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008 - Chapter 8 · Chronicles of America Volume 05 - Pioneers of the Old South

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight of Pioneers of the Old South by Mary Johnston.
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  Speaker 1: This libribox recording is in the public domain. Chapter eight
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  Speaker 1: Royal Government. In November sixteen twenty, they are sailed into
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  Speaker 1: a quiet harbor on the coast of what is now Massachusetts,
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  Speaker 1: a ship named the Mayflower, having on board one hundred
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  Speaker 1: and two English nonconformists men and women, and with them
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  Speaker 1: a few children. These latest colonists held a patent from
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  Speaker 1: the Virginia Company, and have left in writing a statement
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  Speaker 1: of their object. We, having undertaken for the glory of
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  Speaker 1: God and advancement of the Christian Faith, in honor of
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  Speaker 1: our King and country, are voyage to plant the first
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  Speaker 1: colony in the northern parts of Virginia. The mental reservation is,
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  Speaker 1: of course, where perchance we may serve God as we
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  Speaker 1: will in England. There obtained in some quarters as suspicion
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  Speaker 1: that they meant to make a free popular state there
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  Speaker 1: free popular public good. These are words that began in
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  Speaker 1: the second quarter of the seventeenth century to shine and ring.
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  Speaker 1: King and people had reached the verge of a great struggle.
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  Speaker 1: The Virginia Company was divided, as were other groups, in
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  Speaker 1: two factions. The Court Party and the Country Party found
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  Speaker 1: themselves distinctly opposed. The great, crowded meetings of the Company's
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  Speaker 1: sessions rang with their divisions upon policies, small and large,
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  Speaker 1: words and phrases, comprehensive, sonorous, heavy with the future, rose
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  Speaker 1: and rolled beneath the roof of their great hall. There
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  Speaker 1: were heard amid warm discussion, Kingdom and Colony, Spain, Netherlands, France,
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  Speaker 1: Church and state, Papists and schismatics, duties, tithes, excise, petitions
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  Speaker 1: of grievances, representation, right of assembly. Several years earlier, the
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  Speaker 1: King had cried choose the devil, but not Sir Edwin Sandy's.
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  Speaker 1: Now he declared the Company just a seminary to a
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  Speaker 1: seditious parliament. All London resounded with the clash of parties
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  Speaker 1: and opinions. Last week, the Earl of Warwick and the
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  Speaker 1: Lord Cavendish fell so foul at a Virginia court that
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  Speaker 1: the lie passed and repassed. The factions are grown so
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  Speaker 1: violent that Graelphs and Ghibbelins were not more animated one
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  Speaker 1: against another. Believing that the Company's sessions foreshadowed seditious parliament,
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  Speaker 1: James Stewart set himself with obstinacy and some cunning to
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  Speaker 1: the company's undoing. The Court Party gave the King aid,
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  Speaker 1: and circumstances favored the attempt. Captain Nathaniel Butler, who had
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  Speaker 1: once been Governor of the Summers Islands and had now
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  Speaker 1: returned to England by way of Virginia, published in London
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  Speaker 1: the Unmasked Face of our Colony in Virginia, containing a
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  Speaker 1: savage attack upon every item of Virginian administration. The King's
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  Speaker 1: Privy Council summoned the Company, or rather the Country Party,
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  Speaker 1: to answer these and other allegations. Southampton, Sandy's and Ferrar
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  Speaker 1: answered with strength and cogency, but the tide was running
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  Speaker 1: against them. James appointed commissioners to search out what was
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  Speaker 1: wrong with Virginia. Certain men were shipped to Virginia to
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  Speaker 1: get evidence there, as well as support from the Virginia Assembly.
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  Speaker 1: In this attempt, they signally failed. Then to England came
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  Speaker 1: a Virginia member of the Virginia Council with long letters
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  Speaker 1: to King and Privy Council. The Sandee Southampton administration had
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  Speaker 1: done more than well for Virginia. The letters were letters
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  Speaker 1: of appeal. The colony hoped that the governor sent over
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  Speaker 1: might not have absolute authority, but might be restrained to
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  Speaker 1: the consent of the Council. But above all they made
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  Speaker 1: it their most humble request that they might still retain
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  Speaker 1: the liberty of their general assemblies, than which nothing could
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  Speaker 1: more conduce to the public satisfaction and public liberty. In London,
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  Speaker 1: another paper drawn by Cavendish was given to King and
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  Speaker 1: Privy Council. It answered many accusations, and, among others, this
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  Speaker 1: statement that the government of the companies as it then stood,
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  Speaker 1: was democratical and tumultuous, and ought therefore to be altered
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  Speaker 1: and reduced into the hands of a few. It is
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  Speaker 1: of interest to hear these men speak in the year
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  Speaker 1: sixteen twenty three in an England that was close to
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  Speaker 1: absolute monarchy, to a king who with all his house
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  Speaker 1: stood out for a personal rule. However, they owned that,
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  Speaker 1: according to his Majesty's institution, their government had some show
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  Speaker 1: of a democratical form, which was nevertheless, in that case,
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  Speaker 1: the most just and profitable, and most conducive to the
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  Speaker 1: ends and effects aimed at thereby. Lastly, they observed that
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  Speaker 1: the opposite faction cried out loudly against democracy, and yet
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  Speaker 1: called for oligarchy, which would, as they conceived, make the
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  Speaker 1: government neither of better form nor more monarchical. But the
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  Speaker 1: dissolution of the Virginia Company was at hand. In October
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  Speaker 1: sixteen twenty three, the Privy Council stated that the King
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  Speaker 1: had taken into his princely consideration the distressed state of
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  Speaker 1: the Colony of Virginia, occasioned, as it seemed, by the
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  Speaker 1: ill government of the company. The remedy for the ill
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  Speaker 1: management lay in the reduction of the government into fewer hands.
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  Speaker 1: His Majesty had resolved therefore upon the withdrawal of the
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  Speaker 1: Company's charter and the substitution, with due regard for continuing
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  Speaker 1: and preserving the interest of all adventurers and private persons whatsoever,
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  Speaker 1: of a new order of things. The new order proved
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  Speaker 1: on examination to be the old order of rule by
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  Speaker 1: the Crown. Would the company surrender the old charter and
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  Speaker 1: accept a new one? So modeled the company through the
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  Speaker 1: country parties strove to gain time. They met with a
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  Speaker 1: succession of arbitrary measures, and were finally forced to a
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  Speaker 1: decision they would not surrender their charter. Then a writ
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  Speaker 1: of quo Warntow was issued. Trial before the King's bench
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  Speaker 1: followed and judgment was rendered against the company in the
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  Speaker 1: spring term of sixteen twenty four. Thus with Klanger fell
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  Speaker 1: the famous Virginia Company that was one year. The March
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  Speaker 1: of the next year, James Stewart, King of England, died
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  Speaker 1: that young Henry, who was Prince of Wales when the
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  Speaker 1: Susan constant, the Good Speed and the Discovery, sailed past
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  Speaker 1: the cape and named it for him. Cape Henry also
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  Speaker 1: had died. His younger brother, Charles, for whom was named
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  Speaker 1: that other and opposite Cape, now ascended the throne as
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  Speaker 1: King Charles, the First of England. In Virginia, no more
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  Speaker 1: general assemblies are held for four years. King Charles embarks
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  Speaker 1: upon personal rule. Sir Francis Wyatt, a good governor is
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  Speaker 1: retained by commission, and a council is appointed by the King.
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  Speaker 1: No longer our affairs to be conducted. After a fashion,
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  Speaker 1: democratical and tumultuous orders are transmitted from England. The Governor,
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  Speaker 1: assisted by the council, will take into cognizance purely local needs,
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  Speaker 1: and when he sees some occasion, he will issue a proclamation.
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  Speaker 1: Wyat recalled finally to England. George Yardley again who died
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  Speaker 1: in a year's time. Francis West, that brother Lord de
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  Speaker 1: la War, and an ancient planter. These in quick successions
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  Speaker 1: sit in the governor's chair. Following them, John Pott, doctor
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  Speaker 1: of medicine, has his short term. Then the King sends out,
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  Speaker 1: Sir John Harvey, avaricious and arbitrary, so haughty and furious
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  Speaker 1: to the council and the best gentlemen of the country.
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  Speaker 1: Says Beverly, that his tyranny grew at last insupportable. The company.
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  Speaker 1: Previously and now the King had urged upon the Virginians
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  Speaker 1: a diversified industry and agriculture. But Englishmen in Virginia had
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  Speaker 1: the familiar emigrant idea of making their fortunes. They had
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  Speaker 1: left England, they had taken their lives in their hands.
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  Speaker 1: They had suffered fevers, Indian attacks, homesickness, deprivation. They had
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  Speaker 1: come to Virginia to get rich. Now clappards and sassafras,
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  Speaker 1: pitch tar and pine trees for masks were making no
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  Speaker 1: fortune for Virginia shippers. How could they, these few folk
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  Speaker 1: far off in America compete in products of the force
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  Speaker 1: with northern Europe. As to minds of golden silver. That
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  Speaker 1: first rich vision had proved a disheartening mirage. They have
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  Speaker 1: great hopes that the mountains are very rich, from the
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  Speaker 1: discovery of a silver mine made nineteen years ago at
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  Speaker 1: a place about four days journey from the falls of
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  Speaker 1: James River. But they have not the means of transporting
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  Speaker 1: the ore. So, dissatisfied with some means of livelihood and
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  Speaker 1: disappointed in others, the Virginians turned to tobacco. Every year,
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  Speaker 1: each planter grew more tobacco. Every year, more ships were laden.
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  Speaker 1: In sixteen twenty eight, more than five hundred thousand pounds
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  Speaker 1: were sent to England. To England, it must go, and
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  Speaker 1: not elsewhere. There it must struggle with the best Spanish
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  Speaker 1: for a long time, valued above the best Virginian. Finally, however,
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  Speaker 1: James and after him Charles, agreed to exclude the Spanish.
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  Speaker 1: Virginia and the Summer's Islands alone might import tobacco into England.
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  Speaker 1: But off setting this customs went up ruinously. A great
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  Speaker 1: lump sum must go annually to the King. The leaf
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  Speaker 1: must enter only at the port of London. So forth,
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  Speaker 1: and so on. Finally, Charles put forth his proposal to
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  Speaker 1: monopolize the industry, giving Virginia tobacco the English market, but
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  Speaker 1: limiting its production to the amount which the government could
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  Speaker 1: sell advantageously. Such a policy required cooperation from the colonists.
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  Speaker 1: The King therefore ordered the governor to grant a Virginia Assembly,
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  Speaker 1: which in turn should dutifully enter into partnership with him
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  Speaker 1: upon his terms. So the Virginia Assembly thus came back
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  Speaker 1: into history. It made a humble answer, in which, for
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  Speaker 1: all its humility, the King's proposal was declined. The idea
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  Speaker 1: of the royal monopoly faded out, and Virginia continued on
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  Speaker 1: its own way. The General Assembly, having once met, seems
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  Speaker 1: of its own motion to have continued meeting. The next year,
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  Speaker 1: we find it in session at Jamestown, and resolving that
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  Speaker 1: we should go three several marches upon the Indians at
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  Speaker 1: three several times of the year, and also that there
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  Speaker 1: be an especial care taken by all commanders and others,
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  Speaker 1: that the people do repair to their churches on the
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  Speaker 1: Sabbath day, and to see that the penalty of one
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  Speaker 1: pound of tobacco for every time of absence and fifty
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  Speaker 1: pounds for every month's absence be levied, and the delinquents
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  Speaker 1: to pay the same. About this time we read doctor
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  Speaker 1: John Pott, late governor, indicted, arraigned and found guilty of
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  Speaker 1: stealing cattle. Thirteen jurors, three wereof councilors this day wholly
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  Speaker 1: spent impleading next day in unnecessary disputation. These were moving
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  Speaker 1: times in the little colony, whose population may now have
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  Speaker 1: been five thousand. Harvey, the governor was rapacious, the king
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  Speaker 1: at home autocratic. Meanwhile, signs of change and of rest
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  Speaker 1: were not wanting. In Europe. England was hastening toward revolution.
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  Speaker 1: In Germany, the Thirty Years War was in mid career.
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  Speaker 1: France and Italy were racked by strife. Over the world,
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  Speaker 1: the people's groaned under the strain of oppression. In science, too,
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  Speaker 1: there was promise of revolution. Harvey, not that Governor Harvey
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  Speaker 1: of Virginia, but a greater in England was writing upon
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  Speaker 1: the circulation of the blood. Galileo brooded over ideas of
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  Speaker 1: the movement of the Earth, Capitler, over celestial harmonies and
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  Speaker 1: solar rule. Descartes was laying the foundation of a new philosophy.
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  Speaker 1: In the meantime, far across the Atlantic, bands of Virginians
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  Speaker 1: went out against the Indians who might or might not,
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  Speaker 1: God knows, have put in a claim to be considered
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  Speaker 1: among the oppressed peoples. In Virginia, the fat black tobacco fields,
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  Speaker 1: steaming under a sun like the Son of Spain, called
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  Speaker 1: for and got more labor, and still more labor. Every
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  Speaker 1: little sailing ship brought white workmen called servants, consigned and
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  Speaker 1: ventured apprentice to many acred planters. These, in return for
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  Speaker 1: their passage money, must serve labor for a term of years,
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  Speaker 1: but then would receive rachel or at least leah in
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  Speaker 1: the shape of freedom, and a small holding and provision
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  Speaker 1: with which to begin again their individual life. If they
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  Speaker 1: were ambitious and energetic, they might presently be able in
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  Speaker 1: turn to import labor for their own acres. As yet,
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  Speaker 1: in Virginia there were few African slaves, not more, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: than a couple of hundred, but whenever ships brought them,
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  Speaker 1: they were greedily purchased. In Virginia, as everywhere in time
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  Speaker 1: of change, arose anomalies. Side by side persisted a romantic
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  Speaker 1: devotion to the king and a determination to have popular assemblies,
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  Speaker 1: a great sense of the rights of the white individual,
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  Speaker 1: together with African slavery, a practical easy going, debonair naturalism,
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  Speaker 1: side by side with an established church penalizing alike papers
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  Speaker 1: puritan and atheist. Even so early as this, the social
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  Speaker 1: tone was set that was to hold for many and
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  Speaker 1: many a year. The suave climate was somehow to foster
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  Speaker 1: alike a sense of caste and good neighbourliness, class distinctions,
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  Speaker 1: and republican ideas. The towns were of the fewest and rudest,
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  Speaker 1: little more than small palisaded hamlets built of frame or log,
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  Speaker 1: poised near the water of the river James. The genius
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  Speaker 1: of the land was for the plantation rather than the town.
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  Speaker 1: The fair and large brick or frame planter's house of
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  Speaker 1: a later time had not yet risen, but the system
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  Speaker 1: was well inaugurated that set a main or big house
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  Speaker 1: upon some fair site, with cabins clustered near and all
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  Speaker 1: surrounded save on the river front, with far flung acres,
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  Speaker 1: some planted with grain and the rest with tobacco up
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  Speaker 1: and down the river. These estates were strung together by
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  Speaker 1: the rudest roads, mirror tracks through field and wood. The
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  Speaker 1: cart was as yet the soul wheeled vehicle, but the
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  Speaker 1: Virginia planter a horseman in England brought over horses, bred horses,
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  Speaker 1: and early placed horsemanship in the catalog of the necessary
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  Speaker 1: colonial virtues. At this point, however, in a land of
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  Speaker 1: great and lesser rivers, with a network of creeks, the
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  Speaker 1: boat provided the chief means of communication. Behind all enveloping
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  Speaker 1: all still spread the illimitable forest, the haunt of Indians
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  Speaker 1: and innumerable game. Virginians were already preparing for an expansion
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  Speaker 1: to the north. There was a man in Virginia named
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  Speaker 1: William Clayborne. This individual, able, determined, self reliant, energetic had
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  Speaker 1: come in as a young man with the title of
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  Speaker 1: Surveyor General for the company in the ship that brought
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  Speaker 1: Sir Francis Whatt just before the massacre of sixteen twenty two.
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  Speaker 1: He had prospered and was now Secretary of the province.
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  Speaker 1: He held lands and was endowed with a bold, adventurous
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  Speaker 1: temper and a genius for business. In a few years
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  Speaker 1: he had established widespread trading relations with the Indians. He
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  Speaker 1: and the men whom he employed penetrated to the upper
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  Speaker 1: shores of Chesapeake into the forest bordering Potomac and Susquehanna.
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  Speaker 1: Knives and hatchets, beads, trinkets, and colored cloth were changed
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  Speaker 1: for rich furs in various articles that the Indians could furnish.
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  Speaker 1: The skins thus gathered. Claiborne ship to London merchants, and
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  Speaker 1: was like to grow wealthy from what his trading brought.
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  Speaker 1: Looking upon the future and contemplating border on a princely scale,
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  Speaker 1: he set to work and obtained exhaustive licenses from the
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  Speaker 1: immediate Virginian authorities, and at last from the King himself.
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  Speaker 1: Under these grants, Claiborne began to provide settlements for his
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  Speaker 1: numerous traders. Far up to Chesapeake, one hundred miles or
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  Speaker 1: so from Point Comfort, he found an island that he
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  Speaker 1: liked and named it Kent Island. Here for his men
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  Speaker 1: he built cabins with gardens around them, a mill, and
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  Speaker 1: a church. He was far from the River James and
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  Speaker 1: the mass of his fellows, but he esteemed himself to
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  Speaker 1: be in Virginia and upon his own land. What came
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  Speaker 1: of Claiborne's enterprise, the sequel has to show. End of
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  Speaker 1: Chapter eight