The Early English Colonies

Better Late Than Never

Because England got such a late start in the colonization game, they couldn’t just set up their colonies wherever they wanted. Spain dominated South America, Mexico, the West Indies, the American Southwest, and Florida. The French held sway along North America’s major waterways. In addition, the dense forests and occasionally hostile Native American tribes prevented English settlers from moving westward past the Appalachian Mountains. The early English settlements were therefore concentrated along the eastern coast of North America.

There were three types of British colonies: royal, proprietary, and self-governing. Each type had its own characteristics.

• Royal colonies were owned by the king.
• Proprietary colonies, such as Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, were basically land grants from the British government. Individuals were awarded huge tracts of land that they would then supervise and govern, usually in return for political or financial favors. These colonial governors reported directly to the king.
• Self-governing colonies, including Rhode Island and Connecticut, formed when the king granted a charter to a joint-stock company, and the company then set up its own government independent of the crown. The king could revoke the colonial charter at any time and convert a self-governing colony into a royal colony.

Jamestown’s Early Years

• The 105 original Jamestown colonists were all men. Jamestown was a business venture, not a place to raise a family.
• The colonists took this ethic to heart and focused all their efforts on getting rich, neglecting to tend to any sort of agriculture.
• As a result, more than half of the colonists died of malnourishment and starvation within the first year. Only 38 colonists remained when reinforcements arrived in 1608.
• Captain John Smith, one of the surviving original colonists, soon emerged as a prominent leader.
• Smith excelled in diplomacy, maintaining friendly ties with the nearby Powhatan Confederacy (Native Tribes).
• When Smith was wounded in 1609 and returned to England, relations with the nearby Native Americans deteriorated, and in 1610 the first Anglo-Powhatan War (English-Native) erupted.

Tobacco, Money, and Success

• In the end, Jamestown was saved—not by gold or silver—but because it had the perfect climate for growing tobacco.
• John Rolfe, an Englishman who married the Powhatan leader’s daughter, Pocahontas, introduced to the colony West Indian tobacco, a salable strain with many advantages over local varieties.
• From 1616 to 1619, Jamestown’s tobacco exports grew nearly twenty-fold.
• The profits produced by tobacco saved Jamestown and ensured the settlement’s success.
• As the colony grew in size, its members began to desire a better system of government.
• In 1619, the colonists formed a general assembly, the House of Burgesses.
• The House of Burgesses was the first representative government in the New World, though its power was limited because the Virginia Company could still overrule its actions.
• That same year, the first Africans were brought to Jamestown. Originally working as indentured servants, by the 1640s most Africans were bought and sold as slaves.
• The year 1622 was a tragic one for Jamestown. A second war with the Powhatan tribe, a slump in tobacco prices, fraudulent practices by local officials, and high death rates from disease, all conspired to transform the normal rigors of colonial life into extremely hard times.
• Under this strain, the joint-stock company collapsed and James I revoked its charter, making Virginia a royal colony in 1624.

Plymouth Plantation

• In 1620, 102 settlers sailed across the Atlantic on the Mayflower, having procured a patent for settlement from the Virginia Company of London.
• These colonists agreed to send lumber, fish, and fur back to England for seven years before they could assume ownership of the land.
• Most of these settlers were Separatists from England, who wanted to separate from the Anglican Church (the Church of England).
• These Separatists had originally left England for the Netherlands to escape religious persecution. The voyage to the New World offered an even greater escape.
• Separatists renounced the Church of England and established their own self-governing congregations.
• Among the Separatist groups are Pilgrims, Quakers, and Baptists. Separatists are distinct from Puritans, who originally wanted to “purify” the Anglican Church without separating from it.
• In November of 1620, the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Bay, outside the bounds of the British possession of Virginia.
• The leaders of the Pilgrims, as the Separatists who came to the New World were called, insisted that all males sign the Mayflower Compact.
• The Mayflower Compact: it established the colony of Plymouth Plantation as a “civil body politic” under the sovereignty of James I of England.
• The Mayflower Compact is often described as America’s first example of true self-government.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony

• During the first half of the seventeenth century, religious and political oppression in England grew worse.
• In 1628, the Puritans struck a deal with the English government, under which the Puritans would leave England and settle north of the Plymouth Plantation on the condition that they would have political control of their colony.
• The Puritans wanted their colony to be a theocracy, and emphasized religion over trade.
• In 1630, under the leadership of John Winthrop, who had been elected governor, about 900 Puritans traveled to Massachusetts. These Puritans eventually settled at the site of modern-day Boston.
• Winthrop’s colony was a community based on the Bible. He saw Massachusetts Bay as “a city upon a hill,” a model of religious righteousness that would shine throughout the world.

Government of Massachusetts Bay

• The Massachusetts Bay colony was initially run by a General Court that allowed membership only to landholding Puritan men.
• After public outcry, all Puritan freemen, regardless of wealth or holdings, were allowed entrance.

Religion and Massachusetts Bay

• The Massachusetts Bay Colony operated according to a system called congregationalism, in which each independent church congregation served as the center of a community’s political and social life.
• Only those individuals with good standing in the church could participate in government.
• Some inhabitants, however, broke with the Puritan leaders over the strong relationship between church and state.
• One such dissenter was Roger Williams. Unlike those in power, who believed that there must be legal separation but substantial cooperation between church and state.
• Williams argued that total separation was necessary. He feared that without separation the state would corrupt the church.
• In 1635, Williams was banished from Massachusetts. He eventually established the colony of Rhode Island in 1647, where the government renounced the Church of England and permitted religious freedom.
• Another dissenter was Anne Hutchinson, whose religious teachings were taken by some to be attacks on Puritan religious codes.
• In 1637, Hutchinson and her followers were banished; most of them settled in Rhode Island.