History of the Colony and Ancient Dominion of Virginia

CHAPTER XII.

1619-1621.

Thus after eleven years of suffering, peril, discord, and tyranny, intermingled with romantic adventure, bold enterprise, the dignity of danger, virtuous fortitude, and generous heroism, were at length established a local legislature and a regular administration of right. The Virginia planters expressed their gratitude to the company, and begged them to reduce into a compend, with his majesty's approbation, such of the laws of England as were applicable to Virginia, with suitable additions, "because it was not fit that his subjects should be governed by any other rules than such as received their influence from him." The acts of the Assembly were transmitted to England for the approval of the treasurer and company. They were thought to have been very judiciously framed, but the company's committee found them "exceeding intricate and full of labor." There was granted to the old planters an exemption from all compulsive service to the colony, with a confirmation of their estates, which were to be holden as by English subjects.

It is remarkable, that from about 1614, for some seven years, James the First had governed England without a parliament; and the Virginia Company was during this period a rallying point for the friends of civil and religious freedom, and the colony enjoyed the privilege, denied to the mother country, of holding a legislative assembly.

Yeardley finding a scarcity of corn, undertook to promote the cultivation of it, and this year was blessed with abundant crops of grain. But an extraordinary mortality carried off not less than three hundred of the people. Three thousand acres of land were allotted to the governor, and twelve thousand to the company. The Margaret, of Bristol, arrived with some settlers, and "also many devout gifts." The Trial brought a cargo of corn and cattle. The expenditure of the Virginia Company at this period, on account of the colony, was estimated at between four and five thousand pounds a year.

A body of English Puritans, persecuted on account of their nonconformity, had, in 1608, sought an asylum in Holland. In 1617 they conceived the design of removing to America, and in 1619 they obtained from the Virginia Company, by the influence of Sir Edward Sandys, the treasurer, "a large patent," authorizing them to settle in Virginia. They embarked in the latter part of the year 1620, in the Mayflower, intending to settle somewhere near the Hudson River, which lay within the Virginia Company's territory. The Pilgrims were, however, conducted to the bleak and barren coast of Massachusetts, where they landed on the twenty-second day of December, (new style,) 1620, on the rock of Plymouth. Thus, thirteen years after the settlement of Jamestown, was laid the foundation of the New England States. The place of their landing was beyond the limits of the Virginia Company.

In the month of August, 1619, a Dutch man-of-war visited Jamestown and sold the settlers twenty negroes, the first introduced into Virginia. Some time before this, Captain Argall sent out, at the expense of the Earl of Warwick, on a "filibustering" cruise to the West Indies, a ship called the Treasurer, manned "with the ablest men in the colony," under an old commission from the Duke of Savoy against the Spanish dominions in the western hemisphere. She returned to Virginia after some ten months, with her booty, which consisted of captured negroes, who were not left in Virginia, because Captain Argall had gone back to England, but were put on the Earl of Warwick's plantation in the Somer Islands.[144:A]

It is probable that the planters who purchased the negroes from the Dutch man-of-war reasoned but little on the morality of the act, or if any scruples of conscience presented themselves, they could be readily silenced by reflecting that the negroes were heathens, descendants of Ham, and consigned by Divine appointment to perpetual bondage.[145:A] The planters may, if they reasoned at all on the subject, have supposed that they were even performing a humane act in releasing these Africans from the noisome hold of the ship. They might well believe that the condition of the negro slave would be less degraded and wretched in Virginia than it had been in their native country. This first purchase was probably not looked upon as a matter of much consequence, and for several ages the increase of the blacks in Virginia was so inconsiderable as not to attract any special attention. The condition of the white servants of the colony, many of them convicts, was so abject, that men, accustomed to see their own race in bondage, could look with more indifference at the worse condition of the slaves.

The negroes purchased by the slavers on the coast of Africa were brought from the interior, convicts sold into slavery, children sold by heathen parents destitute of natural affection, kidnapped villagers, and captives taken in war, the greater part of them born in hereditary bondage. The circumstances under which they were consigned to the slave-ship evince the wretchedness of their condition in their native country, where they were the victims of idolatry, barbarism, and war. The negroes imported were usually between the ages of fourteen and thirty, two-thirds of them being males. The new negro, just transferred from the wilds of a distant continent, was indolent, ignorant of the modes and implements of labor, and of the language of his master, and perhaps of his fellow-laborers.[145:B] To tame and domesticate, to instruct in the modes of industry, and to reduce to subordination and usefulness a barbarian, gross, obtuse, perverse, must have demanded persevering efforts and severe discipline.

While the cruel slave-trade was prompted by a remorseless cupidity, an inscrutable Providence turned the wickedness of men into the means of bringing about beneficent results. The system of slavery, doubtless, entailed many evils on slave and slave-holder, and, perhaps, the greater on the latter. These evils are the tax paid for the elevation of the negro from his aboriginal condition.

Among the vessels that came over to Virginia from England, about this time, is mentioned a bark of five tons. A fleet sent out by the Virginia Company brought over, in 1619, more than twelve hundred settlers.[146:A] The planters at length enjoyed the blessings of property in the soil, and the society of women. The wives were sold to the colonists for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, and it was ordered that this debt should have precedence of all others. The price of a wife afterwards became higher. The bishops in England, by the king's orders, collected nearly fifteen hundred pounds to build a college or university at Henrico, intended in part for the education of Indian children.[146:B]

In July, 1620, the population of the colony was estimated at four thousand. One hundred "disorderly persons" or convicts, sent over during the previous year by the king's order, were employed as servants.[147:A] For a brief interval the Virginia Company had enjoyed freedom of trade with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco; but in October, 1621, this was prohibited by an order in council; and from this time England claimed a monopoly of the trade of her plantations, and this principle was gradually adopted by all the European powers as they acquired transatlantic settlements.[147:B]

Two persons unknown presented plate and ornaments for the communion-table at the college, and at Mrs. Mary Robinson's Church, so called because she had contributed two hundred pounds toward the founding of it. Another person unknown gave five hundred and fifty pounds for the education of Indian children in Christianity; he subscribed himself "Dust and Ashes;" and was afterwards discovered to be Mr. Gabriel Barber, a member of the company.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIII.

Sir Edwin Sandys held the office of treasurer of the company but for one year, being excluded from a re-election by the arbitrary interference of the king. The election was by ballot. The day for it having arrived, the company met, consisting of twenty peers of the realm, near one hundred knights, together with as many more of gallant officers and grave lawyers, and a large number of worthy citizens—an imposing array of rank, and wealth, and talents, and influence. Sir Edwin Sandys being first nominated as a candidate, a lord of the bedchamber and another courtier announced that it was the king's pleasure not to have Sir Edwin Sandys chosen; and because he was unwilling to infringe their right of election, he (the king) would nominate three persons, and permit the company to choose one of them. The company, nevertheless, voted to proceed to an election, as they had a right to do under the charter. Sir Edwin Sandys withdrew his name from nomination, and, at his suggestion it was finally agreed that the king's messengers should name two candidates, and the company one. Upon counting the ballots, it was ascertained that one of the royal candidates received only one vote, and the other only two. The Earl of Southampton received all the rest.

The Virginia Company was divided into two parties, the minority enjoying the favor of the king, and headed by the Earl of Warwick; the other, the liberal, or opposition, or reform party, headed by the Earl of Southampton. The Warwick faction were greatly embittered against Yeardley, and their virulence was increased by his having intercepted a packet from his own secretary, Pory, containing proofs of Argall's misconduct, to be used against him at his trial, which the secretary had been bribed by his friend, the Earl of Warwick, to convey to him. The mild and gentle Yeardley, overcome by these annoyances, at length requested leave to retire from the cares of office. His commission expired in November, 1621; but he continued in the colony, was a member of the council, and enjoyed the respect and esteem of the people. During his short administration, many new settlements were made on the James and York rivers; and the planters, being now supplied with wives and servants, began to be more content, and to take more pleasure in cultivating their lands. The brief interval of free trade with Holland had enlarged the demand for tobacco, and it was cultivated more extensively.

Sir George Yeardley's term of office having expired, the company's council, upon the recommendation of the Earl of Southampton, appointed Sir Francis Wyat governor, a young gentleman of Ireland, whose education, family, fortune, and integrity, well qualified him for the place. He arrived in October, 1621, with a fleet of nine sail, and brought over a new frame of government constituted by the company, and dated July the 24th, 1621, establishing a council of State and a general assembly—vesting the governor with a negative upon the acts of the assembly; this body to be convoked by him in general once a year, and to consist of the council of State and of two burgesses from every town, hundred, or plantation; the trial by jury secured; no act of the assembly to be valid unless ratified by the company in England; and, on the other hand, no order of the company to be obligatory upon the colony without the consent of the assembly. This last feature displays that spirit of constitutional freedom which then pervaded the Virginia Company. A commission bearing the same date with the new frame of government recognized Sir Francis Wyat as the first governor under it; and this famous ordinance became the model of every subsequent provincial form of government in the Anglo-American colonies.[150:A]

Wyat brought with him also a body of instructions intended for the permanent guidance of the governor and council. He was to provide for the service of God in conformity with the Church of England as near as may be; to be obedient to the king, and to administer justice according to the laws of England; not to injure the natives, and to forget old quarrels now buried; to be industrious, and to suppress drunkenness, gaming, and excess in clothes; not to permit any but the council and heads of hundreds to wear gold in their clothes, or to wear silk, till they make it themselves; not to offend any foreign prince; to punish pirates; to build forts; to endeavor to convert the heathen; and each town to teach some of the Indian children fit for the college which was to be built; to cultivate corn, wine, and silk; to search for minerals, dyes, gums, and medicinal drugs, and to draw off the people from the excessive planting of tobacco; to take a census of the colony; to put 'prentices to trades and not let them forsake them for planting tobacco, or any such useless commodity; to build water-mills; to make salt, pitch, tar, soap, and ashes; to make oil of walnuts, and employ apothecaries in distilling lees of beer; to make small quantity of tobacco, and that very good.

Wyat, entering on the duties of his office on the eighteenth of November, dispatched Mr. Thorpe to renew the treaties of peace and friendship with Opechancanough, who was found apparently well affected and ready to confirm the pledges of harmony. A vessel from Ireland brought in eighty immigrants, who planted themselves at Newport's News. The company sent out during this year twenty-one vessels, navigated with upwards of four hundred sailors, and bringing over thirteen hundred men, women, and children. The aggregate number of settlers that arrived during 1621 and 1622 was three thousand five hundred.

With Sir Francis Wyat came over George Sandys, treasurer in Virginia, brother of Sir Edwin Sandys, treasurer of the company in England. George Sandys, who was born in 1577, after passing some time at Oxford, in 1610, travelled over Europe to Turkey, and visited Palestine and Egypt. He published his travels, at Oxford, in 1615, and they were received with great favor. The first poetical production in Anglo-American literature was composed by him, while secretary of the colony; and in the midst of the confusion which followed the massacre of 1622,—"by that imperfect light which was snatched from the hours of night and repose,"—he translated the Metamorphoses of Ovid and the First Book of Virgil's Æneid, which was published in 1626, and dedicated to King Charles the First. He also published several other works, and enjoyed the favor of the literary men of the day. Dryden pronounced Sandys the best versifier of his age. Pope declared that English poetry owed much of its beauty to his translations; and Montgomery, the poet, renders his meed of praise to the beauty of the Psalms translated by him. Having lived chiefly in retirement, he died in 1643, at the house of Sir Francis Wyat, in Bexley, Kent. A fine copy of the translation of Ovid and Virgil, printed in 1632, in folio, elegantly illustrated, once the property of the Duke of Sussex, is now in the library of Mr. Grigsby. Mr. Thomas H. Wynne, of Richmond, also has a copy of this rare work.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XIV.

In 1615 twelve different commodities had been shipped from Virginia; sassafras and tobacco were now the only exports. During the year 1619 the company in England imported twenty thousand pounds of tobacco, the entire crop of the preceding year. James the First endeavored to draw a "prerogative" revenue from what he termed a pernicious weed, and against which he had published his "Counterblast;" but he was restrained from this illegal measure by a resolution of the House of Commons. In 1607 he sent a letter forbidding the use of tobacco at St. Mary's College, Cambridge.

Smoking was the first mode of using tobacco in England, and when Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom among people of fashion, in order to escape observation he smoked privately in his house, (at Islington,) the remains of which were till of late years to be seen, as an inn, long known as the Pied Bull. This was the first house in England in which it was smoked, and Raleigh had his arms emblazoned there, with a tobacco-plant on the top. There existed also another tradition in the Parish of St. Matthew, Friday Street, London, that Raleigh was accustomed to sit smoking at his door in company with Sir Hugh Middleton. Sir Walter's guests were entertained with pipes, a mug of ale, and a nutmeg, and on these occasions he made use of his tobacco-box, which was of cylindrical form, seven inches in diameter and thirteen inches long; the outside of gilt leather, and within a receiver of glass or metal, which held about a pound of tobacco. A kind of collar connected the receiver with the case, and on every side the box was pierced with holes for the pipes. This relic was preserved in the museum of Ralph Thoresby, of Leeds, in 1719, and about 1843 was added, by the late Duke of Sussex, to his collection of the smoking utensils of all nations.[154:A]

Although Sir Walter Raleigh first introduced the custom of smoking tobacco in England, yet its use appears to have been not entirely unknown before, for one Kemble, condemned for heresy in the time of Queen Mary the Bloody, while walking to the stake smoked a pipe of tobacco. Hence the last pipe that one smokes was called the Kemble pipe.

The writer of a pamphlet, supposed to have been Milton's father, describes many of the play-books and pamphlets of that day, 1609, as "conceived over night by idle brains, impregnated with tobacco smoke and mulled sack, and brought forth by the help of midwifery of a caudle next morning." At the theatres in Shakespeare's time, the spectators were allowed to sit on the stage, and to be attended by pages, who furnished them with pipes and tobacco.

About the time of the settlement of Jamestown, in 1607, the characteristics of a man of fashion were, to wear velvet breeches, with panes or slashes of silk, an enormous starched ruff, a gilt-handled sword, and a Spanish dagger; to play at cards or dice in the chamber of the groom-porter, and to smoke tobacco in the tilt-yard, or at the playhouse.

The peers engaged in the trial of the Earls of Essex and Southampton smoked much while they deliberated on their verdict. It was alleged against Sir Walter Raleigh that he used tobacco on the occasion of the execution of the Earl of Essex, in contempt of him; and it was perhaps in allusion to this circumstance that when Raleigh was passing through London to Winchester, to stand his trial, he was followed by the execrations of the populace, and pelted with tobacco-pipes, stones, and mud. On the scaffold, however, he protested that during the execution of Essex he had retired far off into the armory, where Essex could not see him, although he saw Essex, and shed tears for him. Raleigh used tobacco on the morning of his own execution.

As early as the year 1610 tobacco was in general use in England. The manner of using it was partly to inhale the smoke and blow it out through the nostrils, and this was called "drinking tobacco," and this practice continued until the latter part of the reign of James the First. In 1614 the number of tobacco-houses in or near London was estimated at seven thousand. In 1620 was chartered the Society of Tobacco-pipe Makers of London; they bore on their shield a tobacco-plant in full blossom.

The "Counterblast against Tobacco," attributed to James the First, if in some parts absurd and puerile, yet is not without a good deal of just reasoning and good sense; some fair hits are made in it, and those who have ridiculed that production might find it not easy to controvert some of its views. King James, in his Counterblast, does not omit the opportunity of expressing his hatred toward Sir Walter Raleigh, in terms worthy of that despicable monarch. He continued his opposition to tobacco as long as he lived, and in his ordinary conversation oftentimes argued and inveighed against it.

The Virginia tobacco in early times was imported into England in the leaf, in bundles, as at present; the Spanish or West Indian tobacco in balls. Molasses or other liquid preparation was used in preparing those balls. Tobacco was then, as now, adulterated in various ways. The nice retailer kept it in what were called lily-pots, that is, white jars. The tobacco was cut on a maple block; juniper-wood, which retains fire well, was used for lighting pipes, and among the rich silver tongs were employed for taking up a coal of it. Tobacco was sometimes called the American Silver Weed.

The Turkish Vizier thrust pipes through the noses of smokers; and the Shah of Persia cropped the ears and slit the noses of those who made use of the fascinating leaf. The Counterblast says of it: "And for the vanity committed in this filthy custom, is it not both great vanity and uncleanness, that at the table—a place of respect of cleanliness, of modesty—men should not be ashamed to sit tossing of tobacco-pipes and puffing of smoke, one at another, making the filthy smoke and stink thereof to exhale athwart the dishes, and infect the air, when very often men who abhor it are at their repast? Surely smoke becomes a kitchen far better than a dining-chamber; and yet it makes the kitchen oftentimes in the inward parts of man, soiling and infecting them with an unctuous and oily kind of soot, as hath been found in some great tobacco-takers that after their deaths were opened."

"A Counterblast to Tobacco," by James the First, King of England, was first printed in quarto, without name or date, at London, 1616. In the frontispiece was engraved the tobacco-smoker's coat of arms, consisting of a blackamoor's head, cross-pipes, cross-bones, death's-head, etc. It is not improbable that it was intended to foment the popular prejudice against Sir Walter Raleigh, who first introduced the use of tobacco into England, and who was put to death in the same year, 1616. King James alludes to the introduction of the use of tobacco and of Raleigh as follows: "It is not so long since the first entry of this abuse among us here, as that this present age cannot very well remember both the first author and the form of the first introduction of it among us. It was neither brought in by king, great conqueror, nor learned doctor of physic. With the report of a great discovery for a conquest, some two or three savage men were brought in together with this savage custom; but the pity is, the poor wild barbarous men died, but that vile barbarous custom is still alive, yea, in fresh vigor; so as it seems a miracle to me how a custom springing from so vile a ground, and brought in by a father so generally hated, should be welcomed upon so slender a warrant."

The king thus reasons against the Virginia staple: "Secondly, it is, as you use or rather abuse it, a branch of the sin of drunkenness, which is the root of all sins,[156:A] for as the only delight that drunkards love any weak or sweet drink, so are not those (I mean the strong heat and fume) the only qualities that make tobacco so delectable to all the lovers of it? And as no man loves strong heavy drinks the first day, (because nemo repente fuit turpissimus,) but by custom is piece and piece allured, while in the end a drunkard will have as great a thirst to be drunk as a sober man to quench his thirst with a draught when he hath need of it; so is not this the true case of all the great takers of tobacco, which therefore they themselves do attribute to a bewitching quality in it? Thirdly, is it not the greatest sin of all that you, the people of all sorts of this kingdom, who are created and ordained by God to bestow both your persons and goods for the maintenance both of the honor and safety of your king and commonwealth, should disable yourself to this shameful imbecility, that you are not able to ride or walk the journey of a Jew's Sabbath but you must have a reeky coal brought you from the next poor-house to kindle your tobacco with? whereas he cannot be thought able for any service in the wars that cannot endure oftimes the want of meat, drink, and sleep; much more then must he endure the want of tobacco." A curious tractate on tobacco, by Dr. Tobias Venner, was published at London in 1621. The author was a graduate of Oxford, and a physician at Bath, and is mentioned in the Oxoniæ Athenienses.[157:A]

The amount of tobacco imported in 1619 into England, from Virginia, being the entire crop of the preceding year, was twenty thousand pounds. At the end of seventy years there were annually imported into England more than fifteen millions of pounds of it, from which was derived a revenue of upwards of £100,000.[157:B]

In April, 1621, the House of Commons debated whether it was expedient to prohibit the importation of tobacco entirely; and they determined to exclude all save from Virginia and the Somer Isles. It was estimated that the consumption of England amounted to one thousand pounds per diem. This seductive narcotic leaf, which soothes the mind and quiets its perturbations, has found its way into all parts of the habitable globe, from the sunny tropics to the snowy regions of the frozen pole. Its fragrant smoke ascends alike to the blackened rafters of the lowly hut, and the gilded ceilings of luxurious wealth.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XV.

1621-1622.

In November and December, 1621, at an assembly held at James City, acts were passed for encouraging the planting of mulberry-trees, and the making of silk; but this enterprise, so early commenced in Virginia, and so earnestly revived of late years, is still unsuccessful; and it may be concluded that the climate of Virginia is unpropitious to that sort of production.

The Rev. Mr. Copeland, Chaplain on board of the Royal James, East Indiaman, on the return voyage from the East Indies, prevailed upon the officers and crew of that ship to contribute seventy pounds toward the establishment of a church and school in Virginia, and Charles City County was selected as the site of it, and it was to be called the East India School, and to be dependent upon the college at Henrico. The Virginia Company allotted one thousand acres of land for the maintenance of the master and usher, and presented three hundred acres to Mr. Copeland. Workmen were accordingly sent out early in 1622, to begin the building. The clergymen in Virginia at this time were Messrs. Whitaker, Mease, Wickham, Stockham, and Bargrave.[158:A]

Early in 1622 very favorable intelligence from Virginia reached England, and upon this occasion, on the seventeenth of April, the Rev. Mr. Copeland, by appointment, preached before the Virginia Company, at Bow Church. He was shortly afterwards appointed a member of the Virginia Council and rector of the college established for the conversion of the Indians; but all these benevolent purposes and hopeful anticipations were suddenly darkened and defeated by the news of a catastrophe which had, in a few hours, blasted the labors of so many years.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XVI.

1622.

On the twenty-second day of March, 1622, there occurred in the colony a memorable massacre, which originated, as was believed, in the following circumstances: There was among the Indians a famous chief, named Nemattanow, or "Jack of the Feather," as he was styled by the English, from his fashion of decking his hair. He was reckoned by his own people invulnerable to the arms of the English. This Nemattanow coming to the store of one of the settlers named Morgan, persuaded him to go to Pamunkey to trade, and murdered him by the way. Nemattanow, in two or three days, returned to Morgan's house, and finding there two young men, Morgan's servants, who inquired for their master, answered them that he was dead. The young men, seeing their master's cap on the Indian's head, suspected the murder, and undertook to conduct him to Mr. Thorpe, who then lived at Berkley, on the James River, since well known as a seat of the Harrisons, and originally called "Brickley." Nemattanow so exasperated the young men on the way that they shot him, and he falling, they put him into a boat and conveyed him to the governor at Jamestown, distant seven or eight miles. The wounded chief in a short time died. Feeling the approaches of death, he entreated the young men not to disclose that he had been mortally wounded by a bullet: so strong is the desire for posthumous fame even in the breast of a wild, untutored savage!

Opechancanough, the ferocious Indian chief, agitated with mingled emotions of grief and indignation at the loss of his favorite Nemattanow, at first muttered threats of revenge; but the retorted defiance of the English made him for a time smother his resentment and dissemble his dark designs under the guise of friendship. Accordingly, upon Sir Francis Wyat's arrival, all suspicion of Indian treachery had died away; the colonists, in delusive security, were in general destitute of arms; the plantations lay dispersed, as caprice suggested, or a rich vein of land allured, as for as the Potomac River;[161:A] their houses everywhere open to the Indians, who fed at their tables and lodged under their roofs. About the middle of March, a messenger being sent upon some occasion to Opechancanough, he entertained him kindly, and protested that he held the peace so firm that "the sky should fall before he broke it." On the twentieth of the same month, the Indians guided some of the English safely through the forest, and the more completely to lull all suspicion, they sent one Brown, who was sojourning among them for the purpose of learning their language, back home to his master. They even borrowed boats from the whites to cross the river when about holding a council on the meditated attack. The massacre took place on Friday, the twenty-second of March, 1622. On the evening before, and on that very morning, the Indians, as usual, came unarmed into the houses of the unsuspecting colonists, with fruits, fish, turkeys, and venison for sale: in some places they actually sate down to breakfast with the English. At about the hour of noon the savages, rising suddenly and everywhere at the same time, butchered the colonists with their own implements, sparing neither age, nor sex, nor condition; and thus fell in a few hours three hundred and forty-nine men, women, and children. The infuriated savages wreaked their vengeance even on the dead, dragging and mangling the lifeless bodies, smearing their hands in blood, and bearing off the torn and yet palpitating limbs as trophies of a brutal triumph.

Among their victims was Mr. George Thorpe, (a kinsman of Sir Thomas Dale,) who had been of the king's bedchamber, deputy to the college lands, and one of the principal men of the colony—a pious gentleman, who had labored zealously for the conversion of the Indians, and had treated them with uniform kindness. As an instance of this, they having at one time expressed their fears of the English mastiff dogs, he had caused some of them to be put to death, to the great displeasure of their owners. Opechancanough inhabiting a paltry cabin, Mr. Thorpe had built him a handsome house after the English manner.[162:A] But the savage miscreants, equally deaf to the voice of humanity and the emotions of gratitude, murdered their benefactor with every circumstance of remorseless cruelty. He had been forewarned of his danger by a servant, but making no effort to escape, fell a victim to his misplaced confidence. With him ten other persons were slain at Berkley.

Another of the victims was Captain Nathaniel Powell, one of the first settlers, a brave soldier, and who had for a brief interval filled the place of governor of the colony. His family fell with him. Nathaniel Causie, another of Captain Smith's old soldiers, when severely wounded and surrounded by the Indians, slew one of them with an axe, and put the rest to flight. At Warrasqueake a colonist named Baldwin, by repeatedly firing his gun, saved himself and family, and divers others. The savages at the same time made an attempt upon the house of a planter named Harrison, (near Baldwin's,) where were Thomas Hamor with some men, and a number of women and children. The Indians tried to inveigle Hamor out of the house, by pretending that Opechancanough was hunting in the neighboring woods and desired to have his company; but he not coming out, they set fire to a tobacco-house; the men ran toward the fire, and were pursued by the Indians, who pierced them with arrows and beat out their brains. Hamor having finished a letter that he was writing, and suspecting no treachery, went out to see what was the matter, when, being wounded in the back with an arrow, he returned to the house and barricaded it. Meanwhile Harrison's boy, finding his master's gun loaded, fired it at random, and the Indians fled. Baldwin still continuing to discharge his gun, Hamor, with twenty-two others, withdrew to his house, leaving their own in flames. Hamor next retired to a new house that he was building, and there defending himself with spades, axes, and brickbats, escaped the fury of the savages. The master of a vessel lying in the James River sent a file of musqueteers ashore, who recaptured from the enemy the Merchant's store-house. In the neighborhood of Martin's Hundred seventy-three persons were butchered; yet a small family there escaped, and heard nothing of the massacre until two days after.

Thus fell in so short a space of time one-twelfth part of the colonists of Virginia, including six members of the council. The destruction might have been universal but for the disclosure of a converted Indian, named Chanco, who, during the night preceding the massacre, revealed the plot to one Richard Pace, with whom he lived. Pace, upon receiving this intelligence, after fortifying his own house, repaired before day to Jamestown, and gave the alarm to Sir Francis Wyat, the Governor; his vigilance saved a large part of the colony from destruction.[163:A] Eleven were killed at Berkley, fifty at Edward Bonit's plantation, two at Westover, five at Macocks, four on Appomattox River, six at Flower-de-Hundred, twenty-one of Sir George Yeardley's people at Weyanoke, and seventy-three at Martin's Hundred, seven miles from Jamestown.

The horrors of famine threatened to follow in the train of massacre, and the consternation of the survivors was such that twenty or thirty days elapsed before any plan of defence was concerted. Many were urgent to abandon the James River, and take refuge on the eastern shore, where some newly settled plantations had escaped. At length it was determined to abandon the weaker plantations, and to concentrate their surviving population in five or six well fortified places, Shirley, Flower-de-Hundred, Jamestown, with Paspahey, and the plantations opposite to Kiquotan, and Southampton Hundred. In consequence a large part of the cattle and effects of the planters fell a prey to the enemy. Nevertheless, a planter, "Master Gookins," at Newport's News, refused to abandon his plantation, and with thirty-five men resolutely held it.

The family of Gookins is ancient, and appears to have been found originally at Canterbury, in Kent, England. The name has undergone successive changes—Colkin, Cockin, Cockayn, Cocyn, Cokain, Cokin, Gockin, Gokin, Gookin, Gookins, Gooking, and others. The early New England chroniclers spelled it "Goggin."[164:A] Daniel Gookin removed to County Cork, in Ireland, and thence to Virginia, arriving in November, 1621, with fifty men of his own and thirty passengers, exceedingly well furnished with all sorts of provision and cattle, and planted himself at Newport's News. In the massacre he held out with a force of thirty-five men against the savages, disregarding the order to retire. It is probable that he affected to make a settlement independent of the civil power of the colony, and it appears to have been styled by his son a "lordship." It was above Newport's News, and was called "Mary's Mount."[164:B]

To return to the incidents of the massacre. Samuel Jordan, with the aid of a few refugees, maintained his ground at Beggar's Bush;[164:C] as also did Mr. Edward Hill, at Elizabeth City. "Mrs. Proctor, a proper, civil, modest gentlewoman," defended herself and family for a month after the massacre, until at last constrained to retire by the English officers, who threatened, if she refused, to burn her house down; which was done by the Indians shortly after her withdrawal. Captain Newce, of Elizabeth City, and his wife, distinguished themselves by their liberality to the sufferers. Several families escaped to the country afterwards known as North Carolina, and settled there.[164:D]

When intelligence of this event reached England, the king granted the Virginia Company some unserviceable arms out of the Tower, and "lent them twenty barrels of powder;" Lord St. John of Basing gave sixty coats of mail; the privy council sent out supplies, and the City of London dispatched one hundred settlers.[165:A]

One effect of the massacre was the ruin of the iron-works at Falling Creek, on the south side of the James River, (near Ampthill in the present County of Chesterfield,) where, of twenty-four people, only a boy and girl escaped by hiding themselves.[165:B] Lead was found near these iron-works. King James promised to send over four hundred soldiers for the protection of the colony; but he never could be induced to fulfil his promise. Captain John Smith offered, if the company would send him to Virginia, with a small force, to reduce the savages to subjection, and protect the colony from future assaults. His project failed on account of the dissensions of the company, and the niggardly terms proposed by the few members that were found to act on the matter. The Rev. Jonas Stockham, in May, 1621, previous to the massacre, had expressed the opinion that it was utterly in vain to undertake the conversion of the savages, until their priests and "ancients" were put to the sword. Captain Smith held the same opinion, and he states that the massacre drove all to believe that Mr. Stockham was right in his view on this point.[165:C] The event justified the policy of Argall in prohibiting intercourse with the natives, and had that measure been enforced, the massacre would probably have been prevented. The violence and corruption of such rulers as Argall serve to disgrace and defeat even good measures; while the virtues of the good are sometimes perverted to canonize the most pernicious.

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