Savage Kingdom: Virginia and The Founding of English America

He enlisted with the battalion of a Slovenian warlord, and marched to Transylvania, on the front line of the war. There, during a siege, he claimed to have beheaded three ‘Turks’ single-handedly before the massed ranks of the opposing Christian and Muslim armies. For this act of bravery, the King of Poland granted him a coat of arms, the title of Captain and the status of ‘an English gentleman’.

He was soon after wounded during a skirmish with Tartars and taken prisoner. He and his fellow captives were sent to Axiopolis (modern Cernavoda), a market town on the banks of the Danube, and ‘sold for slaves, like beasts in a market-place; where every merchant, viewing their limbs and wounds, caused other slaves to struggle with them, to try their strength’.

A dealer bought the young soldier for a client in Constantinople, who turned out to be the beautiful daughter of a Greek noblewoman whom Smith called Charatza Trabigzanda (probably mistaking the Greek description of her as a girl from Trebizond).26 She soon ‘took (as it seemed) much compassion on him’, but not yet being of age, and fearful that he would be sold on, sent him to her brother, a military official working near the Black Sea, ‘till time made her Master of her self’. But ‘within an hour after his arrival’, the brother commanded his servant to strip Smith naked, ‘and shave his head and beard so bare as his hand’ and place ‘a great ring of iron, with a long stalk bowed like a sickle, riveted about his neck’. After enduring several months of this treatment, Smith ‘beat out [his master’s] brains with his threshing bat’, stole his victim’s clothes, and made his escape along an ancient caravan route to Astrakhan. He vividly recalled a journey along this intersection of Asiatic trade, each crossroads being marked with a signpost showing the way to the Crimea with a crescent moon, to Moscow with a cross, and to China with a sun. Ending up in Prague, the capital of the Holy Roman empire, he embarked on another epic trek through Germany, France and Spain to the Barbary coast of North Africa, where he hitched a lift with French pirates. Narrowly escaping Spanish capture and being blown up by an on-board explosion, he returned to England.27

It is not clear how Smith was introduced to the Virginia venture. At the time Gosnold was promoting the idea in London, he appears to have been staying with or near Robert Bertie at the Willoughby London residence in the Barbican. Robert’s father had shown an interest in the Roanoke venture, and he had family connections to both the Wingfields and Gosnolds, so Robert may have effected an introduction.28

Whatever Smith’s credentials, he, like Newport and Gosnold, had at least made a name for himself in the world of military and maritime affairs. The same could not be said of two mysterious figures mingling among the assembled adventurers and planters on that November day. Smythe introduced them as John Ratcliffe and George Kendall. They were to take a prominent though as yet unspecified role in the forthcoming expedition, the assembly was informed. Nothing further was revealed about these men, other than perhaps the merest hint that their participation was non-negotiable, as they had been appointed at the personal behest of Robert Cecil himself.

FOUR Departure

BY LATE NOVEMBER 1606, preparations for the Virginia Company’s first expedition were well advanced. Edward Maria Wingfield had packed a trunk with reading material, together with ‘diverse fruit, conserves and preserves’, and dispatched it to Richard Crofts, probably a relative of the Herefordshire landowner and MP Sir Herbert Crofts.

Crofts lived at Ratcliffe, a hamlet on the north bank of the Thames. The stretch of river overlooked by his house was used to moor ships, and on 23 November the Susan Constant, the 170-ton flagship for the Virginia fleet, arrived, heavily laden with supplies for her forthcoming voyage. She was tied up alongside the Philip and Frances, and Crofts dutifully ensured that Wingfield’s precious trunk was safely stowed in one of the cabins. A consignment of clucking hens and a cockerel was also delivered, from which Wingfield hoped to breed a flock to provide himself, and possibly his associates, with fresh eggs and an occasional chicken for the pot once in America.

That night, the Susan Constant began to shift with the ebb tide. Being so heavily laden, she was difficult to control, and crashed against the neighbouring ship, damaging the Philip and Frances’s bowsprit, sheet anchor and beak-head (defined by Captain John Smith as the part of the ship ‘before the forecastle, and of great use, as well for the grace and countenance of the ship, as a place for men to ease themselves in’).1 When the master of the Philip and Frances boarded the Susan Constant to remonstrate with the crew, he claimed to find them ‘tippling and drinking’.2

The Susan Constant suffered minor damage to two of her portholes, but she was soon patched up, and a few days later moved further downstream to Blackwall, where she was to rendezvous with her two companion vessels: the 40-ton Godspeed and the 20-ton Discovery. Of the three ships, only the Discovery, a small bark or ‘pinnace’, was actually owned by the Virginia Company. She was to remain in Virginia for use by the settlers, while the other two hired vessels would return to England, laden, it was hoped, with valuable commodities.

On 10 December, ten days before the ships were due to sail, the mission’s leaders were once again summoned to Philpot Lane, this time to receive their final ‘Orders and Directions’ from the Royal Council.

Newport was confirmed as admiral, having ‘sole charge’ of the venture while he was in Virginia. He was also given the box containing the list of names for the local council, which he was under orders to ensure remained sealed until the fleet arrived in America. Meanwhile, he was left to appoint the ‘captains, soldiers and mariners’ for the voyage. Reflecting his experience and prominent role in getting the venture off the ground, Gosnold was put in charge of the Godspeed while, to everyone’s surprise, the mysterious Ratcliffe was given command of the Discovery.

The expedition leaders were then handed a set of ‘Instructions given by way of Advice’, drawn up by Richard Hakluyt. These distilled the collective wisdom of the adventurers’ forerunners, and showed that a great deal had been learned from their abundant mistakes.

Hakluyt insisted that, on arrival in America, their first job was to anchor the fleet in a ‘safe port’ at the mouth of a navigable river. The river was to be the one that ‘runneth furthest into the Land’ and ‘bendeth most towards the Northwest’, in the hope that it might be that mentioned by the Indians at Roanoke, leading to the Appalachian Mountains and even the Pacific.3

As for deciding the location of the settlement, Hakluyt recalled the experience of the Huguenots at Fort Caroline. The settlers must find ‘the Strongest most Fertile and wholesome place’ far enough upriver ‘to the end that you be not surprised as the French were in Florida’. They should also ‘in no Case Suffer any of the natural people of the Country to inhabit between You and the Sea Coast’, which might cut off their means of escape in the event of hostilities.

The settlement should be located away from heavily wooded areas, because the trees would provide cover for enemies, and they did not have the resources to clear large swathes of land (‘You shall not be able to Cleanse twenty acres in a Year’). They should also avoid a ‘low and moist place because it will prove unhealthful’. It was suggested that the best way of finding a suitably wholesome site was to look at the people who lived nearby. If they were ‘blear Eyed and with Swollen bellies and Legs’, then it was best to steer clear; if ‘Strong and Clean’ it would be a ‘true sign of a wholesome Soil’.

Once a base had been found, they were to erect a ‘little sconce’ or lookout post at the mouth of the river. The one hundred and twenty settlers were then to be split up into four groups: forty to build a fortified settlement, thirty to prepare the ground for growing ‘corn and roots’, ten to man the sconce. The remaining forty were to make up exploration parties. Gosnold was to take half of them into the interior, equipped with a compass and ‘half a Dozen pickaxes to try if they can find any mineral’. The others were to explore the river to its source, scoring the bark of trees on the river side as they went, to help search parties retrace their route should they go missing. The instructions did not specify who was to lead this mission.

Those left to construct the settlement were advised to lay out streets of ‘good breadth’ which converged on a central square or marketplace. A cannon was then to be placed in the centre, which could ‘command’ any street in the event of attack. Before setting up housing, the carpenters and ‘other suchlike workmen’ were to work on the public amenities, such as a secure storehouse and assembly room.

As for the Indians, they were recognized to be vital to the settlement’s success. ‘You must have great care not to offend the naturals if you can eschew it and employ some few of your company to trade with them for corn and all other lasting victuals.’ ‘Above all things, do not advertise the killing of any of your men’, and avoid revealing signs of sickness, in case the ‘country people’ realize the settlers are ‘but Common men’.

Trade was both crucial to survival and fraught with difficulties. The settlers should first ensure that the crews of the ships that brought them (which would soon be sailing back to England) should be prevented from having contact with local tribes, ‘for, those that mind not to inhabit [the colony], for a Little Gain will Debase the Estimation of Exchange and hinder the trade’. Before the Indians realize that the settlers mean to stay, special representatives should be appointed to barter with them for sufficient ‘Corn and all Other lasting Victuals’ to last through the first year, the settlers’ own crop to be put in store ‘to avoid the Danger of famine’.

‘The way to prosper and to Obtain Good Success’, Hakluyt concluded, ‘is to make yourselves all of one mind for the Good of your Country & your own’. Every one of them must ‘Serve & fear God the Giver of all Goodness’. They must shun corrupt or antisocial behaviour, as ‘every Plantation which our heavenly father hath not planted shall be rooted out’. Finally, they were ordered to keep all matters relating to Virginia secret, and prevent the publication of any material which did not have the Royal Council’s prior approval.4

Having given their solemn oaths to abide by these orders and instructions, the three leaders of the expedition went to Blackwall to inspect the company that was to be carried across the Atlantic, and settled in the New World.

Instead of the one hundred and twenty envisaged by Hakluyt, they found around one hundred men and boys, plus a few dogs, brought for hunting and as pets.5

Thirty-six of the company were identified as ‘gentlemen’, many of them the footloose younger sons of distinguished families. Anthony Gosnold was Bartholomew’s younger brother. Thomas Sandys was the younger brother of the prominent MP Edwin Sandys.6 Thomas Studley, the man selected to act as ‘cape merchant’ (in charge of supplies) and an enthusiastic chronicler of the coming adventure, may have come from a line of prolific writers.7 Kellam or Kenelm Throgmorton was probably related to Bess, the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh.

Other gentleman members of the expedition were from more obscure and modest backgrounds. Nothing is known about the origins of Robert Tyndall, the expedition navigator, beyond the fact that he was the gunner of Prince Henry, James I’s son and heir. He may have been the son of John Tyndall, who wrote in 1602 to his ‘kinsman’ Michael Hicks, Cecil’s close friend, ‘recommending him to his favour,’ but this cannot be verified.8

The remainder of the company was made up of an assortment of tradesmen, labourers and young boys. While most of these ‘common sort’ were being shipped out by their masters, those with a trade or skill were contracted directly by the Virginia Company, to work for a specified period without charge, in return for their transport, tools and maintenance. The surly blacksmith James Read, and a professional mariner, Jonas Profit, probably signed up on such terms, as did Thomas Couper, a barber, Edward Brinto the stonemason, William Love the tailor, and Nicholas Skot, a drummer.

All that is known about the boys is their names: Samuel Collier, Nathaniel Pecock, James Brumfield and Richard Mutton.9 Some of the labourers and boys were likely to have been ‘pressed’ into service, an order from the Royal Council providing Newport with the authority to round up suitable candidates from taverns and playhouses, or buy them off gang-masters.

The fleet set sail on Saturday 20 December 1606.10 It was by design a low-key event. None of the government figures concerned with the venture was apparently in attendance, and whereas Elizabeth had waved off previous missions with a salute of cannon, James did not lift a hand for this departure, nor even seek to be informed.

A few days later, the ships reached the ‘Downs’, a well-known anchorage off the forelands north-east of Dover, where they awaited a favourable wind.

For weeks the fleet bobbed on the waves, while a relentless westerly whipped up the Channel, spitting sea spray and rain into the faces of the impatient captains. Every so often, a violent winter storm would throw up waves that threatened to overwhelm the ships, or drag their anchors, but, as George Percy, who was aboard the Susan Constant, loyally noted, ‘by the skilfulness of the captain [Newport] we suffered no great loss or danger’.11

The ships might have been unscathed, but passengers, strangers to each other’s company and many to the sea, were proving to be less resilient. Boredom and frustration soon crept into the makeshift cabins and cramped quarters. The Susan Constant, under 100 foot long and 20 foot wide, was built as a merchantman to carry cargo, not people, so her fifty or so passengers were forced either to bide their time on the freezing, gale-swept decks, or endure the claustrophobia of the airless holds below. The Godspeed, about 70 foot long and 16 foot wide, and the Discovery, 50 or so foot long and 11 foot wide, were marginally more accommodating, as both had fewer crew and proportionately more space for the passengers, but being smaller, their hulls were jolted even more violently by the churning seas.12

For a month the fleet was held in this state of agitated immobility, and boredom began to breed division and distrust among the restless passengers. In particular, Edward Maria Wingfield and George Percy, who found themselves much in each other’s company, began to detect in those around them the suggestion of a religious plot, to which Robert Hunt, the mission’s chaplain, was somehow connected.

When recruiting for the voyage, Wingfield had visited the Archbishop of Canterbury on behalf of Hunt, to vouch that the cleric suited the role of vicar of Virginia as he was neither ‘touched with the rebellious humours of a popish spirit’ – a Catholic, in other words, who might be acting for the Spanish – ‘nor blemished with the least suspicion of a factious schismatic’, a religious independent, who might be tempted so far from his homeland to flout the authority of the Church of England, the bishops and the King.13 Now, Wingfield began to doubt his own words. Something someone had said, some slight or chance remark, suggested to him and Percy that the vicar might be blemished with a suspicion of factious schismatism after all, which threatened to defile the entire venture.

Meanwhile, another of the passengers, Captain John Smith, had formed an attachment to Hunt, nursing him through a bout of seasickness so severe that, according to Smith, ‘few expected his recovery’. During this time, the captain and the cleric fell into conversation about religious matters, and Smith found himself in close accord with Hunt’s evangelical leanings, judging him to be ‘an honest, religious, and courageous divine’.14

It was at this point that Wingfield and Percy decided to confront Hunt with their suspicions. Smith, whose choleric temperament made him as quick to argue as to judge, sprang violently to his new friend’s defence, accusing these two ‘Tuftaffaty humourists’ of trying to hide their own irreligiousness.15

During the ensuing row, certain rumours about Hunt’s past began to surface, like corpses from the deep. Hunt was by no means the Puritan in his own behaviour as he was now suspected of being in his religious beliefs. Three years before, he had been brought before the court of the archdeaconry of Lewes, the regional administrative body for Heathfield, to answer charges of ‘immorality’ with his servant, Thomasina Plumber. He was at the same time proceeded against for absenteeism, and there were accusations that he had neglected his congregation, leaving his friend Noah Taylor, ‘aquaebajulus’ (water bailiff or customs collector), to perform his duties.16

Smith refused to believe such allegations. How could these men, ‘of the greatest rank amongst us’, circulate such ‘scandalous imputations,’ he wanted to know. They were ‘little better than Atheists’.17

Other passengers joined the fray, with at least three gentlemen lining up behind Smith.18 The argument escalated between these nascent factions until, on 12 February, it was interrupted by a change in the weather. That night, several passengers, Percy among them, clambered up to the deck to gaze into a sky that for the first time in weeks was cloudless. Percy spotted in the glistening firmament a ‘blazing star’ or comet.

The appearance of such a spectacle over the ship’s swinging mast, above a fleet trapped between deliverance into a new world and damnation in the old, was auspicious. The wind turned, and in a flurry of activity, anchors were raised, tillers spun and sails unfurled to catch it. Released from their cyclonic trap, the ships raced across the freezing waters towards the Atlantic. Within a day or so they had reached the Bay of Biscay, and soon after closed on the Canary Islands, off the coast of Morocco.

The six-week delay in the Downs had meant their provisions for the voyage had already been used up, forcing them to break into supplies set aside for their first months in America. So they decided to stop at the Canaries and spend what money they could to make up the deficit.

As soon as the ships dropped anchor, the rows resumed. According to one report, some of the passengers, including one Stephen Calthorp, a gentleman from a prominent Norfolk family, now joined Smith in threatening mutiny.19 At this point, Newport lost patience, and ordered the ringleader Smith to be ‘committed a prisoner’ in the belly of the Susan Constant, Smith’s furious indignation muffled by the heaps of bulging sacks that furnished his cell, and the layers of sturdy oak decking that would wall him in for the coming weeks.20

Picking up the trade winds, the fleet headed off into the Atlantic, covering over 3,000 miles in six weeks. The freezing temperatures of a European winter melted into the sultry warmth of the tropics, providing Percy with some hope of respite from his attacks of epilepsy.

On 23 March, they had their first sight of the West Indies, passing Martinique before reaching Dominica, ‘a very fair island, the trees full of sweet and good smells’. The island was inhabited by ‘many savage Indians’, who at first kept their distance. As soon as they realized that the European visitors were not Spanish, the mood changed, and ‘there came many to our ships with their canoes, bringing us many kinds of sundry fruits, as pines [pineapples], potatoes, plantains, tobacco, and other fruits’. After weeks of dried biscuits and salted meat, the men consumed the gifts greedily. They also happily accepted an ‘abundance’ of fine French linen, which the Indians had salvaged from Spanish ships that had been wrecked on the island.

The English gave the Indians knives and hatchets, ‘which they much esteemed’, and beads, copper and jewels, ‘which they hang through their nostrils, ears, and lips – very strange to behold’. During the transactions, the English learned that the natives had suffered a ‘great overthrow’ at the hands of the Spanish, which explained their initial wariness and subsequent generosity.21

The encounter provided a useful introduction to developing relations with locals, and confirmed English assumptions of Spanish barbarism – the infamous ‘Black Legend’ or leyenda negra. The legend had its origins in A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, a furious indictment of Spanish imperialism written by a Spanish bishop, Bartolomé de las Casas. It had been translated into English in 1583 ‘to serve as a precedent and warning to the twelve provinces of the Low Countries’.22 Casas wrote of conquistadors eviscerating seventy or eighty women and young girls, of little native boys being fed to hunting dogs, even of Indian coolies being decapitated after they had performed their duties, to save the bother of having to unlock the clasps around their necks. Such reports had been enthusiastically picked up by Protestant propagandists in France, Holland and England as evidence of the Catholic brutality that had produced the Florida Massacre and now threatened to overwhelm the Low Countries. Hakluyt referred to them on several occasions, quoting Casas’s estimate that Spanish actions in the Americas had ‘rooted out above fifteen million of reasonable creatures’.23

Reassured by the rewards of exercising their higher moral standards, the English continued their tour of the Caribbean. As they pulled away from Dominica, Percy was transfixed by the sight of a whale being chased by a swordfish and a thresher, a kind of shark identifiable by the enormously extended upper lobe of its tail, which it uses to thrash its prey. ‘We might see the thresher with his flail lay on the monstrous blows, which was strange to behold. In the end these two fishes brought the whale to her end,’ he observed.24

On the morning of 27 March, they arrived at Guadeloupe. A landing party explored up to the foot of the 5,000-foot-high active volcano La Grande Soufrière (the big, sulphurous one), and found a pool of scalding hot water. Newport used it to boil up a joint of salted pork, which was ready to eat after half an hour. They returned to their ships and sailed on for a further 90 miles, in the afternoon reaching the island of Nevis. Here, Newport decided to allow the entire company ashore to make a concerted effort to gather supplies, as the ships’ stores were still disturbingly low.

A company of men armed with muskets marched into the densely wooded interior, catching glimpses as they went of the cloud-capped central peak, over 3,000 foot high. Not far inland they found another hot spring, much cooler than the one on Guadeloupe. For the first time in nearly two months, they enjoyed a relaxing soak, as the sun set in a calm Caribbean sea.

‘Finding this place to be so convenient for our men to avoid diseases, which will breed in so long a voyage, we encamped ourselves on this isle six days, and spent none of our ship’s victual,’ wrote Percy. Instead, they lived off rabbits, birds, fish and fruit plucked from the trees, their peace barely disturbed by an occasional glimpse of the locals, who as soon as they were spotted ‘ran swiftly through the woods to the mountain tops’. They lost themselves in the forests, slashing through the undergrowth with hatchets and swords, until they came among ‘the goodliest tall trees growing so thick about the garden as though they had been set by art, which made us marvel very much to see it’. They saw shrubs with huge tufts of cotton wool bursting from their seed pods, gum trees, and a sort of wild fig, the sap of which made the men ‘near mad with pain’, forcing them to rush back to the hot spring for relief. They also found the source of a stream at the foot of the mountain. After drinking its sweet, clear water, ‘distilling from many rocks’, the men ‘were well cured in two or three days’ of all their ship-borne ailments.