COLONIAL COUNTY GOVERNMENT IN VIRGINIA

In the second charter to the Virginia Company the Governor was authorized to use and exercise martial law in cases of rebellion or mutiny in as large and ample manner as our lieutenants in our counties within this realm of England." * This sentence calls attention to the difference be tween the settlement of New England and that of Virginia. Many of the early settlers of New England had been townsfolk, or easily adapted their mode of living to the township idea, which was necessary among so few to insure mutual protection and assistance. The transfer of the governing power to the colony and the nature of the country still further strengthened the natural tendency to reproduce the older and smaller local independencies of the homeland. The settlement of Virginia, however, seems to have been conducted upon another principle. The clause in the charter which conferred upon the governor the powers of a county lieutenant indicates that it was designed for the colony to become in course of time a kind of county dependent, through the Company in London, upon the Crown. From certain circumstances, similar in many respects to those which later affected the northern colonists, a small local life was absolutely required in Virginia, but this did not continue for any great length of time. As more colonists arrived, they extended their settlements over the fertile country by means of its natural highways-the rivers, that had for ages been preparing the soil for easy cultivation by rich alluvial deposits. Little by little the new comers subdued or pacified by force or policy the original proprietors, and, encroaching upon the wilderness, amassed large estates, which were destined to become greater on account of the system of entail and primogeniture that, as some writers assert, was developed in Virginia to a higher degree than in England itself. With the retreat or extermination of the Indians disappeared the necessity of living in or near small fortified hamlets, and as population spread over wider territory the town broadened into the county, and people, institutions, soil, and climate began to exercise upon each other a modifying influence, the result of which was Virginia of the Revolution. Imbued by birth or training with aristocratic notions, Virginia's founders allowed them full play in the land of their adoption, where there was no controlling class above or below them, and where every circumstance favored them. Where almost every

*Hening's Statutes, i., p. 96.

extensive plantation had its own "landing," and the planter was his own factor and possessed and trained his artizans, there was no reason why towns should be built. Even when attempts to lay off towns in every county were made, they were delayed and resisted upon the plea that tobacco culture would be hindered. The consequence of a small population. scattered over a large area was that the county obtained predominance as a political unit, though smaller divisions retained a quasi recognition. A brief review of the history of the first fifteen years of the colony will show in some degree the causes of the origin and growth of the county system.

When one considers the relation of Virginia to the English Crown after the dissolution of the Company, that had controlled their affairs for economic purposes, he sees the Governor representing the King, the law, and to all intents the Church. This was a great advance beyond the idea of an agent for a company, or of a county lieutenant, and the change in the attributes of the governor had been brought about by the increase of population and wealth in the colony, and the consequent subdivisions of power all concentrated into the Governor's hands.

After a few years' experience the mere merchant venture, with its servants, tools and provisions in common, was found to be impracticable. Community of goods under most favorable circumstances has resulted in poverty or disintegration. What was true about many later pure communistic experiments was equally true in regard to the attempt in Virginia. Many of the adventurers unused to manual labor took it for granted that they would be fed from the common store; consequently they were not incited to make very great efforts for their own support, but were glad of any opportunity that might enable them to shirk work. The result was that they not only did not produce enough to repay the outlay of the Company, but were often hard put to provide food for themselves. Sir Thomas Dale hit upon a half plan to remedy this evil, i.e. granting, to each man three acres of land, which he could cultivate one month in the year for himself and devote the other eleven months to the service of the colony, receiving for the same corn from the common store. At Henrico a more liberal arrangement was made, for a man was allowed to work eleven months for himself upon the payment of a certain amount of corn into the store, and was liable to be called on for one month's service to the colony at any time except in planting or harvesting seasons. The institution of private property in land, however greatly it may be deplored by modern socialists of the Henry George stripe, gave the colonists a feeling of permanence suited to their English instincts, and encouraged a man to depend upon his own resources. A man could thus see his labor

affecting directly himself, and, as land may be justly considered the basis of all property, it is not surprising that there soon began to be material comfort and a degree of prosperity which, in spite of set-backs from Indian wars and internal struggles, caused Virginia to be regarded as the granary of the North. The allotment of fifty acres for each person brought into the colony gave it greater stability, and the people having obtained a basis for operations, began to be restless under military rule, and, true to education, to desire a government more akin to English law and practice.* The Company thought fit to acquiesce in this desire, and accordingly sent back as Governor Sir George Yeardley, with instructions to summon a body to make laws for the colony. In answer to his summons there assembled in the church at Jamestown, July 30, 1619, the first English legislative body in America. The members of the Assembly, as it was afterward called, sat together in the church, the Governor and Council occupying the choir or chancel. The larger portion was composed of twenty-two burgesses-two elected from each of the various hundreds, plantations or corporations situated along the Powhatan or James River from Henrico to the Bay, and even from the small settlement in Accomac. † The represent

"The earliest mode of acquiring land in the colony was in virtue of five years' service to the London Company, at the expiration of which the adventurer was 'set free' and entitled to a 'divident' of one hundred acres, which, if planted and seated by the building of a house upon it within three years, entitled the planter to an additional hundred acres; if not, it reverted to the crown. Later each one coming into the colony, or transporting thither or paying the passage of others, was entitled for himself, each member of his family, or other person thus transported, to fifty acres of land, which was called a 'head right,' and was transferable. Still later lands were granted upon the condition of paying an annual 'quit rent' of one shilling for every fifty acres, and of planting and seating within three years." R. A. Brock, The Spotswood Letters, vol. i, p. 23. Virginia Historical Register, vol. ii., p. 190. Jefferson's Works, vol. i., p. 138.

+ By hundreds must not be understood a definite amount of territory inhabited by a body of persons represented originally by a hundred men or families. The term was used loosely in Maryland, but more loosely in Virginia. In 1609 Captain Francis West led a hundred and odd men up the James river and settled near the Falls, while Captain John Martin was in command of a hundred men on the south side of the river in the Nansemond country [Force's Tracts, vol. iii., p. 14]. When this fact is connected with the instructions to Governor Wyatt in 1621 to allow none but heads of hundreds to wear gold in their clothes, it seems to give the hundred a personal character. In the first Assembly there were representatives from Martin's Brandon and Martin's Hundred, the former the plantation of Captain Martin, the latter evidently the place of his original settlement, which had been abandoned after a few months' occupation, but had afterward been revived. If this be so, the place took its name no doubt from the number of men who first seated there. But the territorial idea absorbed the personal, for Sir Thomas Dale “laid oute and annexed to be belonging to the freedom and corporation (of New Bermudas) for ever many miles of Champion and woodland in severall Hundreds, as the upper and nether hundreds, Rochdale hundred, West's Sherly hundred. Diggs his hundred." [Hamor's Narrative, pp. 31-32.] Other hundreds were afterward laid off with no apparent regard to uniformity, and the name was gradually re

ative idea was expressed in the beginning, and did not, as later in Maryland, develop through the proxy system. As this assembly was most important as marking an era in Anglo-American history, and as the body afterward represented the counties taken collectively, it may be well to treat the topic at this point. *

This primitive Assembly first turned its attention to the qualifications. of its members. Captain Warde's seat was disputed and objection was raised against Captain Martin's burgesses. Warde was admitted, but the burgesses of Martin were excluded, because he refused to yield the claim in his patent, exempting him and his followers from the laws of the colony's charter. On Monday the laws which had been made up from the instructions to Yeardley and his two immediate predecessors were passed; religion, morality, relations with Indian, planting, manufacturers, were stricted to the actual settlement or collection of houses, in which form it has been preserved in Bermuda Hundred.

* Mr. Arthur Gilman in his "History of the American People," p. 601, states that "The documentary basis of the Representative government established by Governor Yeardley in Virginia has not been preserved." This is a great mistake, for the Virginia Historical Society published, some years ago, under the supervision of Messrs. T. H. Wynne and W. S. Gilman, the records of this Assembly, with an account of the discovery of and the transcription of the MSS. in England.

Captain Martin was a member of the Virginia Company and created considerable trouble in the colony. Martin's Brandon had been given him in at private meeting of the company which, after many protests, revoked his charter and offered him a new one, which after some delay he accepted. On October 22, 1623, he voted in England for the surrender of the Virginia Charter, and in December of the same year the privy council recommended that "more than ordinary respect should be had of him," and that he and all under him should not be oppressed, but allowed to enjoy their lands and goods in peace. [Calendar of State Papers, Colonial, 1574 1660, edited by Sainsbury, p. 55.] The dispute about the rights of his delegates to seats calls attention to the existence of manorial rights in Virginia, for his patent for his possessing lands "in as ample manner as any lord of any manor in England." The Assembly very honestly confessed its ignorance of the prerogatives of all English manors. Martin and his people were free from all service to the colony except in case of war. He seems to have exercised his power, for there was a complaint made against him that he had made "his owne Territory there a Receptacle of vagabonds and bankrupts and other disorderly psons (wherof there hath bin made publique complaint) * who hath presumed of his owne authority (no way derived from his Matie) to giue uniust sentence of death up on diuers of his Mats subjects and euer the same put in cruell execution." This, however, may have been an exaggeration due to the bitter feeling against him. Somewhat similar grants were offered in 1679 by the Assembly to Major Laurence Smith and Captain William Bird. For the defense of the frontiers, Captain Bird was to settle at the Falls two hundred and fifty men, of whom fifty were to be always ready to arm, and Major Smith was to do the same way at the head of the Rappahannock River. Upon the fulfillment of these and certain similar conditions, the two commanders were to possess full powers to execute martial discipline, and each, with two other inhabitants of this settlement who should be commissioned by the Governor, were to be intrusted with the rights of a county court, and could with six others elected by a majority of the inhabitants make by laws. There is no definite record of these settlements having been made, though there is an implication of it in the language of Colonel William Byrd some years later.

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provided for. On Tuesday the Assembly sat as a court to try Thomas Garnett for indecent behavior, and he was sentenced by the Governor "to stand fower dayes with his cares nayled to the Pillory *** and euery of those fower dayes should be publiquely whipped." After passing more laws on Wednesday and trying Henry Spelman for endeavoring to stir up trouble among the Indians, and providing salaries for the speaker, the clerk, and the sergeant, the Assembly was prorogued by the Governor.

Although many things may have been said and done contrary to laws and customs of England, the Assembly should always be studied with great interest by the constitutionalist and historian, for with it began the real prosperity of Virginia, which encouraged the planting of other settlements in America. The laws which were enacted were characteristic of the men and of the times, and the Company in London could abrogate them, although it was petitioned that they might pass current until the Company's further pleasure was known. The growth of the Assembly is a question rather of constitutions than of institutions, but the relations of the county to it after it had become determined cannot be omitted in this paper. When the governor called an Assembly, burgesses were elected from each county and from some parishes. The number allowed to each county was for a time indefinite, and was probably reckoned according to population. But in 1660 the number was reduced to two for each county and one for Jamestown, it being the metropolis, and if a county should "lay out one hundred acres of land and people itt with one hundred tithable persons," that place could send a burgess. † The right of representation was afterwards conferred upon Williamsburg, Norfolk, and other large towns or cities. The election was held at the court-house, and the sheriff presided and took the votes which freeholders cast, and those who were absent from the poll were liable to be fined. "All voted openly

* Colonial Records of Virginia, 1619-80, p. 24.

Hening's Statutes, ii., p. 20. In South Carolina a similar plan was proposed. Governor Johnson was directed in 1730 to encourage the building of towns. 'Each Town shall be formed into a Parish, the Extent whereof shall be about 6 miles round the Town on the same side of the River, and as soon as a Parish shall contain 100 masters of Families, they may send Two members to the Assembly of the Province." [A Description of the Province of South Carolina, Drawn up at Charlestoun in September, 1731, p. 125 of Carroll's "Hist. Col., S. C."] This plan seemed to have been unsuccessful, for in a work published in 1761, it is stated that "some towns, which by the king's Instructions have a right to be erected into Parishes, and to send two members are not allowed to send any." Carroll, etc., p. 220.

The qualifications of voters were for some years shifting, but at last settled down to freeholders, and at the beginning of the Revolution the voters were those "possessing an estate for life in 100 acres of uninhabited land or 25 acres with a house on it, or in a house or lot in some town." Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, p. 160.