The Virginia Company of London

A joint stock company, an entity that spread both the risk and reward between investors, was formed as the Virginia Company. Two groups within the Virginia Company operated separately as the London Company and Plymouth Company, each to form their own colony. The royal charter of April 1606, arranged by Smythe and granted by King James, was very similar to that of the East India Company nine years earlier. The purpose of the company, it stated, was “to make habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that part of America commonly called Virginia.” The anticipation was that Virginia would be an export-producing base rather than an agricultural colony.

As was usual with monarchs of the period, they had a particular interest in obtaining bullion. In the Virginia Company charter James was to be provided with “the fifth Part only of all the same Gold and Silver, and the fifteenth Part of all the same Copper, so to be gotten or had”. All commercial decisions were to be undertaken by the company but any trade was to be limited to the King’s dominions and not to foreign countries. The company was to be overseen by His Majesty’s Council for Virginia, comprised of thirteen investors appointed by the King.

The main investors in the Virginia Company included Sir Thomas Smythe, Bartholomew Gosnold (an early promoter of colonisation), Lord de la Ware (after whom the Delaware River would later be named), Lord Chief Justice Sir John Popham, Sir Humphrey Gilbert (half-nephew of Sir Walter Raleigh), Sir George Somers, Sir Thomas Gates, Richard Hakluyt the Younger (an early proponent of colonisation), Lieutenant of the Tower of London Sir William Wade, MP for Westminster Sir William Cope, Captain John Smith, the influential MP Sir Edwin Sandys, and Edward Maria Wingfield. An early investor was George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, father of the founder of Maryland. These gentlemen were to be provided with grants of land and receive a portion of any profit. The initial plan was to trade with the indigenous people rather than commercial agriculture but it was recognised that a small amount of farming was necessary for the colonists to support themselves.

The London Company was authorised to create a settlement between 34 and 40 degrees latitude, with the Plymouth Company directed to lands further north. In August 1607 the Plymouth Company created a colony at Sagadahoc in present-day Maine but it was not successful and abandoned the following spring.

The first London Company voyage departed on three ships from Blackwall on the Thames in December 1606, led by Captain Christopher Newport of Limehouse and with Gosnold, Wingfield and John Smith as passengers. In April 1607 they landed on the southern edge of Chesapeake Bay. Attacked by natives, they found a more suitable site for a settlement about 40 miles inland along the Powhatan River. Within months of arriving Gosnold died of disease. From the time of arrival in Virginia Wingfield served as the first president of the Council of Virginia, chosen partly as the more senior in age and also with previous experience of plantations in Ireland. He named the new settlement Jamestown in honour of the King, founded in May 1607.

Wingfield and John Smith had clashed as early as during the voyage to Virginia. As difficulties arose from attacks by natives, the heat, and lack of food, the settlers became disillusioned with Wingfield’s leadership. In September 1608 Smith took command and Wingfield was returned to England but remained involved in the Virginia Company for the rest of his life. Smith proved to be a strong commander and Jamestown survived through two harsh winters but, like Wingfield before him, became unpopular and left the colony.

A further 70 settlers arrived at Jamestown in October 1608, including the first women. By 1609 the Virginia Company was running low on funds. It was also realised that the company’s governance required modification, so a new charter was granted. It transferred control of the colony from the King to the investors, perhaps influenced by Sandys, who in Parliament was a strong critic of James. The charter also enlarged the company’s territory all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Another 500 settlers set off from England in 1609 in nine ships. One of them, the Sea Venture with 150 people on board, was separated from others of the fleet in a hurricane while en-route. During the storm they arrived at an archipelago of islands about 650 miles off the coast of America in the North Atlantic. The ship was captained by Sir George Somers, the company’s admiral, who had previously sailed with Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh, and he drove the vessel against the rocks to save the passengers. Others on board included Sir Thomas Gates, who had also served with Francis Drake, John Rolfe and William Strachey. Strachey’s account of the hurricane possibly inspired Shakespeare to write his play The Tempest. The survivors spent nine months on the islands that they named Virgineola, building two small ships on which most continued to Jamestown where they finally arrived in May 1610. The provisions they brought with them helped save the colony, where many had already succumbed to starvation. Rolfe’s wife and infant daughter died in Virgineola and later he famously married the American native Pocahontas. George Somers returned to Virgineola in 1610 to gather provisions for Jamestown but died there. His embalmed body was returned to England and the islands were renamed as the Somers Islands in his honour.

King Charles granted a third charter to the Virginia Company in March 1612, expanding the boundaries of Virginia to include the Somers Islands. The Virginia Company sent settlers to the islands to colonise them, some from Bridewell and Newgate gaols in London. Farmers began growing tobacco and the first exports were shipped in 1614. A new Somers Island Company was formed in 1615, separate from the Virginia Company, to which ownership of the colony was transferred. It was also headed by Sir Thomas Smythe and with almost the same members as the Virginia Company but was never particularly profitable for its investors.