Invading America. David Childs
fortunes were not readily available and, apart from a military expedition to hold the land against prior French claims, little was achieved between the issue of the Charter and 1631 when, by treaty, the land was returned to France.
Ironically the Christian religion, or the zealously guarded Anglican version of it, delayed the departure of many who might have been expected to apply the high-minded desire of spreading the gospel which had been expressed in the Charters. Stuart England had a growing number of minority creeds, ranging from the sizeable old Catholic families to the newer Puritans and other dissenters. Many of these welcomed the opportunity to emigrate to the new world, where they were quite prepared to work as communities to establish viable settlements, provided that they were guaranteed freedom to worship. This King James was not prepared to allow, being influenced most understandably by the Catholic Gunpowder Plot of 1605. Both the 1609 and 1620 Charters included a paragraph that stated:
because the principal effect which we can desire or expect from this action, is the conversion and reduction of the people in those parts, to the true worship of God and the Christian religion, we should be loath that any person should be permitted to take passage that we suspect to affect the superstitions of the Church of Rome, we therefore declare that it is our will and pleasure that none be permitted to pass in any voyage which from time to time be made to that Country, but such as have taken the Oath of Supremacy . . .
The paragraph went on to state that the Company and appointed officials could demand of any settler that they swear the oath of allegiance and acknowledge the Act of Supremacy. Not even the most illustrious could ignore this ruling.
In 1629, Sir George Calvert, Baron Baltimore and an out-of-the-closet Catholic, cruising the American coast with his wife and family in search of a site for a settlement more in keeping with his requirements than he had discovered Newfoundland to be, put in to Jamestown. Here he was asked to take the oath, in accordance with the Charter, but refused to do so, after which he departed in haste for England, leaving his family behind. Once back at Court he did what the Virginians suspected that he would do, and persuaded King Charles I to grant him a Charter for the future Maryland, carved out of territory that the Virginians believed to be their own. When Charles published the Charter it proclaimed Cecilius Calvert, Baltimore’s son and heir, to be a person who possessed ‘laudable and pious zeal for the propagation of the Christian faith’.
The trials and tribulations of dissenters proposing to settle in New England were to be famously overcome and in a way that demonstrated that the days of the royal Charter were numbered. America had not yet sent out a cry to be given England’s huddled masses, and dissenting illegal and penniless exiles were not obvious shooins for one of the parcels of land, called hundreds, which the Virginia Company was trying to sell. Yet, few other pre-formed communities showed willing to travel across the Atlantic to an uncertain future, and even King James indicated that, although he would not approve, neither would he obstruct the passage of Puritans to the new world.
Thus, after much turmoil, misunderstanding and/or double-crossing, the Mayflower passengers pioneered the passage of people of faith. They did so as part of a new London-based joint-stock company, the indenturing terms of which they were still arguing over as they sailed. Yet, having managed to depart from Plymouth, charterless, on the day of the first disembarkation at Provincetown, Cape Cod, they produced a document, far shorter and much more useful than any Charter, which would reform not only the whole manner under which such ventures would be undertaken in future, but the way that incoming communities would regard themselves – less servility more self-worth. The Mayflower Compact must surely rate as the shortest revolutionary document ever scribed. Not that it appears, at first reading, to deserve that accolade, but what it introduced into the settlements for the first time was the concept of ‘mutuality’ and local democracy. Gone is the governing structure imposed from abroad, relying on the presence of ‘gentlemen’; gone is the desire to grub up the earth for gold or to seek for ways to Cathay; gone is the overarching requirement to create wealth for absentee investors; gone, in a word, is greed.
In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are under-written, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign Lord, King James, by the grace of God, of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc.
Having undertaken, for the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our King and Country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod, the eleventh of November in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord, King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.
The very brevity and simplicity of the Compact make it a truly American text. The English Court was just not capable of such incisiveness: its Charters rolled on for page after page, often repeating the same lists and phrases. The Compact, in its entirety, was shorter than the part-paragraph of the third Virginia Charter quoted above, covering just the one topic of defaulting payments. On 11 November 1620, off Cape Cod, American public prose spoke its first words and what this infant Hercules chose to say was short, precise and clearly understandable. It was to remain so. The Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address and many more seminal documents are, in their clarity and pithiness, descendants of the style adopted in the Compact. And, like the Charters it superseded, the Compact had a dual role, for the fact that all the settlers signed it ensured it would be nailed to the door of democracy through which, eventually, all who entered the new world would pass.
Down in Virginia change was also afoot. In April 1619 Sir George Yeardley, the new Governor arrived under instruction to reform its dysfunctional governance. He started by abolishing the ghastly ‘Laws Divine, Moral and Martial’ and in their place established democracy, or almost. London retained control by appointing the six members of the Council of Estate but below this was established an Assembly whose twenty-two members were to be elected, two from each of the eleven settlements that lay along the James River. ‘Two from each’ – a form of representative government which exists in America to this day.
A mixture of fantasy (the mermaids) and reality (the Amerindian dwellings) are shown in this depiction of Walter Ralegh’s mythical welcome to the new world. Both fact and fiction needed to be employed to convince would-be settlers to emigrate; neither was a powerful enough persuasion on its own. (National Maritime Museum)
Thus in the space of one year a youthful, but differing, form of democracy was introduced into both halves of English America. However, like twins separated at birth by their original Charter into ‘two several Colonies and Companies’, Virginia and New England were to adopt different and divergent outlooks on life so that, like characters from the Bible, which they both held in high regard, they would commit matricide and fratricide until, war weary, they came together ‘one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all’.
There was one more step needed before the weight of the Charters could be lifted off the colonists’ backs, and this came about when it was agreed that the Massachusetts Bay settlement should be self-administered, which removed the need to meet the unrealistic expectations for a return on capital held by English-based shareholders.
The great difference between the founding Charters and their new world successors was not the belief in God, the ideal of liberty and the concept of justice, not even the pursuit of happiness, but that settlers could choose what enterprise to pursue and that, taxes to one side, the wealth which they gleaned from their labours would be theirs to retain within the boundaries of the land which they now considered to be their own. However, after over a century of deployment, those arriving in the new world would still have to conquer before they enjoyed their