VIRGINIA THREADS FOR FUTURE HISTORIANS; Wm. and Mary Qrtly., Vol. 1, No. 4 Transcribed by Kathy Merrill for the USGenWeb Archives Special Collections Project ************************************************************************ USGENWEB ARCHIVES NOTICE: These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or presentation by any other organization or persons. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material, must obtain the written consent of the contributor, or the legal representative of the submitter, and contact the listed USGenWeb archivist with proof of this consent. The submitter has given permission to the USGenWeb Archives to store the file permanently for free access. http://www.usgwarchives.net *********************************************************************** VIRGINIA THREADS FOR FUTURE HISTORIANS. On the sixth day of April, 1606, King James signed the Charter for a Company to send a Colony "of Sondry of or people in yt part of America, comonly called Virginia". Merchants in Plymouth, as well as in London, were interested in the project. Before the patent was sealed there wre deliberations between the residents of both cities, and there is among the records of the corporation of Plymouth in 1605-6, this item: "Five shillings for horses hired for Thomas Love to ride to Exon, about the Virginia Voyage". Thomas Love was a prominent merchant of Plymouth, and with William Parker of the same place, upon the return, in July 1605, of Captain Weymouth from the north Atlantic coast, had made an agreement with him for a Virginia voyage. Sir John Digby, English Ambassador at Madrid, in a letter Page 221. to Trumbull, dated April 28, 1612, mentions that the Spaniards "bite the lipp againe at virginia, and ye northwest passage". Francis Nelson, who was associated with Newort in a voyage to Jamestown, in 1612, sailed with Capt. Thomas Button for Hudson's Bay, and died at the north of the Nelson River, which still bears his name, a stream which flows north from Lake Winnipeg, which lake is fed by the north-flowing streams of Minnesota. On the 15th of July, 1624, George Calvert, then Secretary of State, after- wards the first Lord Baltimore, was appointed by King James one of the Com- missioners to receive the charters, letters, and seals of the late Virginia Company, and attend to the affairs of the Colony. The following letter to Secretary John Coke from him, dated March 15th 1624-5, a few days before King James died, has recently appeared in one of the Reports of the Parliament Historical Commission. Several years before he left the Church of England, he had established a colony called Avalon in Newfoundland. "I intend shortly, God willing, a journey for Newfoundland to visit a planta- tion which I began there some years since. I hired the ship called the Jonathan, now in the river for the transportation of myself and such plants as I carry with me. Since I understand she is stayed to serve the King, to which it is good reason that all my occasions should give place, but I am by that means disappointed, and you should do me a great favor to clear her and her mariners, and also the Peter Bonaventure, for which I contracted for carrying over cattle. Whatever favor you show me here, my Lord Duke [Buckingham] will not be displeased with". Two days later, George Villiers, the Duke of Buckingham, wrote to Coke: "I have herein sent you a letter which I received from the Lord Baltimore craving the release of five ships, to whom I have forborne to give any answer, until I hear from you whether it will be prejudicial or inconsistent to his Majesty's service. I pray, speak to the Lord Baltimore about it." The effort to sail at this time was not succesful. A letter written on the 9th of April, 1625, a few days after the accession of Charles the First, mentions: "The Lord Baltimore is now a professed Papist, was going to Newfoun- land, and is stayed". In 1627, he made a visit to his plantation, remained a few months, and returned, and in January, 1627-8, he writes to Page 222. Secretary Coke in behalf of Christopher Levett, one of the founders of New England: "Mr. Levett seeks a commission for New England. The Lords of the Council desiring to know whether this will encroach on my plantation are in- formed that it does not concern me at all: it is far removed from the Newfound- land; a nearer part of America by some hundreds of miles". In the spring of 1628, he sailed a second time, but he and his colonists during the year suffered from sickness. Early in October 1629, to the surprise of the Virginia authorities he arrived at Jamestown with his second wife, the mother of Philip Calvert, afterwards Governor of Maryland. The English govern- ment required every person who arrived in Virginia to take the oath of allegiance and supremacy, which he refused, and was, therefore, not permitted to remain. In 1627, Sir John Zouch, Knight, of the old Zouch family of Codnor, in Derby- shire, was recommended as Governor of Virginia. He had "bestowed much time and study in things belonging to military discipline", and had served with the English army in the Netherlands. He was a Puritan in religion, and, while not appointed to the Governorship, in 1631, was one of the King's commissioners to consider the condition of Virginia. He sold his estate at Codnor, in 1634, and after that he and his son and daughers were residents of Virginia. He lived in Henrico County, then including Chesterfield. On the 30th of August, 1636, he made his will. He left to his son John all his lands in Virginia, and adds: "I have been at great expense with my plantation having laid out alone twelve hundred pounds upon it". He further mentions that his son John had lost two hundred and fifty pounds in the iron works, "and as much more of my own, by reason that divers that did promise to join with us in that design, did neglect the performance". To his daughter, Isabella, he gave his servants, horses, "and all other goods in Virginia". Mr. R. A. Brock, the late courteous and efficient Secretary of the Virginia Historical Society, who made its reputation in England and this country, writes to me: "There is no grant of land on record to him [Sir John Zouch], but there is evidence of his having taken up 567 acres of land. In the records of Henrico County, which are imperfect, there is a deed of date, April, 1681, from William Byrd of Henrico, to William Hermon for 567 acres, "lately the property of Sir John Zouch, Kn't and escheated." Page 223. Sir Edward Cecil, afterwards Lord Wimbledon, was an active member of the Virginia Company of London, and in 1612, entered at the Stationer's Company the "Articles, lawes, and orders dyvyne, politique, and martiall for the Colonye in Virginia". In a letter dated October 3, 1635, is written: "The Lord Wimbledon is lately married to a young gentlewoman, daughter to Sir Edward Zonch, who died about a year since; her mother is a Dame that served Queen Anne in her bed-chamber. I know her well, an homely woman, but being very rich, Zouch married her for her wealth". Wimbledon in 1636, was stationed at Portsmouth, and, under date of August 9th writes to Secretary Windebank, relative to Governor Harvey, about to return to Virginia: "For yor letter to Sir John Harvey, according to yor direction I heere send you back againe, for that Sir John Harvey is not here. And I am sorrye to see a journey of such charge, that soe many passengers attend it, lye heere so long, spending their civtuall and money so unnecessarye for they were heere before I came, and since a month. Therefore I doe not wonder that such journeys of ye Nation prosper noe better". Eight days after this the Barons of the Cinque Ports report: "For Sr John Harvie's letter we shall be carefull to give it, rather than send it backe, for his is soe far from being gone, that his people heere cannot heare of him, and for our parts we would wish hee were departed, for there cometh daylie soe mennye from London to goe wth him, that wee feare they may bring that ill to us, wch thanks be to God, as yet we are cleare of; and for haste of the journey wee see little, for that this day they are unlaoding their shipps of their ordnance, and cables and their most weightye loadings to search for a leake in her being a most crayse and old shipp". On the 18th of January, 1636-7, the old ship arrived, and Harvey read his new commission in the church of Elizabeth City. Edward Prodger, called "Ned", was a favorite page of Charles the First, and was groom of the bed-chamber of Charles the Second. When the latter was at Perth, Scotland, in October, 1650, a patent duly sealed was given to Prodger, for two thousand acres of land in Virginia. On the 7th of November, 1655, recognizances were taken be- Page 224. fore Tobias Lisle, Justice of the Peace, of Henry Cox, brewer, and Richard Hick- man, carpenter, in the sum of twenty pounds each "for the appearance of Christian Chacrett, alias Sacrett, at the next session of the Peace to be held for Middlesex at Hicks' Hall to answser the complaint of Dorothy Perkins, who accuseth her for a spirit, one that take upp men, women and children and sells them a-ship to bee conveyed beyond the sea, having inticed and inveigled one Edward Furnifall, and Anna his wife, with her infant, to the water-side, and putt them aboard the ship called The Planter to be conveied to Virginiga". On the 4th of May, 1657, recognizance was entered "For the appearance of Sarah Sharp to answer all such matter as shall be objected against her by Katherine Well for violently assaulting her, tearing her by the hair of the head, and byting of her arm; as also, for that she is a common taker of children, and a setter to betray young men and maydens to be conveyed into ships, and as it hath been proved on oath, that she confessed to Mr Guy that she hath at this time four persons aboard a ship, whereof, one is a child about eleven years of age, all to be transported to foreign points as the Barbadoes, and Virginia." A London News Letter of March 12th 1666-7, mentions "A frigate of between thirty and fourty guns, built in Virginia, looks so fair that it is believed that in a hosrt time they will get the art of building good frigates there as in England". On the 7th of October, 1742 William Jeffries of Bristol writes to a friend: "On Friday last, the pilot boat returned here, which was sent to Virginia, by the Government with the first news of the Spanish invasion. She left Virginia the 12th ult., and brings an account that Captain Dandridge in his Majesty's ship of 40 guns would sail in two days to grant relief". Captain William Dandridge served with Oglethorpe in the attack on St. Augustine, and was with Admiral Vernon in the siege of Carthagena. His wife was a daughter of Nathaniel West of King William County, and among his descend- ants was Martha Dandridge, who first married Daniel Parke Custis, and after his death became the wife of George Washington. EDWARD D. NEILL, Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota.