Religion and Society in the Early Literature: The Religious Impulse in the Founding of Virginia

Abstract

N January, i6i9, Virginia Company dispatched Sir George Yeardley to govern its hitherto not very successful colony, and armed him with a set of instructions. Accordingly, he summoned first meeting of House of Burgesses at Jamestown on July 30. Posterity has elevated these instructions into a charter of liberty no less momentous than Magna Charta, and has idealized Burgesses, cloaked and plumed, swords at their sides, seated in the Quire of Church, into forerunners of Patrick Henry. classic statement is Alexander Brown's, which even to repeat is to feel its thrill of conviction: The seedling, he said, after being fostered at home by advanced statemen, grew on this soil into political system of new nation, until our forefathers could rest under its shade, and under its expanding branches sons of cavaliers learned to defend liberties of subject from encroachments of crown. At moment Sir George set sail, a faction within Company, led by Sir Edwin Sandys, was wresting control from group that had ruled since beginning under Sir Thomas Smith. Therefore it seemed evident to Brown and to nineteenth-century narrators that Sandys was advanced statesman who issued instructions. creation of first local representative body was for a long time ascribed to him, and ultimate achievement of American independence has even been termed, with an irresistible, dramatic flourish, fulfillment of the dream of Sir Edwin Sandys.' During hectic life of Company, especially from i609 to i6i6, and again after Sandys took over, i6i9 to i622, interest of Englishmen in Virginia was expressed in, and excited by, a flood of publications, some from promoters in London, some by more infatuated settlers themselves. There were poems, broadsides, sermons, letters, reports, even