If further evidence were wanting, we have it in “The New Life of
Virginia,” published by authority of the Council, London, 1612. This is
the second part of the “Nova Britannia,” published in London, 1609. Both
are prefaced by an epistle to Sir Thomas Smith, one of the Council and
treasurer, signed “R. I.” Neither document contains any allusion to
Captain John Smith, or the part he played in Virginia. The “New Life of
Virginia,” after speaking of the tempest which drove Sir Thomas Gates
on Bermuda, and the landing of the eight ships at Jamestown, says:
“By which means the body of the plantation was now augmented with such
numbers of irregular persons that it soon became as so many members
without a head, who as they were bad and evil affected for the most part
before they went hence; so now being landed and wanting restraint, they
displayed their condition in all kinds of looseness, those chief and
wisest guides among them (whereof there were not many) did nothing but
bitterly contend who should be first to command the rest, the common
sort, as is ever seen in such cases grew factious and disordered out
of measure, in so much as the poor colony seemed (like the Colledge of
English fugitives in Rome) as a hostile camp within itself; in which
distemper that envious man stept in, sowing plentiful tares in the
hearts of all, which grew to such speedy confusion, that in few months
ambition, sloth and idleness had devoured the fruit of former labours,
planting and sowing were clean given over, the houses decayed, the
church fell to ruin, the store was spent, the cattle consumed, our
people starved, and the Indians by wrongs and injuries made our
enemies.... As for those wicked Impes that put themselves a shipboard,
not knowing otherwise how to live in England; or those ungratious sons
that daily vexed their fathers hearts at home, and were therefore thrust
upon the voyage, which either writing thence, or being returned back to
cover their own leudnes, do fill mens ears with false reports of their
miserable and perilous life in Virginia, let the imputation of misery
be to their idleness, and the blood that was spilt upon their own heads
that caused it.”
Sir Thomas Gates affirmed that after his first coming there he had seen
some of them eat their fish raw rather than go a stone's cast to fetch
wood and dress it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account