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Subject: Origin of the Melungeons - 1619, Part 3
Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 10:50:28 EDT
"Origin of the Melungeons - 1619, Part 3
by Tim Hashaw
all rights reserved.
Argall flees Virginia
Although Lord Robert Rich in London was helpless to warn Elfirth to keep the
Treasurer away from Virginia, he could rescue his henchman, Samuel Argall.
The earl delayed George Yeardley's departure from London just long enough to
dispatch his private pinnace, the Eleanor to Virginia. In April of 1619, "there
arrived a little Pinnace privately from England about Easter for Captaine
Argall, who taking order for his affaires, within foure or five daies returned in
her." 5
The new governor George Yeardley lamented in a letter to Pres. Sandys that he
arrived in Jamestown just a few days later to find "Argall…gone with his
riches." 6 Samuel Argall had loaded his stolen loot into the earl's boat and
disappeared.
According to eyewitnesses, Samuel Argall surfaced in London six weeks later
and fearing arrest, he immediately sought the protection of Lord Rich. At that
very same time two agents of the Pilgrims of Leyden were in London seeking
permission from the Virginia Company to migrate to Virginia. On May 8th, 1619,
Robert Cushman in London wrote a letter to the Pilgrims describing the sudden
controversy over the arrival of Samuel Argall in London and the bad news this
meant for the congregation: the Pilgrims' request was indefinitely postponed
because of the ensuing dissension within the Company: "Captaine Argoll is come
home this weeke. He upon notice of the intente of the Counsell, came away
before Sir George Yeardley came there, and so there is no small dissention....
It seemeth he came away secretly." 7
The earl of Warwick now realized that Edwin Sandys and his many supporters in
the Company intended not simply to remove Argall, but to prosecute his
protégé on charges of piracy. Because the earl was closely linked to the former
governor and to the Treasurer's acts of piracy, he couldn't let that happen. So
Lord Rich began gathering Company allies of his own to launch a scorched earth
counter offensive against Edwin Sandys.
The two sides noisily collided over the piracy charges in a company board
meeting in London.
Among those present at the meeting was the Neptune captain Edward Brewster
who had seen the guns and powder that Lord Rich had hidden on the Treasurer when
the Neptune had come across the corsair in the Azores months earlier. Capt.
Brewster was a bitter witness against Argall and Rich, for not long after the
Neptune had ended her 1618 voyage in Virginia, then-Gov. Argall had
court-martialed Brewster and condemned him to death by firing squad in Jamestown for
interfering with his orders.
Brewster's execution was only avoided after the colony's clergy intervened
with Gov. Argall. Brewster, just a few hours before his execution had
experienced a death row conversion in his Jamestown jail cell and had wept to John
Martin "that if Samuell Argall would be but pleased to spare hym his life and to
send hym into England or employee hym in any place in Virginia for the said
colony, he the said Argall should finde that he the said Brewster would leade a
new life and become a new man, further saying that he did never know God truly
until the same tyme."
Gov. Argall agreed to drop the death sentence and only banish Capt. Brewster
from Virginia after making him swear an oath he would keep silent about the
shenanigans the governor was overseeing in Jamestown. But the pardoned ingrate
Brewster sailed to England and blabbed everything to Virginia Company chief
Edwin Sandys.
Months later, the fugitive Gov. Argall was in London facing charges and the
vengeful Brewster was glaring coldly at him across the Company's boardroom
table, all the while tapping his sword.
The mood during the London boardroom meeting was lethal as accusations began
to fly from both sides. During the session Lord Rich and former Company
president Sir Thomas Smith; a foe-turned-ally of Rich and Argall, confronted Sandys
for improperly sending George Yeardley to investigate private business
affairs in Jamestown without any solid evidence of wrongdoing.
The earl of Warwick had a number of sympathizers. The Company included
several wealthy investors who had themselves sailed as pirates during the reign of
Queen Elizabeth and who had enjoyed her blessings as they raided the Spanish.
To these Englishmen, many of them devout Anglicans and Presbyterians,
pillaging the Spaniard was not only honorable, but patriotic. The old English
adventurers believed King James' peace treaty with Spain was throwing the barn door
wide open to Spanish conquest of the Americas. These old privateers saw no
reason for the London Company to prosecute fellow Englishmen for piracy against
Spain. If Spain had evidence, let Spain accuse.
When Sandys rose during the board meeting to accuse Samuel Argall of
corruption, he was shouted down by Lord Rich's allies who countered that he had
illegally ordered Gov. Yeardley without just cause to investigate Argall. In vain
Sandys protested that the grounds for the investigation had been laid by the
very man who was now Warwick's ally; former Company president, Thomas Smith.
Then, Lord Rich produced servants of Lord De La ware who testified that
Brewster, not Argall was the real tyrant of Jamestown. These servants stated that
when they complained to him in 1618 that they were starving Capt. Brewster did
"shew his backside to some of them and bidd them bite there."
Outraged, Edward Brewster at that moment turned the board meeting into
complete chaos when he jumped to his feet, drew his sword against Argall and "gave
him wordes of challenge which challenge Samuell Argall refused with as fayre
termes as he could, but the said Brewster not being satisfyed did swear that he
would revenge himself on Samuell Argall with his sword."
With the meeting now in wild disarray, the skillful conductor Lord Rich sat
serenely calm through the din.
All this, Elder Cushman wrote home to his Pilgrim brethren, meant that they
were not likely to get permission to migrate to Virginia anytime soon. This
was a crushing blow for the Pilgrims, for King James' agents were scouring
Holland at that very moment for the Pilgrim leaders with royal orders to return
them back to England in chains.
The charges against the owners of the Treasurer sundered the London Company.
One historian described the scandal that erupted after the ship Treasurer
stole the Africans was the mortal wound that would eventually destroy the London
Company three years later. Edwin Sandys was a scrupulous man, but he was no
politician and he would not heal the rift. Neither he nor Warwick whose his
neck on the chopping block if the piracy charges were proved, would back down,
and the hostile atmosphere created by this single meeting would only worsen
through the rest of the Company's existence.
After the board meeting
Lord Rich had won a temporary delay. Realizing the meeting was out of
control, Company Pres. Sandys deferred the Argall piracy hearing to a future date.
Following that volatile session Sandys admitted in a letter to a supporter
that his course of action against Rich and Argall had backfired: " I perceived my
work to be unsound." 8
Virginia was self-destructing over a suspected pirate ship loaded with
Africans still somewhere at sea.
And the pirating Treasurer was also threatening the Pilgrims' future. John
Cushman wrote to the congregation that "the Virginia Counsell was now so
disturbed with factions and quarrels amongst them selves, as no business could well
goe forward…[E]ver since we came up no business could by them be despatched."
9
The boisterous meeting gained unwanted attention from higher up. An
investigation by the King's Privy Council would fault both the Sandys faction as well
as Rich's party equally for the ungentlemanly riot within the Company. "It is
notoriously known how they with Captayne Argoll and other friends…principally
through fear, (their accounts, depredations, Piracies and misgovernment being
now questioned before the Counsel and in the Company's Courts), perpetually
disturbed and disgraced by several ways, both to his Majesty and to the world,
all the present proceedings of the Company, to the great disheartening of the
Company here, and no small disadvantage of the Colony." 10
Meanwhile, back in Virginia at that very moment feather quills were busily
waving as "gossips" reported the latest tidings on the Treasurer still at sea.
Pres. Sandys received a communiqué from Cape merchant Abraham Piersey alleging
that the Treasurer was at that moment on a voyage "to rob the King of Spain's
Subjects by seeking Pillage in the West Indies and that this was done by
direction from my Lord of Warwick."
On the heels of this item came startling news that angry Spanish warships
were even then searching for Jamestown because of the "sending out of Captain
Argall's ship, both victualled and manned from the colony, a rowing to the West
Indies." Settlers were fearful that by antagonizing the Spanish navy, Capt.
Elfrith and the Treasurer's crew of marauding pirates would "work their utter
ruin and extirpation." 11
Barely had Sandys digested this when another letter arrived from Gov.
Yeardley reporting that before fleeing Virginia, Samuel Argall had sent a crew "to
goe in the shippe called the Treasurer into the West Indies to rob the king of
Spayne with a dead commission with a Blanke in it of the Duke of Savoyes." 12
Besieged by this alarming blitz of intelligence and anxious to avoid another
riotous confrontation at the next boardroom meeting, Edwin Sandys on June 21st
secretly and without the knowledge of Lord Rich and other Company
shareholders sent a private letter regarding the Treasurer to Gov. Yeardley. The
president ordered his man in Virginia to "give diligent order that the ship be seized
upon immediately upon her returne, and examination taken of her course and
proceeding that Justice may be done to all parties as the case shall require." 13
This proved to be a disastrous order. Lord Rich would soon discover that the
Company president and his cronies were discussing the activities of his ship
in private closed-door meetings. This was a violation of what the earl
believed was a gentleman's agreement hammered out at the last meeting to leave all
accusations of piracy to Spain. Lord Rich strongly suspected Sandys of
plotting to ruin him.
Building character
The Treasurer incident determined America's character at the very moment of
her birth: would the colony be administered from a centralized government in
England, or would Puritan businessmen prevail against London's heavy Anglican
hand and create a colonial America exercising free enterprise, local government
and religious tolerance?
Edwin Sandys believed slow and steady would win the day. .
However, Virginia's exports continued to be piddling at this time. The
colony's most profitable export, Virginia tobacco, was inferior to Spanish tobacco
and the Company had to persuade King James to limit Spanish tobacco
importations in Britain in order to get Englishmen to buy their leaf.
For Lord Rich and certain other investors, piracy against Spanish ships in
the Americas at this time was one of the few ways English adventurers could
profit from their investments in American colonies. Charles Wolferstone of the
Bermuda colony wrote a letter to Nathaniel Rich on May 24, 1617 expressing the
opinion that whaling, pearl diving and the "hope of warr" with Spain offered
the best prospects of profiting from the colonies. On October 9, 1620,
Nathaniel Butler described a "fair war with Spain" and tobacco production as the
soundest investments in America.
The Puritan-dominated Parliament favored giving more autonomy to the colonies
against the wishes of King James and, one month before the Africans arrived,
Virginians were permitted to elect the first representational House of
Burgesses in British America. Edwin Sandys was part of that progressive faction, but
Lord Rich was pushing for autonomy faster than he was willing to move.
And now a small group of Africans was about to tip the balance in a debate
between Parliament and the absolutist King of Britain over the nation's
relationship with the colonies.
In the summer of 1619, the Treasurer was returning from the West Indies to
Virginia accompanied by the White Lion oblivious to the buzz of attention now
following her every move - returning unaware to a home port now in the hands of
Lord Rich's political enemies. The Treasurer carried damning evidence of
piracy in her hold; 30 Ndongo African men, women and children; baptized Christians
with Spanish-Portuguese names. They called themselves, the malungu.
The race to Jamestown
The tenuous nature of the hasty consort between the two corsairs in the West
Indies quickly became apparent, for although the Treasurer and White Lion had
agreed to return to Virginia together with their African captives, the White
Lion left her former ally behind after they crossed the Gulf of Mexico and
approached the coasts of Florida.
Capt. Jope of the White Lion was of course eager to get his Africans to
market first. But why didn't the Treasurer keep up? Daniel Elfrith knew the
course back to the Virginia hideaway as well as any. Why didn't the Treasurer win
the race to introduce Africans into British North America?
Evidence indicates the Treasurer suffered severe damage during the fight with
the Spanish frigate on July 15th. The custom of the day was for the
attacking privateer to blast broadsides of cannon ordnance of double and crossbar shot
at the mast and main topsails of the prey. Pirates and privateers, unlike
invading armadas, did not aim to sink the enemy ship, but rather to disable her
for boarding. They shot high. This was fortunate for the Africans chained in
the cargo hold of the Bautista.
However the privateer's intended quarry had no reason to be as accommodating
in her defense. The Bautista, a fat merchant ship loaded with trade cargo and
fewer soldiers and cannons was running from two fast, lean sea-wolves built
for speed and destruction. She would have desperately fired everything she had
at her pursuers without discriminating between the enemy's sail and hull as
targets.
Quickly running out of ordnance and slowed by the loss of her main topsail,
the Bautista waited helplessly as the two sea wolves circled her in the Bay of
Campeche. The Spanish ship unleashed one last broadside with devastating
effect into the hull of the Treasurer as the man-o-war approached. Then her crew
massed as the English man-o-war came up alongside and lashed grappling irons
to her for a savage duel of muskets and steel at close quarters. In the end,
the Treasurer's professional soldiers overwhelmed the Bautista's crew of
merchant sailors.
Of the two corsairs, the Treasurer with her fourteen guns had taken the lead
position in running down the Bautista. She had the more experienced crew; 60
musketeers "trained for sea service," although for this voyage she had added
men drafted from the Neptune.
Meanwhile, the Treasurer's consort, the White Lion stayed beyond the
Spaniard's range during the battle.
The great shot and small shot fired from the Bautista damaged the Treasurer's
masts, ripped sails, and battered her hull. Deadly splinters from the
Spaniard's broadsides shredded English flesh. Onboard mishaps were a frequent cause
of casualties in battle. Matches were dropping, sparks flew, powder horns
and cartridges exploded in the hands of the gunners. Typically a privateer
could expect to incur an average of four deaths and a dozen men maimed and that if
she was victorious.
In the end, although the Treasurer and the White Lion won the day, the
captured Bautista inflicted upon the Treasurer a grievous wound. In fact, the wound
was mortal. The Treasurer - the irreplaceable war horse that had abducted
Pocahontas, won a truce with Powhatan, saved Virginia from starvation time after
time, destroyed the French settlements at Mount Desert, St. Croix and Port
Royal, forced the Dutch to swear loyalty at New Amsterdam and then terrorized
Spanish frigates in the West Indies while discovering a new shorter course
between Europe and America, would never recover from the damage two storms and the
Bautista's guns inflicted in July of 1619.
This would be the dread corsair's last raid. Within months the wrecked
Treasurer would be stripped of her guns and abandoned to rot in a nameless Bermuda
creek. A letter that John Dutton of Bermuda wrote to the earl of Warwick in
January, 1620 described the earl's stricken ship as "so weather beaten and torn
as never like to put to sea again." 14 Evidence indicates that much of this
damage to the Treasurer occurred during the stormy taking of the Bautista in
July of 1619.
The White Lion on the other hand survived the battle against the Spanish
slave frigate in much better shape. Capt. Jope held her back from the guns of the
Bautista, and instead launched a pinnace to battle and then board the prey,
thus preserving the White Lion's hull, sails and rigging from damage.
The Treasurer had also brought a pinnace, but for some reason, Capt. Elfrith
chose not to launch it during the battle.
The tactic that would win Capt. John Colyn Jope the reputation of the "Flying
Dutchman" paid off. The White Lion sailed for another 50 years.
After the battle the distance between the White Lion and the badly leaking
Treasurer during the voyage to Virginia became noticeable off the coast of
Florida three weeks after taking the Bautista. And early in August when the White
Lion passed the coast of the Carolinas and Roanoke Island which she had
visited in 1586, the sails of the straggling Treasurer were no longer visible.
The African survivors of five grueling months of sea, storm, battle, horror,
darkness and changing ships were about begin a different fate than that
planned for them by their Portuguese captors in Angola. A few weeks away lay
Chesapeake Bay. The White Lion was bringing the first Africans to British North
America unaware of the political storm on the horizon.
...to be continued
Tim Hashaw
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