The Greatest Works of Charles Carleton Coffin. Charles Carleton Coffin
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be a general assembly of delegates or burgesses from each borough, who were to be elected by the inhabitants, and the burgesses were to make all needful laws. They assembled at James City; John Pory was chosen speaker. A prayer was read, and the first Legislature that ever assembled in the New World was ready to proceed to business. The burgesses accepted the privileges which Governor Yeardly had given them as their great charter. The Church of England was established as the Church of the colony, and the ministers were to receive the value of two hundred pounds a year, to be paid in tobacco. Laws were passed against idleness, drunkenness and gambling. If people wore costly clothes they were to be taxed for them; everybody was required to attend church twice every Sunday; and everybody who owned a gun was to carry it, to be ready to fight if attacked by the Indians. The price of first quality tobacco was fixed at three shillings per pound; second quality, half-price.
It was the beginning of a new state of affairs. The settlers took heart, and built good houses. Virginia was their home. There were only about six hundred inhabitants; but now that the cruel laws were repealed, and the rights of the people recognized, there were thousands in England ready to emigrate. In twelve months twelve hundred and sixty-one persons crossed the Atlantic to find new homes on the banks of the James.
Sir Edwin Sandys and the Earl of Southampton were members of the London Company. They were large-hearted men, and through their influence the company granted a written constitution to the settlers. The company were to appoint the governor and his council, while the people were to elect the burgesses.
There had been so many wars, and so many men had been killed in battles, that there were far more women than men in England. There were very few women in Virginia; and in order to supply the settlers with wives, the company sent out a ship-load of girls, who were ready to emigrate for the sake of getting husbands. There were ninety of them. The company paid the cost of their going; but each settler must pay one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco for the girl whom he might select. The tobacco was reckoned at three shillings a pound; so they must pay three hundred and sixty shillings for a wife, which they were ready to do, and in a very short time every girl was provided with a husband. Wives were in such demand that sixty more girls were sent out, and the price raised to one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco.
While the settlers were purchasing their wives, a Dutch ship sailed up the James with sixteen negroes on board, which were purchased as slaves by the tobacco-raisers of Jamestown. It was the beginning of African slavery in America.
As things are constituted in this world, the innocent suffer for the guilty. In Virginia some of the settlers were hard-working, industrious, and thrifty, doing what they could to build up the colony; but many others were indolent, shiftless, and vicious. Instead of working for a livelihood, they stole the corn which the Indians had raised. No one likes to be plundered. In civilized society robbers are put into prison; but the Indian knows nothing of courts of law or jails; the tomahawk is his administrator of justice.
The Indians laid a plan to fall upon the settlements along the James, and at a blow finish the white men who were taking their land, stealing their corn, and driving the game out of the country.
What a scene the sim rose upon on the 22d of March, 1622! Three hundred and forty-seven massacred, and the colonists fleeing to Jamestown pursued by the blood-thirsty savages. The Indians were brave to strike blows, but fled like cowards when the bullets began to whistle about their ears.
The total number of emigrants had been nearly four thousand; some had gone back to England; but there were still twenty-five hundred people.
A ship carried the news to England. There was great consternation. The city of London and gentlemen of fortune contributed money to purchase arms to send to the colonists.
“You must roast out the savages!” was their message.
There were brave men in Virginia, who had no thought of sitting down and wringing their hands. George Sandys. Governor Yeardly, and Captain Madigan enlisted men, and marched into the Indian country, burning their wigwams, driving them from their hunting-grounds, and giving them little rest. Notwithstanding this, the colony languished. The shares of the company were worthless. The members were at loggerheads with each other and with the king. They had fierce discussions in their meetings. James had made concessions in the charter, for he saw that it gave the colonists some rights which he wished to recover. He wanted to be an absolute monarch, and ordered the judges of the court to take measures to revoke the charter. Under such a state of affairs, the colony came to a stand-still.
Chapter VII
The Pilgrims
In England, Holland, France, and Germany there was a great difference of opinion in matters of religion. Men everywhere were thinking for themselves, instead of accepting the opinion of pope, bishop, or priest. In England the people were nearly all Protestants; in France the majority were Catholics; in Holland they were nearly equally divided. In England the Protestants would not tolerate anybody who did not accept the Church which Henry VIII. had set up; in France the Catholics were ever ready to persecute the Protestants; in Holland men could be Catholic or Protestant as they pleased. So it came about that the men and women of Scrooby, when persecuted for separating themselves from the Church of England, and meeting in William Brewster’s house on Sunday for worship, fled to Holland, as the place where they could think and act for themselves. They settled at Leyden, working hard to keep the wolf from the door. They were industrious, and so honest, minding their own business, that the Dutch treated them with great respect. Instead of frequenting the beer-houses, and taking part in the Dutch revelries, they remained quietly at home when their days’ work was done; and instead of carousing on Sundays, they met in the house of John Robinson for worship. They used no prayer-book, nor had they any particular form of worship. They organized themselves into a Church with Christ as their head. All were equal. They elected their deacons, who were to be their servants. It was a Church in which the rights of every person was respected. They believed that Christ and the apostles organized just such churches; that a bishop, instead of having any authority to rule them, should only be their minister or servant; that they had authority from Christ to rule themselves. Ruling themselves! Let us not forget it. When men rule themselves there will be the largest freedom; they will respect the rights of their fellow-men, for only by so doing can they have their own rights.
Through all the centuries, presbyters, priests, bishops, and popes had ruled in religious matters; but these men of Scrooby rejected all such authority, and made their declaration to the world —
The people alone have the right to rule!
Ten years passed. No one molested them in their religious opinions; none disturbed their worship; but Holland was divided into two great political parties— Prince Maurice being at the head of one, and John of Barneveld, before whom Captain Block laid his map of Hudson River, and of the coast along which he sailed in the Onrust, was at the head of the other.
James of England, Louis of France, and Philip of Spain, all were interfering in the affairs of Holland. Civil war broke out, armies were on the march, and the whole country was disturbed.
It was a terrible scene which the people at the Hague beheld at sunrise on May 13th, 1619 — John of Barneveld, seventy-two years old, kneeling on a wooden scaffold in front of the Binnenhof. All the morning the drums had been beating, the trumpets sounding, and soldiers marching. A great crowd had gathered. The old man drew the black cap over his white locks, and kneeled with his face toward his own house, a little distance away. One blow, and the head of the true-hearted patriot rolled upon the planks, and the crowd, scrambling upon the scaffold, dipped their handkerchiefs in his blood, to keep as souvenirs of his death. So Holland’s great statesman died, at the hands of those who hated him, because he was so great. He had done grand things for his country, but intrigue, political faction, and jealousy could not be content till he was in his grave.
The men who had fled from Scrooby to find a home in Holland loved peace. They stood aloof from wrangling. Their true-hearted pastor, John Robinson, taught them to love all men. They could