Читать книгу The Beginners of a Nation - Eggleston Edward - Страница 23

Argall's government. Captain Argall, who succeeded Sir Thomas Dale, was a bold and notable mariner. He had built the first Virginia vessel; he had traded with the Indians for corn with as much enterprise and address as Captain Smith had shown; he had in a small ship called the Dainty made the first experimental voyage to James River by the westward route, avoiding the long circuit by the Canaries and West Indies. It had been his fortune to be the first Englishman to see the American bison, which he found near the Potomac. He it was who by a shrewd trick had captured Pocahontas and held her as hostage; and he drove the French out of Maine, despoiling their settlement at Mount Desert. To a mastery of all the arts that make the skillful navigator he added the courteous politeness of a man of the city and the unfaltering rapacity of a pirate. As governor, he robbed the company with one hand and the hapless colonists with the other. While using the ships and men of the colony to carry on the Indian trade, he turned all the profits of it into his own wallet. The breeding animals of the colony accumulated by Dale he sold, and made no account of the proceeds. There was hardly anything portable or salable in Virginia that he did not purloin. He even plundered the property of Lady De la Warr, the widow of his predecessor. He boldly fitted out a ship belonging to Lord Rich, and sent an expedition of sheer piracy to the West Indies under an old letter of marque from the Duke of Savoy. When advices from England warned Argall that his downfall was imminent, he forthwith redoubled his felonious diligence. Lord Rich's intrigue. His chief partner in England was Lord Rich, who became the second Earl of Warwick in 1619, about the time of Argall's return, and who is known to history in his later character as a great Puritan nobleman, who served God while he contrived to better his estate with both hands by such means as troublous times put within his reach. He was not content with small pickings. Rich appears to have aimed at nothing less than wrecking the company and securing the land and government of Virginia. 20 The first step toward this was to get a charter for a private or proprietary plantation within Virginia which should be exempt from all authority of the company and the colony. This independent government was to serve as a refuge from prosecutions for Argall and other piratical agents, and at last to possess itself of the wreck and remainder of Virginia. The second step in this intrigue was one that could have availed nothing in any time less respectful to shadowy technicalities and less prone to legal chicanery than that of James I. As we have seen, jealousy was excited in Virginia by the possibility of Captain Smith's wedding Pocahontas and setting up a claim to authority based on her inheritance from Powhatan. Stith, 142. A tradition lingered in Virginia a hundred years later that King James questioned Rolfe's right to intermarry with a foreign princess without the consent of his sovereign. If this had any foundation, it grew out of the value of a pretext in a time of technicality and intrigue. There may have been already a scheme to trade upon the hereditary right of Powhatan's daughter. Pocahontas died in England, leaving an infant son. Argall, on his arrival, hastened to notify the company that Opechankano, the brother and successor of Powhatan, had resolved not to sell any more land, but to reserve it for the son of Pocahontas when he should be grown. The company charged that this was a ruse to serve the ends which Argall, Rich, and others had in view. The larger plan miscarried, but Argall found his prey so tempting that he lingered longer than was safe, and got away in the nick of time by the aid of Lord Rich, who had stood guard like a burglar's pal, and who contrived to delay the ship carrying out the new governor until a small swift-sailing vessel could be sent to fetch away Argall and his varied booty of public and private plunder. The Companie's root of difference. MS. Rec. Va. Co., May 7, 1623. In that day justice often went by favor, and Argall consigned his spoils to hands so powerful that the Virginia Company, stripped bare by his treacherous villainy, could never recover any of its lost property. MS. Rec. Va. Co., passim. The embittered colonists had the bootless satisfaction of sending over after the runaway governor twenty-four bundles of accusatory depositions.