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Jamestown Settlement 400th anniversary

Image from the 1957 pamphlet (Cat. ref. PRO 56/78)

Sunday, May 13, 2007 was the 400th anniversary of the settlers first arriving at Jamestown, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas. Since 1807 Virginia has held major Jamestown commemorations every 50 years. In 1957 Queen Elizabeth II visited the Jamestown Festival. It was her first visit to the United States as Britain's monarch.

The first arrivals

In the sixteenth century England was pursuing colonial interests beyond Europe. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, was an ardent advocate of exploration and colonisation. Gilbert, Sir Francis Walsingham and Sir George Peckham collected seamen’s reports and combined them in their description of America (1582). The report described the people, "like Turks with their faces and skinnes very red", their way of living and the abundance of the country.

In 1584 Sir Walter Raleigh received a warrant for the issue of Letters Patent under the Great Seal to discover and colonise "remote heathen and barbarous landes" in the name of the Queen. This warrant set a ten year limit to establish a settlement in North America. Though Raleigh never visited Virginia, the first voyages were made and the ill-fated colonies at Roanoke established under his patent. Conditions were harsh and the first Colony was abandoned when Sir Francis Drake offered to take the settlers back to England. The second colony was founded at Roanoke in 1587 but when supply ships arrived four years later, no trace of the Colonists was found.

In 1606 two Virginia Companies, one for London and one for Plymouth, were incorporated by Letters Patent. The London Company landed on Jamestown Island on 14 May 1607. A journal describes the exploration of the James River from James Forte (now Jamestown) by a party led by Captain Christopher Newport, with a description of the river and the surrounding countryside. One section describes the explorers’ friendly meeting with Queen Apumatec and King Paumanches but a later passage describes an attack in which some of the party were killed.

The first map

Jamestown (Cat. ref. MPG 1/284)

Captain John Smith’s map of Virginia (1608) shows areas occupied by various tribes. The limits of exploration at this date are marked by crosses. John Smith spent much of his time exploring and mapping the New England coast. After his return to England in 1609 he published maps and pamphlets supporting colonisation in America. This map was originally published in London in 1612 and also in the 1612 Oxford publication of "A Map of Virginia: With a Description of the Countrey, the Commodities, People, Government and Religion".

In May 1610 the Deliverance and the Patience set sail from Bermuda, with 142 castaways on board. On arriving at the mainland, they saw that the Virginia Colony had been almost destroyed by famine and disease during what has become known as the "Starving Time". Very few of the supplies from the Supply Relief Fleet had arrived (the same hurricane which caught George Somers’s ship, Sea Venture, had also badly affected the rest of the fleet), and only 60 settlers remained alive. It was only through the arrival of the two small ships from Bermuda, and the arrival of another relief fleet commanded by Lord De La Ware in July of 1610 that the abandonement of Jamestown was avoided and the colony was able to survive.

Jamestown

They decided to make landfall on the swampy ground of what was then a peninsula (and now an island) along the James River, some 60 miles from the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay. Within a month the settlers had constructed a triangle-shaped wooden fort, for protection against the Spanish, who did not want the British to establish any kind of foothold in the New World.

The settlers called their new colony Jamestown. In their first winter, more than half of the colonists perished from famine and illness. They were also under attack from the Algonquins. Eventually, more colonists and new supplies were brought from Britain, and, despite a fire that wiped out the original fort, the settlement found some stability under the leadership of Captain John Smith. Smith, with the help of Pocohontas, daughter of the Algonquian chief Powhatan, managed to broker an uneasy peace before leaving the colony and returning to England in September 1609.

Naval hero, George Somers wrote to Robert Cecil reporting his shipwreck on Bermuda while on a voyage to Virginia, and a famine at Jamestown so severe that people were forced to eat snakes. He planned to ship the colonists to Bermuda "the most plentifull place that ever I came to for Fishe, Hogges and Fowle". The Bermudas, or Somers Islands were granted to the Virginia Company in 1612, and a separate company was formed for their development.

Spain considered that the Colony infringed her sovereignty and lay too close to her trade routes. From its earliest years the Company was much exercised by the twin problems of how to finance and how to populate its Colony. Schemes included public lotteries and the transportation of criminals and vagrants from England. (The Colony would later lose its patent, with government of Virginia taken over by the Crown).

King Powhattan (Cat. ref. MPG 1/284)

John Rolfe and Pocahontas

John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton reporting Sir Thomas Dale’s return from Virginia with Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhattan and her English husband, John Rolfe. Sir Thomas Dale was an early settler and Governor of Virginia. According to a disputed story, Pocahontas saved the life of Captain John Smith when he was captured by her father’s men and became a frequent visitor to the Colony. There she married John Rolfe who introduced the regular cultivation of tobacco in Virginia. In England Pocahontas was received at Court. She died in Gravesend, England, on her way back to Virginia in 1617 and was buried in the parish church.

The Colony

Transportation was advocated in a Royal Proclamation of 1617. Sir Edwyn Sandys wrote to Sir Robert Naunton, asking for a warrant from the Council to enforce the transportation of the hundred children to be sent to Virginia at the expense of the City of London. Some of the worst disposed "of whom the Citie is especially desirous to be disburdened" have refused to leave England.

The Assembly first met in 1619 and it continued to meet and to make laws when Virginia became a royal Colony. A list of names of settlers in Virginia was compiled in 1622 and another list was compiled giving the names of those who died within the previous ten months. By 1622 Virginia was split into factions, its funds exhausted and its prestige gone. The Colony was neglected and a massacre made conditions even worse.

Hostility to the Colony grew and Chief Opechancanough led a massacre on 22 March 1622. Richard Frethorne wrote about the wretched state of the Colony after an attack, begging either to be sent food and clothing or to be "freed out of this Egypt". The Company petitioned the King for obsolete weapons in the Tower and old armour and firearms were sent out for the settlers.

The King revoked the Charter and Virginia became a crown colony in 1624. In the Civil War Virginia supported the King’s cause and after the Restoration the government of the Colony fell entirely into the hands of the Governor appointed by the King.

ProQuest CSA

The National Archives is grateful to ProQuest CSA for the use of the images of Sir Humphrey Gilbert's description of America and the journal describing the exploration of the James River.

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