a royal council, the Virginia Company and its colonial enterprise was transformed into a national endeavor, one with direct association to the king—and its members were the new leaders in society. These included Sir Walter Cope, representing Sir Robert Cecil, and Sir Francis Popham, representing his father, who was suffering from painful kidney stones and in no fit state to attend regular meetings. There were several royal servants, including Sir Ferdinando Gorges, Thomas West, the solitary nobleman as third Baron De La Warr, and Sir William Waad, who commanded the Tower of London. Also, among the merchants, there were three leading members of the East India Company: William Romney, John Eldred, and Sir Thomas Smythe.

Smythe’s appointment to the King’s Council capped a remarkable transformation in his personal fortunes. For the best part of two years, he had languished in prison, having been erroneously accused of taking part in an attempt to overthrow Elizabeth. He only won his freedom after Elizabeth’s death in March 1603, and two months later, he was knighted by James, ironically in the Tower where he had spent so much of his time. Thereafter, he was restored to the governorship of the East India Company and was further reinstated into the commercial and political life of England with his appointment as special ambassador to Russia. He spent ten months there and returned home in triumph, having secured new trading privileges for the Muscovy Company. He arrived back in England amid this renewed excitement about Virginia.

Whatever Smythe’s capabilities, the King’s Council and its composition did not sit well with the merchants of Plymouth and others of the Second Colony group. They had assumed that they would be granted “free and reasonable” terms similar to those that had been held by “a certain particular gent”—meaning Walter Ralegh. Instead, they found themselves under the direction of a royal council dominated by London merchants and courtiers who had little knowledge of their “proceedings.”⁴³ What’s more, all council business was to be conducted from London, which, at the very least, was an inconvenience for the Plymouth contingent. One seasoned transatlantic adventurer later quipped that there was “near as much trouble, but much more danger, to sail from London to Plymouth, than from Plymouth to New England.” In other words, making the trip from the West Country to London by ship was almost as daunting as crossing the Atlantic.⁴⁴

The simmering rivalry between the London and Plymouth investors was about to reach boiling point as the two companies prepared to launch their separate colonies. They knew only too well that whoever got to Virginia first would have first-mover advantage. The London investors, richer and more established, might have been expected to get off to the faster start. But it was John Popham, the feared Lord Chief Justice, and Ferdinando Gorges, his ally on the King’s Council, who got their ships out of the harbor first.