1619 BLACKWELL'S FAILURE. 53 reverse it.'1 The fate of the Virginia Company was the best comment on that speech. Difficulties with the Virginia The possibility of the King's displeasure was not the only obstacle which stood in the way of emigration. It was necessary that the Virginia Company should assent to a scheme widely at variance Company. with the principles which it had hitherto adopted. The policy of the Company throughout had been to keep all the plantations as an organized community under one government. Not only their political but also their commercial system presupposed such unity. The presence of a single independent settler, claiming to be outside the jurisdiction of the Company, had been a cause of inconvenience.2 It might prove a most perilous experiment to suffer in the midst of the colony the existence of a detached settlement, in religious matters firmly attached to its own peculiar usages and principles, and so extending the sphere of religion that few secular questions lay wholly beyond its province. Amsterdam There were further reasons which might disincline the Virginia Company from accepting the proposals Blackwell of the Leyden Nonconformists. A somewhat and the similar experiment had been lately made, and emigrants. the result was not such as to encourage a second trial. Early in 1619, one Blackwell, an elder in the church of Amsterdam, had made arrangements with the Virginia Company for the emigration of a number of his brethren. Though the details of this affair are somewhat obscure, yet it is clear that the result was disastrous to all concerned and discreditable to the promoter. Before the voyage Blackwell and 'Bradford, p. 19. 2 Virginia, &c., p. 212. 3 For Blackwell's proceedings see Bradford, pp. 24-5. The miseries of the emigrants whom he sent out are described in a letter from Cushman to his friends in Holland, quoted by Bradford. others were gathered together at a private meeting in London, seemingly for purposes of devotion. There they were apprehended and brought before an ecclesiastical tribunal. Blackwell contrived not only to exculpate himself by making a scapegoat of one of his associates, but even to obtain from the Archbishop an expression of good-will and a solemn blessing on the projected voyage. The rest of Blackwell's conduct seems to have been equally unworthy and less fortunate to himself. The unhappy emigrants, a hundred and eighty in number, found that a single vessel had been provided for them, in which they were to be packed together like herrings.' The streets of Gravesend, we are told, rang of their extreme quarrelling,' each man blaming his neighbour for the strait into which he was brought. In addition to the lack of room the ship was ill supplied with water. Contrary winds drove her into a more southerly course than was intended. Sickness set in, and a hundred and thirty of the passengers, including Blackwell himself, died. Such was the first attempt at a Puritan migration to America, an introductory episode of which we do not hear much from the historians of New England. den emi form a com 6 Further delay seems to have been caused by the divisions existing in the Virginia Company. On the side The Ley- of the Puritans, too, there were hindrances to grants be overcome. To start a new colony required pany. money, and the emigrants could contribute nothing beyond the labour of their hands. Accordingly, it was necessary to associate with themselves a certain number of capitalists. To this end negotiations were opened with some merchants and others. The scheme finally took the form of a partnership, in which the system adopted by the Virginia Company was imitated, and personal emigration was taken as an equivalent for pecuniary subscription. The terms 1619 ARRANGEMENT WITH PARTNERS. 55 arranged were as follows. All emigrants over sixteen years of age were entitled to a single share of ten pounds value; every emigrant who furnished his family with necessaries was entitled to a double share for each person so furnished, and everyone who exported children between ten and sixteen years old to one share for every two children. Children below ten were to be entitled to fifty acres of unmanured land, but were to have no further interest in the Company. All settlers, except those provided for under the conditions above mentioned, were to receive their necessaries out of the common stock. For seven years there was to be no individual property or trade, but the labour of the colony was to be organized according to the different capacities of the settlers. At the end of the seven years the Company was to be dissolved and the whole stock divided.1 Two reservations were inserted, one entitling the settlers to separate plots of land about their houses, and the other allowing them two days in the week for the cultivation of such holdings. The London partners, however, refused to grant these concessions, and the agents of the emigrants withdrew them rather than give up the scheme. For so doing they were blamed by those for whom they acted. Stringent as the conditions enforced seemed, yet it must be remembered what were the relations between the emigrants themselves and the partners who found the capital. The latter had no interest in the success of the undertaking but a financial one. There is nothing to show that as a whole. they had any sympathy with the peculiar views and objects of the colonists. Those views might well seem to make the Leyden Puritans undesirable associates in a commercial scheme. The colony was specially exposed to the risk of a collision with the authority of 1 The terms of the agreement are given by Bradford, pp. 28-9. the Crown, and it was certain that the settlers would care more for the fulfilment of their own political and ecclesiastical schemes than for the financial success of the Company. There is no exact record extant of the number of the partners or of the proportions which the two sections. of the Company bore to one another. From Smith we learn that the subscribers in England were about seventy, and the whole capital seven thousand pounds. The actual number of emigrants was about a hundred and twenty. It is most probable that the above-named sum included the shares of ten pounds granted to each emigrant. We may also assume that a certain number of these emigrants were furnished at the expense of their parents, husbands, or masters, who would therefore be entitled to a double share. Thus we arrive at the approximate conclusion that from a quarter to a fifth of the capital of the Company was vested in the actual settlers. Patent from the Virginia In the meantime an arrangement had been made with the Virginia Company, a result probably of the more businesslike character which the enterprise had now assumed. In the autumn of 1619 Company. a patent was granted to the new corporation, giving the emigrants the right to settle on a portion of the territory of Virginia.3 The patent was made out in the name of John Wincob, probably one of the London shareholders. He was in the service of the Countess of Lincoln, whose family at a later day played a conspicuous part in the settlement of New England. The patent itself is, unfortunately, no longer extant. It was deprived of all legal value by the events which led the settlers to establish themselves beyond the bounds of the Virginia Company. Yet in its bearings on New England history 1 Smith's General History, p. 783. 2 See below, p. 62. 3 Bradford, p. 26. 1620 PROPOSED CHANGE OF PLANS. 57 it would have had something more than a merely antiquarian interest. It would probably have shown how far the Puritan settlers intended to remain a distinct and separate body, and how far they consented to be merged in the commonwealth of Virginia; in other words, how far the foundation of Plymouth was the result of design or of chance. change of Even now, when all hindrances seemed to have been surmounted, the emigrants found themselves beset by Proposed fresh difficulties. As we have already seen, in plans. 1620 the Plymouth Company was revived. Its original promoters had intended it as an ally to the Virginia Company. In its new form it was rather a rival. Some of the London merchants who were now associated with the Leyden Puritans thought, not unwisely, that New England with its fisheries would be a better field for their enterprise than Virginia. It is not unlikely that they were influenced by the notorious divisions prevailing in the Virginia Company and the court favour extended to the new corporation. Accordingly they proposed to abandon the patent they had just obtained, and to get fresh powers from the Plymouth Company. This seems to have reopened the whole question of a site for the new colony. The emigrants and their partners were divided into factions, one for Virginia, one for New England, one for Guiana, each threatening to withhold subscriptions unless its own scheme was adopted.1 At this juncture a project was set on foot which, if carried out, would wholly have changed the destiny of Scheme for Plymouth, and it may be of New England. The settling on Leyden Puritans, despairing, in all likelihood, of territory.2 any successful settlement on English territory, authorized Robinson to negotiate with the Dutch West Dutch 1 Bradford, p. 28. 2 These negotiations are fully told by Mr. Brodhead in his History of New York, ed. 1859, pp. 123-6. His knowledge of the transaction is derived |