allowing him either trial or hearing. His grantees were the actual sufferers. Summarily ejected from homesteads honestly bought, and for the buildings and improvements on which they had laid out money, they were, nevertheless, bound to pay the purchase-money secured by bond. The hardship of their case would not be mitigated if the Company granted the Assembly's earlier petition. That petition did not apply to purchasers, but only to ancient planters, holding under patents of former Governors. The petition of the grantees themselves, also, does not ask for the land, but only that they may be discharged from the bonds which they had given to Argall. The result, if their petition was granted, would be, that Argall, the intended victim, would lose not only the whole purchase-money, but the land also, and have to pay £50 besides for buildings and improvements; the whole benefit of which was enjoyed, not by him, but for the present, at least, by Sir George Yeardley. This temporary benefit had its weight in the management of this affair. It was so much clear gain, that would not accompany any ordinary grant; because all such grants were presumed to be of unoccupied and unimproved soil only.

It is evident that Sir George Yeardley meant, if possible, to retain possession of Argall's land, and induce the grantees to claim the interposition of the Assembly in their behalf, in whatever way he might suggest or permit. This was so managed as both to shield Governor Yeardley from further importunity and apprehension of loss; and, what was equally agreeable to him, to keep up the clamor, and add to the mass of complaints raised in the Company against Argall, by now urging the Council and Company to compel him, at a great sacrifice, to repair the wrongs inflicted by themselves on the inhabitants of Paspaheigh. Governor Yeardley probably had in view similar purposes prejudicial to Argall, in 1621; when, without any assigned reason, he turned Adam Dixon and James Berry (Perry, I. Burk, p. 336) out of two hundred acres of land in Warrasqueak, given them by Argall; on which, after clearing it, they had expended £100 in building a house. Dixon, the next year, 1622, petitioned the king for redress; and after about two years' delay, on the 21st January, 1624, the case reached the General Assembly, where the testimony of Dixon, and Thomas Gates, and another, was taken on the subject. As the Company was then on the point of dissolution, no decision could be expected; and the result is not known.

In this matter, Argall acted as the agent of Sir Thomas Smith, either as treasurer, or in his private capacity; between whom and the three, Dixon, Perry, and Gates, there were outstanding accounts. Argall, in giving them their freedom, made it an indispensable condition that they should relinquish all claims upon Sir Thomas, and likewise required them to serve one year more without wages or clothes. To this they agreed, but afterwards complained of it as hard. But as each of these men had a hundred acres of land given them, and the year of gratuitous service, for aught that appears, formed part of the term of service agreed on; and, moreover, as Dixon and Perry had a hundred pounds between them to lay out in building a house, they cannot have been very hardly dealt with. That neither Argall nor Sir Thomas Smith thought so, is shown by Stith's representation (p. 226) of Dixon's petition, as one of those "raised up and suborned" by a party, in which he had often, expressly and by name, included both Smith and Argall. No one, surely, would suborn another to publish his own misdeeds. There can be little doubt that Dixon was, as he said, one of the public tenants, or that the three others hired with him were so likewise; and as all of their class, at that period, eagerly desired to be set free, so many, in all probability, had their freedom granted, that, taking into view mortality and ordinary contingencies, the deficiency of tenants at the end of Argall's administration may be accounted for without charging him, as Stith does (p. 159), with depopulating and ruining the public lands. Besides, for aught that is known, they might have been of those freed by Sir Thomas Dale, on condition that they should serve three years, which had not expired in Argall's time.

Yeardley had left Virginia immediately after Argall arrived there in May, 1617, and remained in England until he, in turn, superseded Argall. That he coveted and sought the office, is evinced by the fact that his two years' stay in England, at this period, and his subsequent visit in 1625, both ended in his obtaining the appointment of Governor. His previous removal, to make way for Argall, had wounded his self-love; and his mortification was soon after increased, when he learned that his favorite but lax and improvident system of

government had been discarded by his successor for one more strict and vigorous, and obviously better adapted to the critical circumstances in which the colony was then placed, as well as to promote its permanent prosperity.

This reform, however, was unwelcome; not so much to the laborious commonalty, as to the more wealthy and luxurious planters, the intimate friends or associates of Yeardley; to those who indulged themselves in the sport of shooting, or employed Indians to shoot deer and wild fowl for them; and to those speculators of the colony, or merchants in England, who were no longer allowed their former free intercourse and trade with the savages, which had often been accompanied with fraud, violence, and injury to the colonial traffic with the Indians. All their complaints would, of course, be communicated to Yeardley, in terms equally unfavorable to Argall and to a discovery of the real truth. It fell in with Yeardley's views, to encourage the colonists in this querulous correspondence; as might easily be done, both by direct replies, and through his agents, to whom he was obliged to write concerning his possessions and affairs in Virginia.

The events of the time strongly indicate that, after Lord De la Warre had left for Virginia, the first plan of Argall's enemies was to get him out of Virginia. Lord De la Warre, accordingly, was ordered to send him to England. This would leave the office of Deputygovernor vacant, and open for Yeardley. On learning the death of Lord De la Warre, this plan was changed. Yeardley, by his wealth, and the extraordinary supply of tobacco which he had caused to be sent to England at a moment when it yielded a great profit, had gained high favor and influence with the Company. Instead of going back to Virginia as a Deputygovernor, he was to return with the commission of Governor and Captain-General for three years, favored with seven hundred acres of land in fee, over and above the ordinary quantity allowed for the same number of persons as he sent out to the colony at his own private expense; with three thousand acres of land and one hundred tenants for his use while Governor; and, what was probably no less acceptable, with instructions to bring Argall to trial in Virginia. This was, under existing circumstances, little else than placing Argall's life, liberty, and property absolutely at the mercy of a determined enemy. We may add that the official power and authority wielded by Yeardley were materially strengthened by a moral and almost autocratical influence derived from the fact, that he came back to Virginia as the bearer, and donor apparent, of enlarged civil liberty, and of new and highly prized civil privileges. The Assembly, or any other colonial tribunal, composed, as it would be, of the aristocracy of the land, would, under the circumstances, be very apt to pass upon Argall whatever sentence the Governor might suggest or prefer.

When Argall began his administration in Virginia, the death of Pocahontas had deprived the colony of its most efficient check upon the hostility of Powhatan. Governor Yeardley, although in the previous autumn he had shown a very laudable spirit, in promptly compelling, by force of arms, the Chickahominies to pay their stipulated tribute of corn, yet by weakly yielding to the crafty request of Opechancanough, to make no peace with them without his advice, enabled that savage chief to make himself more formidable by becoming king of these old enemies, whom neither he nor Powhatan had ever been able to subdue; and thus weakened and endangered the colony in the same proportion. The security of the colony demanded that the two savage tribes should be kept apart, as a check upon each other. (Smith, Va. p. 120; I. Burke, p. 179; Stith, p. 141.)

By the death of Powhatan, in April, 1618, his dominions descended to his brother, Itopatin, whose inert and unambitious disposition left his more active and aspiring brother, Opechancanough, free to make himself the actual sovereign of an empire more extensive and powerful than Powhatan had ever possessed. The brothers confirmed the league formerly made with Powhatan; but the massacre of Killingbeck and his party, and the murder, within a week after, of five young children in the house of Fairfax, one mile only from Jamestown, showed how little reliance could be placed on Indian professions or engagements. The want of ammunition in the colony, and the fact that the Indians had firearms, and knew how to use them, as in the instance of Killingbeck, who was shot dead by an Indian, with an English musket, added greatly to the dangers to which the colony was exposed, and made it impossible to seek redress by force of arms.

Under the circumstances, it was indispensably necessary to husband the scanty stock of

ammunition, to conceal the deficiency from the Indians, and to take great precautions against mutual provocations and hostilities.

Argall's regulations, though severely censured by his enemies, were yet well adapted to the exigencies of the moment, and to the motley character of the mass under his government. He prohibited shooting, except in self-defence, until a supply of ammunition should come in, on pain of a year's slavery; hunting deer or hogs without the Governor's leave, and all private trade and familiarity with the Indians; and also reaffirmed the standing law, which made it death to teach an Indian to shoot. All intercourse, without the Governor's leave, was stopped between landsmen and the crews of ships; obviously, because it had always led to idleness, intemperance, and the pillage both of ships' stores and of tools, implements, and other property of the Company. Persons absenting themselves from church on Sundays and holidays were "to lie neck and heels that night, and be a slave to the colony for the following week; for the second offence, he should be a slave for a month; and for the third, a year and a day." (Stith, p. 148.)

These regulations have been censured as acts of tyranny; but, in fact, they were a mitigation of the severe laws previously in force. Under the older law, every man and woman was required to attend Divine service twice every day. For the first absence on a working day, the penalty was loss of the day's allowance of food from the public store; for the second, to be whipped; for the third, six months in the galleys. For the first absence on the Sabbath, a week's provision was forfeited; a second absence incurred the same forfeiture of provision and a whipping besides; and a third was punishable by death. The clergymen was also obliged, each Sunday afternoon, "before catechizing," to weary himself and his hearers, for two or three hours, by reading all the laws and ordinances, on pain of losing his 'entertainment' for the week following." (Lawes Divine, &c., § 6, 37; I. Burke, p. 195.)

Argall neither compelled any one to attend Divine service on working days, nor women on Sundays; nor was corporal punishment admitted into his list of penalties. In this last particular, he showed more humanity, as well as more impartiality, than the General Assembly of 1619, which prescribed that punishment for servants absent from church service; while masters atoned for the same fault by paying a fine of three shillings, which in those days meant one pound of best tobacco.

Such of Argall's regulations as were not in their nature temporary, nor relative to intercourse with the Indians, were substantially confirmed by the Assembly.

The regulation, by which the rate of profit on articles imported for sale, was limited to twenty-five per cent on the cost, and the price of tobacco, also, fixed at three shillings a pound for the best, and eighteen pence for the second quality, was approved and adopted by the Company and by the General Assembly of the following year, as well as by that of 1624. There being no coin in the colony, and tobacco having taken its place as currency and the common instrument of exchange, it was of the utmost importance that its value should be fixed and determined by law. It was no less necessary that the more numerous, indigent class of the colonists, should be protected from the extortion of the factors of the magazine, as well as from that of private importers.

The penalty, three years' slavery, for any one who sold over or under the prescribed rates, was not adopted by the Assembly, but left to the discretion of the Governor and Council. The offence was probably considered equivalent to that of clipping or debasing legal coin. The original penalty, therefore, could hardly be deemed too severe, especially when it is remembered that clipping and debasing were then capital crimes in the mother country

course.

A different fate attended Argall's regulations respecting the Indians. All his safeguards against their hostility had to give way to Governor Yeardley's cherished policy of free interThe Company in England had been induced to give him instructions for "drawing the better disposed of the Indians to converse, and live, and labor with the colonists." Consequently, Indians, in parties of five or six, or even more, with the special permission of the Governor, were allowed by the Assembly "to come to places well peopled, to do service in killing deer, fishing, beating corn, &c., provided a good guard at night were kept over them;" but "lone inhabitants" were not to "entertain" them.

The colonists were required by the Assembly to refrain from injuring or oppressing the Indians, lest the existing peace should be disturbed, and ancient quarrels renewed. The

benefit of this provision was expressly extended to the new subjects of Opechancanough, the ferocious and faithless Chickahominies.

All persons, except servants, might trade freely with the Indians. Servants trading were to be whipped, unless the master paid ten shillings to save the offender from the chastisement. Selling or giving arms or ammunition to an Indian was punishable by hanging, as soon as the fact was proved, "without all redemption." No one was allowed to go to any Indian town, habitation, or place of resort, without the Governor's permission. The penalty for so doing was forty shillings, to be paid, for public uses, to the incorporation in which the offender dwelt. With the exception of the two penalties just mentioned, none whatever were annexed to the violation of any regulation. The punishment was left entirely to the Governor's discretion. Indeed, the restraints placed on intercourse and trade with the Indians were rather nominal than real. The Governor, we know, actually permitted Poole and others to visit Indian towns and trading-posts; and he would hardly subject himself to the just and unavoidable imputation of partiality, by withholding from one planter an indulgence which he freely granted to another. Indians, moreover, in unlimited numbers, might be employed to shoot deer and all other game; and they, most surely, would not be slow to find opportunities for supplying themselves with arms and ammunition. The massacre of 1622 demonstrated the impolicy of sweeping away the restrictions introduced by Argall.

To ensure the adoption of his own favorite measures, Sir George Yeardley took an early precaution to reserve to himself and the two committees of his selection, to examine and prepare them before they were submitted to the Assembly. We say, of his selection, for, although Pory, as Speaker, nominated and formed the committees, yet he had been too short a time in the colony to know much of the burgesses. The Governor, on the other hand, having known them intimately for years, we may be sure that Pory would almost necessarily be guided by the Governor's better knowledge and personal wishes, in his nominations; and, of course, that such members chiefly would be placed on the committees as would support the Governor's measures. As the Company had, in their instructions, sanctioned the leading principle of Yeardley's Indian policy, he was consequently now free to shape it in all its details as he pleased. As usual, he was not unmindful of his own interest. The earliest, and perhaps the chief part of his wealth, had been acquired in trading with the Indians, through the agency of Poole, before the trade in tobacco had sprung up; and when trade with the Indians was the only lucrative one carried on in Virginia. Poole, like all Poles, and other natives of Northern Europe, had, from childhood, known about furs and skins much more than his fellow-colonists did; and as much as they in regard to corn, sassafras, or any other article to be obtained from the Indians. He was fond of savage, wilderness life; spoke Indian as well, if not better than English; and with the natives of the forest was as much at home, but better fed, more at ease, and a much greater man, than with the English settlers. Both were equally foreigners to him. In a pursuit, where gain, at any rate, was the ruling principle and main object in view, his obsequious servility to those in authority over him, and his unscrupulousness under their protection, both acknowledged characteristics of the Polish serf, would make him a particularly convenient as well as profitable servant, in the eyes of so shrewd and thrifty a man of business as Sir George Yeardley. But when Argall shut off all intercourse and all further gains from trade with the Indians, he drew down upon himself the denunciations of many men of substance in the colony; of Sir George Yeardley, and all other speculators in London who were at all interested in the interdicted trade.

In the colony he incurred the resentment of the mariners confined to their ships, as well as of all the drones and knaves among the landsmen, who in past times had freely resorted to every ship in port, as to a tavern, or a mart for the sale or exchange of stolen goods, ships' wares, and all portable kinds of public property. Even the farmers were discontented, because they could no longer shoot game, nor the crows that robbed their fields, nor the animals or birds of prey that destroyed their sheep and poultry.

In England, every malcontent had his circle of friends; and they, together with the numerous party then striving to displace Sir Thomas Smith and gain control of the Company, were, under ambitious and avaricious leaders, made to combine their efforts to create and foster discontent in the colony, and to swell the clamor at home against Argall.

Although the outburst that followed was, in its origin and real character, a mere conflict of private against public interests, against measures indispensably requisite for the preservation of the colony, yet it became so violent and powerful, that the Treasurer and Council were at length constrained to bow before it.

Lord De la Warre, in the first instance, was despatched in April, 1618, to supersede Argall by taking the supreme command into his own hands. On the 23d of the following August, he was instructed to send Argall home as a malefactor, to answer sundry criminal charges; and likewise to seize and send to the Company all the goods and movable property belonging to him in Virginia. His lordship did not live to receive these instructions.

On the same day, Sir Thomas Smith, Alderman Johnson, the Deputy-Treasurer, Sir Lionel Cranfield, and others of the Council, wrote Argall a reproachful letter, recapitulating the crimes and misdemeanors of which he was accused.

As this letter is the source and foundation of most of the censures vented against Argall in the "Declaration" of 1623, mentioned before, and has gone down in history to our days, as an authentic record of indisputable facts, it is right to mention that its statements were never admitted to be true by Argall; nor, as far as we know, ever substantiated by his adversaries. Instead of being regarded, as in their origin and real character they were, the reckless or passionate utterances of self-interested enemies, they have been inconsiderately accepted, as so many conclusive judgments, founded on deliberate, careful, and impartial investigation. By authors, from Stith to those of the present day, Argall is held up sometimes even to scorn, as if his character were a legitimate theme of vilification. The severity with which he is censured ought, however, to be greatly moderated when it is remembered that, up to the time of Yeardley's first return to England, his name had never been touched by the breath of scandal. On the contrary, he had been esteemed by his superiors in authority, who knew him well, and by the community at large, as generous, disinterested, sagacious, brave; and a vigilant, devoted, and most able and useful servant of the colony. After his final return to England, where he could, in person, fully explain the difficulties of his official position, and give a fair history of his calumniated administration, the very writers of the letter in question, who both could and would have spurned him from their presence, if they had continued to believe the statements in it to be true, constantly upheld and defended his cause, and manifested their respect and friendship for him. On the other hand, throughout the space of more than four years that elapsed between his return and the dissolution of the Company, his enemies, although they had in their hands, as — in contradiction to the "Declaration" of the preceding year, made by the Virginia Council and Somer's Island assistants (I. Burke, 323)—the planters, in their "Declaration" of 1624, affirmed, all the affidavits respecting Argall's alleged misconduct, which they, the planters, had, one and all, given to Governor Yeardley in 1619, yet do not appear to have succeeded in making out a case against him.

The charges against Argall, set forth in the Council's letter (Stith, p. 150), are some of them general, indefinite, without circumstantial details, and all of them unaccompanied with any proof whatever. Under the circumstances, they might very justly be passed over as idle, or at best as unsupported, accusations; but our belief of their injustice not resting on evidence so entirely negative, we shall endeavor, in the following comments, to give an idea of their real character.

The first in the series is, that "he was exceedingly chargeable to the Company, and converted the fruits of their expense to his own private use." Now, these fruits, when the tenants and laborers, "the Company's company," had been reduced to "fifty-four men, women, and children" (Smith, 124), and continued to diminish as more of them died or were set free, could not be very great, nor had they ever been so; and again, his body-guard of six men was not so "chargeable to the Company" as Lord De la Warre's "fifty halbardiers in 'fair red cloaks'" (Strachey, chap. 3), or Deputy-Governor Yeardley's company, with "its right-hand file led by an Indian." (Smith, p. 123.) Besides, it is difficult to conjecture upon what a Governor, without salary or emoluments, was to subsist, especially in his first year, unless upon some fruit or other of the public "expense."

This loose and indefinite charge seems to have been designed originally, by its author, to usher in and give an air of plausibility to the second, which is, that "he" (Argall) "was