The Jamestown Experiment Read Online Free PDF Page A

The unhealthful capital at Jamestown would be moved to three otherprincipal settlements, including Point Comfort. More important, colonists would now be granted private ownership of land. Among the laws would be a prescription to work a certain number of hours per day, and food was still allotted from a common storehouse. The military and corporate organization of the colony was still fundamental to its mission, but a reorientation was occurring that slowly chipped away at the edges of this focus.
    The charter enforced religious orthodoxy upon the colonists by requiring them to take the oath of supremacy to the Anglican Church. Worship services were to be conducted according to Anglican forms. Anyone suspected of practicing the “superstitions” of Roman Catholicism was banned from migrating. “Popery” was lumped in with atheism as religious offenses against God that were to be punished.
    When the new 1609 charter reorganized the company, the joint-stock company was restructured to make investment more accessible to a wider group of shareholders. Whereas the first charter attracted the money of the very wealthy and influential, the shares of the second charter cost a little more than twelve pounds. The company had discovered that the expeditions carrying supplies and additional settlers to the colony were very expensive. The costs, as well as the risks, could be spread out with a greater number of investors. Moreover, popular enthusiasm for the project would be encouraged if more people and organizations had a stake in the outcome of the mission.
    The company planned to pool the money of investors to organize a fleet of ships that dwarfed the original settlement in Virginia. The council members envisioned nine ships that would carry several hundred colonists to Virginia under tighter control. A second, larger expedition would follow the year after. The company turned to two gentlemen adventurers—Sir Thomas West (Lord De La Warr)and Sir Thomas Gates—to lead the ambitious expeditions and Jamestown colony.
    Lord De La Warr was only about thirty-two years old but had built up an impressive list of credentials to be selected as the governor of Jamestown. He was related to Queen Elizabeth and had served his queen in the Netherlands, battling the forces of Catholic Spain in the Dutch Revolt. He was knighted for his leadership in fighting the colonial war in Ireland. He followed the common path of gentlemen adventurers in Elizabethan England, and his star was on the rise. Then he was implicated in the Essex rebellion in 1601. Elizabeth nearly had him executed, although he was eventually cleared and actually placed on her ruling privy council. James I asked him to stay on as a member of his privy council. De La Warr naturally supported the national English mission to colonize America in order to challenge Spain in the New World, and the company chose him to be the man who would set things right in Virginia. He would not travel with the first planned expedition, but with the larger second fleet.
    Thomas Gates would have the responsibility of bringing over the first group of settlers and establishing order in the colony. Gates was also an experienced gentleman adventurer with a long record of service to the English Crown. He was educated at Gray’s Inn and served as an ambassador to Vienna. He had fought in the Caribbean and had been currently fighting in the Netherlands, having to request leave to serve in Virginia. He was a charter member of the original April 1606 patent and intimately acquainted with the London merchants and fellow adventurers who had endeavored to make Jamestown successful for the last several years. Few men were as invested in the outcome of the colony as Gates. The company was confident in selecting him to be the interim governor until De La Warr arrived in Virginia. The two gentlemen were bold, daring, anddedicated to establishing a foothold in the New World to challenge England’s greatest rival. They