Patrician and Plebeian: Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old DominionWertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson
History
Patrician and Plebeian: Or The Origin and Development of the Social Classes of the Old Dominion
Wertenbaker, Thomas Jefferson
Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Virginia -- Social life and customs -- To 1775
As years went by, this influx of dissipated gentlemen began to wane.
It could not be concealed in England that the early settlers had
perished of starvation, disease and the tomahawk, and those that had
been led to believe that Virginia was an Eldorado, turned with a
shudder from the true picture of suffering and death told them by
those that returned from the colony. Moreover, the London Company soon
learned that no profit was to be expected from a colony settled by
dissipated gentlemen, and began to send over persons more suited for
the rough tasks of clearing woods, building huts and planting corn.
Their immigrant vessels were now filled with laborers, artisans,
tradesmen, apprentices and indentured servants. It is doubtless true
that occasionally gentlemen continued to arrive in Virginia even
during the last years of the Company's rule, yet their number must
have been very small indeed. When, in 1624, James I took from the
London Company its charter, the colony contained few others than
indentured servants and freemen of humble origin and means. In 1623
several of the planters, in answering charges that had been brought
against the colony by a certain Captain Nathaniel Butler, said that
the inhabitants were chiefly laboring men.[7]
With the downfall of the London Company one influence which had tended
to send to Virginia persons of good social standing ceased to exist.
The personal interest of those noblemen that had owned stock in the
enterprise was no longer exerted to obtain a desirable class of
settlers, and economic forces alone now determined the character of
those that established themselves in Virginia. During the remainder of
the 17th century it was the profit that could be obtained from the
planting of tobacco that brought the most desirable class of settlers
to the colony. It is true, however, that dissipated and spendthrift
gentlemen still came over at times, seeking in Virginia a refuge from
creditors, or expecting amid the unsettled conditions of a new country
to obtain license for their excesses. It was this element of the
population, doubtless, that the Dutch, trader De Vries referred to
when he asserted that some of the planters were inveterate gamblers,
even staking their servants.[8] Such a character was Captain Stone,
whom De Vries met at the home of Governor Harvey. This man was related
to families of good standing in England, but strutted, was lewd, swore
horribly and was guilty of shameless carousals wherever he went. While
in New Amsterdam he entered upon a drinking bout with Governor Von
Twiller, and stole a vessel of Plymouth. In Massachusetts he called
Roger Ludlow a just ass, and later, having been detected in other
crimes, was forced to flee from the colony. Beyond doubt men similar
to Stone were to be found in Virginia during the first half of the
17th century, but they became rarer and rarer as time went on.[9]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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