7. Sir Edwin Sandys' Administration of the Virginia Company
The following is an extract is from Professor Theodore K. Rabb's book 'Jacobean Gentleman Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629' and is reproduced with the permission of Princeton University Press.
THE SANDYS ADMINISTRATION OF THE VIRGINIA COMPANY
'That Sandys took command in Virginia did not mean
that he ran day-to-day affairs. These were usually dealt with
by John Ferrar, though Sir Edwin must still have spent considerable
time on company matters.
'Even when forced by family and
estate concerns to stay in Kent, he was constantly in touch
with Ferrar, and one detects more than a little impatience in
his correspondence of the spring, summer, and autumn of 1620,
when he was forced to stay at Northbourne longer than expected
because of the anticipated birth of yet another child, various illnesses
that afflicted his wife, and finally a miscarriage.
'His route to London when he could leave was apparently across Kent to Gravesend, and then by boat to the capital. That is how Ferrar came to him when Sandys's absence from the city threatened to make him lose touch with company activities. In addition to correspondence with his deputy, and his entertainment of Ferrar and others connected with the organization, he had official letters sent straight to his home in Kent, so that he could be kept informed despite his distance from London. Yet there is no denying that his supervision of the enterprise was nowhere near as close as that of a Smythe, who was always at hand. Indeed, it became necessary in 1623 to appoint a four-man executive committee precisely because the leaders of the company, "absent in the vacation," could not be relied upon to deal with "weighty and urgent businesses."
'Sandys's frequent remoteness from events reinforces the impression that his prime interest was the grand strategy of creating a viable colony. As befitted a gentleman, he had little patience for detailed problems of provisioning ships or hiring sailors. Those could be left to Ferrar while Sir Edwin concentrated on the larger vision which, during these first two relatively untroubled years of his administration, focused on two overriding ambitions. The first, a sizeable increase in the population of Jamestown and its environs, so as to improve defences and productivity capacity, had been one of his main concerns since the earliest days of his serious involvement in company affairs in 1618. The second, diversification of the settlement's economy, was also a long-standing aim.
'Both policies seemed eminently logical in the abstract, and could boast an impeccable ancestry reaching back to Richard Hakluyt, but in practice neither fulfilled Sandys's purposes. The waves of colonists eventually caused massive problems, and diversification proved to be a chimera because tobacco was the one safe and profitable guarantee of Virginia's continued existence.
'In terms of sheer numbers, the shipment of new inhabitants to America was remarkably efficient. We have already seen that Sir Edwin played a considerable part in the resumption of emigration in 1618; and once he took control of the company there was a veritable flood. Most estimates revolve around a figure somewhat larger than a thousand a year; John Wroth and Nathaniel Rich, for instance, both of whom were well informed about such matters, seemed happy with the estimate "that in the years 1619, 1620, 1621 there was 3560 or 3570 persons transported to Virginia." This was a quite astonishing feat, considering the inadequacy of logistics at the time, and it was accomplished only because Sandys was so single-mindedly dedicated to this goal.
'Though few of the settlers were from the fringes of society, he accepted colonists from every source, including vagrant boys or Pilgrims. And to give investors as much incentive as possible, he encouraged private plantations and subsidiary joint stocks, which allowed individuals to reap the substantial profits of tobacco directly, without having to wait for the company as a whole to get back on its feet. Despite the disappointments in sustaining so large a number of settlers - because deaths and returns to England, the colony never managed to reach a total size much above two thousand, and it probably remained well below two thousand for most of Sandys's administration - one must nevertheless conclude that the influx of settles was well-nigh essential for the survival of Jamestown.
'The case is fairly straightforward. Notwithstanding some four thousand new colonists shipped to Virginia in the five years following the spring of 1619, the total population in 1624 was only a few hundred larger than it had been when Sandys assumed the treasurership. An attrition rate of these proportions suggest that, without the extra inhabitants to cushion the impact of disease, accident, departures, and Indian hostility, there may not have been enough people to sustain the settlement, though it is difficult to tell, because casualties were always highest among newcomers. Nevertheless, considering that only about one fifth of the approximately five thousand English men and women who were in Virginia between 1619 and 1624 were still alive and in situ at the end of this period, it takes little imagination to estimate what would have happened without the emigration program. And if the basis for comparison is taken back to the beginning of 1618 - before Sandys, newly devoted to the cause, helped bring about the first substantial increase in the colony's inhabitants - the importance of his policies in preventing the collapse of the venture becomes clear.
'It is also worth recalling that, even with a strength of perhaps two thousand, the Virginians lost nearly 350 of their number in the Indian attack of 1622; if the rate of emigration had been just half of what it was, there is a good chance that Opachankano would have wiped out the entire settlement.
'This is not to deny the misguidedness of Sandys's policy when viewed from other perspectives. As early a June 1620 he was being warned by his friend Yeardley in Jamestown that the almost reckless transportation of people was having serious consequences.
© 1998 Princeton University Press. (Theodore K. Rabb Jacobean
Gentleman. Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629, pp. 344-347)
Edwin even went to the extent of intercepting a ship heading for Jamestown, as it passed Sandwich, so he could add seven colonists. Sir Nicholas Tufton (later 1st Earl Of Thanet), a local Kentish landowner, also became involved in Virginia, he supplied colonists from his estate, and conducted business at Northbourne.[1]
As a result of academic work in recent years Sir Edwin Sandys is now seen in a less romantic light, Rabb states:
'Sandys as the beacon of liberty, both in Parliament and in America, was an image that satisfied Virginian patriotism as well as romantic republicanism. The juxtaposition seems particularly appealing because it makes the early colonies participants in the great constitutional struggle of the day - secret outposts of resistance to Stuart tyranny. None of these rose-coloured views, however, not even the more modest assessment that Sir Edwin was a liberal "in political sympathy" with the Puritans, and "an almost ideal administrator" of Virginia, has survived the scholarship of the past fifty years'.
© 1998 Princeton University Press. (Theodore K. Rabb Jacobean Gentleman. Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629, p. 392)
[1] - Theodore K. Rabb Jacobean Gentleman. Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561-1629, p.345, note 54.
Portrait of Sir Edwin Sandys courtesy of M. Sandys.