The State University

The Graduate School

ATLANTIC ARBITRATIONS: LAW, EMPIRE, AND ENGLISH CULTURAL IDENTITY IN THE ATLANTIC WORLD, c. 1607-1649

A Dissertation in

History

by

Benjamin J. Herman

© 2021 Benjamin J. Herman

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

May 2021

ii

The dissertation of Benjamin J. Herman was reviewed and approved by the following:

Daniel C. Beaver Associate Professor of History Dissertation Co-Adviser Co-Chair of Committee

Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of History Dissertation Co-Adviser Co-Chair of Committee

Greg Eghigian Professor of History

Tobias Brinkmann Malvin and Lea Blank Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies

Patrick G. Cheney Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of English and Comparative Literature

Michael Kulikowski Head, Department of History Professor of History and Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies

iii

ABSTRACT

This dissertation offers a new analysis of the trans-Atlantic political culture of the

English Empire in in the four decades following the creation of .

Previous studies have shown that the English state took great interest in initial colonial efforts and enacted policies that served the collective interests of state goals for empire. Using a combination of previously unused legal records and petitions as well as familiar manuscript and printed sources, the dissertation shows that ordinary English people played an equally large role in the creation of trans-Atlantic political culture. Through a combination of lawsuits, requests, petitions, and letters, English people accessed the state and actively desired to involve it in solving problems in their communities. They had done so in England, and their use and access of central institutions reflects customary traditions in early modern English communities. The language deployed by these subjects also stressed their continued relationship with England, conducted through the institution of the monarchy, and their common membership in the burgeoning English public sphere. This thesis sheds new insight on the development of the early

English empire and identity formation among its Atlantic subjects. Additionally, the research has implications for understanding the relationship between the English Crown and the English people in the early seventeenth century, and how the relationship between the two acted as a give and take across distance.

iv

Contents

LIST OF TABLES ...... vi ABBREVIATIONS ...... vii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii Introduction ...... 1 Historiographical Context ...... 6 The English Empire in Atlantic History ...... 6 The People, Prerogative, and in the Early 17th Century ...... 14 The Public Sphere ...... 19 Methodology and Sources...... 23 Plan of Argument ...... 27 Chapter 1: The Court of Requests and the Colonies ...... 31 History and Procedures of the Court of Requests ...... 33 Methodology and Sample ...... 39 Land and Property in the Americas ...... 42 Shaping the Shipping Lanes...... 50 The Fishery, Requests, and Credit Networks ...... 56 Good Tobacco, Bad Tobacco ...... 59 Women, the Atlantic, and the Court of Requests...... 64 Conclusion: The Court of Requests and Equity ...... 69 Chapter 2: The Court of Chancery and the Atlantic World ...... 71 History and Function of the Court of Chancery...... 73 Methodology and Sample ...... 77 English Atlantic Settlers and the Chancery Court ...... 80 Dealings in Land ...... 85 Thomas Cornwallis, ’s Plundering Time, and The Chancery ...... 89 Shipping Debts in Chancery and Corporate Colonial Lawsuits ...... 96 Women, the Atlantic, and the Court of Chancery ...... 104 Conclusion: Taking a Chance in the Chancery Court ...... 110 Chapter 3: Petitions, Petitioners, and the Plantations ...... 112 Petitioning Practices...... 114 The Language and Structure of Petitions ...... 118 v

Methodology and Sources...... 121 Petitions for Mercy ...... 125 Petitions for Economic and Political Aid...... 132 Petitions for Economic Liberties ...... 139 The Petitions ...... 147 Conclusion: Petitions and Political Culture ...... 154 Chapter 4: Conflict Resolution in within Broader Atlantic Political Culture ...... 156 Law, Authority, and Society in the Puritan Worldview...... 159 The New England Way and Atlantic Political Society ...... 165 New Englanders and Social Conflict Resolution ...... 176 ’s Accounts of Local Conflict Resolution in ...... 176 William Bradford’s Account of Plymouth ...... 182 Other Incidents in New England ...... 189 Response to New England in Privy Council ...... 193 Conclusion: Particularity within Imperial Political Culture ...... 197 Chapter 5 - Literate Influencers: Letters, Dispatches, and the Press as Mediums of Atlantic Political Culture ...... 199 Literacy, Networks, and the Public Sphere ...... 201 Letter Writing...... 206 Woodall’s Cattle: Epistolary Networks as Problem Solvers ...... 212 Reports and Dispatches as Means of Influence on the Crown...... 215 Re-Imagining America in the Press: Arguments for Plantation ...... 225 The Bounty of America ...... 227 Assurances of Continuity ...... 232 The Controversy over New England in the Press ...... 237 Works Criticizing New England ...... 239 Defenses of New England ...... 244 Conclusion: Public Sphere of the Western Hemisphere ...... 247 Conclusion: In Atlantic Ways ...... 249 Appendix A- Atlantic Cases in the Court of Requests (REQ 2 486-566) ...... 257 Appendix B- Atlantic Cases in the Court of Chancery ...... 259 Bibliography ...... 262

vi

LIST OF TABLES Table 1- Court of Requests Cases and Responses ...... 257 Table 2- Chancery Cases ...... 259

vii

ABBREVIATIONS BL- Bodleian Library, Oxford University, Oxford, HL- Huntington Library, San Marino, California, KHS- Kent Historical Society, Maidstone, Kent UK TNA- The National Archives of the United Kingdom

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The completion of this dissertation could not have happened without the constant support of friends, family, and my professional community at Penn State. I am extremely grateful and indebted to my advisor, Dan Beaver. His constructive criticism, archival suggestions, and firm support throughout this process have encouraged me to improve as a historian, as a writer, and as a thinker. My committee co-chair, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, has continually provided insightful feedback and helped me contextualize the project in the wider history of early modern European empires. I am further grateful for the insights and contributions of committee members and seminar instructors of the past six years: Jyoti Balachandran, Brad Bouley, Tobias Brinkmann,

Patrick Cheney, Greg Eghigian, Martha Few, Ben Hudson, Greg Roeber, Kathryn Salzer, Sophie de Schaepdrijver, and Lior Sternfeld. Each one has expanded my horizons and encouraged new methodological approaches that have greatly influenced the final dissertation. I also thank

Kristen Baxter and Thad Olson for teaching me Latin and opening legal texts from the sixteenth and seventeenth century for use in the project.

Completing the dissertation would not have been possible without the financial support of the North American Conference for British Studies (NACBS) and Pennsylvania Historical and

Museum Commission (PHMC), whose generous grants allowed the archival research in the

United Kingdom needed to complete the project. As so much of the work involved looking for needles in the haystack of thousands of boxes, this funding was especially gracious. I also thank the Institute of Historical Research at University College London’s Tudor and Stuart Seminar for providing new friends and new research directions during my time in London and Oxford. In particular, I thank Simon Healey, whose gracious sharing of research notes allowed me to quickly find critical material in the Chancery Court records. I am extremely grateful to the Penn ix

State History Department and the College of Liberal Arts for providing additional funding and release time to write the dissertation during the COVID-19 pandemic that taxed their resources.

The collegial environment among my fellow Graduate Students at Penn State relieved stress and contributed greatly to my own development as a historian. My graduate cohort could not have been a more welcoming and insightful group to grow alongside. I thank Samantha

Billing, Mallory Huard, ShaVonte’ Mills, Chris Valesey, Cecily Zander, and Maosi Zhang for their support and camaraderie from our historiography seminar through to the final submission. I also thank Steve Casement, Ugyan Choedup, Rick Dailey, Sami Davis, Scott Doebler, Kelly

Douma Kaelin, Kate Godfrey, Michael Hicks, Kira Homo, Alex Herrera, Megan Hildebrand,

S.H. Kang, Sara Kern, Kellianne King, Frank Lacopo, Carolyn Levy, Megan McDonie, A.J.

Perez, Yanan Qizhi and Tyler Sperrazza for their insights, seminar discussions, and friendship throughout graduate school. I have learned from them each and enjoyed their scholarship and even more importantly, their good humor.

Any successful academic endeavor requires support outside the workplace, and I have been blessed with a bounty of it. Tom Rorke has helped me through many bouts of intellectual self-doubt (and helped develop the Canada-centric content in the dissertation greatly). Kory

Blose, Taylor Bigelow-Sperrazza, Paul Burnell, Chuck Coup, Horst Di Lorenzi, Hailley Fargo,

Will Horton, Collin Littlefield, Steve Piazza, Victor Prieto, and Lauren Valesey all greatly enriched my years in State College, and I am grateful for their friendship. Outside of State

College, Mikey Brush, Kara Gibson, Rylan Katzwhite, Audrey Landmark, and Ben Nassau have contributed greatly to my personal development and continued curiosity. Pennsylvania’s quizbowl circuit gave me a needed external hobby and a release from the tedium of dissertation writing. I thank everyone involved with it for building such a wonderful community, particularly x

Ryan Bilger, Chris Chiego, and Emily Dickson. My undergraduate advisors, John Patrick

Monatno and Larry Duggan, have remained firm friends and supporters of my work.

Lastly, I thank my family. They have put up with my over-zealous interest in history from a young age and have always been encouraging and supportive, even at my lowest points.

My parents, Joe and Cara, have thanklessly supported my education and provided as much financial and emotional support as could ever be asked for through the process. Our family trips to art museums and historic sites have taught me to stay curious and keep exploring the vastness of the human project. My sister, Emily, has been a grounding presence and continually encouraged me to keep going even when I feel like faltering (and I congratulate her on her concurrent graduation from Medical School as I complete this dissertation). I trust her confidence in my skills as a writer and editor have not been too misplaced. My soon-to-be brother-in-law, Josh, has become a good friend and another source of support. Finally, I thank my grandparents- Grandma Gwen, Poppop Bernie, Bubbie Ethel, and Zayda Harold- for their love and kindness. They were my first history teachers and without them, this dissertation would never have occurred.

Introduction

When he petitioned the Court of Admiralty in 1627, the mariner Thomas King had spent considerable effort trying to reclaim a ship that had been stolen from him. King, the co-owner of a boat called the Anne, had agreed to co-fund a trade expedition to England’s American plantations with Humphrey Slaney. His business partner had a major role in England’s overseas trade and was an important financial player in the Virginia Company and Newfoundland

Company.1 According to King, five years prior Slaney had wished to buy a half share in the ship’s next voyage, and “promis[ed] that she should not want employment, for that he being a merchant, would freight it himself.”2 Slaney outfitted the ship and conducted a typical voyage to acquire American luxury goods. This trip proved successful, and the ship returned to England without incident. King, however, charged that the merchant subsequently “set forth [on a] second voyage adventure . . . the petitioner having hitherto perceived no part thereof.” In other words,

Slaney illegally retained possession of King’s ship after their contract had expired, and therefore had stolen it.3 King tried for years to pin down the location of the Anne, but had been unable to do so, as Slaney continued to use the ship for overseas trade. Eventually, Slaney even rented the

Anne to the English Navy for military purposes. Having exhausted hope of recovering his ship through his own efforts, King petitioned the Court of Admiralty for help.

By asking the Court to get involved, King hoped the state would perform its duty to help its subjects obtain justice. The Admiralty Court was one of several equity courts that relied on

1 For more on Slaney and his involvement in London-based networks of Atlantic trade, see Robert Brenner, Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 101, 103, & 110. King is a more elusive figure but was known to be involved in financing tobacco trade to St. Kitts in the 1630s. See Brenner, 185. 2 Captain Thomas King, pet., contra Humphrey Slaney, deft. Huntington Library, San Marino, CA EL 7007 3 Ibid. 2 royal prerogative, the King’s special abilities to administer justice outside the formal structures of common law. Like all English subjects, the mariner understood that he had the right to access royal prerogative and seek the state’s help. If he could properly explain why he needed assistance, he could obtain a Court order to recover the Anne. King’s petition proved effective.

On 29 January 1628, the Court issued a warrant summoning Slaney to testify about the location of the Anne.4 Proceedings ensued, during which the plaintiff and defendant offered contrasting claims about the contract. King argued that he had only intended to give a half share of one voyage to Slaney and still owned the ship, while Slaney claimed the contract was a continuing arrangement, and that because he provisioned subsequent voyages of the ship alone (including its use as a man-o-war), the ship should remain in his possession. At least one witness, King’s wife

Joan, was called to testify about the nature of the arrangement.5 The court ruled in favor of

Thomas King before 13 October 1628 and ordered Slaney to compensate the mariner for the

Anne, pay him a share of the profits from all the voyages since the initial trip, and return the boat to him. King’s victory in court was pyrrhic. A memo to Charles I explaining the decision noted that two years in court had nearly bankrupted the King family with legal fees, and Slaney’s appeal of decision led to the mariner withdrawing his claims because he could not continue financially.6

King’s petition and the ensuing legal battle provide an example of how English subjects welcomed state involvement in their early American projects, and how government authority, interpersonal conflict, and English institutions intersected in the spaces of England’s early empire. Following the development of “Atlantic History” as a historical subfield and

4 Admiralty Memo 29 Jan. 1628, Huntington Library EL 7015. 5 Documentation from the trial has survived in the Huntington Library’s Egerton Collection, EL 7019, 7024, 7025, 7029, & 7034. 6 Memo to Charles I from John Finch, 13 October 1628, Huntington Library EL 7036. 3 methodology, scholars have examined links between metropolitan England and its early colonial empire through lenses of migration, legal organization of space, cultural conflict, and the economic interests of merchants, investors, farmers, and the government itself. As a result, historians have come to understand the Atlantic world had an important place in English life, and the political culture in each English plantation was informed by European precedents.7 Many have examined the situation from the top down, analyzing how the English state extended its authority, control, governance, and economic apparatuses across the Atlantic Ocean.8 Others have focused their efforts on individuals in the colonies, and their negotiations with each other and with the indigenous peoples of North America as they solved conflicts and ordered their society.9 Yet, to date, the many methods planters undertook to solve conflicts by accessing the authority of the English state in London remain under-examined. Both individuals and corporations regularly looked to the English Crown (defined as the collective sovereign authority of the King, his council, and bureaucracy) as a means to address problems, solve disputes, gain economic privileges, and advocate for imperial development. The formal and informal processes by which these occurred are vital to understanding an emerging Atlantic political society in the early seventeenth century.

7 Throughout the dissertation, I refer to the colonies as “plantations” and the English settlers in America as “planters,” which are more contemporary terms to the period in question. These terms referred to any “planting” of people with the intention of economic development and service to the common good, and it was used to describe English colonialism in as well. It was not specific to the agrarian context of landed estates dedicated to monoculture of crops. 8 Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture (Chapel Hill: University of Press, 1988), 3-10; Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 1-12; Ken MacMillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution: Center and Periphery in the English Atlantic World (: Springer, 2011), 13-28. I elaborate on these arguments below. 9 Stephen Horning, British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America (Lebanon, NH: University of New England Press, 2005), 3-25; April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century (: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 1-7; Mark Peterson, The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Empire, 1603-1865 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 23-25 & 78-82. 4

This dissertation seeks to address this question and examine how individuals accessed the

Crown, understood its authority, and constructed arguments for state intervention in the first decades of the Atlantic empire. Through these interactions, English subjects participated in an

Atlantic political culture that reflected political culture in England. Planters, as well as merchants in London with American interests, knew that English subjects had interacted with the King and his Council since time immemorial to help them solve the problems local arbitrations could not resolve. Therefore, they voluntarily involved the state in their American business, as they had involved the state in their lives in Europe. Their language invoked existing ideas about the relationship between the Crown, the Commonwealth, and individual subjects in English society.

They saw the Crown’s authority to adjudicate these disputes as valid and relied on their practical understanding of natural law and equity, as well as the King’s prerogative, when they sought assistance. Sources including legal records, petitions, letters, and printed materials contain ample evidence that subjects saw their relationship with the Crown in a trans-Atlantic context and sought to involve the state in their daily lives on an imperial scale.

This dissertation offers new insight about communication on the trans-Atlantic scale and ties between planters and the central state during the first fifty years of English colonization. As the flow of business, legal, political, economic, and cultural information moved across the empire, individuals worked to maintain communication networks with the state and their patrons in England. The planters were neither rugged individualists nor principled separatists. Instead, they worked to maintain their place as members of an English political, economic, and cultural society. Examining how English subjects or groups of subjects participated in these structures and aspired to work with the state in empire-formation enhances our understanding of the

English Atlantic, as well as English society itself, for it sheds new light on how civilians 5 understood their relationship to the government across space and constituent parts of the larger

Stuart empire.

Further, this dissertation augments scholarship on political culture and the public sphere in Early Stuart England, adding the Americas to current conversations about pan-British networks of political communication and interaction between the people and the state. During the early modern era, English society developed a common set of political ideas and terms that allowed for legitimate discussion and debate of religious and governmental matters. English subjects participated in vigorous debates about the proper role of the King, the state, and each other in their daily lives, and a common culture developed around ideas like liberty, justice, the commonweal, and what constituted a properly functioning society. Recent historical work has considered the public sphere on a pan-British scale, incorporating Scottish, Irish, and Welsh dimensions to this activity. These arguments have shown that these conversations involved all the British realms, and conversations crossed the boundaries between them.10 The Atlantic colonies, however, have been excluded from these conversations to date. Through use of print, manuscripts, and legal documents, Atlantic individuals engaged with the state and with one another on important political concepts of the day. Their actions and choice of language represents active participation in the contemporary public sphere. By seeking the state’s help in solving conflicts or giving them benefits, English planters in America reinforced their fundamental Englishness and continued relationship with English society as the empire became a trans-Atlantic entity.

10 Laura Stewart, “Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain,” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 712. 6

Historiographical Context

The English Empire in Atlantic History Scholarship on the early American colonies and their relationship with England is as old as the historical profession. The outline, depth, and methodological rigors used to tell that story have changed and refuted initial mythologies of America’s foundation and American exceptionalism. Early narratives stressed the heroic American colonist, seeking religious freedom or capitalist profit, striking out for freedom in America and having little affection or attachment to English institutions.11 This practice fulfilled a narrative for American historians who wished to glorify their own nation’s past. Meanwhile, English historians often remained unengaged with colonial problems and did not fully explore the ties between Britain and

America in the colonial period. The gradual rise of social history, colonial and post-colonial history, transnational approaches to history, and more careful examination of evidence shattered this narrative. By the 1950s and 1960s, a new historical consensus arose which argued that the

English state took interest in its own colonies from the very outset and sought to manage economic and political problems that came with an empire.

Discarding the notion that America was a separate entity from England, scholars have generally revised upward the date at which the English state played a large role in the political cultural world of the American colonies. Through the 1980s, historians maintained that despite some central management, plantations were largely independent of regular oversight from

London during the seventeenth century, relying on internal religious or commercial bodies to

11 Classic works on the topic include Carl Wittke, We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant (Cleveland: Western Reserve Press, 1939), Marcus Lee Hansen, The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860, A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States (Cambridge MA: Press, 1940). 7 solve disputes.12 Intellectual historians also considered when and how England came to centrally control American colonies. The work of Jack P. Greene provides an example. His constitutional theory of the early British Atlantic stated that early English colonization depended on a series of reciprocal contracts that permitted individual planters wide political freedoms and latitude to pursue their own goals in return for extending and reinforcing the dominium of the English crown to a new geophysical space. Disputes over this social contract when the central government became more directly involved in administration of the empire eventually strained the relationship between London and the colonies in the eighteenth century and contributed to the .13 These works developed important historical ideas about the relationship between American subjects and the Crown and showed that it was a negotiation.

English planters in America understood that they had a relationship with England and acted appropriately. Examining how these connections operated before 1660 became a logical next step for research.14

By the late 1980s and 1990s, the development of Atlantic History shifted debates about the nature of the early English Atlantic state. Incorporating English, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch,

12 See for example Richard R. Johnson, Adjustment to Empire: The , 1675-1715 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1981), which places the 1690s as the critical moment, and Jack Sosin, English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Trans-Atlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), which places the 1670s as the critical date. 13 Jack P. Greene, Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the and the United States, 1607-1788 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986), 12-18; Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, 4-5. 14 As a general point, these analyses often suffered from over-focus on New England, which had a particular political culture often in conflict with central administration, at the expense of the , which tended to be more responsive to royal interventions. For scholarship on New England political culture, see Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Boston: Beacon Press, 1953), 307-309, 331-332; Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976), 3-9 & 55-65; David Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex County, 1629-1692 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 1-29; Foster, The Long Argument, Ch. 5-8; Michael Winship, Godly Republicanism: , Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 1-12. Historical scholarship of the last 60 years has generally struck a balance between seeing New England as a distinct region with a particular religious and political habitus, and as a piece of a broader English Atlantic which shared English ways. This idea will be elaborated and developed further in Chapter 4 of the dissertation. 8 and French scholarship, Atlantic historians worked to contextualize the consequences of

Europe’s overseas expansion in the early modern era and how European states justified and controlled their empires in the Americas and Africa.15 Examining English expansion into

America with an Atlantic lens helped historians understand the continuing and prevalent nature of links between London and the colonies, even from a very early juncture.16 Historians of migration have provided much of the evidence for these connections. By analyzing migratory patterns of early modern Europe and elsewhere, scholars have shown the interrelationship between migrants and their homelands in various historical contexts, as well as the non- permanence of many Atlantic migrations.17 During the 1980s and 1990s, historians of both

England and the American Colonies used concepts like chain migration (migrants will often follow people they know) and circular migration (a seasonal or temporary migration by individuals for economic gain) to show that people moved through the English Atlantic in many patterns, and most had every intention of retaining personal and commercial connections with

Europe.18 Such analyses supported earlier work about English settlement in America that showed landholding patterns, local governing structures, and office-holding customs in any given

15 It must be mentioned that, despite a great deal of mention and intention, indigenous peoples of the Americas and Africa were often absent from this supposedly holistic approach. 16 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, Ch. 1-3; Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia, 39-59. See also Nulah Zehediah, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy 1660-1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 20-23 for information on London and the Atlantic economy in this period as prerequisite for later growth. 17 See for example Leslie Paige Moch, Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650 (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1992); Paul M. Hohenburg and Lynn Hollen Lees, The Making of Urban Europe 1000-1994 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 106-179; Ned C. Lansman, “Nation, Migration, and the Province in the First British Empire: and the Americas, 1600-1800,” American Historical Review 104:2 (April 1999), 436-475; Dirk Hoerder, Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium (Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 75-91. 18 James Horn, “To Parts Beyond the Seas: Free Emigration to the Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century,” in "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period, ed. Ida Altman and James Horn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 85-130; Nicholas Canny, “English Migration into and across the Atlantic during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration 1500–1800, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 37-39; Allison Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World (Cambridge MA: Harvard, Harvard University Press, 1999), 19-35. 9

American locality tended to reflect the places in England where migrants came from, and were not uniform.19 These scholarly contributions supplied evidence that European migrants remained tied to Europe and chose to remain so deliberately from the very outset of empire. England proved no exception.

Further revision to this narrative has come from scholarly explorations of the American empire’s connections with the British Civil Wars of the and . A foundational example of this work is Carla Gardina Pestana’s 2004 book The English Atlantic in an Age of

Revolution, 1640-1661. Pestana noted historic re-analysis of the “” as “a war of three kingdoms” with interconnected events in Ireland, Scotland, and England all contributing to military, political, and religious breakdowns in the late 1630s and 1640s.20 She extended this analysis beyond Britain and into the Stuart domains in America, arguing these decades were a critical period for the expansion of state control of the American plantations. The 1640s and

1650s, despite their political instability, proved a critical turning point for the relationship between the center and metropole of the empire, particularly after the execution of Charles I.

Many planters in America supported the Cavalier cause, refused to recognize the

Commonwealth, and in some instances used violent force over the transition to parliamentary rule. This led to the government exerting more direct force to control the plantations.21 Pestana showed links between typical social and political responses to war in England and those in

19 David Grayson Allen, In English Ways: The Movement of Societies and the Transferal of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century (New York: W.W. Norton, 1982). 20 For more on the historical re-assessment of the Civil Wars of the 1630s through 1650s as a pan-British event, see Ann Hughes, The Causes of the English Civil War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), 50-54; Mark Fissel, The Bishops' Wars: Charles I's Campaigns Against Scotland, 1638-1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Barbara Donagan, “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War,” The American Historical Review 99:4 (Oct. 1994), 144-146; Mark Stoyle, Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War (New Haven: Press, 2005); Michael Braddick, God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars (London: Penguin, 2008). 21 Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640-1661 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 125-182. 10

America, such as a tendency of most people towards neutralism, aversion to disruption of trade, and a complex calculus of local and national authority dictating the course of events.22 The last fifteen years have witnessed further scholarly contributions concerning the topic of the war years and the links between Britain and America at this juncture. John Donoghue’s work has added intellectual history to discussions of a trans-Atlantic dimension of the Civil Wars, as discussing revolutionary and republican ideas in their Atlantic context and noting similarities in how

English planters in America and English subjects in Europe wrote about religious and political issues of the 1640s.23 Daniel C. Beaver has pointed out the parallels between the use of violence in the Civil Wars and violent episodes in America during the 1640s.24 Collectively, this scholarship has established the highly integrated nature of the political culture of England and the American plantations during the era of the Civil Wars.

Further exploration of the methods by which the English state executed its authority during and before the English revolutionary period have also enriched the field. For example,

Ken Macmillan’s work on sovereignty and the political philosophy in the English Atlantic has enriched historical understanding of the role of the Crown in America through the functions of

Civil Law. English understanding of imperium, the form of absolute sovereignty the Crown possessed to rule its domains, was inseparable from the monarchy as an institution, and in turn the Crown actively worked to express and protect that imperium. It is through this imperium that what Macmillan dubbed “the Atlantic Imperial Constitution” developed, which involved royal

22 Ibid., 32-56. 23 John Donoghue, Fire Under the Ashes: An Atlantic History of the English Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013), 1-8 & 120-159. 24 Daniel C. Beaver, “Fruits of Unrulie Multitudes: Liberty, Popularity, and Meanings of Violence in the English Atlantic, 1623-1625,” Journal of British Studies 59:2 (April 2020), 372-395.” 11 authority in all the various aspects of colonial governance.25 A combination of customs and written laws dictated the formal authority of the state to rule the Atlantic plantations, and these formed a central basis for English rule in America. The crown did not neglect this imperium and actively enforced it.26 Individual plantations could be granted broad license to form governments and administer themselves, but this relied on charters, patents, and emigration restrictions based on the sovereign powers of the crown. Further, as Mary Sarah Bilder has elucidated, any system, law, or custom “repugnant” to the authority of the Crown was considered invalid.27 Thus, this scholarship rebukes the historiographic idea of salutary neglect, which held that before the late seventeenth century, the King did not interfere at all in the plantations, leaving them to their own devices (and that the termination of this neglect in the form of taxes eventually gave rise to the sentiments which fueled the American Revolution).

Additional legal histories have shown the continual operation of English norms, undergirded by the monarchical state, in America before 1649.28 Works on other aspects of intellectual history, including the influence of humanist ideas on American plantation, the influence of medieval political understandings of empire on the decisions of the Crown, and the use of early modern political theorists such Machiavelli and Bodin in conversations about colonization have also recently become a topic of discussion in the Atlantic history field. It has become clear these political philosophies greatly influenced contemporary discussions about the

25 Ken Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World: The Legal Foundations of Empire, 1576- 1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 5-9 & 27-46; MacMillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 13-28. 26 Ibid., 1-5. 27 Mary Sarah Bilder, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 4-8. 28 Lauren Benton, A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 105-112; Christopher Tomlins, Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 68-90 12 right of England to expand overseas and the nature of plantations as political societies and civic bodies. Such works have diminished dynastic periodization and placed the expansion of empire into a long intellectual continuum, with roots well before the seventeenth century.29

Recent scholarship has also elaborated on the role that the Irish plantations of the sixteenth century played in equipping the English state to colonize America. Ireland became a proving ground for many of the concepts used in American colonization, particularly settler colonialism as a model distinct from the trade outposts established by sixteenth century companies. Both the colonization of Ireland and the colonization of America involved the transplantation of English subjects, the large-scale re-organization of land patterns on top of a displaced people (the native Irish and the indigenous Americans), and its replacement with an

Anglo-social sphere, filled with gentry and legal links back to England itself. Communities were built upon the idea of establishing law and order on English terms, from landholding to dress to diet. While Native Americans were treated as more of a curiosity than as savages, as was the case for the Irish, the general idea of imposing English ways on America influenced the development of this empire. This Irish context has informed discussions of English development and the processes that people used to create their political society in America.30

This dissertation contributes to recent work which has shown the critical involvement of the English state in the daily lives of American planters from the very outset. Having clearly

29 Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonization, 1500-1625 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 58-101; Jessica Hower, “Under One (Inherited) Imperial Crown: The Tudor Origins of Britain and its Empire, 1603-1625,” Britain and the World 8:2 (September 2015), 160-180; Alexander B. Haskell, For God, King, and People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017), 25-81. 30 For the most recent work on Ireland in a trans-Atlantic colonial context, see Audrey Houring, Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013), 17-100; Jennifer Wells, “English Law, Irish Trials and Cromwellian State Building in the 1650s,” Past and Present 277:1 (2015), 77-119; Alison Cathcart, “The Maritime Dimension to Plantation in Ulster, c.1550-1600,” Journal of the North Atlantic 12:1 (Spring 2019), 95-111. 13 discarded the notion of an indifferent state in the mid-century, historians have now looked to the

1610s, 1620s, and 1630s as periods of vital connection between England’s central government and the colonies. While the government did not yet have a developed colonial bureaucracy and left the management of individual colonies to the companies that funded them or proprietors who were granted them, they spent energy on discussing colonial problems in Privy Council and acting as an arbiter in American disputes.31 It is clear from their conversations that they considered a prosperous North American presence a benefit to England and sought to make the process of planting there a happy one for their subjects. What has to this point been under- examined is how ordinary people, who had a clear understanding of imperium and the state’s legal authority in America, accessed that power to do political and economic work in the Atlantic space. Subjects were aware of these concepts and their application in England. Because they remained tied to England, and saw themselves as English, they continued to rely on these concepts when they encountered social conflicts or sought to gain privileges trading in or developing the Americas. While the average planter had likely not read legal or political theory about the relationship between the state and its people, they had a strong sense of the mutual duties and responsibilities subjects and sovereigns held through customary experience. To date, there has been little analysis of how these concepts were applied in America bottom-up, as opposed to by the state itself and its high officials imposing their own goals through the instrument of the Atlantic Imperial Constitution. Such analysis would lend a much fuller picture of the web of social interaction which shaped and drove the first decades of Atlantic expansion in

England. It will also enrich current understandings of Atlantic political culture, and how English subjects translated their self-understanding as English subjects to action in the Americas.

31 Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 143-167. 14

The People, Prerogative, and the Crown in the Early 17th Century

To comprehend the English Atlantic in any capacity, one must consider the general milieu of English society during the early seventeenth century and how English subjects, who became English planters in America, understood their relationship to both the state and to each other. English planters brought with them specific ideas about authority in society and understood the role of the monarchy and its specific authority. English society in this period was in most respects decentralized. Local lords and justices of the peace controlled much of the actual management of the kingdom and remained an important part of local politics and conflict resolution throughout the early seventeenth century.32 English people were accustomed to multiple layers of authority. At the top of the pyramid was the central government, particularly the person of the monarch.33 Contemporary political theory placed the person of the monarch at the head of the body politic, the vital engine coordinating all the constituent parts.34 Among the

King’s most important roles was to uphold the law, to protect the liberties of their subjects, and to enforce natural justice.

The role of equity as a concept in English jurisprudence influenced the mechanics of the overall social order in the early modern period. Equity, a concept borrowed from Civil or Roman law, stressed justice and accordance with natural law and moral order, rather than strict letter of

32 Keith Wrightson, “Two concepts of order: justices, constables and jurymen in seventeenth-century England,” in An Ungovernable People: The English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, ed. J. Brewer and J. Styles (New Brunswick, 1980), 21–46; Anthony Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces: The Government of Stuart England. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 229-272; Mark Goldie, “The Unacknowledged : Officeholding in Early Modern England,” in The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500-1850, ed. Tim Harris (New York: Springer, 2001), 153-194. 33 Parliament, too, was an important central institution, but because it met infrequently and irregularly before 1660, its use to attack social problems or air grievances on a regularized day-to-day basis was not as effective. 34 Ernst Kantorowitz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 1-6; A.N. McLaren, “Delineating the Elizabethan Body Politic: Knox, Aylmer and the Definition of Counsel 1558–88,” History of Political Thought (Summer 1996), 224-252. 15 statute or written law or reliance on precedent, as was used in common law courts.35 In equity courts, the King’s representatives could rule in favor of the plaintiff, defendant, or take third options freely, and thus these courts were a popular option for those who had little physical evidence to present or who could not otherwise recover financial investments concerning

America. Equity followed principles flowing from natural law, revealed by revelation and reason rather than built from statute and precedent.36 Because they were less bound by precedent, royal judges could hear complaints, gather evidence, and make rulings based on the more abstract but widely understood ideas of fairness and justice. Equity courts were also helpful because they were not bound to a specific jurisdiction in the King’s realms, which common law courts were.

Thus, cases that involved multiple parts of the empire could be better adjudicated there. Early

Modern English society drew a distinction between the common law, which was valued as an institution but bound due to its reliance on precedent, and natural law, which was also valued and was more subject to interpretation. When common law “misfired” and produced a ruling that subjects saw as unjust due to its proceduralism and high standards of physical or written evidence, the Crown could provide an equitable alternative.37

Thus, English subjects regularly sought out access to the King’s prerogative when other methods to solve their problems failed. As argued by Michael Braddick, the English state did not do things for people on its own initiative, but the people accessed and used the state to accomplish political work.38 While they relied on intermediaries such as local patrons with roles at court and lawyers on the royal bench as intermediaries, people had the ability to access the

35 John Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 105-125. 36 Andrew Forsyth, Common Law and Natural Law in America: From Puritans to the Legal Realists (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 2-8. 37 Mark Fortier, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England (London: Ashgate, 2005), 3-23. 38 Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, c.1550-1700 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 9. 16 state to seek aid and did so. Generally, this was considered a last resort when other mechanisms like the common law or local arbitration between people in the same social network failed. It was taken for granted that parties should come together and resolve issues of credit and obligation without these extraordinary measures because their spats threatened the social fabric.39

Nonetheless, prerogative courts, petitions, and other appeals to the Crown’s authority remained an option and their use increased throughout the seventeenth century. Subjects were familiar with patterns of deference, specific language, and institutional structures which they deployed when accessing and in contact with the government. They also understood the necessity of social bonds and collective work to uphold their liberties as English subjects. Terms like “Commonweal” and “Commonwealth” in their late sixteenth and early seventeenth century connotation meant not only common good, but also had specific context implying sociability and common activities which ordered the social and political fabric. Maintaining the commonwealth was impossible without social networks and responsible behavior in those networks.40 Subjects understood duty and obligation as a normal part of a functioning society and sought to defend against corruptions to it.41 Their interactions with the Crown reflected these beliefs. They used specific patterns in speech and emphasized specific concepts not only to serve their own interests, but also because they believed they were part of the larger whole of the English people, and that using English methods to solve problems helped keep society healthy.42 Any effective

39 For local methods of conflict resolution, see Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces, 66-73; Craig Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England (New York: Springer, 1998); Margo Todd, “For Eschewing of Trouble and Exorbitant Expense: Arbitration in the Early Modern British Isles,” Journal of Dispute Resolution 1 (2016), 7-11. 40 “Commonweal” and “Commonwealth” in their late sixteenth/early seventeenth century connotation meant not only common good, but also had specific context implying sociability and common social ties to order and manage society. Maintaining the commonwealth was impossible without social networks and responsible behavior in those networks. See Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Polity, 2010), 142-151. 41 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 1-19. 42 For two approaches on how using institutions and access to them created political culture in early modern England, see Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England; Steve Hindle, The State and Social Change in 17 quest to receive financial privileges from the Crown or charity from the crown involved noting the good that would be done for the English people by granting the request, not just the specific person asking. These patterns occurred across class and regional boundaries and provided an important cultural link in a diverse country.

In addition to individuals, corporations played a vital role in English society and the political culture that operated in it. Using the joint-stock model, in which different investors pooled their resources to decrease individual financial risk in the overseas trade, many corporations attempted to set up ventures in America (some more successfully than others). The idea of a joint-stock company predated the Atlantic world and had already played a major role in

English overseas trade with the East. These companies had special legal privileges, and the shareholders of these companies understood them as corporations with both specific liberties in society and specific duties for constituent members. These privileges were protected by royal

Charters.43 Early modern English people created corporations with the intention of making political societies. In the Americas, these companies took on new roles, as they not only had to turn a profit for investors but also funded settler colonialism and had to make American land productive and keep English subjects abroad from starvation and economic ruin. They, too, encountered economic and political disputes, both against each other and against individual subjects. As legal entities, they had access to prerogative institutions and at times sought to use

Early Modern England, 1550–1640 (New York, Springer, 2000). Braddick and Hindle both focus on how ordinary Englishmen as well as Justices of the Peace and other local officers strategized their interactions with the state, showing a widespread understanding of the political culture attached to the Crown. 43 Paul D. Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650-1730 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Phil Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth: Citizens and Freemen in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), Catherine Patterson, “Quo Warranto and Borough Corporations in Early Stuart England: Royal Prerogative and Local Privileges in the Central Courts,” English Historical Review 120:448 (September 2005). 18 the Crown to help reinforce their liberties and solve disputed territories and commercial ventures with other corporations.44

Scholarly attention has revealed these patterns in England, and in the increasingly profitable post-restoration empire, but the methods that average individuals used to interact with the state in America have been thus far lacking in the same rigorous attention.45 Because they maintained both social and economic links back to Europe as well as a deeply ingrained sense of their Englishness and their liberties as English people, they sought to access the state and English society with the same methods that had been traditionally used before the seventeenth century and continued to be used by the King’s subjects in England (as well as Scotland, Wales, and

Ireland) the same as before. Further, people who invested in corporate trading ventures exercised the same procedures to seek royal approval for their corporations and enlist the help of the

Crown to protect their investments. This has major implications both for the formation of Anglo-

American societies and for scholarly understanding of the nature of the English empire in its earliest decades. Planters actively desired to remain a part of English social life and took active steps to cultivate their identities as English people. This dissertation seeks to show that the process of accessing the state for personal, corporate, or societal gain in America was both regular and occurred through a multitude of methods. English subjects were both creative in their use of state institutions and highly aware of tradition and the language of community betterment, poverty, and deference that would have attracted the attention of the King and his council.

44 This happened quite a bit in early America, as uncertainties about North American geography led to nebulous terms in the charters and patents that guaranteed these groups their rights. 45 An exception is Braddick, who examines America in Ch. 9 of State Formation in Early Modern England. 19

The Public Sphere

In recent years, the concept of the “public sphere” as defined by Peter Lake and Steve

Pincus in a 2005 Journal of British Studies article has transformed studies of English political culture, and turned attention to the development of common political language and symbolism in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century.46 Their article tweaked the term coined by the philosopher and sociologist Jürgen Habermas in his 1962 book The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (available in English since 1989).47 Habermas defined the public sphere as a social space between the private sphere and the formal structures of the government, where individuals could debate political concepts and societal organization. Such discussions relied on commonly accepted political language and mutual understandings of political concepts and symbols, thus allowing for rational-critical debate on matters of state.48 He also discussed the concept as inherently related to the social class or economic position of constituent public participants, “regulating from above against the authorities themselves, to engage them in debate on the general rules of governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.”49 The distinction between public and private, required for the development of a “public sphere,” did not exist in medieval Europe. It arose to protect capitalist interests and hold the state accountable to the profit mechanisms of the new bourgeoisie class in Europe.

46 Peter Lake and Steve Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 45:2 (April 2006), 270-292. 47 Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1989), trans. Thomas Burger. 48 Ibid, 89-141. Habermas also uses Britain in the 18th century as a key model on paged 57-68. 49 Ibid., 16. 20

As Habermas discussed the concept in The Structural Transformation of the Public

Sphere, the public sphere developed in the bourgeois culture of the European Enlightenment and thus post-dates the early English Atlantic empire. Lake and Pincus have challenged his definition to argue that some form of a public sphere existed in late sixteenth and seventeenth century

England as well. They attribute the rise of the public sphere to interactions between print, manuscript, and oral sources, and the resulting web of information exchange that individuals could use to persuade others, argue for interventionist economic policies, and curry public opinion for specific religious or political causes. By the reign of Elizabeth I, they argue, England has a distinct public sphere wherein individuals or parties could mobilize resources of communication and deploy specific language to make points which would influence policy decisions by the state.50 The pressing debates of the day, such as war with , Puritanism vs. the Church Establishment, and Irish policy fostered common public conversations without the later developments of bourgeois culture. Though rooted in the Elizabethan period, the public sphere grew exponentially during a “transitional moment” as a result of the Stuart constitutional crises and fierce debates over royal prerogative and the “liberties” of English subjects between

1600 and 1642.51 The audience for public debate moved from court and literary circles to the general public, and people who wished to contribute had to address a general public, aware of the truth (though this was often a spiritual truth rather than a rational one.)

Lake and Pincus’s argument focused on developments in England itself; other scholars have built on their work to explore the public sphere on a pan-British scale. The concept of the public sphere has become increasingly integrated into discussions of the “New British History,”

50 Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 273-275. 51 Ibid., 279. 21 a historical school emphasizing interconnections between the kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland. New British historical analysis links political, religious, and social change in each of the kingdoms with the others as they mutually shaped the others. In several key works published during the 1990s, historians stressed the links between England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the ways that political events in one holistically effected the Stuart realms.52 This led to renewed explanations for major historical events. For example, historians came to see the Civil Wars of the 1640s and 50s as a pan-British problem where contingent events in Ireland and Scotland influenced the collapse of Charles I’s control and the actions taken by Parliament, religious groups, the New Model Army, and others.53 Scholars influenced by New British History also explored political language and modes of discourse like print and manuscript circles of letters to build a common political language of concepts like “freedom,” “rights,” and “justice” during the period.54 In a recent introduction to a series of articles concerning public cultures in this period,

Laura Stewart asserted “over the course of the seventeenth century, the English-speaking peoples of the archipelago increasingly shared communicative practices through which they were able to debate the best means to preserve and advance their conception of their Protestant liberties.”55

The work of several scholars have shown that individuals in Scotland, Ireland, and Wales used print, manuscript communication, rumor, legal institutions, public gatherings, and petitions to

52 Conrad Russell, The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), Alexander Grant and Keith Stringer, eds., Uniting the Kingdom? The Making of British History (London: Taylor and Francis, 1995), Glen Burgess, ed., The New British History: Founding a Modern State, 1603-1715 (London: I.B. Tauris, 1999). 53 New British History is not without its critics, however, who see it as too mechanistic, or too elitist and reliant on elite sources. See Ethan Shagan, “Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641”, Journal of British Studies, 39 (1997), 4–34; Tim Harris, “Publics and Participation in the Three Kingdoms: Was There Such a Thing as ‘British Public Opinion’?,” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017): 731–53. 54 Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England (New York: Polity Press, 2010), 71-83. 55 Stewart, “Introduction: Publics and Participation,” 712. 22 access and manipulate their relationships to one another across borders.56 These networks modified the relationship of the constituent parts of the Stuart domains to both one another and to the Crown that ruled them all.

These conversations have tended to exclude the American colonies from the wider picture of an integrated public in the Stuart realms. This is a major omission, as the American planters regularly contacted home and sought to influence political behavior and socio-economic forces active in the American plantations. Communication between the colonies and the mainland was regular. For one, those who migrated remained keenly interested in religious debates. Planters followed discourse between different sects and sought to contribute their voice to religious controversies, particularly the Puritans of New England.57 Secular business also proved a source of connection, interest, and influence. Planters communicated home regularly about legal business, debts, their property, and simply to keep up with friends, family, and patrons.58 Planters also wrote voluminous reports of their travels and the relative successes and hardships of their colonial missions.59 Incorporating these sources into historical understanding of the British public sphere before and during the Revolutions adds another facet to the multi- kingdom analysis of the Stuart domains, thus allowing a more full understanding of the socio- political culture of the period. Thus, this dissertation will seek to integrate documents that interacted in political debates of the time and used political language that resonated

56 For examples, see Sarah Warechen, “Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public During the Bishop's Wars, 1638-1640,” The Historical Journal 52:1 (March 2009); Lloyd Bowen, “Structuring Particularist Publics: Logistics, Language, and Early Modern Wales,” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 754-772, Eamon Darcy, “Political Participation in Early Stuart Ireland,” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 773- 769. 57 Scholarship on New England Puritanism and its relationship to English Puritanism is voluminous. For good descriptions of communication and continuity, see Foster, The Long Argument, and Winship, Godly Republicanism. 58 David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), 178-182. 59 For an exploration of this literature in detail, see chapter five of this dissertation. 23 contemporaneously to understand the origins and resolutions of social conflict more fully during the earliest colonial decades.

Methodology and Sources

This project augments current scholarship by exploring the methods that individuals and corporations took to involve the state in resolving social conflicts and building their Atlantic world before 1649 and showing the negotiation between state actors and the people in operation.

Through examination of new records and re-examining known records, this project argues that

English subjects applied understandings of their own individual and corporate liberties to

America and based their requests of the state on these ideas. Many people voluntarily looked to the English Crown to help them in times of need, to deal with fraud and criminal action, and to encourage the state to change the direction of the American plantations. Their efforts represented a conscious attempt to participate in English political culture, and their agency resulted in that culture becoming trans-Atlantic.

Building on developments of the field of Atlantic history, this study draws on intellectual and political history of the English state in imperial spaces along with social-historical analysis of conflict and micro-historical episodes. Combining the methodology of Atlantic history with local stories is not revolutionary, as historians of England and other European empires have undertaken them.60 I apply this lens specifically to concepts of conflict resolution and the relationship between social conflict and the use of the state by private individuals or groups in the English Atlantic before 1649. By drawing on surviving examples of English people trying to involve the state in their Atlantic lives in some way, it becomes clear that these individual cases

60 See for example Jon F. Sensbach, Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); James Sweet, Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011). 24 represent widespread awareness of the state’s imperium in America and how traditional means to use the state to solve conflicts in England could be extended to an Atlantic scale. From the very outset of the Empire, English men and women used this knowledge to shape the Atlantic world and foster a partnership between themselves and the London government.

This project also contributes to conversations about political culture in an imperial space during the early seventeenth century by focusing on the language used by individuals in corporations when they wanted to bring issues before the King, Council, or other high-ranking members of English society. In this manner, I draw upon recent studies by Phil Withington,

Ethan Shagan, and Paul Slack which have focused on philology and vocabulary to examine how early modern English people defined concepts and understood the political and cultural world around them, particularly focusing on terms like “commonwealth,” “moderation,”

“improvement,” and “society.”61 When describing their situation, English planters and merchants used political and legal terms to indicate their positions. Though a close reading of dozens of legal documents and petitions, this project intends to show how these terms communicated political ideas and show how subjects expressed themselves in a wider English political culture.

By employing this language, English subjects could apply specific understandings of their world in Europe to America and use those concepts to structure society there. English people in the plantations could also use contemporary tropes about poverty, gender, and crime to create narratives and gain a sympathetic ear when they asked for the state to intervene.

61 Withington, Society in Early Modern England, Ethan H. Shagan, The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), Paul Slack, The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth-century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 25

I also draw on legal microhistories to approach surviving documents of the early English

Atlantic. Scholars including Tim Stretton, R.W. Hoyle, and James Daybell have demonstrated the usefulness of legal records as an entry point for examining wider ideas of justice, social credit, and the relationship of the English people to the law-giving state in the early modern period.62 Their work has shown litigation provides insight into how concepts like justice, gender, property, and authority were understood by and invoked by subjects to accomplish their goals and protect their interests. The same concept can be applied to the English Atlantic. Cases involving the plantations made their way into the prerogative court system regularly by the

1620s, and by examining this previously ignored layer of state-subject interaction, this project will enrich historical understanding of the use of law and the state by people to fight for themselves, their beliefs, and the groups they belong to in the early English Atlantic world.

Utilizing these sources as windows into the daily lives of English people indicates where they came into conflict with one another. It also reveals how the social and political order operated in the tightly knit small communities that constituted the broader English empire.

The project will also expand upon discussions of the early modern English public sphere, arguing that the American empire and planters in America were participants in conversations about public life. The information contained in their messages spread around Court and affected discussions about how the Crown might best manage America and profit off its domains.

Atlantic subjects actively took part in conversations about what America looked like, what goods might be produced there, and what kinds of help average people needed from their government.

62 Tim Stretton, Marital Litigation in the Court of Requests, Camden Fifth Series, vol. 32 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 7; R.W. Hoyle, “The Masters of Requests and the Small Change of Jacobean Patronage,” The English Historical Review 126:520 (June 2011), 556-558; James Daybell, “Gender, Politics and Archives in Early Modern England,” in Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. James Daybell and Svante Northem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 25-46. 26

They also offered ideas about how an English Atlantic society could become the most harmonious and efficient possible, framing their contributions with the political language of the day. Thus, they extended conversations about good governance and what political topics ordinary people could and should engage with beyond England itself and into a global context.

Most of the archive for this dissertation is currently housed in the United Kingdom’s

National Archives, located in Kew, London. The vast records of several law courts, including the equity courts of Chancery and Requests, as well as surviving records of petitions, the King’s privy council, and miscellaneous unrelated documents compiled together under the heading

“colonial office” are located there. Equity courts, which handled Atlantic cases based on the concept of royal prerogative and the King’s duty and ability to bring subjects justice outside the more rigid structures of the common law, handled Atlantic cases regularly and have to this point been greatly underutilized as a window into where subjects saw the state as an ally in the

Atlantic world and where they believed its authority protected them or could assist them in spaces outside of Europe. More familiar sources like letters, petitions, and reports from colonial governors also provide means to examine the relationship between the Crown and the people, and how the two parties could work together to develop and order English society in America. In addition to Kew, there are several collections of petitions, letters, and descriptions of America in manuscript located at archives in the UK and the United States which I have consulted. Taken together, they represent a wide array of communication between planters, merchants, corporations, and members of the English state on matters of Atlantic importance. Lastly, I refer to printed sources from the period to examine the role in the press in developing English ideas about America and fostering public conversations about law, religion, and economy as a means to serve the common good of all English subjects. 27

Many of the sources used in this project would not have been directly created by the hands of the subjects that initiated them, and would have had scriveners, lawyers, and other intermediaries affecting their language and form. These individuals would have helped subjects craft their arguments and put them into formal language for use in formal political or legal settings. At times, exaggerations or conjectures were offered as evidence, because the ideas were considered important in conveying where justice lay. Those who needed help from the Crown had to shape their plea into a story. Natalie Zemon Davis defined this concept as “fiction in the archives,” and other historians have built on her terminology.63 Therefore, it can be hard to determine the exact thoughts of the subjects and separate their desires from the desires of their patrons or contacts in England, or the lawyers looking to win their case. It is more useful to analyze the cases and petitions involved in the aggregate than as individual documents. The ideas subjects appealed to and commonalities in their stories can still show structural elements of their interactions with the state, and give an idea of the values that they, collectively, thought would resonate and gain them favor. These sources also show the common political language subjects used. While the details of each individual case may be exaggerated for effect, taken together, these sources reveal general truths about how English subjects framed America and made arguments for state involvement in life there or the trades involving the plantations.

Plan of Argument

The first two chapters of the dissertation will examine prerogative courts, and their role in civil conflict resolution between English planters, merchants who traded in American products,

63 Natalie Zemon Davis, Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth-Century (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1987); Malcolm Gaskill, “Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England,” Social History 23:1 (1998), 1-5; Tom Johnson, “The Preconstruction of Witness Testimony: Law and Social Discourse in England before the Reformation,” Law and History Review 32:1 (February 2014), 128-130.

28 and other individuals with financial investments in the American colonies. Prerogative courts relied on equity, rather than common law. Thus, they were flexible in their rulings and places where individuals and occasionally corporations could access prerogative to use the state’s authority to solve problems and enforce traditional English social order and concepts of justice.

In Chapter One, I will examine colonial cases the Court of Requests during the first fifteen years of Charles I’s reign (1625-1640). This Court worked a vast variety of cases, and subjects could bring almost any kind of business before it. Based on examination of nearly fifty cases with some American dimension, this chapter argues that English subjects adroitly used the Court to argue for their financial and legal interests across Atlantic space. In Chapter 2, I will examine cases from the Court of Chancery between 1608 and 1645. Operating on similar prerogative mechanisms, the Chancery Court handled business transactions and financial matters. Subjects, either individually or as members of corporate bodies, used this court similarly to the Court of

Requests. In both cases, subjects emphasized their liberties and the special role that the Crown could play in assisting them as their economic lives expanded to incorporate the American

Empire.

The third chapter will focus on petitions to the Crown as a means for both individuals and corporations to convince the Crown to intervene in their Atlantic business and conflicts. Since the Middle Ages, petitioning had been an important method by which subjects sought patronage, charity, and intervention by the the state in the business of their day to day lives. Petitioning was considered a basic right of the subject and access to petitioning through patronage or corporate political bodies had a great deal of power in English political culture. Through petitions, people brought both their misfortunes to the King asking for mercy, and their economic and political proposals hoping to enact actions which would mutually benefit the subject(s), the King, and the 29 and common good. By using this established process and paying attention to the specific language they used while writing, subjects deployed petitions to participate in broader English political culture and apply it to the Atlantic world.

The fourth chapter will discuss the New England colonies, and why the planters there rarely appear in court cases, petitions, or other efforts to access the Crown’s prerogative to gain privileges or solve conflicts in America. The Puritans that founded New England remained just as attached to England as the planters elsewhere in America but inherited a skepticism towards royal prerogative because of religious and political differences in England ongoing during the

1610s and 1620s. As a result, they found the court system and petitioning less appealing than their counterpoints in Newfoundland or the Southern Plantations. Instead, the New Englanders looked to common law, customary understandings of land use, and their local church and government to solve conflicts and shape America. Doing so was normal in England, and New

England’s use of these tactics mirrored traditional ones. The chapter will explore New England journals and court records to show English political principles outside the Crown in operation, and how they practiced English political and cultural approaches to ordering society and solving conflict with less reference to the state than was typical elsewhere. It will also discuss the

Crown’s response to New England’s streak of independence as a reflection of the dialogue between the American planters and the state in London.

The last chapter will tie the themes of the other chapters together and discuss how planters and merchants used literacy in its various manuscript and printed forms to persuade the

Crown to act in America, or otherwise shape state policy for planters, merchants, and investors.

Officials and civilians alike used dispatches and government reports to suggest policy and argue about how the colonial projects should run. Unpublished letters and manuscripts, which were 30 sent to the Privy Council or specific councilors, did much the same, communicating to powerful people at home about the potential of America and problems the planters encountered there. In some cases, subjects took to the printing press. Literacy gave subjects access to public leverage over the vast empire and let them remain tethered to English political and cultural life. Thus, subjects could use them engage in dialogue with the state and other English people about how to grow the American Plantations for the benefit of the commonweal. This chapter will examine sources of literate interaction to show how the same arguments and language used in solving local conflicts, demonstrated in the previous chapters, could be applied on the larger scale.

In its totality, the dissertation argues that English subjects had a variety of methods by which they could involve the English government in their personal matters and solve individual conflicts or influence policy favorable to their economic investments in America. These people had a developed sense of their traditional liberties as English subjects and saw their ability to access the state and the states’ political instrumentation in the same terms as they had always done for problems on British soil. Courts, petitions, letters, and patronage had enabled ordinary people to gain attention of the state for centuries. Political theory of the day stressed that the

Crown had a moral obligation to help its subjects, and the English applied this theory to the extended Crown domains in the Americas. They did so from the very onset of their migration to

America. For many subjects, the presence of the English state in America was not an intrusion or burden, but a helpful presence, and they actively encouraged the King and his Council to intervene in social conflicts between parties.

31

Chapter 1: The Court of Requests and the Colonies

In 1634, William Hullware, a grocer from the town of Dorset, misplaced his trust in his supply chain and found himself in trouble. As he possessed a royal license for selling tobacco in the County of Dorset, Hullware needed a supply of the leaf, and purchased some from one John

Seward. The grocer claimed this man had “pretend[ed] to be a planter of tobacco on St. Kitts, who hath said he duly and wholly paid all customs of the said leaf.”64 Unfortunately for

Hullware, this was incorrect. The tobacco had been smuggled into England, and authorities descended upon his grocery to repossess it, leaving Hullware with a loss of fifty pounds sterling and no product to sell. Without a proper record of his purchase, and not knowing where Seward had gone, Hullware turned to the Court of Requests for help. Claiming Seward’s actions “hath made him unable to take advantage [of his patent],” he lacked money for a more typical procedure in common law courts, so he asked the Court to “graciously summon the said Seward” in order that he might be interrogated on the matter.65 This dispute, arising out of misunderstandings and fraud in the tobacco trade, provides just one example of the Court of

Requests adjudicating for individuals trying to reclaim debts related to the Atlantic empire, or to resolve conflicts over the distribution of American commodities. William Hullware represents one of many who saw the Court as both a legally valid and pragmatically useful method to settle their misfortunes in the years before the English Civil Wars.

This chapter examines the Court of Requests, one of England’s central courts during the early Stuart period, as a location where individuals could bring Atlantic business to the attention of the Crown, thus increasing the state’s involvement in imperial dimensions of English life. The

64 TNA REQ 2/526/114, Hullware v. Seward, 1634. 65 Ibid. 32

Court of Requests, one of England’s prerogative courts of justice, drew its power directly from the person of the monarch and their imperium to administer Crown domains. The chapter will overview the history of the Court of Requests as an institution and the gradual development of its role as a central court of the Crown. After a discussion of the surviving records of the court and the strengths and weaknesses of Requests suits as a source, the chapter examines the array of

Atlantic business the Court handled between approximately 1625 and 1642. These conflicts include debts incurred in the Americas, wage disputes, arguments about shipping investments, questions about tobacco quality, and other commercial matters. Requests records allow for analysis of the Atlantic conflicts that brought an array of plaintiffs to sue in the court. This chapter will investigate how English subjects understood the authority of the Crown, and how it might assist them in Atlantic business.

The importance of the Court of Requests derived from the form of justice it offered, namely, equity. Contemporaries believed the state could use its powers to help provide what ought to be done, rather than the exact letter of the common law. Equity operated on the sense that “law” was not simply a series of statutes but the execution of justice and could be interpreted broadly.66 Thus, equity courts offered a flexible justice reliant not on precedent, but on a personal appeal to the Crown for assistance. Masters that sat in this Court could make decisions according to the principles of equity, unbounded by prior rulings and tailored to the specifics of each case.

This elasticity made it an attractive solution for Atlantic disputes that arose because of England’s plantations or American trade. Plaintiffs used it to settle conflicts over shipping payments, to resolve discrepancies over the quantity and quality of American goods sold, to seek justice

66 The idea of parallel legal systems was not uniquely English or British and could be found across early modern empires. See Richard J. Ross and Philip J. Stern, “Reconstructing Early Modern Notions of Legal Pluralism,” in Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850, ed. Lauren Benton and Richard J. Ross (New York: NYU Press, 2013), particularly pages 110-113 on how European monarchies applied the concept and 128-130 on England specifically. 33 against grafters and smugglers working the trans-oceanic trade, and to right wrongs committed against those who could not otherwise help themselves, including widows. In so doing, subjects not only interacted financially, but also socially, as they worked to uphold networks of cultural credit and trust that were foundational to their conception of a healthy society.67 Crown subjects knew equitable justice from the state could help individuals and had no reservation applying it in a new, extended Atlantic context. Through their use of the Court of Requests, plaintiffs confirmed the place of the state’s power across the Stuart domains while using it to promote their own interests.

History and Procedures of the Court of Requests

The Court of Requests grew from relatively ambiguous origins in the late Middle Ages. It began as a committee at court where the King’s Councilors heard personal requests to the monarch for justice or assistance. Councilors offered their advice to help the King address these requests, and the King could then decide according to his sense of justice in the matter. While some historians have attempted to date the roots of the Court of Requests to the 1340s, the earliest clear records of its meeting come from 1493.68 By the reign of Henry VII, the councilors used this process to hear cases involving civil disputes, and not just petitions for aid and mercy.69

Individuals could bring everyday problems they faced before the Court, from simple cases of collecting getting out of debt to complex issues such as divorces and disputes within corporate bodies. At some point before 1541, the councilors overseeing the process acquired the title of

“Master of Requests” and personally sifted through the cases for the monarchs, advising them on

67 The work of Craig Muldrew, particularly The Economy of Obligation, is the best scholarship about how litigious society was not just about money matters but a distinct network of social capital. This will be elaborated further below. 68 A.F. Pollard, “The Growth of the Court of Requests,” The English Historical Review 56 (1941), 300-303. 69 James S. Hart, The Rule of Law: 1603-1660: Crowns, Courts and Judges (New York: Pearson/Longman, 2003), 26-27. 34 the proceedings.70 Eventually, the volume of petitions increased to the point that the Masters began to hear cases themselves, without the monarch, making judgments as representatives of the broader authority of the Crown.71 By the later years of Henry VIII’s reign, the Court of

Requests had a permanent meeting chamber at Westminster and received ever increasing amounts of appeals for help from the populace.72 In early Stuart times, generally four Masters of

Requests would sit at any given time.73

Due to its ambiguous origins, the authority of the Court of Requests to dispense justice proved a matter of some controversy. Unlike Chancery, Star Chamber, or similar prerogative

Courts, the Court of Requests had no statutory roots. Instead, its power lay in its proximity to the monarch, combined with bureaucratic inertia.74 Sir Julius Caesar, Master of Requests in the

1590s, defended the Court’s authority as simply an extension of the traditional English practice of petitioning the Crown, and the King’s prerogative right to arbitrate between subjects. “The judges of that court were always the King’s most honorable council appointed,” claimed Caesar,

“and such plaintiffs…[had] no proper remedy at common law.”75 In effect, the Court embodied the power of the monarch to act in their role as the source of justice for the realm, and Caesar listed hundreds of precedents to argue that on matters ecclesiastical and temporal, the King’s prerogative could dispense justice when an Englishman asked for it. Champions of English common law disputed this. While acknowledging the King’s prerogative power to resolve petitions, Edward Coke thought the mechanisms by which the Court of Requests evolved had no justification. “In the reign of H8 the masters of Requests thought, to strengthen their

70 Baker, Oxford History of the Laws, 203 71 Kantorowictz, The King’s Two Bodies, 7-23 72 I.S. Leadam, Select Cases of the Court of Requests, (London: B. Quadrich, 1898) xvii. 73 Tim Stretton, Marital Litigation in the Court of Requests, 7. 74 Ibid., 8. 75 Sir Julius Caesar, The Ancient State, Authority, and Proceedings of the Court of Requests (London, 1596), ii, vi. 35 commission, to hear and determine cases of equity. But those commissions being not warranted by law soon vanished, for that neither had an act of parliament nor prescription time out of mind to establish it.”76 According to Coke, the Court had no warrant to step into cases suited for common law, and the process of answering requests should only apply to resolving disputes between the Crown and commons, or for simple aid, and not to property suits between commoners which belonged to traditional English justice and common law courts.

While common lawyers made objections to the Court of Requests’ growing status as a place to settle equity disputes, this did nothing to abate its increased popularity. Whatever its relationship to common law or other prerogative courts, subjects used the Court of Requests because it expedited legal business, and on flexible terms. Although James I and Charles I would occasionally hear cases, their role was increasingly delegated to the Masters of Requests. When the King did hear a case, the Masters usually acted as middlemen.77 At its peak, the Court of

Requests resolved over 1,000 cases in 1637 (and only a fraction of cases that came before it went to full resolution, as plaintiffs might run out of money, the parties might settle out of court, etc.)78 It remained active until the outbreak of Civil War in 1642. At this point, with the loss of a stable location to meet at Westminster and with the King’s prerogative authority fundamentally challenged by Parliament, the Court faded to nothing. Like the Star Chamber Court, it did not return after the Restoration in 1660.79

76 Edward Coke, The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England, (London: Edward Clark and Sons, 1817, Originally Published London: 1644), 96. 77 Hoyle, “The Masters of Requests and the Small Change of Jacobean Patronage,” 556-558. 78 Stretton, Marital Litigation, 9. The Court of Requests was known to actively encourage arbitrations, or refer cases to local courts, ecclesiastical courts, the Chancery, or even the Common Law Courts if it felt cases could be solved through those avenues. 79 Ibid., 10. 36

The Court of Requests used English Bill procedure. In one unique feature of its proceedings, petitioners addressed their complaints directly to the monarch, instead of the councilors, and rulings were issued under the Privy Seal, not the Great Seal.80 This maintained the legal fiction that the monarchs themselves made the ruling, and dispensed the justice involved in the legal result. To sue in Requests, complainants had to claim they were too poor to sue in other courts, or they could not get justice in a common law court on account of missing evidence or proof of their word.81 Once present, plaintiffs would give a bill describing their problems, why the difficulties had emerged, and plead for the assistance of the monarch to help them settle their dispute, often asking the Court to summon the defendant before it or help in gathering missing evidence so the plaintiff could prove their story. If the Masters of Requests thought the plea worthy, they would then bring the defendant before the Court to answer the bill.82 Complainants could then offer a “replication” to the defendant’s answer, followed by a defendant’s “rejoinder.” If relevant, the Court of Requests would call third party witnesses to testify with sworn depositions, and once finished, the Court then issued a final decree.83

This process rarely went to completion, because of both social norms and the Masters of

Requests themselves actively encouraging parties to come to alternate settlements.

Contemporary beliefs about the social fabric encouraged aversion to the courts. Networks of credit, borrowing, and investment were critical in a society with limited access to liquid money,

80 G.R. Elton, The Tudor Constitution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960), 187-190. 81 Stretton, Marital Litigation, 10; Laura Flannigan, “Litigants in the English ‘Court of Poor Men's Causes,’ or Court of Requests, 1515-25,” Journal of Law and History 38:2 (May 2020), 307-334 82 Ibid. 83 Usually this occurred at the Westminster meeting chambers of the Court of Requests. Sometimes, particularly if witnesses were infirm or elderly, the Court did allow for approved scriveners to take the evidence remotely in the counties. 37 and credit relations were interpersonal and tied to personal and family honor.84 In early modern

English social understandings of law, judicial proceedings represented the breakdown of civil order and a threat to the social fabric. Subjects understood that if possible, disputing parties should come to reconciliation outside of court. Contemporaries feared the increasing court caseload during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries reflected a decline in Christian morals of compassion and charity.85 In so far as they could, this meant that the friends and neighbors of those in conflict took it upon themselves to try to assist resolving legal disputes, thus protecting properly ordered relations in England’s hierarchical society.86 Neighbors, local leaders like Pastors and Justices of the Peace, and other members of the potential litigants’ social network often acted as mediators to negotiate the end of conflicts.87 This process did resolve many disputes, but, after 1550, increasing numbers went into court. Once there, the presiding judges encouraged alternative settlements to reconcile parties, often referring cases back to other arbiters.88 Some historians have argued that plaintiffs sometimes intended an initial bill in the

84 Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 2-7, 96-101, 133-143, 274-277. Muldrew argues that an individual or family’s continued function as a member of a local community in good standing in early modern England were reliant on good-faith participation in networks of credit. The explosion of litigation in England from 1550 to 1650 in part reflected an adjustment to a new early modern market economy, where trade over distance and increasingly complex credit networks led to confusion, debt, and defaults. The increasingly Atlantic nature of the economy would only have exacerbated these trends. 85 Cynthia B. Herrup, “Law and Morality in Seventeenth-Century England,” Past and Present 106 (Feb. 1985), 106, Craig Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England,” The Historical Journal 39:4 (1996), 920. 86 The years from 1550 to 1640 in general were a period of greater participation by locals in the periphery of the kingdom in legal activity. This also contributed to English state formation, as people accessed the court system to help them combat disorder. See Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 80-87. 87 For a discussion of how local parties mediated civil conflicts in early modern England, see Keith Wrightson, English Society: 1580-1680 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982), 66, 184; Fletcher, Reform in the Provinces, 66-73; Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation,” 925-927; Catherine F. Patterson, “Conflict Resolution and Patronage in Provincial Towns, 1590–1640,” Journal of British Studies 37:1 (1998), 3-12; Linda A. Pollock, “Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700,” Journal of British Studies 46:1 (January 2007), 6- 8, 18. Colonial American historians have observed similar processes in the English colonies. See Bruce H. Mann, Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987). 88 This was not unique to equity courts and often happened in common law, ecclesiastical, and borough courts as well. See Todd, “For Eschewing of Trouble and Exorbitant Expense” 7. 38 court system as a prod, encouraging defendants to agree to arbitration. Settling out of court would have been more socially acceptable in local English communities and did not carry the stigma of disrupting social norms.89 In addition to these cultural concerns, the great expense of gathering evidence and keeping the parties in London also discouraged protracted proceedings.90

Plaintiffs could run out of money if the legal process went on too long. Lastly, the Court could simply decline to take up the case after the initial bill. Therefore, most surviving cases from the

Court consist of lone bills left to die, or bills with a single defendant’s answer.

Despite this, in early Stuart times, the Court of Requests proved a popular option for legal redress. Compared to common law courts and Chancery Court, the process was faster, and while expensive, it offered a cheaper option than alternatives.91 Perhaps most attractively of all, the

Court furnished flexibility in its judgements.92 Unbounded by statute, and relying on the notion that the Crown’s direct justice had special ability to help subjects with their problems, the Court could rule with less reference to precedent and more reference to natural law or specific circumstances. Because it relied on direct royal power instead of a rigid precedent, it proved a popular appeals Court, as cases from Common Pleas, King’s Bench, Chancery, and other courts would sometimes appear before Requests after a plaintiff had lost there due to lack of evidence or some other perceived misfortune. Testimony in Requests focused on individual and unique circumstances, and this flexibility won the Court of Requests a wide legal constituency.

89 Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation,” 940; Todd, “For Eschewing of Trouble,” 16. 90 Stretton, Marital Litigation, 12. The process of getting defendants or witnesses arrested or summoned to London would require the help of country Justices of the Peace, who could easily shirk in their duties. This would have proved still more difficult when the cases took on an Atlantic dimension, because of expense and distance associated with ocean travel. 91 Tim Stretton, Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 82- 84. The average cost of a Court of Requests case has been calculated at around 6 shillings—still a considerable expense, but not inaccessible to yeoman, tradesmen, or the lower gentry. 92 Ibid., 11. 39

To fully comprehend these cases, one must note the various legal fictions that plaintiffs would invoke to persuade the Court to accept their suit. As in many legal affairs examined by

English courts during the early modern period, the exact truth of the matter was one of several concerns that influenced what was recorded in depositions before trial. Moral truths were as important as temporal truths, and English deponents understood legal fictions could assist their cases. Thus, while some claims may have been exaggerated or untrue, plaintiffs and their lawyers knew to construct their complaints with certain ideas and phrases that the court system would likely respond to.93 In the Court of Requests specifically, all potential plaintiffs had to claim poverty or misfortune as a pretext for needing the monarch’s aid. Individuals proclaimed financial, political, or legal disadvantages of their case, even though many commercial cases occurred between well-to-do parties. This encouraged loquacious pathos in making arguments before the Court, as emotional appeal could reinforce the notion of poverty.94

Methodology and Sample

Today, the Court of Requests’ records, from its earliest surviving fifteenth century documents to its end during the English Civil Wars, are kept in the National Archives at Kew, along with those of Admiralty, Chancery, Exchequer, and the other early modern prerogative courts. Its voluminous records fill over 1,000 boxes. Despite the size of the surviving evidence, historians have rarely made use of the Court of Requests. Specific case records of the Court have scattered across the collections, with many cases having bills and answers split and misfiled.

Cases from other courts have made their way into the Requests boxes over time, and archivists

93 This concept, “fiction in the archives,” has a considerable historiography in Early Modern European history. See Davis, Fiction in the Archives; Gaskill, “Reporting Murder;” Johnson, “The Preconstruction of Witness Testimony,” 128-130. 94 Indeed, there is significant evidence that lawyers serving clients in the Court of Requests framed plaintiff’s narratives to match tropes from contemporary English culture and literature, to emphasize the helplessness or poverty of the plaintiff, particularly female ones. See Stretton, Women Waging Law, Chapter 8. 40 have at times found Requests cases in other collections, particularly the Star Chamber Court records. While many the bills and answers survive, the records of the Court’s final orders and decrees, containing its actual judgements, have received heavy damage and are incomplete, except those from the reign of Henry VIII. In instances where final orders books have become lost, one cannot know the resolution of the case. Charles I’s reign is particularly affected, with only six of the eighteen years in which the Court of Requests was active during his reign having any surviving deposition books, let alone complete or legible ones. Only in instances where the

Court’s final decree for a given case remains and can be tracked can it be said with certainty that the case went all the way through proceedings. Further complicating the use of the Court of

Requests for dates after 1618 is the lack of any calendar of the records, leaving no option but to leaf through hundreds of boxes of records. As a result, a systematic survey of the records would take years of work.95 The relative lack of research with these documents, however, leaves an opportunity for fresh research into the use of the prerogative courts for a variety of purposes in early modern English life, including its Atlantic dimension.

For the purposes of this dissertation, I examined a sample of about one-quarter of the

Court of Requests bills and answers from the reign of Charles I, across 81 record volumes (REQ

2/486 through 566). Atlantic cases came up infrequently but appeared regularly enough to gather a usable sample.96 The majority of the cases dealt with the products of the Americas once they arrived in England, and contracts to buy, sell, distribute, or process them on English soil. In addition, select cases specifically dealt with the colonies, settlers there, and disputes that rose

95 The UK National Archives’ website has a very good overview of the archival difficulties associated with using the Court of Requests. See “Court of Request Records, 1485-1642,” The National Archives, http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/help-with-your-research/research-guides/court-of-requests-records-1485-1642 (accessed 19 June 2019). 96 From this exploration, I obtained a sample of 48 cases with an Atlantic dimension, as outlined in Appendix A of the dissertation. 41 because of traveling there. This included a mix of arguments over land rights, ownership of tobacco, and licenses to fish off of Newfoundland.

Despite the limitations of this collection, examination of Requests records provides important insight about how individuals understood the Atlantic world in imperial and judicial terms, especially their understanding of the King’s prerogative authority there and how it might prove useful to them. While common law had no jurisdiction outside of England, royal prerogative did. This arose from the civil law sense of imperium, or the sovereign’s absolute authority to oversee the territorial extent of their empire and their executive authority to rule it.97

The Stuart state understood itself to possess imperium in all its domains, including England,

Scotland, Ireland, and the colonies.98 James I and Charles I, influenced by the concept of the divine right of Kings, believed that they had the power to rule these realms and that power came directly from God. With God’s blessing, however, came moral duty to act as arbiter of justice for its subjects and see to it they prospered. English, Scottish, and Irish subjects already understood this concept before the expansion of the Stuart domains to America. They petitioned and used the

Court system to access the Crown and let it execute its duty to aid them. Court cases in Requests add to our current understanding of this relationship by indicating that ordinary subjects, also understanding this authority, took initiative to access it regarding colonial disputes. During the early modern period, English people continually accessed the royal state to establish patterns of governance, thereby using the existing authority of the state to govern America.99

97 Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 2. 98 See David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 29; Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 19. Before the English Civil War, colonial business was dealt with in the Privy Council in its capacity as the administrative arm of the Crown. Parliament played no role in colonial affairs until the 1640s. 99 See Hindle, The State and Social Change, and Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, for two examinations to this process. 42

As the following examples show, many of the cases involving the Atlantic that appeared before the Court of Requests involved problems and challenges such as selling bad or low- quality tobacco, proper shipping and storage of American goods, and difficulties moving money, goods, and people across the Atlantic Ocean. The Court of Requests’ flexibility made it an excellent place to seek help with challenges on the Atlantic scale, as it could make decisions despite missing evidence which might be thousands of miles away. These bills convey both a widely understood legitimacy for equity justice and the capacity of individuals to incorporate and use established traditions of prerogative in novel circumstances. Even without knowing the

Court’s ruling (or whether the case proceeded beyond the stage of an initial Bill of Complaint), the reasons people stated for suing provide information about the issues that caused Atlantic conflicts, and the effects of those conflicts upon England itself. While their suits may not have produced a verdict, the subject’s faith in the Court of Requests’ prerogative justice indicates an understanding that America belonged under Stuart imperium the same as the British Kingdoms.

They could, and did, access the royal state in hopes of favorable legal assistance as they had before they left for America.

Land and Property in the Americas

Though uncommon in the sample for this dissertation, lawsuits specifying locations in the

Atlantic world and settlers there did appear from time to time in the Court of Requests, as plaintiffs sought redress for unpaid debts, or help reclaiming property and goods. In doing so, they invoked the Crown’s imperium in the colonies to accomplish their legal goals. Because the

English understood the Crown to have absolute authority to establish law in its domains, including the colonies, legal legitimacy derived from it offered a powerful method for conflict resolution. Cases directly involving the Atlantic would have occurred less frequently than others 43 because of the simple matter of distance. To initiate action in the Court of Requests, one had to be in England and go to Westminster to begin legal proceedings or send an attorney or representative to bring suit in lieu of appearing in person as plaintiff.100 Sea voyages would have added considerable expense on top of normal legal fees involved with the Court of Requests, while corresponding with an advocate by overseas letters would have saved expense but added frustration from long silences between new information. Nevertheless, in the sample analyzed here, 6 of 48 cases (12.5%) directly mentioned one or both parties to the suit either concurrently residing in the Atlantic colonies, involved individuals visiting from them, or were initiated by individuals just returned from them. A further 11 cases (22.9%) involved transactions with merchant mariners or sailors who frequently traveled to the Americas, though they seem to have had at least a part-time residence in England.

These individuals brought cases before Requests, among other reasons, because its expansive scope allowed it to cross jurisdictional boundaries, unlike common law courts.

Looking to the King’s prerogative to solve social conflicts pertaining to the colonies, these plaintiffs petitioned the state to involve itself and use its authority in the legal life of English plantations. They invoked the state’s customary jurisdiction building on concepts of royal prerogative powers applied in the colonies.101 Drawing upon Roman law, the letters patent and charters that permitted English adventurers to colonize and govern in the Americas always mentioned the King’s imperium, both implicitly and explicitly.102 While private individuals might do the actual work of settling and governing the colony, they remained under the ultimate authority of the monarch. Therefore, his personal judicial domain extended outside of the

100 Stretton, Marital Litigation, 13. 101 Braddick, State Formation, Ch. 9. 102 Ken Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World, Ch. 3. 44

Kingdom of England, unlike English Common Law, as a specific institution of England proper, did not.103 Further, the Court of Requests allowed a less rigorous standard of evidence, and evidence for Atlantic cases oftentimes lay thousands of miles away. Specific contracts might be in the hands of an American planter, and thus difficult to produce, and witnesses could prove difficult to bring before the Court in such long-distance cases. The Crown could actively arbitrate there for the benefit of subjects, and English planters overseas understood this.

Sir Thomas Warner, governor of St. Kitts (known at the time as St. Christopher) from

1625 to 1649, provides one example of an individual who used Requests to collect a debt that a common law court could not help him with, and also illustrates some of the frustrations the trans- oceanic distance might give to such plaintiffs.104 Warner, as of 1638, had major landholdings on the island, having purchased property from St. Kitts’ proprietor, the Earl of Carlisle. He used this land to farm tobacco and sold £160 of it on bond to the preacher John Settle, who had also spent time living in the Caribbean before returning to England. According to Warner, he had sent one of his agents, Samuel Cross, to try to collect the unpaid money from Settle, but “the said Settle refuseth to acknowledge the bond and did not deliver to the said Cross [the money] to your said subject’s satisfaction.”105 With Cross as his representative, he then sued in the King’s Bench

Court to try to recover this money in England. Due to the distance involved, he did not return home to testify himself. Since the debt dealt with property purchased outside of England, King’s

Bench did not take the case further, and Warner put himself at the mercy of the Court of

Requests, asking for the assistance of “your highness’ great power of the seal” and for the

103 Nor did common law extend to the King’s other realms, Scotland and Ireland. This was codified in the 1608 Calvin’s Case ruling. See Hulseboch, “The Ancient Constitution and the Expanding Empire,” 439-482. 104 Thomas K. Hubbard, A History of St. Kitts: The Sweet Trade (London: Macmillan, 2002), Ch. 5, outlines the details of Warner’s governorship. 105 TNA REQ 2/488/80, Warner v. Settle, 1638. 45

Court’s magistrates “to bring said Settle before the Court to stand and testify. . . [and to] deliver unto [your subject] right equity and justice.”106 The Court did so, and for his part, Settle did admit he had not paid Warner back. He claimed that he had been “disabled to satisfy the debts” by a major loss of the goods he imported into London after being intercepted by Spanish pirates on the route home.107 Yet, he refused to travel back to St. Kitts to settle the debt there, allowing him to avoid paying anything back while in London. This case’s deflection from King’s Bench to

Requests offers a fine example of how and why Atlantic business might arrive before Requests.

As this lawsuit involved property, had it occurred in England, common law would have done the work needed to get a settlement. However, as the land in question lay in the Caribbean, Warner required an alternate place to recover his losses. The Court of Requests’ prerogative crossed the

Ocean and offered a chance for the plaintiff to obtain justice.

Tobias Scott, a settler of , ended up in a different debt quagmire while trying to return home to England happily and healthily. After emigrating to Barbados in 1631, Scott had lived and worked as a tobacco planter, but to little success. To pay for passage back to England and resume his life there, Scott had agreed to take £18 worth of tobacco back to England on behalf of a merchant-mariner named Rebell. However, upon returning to England, Scott found

“the tobacco was in such an evill and ill conditioned state that not any body would take or accept the said tobacco, thus your subject could not pay custom.”108 He was forced to leave Rebell’s goods behind, impounded at the customs house. As part of their agreement, Rebell transferred his own debts owed to a man named Edward Lindsey onto Scott, in exchange for the value of the tobacco, so that the planter would now owe Lindsey the money. Because Scott still had not found

106 Ibid. 107 Ibid. 108 TNA REQ 2/521/80, Scott v. Lindsey, 1640. 46 enough money to pay back within six months, his new creditor Lindsey had him thrown in debtor’s prison. At this point, Scott went to the Court of Requests for assistance, hoping they would declare his debts unjust and absolve him from a debt that was the fault not of his own negligence, but of Rebell’s giving him bad tobacco from the start. Scott would have found this support valuable, as his default on credit harmed his ability to make future earnings as an individual who had defaulted on credit in a public manner. In his answer to Scott’s bill, Lindsey laid out the straightforward facts. After the transfer, Scott owed him money, further, he had the resources to go through a protracted legal process and the plaintiff did not. Scott soon ran out of money, and his efforts to find freedom failed.

Daniel Chester’s suit against Robert Booth in 1632 provides another example of a debate over debt in the colonies appearing before Requests. An adventurer living on St. Kitts since

1627, Chester traded in diverse goods to “fortune sometimes more, sometimes less.”109 While back in London selling his goods, he met Booth, a salter, who wished to become involved with the Caribbean trade himself. Chester took 50-50 investment on a bigger cargo ship with Booth, and then “accordingly did go to the said Islands, and afterword the said subject did make returns of commodities to the said amount of 8 gallons of anise-seed-water for the next shippe to

London.”110 Chester remained on St. Kitts expecting eventual returns from the products he sent, but to his dismay and confusion he found that Booth refused to accept of the said goods on agreed upon terms, “but doth sue, and disquiett your subject by diverse sundry suits and accounts att lawe, pretending that said commodities of anise-water was delivered to your subject upon sale, and not upon adventure as aforesaid . . . and presented fraudulent books.”111 According to

109 TNA REQ 2/549/8, Chester v. Booth, 1632. 110 Ibid. 111 Ibid. 47

Chester, Booth had attempted to fake a bill of sale which claimed that the plaintiff had directly sold him the cargo outright and had no continuing stake in the items (rather than acknowledging

50-50 investment and split of profits). Thus, once the goods reached England, he kept all profits and did not honor Chester’s co-investment in the cargo. As Chester recounted, the case involved a contract signed in England. Thus, it fell under purview of common law courts (indeed, Booth had filed his suit in one to take control of the goods, though neither man specified which). Yet, the St. Kitts mariner chose to use Requests to make his plea for justice. Notably, he sailed back from the Caribbean to file suit, braving another hard sea voyage to look for the proper court to take his case. The extensive and nebulous powers of Requests provided a most attractive option for this plaintiff, perhaps because the standards of evidence he would need to present would be less stringent. He asked of the King’s majesty “an investigation of the truth,” and gave the names of several witnesses who could “testify to the veracity of the books” he believed Booth had faked.112 An answer by Booth does survive, in which he denied the charges, insisted he had purchased the whole cargo, and did produce his documentation. It is unclear from the evidence whether the documentation Booth produced was authentic or not.

Justinian Cooper, a longtime Virginia resident, found himself in a similar situation over a default on a 50-50 contract. According to his testimony, Cooper said he “for twelve years last resided in Virginia,” where he “had spent much time in the laborious and industrious production of tobacco.”113 While there, he befriended another planter named Robert Sweet. Cooper returned to England, but before he left, he made a deal with Sweet to ship him necessary goods to sell to new settlers from England, such as rope, tar, and foodstuffs. Sweet would then market in

112 Ibid. 113 TNA REQ 2/560/4, Cooper v. Sweet. This case, unusually, does not contain a record of a year. 48

Virginia and the two men would split the profit. After sending the goods and waiting, the money never arrived, leading Cooper to bring suit in the Court of Requests, accusing his former friend of defrauding him. Cooper produced bills of lading to show he shipped goods to Virginia, but he said that Sweet had the original contract and “all witnesses are now residing in Virginia,” complicating his case.

An answer by the defendant exists for this case, which means that Sweet returned to

England to clear his name and came before the Court to do so. He launched a passionate defense of his non-payment by showing that he had no receipts of any goods, claiming the bill of lading was “falsyfied and contained none of the goods mentioned for Virginia,” and that Cooper had shipped goods to Ireland, not Virginia, thus meaning there was nothing to sell in England. Lastly

Sweet claimed that Cooper had never sent cattle that Sweet had purchased directly for his own use (and Cooper never mentioned in his bill).114 Ultimately, whether a contract existed or not or whether the goods reached Virginia or not, Cooper could not show that the original purported contract was ever signed. It is, of course, possible that Sweet neglected to bring it from Virginia, or otherwise destroyed it.

In rare cases, a planter might sue across the Atlantic to deal with goods and property located back in England. Richard Greenhill, a resident of Virginia, sued for these reasons.

Richard sued his sister-in-law, Elizabeth Greenhill, in relation to the will of his brother, Peter, who lived in Southampton. According to Richard, his brother left him a sum of £20, but Richard told the Court that Elizabeth nefariously spent this money. “She utterly denies and refuses to make the payment,” claimed Richard, despite his brother having died over a year prior.115 To

114 Ibid. 115 TNA REQ 2/556/93, Greenhill v. Greenhill, 1633. 49 bolster his claim, he presented a letter from Peter explaining that he would inherit the £20.

Richard expressed his need for the Court of Requests to help in financial terms.

The said letter is not sufficient to give them discharge, and they still pay the said legate . . . except your said subject shall remember from beyond the seas, and demand the same in person of them, which your magesty’s said subject may in no way doe, in regard of his many employments in his magesties said Country of Virginia, where ye said subject has been a long time, and that ye charge of coming over to demand the said legacy and returning [to] Virginia is like to amount than more than ye said subject will gain ye same.116

For her part, Elizabeth claimed that while the letter from her dead husband was genuine, Peter had made a last-minute change to the will which kept the money in England. Her new husband,

Walter Collins, testified before the court in support of his wife’s claim. It is unknown which party won the case, or if they settled out of court.

Two themes emerge from this series of cases. Firstly, settlers who sought redress in the

Court of Requests did so because of its prerogative authority and ability to provide a potentially speedy and flexible solution to complicated problems. Dealing in land and goods in the colonies proved complicated due to the distances involved and the potential for bad actors to engage in theft or predatory debt schemes. Courts such as the Court of Common Pleas or the Court of

King’s Bench had no jurisdiction over the economic life of these individuals once they went beyond England’s shores and into the new environment of America. Use of a prerogative court to make their legal pleas instead indicates that the Crown’s Atlantic subjects did understand this distinction and saw that their King’s imperium might help them in these cases traditionally settled in common law courts. Further, because plaintiffs understood that the Crown’s absolute

116 Ibid. 50 prerogative operated outside (although not against) common law, English subjects could make unique requests for complicated situations in the prerogative courts.117

Secondly, while cases involving planters show the difficulties of Atlantic distance for seeking the Crown’s help, they indicate this distance could be surmounted. The cases Cooper v.

Sweet, Chester v. Booth, and Greenhill v. Greenhill in particular show this in action. To access the Court of Requests and launch litigation there, one had to go before the bench in London and do it in person, or at least have a proxy individual suing for the individual, as Richard Greenhill did because he could not afford to make a voyage. That some plaintiffs did so or wished to do so suggests the appeal of using a prerogative court for Atlantic business. The chance of winning a favorable solution there, where the King’s councilors could rule based on principles of equity, convincing arguments, or other less strict terms, gave these plaintiffs a reasonable expectation that the proceedings would remain brief and cost effective considering the expense of overseas travel. In this way, the Court of Requests became one of the English state’s governing instruments beyond the confines of southern Great Britain. This befitted an Atlantic Empire, comparable to those of Spain and France.118

Shaping the Shipping Lanes

Several cases in the Court of Requests involved debts and legal squabbles created by the risky process of shipping products like tobacco and sugar to England for sale. Since the sixteenth

117 The King was understood to have both an absolute prerogative and an ordinary prerogative. The latter was subject to restrictions from English common law. The former was understood to operate outside the common law, and thus, while not contradictory to the natural justice shared by both common and civil law justice, could operate in ways that contradicted common law procedure. See Glenn Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603-1642 (State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 145, 164. 118 These empires used parallel structures from civil law to justify their imperium over parts of the Americas. See Elizabeth Mancke, “Negotiating an Empire: Britain and its Overseas Peripheries, 1560-1780” in Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820, ed. Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy (London: Routledge, 2002). 51 century, English merchant adventurers had formed joint-stock companies, in which many investors pooled resources into transoceanic cargos to reduce risk. While this model had proved profitable and reliable at producing profit trading luxuries from distant places, the joint-stock model experienced difficulties and mixed success creating functioning plantations of English settlement and wealth generation. They need to establish local governance, supply individuals with food and other necessities, and otherwise properly manage individuals towards a collective economic goal.119 Thus, smaller independent trade and supply ships came to play a significant role in the transatlantic economy, funded by smaller groups of investors.120 Like other contracts in the economy of credit, these ventures operated on personal trust; breach of trust could result in parties hiding profits or cheating their co-financiers out of equal shares. Additionally, the unfamiliarity of many English people with these new goods created opportunity for fraud and false claims about the wares.121 Lastly, as is the case for any type of business, individuals violated contracts, mishandled or damaged goods, and failed to meet sales targets. As the Court of Requests could hear almost any sort of case, many individuals brought perceived business slights. These sort of cases less novelty than cases directly involved with the colonies, because using the Court of Requests for overseas trade arbitration was well-established in early Stuart

England. Indeed, these disputes provide prime examples of the equity cases that Sir Julius Caesar defended as an extension of petitioning, and thus valid topics for subjects to seek equitable justice. These cases provide important evidence about how people utilized the Court of Requests

119 Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984), 280-341; Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 92-140. Notable company failures before 1640 include the Virginia Company and the Providence Island Company. The Somers Island () Company remained technically chartered until 1684, but with a great deal of government oversight. 120 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 184-193. 121 Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24:2 (Spring 2010), 163–188 52 and the state to shape England’s relationship with the Atlantic world, and how people solved conflicts between parties in the early English empire. From these documents, it becomes clear that people quickly added tobacco, sugar, and Newfoundland fish to the list of goods for which they sought prerogative assistance. The cases also show congruency between how people handled Atlantic business and traditional ways of solving their problems. Shippers and buyers suing each other for overseas trade had its place in pre-Stuart England, and continued in new,

Atlantic state of English commercial life.122

The 1630 case between George Rooks and John Day provides an excellent example of a dispute over who owed what in an Atlantic shipping case. Rooks sued Day for seven years of various unpaid debts, relating to their joint investments for trading to “parts beyond the seas” (a stock phrase in Requests cases that meant anywhere outside England except Scotland), specifically Virginia. In his testimony, Rooks offered a meticulous list of investments in different

Atlantic voyages for which he never received payment, and accused his business partner of “not do[ing] a sufficient job of maintaining your subject’s affairs” at the expense of other investors.123

He also mentioned “several commodities cosigned” and meant for sale and profit in the

Americas of which he had not received his shares.124 Day’s answer survives, and contains normal defense tactics, such as alibis about the location of goods, excuses for late payment, and a different set of dates about when the parties had signed the contracts. According to Day, he “did

122 For discussion of the routine legal concerns of sailors and shipping ventures in England during the early modern period, see Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 573-579; George F. Steckley, “Litigious Mariners: Wage Cases in the Seventeenth-Century Admiralty Court,” The Historical Journal, 42:2 (June 1999), 315-345; Richard J. Blackmore, “The Legal World of English Sailors, c. 1575–1729,” in Law, Labor, and Empire: Comparative Perspectives on Seafarers, 1500-1800, ed. Maria Fusorio et al (New York: Springer, 2015), 100-120; Blackmore, “Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight: Seaman’s Earnings and the Venture Economy of Early Modern Seafaring,” The Economic History Review 70:4 (February 2017), 1153-1184. 123 TNA REQ 2/542/70, Rooks v. Day, 1630. 124 Ibid. 53 at several times make an effort to send the ships payment…to [Rooks], who had shown him nothing but hostilities,” and claimed that his books showed the debts had indeed been paid.125 A case like this displays that ordinary disputes over payment and returns from shipping goods across the Atlantic were thought appropriate to bring before the Court of Requests. Suing subjects hoped the justice dispensed there could regain them lost fortunes, and duly punish those who had betrayed them or their interests in the hazardous environment of overseas shipping. 126

Also, since the goods had originated overseas, it may have been unclear which of the Crown’s jurisdictions should handle them if brought before the common law. Taking the issue before a prerogative court solved this problem. Similar cases to this one pertaining to shipping debts and broken partnerships for mutually invested voyages to Ireland, Spain, and the Netherlands proliferate in the Court of Requests records.127 While the Atlantic cases proved less frequently litigated than those from these locations, that such cases appeared shows that overseas investors

(who often had interests in multiple parts of the world) understood the authority of the Court of

Requests in this environment.128

Paying individuals to buy, sell, and ship tobacco across the seas also resulted in Requests litigation. A 1636 suit against Thomas Corke shows that large shipping operations often caused interpersonal problems. Corke’s boss, Thomas Lloyd, sued him in Requests over alleged damage to his Virginia shipping business. Lloyd described his venture as a highly profitable one: “I did receive from Virginia sundry barrels of hyuge sleds of leaf tobacco of the growth of that country, which [Corke] did put out to several workmen to be made into bowls, to be again transported to

125 Ibid. 126 Hart, The Rule of Law, 27-28. 127 Among the cases in REQ 2/486 through 566, one can find cases about trade to European locations as far as modern Lebanon. 128 L.H. Roper, Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 39-60. 54 the low countries, there.”129 Corke functioned as an overseer in Virginia, looking after the quality of tobacco purchased and ensuring it ended up on the proper ship back to Europe.130 Lloyd also mentioned that he worked with multiple such taskmasters, and that the returns from tobacco shipments overseen by Corke seemed comparatively low. This prompted Lloyd to attempt to recover tobacco he purchased out of his employee’s hands. Corke responded by detaining over a thousand pounds weight of tobacco in his own warehouse, refusing to release it. In response,

Lloyd went before Requests. He claimed Corke “was paying less than his due share of the deale,

[taking] leaf for his own use and selling off the leaf so stripped or made up into snuff.”131 The plaintiff requested assistance from the Court with recovering the tobacco before Corke converted it out of the leaf form that Lloyd wholesaled as revenge for his boss firing him. Corke responded to this charge by saying he had withheld the tobacco on account of unpaid wages. While the case record does not clear up which man told the truth, it does indicate how a breakdown in mutual trust over the Atlantic trade could result in a lawsuit heard by the prerogative court system.

The case Samuel Thompson v. Samuel Hardcastle unfolded similarly, as an employee and employer’s relationship broke down. The Court record describes Hardcastle as a ship’s captain that made regular voyages to the . Thompson was one of the seamen that served him. Along with Thompson’s friend Henry Downes and others, the plaintiff voyaged in

Hardcastle’s crew along the regular route to Barbados, with the goal of buying cotton and

129 TNA REQ 2/508/29 Lloyd v. Corke, 1636. 130 Early colonial Virginia featured planters mostly directly selling to merchants, who would travel the colony’s navigable waters collecting tobacco leaf. Gradually, this changed to a system of regular warehouses, where the goods could be overseen and inspected for quality. In large part, this was due to the imposition of taxes on tobacco, so the English state could profit on the trade. See Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton, 1975), 112-130; Bruce Rutman, A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), 12-36. James I imposed these taxes in order to discourage the use of tobacco. See his treatise A counter-blaste to tobacco (London: 1604), which I discuss further below. 131 Ibid. 55 tobacco to resell in England. Thompson had to pay for his own passage, relating that “during the said voyage aforesaid [I] at my own charge provided and furnished [Hardcastle’s crew] with fitting apparel, both linen and woolen, and all other necessities for the voyage, the said Downes being at one penny cost.” 132 Downes died early on, and the voyage quickly became disastrous.

Between bad weather and delays acquiring cargo from Barbados, it took eighteen months to return home.133 Thompson related further “suffering, hardship, and toiles” that he and other mariners endured on Barbados under Hardcastle, though gave no specific terms. As months dragged on, Hardcastle could no longer pay the sailor’s monthly wages, and thus he promised them further pay upon their return home. The ship did eventually make “a safe and gainful return” and the cargo it brought home sold “at great profit,” yet Hardcastle failed to compensate

Thompson. Thus, the latter took his case before Requests, as he sued for “eighteen shillings a month owed for fifteen months of labor in his service” and another eighty shillings for the balance of the apparel.134 Thompson also took care to mention his late friend Downes’ wife,

Ann, saying she and the Downes children also were owed money. He asked if the King’s

Majesty could compel Hardcastle to pay them as well.

These cases concerning labor reveal the Court of Requests served not only to manage goods themselves, but other aspects of commerce and production across the Atlantic Ocean.

When contracts or wage payments caused disagreement, the Court of Requests offered a flexible response and cover the broad jurisdiction of the Atlantic Ocean. Employees and employers alike believed its prerogative authority could help them solve the conflicts which arose while doing business. Further, the nature of prerogative offered a common-sense justice that had its own

132 TNA REQ 2/560/28, Thompson v. Hardcastle, 1639. 133 Thompson notes that his contract to voyage was signed “two years ago,” thus suggesting he brought the case before the Court of Requests approximately six months after returning to England. 134 Ibid. 56 attractiveness. Equity, as a principle, could address not just actual but also moral economies.

Samuel Thompson’s plea on behalf of the Downes family suggests some English subjects understood the function of Requests as a provider of justice for victims of mistreatment in a more general sense than trying to recover individual funds. He hoped the wise councilors of the King could give the kind of fitting justice that would restore order to society and right moral wrongs.

The Newfoundland Fishery, Requests, and Credit Networks

Along with the tobacco trade in Virginia and the Caribbean, the Newfoundland fisheries caused dispute and disagreement in the Court of Requests. In this dissertation’s sample, cases concerning cod fishing appeared as often as the sugar trade, and more frequently than other lucrative commodities such as tropical fruits and spices. Although a migratory cod fishing industry already existed for a century by the early , the activity continued to grow throughout the period in both migratory and settler forms. Devon fishermen who sailed to

Newfoundland numbered 6,000 by 1620. West Country fisherman or other financiers would invest in ships, individually or in groups. The boats then fished for a season before returning to sell their catch in Europe, primarily Spain.135 In addition, 1,500 to 2,000 settlers inhabited

Newfoundland year-round, catching and drying fish and selling them to passing ships.136 These voyages frequently produced disputes about their finances and payouts. As in other Atlantic trades, the risk and the distance involved led to disagreements among business partners. They frequently accused one another of cheating partners out of shares, or not properly caring for the product. Further, Newfoundland, unlike other English colonies, never established its own stable

135 Gillian T. Cell, English Enterprise in Newfoundland 1577-1660 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969), 8- 11. 136 Peter Pope, Fish into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2004), 31. 57 court system, relying on ad hoc courts run by colonial leaders.137 Due to the local courts’ tenuous authority, the royal prerogative offered a more reliable source of judicial protection for English people involved there. The Newfoundland fisheries provide a pertinent example of the social credit system in operation, and how defaults and disappointments in the credit system could result in litigation. This was a contentious trade, and the Court of Requests was one place to resolve rifts among its member traders.138

The fishing town of Dartmouth proved particularly litigious, bringing multiple cases before Requests (as well as Court of Chancery) in the reign of Charles I. One incident concerned a dispute about fishing debts between the financier Abraham Bugge and the mariner Stephen

Geoffrey. Bugge indicated in testimony that he had considerable involvement financing

American trade, as he also had investments shipping sugar. Regarding this lawsuit, he claimed he had “brought a great quantity of fish on bond from said merchant, headed for Newfoundland, for the joint account of said Geoffrey,” and the contract specified he “was to receive the joint returns on said fish from the said Geoffrey,” as per usual procedure.139 Bugge invested £856, and specified his plans for the fish. He desired to sell them in Devon and Somerset in exchange for wool, which he would then resell. Bugge arranged with several other West Country merchants and individuals in preparation for the incoming load of fish from Geoffrey’s voyage.140 Problems arose, however, due to independent debts Geoffrey had accrued before he set out for

Newfoundland. He was greatly indebted to others in and around Dartmouth. Thus, while the

137 Ibid., 231. 138 This trade also involved aggressive encounters between full-time residents and part-time fishermen, who mutually disliked and sabotaged each other’s business, and considerable disputes over who had fishing rights where. See also Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 110 & 112; Pope, Fish into Wine, 153-155. 139 TNA REQ 2/511/9 Bugge v. Geoffrey, 1636. 140 These sorts of advance credit agreements were common in the web of debt and credit that existed in early modern England. See Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, Ch. 5. 58 voyage successfully obtained a load of cod, upon his return to Devon, authorities “seized the said ship and estate [of Geoffrey] . . . knowing the said fish would pay for the debts he had caused.”141 Bugge took very poorly to this development, for now he himself was at risk of defaulting on his own bills without income from the fish. Putting himself at the mercy of the

Court of Requests, Bugge claimed “your subject is truly at the mercy of your said majesty, as the said Geoffrey is indebted to the amount of 400 [barrels] of fish to your subject . . . as he is constantly resident beyond the seas, the said Geoffrey hereby deprives your subject of his due debt and discharge which he ought to in equity have . . . out of his hands to prevent your said subject’s undoing.” He hoped that the justice provided by Requests could at the very least get him his money back from the sale of the fish, or otherwise add himself to the list of people whom the sale of Geoffrey’s fish would repay.

This case reveals a great deal about the Court of Request’s appeal as a place to litigate unpaid debts and make sense of the issues caused by both distance and the highly speculative nature of Atlantic investments. Atlantic cod, like tobacco, required major collective investments with intricate links of credit and debt, ripe for defaulting.142 Complications could hold up business both directly related to the products and other debts, thus threatening financial ruin for fishing voyage backers. The Court of Requests offered redress for those affected. Its simple requirements to bring suit, and its ability to make its ruling by prerogative, proved attractive to plaintiffs. On the one hand, for someone like Abraham Bugge, it could absolve successful plaintiffs from paying crippling debts, or get them refunds on their lost investments. Requests offered a place where debt resulting from goods in limbo, unfixed to common law, could be

141 Ibid. 142 Gillian T. Cell, “The Newfoundland Company: A Study of Subscribers to a Colonizing Venture,” William and Mary Quarterly 22:4 (October 1965), 614-616. 59 adjudicated. In this way, the Court of Requests regulated the shipping lanes of the early English empire.

Good Tobacco, Bad Tobacco

The most common presence of the American Colonies in the Court of Requests involved the tobacco trade as it spread around the Atlantic. At times, as described above, this involved transoceanic disputes, but more often, the Court of Requests heard cases about the sale, distribution, and payment of customs on tobacco in England. These cases display tobacco causing an array of conflicts. By the reign of James I, domestic tobacco demand was high, spurring the growth of Atlantic trade.143 Requests cases concerning tobacco usually involved alleged abuses of power by salesmen, including licensed tobacco sellers approved by the

Crown.144 Between 1615 and 1625, English colonial production of tobacco exploded, replacing a prior system in which most tobacco originated as a Spanish import. This became a major source of state revenue, as it collected customs on imports.145 Charles I furthered this practice, creating a system of officially licensed tobacco dealers in the 1630s. This placed the retail trade of tobacco leaf in England into the hands of grocers, apothecaries, and other trusted distributors, and raised even more revenue for the Crown by collecting fees for domestic sale rights.146 In this way,

143 Keith Wrightson, Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 236-237. 144 In 1634, the state made it illegal to sell tobacco in England without license. See M.W. Beresford, “The Beginning of Retail Tobacco Licenses, 1632–41,” Bulletin of Economic Research 7:2 (1955), 128-143. 145 There was for a time also an excise on domestic tobacco. While the state did not generally encourage its use, the Crown also realized the potential profit from taxing tobacco use and did not let this revenue source go unused. Eventually domestic tobacco production was banned due to lobbying from the Virginia Company and other colonial corporations, who desired a monopoly on their one profitable crop. A considerable black market of England-grown tobacco existed into the 1630s and beyond. See Rowley, “How England Learned to Smoke,” 204-209. 146 For more on the gradual escalation of royal involvement in the importation and licensing of tobacco, see W.F. Craven, The Dissolution of the Virginia Company (New York: Oxford University Press, 1932); 205, Rowley, “How England Learned to Smoke,” Ch. 5-7; Tom Coggswell, “'In the Power of the State': Mr. Anys's Project and the Tobacco Colonies, 1626-1628,” English Historical Review 123:500 (February 2008), 35-64. 60 tobacco provided a major source of extra-parliamentary revenue during Charles I’s personal rule.147

Despite regulation, English people often distrusted tobacco licensers. Frequent complaints about the sale of substandard quality tobacco permeate legal records from the 1630s.

In most Requests cases, plaintiffs claimed they did not know good from bad tobacco on sight and begged the Masters of Requests for help recovering from fraud. The product remained enough of a novelty in England that bad actors could easily dupe or mislead others. Several cases mention that the individuals involved had purchased tobacco product they believed of good quality, but which turned out to be either of poor quality or, worse still, unsalable and useless. Suspicion about tobacco remained high, even though the product had been available in England since

Elizabethan times.148 It is unclear to what extent these pleas of ignorance indicate an honest lack of knowledge about tobacco, or narrative strategy to emphasize the role of a victim needing the

King’s assistance. At the very least, this trope had enough basis to be a useful strategy in court.

Further, the cases suggest that despite tobacco’s status as a somewhat misunderstood product, plaintiffs believed that equity justice was a useful tool to arbitrate conflicts over the drug’s trade.

By bringing tobacco cases to court, tobacco buyers and sellers sought an intervention that the

147 Kevin Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 245. 148 James I was very suspicious of Tobacco and wrote A counter-blaste to Tobacco in 1604 as an attack on its excessive use by his subjects. James described smoking as “a vile and stinking custome” which might “move us to imitate the wild and beastly customs of the slavish Indians,” thus drawing a direct connection between the supposed laziness of Indigenous Americans and implying tobacco use contributed to their inability to cultivate the land productively. England would best not follow suit. James also argued that smoking destroyed the lungs and damaged the body. This statement was no given, as many Europeans believed tobacco had health benefits until the mid-to-late seventeenth century (though James was also not alone in his assessment and cited physicians who opposed tobacco use in the Counter-blaste). See James VI and I, A counter-blaste to Tobacco (London: 1604), 2, 5-9, 12-18. See also Anthony R. Rowley, “How England Learned to Smoke: The Introduction, Spread, and Establishment of Tobacco Pipe Smoking in England before 1640,” PhD diss., University of York, 2003, Ch. 3. 61

Court had traditional provided for domestic trades. The Crown could assist them in recovering losses from cheating and fraud on the relatively unstable tobacco market.

A case from Saint Mary’s Parish, Middlesex, provides an example of how tobacco, its market, and associated fees could cause legal troubles. Robert Cooper, a licensed tobacco seller, had purchased £25 worth of leaf from Noah Tempest, another licensed tobacco vendor. Cooper believed that Tempest had properly accounted for customs, but it turned out this was not the case. The Crown’s agents came after Cooper for unpaid duties. Thus, he accused Tempest of

“unjustly misleading” him, and asked the Court that “Tempest be compelled to make payment unto your Majesty… thus ending the payne committed unto your subject ye plaintiff."149 In his answer, Tempest denied the claim that he had misled Cooper at all. He stated that he sold the tobacco “free from all taxes and his charges,” and in fact his sale had “exceeded the amount

[Cooper] desired.” Tempest suggested this litigation constituted a ploy to compel him to return the money to Cooper, while letting the plaintiff keep the tobacco.150 This argument over tobacco and the payment of taxes to officials just one example of how misunderstandings about tobacco’s regulation could generate litigation. Assuming Cooper was correct, he hoped the Court of

Requests could sort out the matter and prevent him from paying taxes. Meanwhile, if Tempest were correct, the Court of Requests ruling for the defendant would have helped defend against a disappointed customer’s slander. Either man would have hoped the Prerogative Court would do them justice.

If customs could cause litigation when trust broke down, so too did the quality of the leaf.

A suit by Humphrey Howard, a tobacco seller of London, displays this. Howard purchased

149 TNA REQ 2/551/171, Cooper v. Tempest, 1634. 150 Ibid. 62 regularly on credit from the shipping magnate Edward Trigge. Howard claimed that, after he had gotten into debt with Trigge, the defendant had deliberately foisted tobacco of a poor quality on him to keep him indebted. “[The defendant] hath done and used every cost to make the pet[itioner] wrought with rotten and unviable tobacco, so that to keep him in tyme of his enduring debt, which he wants forever,” claimed Howard, who indicated that he had already paid a considerable portion of the debt before bringing his suspicions about the tobacco’s resale value to the bench.151 One can see the perfect environment for suspicions of foul play: a major wholesaler selling to a small retailer, an unfamiliar product with widely varying quality, and a situation for the wholesaler to profit off his debts. For this case, a Court ruling survives, ordering all further debt payments to Trigge halted by Howard.152 This suggests the Court did indeed find evidence for the substandard quality of this tobacco. Yet, they did nothing to help Howard recover the debt he had already paid Trigge, presumably leaving him out of considerable money.

In this case, the Court’s equitable ruling ended up splitting the middle, perhaps leaving neither man happy.

What constituted good quality tobacco led to combative situations on other occasions. In the 1632 case of Samuel Deane against Thomas Bell and Thomas Fynch, a seemingly innocuous purchase turned into litigation. As described by Deane, a cloth merchant, the plaintiff had desired

“to buy a parcel of tobacco for the pleasure of friends,” and went to his neighbor Bell, who was known as “a great producer and merchant of tobacco.153 Bell was not home, but his servant,

Fynch, sold Deane the desired leaf. Deane, by Bell’s account, “being all together ignorant of the goodness of the said commodity tobacco, was forced to take the same as on the word and credit

151 TNA REQ 2/486b/99 Howard v. Trigge, 1639. 152 Ibid. Unusually for the Requests records, the Court’s ruling and other notes by officials about the case are included with the Bills and Answers in the REQ 2 collections at Kew. 153 TNA REQ 2/516/141, Deane v. Bell and Finch, 1632. 63 of the said Fynch, who affirmed the said to be very good and amicable tobacco.”154 Deane paid five shillings cash and took on thirty in credit to Bell’s shop, but upon returning home to smoke with his friends, he discovered the tobacco “not merchantable or of any such use,” and accused

Fynch and the business more generally of deliberately keeping him ignorant.155 Bell, for his part, acknowledged the sale in his register, and affirmed Deane owed the debt, but claimed Deane simply invented the notion that any deliberate obfuscation had occurred, and that all his tobacco was of good quality.

Legal action in the Court of Requests related to tobacco proved extensive enough to spread to labor disputes which barely involved the plant itself. The warehouse owners Hugh and

John Corke, in response to a missing bill of complaint by the laborer Thomas Roland, offer an example. They defended themselves against charges of nonpayment of wages. According to the

Corkes, Roland had caused a great deal of harm to their business, through incompetence handling customers’ orders. This occurred via negligence, for “the petitioner regularly leaving the charges committed to him did cause a greate deal of confusion to his labor about tobacco.”156

Further, the “aforesaid damages . . . caused the def[endant] damages for six times the contract price of the said tobacco . . . [as a result] the def[endant] was unable to complete his contracts for ye said tobacco.”157 Whatever mistakes in bookkeeping occurred, the entrepreneurs had to forfeit their own pay and give away considerable free tobacco because they could not deliver. Despite

Roland’s allegedly subpar job, the Corkes insisted they had paid him, and that the charges

154 Ibid. 155 Ibid. 156 TNA REQ 2/492/15, Rolland v. Corke and Corke, 1638. 157 Ibid. 64 against them were false. After having done an initial round in Chancery Court and lost, the plaintiff had proceeded to try in Requests for a favorable ruling.

These cases involving tobacco show that the plant had a regular presence in the Court of

Requests, and that people sued over tobacco as if it were a more familiar commodity. By the

1630s, tobacco-related cases had become a standard dispute for the Court of Requests to adjudicate. The Court offered a solution for Atlantic cases involving confusion over the growing tobacco trade, both regarding fraud and for labor and wages related to marketing it. Thus, the

Court of Requests made the Crown’s prerogative authority available to those injured in the new

Atlantic tobacco trade.

Women, the Atlantic, and the Court of Requests

In addition to its use by the men who lived in and traded in the colonies, the Court of

Requests proved a method by which women could seek help for their own grievances related to colonial trades. While fewer women actually migrated to America than their male counterparts, evidence in the Court of Requests shows one way women participated in and left a mark on the early Atlantic colonies, even while living in England. 158 Because equity courts focused on the unique circumstances of the individual and were not beholden to the common law limitations of

158 As many fewer women lived in the colonies during this era, they have seldom appeared in narratives of the first decades of American settlement and have been understudied by historians. Particularly in the quantitative school of Atlantic history dominant in the 1980s and 1990s, low numbers of female planters were taken to suggest that men dominated life in these societies. See for instance the essays in European Expansion and Migration: Essays on the Intercontinental Migration from Africa, Asia, and Europe, ed. Pieter Emmer (Amsterdam: Berg, 1992) for this approach. These authors provide excellent demographic data, note the relative absence of women in the colonies, and interrogate this no further. Historians focused more exclusively on an American colonial context challenged this view, investigating the ways in which women’s gender roles appeared in colonial law and the ways in which they took agency in American colonial courts. See C. Dallet Hemphill, “Women in Court: Sex-Role Differentiation in Salem, Massachusetts, 1636 to 1683,” The William and Mary Quarterly 39:1 (Jan. 1982), 164-175; Mary Beth Norton, “Gender and Defamation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” The William and Mary Quarterly 44:1 (Jan. 1987), 3-39. Work in this field has under-examined these individual’s identity as specifically English women, with proclivity to use English political and legal institutions. 65 couverture, they allowed married women to bring suit in cases where a common law court would have only recognized the husband.159 Additionally, the Court of Requests proved a popular option for widows, who had an easy way to establish poverty from circumstance. Women plaintiffs aimed to protect themselves against predatory and fraudulent claims originating in the

Atlantic world. They also worked to protect their families’ assets from abuse by nefarious

Atlantic travelers and sought the Crown’s help in preventing or repairing damages to their financial situation. This evidence shows how women used law to influence Atlantic colonial practices on an imperial scale.160

The women who sued on their own behalf in the Court of Requests usually did so as widows. Under the legal doctrine of femme couvert, upon marriage women lost independent legal personhood in common law courts, making it impossible for them to sue.161 No such restrictions existed in the prerogative courts. It is likely that the husband simply would have acted as plaintiff on behalf of the family if they required legal business and he was still alive, even though married women could sue there. Widowed or not, the Court of Requests and other equity courts still offered the same flexible, fast, and cheap solution for these women to recover money, and provided them with a place where they could reach the ear of the King’s councilors and make a plea.162

159 Stretton, Women Waging Law, 26. 160 Thus, this research fits into a historiographic trend of the last several decades, wherein feminist historians of early modern England have focused not on the causes and systematic barriers of women’s oppression and disadvantage, but on their agency and ability to subvert and operate around patriarchal norms. See Anne Laurence, Women in England 1500-1760: A Social History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994), Jaqueline Eales, Women in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 (London: Routledge, 2005). 161 Bronwyn H. McIntyre, “Legal Attitudes Towards Women in England, 1558-1648,” PhD diss., University of New Brunswick, 1973, 81-84. 162 Never-married women could also have done this, of course, though no such cases appeared in the sample used for this chapter. 66

In most cases in this dissertation’s sample, widows used the Court of Requests in an attempt to recover debts owed to their late husbands. For instance, Helen Ball sued in Requests to recover the vessel of her husband Nicholas. She came into an unfortunate predicament after the loss of her husband at sea in 1624, as the ship contained sixty-five pounds weight of tobacco which her husband had agreed to sell to one Thomas Elliot. The vessel and some of its crew had returned to London, but, according to Ball, thirty-four pounds of the tobacco never appeared, presumably stolen by the other crewmen and sold for their own purposes. She noted that a broken barrel on her husband’s ship contained tobacco residue, suggesting a deliberate effort to remove it rather than an honest mistake. Therefore, she asked the Court to call witnesses “to find if any of them did rework the said barrel . . . for your said subject can likewise not possibly discover who broke up or unheaded the said barrel of tobacco.”163 She singled out three particular crewmen whom she thought were rotten, and directed the suit against them. She asked the Masters of Requests to find “if any of them or any other hath knowledge . . . humbly pray that they & every of them may be compelled to set forth upon oath their knowledge.”164 In doing this, Helen hoped to recover either the tobacco or financial compensation to relieve her family of the debt owed to Elliot, still hanging over them after the loss of her husband and his regular income. Unfortunately, the resolution of this case, like so many in Requests, is unknown.

The case of the widow Joan Kaman against Henry Hedley provides another example of a widow using the Court to recover debt owed to her family. Joan was the widow of Thomas, a navigator who frequently worked trading voyages to the Caribbean. Upon Thomas’ death, Joan inherited a warehouse full of his trade goods, including major stores of tobacco and cotton.

163 TNA REQ 2/500/140, Ball v. Nustant, Ribbon, and Waad, 1625. 164 Ibid. 67

Kaman sued to accuse Hedley, the executor of the estate, of stealing goods from the warehouse and selling them to third parties. The defendant challenged this, saying that Henry had written a new will in the Caribbean before dying there, giving Hedley access to these goods. Further, according to Hedley, the family had always planned to sell the tobacco and cotton, and, therefore, marketing them and then giving the Kaman family a share of the profits in no way violated his duties as executor of the estate.165

Hanna Ferde of Devon used the Court of Requests in a similar manner as other widows.

Hanna, widow of Edward, lived in Dartmouth, Devonshire. Before his passing, Edward had sued a group of plaintiffs including Roger Matthew over investment in the cargo of a ship, the Sara

Bonaventure, which had been intended as a resupply ship for Newfoundland coastal settlers. The ship would then acquire a load of cod and return to Devon. This voyage occurred in 1638, but as of 1640, the Ferde family had not seen any hint of the shares owed to Edward’s estate. She accused them of “taking the fish they said was rotten and unmerchantable” and selling it cheaply in , away from wary eyes. Ferde also accused her husband’s partners of “deliberately over-saltyng the fish so it would become heavy, and unmerchantable, yet, upon landing therof [in

Devon], they charge the said subject with a Bill of Exchange to pay upon, with the subject unknowingly paying for less fish than ye bill of exchange presented.”166 Ferde painted her ex- husband’s business partners as scheming falsifiers, the type of characters to cheat a widow out of her fair share of the profits. In so doing, she played on stereotypes of the poor widow, but also imitated a strong defense of her own interests.

165 TNA REQ 2/553/27, Kaman v. Hedley, 1634. 166 TNA REQ 2/548/64, Ferde v. Matthew et al, 1640. 68

Elizabeth Willis also brought to the attention of the Court purported crimes of a man who would not pay debts. Willis, a resident of Saltash, Cornwall, had loaned the sailor Nicholas Sulk

£3 sometime before 1633, so that he could travel to Plymouth and “sail on a tobacco voyage” to

St. Christopher.167 Per the terms of the agreement, he was to pay her upon his return to England.

He did not, so Willis reported him for “smuggling goods into England in a most fraudulent manner” and “not paying due customs” on the tobacco that he had helped to import into

England.168 If true, it would implicate his captain and dozens of other sailors for ignoring the

King’s regulations on the tobacco trade, potentially amounting to considerably more than a three pound debt.

These women shared common initiative by using the Court of Requests as a defense mechanism against malicious interests in the Atlantic world. The distance involved in the

Atlantic trades made this business opportunity for individuals to engage in theft with few potential witnesses. Women plaintiffs saw the Court of Requests as a power of redress to fend off perceived attacks. By involving the Court of Requests’ prerogative authority, women could protect themselves from potential exploitation in the Atlantic trade. In the cases of Hanna Ferde and Elizabeth Willis, women brought before the Court crimes of fraud and smuggling as a demonstration of their support for the commonwealth and bolster favor for their cases. This would have harmonized the interests of a growing regulatory mechanism with their own personal legal goals. Thus, the Court of Requests provided one way women could and did participate in the networks that linked the early modern English Atlantic. Although these women never set foot in the Americas, they did leave a mark on legal culture in the empire.

167 TNA REQ 2/518/106, Willis v. Sulk, 1633. 168 Ibid. 69

Conclusion: The Court of Requests and Equity

Based on this documentation, it becomes clear that English subjects in the early seventeenth century saw the Court of Requests as both a legitimate and useful place to resolve legal issues arising in the Atlantic colonies or in the Atlantic trades. A sample of approximately one-quarter of the surviving Court of Requests cases from the Reign of Charles I indicates that

Atlantic business did appear on a regular basis. As a prerogative court, individuals could use the

Court of Requests in jurisdictions outside of England, which made it a key venue for plaintiffs with concerns about land, goods, contracts, fraud, and shipping pertaining to England’s Atlantic empire to seek redress. Because the King’s legal role extended via imperium to the Atlantic colonies, while common law did not, courts like Requests became places where English people understood they might receive help for their troubles pertaining to the imperial world. It assisted them in critical moments when both their short-term and long-term economic success came under threat. Through these lawsuits, the Court of Requests deployed royal power for the social and judicial good of the English people and reinforced the King’s role at the center of English law and as a link between his distinct realms.

The English subjects’ use of Requests and the arguments they constructed for use there, with the help of lawyers, indicates that they understood their traditional use of the legal system in

England itself could be applied to the expanded spaces of the Empire, and the concepts of royal prerogative and equitable justice were key in their understanding of how the different plantations were linked with Britain. The use of the Court of Requests to resolve trade disputes, land disputes, and other interpersonal conflicts was by no means an innovation in the 1620s and 30s.

The people understood their liberties were protected by the Crown and knew that the reciprocal relationship between subject and sovereign tethered the social fabric together. Their reliance on 70 the court was customary- not entrenched in statute, but with wide social currency. Like much of early modern English society, it was the instrumental use of the Court of Requests by people rather than the structural application of the law by the state which developed processes to resolve problems and caused the people to see it as a legitimate body for resolving their social conflicts.

Their application of the Court of Requests to American problems reflects their general relationship with the state during the early seventeenth century and an extension of English cultural habitus for conflict resolution to new spaces alongside the more formal imperium that belonged to the crown.

71

Chapter 2: The Court of Chancery and the Atlantic World

The Court of Chancery provided another legal avenue with similar utility, allowing

Atlantic redress for Atlantic matters and played a vital role in subjects’ ability to involve the state in their imperial projects. It proved so broadly useful that English subjects wasted no time involving the Court of Chancery in the business of the Atlantic World. In fact, they already used it to adjudicate disputes over North American products before any arrived in England from its own colonies. In 1606, before the founding of Jamestown, Robert Chancellor sued Peter Richant over tobacco imported from Spain. Earlier, the defendant had advised the plaintiff that “he should buy some tobacco [from Richant], rich and marketable tobacco, the best that was tested, and that he should have the same [at a] reasonable rate.”169 Convinced by Richant’s pitch,

Chancellor purchased £149 of tobacco. However, upon opening the sack that contained his purchase, he found the tobacco of anything but “rich and marketable” quality. Thus, he sued, claiming Richant had “altered” the tobacco to give him scraps while keeping the best product for himself. Richant contradicted Chancellor’s story, claiming that he had sold £156 of tobacco, not

£149, and that he had made no effort to defraud his customer. William Andrew, who had overseen the contract signing as a third party, also offered that “he had no such knowledge of the parcels being altered, including when they came into England.”170 This tobacco originated outside the English empire, but Chancery Court already had become an arena for resolving

Atlantic disagreements.171 England’s own production of American goods would only augment the Chancery Court’s utility.

169 TNA: C2/JamI/C25/64, 30 October 1607. 170 Ibid. 171 The Spaniards had begun growing tobacco in their American colonies by the 1550s, and England was a major export market for their tobacco when the kingdoms were at peace. See Laura Nater, “Colonial Tobacco: Key 72

This chapter will examine the role of the Court of Chancery in the Atlantic World between 1607 and 1649, and its place as a vehicle for subjects to access the central legal powers of the Crown to solve conflicts with American dimensions. It will begin with an examination of the history and institutional norms of the Court of Chancery as they had developed to the seventeenth century. Then, after a discussion of the surviving records, the dissertation will analyze groups of cases brought before the court. These include suits over movable property in the Americas, land in the Americas, contracts and business disputes, and cases brought before the court by widows seeking debts owed to their late husbands. The chapter will also analyze a series of cases relating to Maryland’s “plundering time” of 1645-1646, and their relation to trans-

Atlantic political activity during the era of the Civil Wars of the 1640s. Additionally, the chapter will pay consideration to corporate petitioning and the role of Chancery as a place where English subjects could pursue collective social conflict resolution as readily as individual resolution. In examining these cases, the chapter will discuss the plaintiffs and defendants’ understanding of the authority of this court to resolve Atlantic business. It will indicate how plaintiffs used the

Court’s legal structure to make arguments and explore how they understood and took advantage of the central government to accomplish specific goals in their expanding world.

The Court of Chancery provided one of the main tools for solving controversies about overseas commerce during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. When Atlantic trade grew, so too did the use of the court. As a prerogative court overseeing trusts, land law, estates, and many other contractual disputes, English subjects had regularly used the Court to resolve debts and squabbles for decades. It could stay or overturn common law decisions and the rigorous

Commodity of the Spanish Empire, 1500-1800,” in From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000, ed. Steven Topik, Carlos Marichal, and Frank Zephyr (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 93-94. 73 precedents used in common law courts. Formally led by the Lord Chancellor, the Chancery

Court operated with the full force of the English Crown as a legal entity, and thus represented a direct link between the people and the state. The English quickly adopted its use to resolve contracts over tobacco, sugar, and inherited land owned in the Americas. They even continued to use the Court during the 1640s, as the royal prerogative that explained its existence was challenged by war. English people involved in Atlantic Chancery proceedings treated the cases like any other case that arose in England or Wales. They understood the state’s authority in a trans-Atlantic sense, and this informed their usage of the Chancery Court.

History and Function of the Court of Chancery

By the early Stuart Period, the Court of Chancery had become the largest of the central royal courts, and one of England’s most important legal machines. The Court grew from the office of the Lord Chancellor during the twelfth and thirteenth century. Its judicial functions originated as part of the Chancellor’s oversight of Crown finances, and the great number of writs, issues, and petitions heard in the Chancellor’s capacity as keeper of the royal seal.172

During the fourteenth century, the Chancellor set aside days to hear petitions and oversee requests to the King.173 By the reign of Henry VIII, Chancery had evolved into a major center for equity law.174 As the and bureaucratic machinery of England grew during the sixteenth century, the Chancery Court’s caseload increased.175 Chancery handled all manners of civil suits,

172 All parties in Early Modern England agreed that the Lord Chancellor was a most ancient office, predating the conquest. Writs, petitions, and official financial rolls for the Crown passed through this office, giving the Lord Chancellor a deep connection with the King’s prerogative before the evolution of a distinct Court of Chancery. The court was first referenced during the reign of Edward I. See Duncan Kerly, An Historical Sketch of the Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1890), 23-25. 173 Ibid., 29-31. Explicit references to the Lord Chancellor dispensing justice began in 1322. 174 Alfred Henry Marsh, History of the Court of Chancery and of the Rise and Development of the Doctrines of Equity (London: Carswell and Co., 1890), 6. 175 Geoffrey Elton, The Tudor Revolution in Government, (5th Edition, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 205 & 260; Baker, An Introduction to English Legal History, 97-100 & 259; Braddick, State Formation, 100- 102; Hindle, The State and Social Change, 87-93. 74 including verbal contracts, suits about movable property, inheritance, and wage and labor disagreements.176 As the Chancery’s business ballooned, councilors that sat on it began to specialize.177 As opposed to the Court of Requests, the Chancery Court paid more heed to precedent, and referred to it more frequently in its rulings.178 Precedent had unique meanings in

Chancery Court. Judges on the court were, by definition, not bound by precedent because it was an equity court and thus applied justice through different mechanisms than common law courts.

However, chancellors did take concepts from civil law (on which equity was based) that previous cases could provide examples of the moral and natural truths that equity law served. Eventually,

Chancery Court operated with a common-law like set of precedents which informed decisions, and legal scholars of that day consciously discussed precedent as such regarding Chancery by the seventeenth century.179

The Chancery Court’s relationship with other courts, both common law and prerogative, proved complex. Beginning in Elizabethan times, increasing competition between common lawyers and equity defenders became a matter of intense debate in English jurisprudence. Sir

Edward Coke and other prominent common lawyers challenged the Court’s authority over many traditional reserves of common law, particularly title to freehold and copyhold to land.180

Meanwhile, advocates of equity law argued that it presented a complementary form of justice, helping people gain a just outcome when common law institutions proved unable to execute that

176 W. J. Jones, The Elizabethan Court of Chancery (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967), 10. 177 Ibid., 9. 178 Ibid., 5. To further complicate this, the records of the Court of Chancery were kept at Chancery Lane, a mile away from the Court at Westminster. Thus, those interested would have to scramble back and forth looking for precedent, possibly missing relevant cases due to poor contemporary indexing. 179 Kerly, An Historical Sketch, 100; W.H.D. Wiedner, “Precedent in Equity,” Law Quarterly Review 57 (1941), 245-247. 180 Kerly, An Historical Sketch, 109. 75 result.181 Although Chancery had statutory affirmation by the time these disputes occurred, where and when its jurisdiction applied remained an open dispute. The Court of Chancery’s authority to issue an injunction proved the most controversial. Injunctions allowed the court to halt common law proceedings if the Lord Chancellor and his representatives thought the strict standards of the common law would prove inequitable or unfair in a particular case. The

Chancellors had applied this authority at least since the reign of Henry VI, and this interference angered common lawyers. They argued that the timeless customs of those courts should not be simply overruled by prerogative.182 Pro-Chancery advocates countered by saying the prerogative existed for exactly this reason, in order to best help the people obtain justice (as distinct from

“law” as a structural method).183 These debates proved less concerning in the English colonies, due to Calvin’s Case and the exclusion of English common law from the colonies themselves.184

Specific attacks on Chancery’s jurisdiction in England did not apply to the Court’s wider prerogative purview in the Crown’s imperial possessions.

Along with other equity courts, the role of the Chancery Court in English life grew during the period from 1550 to 1640. This follows a general increase of legal business during this era.185

For instance, in 1627, the Court took on over 4,900 new cases, in addition to continuing work on

181 Mark Fortier, The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England (London: Ashgate, 2005), 66-67. 182 Kerly, Equitable Jurisdiction, 107. 183 Early modern English writers frequently debated the nature of equity law and its role in England in terms of natural law and a more abstract sense of justice. Common Law, by contrast, was a particular structure that was customary and important, but not synonymous with natural law. Therefore, equity courts and royal prerogative could help subjects obtain “justice” when common law structures misfired. See Fortier, The Culture of Equity, 89; Dennis R. Klinck, Conscience, Equity, and the Court of Chancery in Early Modern England (London: Routledge, 2010), 104-107. 184 Hulsboch, “The Ancient Constitution and the Expanding Empire,” 439-482. 185 Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation,” 921, Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, 239-271, Hindle, The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 87-93, Christopher Brooks, Law Politics, and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 33. 76 several thousand ongoing arbitrations.186 Unlike Court of Requests suits, which required at least a fiction of poverty to gain a hearing, Chancery accepted cases from all levels of society. About

40% of its plaintiffs were gentlemen, with farmers and commercial artisans each about 20% and the remainder consisting of unmarried women, widows, and men in minor professions. A slightly higher proportion of defendants came from aristocratic backgrounds.187 The Chancery Court gained a reputation for slowness and inefficiency, in part due to a backlog of over ten thousand cases by the 1620s. Coke and others charged the Court with malpractice due to the slow pace that cases were resolved.188 Regardless, the plodding pace from case overload suggests the Court’s great popularity among early modern English people for doing legal business.

Unlike Requests and Star Chamber, the Chancery Court managed to survive the English revolutionary period and remained active into and well past the Restoration. Because it had roots in statute, and the Lord Chancellor’s office had pre-Norman origins, the Court of Chancery seemed less of an “innovation” than other equity courts. Therefore, Parliamentarian lawyers took over Chancery rather than eliminating it, and sought to reform it and increase its efficiency. Lord

Protector Cromwell’s government formally removed the Court’s power of injunction, but still allowed it to operate otherwise.189 The Court of Chancery remained active until 1875, when it was disbanded and absorbed into the Common Law by act of Parliament.190

Like the Court of Requests, the Court of Chancery used English Bill procedure. Plaintiffs would begin by submitting a plea to the Councilors, claiming they could not get proper redress

186 Henry Horowtiz and Patrick Polden, “Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?,” Journal of British Studies 35:1 (January 1996), 30-31. 187 Ibid., 37. 188 Joseph Parkes, A History of the Court of Chancery (London: Longman Rees, 1828), Ch. VII. 189 Kerly, Equitable Jurisdiction, 158. 190 Ibid., 203. 77 for their civil cases in the appropriate common law courts. In their bill, the subject would testify to their occupation and where they came from, and then describe in non-technical jargon the nature of their complaint.191 If the case proceeded beyond a bill, the Court would summon the defendant to make their own written answer, or demurrer, to the charges, which could then result in replies by both sides. Defendants also had the option to file a cross-bill against the plaintiff.192

After this, the Court would gather testimony from witnesses, and would eventually make a ruling on the case.193

Most bills that made their way before the Court of Chancery did not result in the gathering of much evidence, as the Councilors would have encouraged the use of other Courts or alternative arrangements whenever possible. This included referrals to other arbitration bodies, as well as referrals to other courts.194 Chancery, like most law courts, was considered a last resort when other methods of conflict resolution had failed. The presence of cases there usually implied that the parties had not been able to come to resolution through other methods of reconciliation, or otherwise that the plaintiff wanted to use a bill to force their opponent to negotiate and avoid a lengthy trial.195 Despite this, several cases indicate that plaintiffs had gone to Chancery to appeal decisions from the other courts, because they felt they had not received justice.

Methodology and Sample

The records of the Court of Chancery, located at the UK National Archives, are extensive and diverse, with material spanning the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries. The existing

191 Jones, The Elizabethan Court of Chancery, 138. 192 Henry Horowitz, A Guide to Chancery Equity Records and Proceedings 1600-1800 (London: Public Record Office, 1995), 13-14. 193 Ibid., 15. 194 Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation,” 925-927; Todd, “For Eschewing of Trouble,” 9. 195 Patterson, “Conflict Resolution and Patronage in Provincial Towns,” 13-15. 78 documents consist of legal briefs read to the Lord Chancellor and other judges in the form of prepared speeches. Scribes did not directly record oral testimony of events that took place in the

Court of Chancery.196 Records from this Court have a good survival rate. Unfortunately, no scholar has calendared the records in any way. Researchers have some basic ability to search

Chancery records in a database and several index guides which at least provide case names and some basic details about what each case might contain.197 The records of each individual suit have been divided up and organized by which phase of the court proceeding they represent

(pleadings, interrogatories, witness testimony, and final decrees and orders), rather than as whole case narratives.198 This makes it somewhat difficult to find the details of any single case on a blind search, but a search for plaintiff or defendant’s names, as well as keywords which appear in a case (such as “tobacco”) can lead to considerable progress finding relevant bills. The sheer volume of Chancery records has resulted in most studies using representative samples, either in systematically examining and comparing a single years’ worth of cases or examining a series of cases with similar characteristics. As a result, many interesting stories from the Chancery archive remain untold, despite regular use of the records in social and legal histories of the period.

For the purposes of this dissertation, I found a sample of 54 Bills, almost all with answers, relating to the Atlantic world between 1607 and 1649.199 The greatest concentration of these records came from the 1630s, when the number of Atlantic planters had grown into the tens of thousands, many individuals in England had business there, and no civil wars disturbed the

196 Horowitz, A Guide to Chancery Equity Records, 48. 197 I thank Simon Healey for sharing his notes about tobacco and sugar cases in the Court of Chancery during James I’s and Charles I’s reigns with me, which allowed me to easily compile a considerable amount of my eventual document sample. 198 All Chancery documents are under the UK National Archive’s “C” catalogue label. Pleadings such as the ones used in this dissertation would be listed under C2 through C13; all samples used for this dissertation happen to be in either C2 or C8. 199 See Appendix B of this dissertation for information on these cases. 79 operation of a central court. As with the Court of Requests, these documents primarily concern

Atlantic trade between parties based in England proper. The share of actual planters involved in

Chancery proceedings proved higher than in my Requests sample.200 Chancery Court more frequently oversaw lawsuits that dealt with land and inheritance of property in the Americas. The remainder of the cases dealt with suits over tobacco, sugar, cotton, and other luxury goods produced in the Americas, as well as New England fish trading in Europe. Lastly, two suits arose over Philip Foote of Kent’s monopoly on making clay tobacco pipes.201

Like other Courts, the records of Chancery contain stock phrases and legal fictions gave the cases a certain standard logic. Plaintiffs would open by going into explicit details as to the history of the case and the relationship between the parties, and end on a note of why, specifically, Chancery had to be the place to solve the case. The jurisdictional pluralism endemic in early modern England would mean that this rarely would have in fact been the case.202

Alternatives such as the Court of Exchequer or Court of Requests might have proved just as suitable for Atlantic cases, let alone judicial solutions to the problems presented. Some of this language might have come from lawyers, hoping to collect fees. Yet, the plaintiffs’ desire for access to royal justice would have been enough, and their belief that their case should be heard justified these methods. While the evidence makes clear that many realized other courts could have jurisdictionally handled the case, the rhetorical emphasis on the need for the Lords

Chancellor specifically to solve the case would have strengthened the argument in Court. The moral justice of the matter outweighed specifics of logic.203

200 Actual planters or former planters participated in 19 cases within this sample, or 29.2%, and another 11 cases involved individuals who had a part time residence in North America, or 16.9% of the total. 201 TNA C2/JasI/F11/38 and C2/ JasI/F26/23 202 Hart, The Rule of Law, 123. 203 See Gaskill, “Reporting Murder,” 1-5; Johnson, “The Preconstruction of Witness Testimony,” 128-130. 80

The collective scope of the Chancery Court records provides more insight into what people thought the Court could do for them and the uses of its authority than information or details about the specifics of any given case. While the Court attempted to make its rulings accord with other courts’ decisions, it still offered a flexible legal environment which crossed jurisdictional boundaries. The royal prerogative applied across the empire, allowing it to adapt to the new imperial context. With colonial cases, the Chancery Court affirmed the authority of the state to oversee and make legal adjustments in the colonies. Although few Chancery cases made it to a final ruling, nonetheless the mere existence of bills and answers indicates currency for this form of law in the early English empire. Plaintiffs felt that royal prerogative could provide them with a force to resolve their troubles when alternative options had failed. They knew that royal imperium extended to the colonies, and thus took advantage of it to seek their desired financial gains.

English Atlantic Settlers and the Chancery Court

From the 1610s onward, the Chancery Court played a steady role solving cases concerning the movement and sale of goods and property in the American colonies. Cases concerning inheritance, bonds, or ships appeared before the court somewhat regularly. As with other equity courts, one of the major strengths of Chancery for Atlantic business was its royal, rather than geographical, jurisdiction. Cases which bridged two of the King’s realms could find resolution without issue in the Chancery Court. Further, Chancery had already assumed a role as an arbiter of similar cases between different kingdoms in the British Isles, so litigants simply used the Court as they already had done in those situations. While defendants might question the validity of the plaintiff’s specific case, they did not question the idea that Chancery Court was an 81 appropriate place to handle crimes of Atlantic concern. Settlers accepted oversight by the Lord

Chancellor and lawyers over colonial business as if it occurred in England.

The case of Farley v. Van Steinkist, from 1632, offers an example of how Chancery could arbitrate disagreements among planters. William Farley sued over Gilbert Van Steinkist’s failure to meet the terms of a contract that they had signed in London in 1629, prior to the defendant’s move to “St. Christopher’s or thereabouts” to grow tobacco.204 The two agreed that

Farley would finance the initial voyage. Van Steinkist and others would settle the island and plant tobacco. Once he returned, the parties could “sell [the tobacco] at best rate and for best possible profit that could be made, in equal profit.”205 Farley believed that his business partner had planted the tobacco with the best methods and returned with a great deal of profitable product. However, according to the plaintiff, Van Steinkist had broken his obligation, selling all the tobacco for his own gain rather than sharing fifty percent. Farley insisted he had tried gentlemanly manners to negotiate payment, but this had failed; therefore, he took matters before the Court of Chancery.206 In his defense, Van Steinkist denied this arrangement had existed. He claimed that this business with the plaintiff had entailed a simple buyer-seller relationship, and

Farley had only contracted to buy a certain quantity of his tobacco produced in the Caribbean as a customer. Farley’s attempt to recover perceived debt, and Van Steinkist’s dismissal of this charge, both fall into a typical pattern for Atlantic Chancery cases. Plaintiffs sued over contracts they believed were in force, while defendants either denied the terms of the contract, or that a contract had ever existed.207

204 TNA C2/ChasI/F3/44, 26 April 1632. 205 Ibid. 206 This in keeping with standard practices of the day. See Muldrew, The Economy of Obligation, Ch. 8. 207 Such disputes occurred frequently in Early Modern England, in part because many contracts were only agreed upon orally. See Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation,” 919. 82

In other cases, planters became defendants over debts in England. This occurred in the case of Thomas and Mary Townshead v. Sir Paul Pynder and Sir John Harvey in 1642. The latter defendant was the governor of Virginia from 1630 to 1640. The Townsheads, a family of potters from Southwark, brought suit against Pynder and Harvey over a combination of debts related to pottery they allegedly sold to the defendants and debts from the estate of Christian Willem; they believed they were owed debts from this estate. The plaintiffs named Pynder co-defendant because he had been caretaker of the property in England while Harvey served his term in

Virginia, but the Townshead’s bill mentions him infrequently. The deceased man was another

Southwark resident, who had died in debt to Harvey. As a result of Willem’s debts, Harvey had become owner of his estate in 1630, the year he left for Virginia. The married couple claimed that Harvey had taken “some seven hundred pounds of ready money by the bonds of the country, by the book of purchase” to claim this estate in Southwark.208 The Townsheads argued that

Willem had owed them money as well, which they believed entitled them to part of the estate.

Because they lacked Harvey’s access to ready credit, they had not been able to assume control of their share before he took ownership. The potters claimed they had attempted several times to write to Harvey to settle the case, and that “he promised to pay one thousand pound out of customs to your majesty’s ” to settle the debts and ownership of Willem’s land.209 The couple had received no money as of the time they filed suit, twelve years after the initial seizure of property. This timing raises an interesting question about the delay. Perhaps the couple waited for Harvey to return to England so that the Chancery Court could subpoena him.

Alternatively, they may have feared he would use his office to help dodge their complaint. Either

208 TNA C2/ChasI/T10/50, 1 November 1642. 209 Ibid. 83 way, their own testimony and the gap between the incident and the suit suggests they had tried alternative forms of arbitration, invoking Chancery as a last resort.

Harvey responded, denying that he had instructed anyone to pay the couple. He proclaimed “of the letters he sent out of Virginia, if they may be procured . . . [he would] acknowledge anything therein under his hand … he denyeth that he ever said your majesty would pay four thousand pounds to the said defendants out of customs that did arise out of the goods imported from Virginia to England.”210 He acknowledged receiving letters from the

Townsheads in Virginia, as well as frequent communications with Pynder about the affairs of the estate, but denied he owed anything to the Townsheads. Harvey’s involvement with this case while abroad shows that legal business had not stopped on account of his residence in the colony.

Chancery could consider all evidence, no matter where it had been produced, in considering the resolution of this affair.

In at least one case, American traders sued in Chancery over the boat used to sail to the colonies rather than any cargo. In 1638, Thomas Abraham of Dartmouth, Devon, sued Henry

Humbley over damage to a boat he had loaned on bond to the defendant. According to both parties, Humbley had rented the boat to conduct a typical merchant-adventurer mission to St.

Christopher and elsewhere in the West Indies, selling food and supplies to the planters and then returning with tobacco. According to Abraham, the defendant had “ill fitted” his ship, and

“according to the condition aforesaid . . . sail[ed] unto St. Christopher’s and other Caribbean

Islands to trade, and having ended her voyage there, and came bound for England, wherein she received a great leake and was forced to put in to the Canarie Islands drowned, wherein he lost

210 Ibid. 84 his whole cargo.”211 The plaintiff blamed ill maintenance of his ship by Humbley as the cause of this leak, and sued for damages to his vessel in accordance with the bond he signed. Abraham’s bill gives no indication he cared about the lost Indies goods, and simply wanted Humbley to pay for damages to the ship. Upon finding that both the defendant and all involved mariners had gone back out to sea, he asked for Chancery to “issue a writ of subpoena for the said Humbley” so that they could settle the case upon his return from overseas.212 The Chancery Court issued a subpoena, which survives, as does Humbley’s answer. He claimed to “know of no bill of the said date” which would have put what he owed for the ship in writing, and blamed the ill- maintenance of the vessel not on his negligence, but on bad weather in the Caribbean and delays resulting from tropical storms. Either way, Abraham’s decision to sue in Chancery reinforces the idea that Atlantic trading fell under Chancery Court’s purview. As the ocean could be a legally ambiguous space, not subject to any one jurisdiction’s enforcement of common law, equity proved a good option for this kind of conflict resolution. The King’s imperium applied not just in

England and the colonies, but on the decks of English ships as well.

These three cases provide examples of American planters involved in lawsuits, either as plaintiffs or as defendants, and display the willingness of English people to use Chancery as a means of redress. Suits over goods and tradeable material in the colonies provided similar conundrums to those in other equity courts. Plaintiffs and defendants alike believed the prerogative justice of the Court of Chancery could prove useful in prosecuting suits over great distances. Ordinary English people clearly understood the crown’s legal imperium and its financial implications for the Atlantic economy. Plaintiffs hoped to use the Court to force

211 TNA C2/ChasI/A32/3, 21 July 1635 212 Ibid. 85 opponents to pay. Defendants knew this and used their answers to dismiss or downplay charges, citing the difficulties of Atlantic business and greed on plaintiffs’ parts as reasons the state should dismiss the case. Both parties recognized, however, the legitimacy of Chancery as a space for making Atlantic arbitrations as if they were involved in ordinary business back at home.

Dealings in Land

Frequent suits over American land in Chancery set it apart from the Court of Requests.

Confusion after a landholder died, and about who should control the property, often generated litigation. Under the civil law notion of “terra nulla,” English people perceived an abundance of open land in the Americas.213 However, when dealing in land, plaintiffs and defendants often framed their arguments with reference to traditional landholding customs in England. Chancery

Court became one weapon in the legal arsenal subjects could deploy make claims and shape colonial landholding patterns, aiming to benefit themselves. In many instances, wills left by a dead planter were disputed across the Atlantic, and legal action occurred between the relatives of the deceased and the executors of the wills in the colonies. At other times, a disagreement over who owned what land might result in litigation. Prerogative courts offered a good option to mediate these disputes, due to their wide jurisdiction and the inability of some plaintiffs to access colonial courts from England. As landowners tended to possess at least some wealth, they perhaps could not successfully plead poverty and use the Court of Requests, and to the Chancery to do this business.214

213 English made their legal claims to over the land of the New World the same way they had done in the past. Claims to the land was established through the Crown’s imperium. Then, improving and building on land was required to establish possession and validate individual subjects’ claims to a given parcel. Legitimizing claims to legal possession land was important for the planters. See Patricia Seed, “Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires,” The William and Mary Quarterly 49:2 (Summer 1992); Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World, Ch. 4 and Ch. 6. 214 See Chapter 1 of this dissertation for information on the legal fiction of poverty in the Court of Requests. 86

Thomas Steed v. William Brockett provides an example of a Chancery Court case over land in America. It stemmed from an alliance of two planters breaking down, offering an extremely rare case (in any of the prerogative courts) of the lawsuit occurring between two people explicitly stated as still living in the American colonies at the time of the suit. Steed had provided £26 for John Brockett, William’s brother, to voyage to St. Kitts in 1636. Both the plaintiff and the defendant planned to grow cotton there for export. According to Steed, they agreed to share the profits of any cotton grown in the colony, and Brockett was to pay twenty pounds weight of tobacco produced on his farm in return for taking him to the Caribbean. John

Brockett succumbed to disease on the island some time before 1639 (the year of the suit). His brother William, also resident on St. Kitts, assumed responsibility for the estate. Steed estimated that the late Brockett had “possessed a personal estate to the value of three hundred pounds, besides diverse goods and separate debts,” including “several pounds weight of cotton and other sweet goods”.215 Steed acknowledged John Brocket’s will, which left his brother everything, but insisted William Brockett still owed his 50-50 share of the cotton produced by his brother’s land, as per the contract. Further, according to the plaintiff, “although your orator hath often in a very friendly manner demanded and requested the said William Brockett give satisfaction for his said debts,” no money had come.216 Thus, while on a return trip to England, Steed brought his grievances to Chancery.

The same summer voyage also brought William Brockett home for a visit to England, allowing him to leave a deposition in court eight days later. He testified that he had had no knowledge of the supposed bond agreed on by his brother and Steed before the plaintiff had

215 TNA C2/ChasI/S12/9, 12 Oct 1639 216 Ibid. 87 begun to bother him for money, and that the will had specified nothing about the debt. To bolster his defense, he also stated he had “paid any debts and residue whereof [his brother] died . . .

[such as] to John Hawkins, surgeon of the ship, of cotton [and] sugar debts . . . to the amount of twenty pounds.”217 Using this as a legal strategy reinforced the core of Brockett’s defense argument: the plaintiff could not produce the documentation that would prove the alleged bond’s legitimacy, and had he done so, Brockett would have gladly paid. “Without a sample of the said bill set down and alleged, there is no thing material or effectual to obey,” claimed Brockett.218

Steed v. Brocket offers an instance wherein planter plaintiffs believed the state might help them obtain goods they thought they were owed when personal mediation had failed. The initial efforts to persuade William Brockett to pay half of his brother’s cotton indicate that the expense of a legal proceeding, let alone returning to England, were not first recourse for Steed. When this failed, however, he sought Crown authority to repossess the goods involuntarily rather than voluntarily. Brockett’s defense, although containing more legalese than usual and thus perhaps reflecting his lawyer’s language as much as his own, indicated that had Steed provided evidence for this bond, he would have seen both the bond and the Chancery’s orders to pay it as valid.

Both plaintiff and defendant believed they could sway the court to their side, but neither saw it as an invalid body to arbitrate the case. A great deal of precedent existed for Chancery to sort through which party owned which properties and the products produced.219

Sir Thomas Mortlake sued one John Robinson for similar problems of inheritance and possession, in this case over the Virginia manor of the late William Bell. This suit began in the

Court of Common Pleas. Mortlake claimed he could not achieve his desired result there and thus

217 Ibid. 218 Ibid. 219 Klinck, Conscience, Equity and the Court of Chancery, 145-150. 88 filed a bill in the Court of Chancery instead. He indicated he had originally owned “diverse” landholdings in Virginia, some of which had been leased to Bell.220 Robinson, according to

Mortlake, had “occupied” land that was meant to be returned to him on Bell’s death, and extracted tobacco, foodstuffs, and other items which might make profits without license.221

Robinson had used dubious claims to occupy this land, stating he intended to wrap up Bell’s affairs, and Mortlake had been unable to dislodge him. He asked for the Chancery Court to use its injunction ability and prevent the case from continuing to Common Pleas. His determination displays the overlapping layers of authority in the English Courts, and Chancery’s place in larger patterns of trans-Atlantic law. The plaintiff could not show documentary evidence of his claims, and thus hoped the Crown officials would help him recover this land. An equity court provided a logical place to do so, as Common Law courts would have required this evidence. Robinson responded to the initial bill about a year later. The defendant denied the idea that this land had been a rental agreement, and cited Bell’s will, written in Virginia, as evidence for his ownership of this land, purchased outright from Mortlake.

These Chancery cases reinforce the place of the Crown as an authority over property disputes among English people in America. Since the Middle Ages, the Court of Chancery had adjudicated disputes over land and its usage in the King’s realms, and it continued to do so in the colonies. While the specifics of the American context had their own wrinkles, Chancery’s involvement in land cases marked nothing new. Further, plaintiffs and defendants cited English precedents for why they should or should not have to pay or forfeit property. All parties agreed

220 TNA C2/ChasI/M40/64, 29 February 1627 221 Ibid. 89 to prerogative oversight of the process. For many, direct intervention from the Crown proved as useful as local laws or emerging custom in the English plantations.222

Thomas Cornwallis, Maryland’s Plundering Time, and The Chancery

A series of Chancery cases from 1640s Maryland provides additional insight on the perceived role of the English central government and its authority to address not only economic grievances in America, but also political ones. Tensions between the colony’s Protestant and

Catholic populations, combined with long-distance effects of the Civil War in England, produced a politically unstable environment in 1630s and 1640s Maryland. Several episodes of localized violence led to property damage in the colony, escalating after the outbreak of Civil War in

England.223 During this chaos, a few cases made their way before the Chancery Court, containing reference to the political affairs of the colony. Their presence is significant for historical understanding of the English Civil Wars and the challenge to royal prerogative and institutions reliant on it in a trans-Atlantic context. The major political upheavals of the period were felt in

America, and planters in the colonies reacted to the course of events like their English, Scottish, and Irish co-subjects. Cavalier, Roundhead, and neutral factions existed in the colonies, and they closely followed events because they had implications for the validity of their charters, their practice of religion, and their social and economic livelihoods.224 Six of the colonies even had rebellions against Parliament in the aftermath of the execution of Charles I, Maryland among

222 The crown had specific legal and historical rights in authorizing and validating its new colonial peripheries. See Anthony Pagden, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France c.1500-c. 1800 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), 94; Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession, 205-206, Ken Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 60-65. 223 Antoinette Sutto, Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists: Maryland and the Politics of Religion in the English Atlantic, 1630-1690 (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015), 48-51. 224 Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 88-122; Donague, Fire Under the Ashes, 198-238. 90 them.225 The fact that a few cases appeared in Chancery after 1642 suggests a dedication to the institution, even while the King and Court had left London and the validity of any prerogative court had come under question.226 It had become such a commonly used instrument for business, in all parts of the empire, that some subjects felt perfectly comfortable that its decisions held weight and that it could still provide them with answers to their grievances. Thus, the Chancery cases from Maryland demonstrate the trans-Atlantic nature of a wider British political society by the 1640s, and the important role legal institutions played in its operation.

An understanding of Maryland’s “plundering time” of 1645 to 1646, in which the merchant-mariner and functional pirate staged a successful coup against Lord

Baltimore’s government, is required to analyze these cases. Ingle’s own statements indicate that he saw himself as a defender of Protestantism, on a mission to destroy the Jesuits in Maryland and Catholic influence over the colony.227 In addition to these religio-political justifications,

Ingle resented past commercial damages by Marylanders, who had seized his cargos on account of his political agitating.228 The work of Timothy B. Rioardan has framed Ingle’s rebellion as an extended episode of the English Revolution, and its anti-Catholic and anti-established landholder goals reflected contemporary warfare and political discourse in the British Isles.229 Warfare was

225 Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 86. The other five were , Barbados, Bermuda, Newfoundland, and Virginia. 226 Parliament assumed functions related to the American Plantations during the 1640s which were once handled by the Crown. Before the English Civil War, Parliament had played no role in administering these areas, but they began to appoint their own governors and see to the business of maintaining political control there. See ibid., 49-50 & 53- 56. 227 Sutto, Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists, 48-51. Ingle was also allied with , the former landholder of Kent Island for Virginia, who spent 40 years trying to destroy Maryland’s claim to lands he thought his. 228 Ingle had been charged with treason by Governor in 1644 and had fled to England before returning with a posse to stage his coup. Ingle had also filed a suit in Admiralty over these damages. See Timothy B. Riordan, The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645-1646 (Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2004), Ch. 6-8. 229 Ibid., 5. 91 not contained to Great Britain, and the property damages and political explosions that caused social conflict there also ensnared the North American empire.

All surviving pre-Restoration Maryland Chancery cases before 1645 involve the planter

Thomas Cornwallis, first an ally and later a bitter enemy of Ingle. Thomas Cornwallis was one of the major landholders in the colony since its founding in 1634 and had been one of Lord

Baltimore’s earliest commissioners (and thus worked closely with Leonard Calvert, Lord

Baltimore’s cousin and ). He was also a major creditor to other Maryland residents, and amassed considerable wealth from rents.230 His first appearance in Chancery is a rather mundane one, as a defendant in a case over inherited lands in the colony. James Harley of

London sued him to recover the property of his deceased brother Jerome in 1639. Per Harley’s account, his brother had “sailed to the New World in 1630 intending to plant himself and his wife,” and to this end had settled first in Virginia, and then moved to Maryland.231 Jerome had died in 1638, leaving an estate worth £1,000 to his brother, including lands he had leased from

Cornwallis. James Harley indicated he did not want to become a planter and care for the land himself, but he did want to keep the land in the family and keep it productive. Therefore, he sued

Cornwallis, Jerome’s creditor, to release the land, because the defendant had seized it after

Jerome’s death. Cornwallis insisted that he had the lawful right to take back the land that he had leased to Jerome until the family had paid for it in full. He stated, “the debt bill allows [me] to take administration of the goods of [Hawley] . . . according to the laws and customs lawfully delivered by his majesty” and also that his seizure of the land was “proper according to the practice of that province.”232 Cornwallis argued for this despite the fact that Jerome’s widow

230 Riordian, The Plundering Time, 82. 231 TNA C2/ChasI/H11/19, 12 Nov. 1639. Cornwallis’ answer specifies that the property was on Maryland’s Eastern Shore and not by St. Mary’s City where most of the first Maryland planters had settled. 232 Ibid. 92

Eleanor still lived on the property and relied on it for support. Either way, the answer illustrates how Cornwallis already concerned himself in 1639 with the jurisdiction of the King and the laws of England as they pertained to Maryland. He did acknowledge the colony had local customs, but also invoked the Crown and standard English land contracts in making his own defense.233 Thus, he indicated a belief that authority originated from England and the Crown, and not specific laws

Baltimore’s government had passed. He tailored his appeals to the Crown itself, knowing well that appealing to its prerogative authority might help him in this case.

The disputes over the Harley estate had not resolved by the time of the next case involving Cornwallis, Folne v. Cornwallis, in June 1642. In interpreting this case, and others during and after January 1642, one must consider that the Court of Chancery now operated under

Parliamentarian oversight. While the King still believed that his privy council controlled the

Court from a legal standpoint, Parliament disagreed, arguing the King and his councilors had forfeited the seals and other procedural items needed to run Chancery Court by raising an army against Parliament.234 Thus, they absorbed the Court and its equity functions. When the plaintiff

James Folne sued Cornwallis, he believed in the power of Chancery as an institution, backed by the state, to provide him justice, and that justice could be served by the state despite conflicts among its institutional members. Only a bill of complaint exists from the Folne case. Folne had similar disagreements to James Harley’s over land rights in Maryland, and mentioned that “the said defendant hath seized [the orator’s] beaver pelts about the handling of his credit line” and

233 For scholarship on custom and its importance to local communities in early modern England, see Wrightson, English Society, Ch. 2; Andy Wood, “The Place of Custom in Plebeian Political Culture: England, 1550–1800,” Social History 22:1 (1997), 46-60; Daniel C. Beaver, Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester, 1590-1690 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 30-35; Rab Houston, “Custom in Context: Medieval and Early Modern Scotland and England,” Past and Present 211:1 (May 2011), 35-76; Wood, The Memory of the People: Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 156-187. 234 Parkes, A History of the Court of Chancery, 114-117. 93 also emphasized “the seizure of goods and tobacco from the said widow Elinor”, the same woman as in the Harley case; she now lived in poor economic shape as a result.235 Folne accused

Cornwallis of avarice, for “he hath great stores of tobacco, corne, cloth, and iron, which he hath possessed from others.”236 While Cornwallis’ answer, if one ever occurred, is lost, this bill nonetheless suggests how two parties in the Maryland colony both believed the Chancery Court could become an ally. If Cornwallis hoped the crown would provide support for the seizure of property, so too could Folne hope the crown would halt the taking of property and protect the indebted. Folne asked the Chancery Court to protect him, and on several occasions near the end of his bill, mentioned “the government” of Maryland could not do so.237 Despite the chaotic political situation in England, these planters still believed that the central government, based in

London, had something to offer them. The institutional power of Chancery transcended conflict.

Willing to use the Chancery Court himself as a plaintiff, three years later, Cornwallis sued Richard Ingle for his role in damaging and destroying property. Cornwallis indicated over

£1,000 in damages to his tobacco farm, the loss of cattle, and destruction of assorted merchandise. Originally, Cornwallis had been one of Ingle’s allies in Maryland, and had argued for his release from prison on one occasion. This had made Cornwallis enemies in Maryland.

“Not only did some half of the subjects of the plantation . . . threaten to take away said orator’s life and plunder and make spoil of his house and goods, but so far invoking the said governor of this province against him.”238 His prior support for Ingle earned him no mercy during the chaos

235 TNA C2/ChasI/H21/54, 4 June 1642. 236 Ibid. 237 Ibid. 238 TNA C2/ChasI/C15/23, 30 August 1645. 94 of the Plundering Time. Cornwallis found his property seized as supply during Ingle’s mission to end the Baltimore regime.

Richard Ingle did disfray many of your Orator’s said Cattel . . . [Ingle] did for a while keep garrison in your Orator’s said house and gave for the command of the burning of the said house, and the said Richard Ingle in a most violent and unconscionable manner did carry away out of the said province a rig of your Orator’s ready for employment . . . unchristianlike, unconscionable, barbarous.239

This pillaging forced Cornwallis to flee the colony. Once he returned to England, he filed suit.

The opening of Cornwallis’ bill provides an unusual amount of political commentary for an Chancery case. Rather than making this a strictly financial suit, Cornwallis took the opportunity to demean, criticize, and discredit Lord Baltimore’s proprietorship of the Maryland colony for its failure to protect English subjects living there. To this end, he wanted the government of England, as his ultimate sovereign, to intervene in the affairs of the colony. He reminded the government that “thirteen years past our sovereign Lord the King’s majesty decided to grant . . . the authority to the said Baltimore and his heirs to make and extend the said plantation.”240 In opening this way, Cornwallis directly tied Crown authority to Maryland and noted that the charter reserved ultimate power for the English government. This opening provides critical information about Cornwallis’ understanding of chartering and the trans-

Atlantic authority of the state, because he expected Parliament to honor the charter granted by the King for Maryland, despite the document’s protections for Catholics and Parliament having nothing to do with the original process of its creation. Summarizing Richard Ingle’s career and the damages he caused, Cornwallis then stated his belief that while Ingle might be liable for

239 TNA C2/ChasI/C15/23 240 Ibid. 95 damages, the chaos had occurred due to the corrupt, popish government of Lord Baltimore. He hoped that Parliament could intervene and protect Maryland from ransacking, where Baltimore had failed to do. In so doing, he recognized that the Calvert family has failed in their duty to protect the colony as proprietors. His reliance on anti-popery as an argument mirrors political language used during the Civil Wars more broadly. Many English firebrands and pamphleteers had used fear of Catholics as a motivational tool in the 1640s for the parliamentarian cause, particularly in the context of the Irish rebellion of 1641, during which false rumors spread of the mass murder of English people in Ireland.241 While in this case it was anti-Catholics, not

Catholics, who had caused the actual damage, blaming Catholics for discord and instability in

English society was familiar concept and loaded political language.

Considering the explicitly political nature of Cornwallis’ charges, Ingle’s eventual response proved remarkably apolitical. Ingle tersely stated that charges “were filed against him merely of malice.”242 Ingle himself gave no indication of the political content of the damages, despite the fact that framing the incident as collateral damage in the name of the Parliamentarian, anti-Catholic cause might have helped his case in the Parliament-controlled Chancery

(Parliament certainly had no qualms about using forceful tactics to restore control in Ireland).243

The text of the answer makes it clear that the lawyers already had cross-referenced the cases that

241 As scholarship of the English Civil War has evolved into a broader consideration of the Stuart domains holistically, consensus has emerged that the 1641 rebellion in Ireland represented a piece of a broader crisis and collapse of effective royal management of disparate religious and political interests in Scotland, Ireland, and England, with each new rebellion influencing the next. For scholarship on anti-Catholicism in the lead up to and during the English Civil War, see Robert Clifton, “Popular Fear of Catholics During the English Revolution,” Past and Present 52:1 (1971), 30-41; Keith Lindley, “The impact of the 1641 rebellion upon England and Wales, 1641– 5,” Irish Historical Studies 18:70 (Sept. 1972), 143-176; Braddick, God’s Fury England’s Fire, 168-177; Eamon Darcy, The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the War of the Three Kingdoms (Woodbridge: Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2013), 77-102. Darcy also considers implications for how both King and Parliament addressed Ireland in the 1640s and 1650s on pages 134-136. 242 TNA C2/ChasI/C15/23 243 Darcy, The Irish Rebellion of 1641, 29-47. 96

Ingle’s violent strikes on Maryland generated in the Admiralty Court, in order to gather more information about how to best handle this incident.

Adjudicating civil conflicts in Maryland via Chancery reveals the extent to which subjects saw the equity court as a place for solving not only financial, but also more general social and political disputes in the colonies. Their trust extended even beyond the prerogative nature of Chancery and to a more general sense that the Court functioned as a beneficial institution of the state. Maryland’s political instability during its first twenty years had bred fear, distrust, and violence, calling into question Lord Baltimore’s proprietorship. While some subjects, such as Richard Ingle, decided to use force, Thomas Cornwallis used prerogative courts to strengthen his position in the colonies. The justice of the central government proved attractive, for not only could he seek to regain financial damages there via civil suit, but he could also air political frustrations with Maryland the failure of the Baltimore proprietorship and suggest the state could help restore order for English subjects with investments in Maryland.244 In doing so, he brought attention to disputes in the American Plantations directly to the feet of the central government. Cornwallis participated in the political debates of the Civil War era through his arguments in Chancery Court. There, he advocated for a specific concrete political action in response to an Atlantic conflict, in the same way many English subjects had during the period through speech, petitioning, and the presses.

Shipping Debts in Chancery and Corporate Colonial Lawsuits

Property in the Americas only accounts for a portion of the Court’s Atlantic business.

Shipping goods across the Atlantic and disputes over American trade also featured in several

244 Cornwallis never personally returned to Maryland after 1645. Riordan, Plundering Time, 232. 97 suits. Individuals and corporations used the Chancery Court to manage disagreements in overseas shipping well before Atlantic colonization. Overseas subjects working in or with joint stock companies frequently found themselves plaintiffs or defendants there during the

Elizabethan era.245 Suits about tobacco, fish, sugar, and cotton from the American colonies in the

1620s and 1630s followed from prior usage of Chancery for European goods. The Court of

Chancery also could adjudicate wage and labor disputes related to the shipping industry.

Individuals who sued in Chancery Court generally did so because they felt their business partners violated bonds of debt and obligation. As a result of distance, documents confirming contracts may not have been readily available to present as evidence in court. Laxer standards for evidence in an equity court allowed plaintiffs who had lost access to or misplaced written contracts to have a chance at of winning their lawsuit. The use of Chancery by corporate groups more frequently than Requests also signifies the importance of the Court to the growth of the Atlantic economy.

Gilds, boroughs, and other corporations had long expressed a form of corporate citizenship and expressed an understanding that they had ancient liberties and privileges in a manner akin to individuals.246 Atlantic corporations quickly applied this idea to their activities. Chancery suits allowed these bodies to pursue goals in accordance with their legal rights on an Atlantic scale and strengthen the place of corporate entities in the new economic and political dimensions of a

245 Carole Shammas, “The ‘Invisible Merchant’ and Property Rights: The Misadventures of an Elizabethan Joint Stock Company,” Business History 17:2 (July 1975), 95-109. 246 Patterson, “Conflict Resolution and Patronage,” 880-885, Phil Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” American Historical Review 112:4 (October 2007), 1027-1031. Early modern corporations, including incorporated towns and boroughs as well as profit-based ventures, understood themselves as frameworks for civic participation in a humanist sense of the term, and places for active practice of citizenship and community participation. With this public activity came participation in the public sphere. Corporations and the general public discussed where their political power should be exercised and how to exercise it legitimately. Good historical scholarship exists on how these ideas specifically influenced the conduct and management of the Virginia Company. See Fitzmuarice, “The Civic Solution to the Crisis of English Colonization,” 34-43; Haskell, For God, King, and People, 199-271. 98 trans-oceanic empire. Through Chancery Court, English subjects participated in the public sphere both as individuals and corporate bodies.

William Barkley’s suit against Elias Roberts and Robert Dennis provides an example of how misunderstandings about shipping goods and people across the Atlantic could cause a lawsuit in Chancery. This case arose from a voyage to Virginia in 1638, meant for “plaine profit” according to its chief investor Barkley. The defendants were the captains of two ships involved in the operation. According to Barkley, they had commands to transport two individuals to

America who were slated to become indentured servants. Once there, they would acquire tobacco for sale and return to England. The plaintiff sued because he had never seen a penny of profit, even though the captains had returned. Further, they had not carried the servants over. The defendants disputed every word of the plaintiff’s deposition. They implied that they had never contracted to bring the passengers aboard, and that Barkley had only financed one ship, not two.

They also claimed the Admiralty Court had already settled debts related to the one ship they acknowledged.247 This case displays two important points. For one, the litigation involved individuals allegedly not following instructions about who or what to bring where, or when.

Secondly, the cases in the Chancery Court very often contained multiple individuals, either multiple plaintiffs, multiple defendants, or both.248 This signifies corporate activity by plaintiffs, and the expression of communal power to do social and political work on an Atlantic scale.

These types of suits had often occurred in general English commerce, and now occurred regarding trans-Atlantic trade.

247 TNA C2/ChasI/B50/30. 248 By contrast, the Court of Requests usually had handled disputes between parties of one individual. 99

Francis Lathbury’s attempt to finance a voyage to Virginia in 1638 resulted in similar conflict over delays, shipping, and profits. Lathbury, a London merchant, entered into a contract with four other men (Stone, Wilding, Chandler, and Smyth) “to fund and finance a ship trading to Virginia, carrying goods, merchandise and passengers” for delivery and collective profit.249

The ship successfully sailed to Virginia and according to all parties. It returned around

1 April 1639 containing “200 hogsheads of tobacco, fifteen barrels of tobacco, and four butts of tobacco, and also then delivered a great quantity of other goods” in its cargo.250 The suit concerned what happened after the ship returned to England. According to Lathbury, the other four men went to the tobacco storage cellar and “did posess themselves of said goods and carried them away without your Orator’s permission of consent, . . . for their own use.”251 Unable to sell his share of the tobacco and other goods, Lathbury sued to recover £1,500 stolen from him, out of an estimated £10,000 in total value from the haul.252 The defendants, in their answer, challenged Lathbury’s claim that they had not shared the money, insisting they had “never at any time refused” to pay their co-investor’s fair share, and they had paid him the goods’ worth to buy him out of the partnership before taking the tobacco away.253 Perhaps frustrated in efforts to recover his money elsewhere due to lack of concrete evidence for the original contract for the goods, Lathbury may have taken his case to Chancery because of its less stringent evidence standards for a favorable ruling. He clearly felt he had been a victim of theft and sought equity law as a force by which he might gain justice.

249 TNA C2/ChasI/L63/49 250 Ibid. 251 Ibid. 252 Lathbury never explicitly stated how much each man had invested in the voyage, but based on this demand, one can assume his own investment was 15%. 253 Ibid. 100

In 1627, Thomas Smith sued the City of London for £1,000 in relation to debt supplying the Virginia Company. Smith claimed that he had loaned this sum to the aldermen of London, who raised the funds to send a voyage “for the supply of the poor planters” in Virginia, struggling in the early 1620s.254 Many alderman of London were also investors in the Virginia

Company. With this vested interest in its success, it is logical they might flex their power within one corporation to help another they belonged to. According to the plaintiff, even the mayor of

London had signed off on this project, as well as the paperwork for the loan. Smith claimed the

City Corporation, which hand funded this relief mission, had mislead him as to the nature of his shares, and he sued for damages (for he no longer had hope of acquiring returns after the bankruptcy of the Virginia Company and its direct takeover by the state). He further alleged that one alderman, Thomas Middleton, had falsified the books to make it look like Smith had barely invested in this relief effort, and thus “did not pay by proportion of the value of the goods, which the Alderman did take at effective rates.”255 He asked the Chancery Court to summon several

Alderman to gain a fuller account of where his money had gone.

Several representatives of London joined together to answer Smith’s bill. These men confirmed that “it is true the money was lent to Sir George Wollstone, and said alderman appointed guardian of said monies” and that the funds “were borrowed for [the aldermen’s] joynt use, and not for their own supply of any joynte stock.”256 According to the aldermen of the corporation, the Virginia Company had paid Smith and other money lenders via stock, previously owned by the city.257 Since the Company had gone defunct and Virginia had become

254 TNA C2/ChasI/S85/27. 255 Ibid. 256 Ibid. 257 The City of London had bought a significant amount of Virginia Company stock in 1613-14. See Edward D. Neill, History of the Virginia Company of London (Albany NY: J. Munsel, 1890), 54. 101 a Royal possession, Smith now found himself out of luck as his “payment” had no value. The answerers also cited a specific conversation between the plaintiff and one Alderman Johnson, wherein the plaintiff had sent someone to “come here and demanded the said debt and interest of the company, which he believed to be lawful … the said defendant denied that the debts were unpaid.”258 By this, they suggested that Smith did know that the Virginia Company itself, and not just the City of London, held their debt. Regardless of guilt or innocence, this case shows how the Chancery Court operated as an arbitrator not just between private individuals, but subjects and corporations as well. In Chancery, corporations could express their “legal personality” as a chartered entity consisting of multiple collective persons, and seek to convince the King to augment their power on the economic networks of the Atlantic world and protect them from lawsuits.259 They carved a place for themselves in between the state and private subjects. As consideration of corporate suits had been traditional function of prerogative courts, corporations and the individuals that participated in them expected the courts to function in the same manner on the imperial scale. They were not disappointed.

Smith was not the only individual to sue an Atlantic corporation in Chancery. Henry

Woodhow sued the Somers Island Company in 1630 over debts related to his service as . Expecting the company to provide him with an income while on the island (as he claimed was outlined in earlier agreements), Woodhow never received his expected stipends or any funds with which to maintain the Island. He also complained of out-of-pocket expenses for items including “a carpet for a table, cleavers, knives, and two chopping rings,” presumably so that he could supply his kitchen in Bermuda at a level appropriate for a governor of the

258 TNA C2/ChasI/S85/27. 259 See Paul G. Mahoney, “Contract or Concession--An Essay on the History of Corporate Law,” Law Review 34 (1999), 874-875, for a discussion of Corporations as “legal personalities” created by the state. 102 colony.260 Claiming he had helped the fledgling plantation by growing its sugar industry, the former governor estimated the expenses the company owed him at well over £100 of tobacco in unpaid stipends and funds for proper management of the colony. Moreover, Woodhow mentioned that other stockholders in the Somers Island Company were indebted to him over £12 for sugar he had sold. He mentioned that he knew the company had met regarding these charges, but he, “being unable to attend [to the meeting] in England,” had been at a disadvantage by his inability to testify.261 In their defense, the Company said that Woodhow had disobeyed orders and misdirected the funds of the company, rather than never receiving them. Further, as a shareholder in the Somers Island Company, he had agreed to take his pay via stock and not as funds. This case suggests that shareholders in England’s joint-stock companies viewed the Court of Chancery as a place which could combine several distinct issues of unsettled debts with their company into one case, which had wider purview than a common law property suit. The flexibility of Chancery allowed Woodhow to merge his general grievances over salary with the company with his individual debts over sugar trading. He also looked to the authority of the crown to override the joint-stock company’s internal methods of solving financial disagreements.

Because the individuals that ran these companies met and did business on London, which was highly reliant on in-person discussions among stockholders there, subjects like Woodhow had difficulty making them pay. Further, these subjects could not use common law courts to sue for payments outside of the England-specific jurisdiction of that law. Therefore, the prerogative courts and the direct aid from royal authority became the most useful way of going about his

260 TNA C2/ChasI/W14/56. 261 Ibid. 103 lawsuit. Equity allowed for subjects to deal with Atlantic problems against corporations in an imperial space, just the same as corporations could use equity courts to address their own needs.

Cases concerning disputed shipping profits continued even after the prerogative courts were thrown into chaos by the Civil Wars, displaying the institutional strength of the Court. In

1643, Stephen Greenstreet sued Elias Roberts and John Taylor over clapwood imported from

New England. Greenstreet had instructed Roberts, the captain of the ship Cadwallader, to sail to the Bay to trade, and then to New England, and then hurry home in order to rapidly return the investment. Instead, the ship took months more than expected to return, and

Greenstreet believed foul play was involved. He accused Roberts and his first mate Taylor of

“minding and intending to defeat the orator of the benefit of the said voyage, [and] sailed to

Virginia and some other place, then sailed to New England where your orator’s goods [were] intended to be shipped.”262 Greenstreet argued that the two should pay him for damages incurred by taking so long to get home, visiting too many ports of call and spending too long moored at a

New England harbor while his wood rotted. In this instance, the defendants acknowledged their delay, but attributed it to damage to the ship from natural causes. They also challenged

Greenstreet on his use of the Chancery Court. According to the defendants, Greenstreet “hath good remedy by common law upon the charter party,” meaning that since they signed the contract in England and he still had it as evidence, common law courts should solve the issue.263

Roberts and Taylor’s recognition that common law would have done perfectly well here offers a rare argument in these Atlantic cases against Chancery on jurisdictional grounds. Because this case occurred during the English Civil Wars, and the related attacks on the prerogative authority

262 TNA C2/ChasI/G22/20 263 Ibid. 104 of the King, this challenge had quite a bit of force behind it.264 However, even though the King’s authority had come under open question, the defendants did not indicate that Chancery had no role to play at all in the Atlantic world; merely that in this case, where the relevant documents never left England, common law was more appropriate. While they objected to its use in their case, in some other Atlantic situation, Chancery might have helped them as it helped others.

Chancery cases about shipping and the sale of goods reinforced the central court’s oversight role over colonies, corporations, and subjects. The commercial business of individuals and companies became an item for the state to arbitrate, and its equity became a convenient route for people with trans-Atlantic business disputes to resolve conflicts. In so doing, subjects handled their contract and trade disputes about new objects from new areas via traditional avenues for resolving commercial conflicts. Corporations also used the court to defend their place in the Atlantic economy. When they brought cases to Chancery, they implicitly understood the royal prerogative, and that it could help them to obtain justice in congruency with the law.

Women, the Atlantic, and the Court of Chancery

Much like the Court of Requests, the Court of Chancery offered a women influence on the wider Atlantic Empire. Equity law in the Court of Chancery attracted female plaintiffs for all the reasons that it attracted male ones, namely, its flexibility and its larger legal jurisdiction when it came to the Atlantic world. For many plaintiffs, particularly widows, equity offered a chance for success in court which could not occur elsewhere. While female plaintiffs in Chancery never reached levels of male ones, they regularly participated during the early modern era and provided

264 Scholarship on the contested nature of Royal Prerogative during the 1620s to 1640s is voluminous. See Conrad Russell, Parliaments and English Politics 1621 – 1629 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), Ch. 7; Richard Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626-1628 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 150-185; Patterson, “Quo Warranto and Borough Corporations in Early Stuart England,” 883-885; Braddick, God's Fury, England's Fire, 53-56; David Cressy, Charles I and the People of England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), Ch. 3. 105 them a means to involve themselves in the networks of debt and credit with some power.265 This was important because defendants often withheld evidence like contracts, and critical witness testimony became lost with the death of their husbands. With less rigorous standards of evidence than common law, prerogative courts proved helpful. Equity allowed for the pleading of helplessness or poverty, playing into cultural tropes of the early modern English world to gain a sympathetic ear for these women’s cases.266 Unlike the Court of Requests, using this strategy was voluntary on the part of the plaintiffs and their council, suggesting the rhetorical power of the tactic. In general, the Chancery Court provided a place where many women resolved family dramas containing financial or legal dimensions, and their lawyers were quite skilled at using contemporary notions of wife-hood and motherhood to obtain results.267 The Atlantic cases prove no different. These women acquired greater agency in the Atlantic economy by their adept use of the Chancery court and its legal customs to pursue their cases.

As an example, in 1634, Margaret Jackson of Bristol sought the return of her family’s valuables from across the ocean via Chancery. Her late husband, Richard, was a merchant- planter, having settled two years before in Barbados. Margaret claimed that upon his migration, he not only took necessities for survival, but valuables including “gold rings and many other goods of great worth.”268 She sued in hopes of recovering property she believed rightfully hers in her husband’s will, that had instead gone to the Gibbs family of Barbados. Henry Gibbs Sr., a

265 Women’s ability to access and conduct successful suits in court was to a degree intersectional, and heavily dependent on their class, family, and location. See Alexandra Shepard, Worthless Witnesses? Marginal Voices and Women’s Legal Agency in Early Modern England,” Journal of British Studies 58:2 (October 2019), 718-719. 266 Stretton, Women Waging Law, Ch. 3. 267 Tim Stretton, “Written Obligations, Litigation, and Neighborliness, 1580-1680,” in Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England, ed. Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard, and John Walter (London: Woodbridge 2013), 189-210; Daybell, “Gender, Politics and Archives in Early Modern England,” 25-46; Amanda L. Capern, “Maternity and Justice in the Early Modern English Court of Chancery,” Journal of British Studies 58:4 (October 2019), 701-716. 268 TNA C2/ChasI/J11/11. 106 friend of Richard’s, had been named in the will, which Margaret acknowledged; he had also died in the previous year, so his son, Henry Jr., inherited this share of the estate. Margaret claimed that the will had specified the Gibbs’ were not entitled to the rings or other valuables, and so she sued for their recovery. Henry Gibbs Jr. did respond to the charges while in England on business the next year. He acknowledged he owed the Jackson family some of the inheritance, and agreed to return the jewelry, but he also claimed Richard Jackson edited the will after he had gone to

Barbados, giving the Gibbs family a bigger share of the overall value of the Barbadian estate.269

This case gives an example of how Chancery could become a venue to sort out conflicting claims about estates, and female plaintiffs could work toward to goal of protecting their family’s property and position from counter-claims.

Some women sued in Chancery corporate bodies, instead of individuals. Elizabeth

Waters of Surrey, widow of the baker John Waters, provides one example. She alleged that a few years prior to 1623, she and her husband had baked £20 worth of biscuit bread on commission from Nicholas Darling, to “be put on a ship bound for Virginia, for the use of the said governor and company.”270 She specified this commitment to supply bread and repay its cost had occurred under oath. Waters said that the Virginia Company had never bothered to honor their commitment. She and her lawyers emphasized the poverty this caused for the family, stating that this course of events “[left] the said subject and her children indebted” and in “perilous” financial shape.271 Waters asked the Chancery Court to subpoena Darling and question him about the money. While she did not name the Virginia Company itself as a defendant in the case, she regularly mentioned them in the context of owing her money for her bread, as much as Darling

269 Ibid. 270 TNA C2/JasI/W6/68 271 Ibid. 107 himself. The Court did summon Darling, who responded in turn that “the bill of complaynte and all matters therein contained are very untrue and uncertayne,” while denying that a contract for

£20 worth of bread ever existed.272 Instead, he claimed he only purchased £6 10s of bread, and the company had paid for it. Seeing as the case occurred in the early 1620s, one can imagine that the Virginia Company’s financial difficulties may have led to its inability to pay debts. Waters believed that the Chancery Court could help her recover finances in the precarious situation, hopefully quickly to help prevent her children from loss and hardship.

Joan Wright used the Chancery Court to pursue money owed to her late husband as well, in this case unpaid wages. A resident of Plymouth, she sued to collect payment owed to her family by the defendants John Spark and John Goabert, also of Plymouth, who owned a

Virginia-bound ship called the William. Her husband Nicholas had died on the voyage in 1627, one year before the case appeared in the Chancery Court. The ship endured a difficult journey, for “on her return from Virginia she was taken by ye said Turks” and plundered, causing great damage to the ship and the looting of its wares.273 According to Joan, the shipmasters still owed her husband twelve pounds eight shillings in wages on bond, which they had signed before they left Plymouth. Claiming poverty and the need for the Crown’s direct intervention on account of inability to bring suit in the common law courts, she “plead before ye law that your majesty’s court will grant a writ of subpoena [for] ye said Spark and Goabert, commanding them to appear.”274 Wright also mentioned that “her husband had never demanded any money” before this point, suggesting owed back-pay from previous voyages. The defendants did acknowledge that her husband “doth been employed in [their] service and that ye particular monies by

272 Ibid. 273 TNA C2/ChasI/W176/146. “The Turks” may have been Moroccans, and the Wright may have used “Turk” to refer to Muslims generally. 274 Ibid. 108 particular directions were owed to ye servants,” and also agreed that “the said Richard was owed

. . . eight and twelve schillings,” for the amount he worked. However, they claimed they had paid

Richard Wright in gold for the work he had done before his death.275 They denied signing on to this as a bond agreement and said that the money which they had paid fair and square to the family had been lost in the raid upon the ship. Thus, they claimed their own poverty of sorts, unable to pay the wages back having lost thousands of pounds due to the raid.

At least one Atlantic case in the Court of Chancery from James I’s reign, that of Cropley and Clark v. Howe and Howell, pitted women against each other. This case arose due to disputes over the accounts of the deceased Samuel Cropley, late husband of Jane Cropley. Disagreement occurred over tobacco purchased from John Howell some time before 1624. The co-plaintiff,

Richard Clark, appears to have been her new husband. According to Jane, Howell “had pressured her husband of trading passed” between the parties, and the said defendant “had traded tobacco .

. . which he praysed of good and tradeable quality . . . and ye said Samuel Cropley was very much indebted and obliged to buy ye said tobacco.”276 As so often was the case for prerogative court cases involving tobacco trading, the plaintiff then found that the tobacco “was so bad that little or nothing could be made of it.”277 Cropley then accused Howell and Mary Howe, another widow to whom her husband had owed debt, of conspiring and deliberately passing bad tobacco as good in order to “keep [Samuel Cropley] in submission of debt” to themselves. The defendants agreed with Jane Cropley that Howell had sold £24 worth of tobacco to Samuel, but rather than answering questions on the alleged quality of the tobacco, instead claimed Cropley had never paid for it, and that the day after the past Lady Day, “the defendant has enforced upon

275 Ibid. 276 TNA C2/JasI/C22/80. 277 Ibid. 109

Samuel Cropley for payment against the estate.”278 Mary Howe’s role in the case, if any, is unclear from this answer. In this example, one can see that individuals sought to use the Court of

Chancery to arbitrate not only disputes about debt relating to tobacco, but also to seek general redress about payments for debts. The prerogative mechanism could help a family recover from fraud, as the plaintiffs hoped, or act justly to protect defendants from debtors trying to cheat them.

In at least one case, a widow even sued across the Atlantic to acquire land her late husband held in copyhold. The case of Anne Goodwin v. Robert Marsh and Thomas Sherwood is unfortunately fragmentary, as only the defendant’s answer to her bill survives. From their rejoinder to her charges, however, one can figure that she hoped for quite an ambitious judgement. According to the defendants, she had claimed that she owned the rights to significant copyhold in Virginia, inherited through her late husband, and that “the said bond of April the

Ninteenth in the ninth year of the reign… sheweth [her husband’s] purchase from Francis Baxter in the North Shire of Virginia.”279 The defendants put forward an alternative line of ownership, wherein Francis Baxter’s own death had left the property to his only heir, Richard, who was both in England at the time and a minor. They claimed to have purchased the land from his guardians earlier in the year of this case (1635). Neither side could produce the actual documentation to back up their claims, leaving this case ambiguous.

These female plaintiffs provide examples of how the Court of Chancery offered an avenue for women to influence the legal world of the Atlantic colonies, without moving there or settling in large numbers, before 1640. In suing defendants over debts relating to Atlantic lands,

278 Ibid. 279 TNA C2/ChasI/G27/43. “The North Shire” is probably Charles River Shire, on the modern James Peninsula. 110

Atlantic inheritances, of Atlantic goods, they employed the Crown court’s purview to dealing with the legal business generated by the expansion of Empire. Chancery, with its focus on financial litigation, did not offer the same legal fictions about protecting the helpless widow that made the Court of Requests a popular option for women plaintiffs. Nevertheless, women proved adept at using tropes of familial peril or their supposed weakness as women to suggest equitable justice should be on their side, and in doing so, they applied concepts they understood in England to the new Atlantic economy. Whether they won or lost the case, the fact that women saw the

Chancery Court as a source of redress suggests they both knew that they could get assistance from the Crown and had no hesitation to seek its help.280

Conclusion: Taking a Chance in the Chancery Court

From these cases, it becomes clear both planters and other English subjects utilized the

Court of Chancery to resolve several different types of disputes in the early Atlantic Empire. The prerogative of this Court avoided many of the restrictions of the common law, allowing for a integrated English justice to reign in its colonies. As an equity court, its jurisdiction extended into all the Stuart domains, and could resolve disputes which transcended boundaries and involved different parts of the empire. From the outset of plantation, English subjects understood the utility of prerogative justice in the American colonies. The types of cases they brought before

Chancery concerned land, property, debt, and wage disputes, all of which were regularly solved by the court in England. Thus, these cases applied existing practice to the American plantations, based on notions of imperium and royal authority over different Crown territories. It did not take revolution, much less the highly developed colonial bureaucratic machinery of the late

280 Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, Ch. 1. 111 seventeenth century, for the crown to govern the Atlantic world’s economic and social development. Ordinary people were happy to encourage the central court system’s involvement themselves, to the point where they continued to do so even after 1642 and the assult on prerogative brought by the open breach of the Civil Wars.

These cases suggest wider implications about the nature of the crown’s relationship with the American colonies before 1640. The use of the Court of Chancery by English subjects helped investors, businessmen, and consumers alike to solve civil suits, and do so when the Atlantic

Empire was only in its relative infancy. Most plaintiffs and defendants saw this as useful and helpful. Equitable justice proved to have a cultural currency that transcended common law jurisdictions, and that attracted English people to the central courts. Settlers who still thought themselves a part of the body politic retained deep interest in political and legal structures at home, and continued to use the rapidly growing Chancery Court, as their fathers and grandfathers had, to achieve the legal results they desired. It did not take initiative by the central government itself later in the seventeenth century to bind the American periphery of the empire with the center in resolving civil conflicts.

112

Chapter 3: Petitions, Petitioners, and the Plantations

Lewis Hughes of Bermuda hid none of his anger when he petitioned the Crown in 1625.

At great length, he described various abuses of power by the island’s governor, Captain Daniel

Tucker. The Somers Isles Company had sent him to govern according to English justice standards, but instead, he had embraced martial law.281 As a preacher and one of the few men of status equipped to question Tucker’s administration of the island, Hughes had publicly criticized

Tucker’s actions on Bermuda. The Governor responded to the challenge by imprisoning the petitioner. “Parker the blacksmith came, and with a crow of yron brake open my chamber door and drag’d me out to his owne house, where he kept me prisoner,” claimed Hughes.282 He also described another man, Mr. Follet, being “hung by his hands and feet from the wharf.”283 Hughes depicted in detail Tucker’s usurpation of land which belonged to other planters for his own use, spreading his seed and corn about the island to the great expense of the plantation’s poorest individuals. His description makes vivid references to tyranny, arbitrary imprisonment, and violations of English justice, invoking notions of evil royal councilors and political controversies of the past and present.

After his release from jail, Hughes traveled to England to “see if [he] could persuade ministers to go over & to acquaint the Company with the weak state of the Islands, and the

281 Bermuda had been settled in 1609, after vessels sent to relieve the struggling Jamestown settlement became shipwrecked on its coast. This led to the island eventually becoming a permanent English possession, first under the administration of the Virginia Company, then after 1615 under the separate Somers Isles Company. These two companies shared many of the same investors. Unlike Virginia, which became a royal colony in 1625 after its namesake company was disbanded, the Somers Island Company proved successful at administration and Bermuda remained a until 1684. Captain Tucker had been a former Jamestown resident, and thus was well connected to the Somers Island Company’s shareholders. See Michael J. Jarvis, In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 17-23. 282 BL Add MSS 12496, Collections Made for Sir Julius Caesar, #405. 283 Ibid. 113 grievances of the people, [for] we were ready to mutiny.”284 He sought an audience with the

Somers Isles Company itself, but they refused to hear his complaints. He interpreted this as shielding Tucker to maintain a clean image for the venture. The preacher then changed strategies and petitioned the Crown. Hughes’ complaint enumerated the abuses suffered by Sommers

Islands planters to the King and asserted their need for his help to amend the situation. He believed that through royal intervention, the horrid abuses of martial law would be alleviated.

Hughes also asked for help expediting his separate lawsuit against the Sommers Island Company for over £350 of unpaid wages.

Hughes’ petition was one of many petitions with political, economic, and cultural dimensions in the early English Atlantic world. This chapter will discuss the role that petitions to the King, made by individual subjects or groups of subjects, played in the resolution of conflicts in the early Atlantic empire. It will begin with a discussion of the history and format of English petitions to 1600. For centuries, the English had petitioned their monarchs for assistance, privileges, and favor. Such requests to the Crown had standard approaches in their argumentation. By framing a petition as beneficial to the realm, subjects could secure themselves special favors or bring attention to problems they faced. Following a methodological discussion about petitions as sources, the chapter will explore the types of requests petitioners made. This includes pleas for mercy due to unfortunate circumstances, pleas for assistance regarding conflicts between subjects, pleas asking for a particular monopoly or privilege related to the

Atlantic economy. The chapter will also examine series of petitions made by the Virginia

Company’s investors, who hoped to save it from state takeover, to explore how corporations also used the petition for similar aims. Throughout, this chapter will emphasize formats and tropes

284 Ibid. 114 petitioners used to position their arguments. It will focus on the petitioners’ efforts to show how three parties- the Crown, the commonwealth, and the petitioning subject or subjects- could benefit from the actions proposed in the petitions.

By petitioning, individual subjects as well as chartered companies could approach their sovereign and make both specific and general arguments for direct intervention in America. Well before a large imperial bureaucracy existed, petitions provided a way commoners could use to convince the state to aid their interests. Successful petitioning required a sympathetic ear in court. If the requests came off as transparently self-interested or a burden on the English empire, the Crown would reject a petition. If, however, a petition successfully argued that their request served the larger interests of the King and the kingdom, the chance of success proved high. Some petitioners convinced the Crown to intervene in their legal cases, absolve them of debts, or invalidate contracts that put them into difficult situations. Others used the petition to gain economic guarantees or commercial opportunities. In all cases, petitioners hoped that the King would provide them equitable justice. The monarchy proved willing to help many subjects as a manifestation of the royal duty to provide justice, but also rejected petitions that failed to show mutual interest between state and subject. In this way, petitions became an important medium through which early English Atlantic subjects participated in trans-Atlantic political, economic, and cultural conversations, and remained deeply tied to traditional interactions with their government.

Petitioning Practices

The right of English subjects and chartered corporations to petition for redress had become well established by the early modern period. Lawful petitioning had precedent in medieval jurisprudence, particularly with reference to the Magna Carta, which established the 115 right of subjects to bring disputes about their landholdings directly before royal justices, bypassing the courts of local lords.285 This concept of direct access to the King for the people was discussed and expanded upon in subsequent centuries, and used both by individuals and corporations to seek the ear of the government. Some petitioned local notables instead of the

King. Petitioning relied on language that stressed particular conceptions of justice, order, and duty that developed in the Middle Ages and became more formal with time.286 It was the King’s prerogative authority to affect change in society that attracted subjects to the petition. They hoped the Crown would assist individuals or the commonweal, as all just monarchs were obligated to do. They did not seek arbitrary results, but principled ones that would create a more just society.287 The process was consciously a negotiation between a subject or subjects and the state, and thus required mutual acknowledgement of benefit.

In the abstract, any English person could petition. The people understood petitioning as a privilege of their Englishness, and they saw the ability of subjects to seek their monarch’s attention as part of the reciprocal relationship between the monarch and the subject. Both King and Parliament recognized this practice as a basic right of the people and indicated that responding to petitions was an essential duty of the Crown.288 People petitioned about almost every concern, such as their land rights, pardons, access to honor, titles, and monopolies on goods or on industrial processes, or simply for charitable relief.289 These petitions met with

285 Ralph V. Turner, Magna Carta Through the Ages (Harlow, UK: Pearson Longman, 2003), 71-73. 286 Gwilym Dodd, “Kingship, Parliament and the Court: The Emergence of ‘High Style’ in Petitions to the English Crown, c.1350–1405,” The English Historical Review 129:538 (June 2014), 515-548. 287 Fortier, The Culture of Equity, Ch. 2-3. Also refer to Chapters 1 and 2 of this dissertation for further discussion of equity law. 288 David Zaret, “Petitions and the ‘Invention’ of Public Opinion in the English Revolution” American Journal of Sociology 101:6 (May 1996), 1497-1555; Cressy, Charles I and the People of England, 177-178. 289 Derek Hirst, “Making Contact: Petitions and the English Republic,” Journal of British Studies 41:1 (January 2006), 26-27. 116 widely varying degrees of success. In practice, patronage and connections to monarch or councilors greatly increased the chance a petition would gain an audience. As the English population increased, so too did the number of petitions the government processed. Therefore, by the early modern era, the Privy Council handled most petitions and served as an intermediary between the monarch and the petitioners. A petitioner who could speed along the Council’s discussions by having a patron advocate for them (or perhaps a patron sitting in the Privy

Council) had a far greater chance to gain the attention of the government. Some decried this situation as a form of corruption.290 Still, several historical examples survive of individuals who managed to get petitions heard by the monarch and their council without these aids. For example,

Lewis Hughes, whose petition opened this chapter, gained an audience despite rebuffing by the

Sommers Island Company and its investors, who normally would be the sort of high-ranking members of society that acted as intermediaries.

In addition to individual petitions, corporate bodies could petition and ask the Crown to help them reach their own goals. Like individuals, the right of corporate bodies to petition was well established by the seventeenth century and had been used for a variety of purposes. As argued by R.W. Hoyle and John Walter in political and religious contexts, respectively, these petitions created an important layer of political culture, and a method that groups not only could use in theory but pursued in practice to ask for privileges, remind the state of its duties, and try to force executive or legislative action.291 It was clear that chartered groups like towns, gilds and

290 R. Malcolm Smuts, Court Culture and the Origins of a Royalist Tradition in Early Stuart England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987), 185-191; Linda Levy Peck, Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England (London: Routledge, 1990), 49-52; Alistair Bellany, The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603-1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 29- 36. 291 John Walter, “Confessional Politics in Pre-Civil War Essex: Prayer Books, Profanations, and Petitions,” Historical Journal 44:3 (September 2001), 677-701; R. W. Hoyle, “Petitioning as popular politics in early sixteenth–century England,” Historical Research 75:190 (November 2002), 365-389. 117 professional groups, and joint- stock companies could petition this way. It was more controversial whether people could petition on behalf of all English subjects in this corporate way, because the “mass” character of such petitions threatened the Crown’s authority.292

Corporate entities used the petition, among other goals, to gain rights to trade and to have the

Crown re-charter them to facilitate necessary internal structural reforms.293 These petitions invoked the idea of “the people” their group represented and often spoke with the voice of the generic English subject.294 Because corporations played a critical role in the development of the

English Atlantic and its political society during the seventeenth century, their right to petition became one way to enter their opinion into public sphere. Their needs could be extensive.

Companies had to not only turn a profit but provide for English planters in America, tend to the condition of their settlements, and contend with risks of overseas trade. Corporate shareholders knew the Crown and its authority could help them, and therefore used their corporate citizenship to petition it for help.

The actual presentation of a petition occurred at Court and required a member of the

King’s circle to present them either personally to the King, an official with specific relevant duties, or the Masters of Requests. While on the surface this might seem prohibitive, many people had indirect access to the Court via surrogates because of the hierarchical nature of

English society and interconnected web of boroughs, corporations, gilds, tenants on estates, and other economic institutions in early Modern England.295 Petitions might be “passed up” this

292 Ibid. 293 Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic, 33-47, Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” 1027-1031. 294 See Zaret, “Petitions and the ‘Invention’ of Public Opinion,” 1497-1511, for a discussion of the process by which petitions went from individuals or specific groups to speaking for the people in a political context, which was a gradual development. 295 Peck, Court Patronage, 47-60; Hoyle, “The Masters of Requests and the Small Change of Jacobean Patronage,” 544-581; Cressy, Charles I and the People of England, 193-203. 118 chain multiple times on their way to Court. Documents were very rarely written by the petitioner or petitioners themselves, and they relied on professional scribes to record their requests.

The Language and Structure of Petitions

The language petitioners used could make or break them, and successful ones demonstrated wider benefit for the Crown and commonweal, not just themselves as individuals or profit-seeking corporations. Petitioners believed the state had a specific public authority and prerogative ability to intervene in their political, social, and economic lives, and petitions were a means to access that existing authority. Because petitioning was construed in the early seventeenth century as a time-immemorial custom, the language used had to reflect the patterns of deference surrounding contemporary understandings of authority. Monarchs enjoyed prestige from the process, as giving fair results to subjects helped to enforce the idea of a just ruler.

Except for charitable requests for mercy, all petitions had to show how the King’s generosity granting the request would help not only the individual or individuals involved, but also the King or England at large. Showing mutual economic benefit became increasingly easy during the reigns of James I and Charles I, as both Kings relied on granting monopoly privileges and offices to fund the skyrocketing expenditure of the state and royal household.296 Petitions provided the main way to get such grants, and the King and the petitioner could both make money off monopoly arrangements. Petitioners framed their requests to suggest that aid from the Crown would help them complete vital missions such as building England’s wealth or restoring social order, which would create a more harmonious realm and prosperous English society.

296 Peck, Court Patronage, 8-10; Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I, 120-126; John Cramsie, Kingship and Crown Finance Under James VI and I, 1603-1625 (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2002), 32-34 & 194, Cressy, Charles I and the People of England, 180. 119

Petitioners also used explicitly political language, which had important cultural resonances in the early seventeenth century, to compose their petitions and strengthen their arguments. In discussing the King’s authority, petitioners indicated their understanding of the complex debates over royal powers in the early seventeenth century. They believed that English subjects could and should participate in the process of shaping their localities and interacting with their government (sometimes through corporate organizations.) English subjects referred their ability to participate in this community in humanist terms and sought to actively participate in the institutions which made their towns, counties, and kingdom run.297 Having developed this sense regarding England itself during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, subjects applied the concepts of Civic humanism and communal benefit to their discussions about America.298

Petitioning was one manifestation of this political culture. Those who petitioned understood it as one way they could participate in the process of building a better society, which would benefit themselves and the English people. Thus, their word choice reflected a desire to do well and inform the Crown of potential inefficiencies in the realm, deemphasizing personal gain. All these petitions shared a common political language present in the Stuart realms, and participated in the public sphere created by the discourse of that age.

For example, the petition of Lewis Hughes, which opened this chapter, made some of its arguments by referencing the political climate of the 1620s, framing Governor Tucker as a corrupted councilor to the King and Somers Island Company. He carefully chose words to

297 For scholarship on civic humanism in early modern England, which is extensive and been applied to diverse contexts, see Pagden, Lords of All the World, 36-39; Robert Tittler, The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, C. 1540-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 292-307; Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth; 6-11 & 114-122; Richard Cust, “The ‘Public Man’ in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England,” in The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England, ed. Peter Lake and Steve Pincus (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007), 80-85. 298 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 20-56 & 137- 157; Haskell, Forging Renaissance Bonds, 202-217. 120 degenerate the regime of Tucker, emphasizing the “stately” the house he built for himself off other people’s hard work. He also described his system of taxation being “arbitrary,” and noted his ability to “devour” the profits of innocent Englishmen and Englishwomen in Bermuda. These all evoke dissatisfaction with profiteers in the contemporary English economic system.299

Hughes tapped into contemporary ideas of corruption, and the need for a good ruler to weed it out from his kingdom. In his version of events, Tucker took advantage of office to drain funds and resources from the people of the commonwealth, an argument many used against servants of the King in England during the 1620s.300 Hughes’ religion likely influenced his petition as well.

As a Puritan, Hughes quite likely saw the attacks on himself and his ideas as parallel to similar attacks against Reformed Christianity by the established Church in England. Hughes’ petition mirrors similar efforts to convince Charles I to reject the innovations of Archbishop Laud and other Arminians to save the Kingdom from evil.301

Subjects interested in America readily applied petitioning to the new imperial context. As the English plantations offered both opportunity and misfortune, subjects adapted the format to help both their own economic interests and serve the larger empire. Both individual planters and corporations that funded American expeditions knew they could exploit land and products in the

Americas, thus, enterprising individuals proposed new monopolies there.302 The state collected revenue alongside the subjects, benefitting both parties. Petitions also offered a method to bring obstacles English people encountered in the Americas, like shipwrecks, robberies, and bad

299 BL Add MSS 12496, Collections Made for Sir Julius Caesar. 300 Francis Bacon, Lord Cranfield, and the Duke of Buckingham most famously. See Peck, Court Patronage, Chapter 8; David Coast, “‘Rumor and Common Fame’: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England,” Journal of British Studies 55:2, 241-267. 301 For more on resistance to Arminianism, see Nicholas Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, C. 1590-1640 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), 185-190; Foster, The Long Argument, Ch. 4. 302 Catherine Armstrong, Writing North America in the Seventeenth Century: English Representations in Print and Manuscript (New York: Routledge, 2007), 133-138. 121 governors, to the attention of the Crown. As these planters had incurred risks while serving the growth of the empire, they could justifiably ask the state to help them with these setbacks and serve moral justice. Atlantic matters quickly found a place in the general month-to-month business of the state. The number of Atlantic petitions became great enough that by 1634, the

Crown established a specific Committee for Foreign Plantations within the Privy Council in part to handle these petitions and otherwise manage the affairs of the English Atlantic.303 Charles I and the Privy Council continued to hear petitions about the Atlantic World even during the tense atmosphere of the Long Parliament’s first months, although if they assessed anything after the

King left London, it has not survived.

Methodology and Sources

Petitions concerning the Americas are spread across several archives, having found their way into the files and papers of various government officials. The largest number of petitions exist in collections of the National Archives at Kew. Occasional evidence survives in the records of the Privy Council itself; in other cases, archivists retroactively included early petitions in the documents of the Colonial Office. These petitions have varied scope and content and represent a variety of parts of the Empire and people in many different situations. Further petitions exist in the papers of Sir John Bankes, located at the Bodleian Library. As Attorney General from 1634 through 1640, Bankes oversaw countless petitions for economic licences, monopolies, and exemptions.304 Subjects seeking these liberties would have to petition, and cases pertaining to plantations proved no exception. While the portion of these petitions concerning America make

303 Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 62. 304 Christopher W. Brooks, “Bankes, Sir John,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1288. As Attorney General, Bankes handled all letters patent and delegations of royal monopolies and economic privileges. He was also responsible for initiating Star Chamber cases in the name of the Crown and handled royal interests in the English court system generally. 122 up only a fraction of the Bankes papers, dozens of items pertain to North America. A further collection of petitions, concerning the earliest decades of Virginia, exist in the Cranfield Papers, held by the Kent History Center in Maidstone. Lionel Cranfield, 1st Earl of Middlesex, served in a variety of positions during James I’s reign, including as the Master of Requests and as the Lord

High Treasurer from 1621 to 1624.305 He managed import duties for the Crown on Virginia tobacco, which made him rather unpopular with the gentlemen who had invested money in the

Virginia Company.306 A series of approximately 70 documents, many of them petitions, survive from his investigation of the Company.307 Lastly, a few petitions exist in the British Library.

Despite their scattered locations, most petitions share structure, formatting, paper size, and type, confirming production by professional scribes.

Any given petition consists of a description of the subject’s situation and their reasons for bringing some aspect of their predicament to the attention of the Crown. At times, the petitioner’s description went on at length, though they were often only a paragraph. In this segment, petitioners tended to do one of two things: explain a series of misfortunes that had befallen them (through bad luck, the avarice of others, an act of nature, or a legal misunderstanding), or point out some economic circumstance that, at present, did not benefit the kingdom. Following this, a brief section would make the actual request of the petitioner. Where, when, and why the state might intervene, and for or against which parties, form the bulk of these statements. After the council accepted a petition for an audience, it would often but not always write notes about when they heard the petition, who sat in on the discussion, and their decision

305 Michael J. Braddick, “Cranfield, Lionel, first earl of Middlesex,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6609. 306 Ibid. 307 Also among the papers is important correspondence with and other leaders of the Virginia Company during the early 1620s. 123 about whether to grant the request. At this stage, the success of a petition might be shaped by

Court faction. Councilors might support causes and companies in which they had invested, or which might boost their prestige, and therefore they would support their own clients during deliberations over petitions. Conversely, petitions which might disadvantage the King or his servants’ financial situations would face difficulty. The Council also considered the political optics of a decision, and whether propping up a specific interest would disturb the commonwealth.

When considering these petitions as sources, one must weigh political, structural, and economic aspects of the documents. Though often short, these documents contain valuable information about the ways people perceived the role of the Crown and royal justice in America.

In effect, these petitioners saw it in conventional legal and political terms, and as business-as- usual. Close examination of the language petitioners used reveals connections to political norms and political conflicts of the 1620s and 1630s. Petitions also raise questions of class and status.

Most petitioners, particularly those asking for mercy as opposed to a particular economic privilege, indicated their poverty and helplessness. One must always question this assertion.

Invoking poverty became standard, as the monarch had a duty to assist less fortunate subjects.

Thus, some of the language used in petitions mirrors that in the Court of Requests. Additionally, those who encountered misfortunes in the pursuit of Atlantic trade had arguably incurred significant risks in pursuit of a project that benefited the commonweal. Petitions were one way to ask the state for redress for losses encored helping the state expand its geopolitical and commercial power.

Petitions show that English subjects included the American plantations much like anywhere else in contemporary understandings political communication. Certain petitions might 124 argue for or against the liberties of certain subjects, different religious positions, or for certain foreign policy stances. For instance, a series of petitioners decrying the regime of Governor

Harvey in Virginia also invoked political ideas that resonated in 1630s England. These petitioners, including Francis Pott, Elizabeth Pott, Samuel Matthews, and John Phipps, focused their assault on Harvey around the issue of arbitrary imprisonment.308 At this time, several prominent cases of imprisonment and the validity by which political prisoners were jailed had caused a great deal of debate in England itself. Fears about the arbitrary use of power to imprison and suspension of Habeus Corpus caused political debates over the King’s authority and prerogative, as well as religious resistance by Puritans to censorship and imprisonment of Anti-

Laudian ideas.309 That several petitioners used arbitrary imprisonment as a method to criticize the royal governor suggests these petitioners held ideas about imprisonment and an understanding that unlawful jailing was a violation of their liberties. This choice seems odd, considering how arbitrary imprisonment had become a major criticism of Charles I and his government in the 1620s and 1630s. Because it was not the King under question, however, but one of his servants acting on his own accord, the petitioners could emphasize distance between the central government and the corruption. These petitioners hoped that their pleas would bring attention to Harvey’s misuse of power and gain aid from the royal government. They recognized that the Crown could eliminate abuses of powers in the localities, at home and abroad.

Further, subjects understood petitions, like other mediums in the public sphere, as a method by which government or private actions constituted “the common good” could be

308 TNA CO 1/8, f. 174 r., 232 r., CO 1/9, f. 123 r., f. 125 r. I will address some of these petitions in depth later in the chapter. 309 Braddick, God’s Fury, 77; Paul D. Halliday, “11,000 Prisoners: Habeas Corpus, 1500–1800,” in Judges and Judging in the History of the Common Law and Civil Law: From Antiquity to Modern Times, ed. Brand, Paul and Getzler, Joshua (Cambridge, 2012), 259–76; David Cressy, “Puritan Martyrs in Island Prisons,” Journal of British Studies 58:4 (Oct. 2018), 736-754. 125 expressed and negotiated.310 Most Atlantic petitions did not directly relate to political events in

England, Scotland, or Ireland, but did use language that mirrored concurrent debates about the liberties of the people against tyranny, the conflicts between the monarchy and the parliament, or continued religious strife. English petitioners who argued that their private business would bring about some common good, or who asked that the Crown assist them because of contemporary ideas about justice, showed they understood the petition as a political tool, and applied that tool to address imperial matters. Thus, petitioning operated in an extended, trans-Atlantic public sphere ascendant in early modern Britain.311

Petitions for Mercy

In cases that did not otherwise involve a specific civil conflict between individuals, petitioners might request that the Crown offer its mercy upon them and relieve them of Atlantic misfortunes. Petitions brought problems ordinary people faced to the state’s attention and allowed them to ask for the intervention by the government. While most Atlantic petitions had specific economic requests, seeking specific privileges, mercy petitions simply asked the Crown to protect the individual or help them recover from bad luck or unfortunate circumstances. Most subjects who petitioned this way did so because they feared bankruptcy or financial ruin. They did not ask for major windfalls, but simply for the recovery of lost possessions or protections from creditors. They invoked tropes of helplessness and deference to the majesty of the monarch far more than other early Atlantic petitions.

310 Stewart, “Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain,” 717. 311 This American context has been under-analyzed, but excellent recent work has been done incorporating Scotland, Ireland, and Wales into the conception of a public sphere that transcended pieces of the empire. See the following articles in Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), a special issue concerning the early modern Public sphere in a pan-British context: Lloyd Bowen, “Structuring Particularist Publics: Logistics, Language, and Early Modern Wales” (754-772); Eamon Darcy, “Political Participation in Early Stuart Ireland” (773-796); Karin Bowie and Alasdair Raffe, “Politics, the People, and Extra-Institutional Participation in Scotland, c. 1603–1712 (797-815). 126

John Harry’s petition of 16 July 1630 provides an example of a subject asking for assistance recovering from misfortunes beyond his control. Harry had settled in Virginia several years prior, and although he began with a small estate, the ups-and-downs of the tobacco economy had led him into economic ruin. He defaulted, and the Virginia court ruled that he had to give up his property to creditors as punishment.312 After recounting these circumstances,

Harry asked for help. “May it please your majesty to take into your gracious consideration [the petitioner] long being in the country, his pertinence for his faults, and present use of the colonies, according to your gracious clemency, vouchsafe to pardon him of his offense and return him to his former estate, which though of very small value may be means to enable him.”313 This petition used tropes of the helpless subject, in need of the Crown’s aid. The petition honestly describes why the government had charged Harry in court and emphasizes that relieving from his debt would constitute an act of grace. Harry also indicated that he could not work in his current state, and that the Crown’s assistance might allow him to become productive again.314 The Privy

Council denied this petition, but it still suggests the great hopes ordinary subjects might place in the process.

Two petitions from Francis Pott to Francis Windebank (secretary of state under Charles

I), dating to 1635 and 1636, depict mercy petitioning in a criminal context. Pott had found himself imprisoned in Virginia and returned to England at the behest of Governor Harvey. This occurred due to concerns over Pott’s unpaid debts. At the time of this petition, Pott was

312 Early Virginian planters lived in an unstable economy in which debts, defaults, and repossessions were normal. This resulted from the volatility of the tobacco economy, a commodity whose price continually decreased as supply increased. See Russell M. Menard, “A Note on Chesapeake Tobacco Prices, 1618-1660,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 84:4 (October 1976); James P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake (Williamsburg: University of William & Mary Press, 1994), 130-141. 313 TNA CO 1/5, f. 212, r. 314 Harry was playing into English and Calvinist notions that non-productivity and laziness were a direct cause of social problems, crime, and disorder. 127 imprisoned on a ship docked in London after returning from Virginia, awaiting further resolution of his case. According to the prisoner, small debts had spiraled after his imprisonment, for

Harvey’s “seizure of [the petitioner’s] small estate has left him to subsist so that ye has become completely indebted; and now he has much wasted in ye health of his body.”315 By stressing his declining health, he added a degree of urgency to the proceedings, and made himself look even more in need of the Crown’s help. Pott also pleaded a need for action on behalf of his wife and children, left destitute without his income. He indicated that he had tobacco and other goods shipped from his Virginia estate sitting in the English customs house, and he would likely lose the cargo if he remained in debtor’s prison. He beseeched Windebank, as representative of the

King, “to be favorable unto him … let him free from his imprisonment to grant him liberty to his affairs, [after] which he would return to ye fleet at night.”316 Allowing Pott bail would allow him access to his property at the customs house, perhaps selling some of it off to pay his debts. As of

1636, Pott remained in prison, “to his infinite charge and lamentable sufferings.”317

Two petitions from Kenbaugh Hawley of Barbados, from 1639 and 1640, asked for help of a different manner. She hoped the Crown would aid her family after her husband abandoned her. Kenbaugh was married to Henry Hawley, a Governor of Barbados. Hawley claimed broad authority in the Caribbean, on account of a warrant issued by the Privy Council in 1632 that allowed him to go to other plantations and investigate the black-market tobacco trade there.318

He gained a reputation during his time as Governor as something of a tyrant. When Hawley, on a return trip to England, supported the attempts of the Earl of Warwick to purchase the island from the plantation’s proprietor, the James Hay, the 2nd Earl of Carlisle, Hay recalled him from his

315 TNA CO 1/8, f. 232, r. 316 Ibid. 317 TNA CO 1/9, f. 125, r. 318 A copy of this warrant survives. TNA CO 1/10, f. 56, r. 128 post. Hawley fled back to Barbados and proclaimed himself Governor again, despite the King and Carlisle both having commissioned a new governor. He held control of the island through threat of violent force until a second commission from the King arrived. 319 Eventually, as his position became untenable, Hawley fled elsewhere in the Caribbean for his own safety under the auspices of his commission to investigate tobacco trade. He surrendered in March 1640 and returned to England without any royal or proprietary commissions.

Kenbaugh Hawley feared what would happen to their family’s property during this period of turbulence. She petitioned the Privy Council to review the warrant for investigating tobacco to see if he had authority beyond Carlisle’s approval. She also asked the Crown to protect the family from having their property seized. Her plea emphasizes the “defamation of her husband” and the “weakness” she and her children found themselves in due to this situation.320 As of

January 1640, her husband had not returned, and she again petitioned for help protecting the family property in case her husband did not re-appear.321 Kenbaugh Hawley’s petitions sought not to make positive gains, but to protect the loss of her family’s estate. She hoped that a successful petition could convince Charles I to forgive her husband, despite the fact the King had just confirmed the Earl of Carlisle’s new choice for governor.322 This would shield her family against men who wished to take advantage of Henry’s loss of the governorship for their own financial gain. The second petition indicates the Privy Council debated the case about a month after receiving the request and issued injunctions to stop any legal proceedings against the

319 For more details on this episode, see Larry Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627-1660 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 34-39. 320 TNA CO 1/10, f. 54, r. 321 TNA CO 1/10, f. 129, r. 322 Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted, 38. 129 family. While her husband had fallen into disfavor, Kenbaugh had used arguments for mercy to protect herself and her children from even greater damages.

In 1637, Eleanor Babb of Northampton also petitioned for help against debt collection.

While living as a settler in the , her husband Thomas had entered a contract with a man named Edward Trelawney, which called for shared investment in £200 worth of diverse merchandise. They would sell the goods for profit back in England. Trelawney, however, absconded with the goods, sold them all himself, and kept the profits. Further, according to Eleanor, on his most recent visit to England her husband had “brought attention of the [Court of Common Pleas] against her husband for damages statute in ye court of admiralty,” which had ruled in their favor and ordered Trelawney to pay £200, but he had not done so.323

With Thomas back New England and unable to follow up, Eleanor took it upon herself to seek help. Writing to the King’s servant the Lord High Admiral, she asked that her family’s property be protected against countersuits Trelawney had filed and force him to pay the money he owed the family. The Lord High Admiral approved this petition on the King’s behalf, halting legal proceedings and protecting her family from further harm.324 Like Kenbaugh Hawley, Eleanor

Babb argued from a position of financial weakness that the Crown could act in a just way towards its subject by intervening in her situation. Petitions provided a medium to do so.

A particularly impressive petition came in 1630 from Elizabeth Pott of Virginia, the wife of the doctor John Pott.325 While surviving sources do not clearly indicate what occurred, John

323 TNA CO 1/9, f. 193, r. 324 Ibid. 325 John Pott was the brother of Francis Pott, who made the previously mentioned petitions from prison in London. The doctor was already somewhat infamous in Virginia for using his medical expertise to concoct poison given to over 200 Native Americans in 1624, in retaliation for their attack on Jamestown in 1622. See Charles E. Horton Jr., “John Pott: America's First Physician-Governor and Revolutionary,” Bulletin of the New York Medical Academy, 59:7 (July 1983), 680. 130

Pott was arrested in Virginia by John Harvey for something along the lines of stealing cattle from other Virginia planters.326 This proved unpopular in Virginia, despite the fact most people believed Pott’s guilt. The colony had no other doctors, and the settlers badly needed his medical expertise. Harvey would not budge on his decision to jail Pott and bring charges against him, however, writing loquaciously to the Earl of Dorchester to justify his actions (messages which would have spread at court). Harvey claimed Pott, while serving as governor of the colony elected by Virginia residents prior to the arrival of himself, had “pardon[ed] willful murder, getting [the murderer] out of the country after legal condemnation,” had had regularly been

“cutting the [brands] of other men’s cattell, and making them for himself,” thus proving his poor character.327 In a different letter Harvey also accused Pott of stirring up resentment against his governorship out of jealousy, thus besmirching “the good glory of his majesty’s honor.”328

Harvey understood himself as the King’s representative, and thus beleived Pott’s intransigence justified imprisonment.

As her husband’s imprisonment gravely threatened her family’s livelihood and ability to pay debts, Elizabeth knew she needed to take action. For her, the effective authority of the

Crown to solve the problems of those in dispriviledged circumstances proved worth the great risk of traveling back to England (and, one can assume, the worth of having her husband freed outweighed the costs and risks of the voyage to submit a petition). “Your subject hath taken a long and dangerous voyage to her excessive charge & the great hazard of herself, to appear before your sacred majesty, touching the wrong doing to her husband,” stated Pott as she opened her petition.329 She used the opportunity to decry Governor Harvey, accusing him of corruption

326 Several documents relating to John Pott’s Case are located in TNA CO 1/6 176, 203, 205, 210, and 212. 327 John Harvey to the Earl of Dorchester, TNA CO 1/6, f. 203 v. 328 John Harvey to the Earl of Dorchester, TNA CO 1/6, f. 214 r. 329 TNA CO 1/6, f. 234 r. 131 and imprisoning her husband because he was a former governor chosen by the planters, rather than the King (having served about a year before Harvey arrived in 1630).330 Pott had frequently criticized the new governor, and Elizabeth believed Harvey viewed him as a political threat.

“There appeared neither proof nor any probable matter unto the commissioners,” claimed

Elizabeth, “to justify the proceedings made against her said husband, either for his life, or for his liberty at large.” In this way, Pott invoked the classic trope of the King’s evil Councilor, misleading the monarch to enrich themself at the expense of the people. Pott also made an emotional appeal for a rapid resolution, for “if your majesties’ word will miss the next ship,

Virginia will not know of it for a year,” and her poor husband would fester in prison.331 The

King’s Council investigated the case and instructed Harvey to release Pott, but not for the reasons his wife had argued. They concluded that Virginia needed its doctor too badly to risk keeping him in prison. This case among others shows both the appeal of the petition and the great deal of initiative women displayed in using them to influence Atlantic politics. While dangerous, Elizabeth Pott’s voyage to petition the King illustrates the great faith English subjects put in their ability to use the Crown’s authority to obtain outcomes they desired in America.332

These petitions for mercy show one way ordinary English people could bring the power and authority of English royal government into American affairs. Petitioners understood that familiar tropes, such as the helpless subject and the merciful king, could find success before the

Privy Council, and thus increased their chance of having their unfortunate situation relieved.

They also believed that the monarch had a duty to help provide a just world for English subjects, and this belief informed the way they framed their requests. They sought the King’s fair hand to

330 Horton, “John Pott,” 682. 331 TNA CO 1/6, f. 234 r. 332 John, Elizabeth, and their children retired to a new plot of land further away from Jamestown after his pardon. The land contained on their plantation later became the center of Williamsburg, VA. Horton, “John Pott,” 685. 132 relieve them of injustices, which would benefit both their individual circumstances and create a fairer existence for Atlantic subjects of the Crown. Their use of petitions to aid their causes shows not only the utility of the petition in Atlantic political society, but a genuine investment by

English people in the process and a belief that it could help. The Crown could make a difference, and that a royal audience could have direct effects on life in the Atlantic empire.

Petitions for Economic and Political Aid

While many sought mercies, more frequently petitioners asked for aid that either had concrete economic value, or some specific political goal to restore harmony in the Atlantic empire and remove inefficiencies in English political society. Several petitioners wrote to the

King or the Privy Council with the intention of gaining sanction to take back properties owed to them, or to call in debts. Others petitioned for help with tricky social and political conflicts that had caused rifts in the American imperial space. Unlike petitioners for mercy, those who sought this form aid from the Crown emphasized not their own helplessness, but how the situation in

America presented inefficiencies for both the empire and the subject that only the state could fix.

Many had similarities with cases from the Court of Requests and Court of Chancery, as these petitions asked for economic interventions that a lawsuit might have provided. Petitioning had advantages and disadvantages to these alternatives. A petition could bring business to the state’s attention quickly, while court cases might take months or years to resolve. Petitioning ran the risk of a summary rejection, or denial because of political factors in Court. However, the steady stream of petitions that reached the Privy Council during the 1620s and 1630s shows that petitions proved attractive nonetheless.

For example, a petition filed by William Clobbery, John De Barre, and David Moreland in 1634 on behalf of William Claiborne, Virginian trader and longtime opponent of the 133 government of the Calvert family in Maryland, addressed specific damages incurred in

Claiborne’s dispute with Maryland. Claiborne generated controversy in both the Chesapeake and in England due to claims to Kent Island, within territory given to Maryland by its 1632 Charter.

He had established a trade post there in 1631, based on his understanding of the earlier Virginia

Charter. When the Maryland government removed him from Kent Island with violent force, allowing their own planters to take the land, he objected. Claiborne spent the rest of his life unsuccessfully petitioning, plotting coups, and otherwise doing anything he could to recover

Kent Island for himself.333 Clobbery, De Barre, and Moreland were London-based merchants who had invested with Claiborne in trading operations, and petitioned on his behalf (likely because they were closer to the government physically).334 The petitioners emphasized

Claiborne’s work developing and making the land useful.335 “Your subject hath brought trade and plantation to some perfection after much costs, industry, and labor,” they indicated.336 They also stated forcefully that Baltimore’s men “intend[ed] to disposess [Claiborne] and boats going to trade there, they fired shot at the petitioner, in an endeavor to affront and hinder their proceedings, which the petitioner conceives to be contrary to your majesties gracious intentions, that any of your subjects should be put out of their plantations, discouraged, or hindered in so good a worke.”337 It is worth noting that they said Marylanders shot at “the petitioner,” not

333 Sutto, Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists, 38. Claiborne did not die until 1677, so his efforts lasted over forty years. 334 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution,120-124. 335 Under common law, claiming that one had worked the land and made it productive was necessary for confirming title to land. Uncultivated land was not legitimately occupied. Elizabethan proponents of plantation had argued for establishing a presence in the Americas in part because of the need to develop land England could claim based on Arthurian legend and the voyages of the Cabots, before Spain could settle these areas and prevent the confirmation of the claim through development. See Ken Macmillan, “Benign and Benevolent Conquest? The Ideology of Elizabethan Atlantic Expansion Revisited,” Early American Studies 9:1 (January 2011), 21-61. This was also an aspect of settler colonialism in Ireland. See John Patrick Montaño, The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 103-153. 336 TNA CO 1/8, f. 91 r. 337 Ibid. 134

Claiborne and his men, suggesting the Londoners saw their interests in America as very much a part of themselves. They requested state aid to dislodge the Marylanders and allow Claiborne to reclaim his rights to trade on Kent Island. Their petition emphasizes his efforts to create order, and in turn identified the Marylanders as agents of disorder. In the version of events recounted by the collective petitioners, the Marylanders violently imposed themselves against standards of

English law, and hampered well-meaning, productive use of the land. They had sown discord.

Thus, the petition frames its request as a public good. The petition ends by specifically asking the

King to review the Virginia and Maryland Charters and original commissions about land use in the Chesapeake, in order to secure claims to the region. They seemed sure that the Council would find Claiborne correct and force the Marylanders off Kent Island. They were incorrect, and the

Crown supported Maryland’s claim to the island and not the London traders’ position.

Clobbery and his co-petitioners also considered religious dimensions in their plea to return control of Kent Island to Virginia, invoking the threat of popery in the petition. Anti-

Catholicism played a major role in Atlantic politics from the outset. The Irish precedent for colonization loomed over American proceedings. “Plantation” involved imposing English law, religion, and property structure on areas outside Great Britain, and the Irish Plantations of beginning in the sixteenth century created a cultural association between planting English society and combating Catholic political and spiritual power.338 Clobbery, De Barre, and Moreland would have known this and known that framing the King and English people’s interests against

Catholicism would have had political resonance. On several occasions, the petitioners complained of “wrongs” and “oppressions” that had befallen Claiborne and other Protestant

338 See Nicholas P. Canny, ‘The Ideology of English Colonization from Ireland to America’, William and Mary Quarterly 30:4 (1973), 573–98; Montaño, The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland, 4-11; Hourning, Ireland in the Virginian Sea, 17-100 135

Virginians as result of the intrusive Catholic government of the new plantation.339 In so doing, they indicated a threat to the liberties of English subjects and free property, against the very orders of the King. By implication, the Catholic proprietor favored an unfree society with slavish devotion to Catholicism, thus assaulting the liberties of freeborn English people. Clobbery and

Claiborne both appear to have sympathized with Puritanism, and the latter readily joined with

Richard Ingle’s violent assault on Maryland during the civil war years.340 Emphasizing Catholic treachery and disloyalty allowed their petition to express religious fears in political terms.

Captain William Button, another Chesapeake planter, also wrote on his economic behalf due to changes in the Chesapeake’s political and economic situation. Also petitioning in 1634,

Button asked the Crown to restore specific rights that Virginian planters had lost a decade previously, during the royal takeover of the Virginia Company. Many of the planters of Virginia had lost a great deal of money and property during the reorganization from company to royal governance, and men like Button desired compensation for this loss.341 He argued that the withdrawal of several privileges for the planters had stunted the economic growth of the region and led several people to desert the area. Button petitioned for a wide redistribution of land “so provided in the manner before 1625” to accelerate the weakened Virginia economy and encourage investment in the area.342 While the petition mostly addressed wider goals for the colony and land grants in a general sense, he briefly made reference to a particular plot of 200 acres along the Rappahannock River he had in mind for himself. Button’s petition mixed broad suggestions for land use rights with his own personal interest, and desire to own property in

339 TNA CO 1/8, f. 91, r.; CO 1/9, f. 281, r., CO 1/9, f. 305, r. 340 Sutto, Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists, 42. 341 The Crown had essentially placed the Virginia Company under receivership, and the losses were like those of a bankruptcy. See Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 322. 342 TNA CO 1/8, f. 26, r. 136

Virginia. Petitioning allowed him to do the latter while also appealing on behalf of the commonwealth’s benefit. Button indicated there were other people like him that would benefit from the King granting them land in Virginia, and his petition might help them as well. It also defended the traditional right of English subjects to own land and reinforced the idea that petitioning could be one way to solve landholding problems. The Crown heard the petition in

July 1634, and decided to restore patents to settlers before 1625, and granted Button his desired lands on the Rappahannock.343 This petition offers an excellent example of the power of the process, and how both individual and common good could be served by bringing problems to the attention of the King through petitioning.

Another petition, that of George Griffith and the crew of his ship, the Warwick, shows how some subjects believed petitioning for aid could expedite commercial and customs issues that might otherwise take months to resolve. In 1634, the Warwick sailed for Virginia, intending to trade tobacco. The crew ran afoul of customs authorities. Virginia’s officials refused to recognize the ship’s papers because of confusion about their expiration date, thus “prevent[ing] the said ship and the profits she hath earned from returning hither to great loss and discouragement [of the crew].”344 Using business associates in England to submit the petition, the crew asked for their case to be referred to Sir Henry Martin, a judge of the Admiralty Court and a member of the Privy Council. The document indicates that Martin did overlook the petition and approved it.345 A case like this one shows the power a direct appeal to a specific Privy

Councilor could provide for subjects. Without this help, the mariners might have begun litigation in the Admiralty Court, or perhaps the Court of Requests, to get recognition of their customs

343 TNA CO 1/8, f. 28, r. 344 TNA CO 1/8, f. 73, r. The crew claimed their commission to trade in Virginia lasted three years, while the Virginians believed all commissions expired at the end of a given year. 345 Ibid, f. 73, r. 137 rights. This, however, would have taken a considerable amount of time, and if the case dragged on, the money spent on legal fees would have consumed the value of any tobacco they purchased. The petition eliminated this risk and allowed the sailors to get home much faster.

Similarly, Marmaduke Rayner, a recent returnee from Virginia, petitioned in 1627 for permission to board the ship that he returned on, the Temperance. According to the petitioner, the ship’s captain, William Saler, had “detained the goodes of the passengers from them and other goodes cosigned” upon his ship once it had docked in London.346 Under normal circumstances, English people could not simply board a ship and reclaim their goods. The government strictly regulated who and what could leave England, and it took written permission from the Privy Council or others to board a ship bound for America, lest someone leave without sanction.347 Rayner petitioned on behalf of himself and the other passengers for permission to board the ship and retake possession of their goods, which Captain Saler had held against their will. The petitioner argued such would benefit the King’s subjects and would help settle debts and receipts relating to the cargo. This document contains no indication that the Council discussed this petition.

A petition from Governor John Harvey of Virginia, on behalf of an elderly Virginia resident named Thomas Covell, illustrates the patron-petitioner relationship at work. According to Harvey, Covell had resided nearly thirty years in the colony of Virginia.348 Covell, who had filed his own (now lost) petition, had returned to live in England and, while back in Europe, had lost control of his estates. This took place when Mr. Thomas Loving, newly married to the

346 TNA CO 1/4, f. 90 r. 347 Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic, 19. 348 TNA CO 1/10, f. 90 r. If Covell had indeed been in Virginia for 30 years by this point, he most likely arrived in 1610, just after the colony’s Starving Time, and would certainly have been one of very few people still alive from that cohort. 138 widow of one of Covell’s renters, possessed himself of the Virginia property and stopped paying his yearly dues. Harvey, in England on a business trip, brought his petition before the Privy

Council, using his rapport with many on the Council for Plantations to “make good of ye Lord’s good intentions” and assist Covell, who could not prove his claims to the land for lack of documentation.349 Endorsed by secretaries, the Council heard the petition on September 1, about three and a half months after Harvey had introduced Covell’s cause. Unfortunately for them, the

Councilors ruled against the elderly man, as he lacked sufficient documentary evidence to support his claim. Even though Harvey had served the Crown for years, the Council decided the equity of the matter upheld the status quo, an important calculus underlying the monarchy’s just rule.

Petitions for aid differed from petitions for mercy because they did not emphasize the helplessness of the petitioner, so much as potential good done for the King’s subjects and in general. Through these suggestions, hoped petitioners, the individual, the monarchy, and the commonwealth would benefit through the application of equity and the

Crown’s role as a source of justice. The petitions indicate that subjects understood and believed in this relationship and deployed petitioning for the chance to shape their Atlantic lives in traditional English ways. They used the format to address problems they encountered as part of a trans-Atlantic social and political society, with similar approaches to subjects in Europe. This process enabled a less expensive alternative to the courts. It also provided a mechanism where private entities and public policy in the early Atlantic empire interacted and could be discussed.

349 Ibid. 139

Though not all of them were successful in their goal, their decision to petition shows the power of the process in their society.

Petitions for Economic Liberties

Other petitioners sought specific Atlantic trading privileges, favors, or exemptions. By offering propositions which mutually benefited the Crown, the Commonweal, and the Petitioner, many individuals successfully gained access to new commercial opportunities. These subjects used established procedures to ask the King for special privileges, such as monopolies and exclusive contracts, which individuals and groups had used in England for decades.350 This process had long offered important incomes and estates, and thus had a regular place in subjects’ interactions with the government. English subjects frequently requested exclusive rights either to land or to trade certain goods in certain regions. Petitioning for economic liberties also reinforced social hierarchy and deference. Petitioners had to show appropriate respect for the

Crown, and make their arguments for economic licenses with reference to a general social benefit and a benefit to the interests of the King.351 While the individual subjects that petitioned for these privileges certainly made lucrative personal gains from them, they also self-consciously believed they might service the kingdom at large, and they used proposals granted due to petitions to build the strength of England’s increasingly trans-oceanic economy.

For example, George Kirke petitioned the Privy Council in 1634 hoping to gain economic privileges at the expense of the wool dyer’s guild, which he framed as inefficient and burdensome to the general economy. Kirke, himself involved in the textile industry, brought notice of poor dying practices using new American plant products, which had “corrupted the said

350 Zaret, “Petitions and the ‘Invention’ of Public Opinion,” 1509. 351 Ibid., 1511. 140 silkes . . . to a great deceit concerning all your majesties subjects.”352 His petition also referred to a Star Chamber case against the silk dyers for damage to clothes from dyes derived from

American products, in which he himself had testified to “inform your majesty of great abuses” in the silk industry.353 Kirke offered his own expertise as a solution. Claiming to know how these products worked better than others, he asked the Crown to make him a commissioner, and authorize him to investigate the silk producers’ use of dyes. With this blessing, he could examine if they accorded to proper industrial practices. Kirke proposed this commission come with a salary, as well as commission fee for each successfully prosecuted a silk dyer. The Privy Council reviewed the proposal and commissioned him with a salary, but did not agree to give him a per- case commission bonus if he found improper uses of the American dyes. Kirke’s offer presents a marriage of his own economic benefit with the benefit of the Commonweal. His expertise could result in better cloth coming into England, which would also generate money for the King and happiness for the English clothes shoppers. By showing how all parties could gain from the

Crown giving him an official commission, Kirke gained commercial rights.

This would not be the last time George Kirke petitioned for Atlantic economic privileges.

Four years later, he sought sanction of a different nature, relating to New England shipping.

Again, he used the petition to offer evidence about abuses committed by others, in this case the trader John Wollstenhome. Kirke accused him of flaunting laws and regulations of the realm by illegally trading victuals, especially butter, to New England. Citing several past decrees by the government about trading butter and about monopolies on certain American trades as precedent, he argued that Wollstenhome had violated Crown restrictions and thus forfeited his rights to

352 BL, Bankes Papers, 17/66. 353 Ibid. The plaintiffs had won this case against the silk dyers. 141 trade. Kirke then offered himself as an alternative, responsible franchisee for the trade of butter and other dairy products to New England and asked for exclusive rights.354 The King and

Attorney General discussed the matter on 12 March, 1639, and granted Kirke his request. Again,

Kirke combined existing evidence about problems in Atlantic trade with a general principle to help the commonweal into his successful petition. The general principle of an individual petitioning for economic liberties to solve a larger problem proved an effective one which directly involved the Crown in trans-Oceanic trade that affected many subjects. Kirke’s adeptness at this kind of petition allowed him great success at gaining privileges.

Edward Winslow’s November 1632 petition for a license to import hemp and flax in New

England offers another example of the economic petitions and their application in the Atlantic world. Winslow had a prominent role in the Plymouth plantation, had signed the Mayflower

Compact, and was an experienced politician, acting as an intermediary between officials in

London and New England locals.355 This experience allowed him to combine familiarity with

New England’s agriculture with the technical knowledge to petition successfully. Aware that

New England contained the potential to grow grain, hemp, and flax, Winslow sought a license to plant it there and import it to England. His petition emphasized the “air as temperate as our bodies, and the sea with suffice harbors” which would make English trade there profitable.356 He proposed he receive sole right to trade hemp and flax across the Atlantic and pay the crown 20% of his profits. This would create a lucrative trade for himself, but his petition argued the primary benefit would go to the realm. “Your Honors will soon see his majesties’ revenues and customs

354 BL, Bankes Papers, 43/46. 355 Len Travers, “Winslow, Edward, Colonial Governor,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29751. Winslow later served as a governor of Plymouth. 356 TNA CO 1/6, f. 172, r. 142 by reason of this Plantation enlarged, and the Kingdom supported,” claimed Winslow.357 In addition to the customs benefit, he claimed these materials would give England a new and cheap source of materials to make rope and other woven goods, which they could then export to

Europe. Winslow’s petition shows knowledge of economic opportunities provided by negotiating with the Crown, similarly to in England itself, on a trans-Atlantic scale. When subjects like him received American monopolies or special privileges from the Crown, they gained the potential for great personal advancement and profit while also generating wealth for the entirety of

English society. They had to emphasize the benefits for the state and commonweal. All petitioners knew that the government would listen to many suggestions about mutual profit and acted accordingly.358 Winslow took this knowledge when he immigrated to Plymouth and applied it to his argument to control the hemp and flax market.

Edward Brook made a similar proposal regarding the sugar trade. His request allowed him to gain a salaried office by arguing for more Atlantic shipping oversight. He petitioned in

1638, complaining of abuses by sugar traders in England. Previously, the King had appointed two individuals, John Blackwell and Michael Warring, as overseers in the “taking of sugar” at the Port of London, or in other words, as customs officers for this specific product. Brook, a sugar salesman based in London, complained to the Crown that “divers times the sellers of sugar were much wronged and abused by the buyers thereof” due to negligence and the ignorance of how to properly store and evaluate the quality of sugar.359 Because the King’s appointees had mishandled duties, Brook petitioned to have himself appointed to the office for the taking of sugar. He cited his own expertise with the trade, and that he would combat abuses for the good

357 Ibid. 358 Peck, Court Patronage, Ch. 3. 359 BL, Bankes Papers 54/64 143 and profit of both his majesty and his majesties’ subjects. The Privy Council investigated, and upon finding “Blackwell and Warring have altogether deserted [their post],” they granted the petition and gave Brook the job.360 With this appointment, the petitioner received an annual stipend, and could hold the post for 31 years, unless recalled. By successfully exposing corruption and relating the general interest of the matter, Brook had achieved great dividends.

There may have been additional political dimensions at play in this petition. The Blackwells were puritan merchants that had a retail relationship with the Crown as Grocers, and John

Blackwell’s son eventually emerged as an officer in Cromwell’s regiment during the Civil Wars and eventually part of the Eleuthera Plantation project, a group of Puritans that funded a plantation in for religious exiles from Bermuda.361 Brook never explicitly mentioned religion, but his general effort to argue that Blackwell and his partner had not fulfilled their duty to the King might have stirred up thoughts of disloyalty. Either way, Brook’s petition provides another example of a successful economic petition, arguing for royal intervention on behalf of better management of sugar imports to the benefit of all alongside benefits for the

King’s purse.

Petitioners could also ask for license to use American land, rather than buy and sell

American goods. Sir Ferdinando Gorges petitioned on several occasions for the Crown to reaffirm his claims to today’s state of Maine. Gorges’ claim was based on a patent granted to his father by the New England Company, a corporation which had given several patents in the 1620s to settle and develop America, but which had collapsed by 1634 and its rights re-invested in the

Crown.362 Like much of New England in the 1630s and ’40s, the Maine coastline had become

360 Ibid. 361 Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, 527-8. 362 Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 134. 144 disputed territory. The Massachusetts Bay Company, with its expansive Charter, claimed many separate regions, including , , and Maine, fell under their jurisdiction. Because the Massachusetts planters had taken their charter with them and the significant company officers had emigrated to America with it, it became more difficult for the

Crown to oversee and enforce their authority on the corporate political body of Massachusetts than was the case with other chartered entities. This left a complex legal matter regarding Gorges and others’ patent claims to parts of America.363 The patents were now backed by the New

England Company grants that the Crown had assumed; the very same Crown had granted

Massachusetts a charter which allowed the Bay Company to claim those lands. Both claims were

“valid” depending on which manifestation of royal grant one preferred. Ferdinando Gorges petitioned the Privy Council to reaffirm his rights to the area in 1639, fearing that Massachusetts would interfere with his plans for settlement. He also proposed that “for the better settling of his estate,” he should go to the colony with official royal backing and personally lead efforts to plant it.364 A summary “nihil” is written at the bottom, indicating a denial (perhaps because Gorges asked the King to foot the bill himself).365 While the Committee for the Plantations had become quite frustrated with the Massachusettsans and had begun to consider revoking their charter,

Gorges had not provided enough reason or benefit for the state to support his cause. He tried again with a second petition in 1641 but received the same result.366 Modern Maine remained

363 By 1641, the Privy Council was occupied with internal strife in England, Scotland, and Ireland, and Atlantic business was not addressed as readily. See Chapter Four of this dissertation for an extended discussion of the Massachusetts Charter and its implications for the borders between various jurisdictions within the English Empire. 364 TNA CO 1/10, f. 143, r. 365 Ibid. The signature is in Archbishop Laud’s handwriting. 366 TNA CO 1/10 f. 255, r. 145 relatively underdeveloped throughout the mid-seventeenth century, and eventually Parliament and Charles II in 1661 confirmed Massachusetts’s claims and allowed for annexation.367

Gorges was not the only subject to petition for economic liberties he believed had already been established. John Wesloe, a planter in Virginia, petitioned the King on behalf of himself and others to protect their rights in the Chesapeake after the Baltimore Patent for Maryland transformed the economic situation of the region.368 This case touches on the relationship between the Crown and the chartered jurisdictions the Crown created in America, and how planters might try to intervene. Wesloe began the collective petition of November 1633 by describing his trade portfolio.369 “Your petitioners have a very great charge in transporting of men, cattell, [and] bridling horses within the great Bay in Virginia.”370 They then outlined how border disputes with Lord Baltimore threatened their economic livelihood. Like most in Virginia, they believed that the grant to Calvert contradicted their own Charter, and thus inadvertently violated their own rights to land and commercial goods in the area. They thus petitioned that

“your honors not [take] from them but what they may have your honors order to enjoy the same with freedom of trade without any interruption, and that Lord Baltimore may settle in some other place.”371 For this group of petitioners, asking the King to reconsider and have mercy on their cause would logically protect them from loss of their economic rights. The petition addresses the liberties of English subjects to land which they had possessed and developed against the charters the crown created. Charles I rejected this petition. All rights to land in America ultimately came

367 John C. Abbott, A History of Maine (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1892). 368 Virginians were not happy with the presence of Maryland in part because their patent also contained the land that Baltimore’s did. This was a topic of legal dispute, in which Charles I’s government continually ruled in favor of Baltimore. See Riordan, The Plundering Time, Chapter 1. 369 It is worth noting that the first settlers did not arrive in Maryland until 1634, therefore, Wesloe’s petition represents preemptive fears and not actual events. 370 TNA CO 1/6, f. 220, r. 371 Ibid. 146 from his own imperium, and he had the right to revoke, amend, and revise the boundaries of

English plantations.372 While he consistently attempted to negotiate between parties and come to an amicable conclusion to the conflict between Maryland and Virginia over the border, Charles supported Baltimore against Virginians who wished to claim those territories undisputedly remained with Virginia due to the earlier Charter. The Crown balanced the good of its subjects with its own considerations and insisted on the letter of the most recent charter reinforced. John

Wesloe and others who filed this petition correctly understood that petitioning could win the

King’s help in protecting economic liberties but failed to properly consider the disposition of this particular monarch to support the Calvert family.

Economic petitions, as they pertained to America, represented the extension of usual business practices in England to the imperial context. As English individuals and groups had used the petition to make requests of the Crown for centuries before Atlantic expansion, its form helped them make sense of the Atlantic world and their political and economic agency in that world. So long as one could get a petition heard at court, and so long as one demonstrated how their request benefited not only the petitioner but also the Crown and the common good, one could potentially gain many economic privileges and a significant amount of capital in the

English Atlantic. Residents of the American plantations applied for economic liberties to trade route and land use, and also petitioned against the rights of individuals with rival claims to trade routes and land sources. Some found success and others did not, but all understood the process as traditional, valid, and beneficial to English people on net. Subjects understood the role that the

372 Benton, A Search for Sovereignty, 56-61; Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession, Chapter 3; Mary Sarah Bilder, “English Settlement and Local Governance” in The Cambridge History of Law in America: Volume 1. Early America, 1580–1815, ed. Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 63-103; James Muldoon, “Colonial Charters: Possessory or Regulatory?,” Law and History Review 36:2 (May 2018), 355-381. 147

King and his Council played in governance and justice in the wider empire as equivalent to their traditional liberties in the British Isles, and thus regularly used the petition to access that right and to pursue their goals in America.

The Virginia Company Petitions

The Virginia Company made a series of efforts which depict how companies also used the petition as a tool to integrate the plantations into a larger Atlantic political society. Its shareholders attempted to defend the Company from charges of corruption, as well as ask for assistance and privileges from the government. Companies played a critical role in the direction of English plantation, especially before the 1650s, as they handled the initial financing and management of not only the profits, but settlement itself. Plantation and profit were co-equal goals. This was an important contrast from previous joint-stock efforts to trade in the Eastern

Hemisphere, which were commercial but not settler ventures.373 The Virginia Company, as well as others such as the Somers Island and Providence Company, not only had to turn a profit but provision their settlers, but also establish local law courts, manage the sale and development of land, and uphold the terms of their charters. To do so, they interacted with the English state and with the patronage networks of English society for funding, support, and moderation.374 From the very outset of the venture, the Virginia Company understood their project as the formation of a commonwealth. The argument for planation was grounded in a humanist idea of religious duty,

373 Andrews, Trade, Plunder, Settlement, 41-183. While not run by joint-stock companies, settler colonialism in Ireland provided more important precedent for American colonization that sixteenth century companies, as it was meant to uproot the local culture and replace it with an English system of land use, religion, and law. Canny, ‘The Ideology of English Colonization from Ireland to America’, 573–98; Montaño, The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland, 4-11; Hourning, Ireland in the Virginian Sea, 177-270. 374 Braddick, State Formation in Early Modern England, 398–404; Elizabeth Mancke, “Chartered Enterprises and the Evolution of the British Atlantic World,” in The Creation of the British Atlantic World, ed. Elizabeth Mancke and Carole Shamas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005), 237-262; L.H. Roper, The English Empire in America, 1602-1658: Beyond Jamestown (London: Routledge, 2015), 31-33 & 50-52. 148 fealty to the sovereign, and the creation of a happy and productive society. 375 As the Company floundered during the 1620s, they used petitions to portray themselves in a more positive light and emphasize the work they could do for the good of empire, King, and commonweal (namely, the economic benefits they could bring to England with greater support and investment for their enterprise). Although these petitions did not successfully save the Company from Crown takeover, they do indicate how corporate groups might use strategies very similar to individuals when they petitioned. The process was a negotiation, and because corporations had the traditional right to petition as one, they could use that right to put forward defenses of their projects and justify their efforts in terms of mutual benefit.

The struggles of the Virginia Company to properly run their American plantation informed the content of these petitions. Already, by the 1620s, the Company had been chartered and re-chartered three times (1606, 1609, and 1612). Successive forms of governance had failed, leading to increasing pressure on investors to turn around the venture and establish a healthy and profitable environment for the planters. The company initially governed the plantation by martial law, and individuals did not own their own land.376 Each of its charters gave authority to administer the colony to the Virginia Company, and each one restructured to add more oversight from England.377 Despite this, the Company still proved unable to effectively administer their settlement or turn a profit. Thus, another attempt in the form of a “Great Charter” of 1618

375 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 58-101; Haskell, Forging Renaissance Bonds, 9-14. 376 William E. Nelson, The Common Law in Colonial America: The Chesapeake and New England, 1660-1750 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 14. 377 The text of the three Charters can be found in The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London, ed. Samuel Bemis (Baton Rouge: State University Press, 1940). Outside of the governing structures, the charters were nearly identical, including the standard clauses about the relationship of royal imperium with the company’s rights and operations, and general language about the tax and profit structure both the Company and the Crown would enjoy from Virginia. 149 reorganized the company council and instituted common law for the Virginia plantation.378 This reshuffling aimed to incentivize immigration and pave the way for more responsible, participatory governance for the planters. They hoped not just to profit but create a new commonwealth and encourage the creation of a healthy political community.379 This would better serve the two imperatives of the Virginia Company: trade and settlement. It did little, however, to fix the poverty and starvation in Virginia, nor prevent the massacre of Virginia planters in 1622 by warriors.380 In 1623, King James called for an investigation of the

Company and its failure to create a safe and prosperous environment for English subjects (doing so in part due to efforts by disgruntled members of the Virginia Company and factional disputes among its investors).381 Investors feared this would result in a loss of their shares in Virginia, further, the Crown and English people otherwise had developed real concerns about the safety of the colony for potential planters. As a result, the Company commenced an extended campaign of petitioning to assure the King that English interests in the Chesapeake were secure.

Even before the royal investigation, the Virginia Company directed petitions to Lord

High Treasurer Cranfield, and these documents survive in his papers.382 On 23 June 1620, the petitioners wrote to defend the Company’s direction and ask for more support. Their struggles in

378 L.H. Roper, The English Empire in America, 80-81. 379 Andrew Fitzmaurice, “The Civic Solution to the Crisis of English Colonization,” 37-39; Haskell, Forging Renaissance Bonds, 9-14. 380 Roper, The English Empire in America, 84. See also John Wood Sweet, “Introduction: Sea Changes,” in Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World, ed. Robert Applebaum and John Wood Sweet (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005). How and why so many Jamestown settlers suffered in this period remains speculative, as specific, non-propagandistic accounts about life in Virginia before 1625 remain limited. Archaeological evidence has indicated cannibalism on at least one occasion. The death rate in the colony exceeded 80% in its first three years. 381 Ibid., 88; Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, Chapters 9-10. This process would result in the official transition of Virginia from a joint-stock to a royal colony. It should be noted that many of the King’s commissioners were in fact already involved with the Company, with a conflict of interest. 382 A few other scattered remains from this petitioning campaign are located in the National Archives and the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 150

America had become common knowledge, and the Company’s representatives did acknowledge difficulties.383 “In [this] enterprise many of us have suffered through great things, which alone would be as incredible as horrible to report to your ears.”384 The petitioners declined to further specify, however. Instead, they emphasized the achievements of the company, and that they had

“overcome and brought themselves some sort of stability without any other help from

England.”385 The petitioners reminded the King that “it pleased your majesty many years since of your religious desire to spread ye gospel of Christ and princely ambition to enlarge your domains, to give encouragement to yr pour subjects by many godly privileges and liberties.”386

Invoking liberties tied the project to the humanist goals of godly virtue, and also suggested the traditional freedoms of English people and the benefit of all England, which the Company aimed to protect and augment. With this established, the petitioners then claimed that political enemies had attempted to prevent proper conditions for a healthy tobacco market, and various individuals had gone rogue, hindering both the profit of the company and the profit of the King. This resulted in the restructuring of 1619, which would accelerate religious and economic progress that the Company had strived for. Closing with a request, the Virginia Company petitioners asked Cranfield and the King “to return us to our liberty, or otherwise to send for us all home, and not to suffer ye heathen tyranny over us.”387 This first petition indicates how the Virginia

Company, like individual petitioners, used concepts of intertwined benefit- Crown, country, and petitioner- as a rhetorical strategy to argue their case. To prove why the state should intervene in

383 Fitzmaurice, “The Civic Solution,” 31-32. 384 KHS, Petition of the Virginia Company, Cranfield Papers 34-2. 385 Ibid. 386 Ibid. 387 Ibid. 151 the Atlantic situation (or in this case decline to intervene), demonstrating the good of all proved essential.

The Company composed a second petition to Cranfield in 1623, after formal investigation had begun, to explicitly address criticisms of the Virginia Company. The document scapegoats Alderman Johnson and Captain Butler, two shareholders supposed to represent the company to the central government, of “delaying and forbearing” their commission investigating

Virginia, “to the extreme wrong of your supplicants, whose actions they have most unjustly and untruly endeavored to blemish.”388 They claimed that these individuals had misrepresented the financial state of the company and the extent to which inefficient management resulted in the massacre of 1622. The petitioners asked for the opportunity to correct these errors. They also asked for the return the company books, seized during the ongoing investigation, so that they could resume their activities, for without them they “were not able to govern their business.”389

Lastly, the company mentioned that over fifty gentlemen and their incomes relied on the speedy resolution of this business. Noting that the King might be merciful, the petitioners requested that

“[your majesty] be graciously pleased to preserve these men their rights, liberties, and privileges

… otherwise would turne to the utter discouragement of both adventurers and planters.”390 In this petition, the authors failed to discuss the benefits that the Crown would receive by assisting them, while being perhaps too willing to discuss the financial benefits Virginia investors received through continued returns from their joint-stock investments. The petition failed, and royal investigation continued.

388 Petition of the Virginia and Somers Island Company, Cranfield Papers 33, Kent History Center, Maidstone, Kent. 389 Cranfield Papers 33. 390 Ibid. 152

As the Virginia Company collapsed in 1624, its commissioners petitioned once again with the hopes of preventing royal takeover of the enterprise. Concerned with the potential loss of their investments, they proposed to the King “a form of Government for ye Plantation as to us appears most proper and important both for advancing ye public estate thereof and establishing the interests of private men.”391 Rather than a direct royal takeover, the petitioners instead proposed that the King select 24 councilors to oversee the Virginia Company. This would allow for a form of royal oversight in Virginia, while allowing many of the investors to hold an official office and continue running Virginia. This arrangement would be consistent with a proposal to protect the best interest of the King, the stockholders, and the planters in Virginia who had struggled. Virginia’s investors also sought a re-chartering of the Plantation, which would make more explicit central government oversight of Virginia while also ensuring “planters rights, goods, and liberties.”392 As English monarchs frequently did re-charter corporations for political or economic purposes, this request was not unusual.393 The petitioners proposed that the appointed council would make laws, none of which would be repugnant to those of England.394

Throughout the document, the authors emphasized their loyalty to the King and their recognition of his mercy. During the introduction, conclusion, and at several points in between, the petitioners underscored their gratitude for the fair rule of the King and highlighted their understanding that the ultimate authority over Virginia belonged to the King. Councilors should

391 BL, Bankes Papers 8/2, f. 1, v. 392 Ibid., f. 3, r. 393 This was a two-way process. The King could recharter for his own reasons, but more often than not recharterings were instigated by local interests. These people hoped to gain new rights or democratize old ones by new charters of incorporation. See Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic; Patterson, “Quo Warranto and Borough Corporations in Early Stuart England,” 883-885. 394 Whether or not a law was “repugnant” to the laws of England was a common standard for whether a colony could validly enforce it. So long as a given law accorded with that of England, the plantations had great latitude with their own legal systems. If, however, the Crown found their laws “repugnant” to its own laws, it could reject and override them. See Bilder, The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire, Chapter 1, for a discussion of this principle. 153 only serve “through his majesties own knowledge of their ability,” and should govern “with the interests of his majesty” informing all decisions.395 The petitioners understood the relationship between the Sovereign, on which their Charter relied for its authority, and themselves. Their language suggests supplication, knowing the potential loss of their investment could be imminent, and again attempted to use concepts of mutual benefit to justify investor control of

Virginia. The Crown did not grant the request and assumed direct control of the Virginia

Plantation. Perhaps in considering the several previous re-charterings of the Company, the King and Privy Council believed that to do so again would simply result in continued negligence and undersupply of residents in the Chesapeake.396

The Virginia Company’s petitions ultimately failed, but their use of the format provides insight into how English people understood the process of petitioning during the early seventeenth century, and the means to petition effectively. These documents display understanding that the authority to occupy Virginia came from the Crown, and that it held ultimate sway over whether the company could continue to function despite its difficulties.

Claims of English liberties permeated their petitions, as humanist ideas of good governance and

English ideas about traditional liberties informed the nature of the company’s project and their justification for plantation. As they argued for the continued independence of the Virginia

Company, they paid close attention to these concepts and argued that the continued independence of the Company accorded with the interests of the English people and the Crown in particular. Yet, the investors failed to properly demonstrate what benefits the King, the

English at large, and perhaps especially the planters already in Virginia gained by allowing their

395 BL, Bankes Papers 8/2, Folio 2. 396 Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 305; Fitzmaurice, “The Civic Solution,” 41-50; Haskell, Forging Renaissance Bonds, 238-246. 154 inefficient corporate venture to continue. In the end, the Virginia Company petitions failed in part because they improperly accounted the concerns of other elements in English Atlantic society, rather than the interests unique to company shareholders.

Conclusion: Petitions and Political Culture

Petitions proved a practical and productive means by which English Atlantic subjects contacted the state and negotiated the inter-relationship between the Crown, private persons, and corporations in the development of empire. Some subjects used the petition to relive themselves of bad luck or address inefficiencies and social conflicts in the American Empire. Others used it to gain economic privileges and increase their power in the lucrative Atlantic economy. Still others used to in efforts to protect their rights- individual and corporate- from the shifting situation in America as more English men and women peopled it. All these petitioners understood the format as a legitimate way to engage with the Crown and participate in the give- and-take that defined the relationship between the King and his subjects. This was a traditional right of the people in Europe and they continued to express that right in an American context.

Petitioning also showed the widespread understanding that the Atlantic world, like England itself, was a community tied together through networks and mutual association. Therefore, to successfully convince the Crown to intervene in a petitioner’s case, the author had to demonstrate three interlocked layers of benefit: the self, the monarchy, and the greater English society.

This utility also made Atlantic petitions part of a wider political culture of the early sixteenth century. Petitions addressed contemporary understandings of religion, politics, individual property, and tradition that English planters had carried with them to America. By including these ideas in their petitions, English planters consciously reflected on their identity as 155

English people with traditional liberties in the American space. Indeed, because petitioning was one of those rights, use of these documents perpetuated English identity in America and reinforced the bonds these individuals had with their homeland. Corporations, too, participated in this process and this political culture. Their petitions reflected their own understandings of their chartered liberties and the civic humanism that accompanied participating in the processes laid out by those charters. In combination with the other means English people had to participate in the expanding political orbit of England and its empire, petitions provided a formal mechanism through which these identities could be reinforced, perpetuated, and powerful within the public sphere.

156

Chapter 4: Conflict Resolution in New England within Broader Atlantic Political Culture

On the 5th of January, 1647, John Evance of the New Haven Colony sued John Charles, also of New Haven, for negligence while caring for his property. Evance had hired Charles to sail to Saybrook and Guilford in nearby Connecticut, where the plaintiff hoped to sell a cargo of peas and other perishable goods for profit. Unfortunately, during a stormy evening, the ship beached. All goods “belonging to himself and others [were] lost, all which, with the shallop, a boate, & other charges occasioned there, [were] valued at 1000 pounds,” according to Evance.397

He believed Charles could have avoided the wreck and that the crash had resulted from the defendant’s poor preparation. New Haven’s Court chose another trained mariner, Robert Martin, to oversee arbitration. Several witnesses came forward testifying that Charles had improperly prepared the boat to make a sea voyage. Considering this, the court concluded that “upon a full hearing of the parties with their allegations and proofs . . . given [Charles’] judgement, award that the shallop, boate, and goods were lost by negligence & ought to be made good to the owners.”398

A case like this one could have appeared in the English Court of Requests, Court of

Chancery, or Admiralty Court. Further, the records indicate Charles expressed displeasure with the outcome, and thus he might have considered asking for help from the English state. He did not do so. The entire case between these two parties made no mention of King, Parliament, the laws of England, or the laws understood to govern the seas, instead only invoking local statute in

397 Evance v. Charles, Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven from 1638 to 1649, ed. Charles J. Hoadly, (Hartford: Case and Tiffany, 1857), 281-282. 398 Ibid. 157

New Haven. For the New England colonies, handling things in this manner was by no means unusual.

This chapter will explore why the New England plantations appeared less frequently than other English Atlantic plantations in the litigation, petitioning, and letters which subjects used to access the royal government before 1649. The chapter argues that other continuities with English political culture, particularly the use and replication of common law and custom practices in

New England, provided an alternative that New England Puritans preferred to prerogative solutions. The chapter begins with a consideration of the political and cultural context surrounding the creation of New England plantations. New England was an English society at its core, and the relationship between law, political authority, and society there was undergirded by the same intellectual history as other plantations.399 Despite this, key religious and political debates in England predisposed New Englanders to specific understandings of authority, freedom, and obligation which disinclined them from using prerogative mechanisms to solve their Atlantic problems.400 Having established this, the chapter explores the ways that New

399 The historiography of law and society in New England is extensive and has transformed significantly through consideration of English intellectual background that both magistrates and ordinary people possessed when they built that society. Early works treated increasing litigation in New England as the breakdown of a harmonious society as it moved from piety to materialism. See Miller, The New England Mind, 307-309, 331-332; Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town: The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1736 (New York: Norton, 1970), 145-149. This notion was challenged in the 1970s and 1980s by scholars who contextualized legal proceedings and argued that a highly litigious society was inherited from England and represented social ideas about the law and its usefulness to the people. Thus, legal culture changed with time as a feature, rather than as a breakdown of order. See Timmothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster, “The Puritans' Greatest Achievement: A Study of Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts,” Journal of American History 60:1 (June 1973), 15; Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts, 1-29. More recent work has brought discussion of English law in New England into broader conversations about English Empire and law in a pan-Atlantic context of Europe and both Americas. See Cristopher Tomlins, “The Legal Cartography of Colonization, the Legal Polyphony of Settlement: English Intrusions on the American Mainland in the Seventeenth Century,” Law and Social Inquiry 26:2 (April 2001), 315-373; William E. Nelson, The Utopian Order of Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630-1686,” American Journal of Legal History 47:1 (January 2005), 183-230. 400 The links between Puritan religious belief and the political sphere have a large historiography. See Margo Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987) 22-52; Stephen Foster, The Long Argument Ch. 1-4; Peter White, Predestination, Policy and Polemic (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 203-214; David Como, Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an 158

England society transferred English law to America and combined it with their religious practices to make a cohesive society. Next, the chapter examines local conflicts in the New

England colonies as documented by officials and residents there, particularly Governors John

Winthrop of Massachusetts and William Bradford of Plymouth. These authors give a sense of how New Englanders addressed disputes among individuals and between colonies, with varying degrees of success. Their records make clear that New Englanders, still happily using English common law and custom, preferred to rely on the internal Puritan community rather than the royal government in London to bring about conflict resolution. The chapter concludes by examining reactions to New England’s relative independence by the royal government.

In the New England colonies, residents generally turned not to the Crown, but to their own local political institutions to solve their problems. From the history of the Puritan movement since the mid-sixteenth century, the types of people that became New Englanders inherited reservations about the use of prerogative power by the Crown, particularly in matters of religion.

While they acknowledged the King held these powers legitimately, they also feared a slippery slope into popery and tyranny could result from their overuse. New Englanders looked to other mechanisms to regulate social cohesion from English society instead, including common law, the church, and local custom. The near absence of New Englanders from records of prerogative courts and petitions does not represent a rejection of their Englishness, but an embrace of other aspects of English political culture in the early seventeenth century.

Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004), 221-223; Michael P. Winship, “Freeborn (Puritan) Englishmen and Slavish Subjection: Popish Tyranny and Puritan Constitutionalism, c.1570–1606,” English Historical Review 126:510 (October 2009), 1059-1060; Antonina Bevan Zlatar, Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in Elizabethan England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), Ch. 6; Winship, Godly Republicanism, Ch. 4 159

Law, Authority, and Society in the Puritan Worldview

Deep political, religious, and cultural tensions in early modern England contributed to the

New Englanders’ relative disinterest in using prerogative mechanisms to solve their Atlantic problems. Puritans saw themselves as English and most of them remained committed to participating in the , despite their insistence the Church retained many harmful elements of Catholicism. However, rising pressures on Puritans from the Arminian movement forced them to consider emigration to New England to preserve the Church and bide time until reform might be accomplished. Puritans, like many English people, were also concerned about the rise of tyranny and arbitrary use of power by the Crown, which they tied directly to the religious corruption. These debates influenced Puritan views about law, religion, and society, which would in turn shape how they set up New England’s political structures.

English Puritans were a diverse group that shared a belief that the Reformation, as it had been settled during the reign of Elizabeth I, was incomplete. They believed the church had not been fully reformed and contained many harmful remnants of Roman Catholicism. Among their concerns were the use of vestments and other clothes by the priests, an inadequate emphasis on preaching, and England’s retention of hierarchical ecclesiastical offices like Bishops. This led to efforts for reform of the Church, which took different forms over the decades. In Elizabethan times, the Puritan movement had a strong presence in courtly politics and reform focused on furthering the 1559 act of settlement, peaching, and constraining the power of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Around the turn of the seventeenth century, the movement had declined, largely subsumed into a Calvinist consensus within the Church of England. From the 1610s on,

Puritanism revived in response to the rise of Arminianism (which will be described below) and renewed fears of Popery; this Puritanism gained many followers in Parliament and was one of 160 many factors that contributed to the breakdown of the social order and eventual outbreak of civil war in the British Kingdoms. Puritans held no consensus beliefs and reflected a spectrum of theologies and points of agreement and disagreement with the established Church. Puritans linked their religious goals to the political and social fabric of the English state. Catholicism

(particularly the institution of the Papacy) and political despotism were closely linked in the political thought of all Protestant sects; eliminating the influence of the Pope was a universally desirable goal among the Protestant groups. Because the monarch headed the Church of England and was thus tied to vestigial Catholic religious institutions, Puritans feared corrupting influences and the slippery slope to tyranny. This was a two-way street, because Puritans also feared arbitrary and unsanctioned use of political power could corrupt religion.401

Puritanism was not a monolithic religious position, and there were differences between groups who bore the label “Puritan” (which they did not chose for themselves.)402 Puritans were at odds over concepts like free will, how God revealed truth, and the organization of Church life.

Most significant for discussion of New England is the difference between Separatists, who disobeyed the laws of the established church and removed themselves from it, and non- separating groups, who reluctantly continued to participate in the Church of England in hopes of eventually reforming it. Each of these groups had their own sub-divisions. The founders of

Plymouth Plantation were Separatists. They rejected of the Church of England, believing that

401 Puritanism, its theology, its goals, and its presence in social and political conversations of early modern England is a topic with a vast historiography, of which cataloguing every work would be nearly impossible. For some key works, see Patrick Collinson, The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (London: Methuen, 1967); Todd, Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order, Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 1-21; Peter Lake, Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker (Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988), 1-12; Foster, The Long Argument, 33-137; John Spurr, English Puritanism 1603-1689 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998), 54-78; Como, Blown by the Spirit, Ch. 2; Tom Webster, “Early Stuart Puritanism,” in The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, ed. John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 48- 66; Andrew Chambers, Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580-1720 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 1-38. 402 Puritans called themselves other terms, such as “the godly” or “saints.” Spurr, English Puritanism, 18. 161 reforming the Church from within was impossible and counterproductive. Thus, they “separated” from the Church to form their own congregations where they could practice in accordance with their own understanding of biblical principles. The Plymouth (and other) Separatists hoped that by showing their own Church as a model one, adherents of the Church of England would become aware of the tyranny that the official church harbored, and thus join them and gain liberty within

God’s true church.403 Meanwhile, the founders of Massachusetts Bay were non-separating

Congregationalists. Congregationalists clashed with both the mainstream Church of England, which gave Bishops and the larger Church of England power to regulate and dictate ecclesiastical life in individual churches, and Presbyterian Puritans, who accepted that synods or other meetings impose on individual churches and lead the completion of England’s

Reformation.404 The Congregationalists believed each individual church’s covenant with God existed independent of others, and thus each community made its own church that possessed autonomy. They rejected the top-down interference that both Bishops and Synods presented.

Neither group disputed the idea that the King possessed legitimate authority and, until well into the period of Civil War in the 1640s, all agreed that obedience to central government on secular matters was compatible with Puritan religious positions.

Of particular concern to Puritans after 1620 was the rise of the Arminian movement.

Though Protestants, Armenians embraced the visual ceremonial experience of the Church familiar in Catholicism rather than the austere ecclesiastical spaces of Calvinism, and also rejected the Calvinist interpretation of strict predestination. The Arminian movement gained

403 Jeremy Bangs, Strangers and Pilgrims, Travelers and Sojourners: Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation (Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2009), 3-53; Winship, Godly Republicanism, 112-144. 404 For two overviews of Congregationalism, see Bremmer, The Puritan Experiment, 55-72; James Fennimore Cooper, Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 11-22. 162 favor at court in the 1620s, affecting practices of the Church of England. Many leading Bishops subscribed to it. This included Bishop Laud of London, later Archbishop of Canterbury, who became notorious for enforcing conformity and persecuting Puritans who would not follow the official rules.405 To Puritans, Arminianism reeked of Popery and was a serious threat to English society. As argued by Nicholas Tyacke in his authoritative history of the rise of Arminianism in

England, the Arminians challenged a Calvinist, predestinarian consensus that had defined the theology of the late Elizabethan Church of England, causing rupture.406 A rejuvenated Puritan movement argued the re-introduction of practices too similar to Catholicism could breed papal despotism and distract people from the word of God and the spirit of God’s laws.

Congregationalists and Separatists, like those who founded New England, found the Arminian imposition particularly frustrating because Laud and others were so meddlesome in the independent life of their Churches. For these groups, such intervention was the very embodiment of tyranny, and thus popery. Many Arminian persecutions of Puritans took place in the English court system, and combined with Charles I’s patronage of the Armenians, the entire prerogative judicial system would have been an unfavorable place for Puritans. This explains some of the

New Englanders’ preference to avoid the prerogative courts. One of them, the Star Chamber, was actively used as a tool to squash their religious dissenting.407

405 The standard account of Arminianism’s rise in England is Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists. See pp. 87-105 for the development of Arminian theology in the form that would gain power in England, heavily influenced by the international Synod of Dort in 1619. See also Jonathan M. Atkins, “Calvinist Bishops, Church Unity, and the Rise of Arminianism,” Albion 18:3 (Autumn 1986), 401-427; John Feilding, “Arminianism in the Localities: Peterborough Diocese, 1603–1642,” in The Early Stuart Church, ed. Ken Fincham (New York: Springer, 1993), 93-113; Michael Questier, “Arminianism, Catholicism, and Puritanism in England during the 1630s,” Historical Journal 49:1 (March 2006), 53-78. 406 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 3-16. 407 Ibid., 200, 210. 163

Further, concerns about royal despotism in 1620s and 1630s English society likely influenced some New Englanders to distrust prerogative courts or petitions as strategies to solve their problems. While all English subjects believed the role of the monarch was critical for a functioning society, they also understood a need for limits and restraints on the monarch’s power.408 This fear became particularly acute during the reigns of James I and Charles I, who made no secret of their preference for divine right monarchy.409 The increasingly contentious relationship between the monarchy and parliament caused anxiety among many English subjects in the 1620s and 1630s, who worried about encroachment on civil and economic liberties.410

Most Puritans were members of this group. This only escalated during the personal rule of

Charles I from 1629 to 1640, when the King did not call Parliament, executed legally controversial strategies to collect revenues, and patronized controversial Arminian theologians.411 Dis-ease about royal abuse of power was not unique to the sorts of people who eventually moved to New England, but it was a very present theme in cultural conversations which they participated in. Moments of contention included the 1626 forced loan, in which

408 Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 113-134; Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution, 152-157; John Guy, “Monarchy and Council: The Models of State,” in The Sixteenth Century, ed. Patrick Collinson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 123; Andrew Hadfield, Shakespeare and Republicanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 17-54. After the deposition of Charles I, debates continued about whether monarch-like power could function and/or ought to function in a republican setting. See Benjamin Woodford, Perceptions of a Monarchy Without a King: Reactions to 's Power (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013), 132-163. 409 James had written two books, The True Law of Free Monarchies (1598) and Basilikon Doron (1599), in defense of absolutism. Modern editions of both can be found as James VI and I, Political Writings, ed. J. P. Sommerville (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994). 410 The constitutional crisis of the early seventeenth century has a voluminous historiography. For a sample of some contemporary perspectives, see Lake, Anglicans and Puritans?, 123-139, 197-213; Tom Coggswell, The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 29-52; Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 151-185; Glenn Burgess, Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 127-164; Robert Zaller, The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007), 563-570; Conrad Russell, “Parliament, Royal Supremacy, and the Church,” Parliamentary History 19:1 (March 2008), 27-37. 411 Stressors included ship money, extensive grants of monopoly, religious fears about the rise of Arminianism, and a series of controversial prosecutions of subjects who refused to comply with Charles’ new financial regime. See Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, 181-241; Sharpe, The Personal Rule of Charles I 131-275; Richard Cust, Charles I (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005), 104-196. 164

Charles’s government made efforts to collect taxes without the consent of Parliament to pay for his war with Spain, the Five Knight’s Case, which generated debates about prerogative after five individuals were imprisoned for refusal to pay the loan, and the levy of ship money during peace time, when this levy had previously been used only during wartime.412 All English Protestants, whether establishment, presbyterian, congregationalist, or separatist, closely associated tyranny and the Papacy, and feared not only the loss of property and civil liberties, but their souls to

Catholicism. The two were interrelated, because civil tyranny could foster religious corruption, while church tyranny could corrupt civil society. As a result, Puritans saw themselves as protecting traditional English liberties alongside their efforts to preach God’s true religion.413

Tensions between the Puritan community and the Crown were inflamed by debates in

Parliament over both religious and secular matters. Several members of Parliament began to forcefully espouse the Puritan cause in the 1620s, and specifically pointed out royal favorites that supported Arminianism as a potential source of corruption.414 Meanwhile, major debates over the

King’s war policy, the (over)use of royal power to grant monopolies, and arbitrary imprisonment caused great consternation.415 This further contributed to skepticism among Puritans about prerogative’s use to solve problems. They became less inclined to see prerogative, petitions, and

412 Cust, The Forced Loan in English Politics, is the fullest treatment of the loan and political, economic, and social consequences of the loan as English people argued for or against it. For the Five Knight’s Case, see Mark Kishlansky, “Tyranny Denied: Charles I, Attorney General Heath, and the Five Knight’s Case”, Historical Journal 42:1 (March 1999), 53-83; Sarah Willms, "The Five Knights' Case and Debates in the Parliament of 1628: Division and Suspicion Under King Charles I," Constructing the Past 7:1 (2006), 11. For Ship Money, see Peter Lake, The Collection of Ship Money In Cheshire during the Sixteen-thirties: a case study of Relations between Central and Local Government,” Northern History 17:1 (1981), 44-71; Henrik Langelüddecke, “I finde all men & my officers all soe unwilling”: The Collection of Ship Money, 1635–1640,” Journal of British Studies 46:3 (July 2007), 509-542. 413 Tyacke, Anti-Calvinists, Ch. 6; Peter Lake, “Anti-Popery: The Structure of Prejudice,” in Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, ed. Richard Cust and Anne Hughes (New York: Longman, 1989), 82-86. 414 Braddick, God’s Fury England’s Fire, 44-49. 415 There is extensive historiography on the relationship between the King and the Parliament during the early 17th century, and related controversies over religion, the extent of prerogative, and taxation. See Russell, The Crisis of Parliaments, Ch. 5, Derek Hirst, Authority and Conflict: England, 1603-1658 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), Ch. 4-6; Burgess, The Politics of the Ancient Constitution, 180-221, J.P. Sommerville, Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603-1640 (London: Routledge, 2014). 165 courts based on it as a solution to their problems in America or elsewhere. Instead, they preferred to look to other English traditions, particularly common law and local custom, as a means to solve problems and regulate their society. With these important questions about faith, authority, and the relationship between the church, the state, and the people, Puritans had developed a worldview within and very much a part the larger intellectual culture of England, with its differences based on rifts occurring all over the English empire. This worldview would influence the social structure and conflict resolution in the New England plantations.

The New England Way and Atlantic Political Society

The plantations founded in New England between 1620 and 1640, which included

Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven, modeled their government, towns, and structures of social cohesion on concepts and customs already present in England; these same structures provided alternatives to the royal prerogative while creating an explicitly English

Atlantic society in America and tying these plantations to larger conversations about authority and social conflict in the empire. Most of these settlements drew their validity from charters and patents, documents which conveyed privileges from the Crown (directly or indirectly). Using these documents, Puritan religious and political thought, and English common law, the New

Englanders developed a complex and competent system of government for their colonies. The

New England Way thus referenced English roots and used local government rather than royal government as a model for their towns. As a result, the absence of New England from the prerogative courts and from petitioning can be explained not because planters rejected the

English government and the Crown entirely, but because they had developed strong internal mechanisms for resolving problems in their society. When combined with Puritan suspicions 166 about tyranny and popery, New Englanders would have gravitated to their own system over the

Crown’s.

A brief note on the nature of patents and charters is required to explain the stronger position of Massachusetts relative to Plymouth and subsequent New England colonies, and how the New England plantations set up their governmental and legal structures. In general, patents were open letters issued under the King’s seal which could grant economic privileges, titles and positions, commissions, or pardons to a given English subject or group of subjects. Patents could also be issued by chartered entities, and thus be non-royal (for example, the various patents that were issued by the New England Company, a chartered corporation, for various land grants in

America). However, these secondary patents still indirectly relied on the authority of the Crown, as the chartered corporations that issued them owed their legal status to royal prerogative.416

Charters could only be issued by the Crown, and not only granted rights but outlined explicit terms for creating a body with officers, rules, and special legal statuses. When a group of people received a charter, it was widely understood they intended to form a sovereign political society, with regulations and participatory involvement of the parties mentioned in the Charter with the conduct of business.417 Patents could convey some aspects of sovereignty and legal rights but tended to be less specific in terms of how patentees should govern and on what basis they should conduct themselves. This made them easier to contest. On top of this, in English law, chartered

416 For more on the legal functionality of the patent in early modern England, see Chris Dent, “Patent Policy in Early Modern England: Jobs, Trade, and Regulation,” Legal History 10:1 (2006), 71-96. For the operation of charters and corporate bodies, see Braddick, State Formation, 39-40; Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” 1016–1038. The best example of corporate sovereignty in the English empire was the East Company, which maintained independence from London a century longer and conducted all the powers of a sovereign state, such as raising armies, conducting courts, and managing land ownership and rights. See Philip Stern, The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 417 See Halliday, Dismembering the Body Politic, 29-55, and Withington, The Politics of Commonwealth, 16-48, for background on corporations as political societies in early modern England. See also Haskell, For God, King, and People, 137-198, for an analysis of corporate political philosophy pertaining to Virginia. 167 entities (not just companies but also boroughs, gilds, etc.) could only be changed or withdrawn via a formal legal process, while the King or the institution that granted a patent could amend those documents as they pleased. Thus, while patent plantations could establish title to land and form a government, they had more trouble creating universally recognized means to conduct themselves regulate their residents.

Initial patents to settle modern New England, including patents for Plymouth, the

Dorchester Company’s first settlement, and Ferdinando Gorges’ patent for modern Maine, were issued by the . The Council for New England was a chartered joint- stock company, approved by King James in 1620. Its stated goal was to propagate English settlements in America, grant patents to land there, and regulate trade from the region.418 The

Council for New England’s chartered rights gave it control of the area as a grant from the King, who ultimately held license to all the land in America. The patents gave commercial privileges of settlement or resource extraction but tended to be vague in their terms and thus easy to challenge.

For example, the first patent given to the founders of Plymouth Plantation gave only a title to some land in the Council’s territory, without even specifying the location. Further, many of these initial patents were conditional on settlement and development within a stated window of time, resulting in hastily organized settlements and the double-booking of territory. All of this was compounded by the Council’s lackadaisical attitude toward record keeping. Lastly, the patents allowed for the establishment of governance and law courts in a general sense but gave little indication as to how planters should go about doing this.419 As a result of ambiguity, plantations reliant on patents frequently clashed with each other over boundaries and commercial rights. As

418 The Charter of New England, 1620, in The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), 1091. 419 See R.A. Preston, Gorges of Plymouth Fort (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953), 170-175, 197-199, 204-211, & 218-224 for an extended discussion of the New England Company and its inner workings. 168 the geography of New England was still somewhat uncertain, different groups of English subjects began to quarrel over who belonged where, sometimes violently. English subjects attacked each other’s fishing stations, contested land rights, and at times raised militias against one another.420 Parties used the language of protecting English liberties and the security of property during these conflicts.421 The Crown soon realized this was undesirable. These disorders contributed to the King and Privy Council’s decision to revoke the Council for New England’s

Charter in 1634 and work to get the region under control, re-establishing harmony within English

Atlantic society.422

Massachusetts, as a chartered colony instead of a patent colony, could make a stronger claim to a clearly delineated political society directly authorized by the King. The company’s leaders secured a charter from directly Charles I on March 4th, 1629, in order to avoid some of the problems they had seen in Plymouth and elsewhere with patents from the Council of New

England.423 The Charter of Massachusetts Bay proved extremely useful not only because it was a royal charter rather than a patent from a public corporation, but also because it laid out the structure of government in great detail, thus making the structure of the political society the

Puritan planters wished to create explicit and hard to challenge. The nebulousness of the patents for Plymouth and Piscataqua regarding how to establish effective governance are not present in

420 Beaver, “Fruits of Unrulie Multitudes,” 372-395. Intra-English conflicts were not limited to New England at this time. Virginia and Maryland constantly clashed over land rights and the legitimacy of Maryland’s Charter. See pages 89-96 and 132-134 of this dissertation’s second and third chapter for more on this conflict. Regarding Newfoundland, see Pope, Fish into Wine, 268-272; regarding Barbados, see Gragg, Englishmen Transplanted, 49- 62. 421 Beaver, “Fruits of Unrulie Multitudes,” 377-380. As Beaver points out, these patterns also reflected concurrent developments in the British Kingdoms and localized violence that preceded the Civil Wars. 422 This of course was not the first time the King revoked a colonial charter for this purpose, having done so for Virginia in 1624. This is also not to say chartered entities never came into conflict with each other. Most pertinent to English America before the Civil War is Maryland and Virginia and their conflict over Kent Island. 423 The Charter of Massachusetts Bay, 1629, in The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), 1031. 169

Massachusetts’ Charter. Because the Charter lacked the usual clause that specified Company meetings needed to occur at a specific location, the Company’s leaders transplanted the document (and themselves) to Boston, allowing it to be used and read by the government there.424 The charter specified the creation of a General Court consisting of all members of the company and Court of Assistants to run the day-to-day affairs of the colony. These individuals, called magistrates, executed not only legislative functions but as a body for judicial appeal.

At first, the freemen who served on the General Court and the Court of Assistants were the same people. Eventually, a new body of freemen consisting of anyone admitted membership in any of the colony’s churches formed; when these freemen demanded to see the Charter in

1634, they discovered the Charter allowed the General Court some legislative powers and the

Assistants acquiesced to this.425 The Massachusetts planters interpreted these clauses with an explicitly congregational Puritan worldview.426 By having a charter which so well specified how to govern and with the backing of royal authority itself, there was widespread consensus on its use to structure to set up the Bay Colony’s government and law. To do so would have been both consistent with English respect for monarchical power to issue a charter (an expression of prerogative), as well to create limits on the power of the individual institutions of Massachusetts’ government, consistent with Puritan political philosophy.427

424 Ronald Dale Kerr, “The Missing Clause: Myth and the Massachusetts Bay Charter of 1629,” William and Mary Quarterly 77:1 (March 2004), 91. It is unclear if the Company deliberately omitted the clause specifying location for this reason or did so accidentally. 425 This account follows Haskins, Law and Authority, 9-31, and William E. Nelson, “The Utopian Legal Order of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630-1686,” American Journal of Legal History 47 (2005), 189-192. 426 Rozella Canty-Letsome, “John Winthrop’s Concept of Law in Puritan New England,” Duquesne Law Review 16 (1977-78), 331-358. 427 Nelson, “The Utopian Legal Order of the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” 185-188; Forsyth, Common Law and Natural Law in America, 10-13. 170

Using the Charter’s permission for the Bay Company to enforce law, punish crime, and rule within the boundaries of Massachusetts, the magistrates took it upon themselves to create a model English society, resistant to some of the corruptions they perceived in across the Ocean and better preserving the social fabric from the twin attacks of tyranny and popery.428 The planters believed that good rulers were chosen by God, and they sought to choose magistrates that upheld the principles of divine and secular law. The selection of leaders reflected methods the planters would have been familiar with in England. For instance, voting in elections usually favored of incumbents or pre-arranged candidates, and a disputed election was considered a breakdown of the orderly political process. Modern concepts of democracy and political opposition did not exist in early modern England.429 As argued by T.H. Breen, the Puritans also believed the magistrates should also act as “ministers of God,” upholding the moral order of the colonies alongside their duties of secular governance.430 Massachusetts’ General Court specifically borrowed terms and concepts of local government from England. This is particularly apparent in their creation of Quarterly Courts and distinct counties in Massachusetts, which were both local units of governance familiar in rural England. These units allowed people to bring suits and problems to elected magistrates in their era, with the General Court handling larger cases and appeals. The creation of counties exceeded the authority of the Charter and contributed to later investigation of Massachusetts and attempt to revoke its charter by the Crown (as will be discussed later in this chapter). None of this was foreign to Puritan political thinking of the 1620s and 1630s, or general English political and legal practices in the early modern era. English

428 Several leaders of New England wrote to this effect. See John Winthrop, “A 1630- 1649,” vol. 1, ed. James Kendall Hosmer (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1908), 137, 144; Thomas Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline (London, 1648), part II, 80; , An Exposition upon the Thirteenth Chapter of the Revelation (London, 1655), 108-112. 429 T. H. Breen, The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 53. 430 Ibid., 35. 171 people in England and America alike preferred to solve problems locally and with neighbors and friends as arbitrators, with higher authorities only a last resort.

In addition to the formal legal structures of the New England plantations, English custom and understanding of custom greatly shaped the development of New England society and how conflicts were handled within it. As shown by David Grayson Allen, the individual towns of

Massachusetts shaped the government and the landholding patterns to accord with local systems the immigrants of any given town were used to. Migrants to any given town tended to come from the same part of England, but different towns took their population from different parts of

England. Thus, there was variety within the colony’s landholding and governing patterns that mapped onto variety in England itself. Those that had come from manors arranged their fields like manors, while those that had come from pasture land did the same.431 The towns of

Massachusetts and elsewhere in New England rapidly developed a sense of local custom- the time immemorial knowledge of whose fields were where and which animals belonged to whom- and cited unwritten common knowledge when the General Court or local courts handled disputes between landholders (with the additional added benefit that all the initial setup was still in living memory through the late seventeenth century).432 The New England planters liked familiar

English systems to handle land and property disputes and made effort to replicate them in

America. While the prerogative court system and petitioning the Crown handled local land disputes in England, these were expensive methods of last resort only when local custom and local arbitration failed. New Englanders chose to develop and then respect custom as means to organize property, showing their affinity for English ways.

431 Grayson Allen, In English Ways, 1-19. 432 Konig, Law and Society, 38-42. 172

The religious and social structure of New England towns also shaped conflict resolution.

The New England Way emphasized the role of the laity in choosing their own ministers, and protected each town’s church, established independently.433 Making sure to sperate powers as a roadblock to tyranny, the New Englanders made sure their ministers were not the same as their magistrates. The minister John Hooker put this succinctly. “It is unlawful for a Minister to be a

Magistrate; not because these things are contrary; but the weight of the one is so great, that it is beyond any ordinary ability to undertake to discharge both, unlesse he would wrong both.”434

The planters restricted membership in New England Churches. Only those who could satisfactorily prove to the community that they had genuine belief and experience of God could enter the church or receive communion, and only church members had political franchise.435

While individuals concerned themselves with the behavior of their neighbors in all variants of early modern English culture, the religio-political infrastructure of the New England town provided a particularly strict system for social regulation.436 The church involved itself in moral regulation of residents’ family, social, and sexual behaviors. Residents would bring their concerns about moral crime as well as civil crime before local leaders. The Churches of New

England worked with local magistrates to administer punishments; the magistrates took responsibility for civil penalties like fines and imprisonment, while the church could withhold

433 Cooper, Tenacious in Their Liberties, 5-7 & 23-27. 434 Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline 26. This entire book is a useful source for a New England Congregationalist’s argument for the separation of powers as justification for the independency of Churches. 435 For more on church membership and how local authorities regulated it, see Robert T. Miller, “Religious Conscience in Colonial New England,” Journal of Church and State 50:4 (Autumn 2008), 664-665; Bruce C. Daniels, New England Nation: The Country that the Puritans Built (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 64; Francis J. Bremmer, “The New England Way Reconsidered: An Exploration of Church Polity and the Governance of the Region’s Churches,” in Church Polity and Politics in the British Atlantic World, ed. Eliot Vernon and Hunter Powell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), 155-173. 436 See Barry Levy, Town Born: The Political Economy of New England from Its Founding to the Revolution (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009) for a discussion of how the labor market of each New England town structured their economy to favor local residents over travelers and transients. 173 sacraments or banish people from service.437 As put by the minister Richard Mather: “[of] punishments in Purse or Person, in respect of the body or outward man, are not to be inflicted by

Synods, but by civill Magistrates; and Church-censures of Excommunication, or the like, belong to the particular Church of which an offender is a member, out of the communion whereof a man cannot be cast, but onely by his owne Church.”438 Towns and the Church discipline system considered moral law in their judgments more than their counterparts in England, but again, this was not contradictory to contemporary English practice.

It must be stated that while the people of New England acted with less reference to central authority than their counterparts in the rest of the English Atlantic, they in no way saw themselves as wholly distinct from England and remained deeply attached to their homeland in many respects. The very charters and patents that guaranteed them their liberties and structured their Commonwealths was an expression of royal power, and planters recognized this.439 This was particularly important for the non-separating Congregationalists in Massachusetts, who remained tied to the Church of England and hoped their example might lead to complete the reformation. A number of individuals returned to England dissatisfied with conditions in New

England, and far more engaged in circular migration around the Atlantic.440 Leases, debts, bonds, and guardianships in England still occupied the minds of New England’s settlers, and they frequently communicated with England in order to attend to these economic matters.441 The

437 Hall, A Reforming People, 145-148. 438 Richard Mather, Church-government and Church-covenant Discussed (London: 1645), 66. 439 This became tricky during the Civil Wars, as tacit acknowledgement of the rights in the Charter was somewhat contradictory with New Englanders’ general support of Parliament. See Peterson, The City State of Boston, 23-25 & 78-82. 440 Cressy, Coming Over, 197-204; Games, Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World, 164-167. 441 The best account of the continued economic and kinship connections between England and New England in the 17th Century is Cressy, Coming Over, particularly Chapter 7 (on debts and obligations) and Chapter 9 (on the transatlantic flow of information.) See also Andrew Delblanco, “Looking Homeward, Going Home: The Lure of England for the Founders of New England,” New England Quarterly 59:3 (September 1986), 358-386; Peter Temin, Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 174 planters believed communication with fellow Puritans still in England was crucial, in order to spread the idea of New England as a model society.442 Lastly, the New England settlements still, in part, relied on England and the rest of the empire for trade and for goods that were not produced in New England (while also participating in a much larger Atlantic network of trade with France, the Netherlands, Native Americans, and others that reduced that reliance on

England).443 Therefore, New England was not a society apart from the rest of the English

Empire. Though in specific respects, its planters viewed life, religion, and authority differently than most English people, those who came to New England still maintained an English identity and a connection to English society. Their tendencies towards independence arose from ideas within and not external to English culture of the early seventeenth century. Thus, their tendency to avoid accessing the royal prerogative to solve conflicts is even more significant.

Instances where New Englanders did choose the Crown rather than local structures prove a useful example and reinforce the idea that they still saw themselves as English subjects. The petition of Connecticut planters to the Privy Council in 1638 offers an example. Connecticut had been founded two years prior by separatists branching off from Massachusetts and had no charter or patent to sanction their settlement.444 The residents of Connecticut hoped for urgently needed resupply, as they had encountered difficulties keeping fed and clothed. “The plantations in New

England are in greate distresse for want of provisions, especially butter and cheese and therefore

Ch. 1; Marsha L. Hamilton, Social and Economic Networks in Early Massachusetts: Atlantic Connections (State College: Penn State University Press, 2009), 3-11. 442 Foster, The Long Argument, 139-159; Michael P. Winship, “The Most Glorious Church in the World”: The Unity of the Godly in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1630s,” Journal of British Studies 39:1 (January, 2000), 71-98. 443 Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995), 192-199; Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia, 49-51 & 88-89; Peterson, The City State of Boston, 32-61. 444 Jackson Turner Main, Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), Ch. 4.; Scott D. Gerbner, “Law and Religion in Colonial Connecticut,” American Journal of Legal History 55:2 (June 2015), 149-193. 175 by their scarcity . . . the disasters will be great for those planted at Connecticut in the South of

New England.”445 They then noted that no supply ships had come to help then at Connecticut, which they had only settled “for the benefit of your [majesty],” and asked for 200 pounds weight of butter and other victuals to be sent in relief.446 There were major issues to overcome for this petition to find success at Westminster. Because Connecticut was an unsanctioned political entity, with its legal existence unsupported by any grant of rights from the Crown, the state might look unfavorably at the effort and see no reason to assist the planters there.447 Nevertheless, the petitioners hoped the Crown would show mercy for their situation. They “humbly beseech[ed] your honors’ compassion to these and other planters at Connecticute, to take consideration of the great distress to these and other planters, and pledge to give by transport to the said planters the said supply of butter, cheese, and shoes.”448 The Council denied the request. The Connecticut planters petitioned the crown, hoping for a prerogative solution, when they were weak and disorganized in the process of setting up their own distinct polity from Massachusetts. The extraordinary circumstances overcame their general tendency to look amongst themselves instead of the Crown for help, and perhaps might not have done so had they been more stable at that moment.449

Hence, the Puritan background of the New England planters, the way they interpreted their patents and Charters, and the way they structured their towns and government reflected an

English Puritan worldview. The New Englanders consciously remained English and looked to

England for examples. While English people could and frequently did use central mechanisms

445 TNA CO 1/9, f. 306 r. The petition is not dated beyond a year. 446 Ibid. 447 Connecticut’s official Charter was not issued until 1662. 448 TNA CO 1/9, f. 306 r. 449 As another example of New Englanders using prerogative methods to access the Crown, see the Chancery case Greenstreet v. Roberts and Taylor in of this Dissertation (pg. 102). 176 based on royal prerogative to solve their problems, this was considered a last resort and local structures were preferred. New England’s near absence in records from prerogative hearings simply suggests those impulses were even stronger for the New Englanders than the Chesapeake or Caribbean planters. Their differing approaches reflect distinctions within a larger Atlantic political culture but were not contradictory.

New Englanders and Social Conflict Resolution

The people of New England left numerous records indicating their understanding of authority from local courts and their desire to use them wherever possible. As they recorded events around them, they left evidence about how the church-town community handled these matters, providing an alternative to institutions in England. Unlike other plantations, New

England accounts of legal procedure or conflict resolution seldom mention England, the King, or royal institutions, and focus more on the decisions made by New Englanders themselves. These societies built their own judicial system drawing from a combination of common law and the church-town structure. They found it sufficient to handle disputes between the planters who lived in the region. England was not absent from social conflicts, but cultural and political tensions between New England and England led New Englanders to avoid the pan-imperial prerogative mechanisms to resolve their conflicts whenever possible.

John Winthrop’s Accounts of Local Conflict Resolution in Massachusetts

John Winthrop journaled extensively while serving as Governor of the Massachusetts

Bay Colony. He recorded numerous examples of local conflicts and attempts to resolve them. In office over four non-consecutive stints between 1630 and his death in 1649, Winthrop mentioned 177 disputes among residents of Massachusetts on a regular basis.450 When he did so, he indicated how legal authorities within Massachusetts, embedded within the structure of the church and the government, helped resolve conflicts. Winthrop believed that magistrates “must have love & think only of God and doctrine” in their decisions, and thus consider these along with English common law and statute as a model. His’s legal theory held that valid secular laws could not contradict the law of God, and “if anything had otherwise been established, it was in error, and not a law.”451 A common lawyer himself, Winthrop saw no contradiction between common law and the law of God, and the two worked together in the administration of justice.452 He was careful to note the application of both in his journal, although at times the use English Common

Law was simply assumed. Winthrop’s Journal provides evidence that Massachusetts had an advanced process for handling conflict within and outside the colony, and residents became comfortable using it instead of looking to London.453

Winthrop mentioned instances of disagreements and of punishments regularly, and often without ceremony. The routineness of his descriptions of Massachusetts’ procedures suggests agreed-upon processes to handle civil and criminal matters. These processes accorded to typical

English patterns of local legal activity and involved typical officers which would be found in

English counties, like Justices of the Peace and Quarter Courts.454 An entry from June of 1631 describes the sentencing of one Mr. Philip Radcliffe, a convict “of most foul, scandalous

450 Although Winthrop was not a founding member of the Massachusetts Bay Company, he was elected to lead the first cohort of emigrants to America, and thus served as the colony’s first Governor from 1630 to 1634. He served again from 1637-40, 1642-44, and in 1649. 451 Winthrop, “A History of New England 1630-1649,” vol. 2, 288. 452 “John Winthrop to the Magistrates of Massachusetts,” Winthrop Memorials, Harvard Houghton Library, AM325. 453 Winthrop’s legal experience had been with local manorial courts, which were among the models for courts in New England. See Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts, 3-20; Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 101. 454 Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts, 20-29. 178 invectives against our court and government,” to whipping, lose his ears, and banishment.455 The next year, on February 17th, Winthrop recorded the complaint of the people of Watertown against their aldermen for raising taxes to fund fortifications, as they had understood that this government was overtaxing and the freemen could thus declare their grievances at every general court.456 This suggests they understood statutes about taxes and defense in Massachusetts and thought them improperly applied. Later in the decade, in 1639, Winthrop discussed charges against Robert Keane, a shopkeeper in Boston, “who was notoriously above other observed and complained of” for his usury. The magistrates fined him £200 for his greed, citing that he had accepted the religion of the colony and thus his hypocrisy. Thus, this ruling accorded with common law statutes against usury as well as Puritan understanding of natural law and social order. Despite several promises that he would reform himself, Keane had continued to profit too greatly from his trades and thus flaunted community values.457 As a final example, in 1642, the church in Boston tried a case between a Captain Kayne and Mrs. Sherman, wherein Sherman accused the Captain of killing one of her sows. This case went through six years of appeals process, using various local common law courts of Massachusetts.458 Across these instances, the planters of Massachusetts Bay looked internally for justice. They used their local courts, which were based on English models, to handle civil and criminal matters. Virginia, Maryland, and the

Caribbean colonies all had similar ways to resolve these conflicts, with their own court systems based on common law.459 The fact that planters there often chose to appeal to Royal prerogative

455 Winthrop, “A History of New England 1630-1649,” 64. Winthrop wrote his journal beginning with his voyage to America, and it has been republished on several occasions. The third volume, covering 1644-1649, was not rediscovered until 1846 and published in 1853. 456 Ibid., 74. 457 Ibid, 315-317. 458 Winthrop, History, vol. 2, 64 459 Nelson, The Common Law in Colonial America, Ch 2. 179 mechanisms while New Englanders did not suggests cultural and religious aversion to prerogative solutions played a role in Massachusettsean decision making.

The general acceptance of Massachusetts Bay’s authority to adjudicate these conflicts was not universal, and at times challenged. A significant example occurred in 1646, when Robert

Child and six other signatories sent a petition to the Massachusetts Bay General Court, which posited that by denying political franchise to non-church members, they had denied them their rights as Englishmen. The government responded to this challenge by arresting the signatories.460

Winthrop records the response of signee William Hubbard, who when brought before the

General Court in Boston, challenged the general council’s premises for arresting him and his fellow petitioners. He asked them to show “what offence he should be charged with, or what wholesome law of the land, not repugnant to the laws of England” that he had broken.461 If this could be shown, said Hubbard, he would submit. Hubbard also stated that the law of God could be interpreted different ways. The court responded that he had committed seditious practices by signing the petition.462 Hubbard’s challenge shows a New England subject appealing to the spirit of English law, even though he could not appeal to the English state directly.463 He cited the repugnancy principle directly and challenged the notion that the religious nature of New

England’s Churches should have supremacy above his English rights of franchise and access to commerce. Had the circumstances been different, Hubbard or the other petitioners could

460 Margaret E. Newell, “Robert E. Child and the Entrepreneurial Vision: Economy and Ideology in Early New England,” The New England Quarterly 68:2 (June 1995), 149-193. 461 Winthrop, History, vol. 2, 265. 462 Ibid., 267. 463 Massachusetts Bay having made such legal appeals illegal in 1637, further, by 1646, England’s ongoing civil wars would have made appeals to prerogative mechanisms for help incredibly difficult. 180 conceivably have tried to petition the Crown, but by the 1646 this was unlikely to turn up much help as the King’s armies collapsed in the Civil Wars.

Winthrop did record some interaction with England regarding the imprisonment of those convicted of crimes by Massachusetts’ courts. On September 30th, 1630, Winthrop noted that

“Thomas Morton [was] adjudged to be imprisoned, till he were sent into England, and his house burnt down, for his many injuries offered to the Indians, and other misdemeanors.”464 In another instance of 1631, Winthrop and the Bay planters sent Robert Wright, convicted of treason for clipping coins, back to England after he had escaped and arrived in Massachusetts.465 These episodes show that Massachusetts planters may have thought it useful to interact with England’s legal system in certain circumstances. Once locals tried and convicted someone, or when criminals tried to enter their plantation, they could be sent home to England for punishment or handed over to the King, rather than kept in America as a stain on the community. Massachusetts residents clearly understood that they remained part of the Empire, but judiciously chose when to involve London in their affairs.

Winthrop also recognized that the King and Privy Council posed a potential threat to the plantation and kept record of their rumored resistance to the project of Massachusetts. Winthrop particularly noted the efforts of Ferdinando Gorges and John Mason, who had patent claims to

Maine and New Hampshire, respectively. Both sought control of New England via their patents and attacked the validity of the Massachusetts Charter.466 Winthrop made note of petitions

464 Winthrop, History, vol. 1, 53. 465 John Winthrop to Lord Chief Justice Sir Nicholas Hyde, March 1631, Winthrop Papers (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1928), vol. 3, 15. 466 Both Gorges and Mason had made little concrete progress towards a viable settlement in America. Because they had not developed the land there, their claims under English understandings of dominium were themselves somewhat suspect, and the New Englanders cited this as a counterattack. Charles E. Clark, The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England, 1610-1763 (New York: Knopf, 1970), 15-26. 181 against Massachusetts that aimed to wrest control from the established colonial government, as well as efforts in London to subvert Massachusetts’s authority.467 New immigrants to Boston, as well as contact with Puritan friends in England, would have kept him abreast of these developments. The Governor noted that these petitions “charged us with many false accusations, but through our Lord’s good providence, and the care of our friends in England, their malicious practice took no effect.”468 Winthrop and others in Massachusetts also knew that disgruntled ex- planters wrote to the council against the colony and helped to build the case against them.469 In a

1635 entry, Winthrop noted that the Crown had begun considering direct intervention in

Massachusetts. He feared that London (with help from the people currently in Virginia) would

“force us to receive a new Governor, and the discipline of the Church of England, and the laws of the commissioners,” thus interfering with the spiritual and political life of Massachusetts

Bay.470 Later that year he reiterated fears that Gorges and Mason would finance a military intervention with their own ships, but also noted that their friend Lord Saye and Sele had frustrated anti-Massachusetts efforts in the Privy Council.471 Winthrop made one last mention of this controversy on 27 June 1640, stating that Mason had again slandered the Bay Company in

Court, but to no avail.472 Overall, Winthrop knew that what occurred in England mattered if

Massachusetts was to maintain its independence. The Crown could try to revoke the Charter through a legal process, and this would undermine the structures that kept the Massachusetts community cohesive. He also understood that continuing to use systems of political patronage would help Massachusetts remain uncorrupted by outside influence. Massachusetts planters used

467 I discuss Gorges’ petitioning efforts at greater length in Chapter 3 of this dissertation. See page 144-145. 468 Winthrop, History, vol. 1, 99. 469 Bremer, John Winthrop, 231. 470 Ibid., 135. 471 Ibid., 152. 472 Winthrop, History, vol. 2, 10. Mason and Gorges both died relatively soon after 1640, though the government would have no time to fund military adventures in America because of war at home after 1641. 182 human connections in the Privy Council to influence political decision making on the part of

Charles and his councilors so that they could protect their internal political life.

In sum, Winthrop’s record of Massachusetts social conflicts shows an understanding of the relationship of the Bay Colony to England and inherited legal and social concepts from

England, as well as a preference to handle things internally and wariness that the government might compromise the colony. With a background in common law and a Congregationalist worldview, Winthrop still held a respect for many English concepts and institutions of law, social cohesion, and discipline. However, he astutely understood how the authority the Bay

Company claimed via its charter clashed with the Crown, and why the royal government could threaten the colony’s continued operation. This was the paradox of Massachusetts’ relationship with the prerogative. Their Charter and system of local conflict solution relied on prerogative powers of the Crown to devolve governing authority, but planters remained concerned about arbitrary use of those same powers.

William Bradford’s Account of Plymouth

Like Winthrop, Governor William Bradford of the Plymouth Plantation extensively recorded disputes in his community. As an original settler and frequent governor of this colony,

Bradford had experience managing crises. His account of the history of Plymouth includes both mundane and extraordinary cases of conflict between English people in America. Like their neighbors, Plymouth’s churches were based on a congregational model where each town had its own church, and local leaders played an important role in social cohesion. Plymouth’s Separatist religious stance, however, rejected the Church of England entirely, making it more difficult to procure ministers and attract new planters. This also caused internal conflicts when non- 183 separating individuals showed up in the colony and attempted to integrate.473 Further, into the

1630s and 1640s, Plymouth remained reliant on its royal patent, which lacked the specific outlines and instructions for setting up a government that Massachusetts Bay enjoyed. Between their less orthodox religious beliefs and their patent’s ambiguity on how to implement the structures needed to create a political society and defend it from external attack, Bradford and the

Plymouth planters consistently found themselves on less secure ground. Compared to Winthrop,

Bradford wrote less frequently about legal disputes and their internal resolution within Plymouth

Plantation, and more on conflict with other settlements resulting from disputes about the patent.474

Plymouth’s religious situation created conflict with Atlantic implications. Lacking a minister to administer sacraments in their Separatist Church for several years because of political in-fighting with their financiers, the Plymouth planters accepted John Lyford, a non-separating minister, in 1624.475 Though Puritan, Lyford’s presence quickly led to strife in Plymouth.

Factions quickly developed between the Separatists and followers of Lyford (led by the merchant

John Oldham), with both sides coming to distrust each other and suspect the other of intending to separate from the main body of the colony. Lyford, upon admittance to the Church at Plymouth, was asked to renounce his calling to the church of England, which as a non-separating Puritan he refused to do. Desperate for sacraments, many people preferred to follow Lyford’s religious

473 David S. Lovejoy, “Plain Englishmen at Plymouth,” New England Quarterly 63:2 (June 1990), 238-239; Carla Gardina Pestana, The World of the Plymouth Plantation (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2020), 147-156. 474 Plymouth eventually had to contend with Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and the efforts of Mason and Gorges. Unlike Connecticut and Rhode Island, Plymouth never secured a charter even after the restoration, which is why it was eventually absorbed into Massachusetts. See Johnson, Adjustment to Empire, 201. 475 The Adventurers of the New England Company, which issued the initial Patents to Plymouth, were mostly conformists and thus held back John Robinson, the intended minister of Plymouth’s Church, from travel several times. Reliant on others for paying to ship migrants to America, the Plymouth planters could do little to stop this. Winship, Godly Republicanism, 119-121. 184 practices over the intended Separatist ones. The separating and non-separating camps came near a violent clash, to the point Oldham publicly drew a knife on Separatist supporters and accused them of treason. Lyford, for his part, held a separate Church service and administered the sacraments, which Separatists would have interpreted as a slide back into religious corruption for

Plymouth.476

Braford, as governor of the colony, was tasked with trying to control the situation. He called a Court of the Colony, which accused Lyford and Oldham of disturbing the public peace.

He described their actions as “most injurious to the civil and church state,” as he understood this as a threat to the entire fabric of the Plymouth society.477 In the third person, Bradford indicated how he saw his role as a preserver of that social fabric: “[the magistrate] was bound… to prevent mischief & ruine that this conspiracy and plot of theirs would bring on this poor colony.”478 This schism threatened the whole of Plymouth. Bradford saw Plymouth as a Commonwealth (a term which he used elsewhere in his writings) and the assult of non-separatists on the social harmony and religious freedoms gained by separatism represented an attack on that political society.479

Lyford and Oldham were both sentenced to exile as a result.

Plymouth survived this spat, but it showed the weakness of the colony. Separatist religious principles were considered seditious by most English subjects, as Separatism directly challenged the idea that Church of England was the established Church. The religious combat led the financiers of the colony in England to withdraw their support, leaving Plymouth in a precarious position until alternate support could be secured.480 For contrast, Massachusetts,

476 Ibid., 123-125. See also Beaver, “Fruits of Unrulie Multitudes,” 380-384. 477 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1952), 140. 478 Ibid, 141. 479 Ibid., 121. 480 Lovejoy, “Plain Englishmen at Plymouth,” 239. 185 whose company government, and government-in-America were the same body, did not have to worry about such matters. Efforts by Bradford and other Separatists to fashion a commonwealth in Plymouth were successful, but repeatedly subject to stressors internally and externally. The religious conflict of the Lyford/Oldham episode exemplifies this fragility.

Internal conflicts in Plymouth were, unsurprisingly, not limited to religion and included the commercial sphere. In 1630 and into 1631, Plymouth encountered controversy caused by

Isaac Allerton, who committed at best inefficient or at worst fraudulent misuses of the colony’s finances. Allerton was an original settler of Plymouth on the Mayflower, but at one point returned to London to secure economic privileges to hunt beaver and fish. While there, he claimed to have helped settle the planation’s debts, and asked to use public funds to build ships and conduct fishing ventures. Allerton argued this would benefit all in the colony. He convinced many people in Plymouth to help finance the construction of a fishing fleet, but did not return with any seafood, seemingly having disappeared. Bradford recorded the situation as of 1630:

“[Our settlers] were forced to buy [Allerton] a bark, and to furnish her with a master and men to transport his corn and provisions . . . [The people of Plymouth] looked earnestly for a timely supply this spring, but the fishing ship which they expected, and had been at charge to keep a stage for her, but none came nor any supply heard for them.”481 A search party eventually tracked Allerton to Bristol Bay on the other side of Cape Cod, but found him lacking in any provisions for the colony, outside of alcohol.482 Considering the rich natural cod population in the region, the inability to acquire fish seemed inexplicable. Several people in Plymouth indicated dismay that their resources had been misused. Cases of this sort could have gone to

481 William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1952), 226. These passages about Allerton were written well after 1630-31, as Bradford references events as late as 1639 to follow up on specific individuals. 482 Ibid., 228. 186 court in London, as they did in Virginia and Newfoundland, but no records indicate activity there.483 Instead, the next year, Allerton hoped to finance a voyage the same way, and local protests ended any such venture. “Mr. Shirley, Mr. Beauchamp, and Mr. Andrews, they renounce all particulars protesting but for us they would never have adventured one penny into those parts.”484 An investigation of Allerton’s finances and the accounts he had “solved” in England turned up considerable irregularities. The eventually exiled Allerton, but not before he deserted Plymouth to move to Salem in Massachusetts.485 Plymouth residents recovered none of the money they had invested in Allerton’s fishing attempt.

Plymouth had clear problems with Allerton, who they believed defrauded the public finances in failed attempts to set up commercial fishing ventures. Yet, it failed to execute judicial authority on the matter. Bradford made note of public shaming and attempts to prevent further sunk costs for public finance in a second voyage. However, unlike in Winthrop’s discussion of civil disputes, Bradford did not mention the involvement of church elders or judicial functions to try to resolve the case. Bradford and the Plymouth planters also never considered sending

Allerton back to England to face trial for fraud there, though they might have. Plymouth’s patent allowed it license to pursue “advancement of the publique planation,” or create a political society, and also “marine liberty” and Admiralty Jurisdiction over the waters Allerton fished, but it lacked the clear procedural indications for how to go about implementing and enforcing this authority as Massachusetts had in its Charter.486 Internal debates among Plymouth’s planters about punishment and consequences gave Allerton enough time to flee before the punishment of

483 Bradford did note went to England to investigate Allerton’s financial deeds there. Ibid., 227. 484 Ibid., 237. 485 Allerton would in turn be exiled from Massachusetts, then settled in New Haven and died there in 1659. David Lindsay, Mayflower Bastard: A Stranger Amongst the Pilgrims (New York: St. Martins Press, 2002), 81- 83. 486 “Charter of the Colony of New Plymouth Granted to William Bradford and His Associates,” in The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1909), 1088. 187 exile would have meant anything. In this instance, Plymouth had more difficulty than

Massachusetts in managing, trying, or punishing problem residents.

Bradford’s account of a violent incident in Northern New England in 1634 depicts the people of Plymouth came in conflict with those in other patent settlements, and how these incidents engendered anxiety about the colony’s position within the wider English Atlantic. John

Hocking, an English merchant, had begun to trade on the Kennebec River, in modern Maine.

Plymouth claimed the area, which was supported by their patent.487 John Howland, the head of the Plymouth men there, did not acknowledge Hocking’s rights to undertake economic activity there and insisted he remove himself from the river, but Hocking decided to trade with the

Native Americans in the area regardless. Despite several further attempts at persuasion, the

Hocking would not move, so Howland authorized his men to cut Hocking’s anchor and let the current carry his ship back to sea. During this proceeding, the sides took shots at one another, and Hocking as well as one of Howland’s men were killed.488 News spread quickly to England, which concerned Bradford. He noted

“the Lord Saye and Lord Brook with some other great persons had a hand in this

plantation. They writ home to them as much as they could to exasperate them in

the matter, leaving out all the circumstances as if he had been killed without any

offense on his part, concealing that he had killed another first and the just

occasion he had given in offering such a wrong. At which their Lordships were

much offended until they were truly informed of the matter.”489

487 This was outside the bounds of the Plymouth Plantation’s main towns, but lay in the broad, undefined area of their patent. Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 262-268 488 Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 263. 489 Ibid., 264. Lord Saye and Sele, as well as Lord Brook, had invested in the small existing settlements in modern New Hampshire and Maine, and thus would have been concerned about this matter. 188

Bradford noted widespread sadness across New England over the matter, and worried that the involvement of Lords in the case might jeopardize Plymouth despite the murder occurring elsewhere. News also spread across New England, with Winthrop making some comment on the matter in his own journal. Winthrop and Thomas Dudley (at this time the governor of

Massachusetts) involved themselves in correspondence with all parties in England and America to bring this matter to justice.490 This was a complex matter under English law, involving not only the contested economic rights to the region from differing patents, but also the right of

English people to defend their property. Both parties’ right to conduct commerce on the

Kennebec river relied on permissions from the Crown, and the Crown could revoke that right or side with the other party at its will. This could further weaken Plymouth, already at odds with the

Crown and Church of England over religious separatism. While no Royal intervention came out of this moment, it reveals the relative weakness in comparison with a chartered entity like

Massachusetts (which also relied on the King’s grant of rights, but had its powers more specifically outlined, and required a court case for the crown to revoke those rights).

Bradford’s account of Plymouth Plantation shares much with Winthrop’s account of

Massachusetts. Both governors stressed the need for internal cohesion and indicated through their writings that a combination of God’s law and English traditions could bring about a healthy

New England Way. Winthrop wrote from a position of greater strength, as the Charter of

Massachusetts Bay outlined specific structural mechanisms which could be used, and the colony was more populous and more prosperous than Plymouth. Bradford, denied these advantages, had to contend more with deviance and direct challenges to the project of the New Plymouth

490 Winthrop, Journal, 114-115; Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 264-266. Bradford includes two letters from Dudley in full in his account. 189

Plantation. Nonetheless, Bradford and the other Plymouth separatists successfully defended religious, commercial, and political attacks on the colony, mostly through local courts and councils. Developments in England had to be monitored for survival, but this was no different than Virginia, Maryland or elsewhere.

Other Incidents in New England

William Pynchon’s disputes with Connecticut provide another example of New

Englanders in conflict over territory, and how court proceedings based in common law resolved them. Pynchon led the first settlers up the to settle modern Springfield,

Massachusetts, in 1636. Initially, Springfield was part of the new , which included other downstream settlements at Weathersfield (modern Hartford), Saybrook, and

Windsor. Pynchon (and later his son John) would dominate networks of credit and social integration in the upper Connecticut River Valley for decades, through extensive use of debt peonage and owning and renting land.491 Pynchon also had extraordinary entrepreneurial skills, using the town’s prime location and land speculation to enrich himself.492 This set him apart from the other founders of Connecticut, whose goals for the new colony stressed religious goals.493 As conceived by the colony’s founders, Connecticut was, like Massachusetts, a

Congregationalist polity, and church and state were not separated. The Fundamental Orders of

491 Springfield’s early history and economy have been examined in detail in Stephen Innes, Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth Century Springfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). See chapter 2 for how the Pynchon family dominated the region and became the major landowners in Western Massachusetts, especially pages 23-29. 492 Town proprietors enriching themselves was common in New England, and profit occurred readily. What made Pynchon somewhat unusual, though not unique, was that he chose to actually settle in Springfield. Most proprietors gained their profits as absentees and remained in Boston. Town founders recruited planters for their new towns, in order to develop them, establish ownership, and begin the generation of economic gain. See John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 31-35. 493 For a discussion of the theological aims of Hooker and others, see Baird Tipton, Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), particularly ch. 7 and 9. 190

1638/39, which codified Connecticut’s legal system, were explicitly religious and looked to the

Bible to justify many ordinances. Common Law was embraced alongside this as a practical way to administer the law enforce the social order that Congregationalists desired.494

In 1639, Connecticut took Pynchon to court, citing irregularities in his trade with Native

Americans and his provisioning local English planters with supply. According to Thomas

Hooker, John Mason, and others, Pynchon had sworn on oath that he would go up the river to purchase corn from the Native Americans and provision settlers in the river valley with food for the winter. He was given public funds to do so. The Connecticut men alleged that Pynchon, however, had “avoid[ed] the carrying down of corne with other excuses . . . difficulty of the falls, the coldness of the water, and the floods all these excuses were alleged in the presence and haearing [sic] of others.” Due to these voluntary delays, by the time Pynchon returned, “all ye corne but a little had become spoyled.”495 Thus, the planters of Connecticut formally charged him for failing to uphold his oath. Pynchon denied that he had broken his word, and claimed

“according to the best of his skills and Judgement he did [use] this opportunity to the best advantage of the publique in that he offered this Indian furr trade at severall rates . . . he esteemed it a better way for speedy supply, than to draw them into a bargyn.”496 Thus, Pynchon argued his purchase of corn at a worse price was done in the interest of the colony, and to uphold his mission to provision. Hooker then accused Pynchon of trying to embezzle, a charge which made the defendant furious.497 Pynchon responded that he had orders simply to trade with the

494 See Gerber, “Law and Society in Colonial Connecticut,” 151-158. Gerber focuses on the religious underpinnings of Connecticut statutes, but he also emphasizes the place of common law as a mechanism to enforce these teachings. For example, murder was equally illegal in biblical and common law. 495 William Pynchon Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, MS N-670, pg. 3. 496 Ibid., 3-4. 497 While this account is in third person, it is interspersed with first-person recollections of Springfield and it is likely Pynchon would not have included it in his papers or edited it otherwise if he did not agree with the general scope of the narrative. 191

Indians for the best price he could, the trip had greatly inconvenienced himself, and that difficulty with negotiations occurred because the English at Wethersfield and Windsor had previously agitated the Natives.498 The court eventually declined to fine Pynchon due to lack of evidence, but nonetheless concluded that he had not done his all to fulfill his oath.

A case like this one provides an example of how local courts dealt with disputes in New

England. Abuse of public funds was illegal under common law, and English legal concepts, like the idea of an oath, were important and maintained both formal and emotional meanings for people involved in the trial. The New Englanders did not need the Crown to solve their problems because their local courts were equipped with English legal practices already. Additionally, this case shows how outside of Massachusetts, local authorities had less force and parties could easily challenge governmental authorities. An enraged Pynchon used this trial as a pretext to secede from Connecticut and annex Springfield into Massachusetts.499 Clearly, Pynchon did not respect the institutions of Connecticut or its courts enough to allow himself to be slandered (at least as far as he saw it).500 Because Connecticut was an unchartered colony formed by

Massachusetts settlers looking to found new churches, but would have almost surely failed in any effort to convince the King to use his prerogative to help them retain territory. Connecticut

498 This trial occurred only one year after the of 1636-1638 had resolved. The Pequot tribe occupied the land up the Connecticut River Valley where Springfield was established, and the planters of Massachusetts and Connecticut allied with other tribes in the area to defeat the Pequots and create an opportunity for their own settlement and stronger control of the fur trade. While Pynchon insisted he preferred to trade with Indigenous Peoples than kill them, he unquestionably benefited from the violence against them. Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995) is the best scholarly account of these events. 499 Innes, Labor in a New Land, 12. As the author points out, switching to far-flung outpost of Massachusetts from one of several Connecticut towns growing together gave Pynchon and Springfield a great deal of autonomy. William Pynchon returned to England in 1652, leaving leadership of Springfield to his son John. 500 Connecticut’s first planters, who arrived in the area between 1633 and 1636, were mostly Massachusetts planters that moved further West to find land and created towns and churches of similar structure to Massachusetts. The Bay Colony let these settlements manage their own affairs due to the distance and difficulty managing them in the 1630s. Thus, Connecticut came into its own without royal approval, in contrast to Massachusetts, which had a royal charter despite the Crown’s regret of their decision to grant it. See Tipton, Hartford Puritanism 48-49. 192 lacked even a patent, and the Crown had never authorized settlement there as it had for

Massachusetts. By settling in the Connecticut River valley without authorization, the

Connecticut settlers put themselves in a legally weak position. Thus, Pynchon could remove

Springfield from Connecticut to Massachusetts without consequence, and the planters of the lower Connecticut River Valley simply let the town go.

Meanwhile, the settlers of New Haven colony made few references to England, English

Law, or English custom in their records of the proceedings of their colony, as the system of

Mosaic law adopted by the planters there reflected a general understanding that their system and common law were compatible.501 New Haven represented the extreme end of a continuum of religious separatism. Dissatisfied with what they found in Massachusetts, a group of people left

Boston to found New Haven in 1638 and created a system with even more strict standards of church membership, and thus franchise. The founders of New Haven still modeled their legal system on common law, despite placing more emphasis than other groups on subordinating the civil legal system to religious doctrine. New Haven also had many merchants who wanted to trade with England and thus would still have interacted with English law systems.502 Various court sessions recorded in the 1640s indicate the Courts administering punishments for the stealing of grain and animals, slander, and disputes over shipping debt.503 The court also acted as a public forum for lodging complaints. On several occasions, the records of New Haven note that different residents used court time to introduce accusations of theft and graft, to the exclusion of

501 New Haven was formally organized in 1639 by a “fundamental agreement” among planters which established the New England standards for selecting magistrates and church membership. New Haven’s founders were particularly religiously strict and emphasized biblical law. Leonard Bacon, The Civil Government of the New Haven Colony (New Haven: New Haven Historical Society, 1865), 103. 502 Jon C. Blue, “The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639–1663,” (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015), 6-9. 503 For a representative session with all three, see the Court Records of 5 February 1644, Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven, 152-153. 193 all other court business.504 New Haven lawyers never directly mentioned England, the King, or the Crown as a source of authority in these matters. England’s only appearance in the records came in 1641, when confessions and evidence of sin by one George Spencer undertaken “in olde

England” were heard to support charges for bestiality, contributing to Spencer’s conviction and capital punishment.505 The internal application of Mosaic Law justified the actions of the New

Haven planters without reference to Old England, but to do so would not have been necessary.

The archival silence simply indicates that New Haven had a working system for resolving internal conflicts, much like other New England colonies, and this was widely understood by its

General Court and its scriveners.

~~~

In sum, settlers of New England, as they recorded conflict, indicated their general tendency to keep things local whenever possible. While residents in other colonies frequently mentioned the Crown and their continued relationship with it for addressing local problems, New

Englanders tended to be more self-reliant. While concepts about law and justice transplanted themselves to New England with these individuals, tying them to their homeland culturally, a combination of religious, political, and cultural conditions in these colonies made planters there less likely to look at the English state as a worthwhile place to solve debates among themselves.

Response to New England in Privy Council

Challenges to royal authority did not go unnoticed. The Privy Council understood

Massachusetts’s claims about its sovereignty as a violation of royal imperium and a subversion

504 For instance, Ibid., 57, wherein the entire Court session record for 7 July 1641 consists of Francis Hall complaining of Luke Atkinson withholding money from him. 505 Ibid., 61. 194 of their supremacy over policy in the English Atlantic. The creation of the Committee for

Plantations within the Privy Council exerted pressure on Massachusetts. This Committee had considerable powers to manage business and enforce the Crown’s imperium more efficiently on the colonies, meeting regularly to handle Atlantic business.506 By the mid-1630s, the government had begun to chastise Massachusetts for its unwillingness to cooperate and considered military intervention before England became pre-occupied with rebellion closer to home.

Soon after the Massachusetts Bay Company leaders took their Charter overseas, the Privy

Council became uneasy about the colony and made efforts to investigate and better control the area. Archbishop Laud, who led this committee, was an ardent opponent of the project and saw the Puritan influence on political practice there as a blasphemous and illegal assault on the

Church of England. The first major state hearings on New England occurred in 1632, when the

Privy Council heard a petition from Gorges, Mason, and others on the matter of their patent rights and the infringement of the Massachusetts Bay Company against their economic livelihood. The commission encountered problems figuring the truth of the matter, as they could barely call any witnesses to attest to conditions in New England and how residents applied their charter there.507 Over the next several years, committees revisited these charges and continually re-assessed the situation in New England. Questions concerning religion and their economic control of the area engendered numerous complaints, which kept Massachusetts constantly in the rotation of the committee’s concerns. Every year through 1641, they heard at least one complaint against Massachusetts.508

506 Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 156-159. 507 TNA PC 2/347, f 1r. 508 H. E. Egerton, “The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Privy Council in Its Relations with the Colonies,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, Third Series, 7 (1925), 4. 195

The Council also became concerned by Massachusetts exceeding its authority in its

Charter. All Charters rested on the very powers of royal prerogative that New Englanders tended to avoid, and thus, exceeding grants of power in the Charter was understood as an attempt to seize authority from the sovereign. Massachusetts’ efforts to create formally organized Quarter

Courts and Counties, themselves modeled like corporate political bodies, raised the alarm. As argued by Sir Edward Coke in the 1614 case of Sutton’s Hospital, “none but the King can create a corporation,” and corporations were “indivisible,” in other words, no corporation could create another corporation.509 Thus, the Bay Company had exceeded their authority and violated the terms of the Charter, which would strengthen the Crown’s case against Massachusetts.

During this period, the Crown made clear its willingness to monitor and enforce royal authority on an Atlantic scale to the New Englanders. The goal of Committee for Plantations was to make ordinances and policy in the public interest of the English Planters, reinforcing royal authority across the Atlantic.510 They sent a copy of their commissions directly to Boston in

1634, thus symbolically indicating to the Massachusetts planters that the state would closely scrutinize their actions.511 The Privy Councilors considered the general good of all subjects, including those with alternative claims to New England, against the Charter. Because

Massachusetts’ Charter originated out of the separately chartered New England Company, the

Committee perceived it less generously than most, although the Crown had given the Bay

Company its own Charter. The lack of investors in the Massachusetts Bay company sitting in

Privy Council, which most other Atlantic Companies had, also gave them a disadvantage.

509 Sir Edward Coke, Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke, vol. I, ed. Steve Shepard (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), 354. The full text of Coke’s ruling runs pp. 349-378. 510 Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 1574-1660, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1860), 177 511 Macmillan, The Atlantic Imperial Constitution, 160. 196

Though the Bay Colony did have allies in Council, no one there had potential financial losses if the state interfered. This only became more pressing for Massachusetts in 1634, when the

Committee for Plantations received the voluntary surrender of the New England Company’s charter. The return of the Company’s corporate rights had more symbolic than practical power, because by this point it had ceased to make effectual efforts at planting America.512 It did, however, indicate that the government had a clear path to investigate Massachusetts.

A Quo Warranto court case against the Massachusetts Bay Company eventually resulted from state investigations. This procedure required a defendant to show by what warrant they held a charter, patent, or franchise. Upon examination, the royal government could declare documents void during the Quo Warranto procedure. The Crown used Quo Warranto proceedings to review and seize charters, sometimes at the behest of disgruntled subjects and sometimes for the

Crown’s own aims, but more often because the Crown suspected the Charters had been violated.513 In 1635, legal proceedings against Massachusetts began. Patentees mentioned in the

Charter were called before the Committee, but most of them did not appear since they resided in

America.514 After hearing evidence, the Committee for Plantations formally recommended that

Charles revoke the Massachusetts charter. The decision to remove the physical document to

America proved critical to the survival of the colony as a constituted government. Due to the distance involved with sea travel the government found itself unable to serve the warrant and repossess the document. Crown officials began to contemplate military intervention when

512 TNA CO 1/8, f 58, 59r. 513 Patterson, “Quo Warranto and Borough Corporations in Early Stuart England,” 883-885. 514 Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World, 162. 197

Massachusetts would not comply and voluntarily surrender the charter, but the disintegration of the British Kingdoms into war drew their attention elsewhere before this could occur.515

This sequence of events indicates that the royal government became greatly concerned with how Massachusetts applied its Charter and managed its own affairs. When disaffected parties complained about the Puritan establishment in New England, the central government responded as they did for other regions of America and intervened to maintain harmony (while also enhancing the English empire’s prestige.) The Charter and the authority sanctioned by it were supposed to entail a representation of the prerogative authority of the King, Massachusetts’ willingness to use the document to justify an expansive legal system independent from the central government exceeded its authority and thus justified legal proceedings. Massachusetts’ expansive stance and use of its Charter to replicate English governmental structures was so extensive that it challenged royal Atlantic imperium, centered on the monarchical state. This sequence of events reveals how both the government itself and anti-New England subjects perceived the role of the government in America and its authority over colonies sub-chartered from it quite differently from the people of Massachusetts themselves, despite both holding shared concepts of authority and legality.

Conclusion: Particularity within Imperial Political Culture

By 1640, most English subjects in America understood their right to use and regularly access institutions reliant on royal prerogative in England to help them resolve their Atlantic conflicts. Intellectual, religious, and social differences in the New England colonies resulted in residents there partaking in these processes less frequently. Puritan religious and political

515 TNA CO 1/9, f 12r. 198 thinking had emphasized the threat of tyranny, popery, and the degradation of English civil society, and the use of prerogative courts and other institutions the monarchs claimed as their prerogative had alienated the people who would become New Englanders. Though the New

England planters avoided prerogative, they maintained their English identity and consciously replicated local common law courts, custom, and traditions in order to resolve their problems.

The specifically worded Charter of Massachusetts Bat made that colony particularly effective at setting up an internal system- so effective that the General Court began to exceed the terms of the Charter, provoking a royal reaction. Surviving records from prominent New Englanders give evidence that while the planters by no means ignored England and the center’s influence on the periphery, residents seemed to prefer handling things in America.

The archival silence in Requests, Chancery, and the petitioning records about New

England reveals that key cultural differences within English culture in Europe were replicated in

America and the ways that emigrants to America wanted to interact with the central government.

The local magistrates, neighborly interactions, and religious structure of the New England towns proved effective at handling problems, removing the need to rely on prerogative mechanisms that

Puritans tended to distrust. The Southern colonies, which were religiously and politically more mixed, left far more records in state archives than their New England equivalents in the period before 1640 because they contained more of the English people who would have accessed their right to ask for the Crown’s help in England anyway.

199

Chapter 5 - Literate Influencers: Letters, Dispatches, and the Press as Mediums of Atlantic Political Culture

So far, this dissertation has discussed subjects’ access to the royal prerogative and its use in resolving conflicts and influencing the development of the English empire. Both the Court system and petitioning involved procedural elements and addressed trans-Atlantic problems.

New Englanders’ relatively infrequent use of them was embedded in political and religious fissures within English society. While these methods proved effective, English subjects had many additional means by which they could access officials and thus influence Atlantic policy and participate in a trans-oceanic political discourse. Personal communication and networks of patronage provided ways for clients to ask for help from superiors. Others, in dispatches or reports, described American problems in attempt to convince the state to take discrete policy actions. Still others turned to the power of the press. These subjects’ efforts impacted the discussions over the nature of royal power, the growth of empire, and the central government’s role in that growth.

As argued by Lake and Pincus in their seminal article “Rethinking the Public Sphere in

Early Modern England,” both print and manuscript forms of communication deeply influenced the public sphere of England.516 Books and letters allowed for the communication of ideas to a wider British public and allowed for trans-regional political and cultural concepts to be

516 Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England,” 270-273. Lake and Pincus state in a footnote on 270 that their article is intended more as a suggestion for future directions in scholarship than a traditional journal article. They sought to remedy what they saw as an over-emphasis on local sources in manuscript at the expense of the very real power of print and other widely circulated sources for interpreting early modern English history. The local manuscript-heavy approach characterized “Revisionist” scholarship of early modern England of the 1970s to 1990s, which sought to challenge broad Whiggish interpretations of political and cultural conflict in early modern England as inevitable and a march toward modern rational democracy. 200 debated.517 This chapter will discuss methods English subjects used literacy to involve the state in America before 1649 and participate in the public sphere. It will begin with a theoretical discussion of how these methods contributed to political conversations and complimented formal methods like courts and the petitions. Next, the chapter will discuss three specific forms of communication which would not have generated a specific procedural response but nonetheless contained political and social power. First, the chapter examines letter writing and letter circulation as a means for subjects to influence the King, and, more frequently, his close advisers. This method was more available to elites than common subjects, but nonetheless provided an opportunity to enlist the crown in conflict resolution or to act with favorable policy.

Secondly, the chapter will examine manuscript reports and descriptions about the condition of

America. These reports proved a useful way to indicate perceived problems in America and thus sway the state to act on those matters. Lastly, the chapter will discuss the use of printed materials as a way to shape how both the state and English people generally perceived conditions in the

North American empire and how to best run it.

By examining these various tools English people used to participate in trans-Atlantic conversations, it becomes clear that from a very early date, they understood the plethora of ways in which they might influence the King and his Council regarding English presence in North

America. There was no single best way to get help from the King, other figures at Court, or the state machinery, and subjects proved adept at picking different methods to suit their circumstances. Some, particularly higher officials who had access to power, made reports that portrayed themselves positively and advocated for their own plans for America. Others used

517 For examples, see Warechen, “Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public During the Bishop's Wars, 1638-1640;” Bowen, “Structuring Particularist Publics;” Darcy, “Political Participation in Early Stuart Ireland,” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 773-769. 201 these methods to report abuses or irregularities to the Crown so the state could make beneficial decisions for the commonweal. Still others used these methods to do the things they might have done in court or with petitions and worked to protect their personal or financial interests by asking the Crown for help. In all cases, these individuals showed understanding that the English state could help them get something they wanted in America, either as individuals or through enacting policies beneficial to the commonwealth. As in the courts and as with petitions, the political culture of England crossed to the American frontier and was actively deployed by

Atlantic subjects. In this respect, they acted similarly to English subjects still in Europe, and participated in the public sphere of the early seventeenth century.

Literacy, Networks, and the Public Sphere

Written communications could exert political pressure and introduce new ideas into government circles. Books in print distributed information to a wide audience, and letters could cultivate specific relationships or win specific allies in London or important port towns. These documents introduced ideas about America and what America meant into public discourse. As argued by Phil Withington, public discourse in England in the early modern era was understood to be a process of restrained and principled communication with an established audience.518 This could take a variety of forms, and often relied on oral communications.519 Atlantic individuals had to rely on literacy to access the public sphere or conversations about America and how to

518 Withington, “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England,” 1117, 1138. 519 Especially for England’s lower classes, oral forms of communication like talk at the alehouse, ballads and songs, puppet shows and theatrical performances, and religious sermons all contributed to public ideas about the King, the state, and England’s place in the world. While these formats are beyond the scope of this dissertation, they would have also been involved in conversations. See Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Lake and Pincus, “Rethinking the Public Sphere,” 288; Christopher Marsh, Music and Society in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 225-288; Eric Nebeker, “The Broadside Ballad and Textual Publics,” Studies in English Literature 1500-1900, 51:1 (Winter 2011), 1-19. 202 best develop it in private spaces otherwise. As shown by David Cressy, and access to literacy

(and numeracy) provided one of the major transformative changes of early modern England and access to it gave individuals increased power to access the expanding local and state bureaucracy.520 The distance involved over the Atlantic made writing even more important in an imperial context.

Written networks had an important place in English political culture for centuries preceding Atlantic empire. Letters were the only way to conduct business transactions, maintain relationships, and otherwise communicate over long distances. As a result, most literate English subjects participated in networks of correspondence, sending news around the realm. Larger patterns of exchange were predicated on these letters, and many letters were intended to be shared (as opposed to solely read by the recipient).521 Networks of letter writers could have a significant impact on discussions of policy in the public sphere. As many elites in England were tied together through collective financial investments, attendance at Oxford and Cambridge, intermarriage of their families, and their duties as local or national political officers, they formed an intricate network where news could spread.522 Non-letter manuscripts, too, were an important part of this discourse. Many people wrote extended accounts of problems or events within the

520 David Cressy, Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 175-190. 521 There is excellent scholarship on epistolary networks in early modern England. In addition to politics, these networks were important for the growth of the arts and natural sciences. See Gary Schneider, The Culture of Epistolary: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England, 1500-1700 (Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2005), 183-223; James Daybell, The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Cultural Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 175-217; Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti, “Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern Culture: An Introduction,” Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2013), 17-35; Lindsey O’Neill, The Opened Letter: Networking in the Early Modern British World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015); 1-3, 78-81. 522 Linda Levy Peck, “‘For a King not to be bountiful were a fault’: Perspectives on Court Patronage in Early Stuart England,” Journal of British Studies 25:1 (January 1986), 31-61. 203

English kingdom and introduced these to the networks that shared written material.523

Manuscripts thus acted as an important bridge between subjects anywhere in the English empire.

These writings, which did not involve a formal procedure as defined by English common law or civil law, still played an important role in the political society of early modern England and in the Atlantic empire. Ian Steele has shown that, contrary to popular imagination, communication over the Atlantic by letters was reliable, if slow, and individuals could count on the circular flow of information for commercial and personal purposes.524 Because so many people who served in Council or participated in the social circles of Court were well connected and near the center of major patronage networks, news and ideas coming in through written accounts influenced the conversations in the government. The state paid close attention to information, rumor, and gossip as it circulated in all the providences of the Crown’s authority, so that it could properly enforce its authority and prestige.525 In a general English context, the state would prosecute seditious and libelous ideas when it thought it necessary, and paid close attention to how the people received ideas.526 While some of this was undoubtedly born of political insecurity and the desire to maintain order, it also stemmed from a commitment to protect the state’s subjects and to provide justice and prosperity for them. Data collection and good management allowed the central government to understand what might be ailing locals and work towards a more prosperous commonwealth. The same went for the Atlantic world, where

523 F.J. Levy, “How Information Spread Among the Gentry, 1550-1640,” Journal of British Studies 21:1 (Jan. 1982), 20-24; Jason Scott-Warren, “Reconstructing Manuscript Networks: The Textual Transactions of Sir Jason Powle,” in Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric, ed. Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000), 18-36. 524 Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic, 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 5-7 & 211-232. 525 Adam Fox, "Rumor, News, and Popular Political Opinion in Early Modern England,” The Historical Journal 40:3 (Sept. 1997), 596-620; Michael Mendle, “News and the Manuscript Culture of Early Modern England,” in The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe, ed. Sabrina Alcorn Baron and Brendan Dooley (New York: Taylor and Francis, 2001), 57-77; Coast, “Rumor and ‘Common Fame’,” 241-267. 526 Fox, “Rumor, News, and Popular Political Opinion,” 600-605. 204 letters and manuscript dispatches became even more important as the only way to communicate across the sea without traveling home. Through these documents, planters and investors could introduce information into the circles of court and council that they could no longer do through personal conversation. When individuals or groups faced problems in the Americas, they could write to point out inefficiencies of which high officials had no first-hand experience. These people would understandably avoid criticizing the King when they did so, and they had the chance to invoke the traditional roles and mechanisms by which subjects might ask for help, such as blaming bad local officials and councils or playing up the monarchy’s role as a protector and dispenser of justice. The result was a consistent interaction between the people and the state through written media.

The discourse among manuscript sources was complimented by the growing role of the press in public conversations. Scholars have demonstrated a “reading revolution” between 1450 and 1600, in which the invention of movable type resulted in a drastic expansion of information dissemination in early modern Europe.527 It became easier than ever to widely disseminate information to the literate classes and to do so without the introduction of errors from manuscripts copied over and over. The political pamphlet became an established means for expressing dissent or support for the government by the 1580s, and the distribution networks of these texts in turn influenced their content as authors sought to appeal to a broader audience.528

Print also allowed the communication of news and events in a changing world to reach English

527 For examples, see the essays collected in The Printing Revolution in Early Modern Europe, ed. Elizabeth L. Eisenstein and Elizabeth Lewishon (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Only a fraction of English people could read, of course, but through oral dissemination of printed material, the illiterate could interact with this material. See Adam Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), 1-50. 528 Joad Raymond, Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 25-26, 54-58; Jason Peacy, “Print and Public Politics in Seventeenth Century England,” History Compass 5:1 (2007), 85-111; Peacy, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013). 205 people.529 The Crown would have been aware of conversations occurring in print. Laws regulated what content could be publicly released, and the Crown engaged in press censorship of ideas too critical of the state and its policies.530 Literate classes in England would have read printed materials in combination with the letters and manuscripts in circulation, and the conversations in all these formats would have influenced public opinion, and thus potentially policy. It is impossible to know exactly which persons in the state read what, but they were reading, and ideas in books entered their sphere.

The interplay between print and manuscript must be considered on an Atlantic scale. The environment of private and public comment, outside of formal interaction with the state and its mechanisms for addressing the needs of the people, exerted considerable influence on the decisions affecting life in England, and thus life in England’s Atlantic plantations. News or rumors from America could be particularly dangerous as few English people had direct experience of the trans-Atlantic world. Exaggerated portrayals of Native American tribes or the natural flora and fauna of America might lead to bad investments or international embarrassments.531 On the other hand, monitoring information as it came in from America might influence good policy or augment investments by chartered companies (in which many people at

Court had a personal financial stake) or encourage productive individual planters. Conversations

529 C. J. Somerville, The News Revolution in England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996); Joad Raymond, The Invention of the English Newspaper (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996). 530 For the mechanics of press censorship in Early Modern England, see Cyndia Clegg, Press Censorship in Caroline England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), particularly 30-41, 186-206. Most censorship was of heterodox religious material. 531 England’s government was concerned about Spain and France and did not want private individuals causing incidents with either empire in America. Challenging these empires’ claims to America was a goal of the English government, but they wanted this to occur through deliberate official action and not through accidents. See Armitage, Ideological Origins of the English Empire, 100-104; Macmillan, Sovereignty and Possession, 178-180. 206 in the English public sphere thus influenced the state’s decision making, and manuscripts and books offered one way that ordinary people could put new ideas into the marketplace.

Letter Writing

Writing letters provided a direct and personal way to appeal to notables for help, particularly for people with contacts at Court. These letters differed from petitions because they lacked the same formal expectations and rhetoric. Letter writers did not necessarily frame their requests as beneficial to the kingdom at large, nor did they always write their requests in structured terms with specific vocabulary. Indeed, letters often served the dual purpose of informing their audience about America while also simply exchanging pleasantries, personal news, congratulations, or condolences. Pleas for assistance might lie between descriptions of wilderness and agriculture, standard commercial reports, and general well wishes. Instead of relying on the idea of royal justice, letter writers relied on amity between parties to accomplish their business. For planters with access to power and patronage, this proved an important way to network and influence the state as it had in England. Those who sent letters home understood that they remained English subjects and conducted personal business with friends in high places in the same manner as they had in the past.

One function of letter writing was to use English contacts to attend to business that

American planters wished to attend to in England. Using their friends, family, and other connections, American planters could actively manage their financial affairs in England. For example, Nicholas Martiau, a French Huguenot enlisted by the Earl of Huntingdon for the

Virginia Company, wrote in 1626 to his patron asking him to sell off his remaining estate in

England so that he could reinvest the profits in his American ventures. Huntingdon had previously given Martiau considerable powers in Virginia, allowing him to act with power of 207 attorney on his behalf there.532 Martiau had become concerned by the lack of news from his patron. Like many asymmetrical relationships, he had to carefully suggest his need for more attention from Huntingdon while offering profuse thanks. “I have only receaved [sic] one Letter from your honor, [from] the hands of Mr. Mores & those thinges which your Honor sent unto me there . . . I doe returne your honor humble thanks.”533 Acting with humility and difference would make it more likely his patron would assist him, and he spent half the letter attempting to assure his patron of his loyalty. At this point he indicated frustration and failure to realize the larger plans for prosperity in Virginia. He worried that Huntingdon and the Virginia Company would fail without more support, which would have weighed heavily on the Virginians during a time of transition from company to royal colony. “There is no profit to be caused from the Land, unless it be planted, & if your honor be intended to have A plantation, supply it with money & such things as are nessecarie,” stated Martiau.534 In order to generate profit and help the common good in Virginia, Martiau asked Huntingdon to act as his personal realtor and sell his farm in

Oakthorpe (a village in Leicestershire), and use that money to buy “commodes necessary for

Virginia,” which could then be sent across the sea.535 Writing home to a patron in a position of power allowed Nicholas Martin to access liquid capital, which he would not have been able to himself while in Virginia. In addition to his personal re-investment, Martiau’s letter also reflects how patron-client relationships generated development in America, and how these relationships were critical for the success of settler-planter model.

532 “The Copy of my Letter of Attorney unto Nicholas Martin and Benjamin Blewett,” from 5th Earl of Huntingdon, 5 April 1620,” HL, HA MS MAGGS 501. 533 “Letter from Nicholas Martin to the Earl of Huntingdon”, HL, MS HA 9169. 534 Ibid. 535 Ibid. It is not clear from the letter what specifically Martiau had in mind to buy, though he suggested the Earl talk Mr. More, said to be knowledgeable about what was needed for a successful Virginia farm. 208

Two years later, the planter wrote to Huntingdon about the management of his affairs in

Virginia. Again, using deference, compliments, and humility, the Martiau mentioned a plot of land he had picked out for the Earl to potentially settle on in Virginia, and had tended to it carefully. Without more support, this seemed like an unwise use of the Earl’s resources. He stated “it behooveth your Lordship to have a confirmation thereof from his Majesty, which so procured your Honor may safely plant and occupie [the land] yearly, supplying it with a competent number of laborious subjects. Otherwise I cannot see what benefit will accrue unto your Lordship, by the bare possession of it.”536 Using the personal connection to the plantation,

Martiau put forth ideas about misuse of America and the need for more extensive, hands-on involvement by both the Crown and absentee landholders. Though frustrated by lack of news from his patron, Martiau wrote that he had heard second-hand about “[his] noble Courtesy bestowed some hole care & industrie in the managing of my estate, which if your Honor shall thinke good may so continue till my [return to England].”537 Thus, Martiau used the letter to advocate a specific interaction his patron should undertake with the King. It is unclear from this second letter if this referred to the same plot of land in Oakthorpe that Martiau had intended to sell, but at the very least he could be heartened that Huntingdon had not allowed his property to decay.

Other letter writers contacted home to explain difficulties they faced or misfortunes upon them, and asked for help. For example, Captain Charles Wolverstone’s 1630 letter to his employer, James Hay, the Earl of Carlisle, described how his merchant crew had been raided by pirates off Bermuda, to the loss of 3,000 pounds weight of tobacco. Carlisle was the proprietor of

536 Nicholas Martian to Henry Earl of Huntingdon, 12 Dec. 1628, Elizabeth City, Virginia. HL, MA HA 9170. 537 Ibid. 209

Barbados, and thus had interests in the Caribbean trade. Wolverstone emphasized throughout the letter that the Earl properly supported and helped prepare the ship from all but the pirates and therefore had no fault in its misfortune. In addition to lost tobacco, the crew also had to consume foodstuffs intended for use in America themselves because of the pirate attack. The captain begged Carlisle, who had financed the trip, for pardon. While he understood his employers’ financial losses, Wolverstone also noted his and his crew’s own financial plight. “[The] servants are left poore & miserable by reason of the disturbance done to me by the said confederates and soe lost all their hopes for this yeare, & also the said merchants doe sent to their Servants a speedy supply of provisions lost them between 4 or 5000 schillings besides they have been out of their money neere two yeares.”538 He added that the consumption of the food on board was an unfortunate necessity where the crew “chose to suffer knowing it lyeth in his Lordship’s power to redress all these wronges wee have suffered.”539 Clearly, the captain knew that the decisions made on his boat might get him into trouble later, so the letter explained the extenuating circumstances in hope that Carlisle would understand. While it is not known if this worked, the effort at least shows one way planters used letters to assist themselves with their superiors. It is another example of asymmetrical relationships in English society that played a role in developing America, and how carefully written letters were a key method for those lower in social standing to negotiate with their superiors.

Letter-writers could of course use their messages to serve multiple functions, suggesting policy while also tending to personal needs. An early example of this can be found in Peter

Wynne’s letter to John Egerton, 1st Earl of Bridgewater, dated 26 November 1608. Wynne

538 Charles Wolverstone to the Earl of Carlisle, 1630, HL, HM 17. 539 Ibid. 210 described the Virginia landscape and communicated that the region would provide a good place to produce “pitch tarr, soap, ashe, and some dyes, whereof [Wynne] sent examples.”540 Wynne suggested shifting the Virginia Company’s goals to focus on these items would produce more profit for the Company and planters that had traveled to Virginia, serving the mutual common good. Additionally, Wynne wrote of bloodhounds that the two men had bred and asked

Bridgewater to look after his dogs while he was away in Virginia. Hunting intimacies such as these had significant meaning in early modern England, and the rituals of hunting were important structures in the social order. The hunt suggested symbols of sacrifice and political legitimacy in genteel circles.541 Mentioning the hounds the two men both knew not only tended to an individual need of Wynne’s but also reminded Bridgewater of their hunts and the symbolism of political order. Wynne’s words about Virginia suggested the need to establish that order in

Virginia and make it economically and socially productive spaces, like the forests and parks of

England. This would serve the individuals, the King, and the commonwealth in equal parts.

Letters could also be used as a warning about the trials of life in America and a plea for more aid from England to fix societal, rather than personal, problems. One such example is a series of nine letters from Richard Newall concerning trade, fishing, and industry in America, particularly in and around modern New England and Maritime Canada.542 A resident in

Plymouth in Devon, Newall participated in a 1623 voyage to deliver residents to William

Alexander’s Scottish plantation project in Nova Scotia (and also fish off Newfoundland on the way back). Newall and was appalled by the conditions he found in Nova Scotia. In one letter, he

540 Peter Wynne to the 1st Earl of Bridgewater, 26 November 1608, HL, EL 1683. 541 For more on hunting symbolism in early modern England, see Daniel C. Beaver, Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 17-25. 542 The originals of these letters do not survive but were copied into blank pages at the back of a notebook mostly containing poetry excerpts from the Italian epic Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto, first published in 1516. BL, MS Malone 2, f. 1 r-18 r. 211 remarked he had not “found the colony for [sic] Nova Scotia to be in as good reddyniess as I did expect, some part of them being dead, others dispersed abroad to obtayne sustenance.”543 Writing to several of his creditors in England, he encouraged them to use their influence with the King to investigate and help the poor individuals stationed there. He remarked “[I] fear finding the

Colony to be starved by death,” and suggested that more money invested in exploration and supply lines was necessary to help them.544 “We ought to have better knowledge thereby to serve them & their employers with happy & speedy return.”545 Newall’s letters to in England provide a call for mutual gain, for if the investors sent money and resources to improve the lives of the

Nova Scotia planters, the commonwealth would become healthier and personal fortunes increased. Newall’s actions are also significant because Nova Scotia, while being founded by

Charles I’s subjects, was not English, and Newall gave his support to the planters despite the often-tense Anglo-Scottish relationship. His pleas sought to protect the dignity of these people.

Newall had a clear understanding of the economic and political issues involved in America and recognized that the common good was better served by helping the Scottish colonial effort, cultivating a healthy society and a market for English goods there. His account demonstrates the importance of central government Newall’s understanding of the Atlantic world. Despite this passionate letter, Newall’s effort did not produce any aid. In fact, the news contained in his account was evidently so dour that at least one of the people he contacted, William Clobbery, withdrew his investments in Nova Scotia because of the report.546

543 Richard Newall to James Mann, 8 February 1623. BL, MS Malone 2, f. 1 r. 544 Richard Newall to Humphrey Slaney and William Clobbery, 8 February 1624. BL, MS Malone 2, f. 3 v. This is the same Humphrey Slaney mentioned as a litigant in the introduction of this dissertation and the same William Clobbery mentioned previously in Chapter 3 as a petitioner on behalf of William Claiborne. 545 Ibid., 3. 546 William Clobbery to Richard Newall, 18 August 1623. BL, MS Malone 2, f. 8 r. For additional information on this voyage, see John P. Newell, “Richard Newall’s voyage to Newfoundland in 1623: New insights into Sir 212

Letter-writing across the ocean was in most respects like letter writing within England itself, only over a longer distance. English people in America could count on letters as a reliable way to keep abreast of events in Europe and communicate commercial, personal, and political needs to those across the Ocean.547 Individuals communicated grievances and requests with their contacts in high places, and this communication could influence policy or financial decisions. In this way, people used personal communications to accomplish local goals as they had in Britain for some time, and could make the government take actions for them.548 Some used letters to advocate changing economic approaches to the Americas or intervention in plantations where problems had developed. Others used their letters to simply keep in touch with England and keep themselves integrated with events at home or address personal matters. Either way, the letters offered a key interface for connecting the American part of the empire to the European one.

Writing letters offered another avenue through which Atlantic subjects could introduce ideas into political, economic, and interpersonal conversations in England, and participate in English society while abroad in America.

Woodall’s Cattle: Epistolary Networks as Problem Solvers

While at times an individual letter resulted in action taken by one or more parties, letters could also generate extended communication and efforts to influence the state to make certain decisions. A long and well recorded instance occurred from 1630 to 1632 as a result of John

Woodall’s petition to recover the monetary value of some of his cattle. His initial request generated a trail of subsequent letters and reports, which survive in Lord Cranfield’s papers. The original petition that started this series of documents is lost, but its contents can be re-created

William Alexander’s attempts to establish a Scottish colony in Nova Scotia,” The International Journal of Maritime History 28:1 (2016), 102-107. 547 Steele, The English Atlantic, 229-230 & 273-278. 548 Braddick, State Formation, Ch 9. 213 based on the various responses and a subsequent petition. In the original document, Woodall communicated something along the following lines. As a planter in Virginia, he had worked as a servant and animal-minder for Lord Argall, onetime governor of Virginia. Woodall claimed that

Argall had liked him, and he had served him satisfactorily. The planter tended Argall’s cows so frequently that Woodall’s own herd had become intermixed with the governor’s cows, as he cared for them together. Because of Woodall’s familiarity with individual cattle, this did not present an issue while he tended them. However, after the governor left Virginia and subsequently died, problems arose over the provenance of the cattle on the estate. All the cattle were sequestered as the former Governor’s property, including cattle which Woodall owned himself. As a result, the planter petitioned the crown for assistance sorting out the credit and tracking down Argall’s accounts, which were in England, so that his own cattle could be released from sequester.

Rather than resolving the case themselves, the Privy Council referred the incident on to

Argall’s estate. The Crown indicated “[for] the advancement of the Plantation, adventurers and planters in cases of this nature should receive all just and lawful favor,” but also indicated that the most agreeable solution would be for the decedents and creditors now in charge of Argall’s property to simply sort the case out themselves.549 This decision is consistent with how the early modern English understood credit networks and their preference to avoid involving higher legal and political authorities in what might be resolved privately.550

On 31 May 1630, a man named Rosheath, who managed the financial affairs of Argall’s family, replied to the inquiry. He acknowledged Woodall did indeed work for the former

549 Lord’s Letter Concerning Mr. Woodall, 24 April 1630. KHS, Cranfield Papers, OV 20-2. 550 Muldrew, “The Culture of Reconciliation,” 919-921. 214

Governor of Virginia, and thus should be in some way compensated. However, in the many years since Argall had returned home, the estate’s knowledge of which cattle belonged to whom had become muddled; thus, they did not know exactly which animals belonged to which man. Thus, they proposed the Crown authorize a further investigation to figure out the “public good” in this matter.551 On 2 August 1630, the estate replied by forwarding an older letter from Rosheath to

Argall concerning the cattle, confirming that Woodall had worked for the Governor. Thus, the estate seemed willing to cooperate and was genuinely confused about what to do. 552 The

Crown’s ability to make “public good” in matters like these was accepted by all sides, suggesting the sort of remonstration that could come from this written interaction.

The Privy Council decided to investigate after this reply and sent word in their next dispatch to the current Governor Harvey (now lost) that he should conduct an inquiry into the matter. That December, Harvey indicated he had begun an investigation.553 Despite some effort, it took well over a year to complete the investigation into the cattle. During this period, Woodall petitioned the Crown a second time for help. He reiterated that when Argall died, the cows were all “detained by reason of some custodian’s offense,” and “diverse accusations [against Woodall] were observed for supposed wrongs done to [Argall’s estate] though which they were not proven.”554 It was not until 1632 that the Virginia followed up on the matter, found a record of Woodall maintaining a specific sized heard in 1620, forwarded this to the

551 Rosheath to the Attorney General, 31 May 1630. KHS, Cranfield Papers, OV 20-2. 552 Letter from Rosheath to Governor Argall, forwarded 2 August 1630. KHS, Cranfield Papers, OV 20-1. Argall had returned to England in 1619 and died in 1626, so the letter was originally written in this time frame. 553 KHS, Cranfield Papers, OV 20-4. 554 KHS, Cranfield Papers, OV 23. The original petition had generated comment by April 1630, suggesting Woodall initiated his quest to get the Crown’s help in 1629 or early 1630. 215

Crown, which forwarded it to Rosheath, who authorized the return of Woodall’s cows from the sequester.555

This episode shows the interrelationship of the state, individuals in America, and individuals in England at work as they addressed a complex complaint through letters. Woodall knew that the Crown might help resolve confusion over the ownership of cattle and petitioned them appropriately. He presumably did not know that those managing Argall’s estate had genuine confusion over which animals belonged where. The government’s initiative generated letters which resolved the situation. While the petition did not directly aid him, it indirectly created a chain of letters which allowed him to get his cattle back and clear up confusion among parties on both sides of the Atlantic. In cases like this, where parties were not opposed, the state and the letter networks associated with it could facilitate communication and the necessary evidence gathering. The letters facilitated interaction between parties in different parts of the empire, so they could work toward a mutually beneficial solution. The Crown, as the intermediary, served in its traditional role of helping subjects gain equitable justice. In a case such as this one which had parties on both sides of the ocean, the Crown could act in a role which neighborhood arbitrators might have fulfilled in a smaller geographic setting.

Reports and Dispatches as Means of Influence on the Crown

In addition to letters, many Atlantic subjects used reports about environmental conditions in America, travelogues, and commercial documents to suggest policy and add their voice to discussions in the Crown’s committees and court culture. The state remained committed to exploring and cataloguing what America had to offer during the early seventeenth century to

555 Virginia Council Meeting Minutes Regarding Woodall’s Cattle. KHS, Cranfield Papers, OV 43. 216 better manage customs duties and other fiscal regulations that might benefit it.556 As people reported on conditions in North America, they shaped their content to argue for specific policies they believed the Crown should adopt. This offered an opportunity to bring injustices and inefficiencies to the attention of the King. If successful, subjects stood to gain both as individuals, with profits and political power, and collectively as part of a more developed and prosperous English Atlantic society. These reports noted the power that royal influence could have in America and encouraged the Crown to exert its strength. While these dispatches were not always successful, they provided yet another tool in the toolbox for English subjects to suggest changes in the Atlantic empire.

Governor Harvey of Virginia frequently used this strategy and wrote profusely to

England to rebut complaints against him. He discussed problems he faced as an administrator and perceived disloyalty among the planters. For instance, in 1634, he lamented the refusal of the planters to adopt mandated economic policies to grow more corn and less tobacco and thus produce enough to feed themselves.557 In other dispatches, he indicated “my power [in Virginia] is not great . . . I have almost all [people] against whatever I propose, especially if it concerns

Maryland, and these proceedings of the councell do so embolden others notwithstanding the obligation of Christianity.”558 In conveying the chaos of the colony, Harvey wanted to ensure the

King knew that this situation arose not from lack of effort on the Governor’s part, but from the ordinary subjects’ refusal to act reasonably. Harvey also directly communicated with the Crown

556 The English government was especially interested in keeping up with Spain, which had through a combination of exploitation of indigenous people and significant bureaucratic effort created a developed apparatus for profiting off its American possessions by 1600. Antonio Barrea-Orsorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), Ch. 1; John H. Elliot, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), 88-93. 557 John Harvey to Privy Council, 6 February 1634, TNA CO 1/8, f. 9 v. 558 John Harvey to Secretary Windebank, undated, 1634. TNA CO 1/8, f. 106 r. 217 about how to appropriately restore honor to his position after following his deposition as

Governor of Virginia in 1635 and reinstatement the next year. He insisted that he be given a royal ship to take him back as a symbol of the King’s confidence, and to show that despite the munity of the Virginians, he still had the good graces of their King. Surely, argued Harvey, subjects would take “his majesties business to heart” and return to productivity and peace upon seeing a royal vessel.559 The Crown was convinced by this argument, though it took three months to work the matter through the Committee for Plantations.560

These defenses served Harvey’s political self-interest, but also contained genuine concern for the empire. He stressed issues of order and disorder, which had strong cultural cache in the early modern world. Contemporary English society stressed the need to follow the rule of law, custom, and social hierarchy, and the ordinary planters challenging Harvey’s station threatened to upend that order. Successful local government required all parties to function appropriately for their station. For the localities of the empire to function, they had to act in a harmonious and orderly way under the auspices of royal authority.561 Harvey expressed a conventional view that the Crown had not only the right but the duty to suppress disorder, and this benefited the commonweal. Productivity also crossed Harvey’s mind and hoped the crown could foster it among the planters. Tapping into the Protestant worldview that idleness bread sin and weakened the social fabric, the governor expressed concern that the Virginians failed to serve the common good through their refusal to grow edible crops. He also seems to have understood that he, as an

559 John Harvey to Privy Council, 15 February 1636, TNA CO 1/9, f. 8 r. 560 John Harvey to Charles I, 17 May 1636, TNA CO 1/9, f. 50 r. In this letter, Harvey thanks the king for his generosity. 561 For more on order and the English worldview in the early modern period, see Anthony Fletcher and John Stevenson, “Introduction,” in Order and Disorder in Early Modern England (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987), 15-41; Henrik Langelüddecke, “Law and Order in Seventeenth-Century England: The Organization of Local Administration during the Personal Rule of Charles I,” Law and History Review 15:1 (Spring 1997), 49-76; Hindle, The State and Social Change, 94-115. 218 unpopular governor, lacked the clout needed to convince the Virginians to grow more foodstuffs instead of tobacco. He believed that the Crown had symbolic power to change these planters’ minds, and the use of a royal ship would make the connection between himself and the King more explicit. Thus, Harvey showed an understanding that monarchy as an institution held great power in the minds of English subjects in America.

Harvey was not alone in expressing concerns about order and disorder in official reports.

Take, for example, Henry Ashton’s report on the whereabouts of the renegade Governor Henry

Hawley in 1640.562 Ashton wrote from Barbados to report that the former Governor, who had fled elsewhere in the Caribbean when he was recalled to England, had surrendered. The dispatch reported that the Governor had submitted to the Crown and the new Governor had been received on the island. Ashton noted that Hawley was still trying to negotiate his release and an estate in

England, but also mentioned he had been “the cloud that spread itself” over the colony. The officials on Barbados would not offer him clemency in order to uphold the honor of King

Charles’ mandates.563 The letter also mentioned that Hawley’s existing properties on Barbados had been sequestered, and asked for instruction about how to distribute them to be given to Mr.

John Howe (a planter from Barbados who had returned to England temporarily).564 Acquiring this information would allow the Barbadians to make sure all of the financial ambiguities effected by Hawley’s actions could be closed. This report also expresses concern for the King’s

Law as it pertained to America and shows how subjects communicated with the Crown when they were unsure how to properly administer it in ambiguous situations.

562 A petition from Hawley’s wife to protect the family from this trouble previously appeared in Chapter 3 of this dissertation, pp. 128-130. 563 “Letter from Henry Ashton et al. to the King, 23 June 1640. TNA CO 1/10, 185. 564 Ibid. 219

Commercial concerns also permeated reports to the Crown, as planters hoped to influence discussions in Court and get favorable policies to economic growth implemented. Ralph

Hamor’s handwritten account of Virginia, composed in 1614, provides an example. The Crown received the report and later circulated among Virginia Company officials. It eventually surfaced as a book, A True Discourse of the State of Virginia, the following year.565 Hamor wrote his account with the intention of showing the benefit to the commonwealth that came Virginia could only fully blossom with greater support of England. Circulating a manuscript among the literate classes of England would raise awareness for the colony’s struggles and, hopefully, get the

Virginia Company and other notables to throw more support behind the plantation. The original handwritten account indicated that Hamor had taken a prominent role in the affairs of the colony when no Governor from England appeared. He predicted dire consequences if there were no further assistance.

For here is no one that the people would have to govern them, but my self: for I

had now come away, had I not found a general desire in the best sort to returne, so

as I knew not upon whom to conference the case of this business in my absence,

whom I thought fit was generally distasted, so as seeing the eminent ensuing

danger, should I have left this multitude, not yet fully refined, I am resolve to stay

until the harvest be got in, and then settle things according to my poor

understanding and return: if in the [meanwhile] there come no authorized

Governor from England.566

565 Ralph Hamor, A True Discourse of the State of Virginia, 1615. 566 Ralph Hamor, Handwritten account of Virginia, 1614, manuscript, HL, BR 584, 19. 220

If even the most dedicated planter such as himself struggled without the aid of a governor, the project would surely fail unless the Virginia Company could successfully supply one. Hamor knew that many of the shareholders in the Company would read his account if it circulated around the English upper classes (and its later publication only further increased visibility of

Virginia’s struggles.) Thus, the document reminds those shareholders of their duty to fellow

English people in Virginia, who had undertaken great personal risk to make this project bear fruit. Hamor’s account thus stresses the mutual obligation between members of the commonwealth, one of the key elements of early seventeenth century political culture.

On the brighter side, Hamor emphasized the natives had been subjugated, and, as he

(incorrectly) understood it, had submitted themselves as vassals of the Stuart Crown.567 He stated that the Plantation would receive regular tribute, and the expected to be “known to

King James as his noble men.”568 This point stressed the political triumph of the English planters and the order and structure they had brought to the region, putting the locals to their use, providing another needed food source for the planters, and increasing the prestige and glory of their monarch and the kingdom. Achievements like these made the project of Virginia worth

567 There was genuine confusion in English circles over whether the man they called Powhatan had willingly subjected himself as vassal to King James during ceremonial meetings with English planters, had explicitly rejected this and believed the English had subjugated themselves to him, or had done something else entirely. What is clear is the English did not fully understand the nuances of Algonquian political symbolism. These tribes had their own complex system of tribute, ceremony, and obligation which did not map on to English or more broadly European understandings of obligation and duty. See Jeffery Glover, Paper Sovereigns: Anglo-Native Treaties and the Law of Nations, 1604-1664 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014), 26-32, for a scholarly treatment of English confusion regarding whether or not Chief Powhatan declared his tribe a vassal of England. For scholarship on the Algonquian political culture, see Stephen R. Potter, Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: The Development of Algonquian Culture in the Potomac Valley (Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1994), Ch. 4; Margaret Holmes Williamson, Powhatan Lords of Life and Death: Command and Consent in Seventeenth-Century Virginia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 47-72. 568 Hamor, Handwritten Account of Virginia, manuscript, HL, BR 584. 221 supporting. Hamor showed how a plantation project like Virginia might increase the power of the crown and serve the common good of the English people.

Corporations also wrote inform the Crown about conflicts between subjects. For instance, the Trinity House, which funded fishing expeditions to Newfoundland, issued a formal survey of the island in 1637 with political goals in mind. Trinity House, a chartered mariner’s guild located in Deptford, Kent, relied on the Newfoundland fishing trade for income.569 Unfortunately, the permanent residents of Newfoundland interfered with their traditional annual fishing trips, which dated back a century earlier.570 The aldermen of Trinity complained “ye fortifications in the port would not sustain our ships,” and accused the year-round residents of Newfoundland of damaging seasonal fishermen’s ships intentionally.571 They further implied that the leaders of

Newfoundland actively ignored attempts to plant and develop the island, denying England a profitable timber industry. Thus, they interfered with existing commerce at the expense of potentially lucrative new commerce. To address this problem, the aldermen asked for a certificate with the King’s seal to bring with them on their next voyage to Newfoundland. This report indicates how royal symbols meant a great deal to English people anywhere in the world.

If the seasonal fisherman could present documents containing the royal seals that repudiated the actions of the year-long residents of Newfoundland, reasoned the aldermen, then the rogue planters would be forced to acknowledge the superior authority of Charles. The King’s authority overruled those of the proprietors with charters from the area, as the charters relied on the King’s

569 The guild was chartered in 1513 by Henry VIII. Trinity House still exists. Its current role is regulation of lighthouses around the United Kingdom. Alywin A. Rudock, “The Trinity House at Deptford in the Sixteenth Century,” The English Historical Review 65:257 (Oct. 1950), 458-476. 570 Pope, Fish into Wine, 60. 571 Report of the Master Wardens and Assistants of Trinity House to the Privy Council, 27 February 1637. TNA CO 1/9, Folio 105. 222 devolved authority to begin with.572 The political symbolism of the Crown translated to the new

American domains. This episode also shows that, as was the case for lawsuits and petitions, corporate bodies knew about and used the same methods as individuals to shape the Atlantic empire. These entities controlled major portions of the trans-oceanic economy and used multiple methods to participate in political negotiations with the state.

Subjects of the Crown also used their reports for commercial influence, seeking to change policy to benefit potentially profitable ventures. One example came in 1629 from a group of anonymous individuals employed by Edward Barrett, Lord Newberg and Sir John Coke, who advocated for a monopoly during a royally-commissioned exploration of Canada. Both patrons were important dignitaries. Newberg was Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1628 to 1629, and

Coke was also on the Privy Council during this period. Newberg held a patent to develop a grant of 16,000 acres in Nova Scotia.573 The petitioners, working on behalf of Newberg and Coke, examined this area in the aftermath of the 1629 surrender of Quebec, in which Sir David Kirke and six English captured the French settlement without violence.574 “The soil of the

Country about Kebeck, and in many other parts adjacent, is very good, proper and fitting, to produce plenty of Hemp for cordage,” observed the authors, as well as “an infinite number of fir

572 George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, had a patent to start a colony on the Avalon Peninsula of Newfoundland, which became the settlement of Ferryland. Bad winters and economic squabbles hampered this colony, which resulted in Calvert asking King Charles for a new proprietary colony in its place, which eventually became Maryland. See Luca Codigonla, The Coldest Harbour of the Land: Simon Stock and Lord Baltimore's Colony in Newfoundland, 1621–1649 (Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988), 53. Ferryland was later absorbed into a patent granted to David Kirke for all Newfoundland in 1637. Kirke and his family made considerable personal profit from the arrangement, but often angered other residents of Newfoundland. Pope, Fish into Wine, 80-91. 573 Richard Whisker, “Barrett, Edward, Lord Barrett of Newburgh,” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/65782. 574 Kirke seized the land as an action of the Anglo-French War of 1627-1629. Quebec surrendered after the two sides had formally signed the Susa Treaty in April 1629, due to the delay in news reaching America. England controlled Quebec for three years before returning it in the Treaty of Saint-Germaine-en-Laye in 1632. See Michel de Waele, “Honneur national et destin colonial: le sort de l'Amérique française, 1627-1632,” Histoire, économie & société 35:4 (2016), 68-84. 223 and pyne trees” which would be useful as ships’ masts.575 Based on this natural abundance, the author suggested that the company receive a patent to establish trade and plantations in those parts, so that they might “furnish your majesty’s Kingdom with considerable pitch, tarr, masts, and cordage at reasonable rates, as shall be of much consequence to your majesty’s service, and the benefit of the public.”576 In tone and subject matter, their request sounds akin to a petition.

Like other examples of petitions, the authors sought to convince the Crown to intervene for the good of three parties: the petitioners and their patrons, the Crown itself, and the commonwealth.

The authors believed that the syndicate led by Newberg and Coke would become enriched from developing the region, and that this would also serve England’s larger commercial and military goals. By attaching their suggestion to an otherwise neutral report about environmental conditions in Canada, the authors emphasized their experience with the terrain in America and thus their ability to successfully make good on potential patent privileges. One must note that

Quebec was not among the lands given to Newberg in his patent, perhaps suggesting that this group was eyeing a further expansion of their involvement in America.

Newfoundland and Quebec were not the only parts of modern Canada where subjects advocated for more royal intervention. William Alexander, Scottish proprietor of the attempt to settle Nova Scotia, sought to convince the King to support claims against the French, his efforts show that the literate networks that drove political culture linked not only England and America but Scotland and the other Stuart realms.577 Alexander noted that the French claims to land in

575 “Report Made to his Majesty of the Commodities of the Nation of Canada,” November 24th, 1630, British Library, Egerton MSS 2395, f. 1 r. 576 Ibid., f. 2. 577 Alexander had received permission from James I and a charter to create a Scottish-settled colony in today’s Nova Scotia in 1621. He argued that this was the only way to get Scots to emigrate to America and published an argument for the project in An Encouragement to Colonies (London, 1624). Alexander failed to attract much in the way of investment, in part because it was already known that Nova Scotia’s rocky soil was unpromising, and in part because the French had their own counterclaims to the area. Lack of financing caused the collapse of Alexander’s 224 this area threatened its stability and discouraged investment in the region. “Considering the benefit arising to this Kingdom by the assertion of lands to the Crown,” argued Alexander, it would benefit the realm if Charles I made more effort to supply, people, and defend Nova Scotia, weakening the French empire while building up his own.578 Very little evidence has survived concerning Scotland’s involvement in the British plantation of America, but this evidence is nonetheless important. Alexander’s letter shows the importance of pan-British connections in the literary circles that drove discussion of America. The Crown provided the nexus of these conversations because it bound subjects outside of England together as a British whole, and people like Alexander could access the Crown’s ability to aid their cause just the same as subjects in England. Some of the same arguments, particularly those that involved weakening other European monarchies while enriching the Stuart Crown, transcended these boundaries and had currency across the pan-British public sphere operating in the early Stuart period.

Official reports like these gave readers in England some sense of the Americas before

1649, and relayed conditions on the ground in order that the Crown might make decisions which benefited all English subjects. While these dispatches did not employ all the formal traditions and meanings associated with the petition, they could function similarly and influence the direction of the English Atlantic. The authors of these documents framed them to emphasize the

King’s interests or appeals to the commonweal. As a group, these documents show their authors understood the power of state intervention. In combination with petitions and letters, these reports provided an important link between the English government and its Atlantic subjects and

Scottish colonial effort by 1632, and the charter was withdrawn. See Andrew D. Nichols, A Fleeting Empire: Early Stuart Britain and the Merchant Adventurers to Canada (Montreal and Kingston: Queen’s University Press, 2010), ch. 4, for a scholarly treatment of this effort. 578 “Copy of a Letter from the Council of Scotland concerning His Majesty’s Title and Right to New Scotland,” 9 September 1630, British Library Egerton MSS 2395, 3/f. 18. 225 allowed them yet another method to use familiar English instruments of literacy to shape life in their new home.

Re-Imagining America in the Press: Arguments for Plantation

In addition to direct appeals through manuscript letters and reports, numerous published materials and accounts of America contributed to the public discussion about policy for these new plantations and linked America to existing political language and culture in the public sphere. By the 1620s and 1630s, descriptions of America had developed into a stock “genre” that enumerated the virtues of America while emphasizing how developing the continent benefited

English society. Most accounts of America contained descriptions of both foreign and familiar plants, animals, and minerals that could be gathered there. Books also contained passages with political content. Authors discussed the development of English society and the creation of productive spaces in America to justify the imperial project and convince the state to support

American ventures. To convince the Crown and the public to support their projects, different pamphleteers discussed social good and avoided frameworks that emphasized profit for companies and individuals. Additionally, these works discussed the national interest of creating an English society abroad as a bulwark against Spain, France, and other foes of the Crown.

Printed materials advocated state involvement to a wider audience, potentially pressuring the

Crown to invest more seriously and support the American plantations. The works also widened knowledge of America in England, allowing for more advanced discussions in the public sphere.

In writing these texts, authors built upon already existing notions about America, its benefits, and the need for English presence there that had been circulating in the Elizabethan public sphere. English concerns about France, Portugal, and especially Spain creating Catholic empires in the Americas fueled anxieties in England. They believed these empires to be nexuses 226 of abuses and barbarities against the Natives; thus, their Protestant duty involved stopping the expansion of these empires and simultaneous quashing of Catholicism.579 It is for this reason that

Richard Hakluyt, Samuel Purchas, and others began to advocate for the project of American colonization in the late sixteenth century. These authors argued that the extension of England to

North America was not only profitable, but a check on the power of Pope and beneficial to the commonwealth.580 The idea that American plantation would do good for England as a whole and strengthen both the Crown that ruled it and the health and happiness of the people that populated it, established by 1600, informed seventeenth century descriptions of America and what role it might play in English life.

Travelogues and descriptions of the land and resources of America in the seventeenth century built on this base and became more detailed as mariners, planters, and traders gained firsthand experience with America after 1607. Mary C. Fuller has argued that because sixteenth and seventeenth century nautical enterprises already produced ample amounts of documentation, such as navigational charts, captain’s logs, and ledgers for goods bought and sold, it was a smooth transition for travelers to produce personal accounts of the Americas once the English at last began to visit America regularly. The urge to record experiences in detail already had associations with economic profits and duties to the Crown.581 Andrew Hadfield has argued that

579 Historians have discussed the antagonism of Spain as the fuel which created the “Black Legend” that Spain’s abuses against the Indigenous Americans as well as African Slaves was particularly egregious, and the myth of Spanish horrors contributed to English identity formation in an Atlantic empire. Scholarly consensus has exposed this legend as false. See Benjamin Keen, “The Black Legend Revisited: Assumptions and Realities,” The Hispanic American Historical Review, 44:9 (November 1969), 216; Colin Steele, English Interpretations of the Iberian World from Purchas to Stevens (Oxford: Dolphin, 1975), 25. 580 See the essays in Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe, ed. Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt (London: Ashgate, 2016) for examples of contemporary perspectives on this writing. It is also worth noting that before the 1580s, descriptions of America all were translations of Spanish and Portuguese accounts. From 1580, domestic accounts from firsthand experience began to appear and accelerated throughout the next decades. Armstrong, Writing North America, 6-7. 581 Mary C. Fuller, Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576-1624 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 6-8. 227 travel literature could in fact be a subversive genre, allowing for reflection on what an English empire ought to mean and what it should do and should not do in a way that seemed remote enough to avoid censorship.582 While this may be true, it is also clear from the books and pamphlets that significant respect existed for the Crown and its authority in America, and authors encouraged London’s involvement in plantations. Authors used the language of the commonweal and discussed the benefit for all of England, and not simply for the planters of a given project. As in their petitions, letters, and dispatches, they also emphasized the Crown would be one of the parties to benefit from the process. These arguments were consistent with humanist political language and the intellectual culture of the period. Andrew Fitzmaurice has shown that individuals in court and London’s merchant networks of the early seventeenth century explicitly saw their project in humanist terms and discussed them accordingly.583 Thus, early pamphlet literature about America stressed prudence, honor, and a political society that respected English or more broadly European tradition, law and custom, not pure profiteering.

The Bounty of America Early printed material about America was often optimistic, smoothing over difficulties encountered there. Reports about starvation, disease, Native American attacks, and the general failure of American ventures to turn a profit circulated in England and did appear in public discussions. This resulted in royal investigation of Virginia and weak recruitment there and elsewhere as a matter of public concern.584 Corporations sought to counteract this narrative. The surviving printed materials tend to be supportive of the American project and downplay difficulties. This is in part because joint-stock companies hoping to recruit new planters (or

582 Andrew Hadfield, Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545-1625 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 1-3, 86-89. 583 Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America, 61-79. 584 Craven, The Dissolution of the Virginia Company, 303-330; 228 individuals who had invested in these companies) published and funded much of the material.

They had every incentive to paint a rosy picture of efforts in America. Primarily, their authors emphasized the bounty of the continent and the natural wealth found there.585 These descriptions had a repeated and specific order: rivers and water resources, followed by the types of trees for logging in the area, then mineral wealth, flora, and finally fauna. This approach allowed works to be read in relation to each other. The imagery used in early descriptions of America emphasized abundance above all else. If these sources were to be believed, the fruits of America were all sweeter, the animals grew larger there, and the air quality proved purer than anything in Europe.

While one could easily dismiss this as corporate propaganda (and this was certainly an element of the pamphlets’ construction), these passages also worked to manage expectations about the empire and advocate further investment for the benefit of the commonwealth. Thus, they contributed to discussions in the public sphere about the future of the plantations and the future of these companies.

A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs of Virginia provides an example. The book, penned by Edward Waterhouse, had financial backing from the company itself, and thus its claims must be qualified, but its description of America is unmistakably bountiful. This book opens with a lengthy description of North American geography:

This spacious and fruitful country of Virginia is (as is generally known to all), naturally rich, and exceedingly well watered, very temperate, and healthful to the inhabitants, abounding with as many natural blessings, and replenished with as goodly woods, and those full of deer and sundry other beasts for men’s sustenance, and the seas and rivers full of excellent fish of diverse sorts, and both

585 Armstrong, Writing North America, 63-121. 229

water and air yielding a great variety of foul, as any country in the world is known to afford.586

From this description, readers could glean that Virginia contained all the familiar natural features they knew well in their old homes. It portrayed America not as an alien world, but as an augmented, purer version of England. Waterhouse also underscored that the colony served England and provided safety and security for its residents.587 The

Company’s belief in Virginia and its potential benefits for England undoubtedly contained some real truths while also advertising how and why Virginia could benefit

English people.588

Thomas Morton’s 1637 New English Canaan provides an example of these descriptions for New England. It invokes the land of milk and honey in its very title.

Morton’s work responded to accusations that New England was a bitter, inhospitable land of heretics and poor farming, a common line of attack during the 1630s. He argued that, at 40 degrees north latitude, New England had the “most apt and fit” climate for habitation instead of the swarthy Chesapeake or barren Canada.589 This implied that those colonies were not as profitable as advertised, while New England had abundance for

English people to enjoy. Morton also stressed natural resources and linked them to

English desire to outdo the Spanish empire. For instance, he stated “the Coast aboundeth with such multitudes of Codd, that the inhabitants of New England doe dunge their

586 Edward Waterhouse, A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affares of Virginia, with the Names of the Adventurers, and surnames of those adventured in that action (London: His Majesties’ Council for Virginia, 1622), 1. 587 The pamphlet was published anonymously. Karen Ordahl Kupperman, The Jamestown Project (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2007) 89. 588 See Haskell, “For God, King, and People,” 201-206, for analysis of the ways the ways investors in Virginia understood their mission in humanist terms and with reference to the concept of the Commonweal. 589 Thomas Morton, New English Canaan New Canaan Containing an abstract of New England (London: 1637), 15. 230 grounds with Codd; and it is a commodity better than the golden mines of the Spanish

Indies.”590 Morton thus placed the generous resources that England might take from New

England into contemporary political and military conversations about the Spanish threat.

Considering that New England’s Congregational Puritanism provided the greatest contrast to Roman Catholicism, this statement is not without religious implications.

The potential of America, as much as its present bounty, also featured in literary accounts. Catherine Armstrong has argued that seventeenth century works about America made use of a two-fold argument: for “place” and already existing benefit, and for “potential” to become an even stronger, more developed entity.591 Books and pamphlets indicated a genuine belief that England and the English people would strengthen by planting America and developing these resources. Thus, the American pamphlets reflected conversations about improvement, efficiency, and better management of land which were occurring in England during the seventeenth century.592 Contemporary English subjects knew that extraordinary population pressures existed in England, and poverty, vagrancy, and hunger threatened to upend the social order.593 Therefore, the literature portrayed America as a land where unlucky English people could prosper, taking advantage of land and resources. So long as they worked hard and diligently, their crops would be bigger and better than ever before, providing personal gain.

590 Ibid., 86. 591 Armstrong, Writing North America, 17. 592 Slack, The Invention of Improvement, 53-91; Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 24-42; Nicholas Blomley, “The Territorialization of Property in Land: Space, Power and Practice,” Territory, Politics, and Governance 7:2 (2017), 233-249. 593 For some scholarly examinations of overpopulation in England from 1550 to 1640, see Ian Blanchard, “Population Change, Enclosure, and the Early Tudor Economy,” Economic History Review 23:3 (Dec. 1970), 427- 445; A.L Beier, Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640 (New York: Methuen, 1985), 14- 17; Wrightson, Earthly Necessities, 120-128; John Walter, Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), ch. 3. 231

Meanwhile, the whole empire would gain from more available land, reduced population pressure, and a stronger economy.

An anonymous 1635 pamphlet, A Relation of Maryland, provides an argument that a naturally gifted land could be made even greater through English tending. Written the year after settlers arrived in Maryland, the author stated that the adventurers “found [the plantation] to be a very commodious situation for a Towne . . . the land is good, the ayre wholsome and pleasant, the River affords a safe harbour for ships of any burthen, and a very bould shoare; fresh water, and wood there is in great plenty, and the place so naturally fortified, as with little difficultie, it will be defended from any enemie.”594 In addition to this, Maryland had been gifted with the standard natural resources in wood, seafood, and agricultural products to set up a fantastic community. This author emphasized the point that to reach its true potential, Maryland would require labor. Unlike most pamphlets of the day, the author divided the products that Maryland would produce into those “of nature,” which could be harvested or grown, and “of industry,” which would require manufacturing. The products included wine, bread, and “brave ships” which could be used to augment English power in the Atlantic.595 This construction explicitly showed how hard work and development would make Maryland even more prosperous than mere resource extraction.

Famed mariner and former Jamestown leader realized not only the industrial potential of America, but also its processing potential, and drew on his experiences there to argue for increased government regulation. His 1624 book The generall historie of Virginia, New-

England, and the Summer Isles combined his personal account of the history of America, the

594 A relation of Maryland together, vvith a map of the countrey, the conditions of plantation (London: 1635), 7. 595 Ibid., 18-20. 232 natural and geographic histories that were staples of literature on America in the 1620s, and argument for policy. Smith primarily focused on Virginia, as it was the only place with any significant English population in America at the time, but he mentioned other locations as potentially impressive projects.596 While discussing Virginia, Smith emphasized work and the value of labor above all else. Every man had to work if they wanted to eat, and this labor defined their experience as English subjects in the American context. Whether it be to “cut down trees to make place to pitch their tents, provide clapboard to readie the ships, make gardens, or form nets,” the work of the English is what created viable settlement, per Smith.597 In so doing, Smith argued that English labor combined with the natural beauty and benefit of the land would together create prosperity for individuals, the King, and above all the Commonwealth.

Assurances of Continuity Concerns of resources and economy were not the only topics discussed in early printed literature about America. Books and pamphlets also emphasized cultural continuities between

England and the Plantations. Both travelers who had experienced America as well as “desk” proponents of the imperial project emphasized the maintenance of English law and order, and how subjects upheld these in America. These writers argued that efforts to construct English- style towns and law courts made America not be much different than home. Books stressed opportunities to remain in contact with friends and family. Emphasizing this alongside the natural bounty of the Americas accomplished two goals. For one, the books worked to dispel the narrative that the Americas were chaotic and filled with lawlessness. Bad reports from Virginia

596 In an earlier tract called A Description of New England (London: 1616), Smith coined the term “New England” to describe the Northern coasts he had voyaged to after recovering from injuries he had sustained in Virginia that necessitated his return home. 597 John Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: with the names of the adventurers, planters, and governours from their first beginning, ano: 1584 to this present 1624 (London, 1624), 37. 233 and the Caribbean about mortality and starvation had entered public discourse as early as 1608, and the authors sought to counter this idea.598 Secondly, these books put forth the notion that the royal government would still look after its subjects across the ocean. There would not only be local structures to replicate English customs across the ocean, but also ample opportunities to communicate problems there to London, or to return home if things did not work out in America.

Thus, assured these authors, any individual who wanted to head for America did not put themselves at any risk of losing vital traditional liberties and access to the Crown.

Examples of invoking English law, custom, and social ties are numerous. A Relation of

Maryland concludes with a set of instructions for those intent to travel to Maryland, and the text of its charter.599 The inclusion of this legal material emphasized the legitimacy of Maryland against anti-Catholic attacks. The pamphlet showed how the King had approved the project, and how the Charter of the colony forced it to uphold English law and custom. It invoked English law, acting through the Charter approved by the Crown, to show Maryland as explicitly an

English project, benefiting the entire kingdom. A True and Sincere Declaration Virginia, an early defense of the Virginia company, invokes the establishment of government as well, emphasizing that honorable and distinguished men had been chosen to lead the Virginia

Government.600 This pamphlet stressed local leadership by the gentry in Virginia, thus, the social order transferred from England to America. It also recognized accusations of ruin and economic failure in Virginia to 1610 and stressed the colony had done much to combat “the misgovernment of our men, their idlenesse, their want.”601 This portrayed the colony as safe for

598 John Smith, A true relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath happened in Virginia (London: 1608) was the first published account of the colony and was quite critical of its progress. 599 A relation of Maryland, Ibid., 32-40. 600 A true and sincere declaration of the purpose and ends of the plantation begun in Virginia by the Virginia Company of London, (London:1610) 12. 601 Ibid., 18. 234 potential migrants and assured them things had become orderly. Smith’s General History also considered the social good for England done by colonization. Despite noting inefficiencies in the current plantations, Smith maintained that planting America was a worthy goal and one which could provide infinite benefit for England, if the English men and women who traveled there worked hard. “The vaine expectation of present gaine in some, ambition in others, that would be great above all else, and the carelessness in providing supplies, have caused the defailments [sic] in all those plantations,” claimed Smith, and prior failures had mostly come from improper preparation rather than the nature of English activity in America.602 Smith thus qualified the idea that profit and growth would be ready in America, but emphasized that if the base impulses of the public could be tamed, the English plantations would thrive.

In addition to actual travelers to America, several “desk” proponents of plantation also weighed in on the social good that could come from American projects, emphasizing relieving population stress and combating idleness. Richard Eburne’s 1624 book A Plaine Path-Way to

Plantations argued that the abundance of land would result in happier lives by relieving overpopulation.

“The Argument whereof I intreat [the reader], is, of Plantations, which howsoeuer

[sic] attempted by many worthy, great, and honourable Personages, yet seeme

little to bee accepted and respected of you, for whom, of all other, they are most

necessary, and to whom properly they are intended . . . Looke upon the miserie

602 Smith, The generall historie of Virginia, 240. Smith’s account contains his own biases. He had led the colony from 1607 to 1609 and had a specific understanding of the problems it had encountered. Emphasizing hard English labor provided a contrast to leaders that followed him (as he saw it) and allowed him to implicitly criticize the transition to a tobacco economy in the 1610s as a “shortcut” way out of building a structurally sound plantation. His arguments decried a perceived ascendance of selfish motives among American planters and encouraged the state to take more forceful action against this trend. Smith’s version of American prosperity was reasoned and gradual. This contrasts with many competing printed materials that emphasized the ready nature of goods and the ease with which planters could obtain them. 235

and want wherein you doe, and abiding in England, you cannot but live. Looke

upon the plentie and felicitie, wherein going hence, you may live.”603

Eburne hoped to convince English subjects like himself that the social conditions confronting early seventeenth century England meant planting colonies was in the best interest of all. Using a dialog format, the main body of Eburne’s text outlines many benefits of colonization, including the propagation of the gospel to the Native Americans, relief of overpopulation, and a reduction of vagrants in England. He blamed opposition to colonization on laziness, insisting that the people had a calling to occupy good land and make it plentiful.604 Thus, he tapped into common political language used by Smith and others to reject laziness and see English societal problems resulting from sloth. John White, a preacher and one of the leading figures in the Dorchester

Company, was another author who discussed colonies as a favorable social opportunity. White had played a role in organizing the Dorchester Company’s fishing colony on Cape Anne in modern Massachusetts, which was active in the 1620s but eventually failed.605 A puritan who emphasized godliness while reforming Dorchester, his religious convictions directly informed his approach to colonies.606 White emphasized social good that could come from colonization, but with a more humanist rather than pragmatic tone. “The setling of new States requireth justice and affection to the common good: and the taking in of large Countreys presents a naturall remedy against couetousnesse, fraud, and violence; when euery man may enjoy enough without

603 Eburne, A Plaine Path-way to Plantations, v. 604 Ibid., 16, 91-92. 605 Frances Rose-Troup, The Massachusetts Bay Company and Its Predecessors (New York: Clearfield, 1930), 10- 16. 606 White was a rector at Holy Trinity Parish in Dorchester. After a fire destroyed most of Dorchester in 1613, White had led local efforts to reform the populace to be godlier and had helped organize a public workhouse and brewing house in order to employ the poor. White’s efforts created a strong network of charity and social support in Dorchester, and made it a center for Puritan religious activity in the years leading up to the English Civil War. See David Underdown, Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 90-196, for details on White’s life and work in Dorchester. 236 wrong or injury to his neighbour.”607 A successful colony, among its material and geopolitical benefits, would help the commonweal by allowing all men to have a place and fostering a sense of duty to God and England. The plantation of America would also help relieve the problems of unemployment and lack of land for tillage, putting the settlers to productive labor.608

William Alexander’s An Encouragement to Colonies provides a Scotsman’s perspective, extending the discourse to a pan-British context. Though he held a patent for Nova Scotia,

Alexander wrote more generally about the good that could come from British plantation.

Alexander was encouraged by English efforts in America, particularly Ferdinando Gorges and the New England Company’s various patents. However, he was concerned his own countrymen would not join in without a place of their own.

My Countrymen would never adventure in such an Enterprise, unlesse it were as

there was a , a New Spaine, and a New England, that they might

likewise have a New Scotland, and that for that effect they might have bounds

with a correspondence in proportion (as others had) with the Country whereof it

should beare the name, which they might hold of their owne Crowne, and where

they might bee governed by their owne Lawes.609

Alexander’s request indicates the centrality of the Crown to the entire British-American project and the importance to potential emigrants of maintaining a connection with their past customs, laws, and traditions. Scots would not go to America, argued Alexander, unless their Presbyterian

Church, their traditional patterns of landholding, and their own unique relationship with the

607 John White, The Planter’s Plea (London: 1630), 5. 608 Ibid., 11. 609 Alexander, An Encouragement to Colonies, 32. 237

Stuart Crown could be maintained. He specifically asked James I to use the seals of the Scottish

Crown instead of England when issuing his patent or other patents for Scottish colonies, to convey the special relationship between the Stuarts and Scotland.

In sum, early books and pamphlets about America emphasized the ability of Britons to involve themselves in something new, exciting, and profitable in service of the commonweal.

These authors contributed to public discourse by encouraging colonization. Readers would have seen assurances on religious, economic, and social grounds. Print had the power to forward these ideas to the public discourse, the government which protected these ventures and invested in them, and individual potential emigrants considering crossing over. Using contemporary political language about hindering the Catholic empires, relieving overpopulation, and connection between the constituent parts of the Stuart kingdoms informed these documents to assure readers of the benefits of planting and convince them to do so was not only helped the commonweal

Britain but also would not hinder them or reduce their place in society. Print acted as a final layer on top of other forms of communication of speech and writing, codifying what America looked like in the minds of the public and affecting how they interpreted conflicts over land, resources, and money in that part of their empire. No matter the individual author’s intention or stance, these works stressed and made explicit that American plantations were part of the commonwealth and could contribute to the general interest with proper curation.

The Controversy over New England in the Press

Descriptions of the Atlantic Plantations did not concern themselves simply with questions of the public good that could come from planting America, but also reflected deep political divisions and comment on fissures in the larger public sphere. Polemics for and against New

England became a prolific topic in pamphlet wars during the 1640s, as both the religious and 238 political actions of these colonies contributed to debates about faith and the rights of the King, the Parliament, and the people.610 As argued by Jason Peacey, print became a key medium for popular mobilization, and the ubiquity of cheap print during the Civil War years due to relaxed censorship expanded the sphere and inclusiveness of existing English political culture and contributed to the growth of a public.611 Pamphlets concerning New England were part of a larger invective press that discussed religion and the proper relationship of both the state and individuals to religious and political authority. Several historians have shown that print tracts commented on each other and over a quick news cycle in a shifting balance between both each other and oral, written, and printed communication.612 The polemic style of Civil War pamphlets suited viperous arguments against New England’s independent churches and conduct. In turn, their opponents responded with religious and political defenses of the New England Way. While most attacks focused on religion, works were filled with allusions to disorder and willful rejection of the norms of English law. Pamphlets also used the intellectual and political language of humanism and logical jurisprudence to make points on the degeneracy of the opposing side.

Such attacks were common in Civil War pamphlets that commented on England itself.613

These writings brought New England’s political and religious systems into a broader

Atlantic political conversation flowing from the Civil Wars. Pamphlets about New England reflected the larger political crisis in the British Isles, and the divisive arguments about the nature

610 See Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, Appendix 2, for an extended list of such pamphlets. For more general accounts of the role of print and pamphlet literature in the public discourse during the Civil Wars, see also Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire, 282-284, 411-412, 441-448. 611 Peacy, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution, 14-18, 92-115. 612 Ann Hughes, Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 222-317; Bernard Capp, “The Religious Marketplace: Public Disputations in Civil War and Interregnum England,” English Historical Review 129:536 (February 2014), 57-64. 613 Raymond, “Pamphlets and Pamphleteering,” 202-205, 277-281; Barbara Shapiro, Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558-1688 (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012), 73-78; Peacy, Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution, 92-115. 239 of royal authority, the relationship between the people and the state, and the proper practice of religion. This America in the news and laid out the inter-linked nature of events in America with events in England, Scotland, and Ireland. By discussing New England’s political and religious structures, and how those structures did or did not subvert an orderly society, authors implicitly argued for the importance of America in a larger whole. Further, the discourse contributed to conversations about Puritanism in England itself, particularly Congregationalism, arguing why

New England’s religion was or was not an affront to public order. Lastly, because many authors either were themselves planters or closely connected to them, print about New England was one way the voices of planters featured in larger debates about English society in this period.

Works Criticizing New England Criticisms of New England foregrounded religious heterodoxies above all else. For example, in his Anatomy of Independency, Alexander Forbes addressed New England’s aversion to the central government and established Church and attacked it. Forbes part of the Scottish delegation at the Westminster Assembly. A Presbyterian, Forbes favored the idea of the central government and synods dictating the grounds of religion, even though he despised Arminianism and the royal settlement. In his view, Congregationalism and Separatism were no better. The author mentioned New England several times, claiming that their strict way of solving local conflicts was over-disciplinary and “not so accompanied with the practise and power of

Godliness.”614 More frequently, Forbes related polities like Massachusetts to a “Hollande” suffering from chaos and confusion. As the Dutch were known for religious tolerance and therefore harboring religious heterodoxy, Forbes thus made an association between New England and destabilization. The author assaulted the role of New England church ministers in the

614 Alexander Forbes, An Anatomy of Independency, or, A breife commentary and moderate discourse upon the apologetically narration of Mr. Thomas Goodwin and Mr. Philip Nye (London, 1643), 9. 240 resolution of local justice, accusing them of “excessive hyperbolicall encomiasticks, whereby they magnifie the actions and qualities of men of their own profession.”615 Thomas Lechford, a

New England emigrant and disgruntled ex-planter, attacked the religious state of the region along similar terms, criticized the religious and political community he had experienced in America.

Though a critic of the Church of England, Letchford clashed with Congregationalists on issues of establishing an episcopacy, he was denied membership in any New England Church and returned to England.616 These experiences shaped his writing, as he came to appreciate the role of Bishops and became more favorable the Church of England as established by Elizabeth I. He noted the controversy in England over the role of diocesan bishops and wished to interject lessons from a none-too-pleasurable experience in Massachusetts where the bishops were disregarded. Lechford described “wars of anarchy and confusion” among the churches of New England, which because of their congregational model and rejection of the Anglican establishment tended to squabble over trivium and paralyze their communities.617 Lechford went so far as to compare the New

Englanders’ state of anarchy to that of the Indians they lived beside. This was a damning comparison, suggestion the state of New England’s communities was as unenlightened as non-

Christians.618 Attacks like these stressed the New Englanders violated religious norms of

England and thus threatened the social order.

Accompanying religious attacks were attacks on the region’s political and legal culture.

In An Anatomy of Independency, Alexander Forbes feared further governmental chaos if the New

England way spread to England. Their system of magistrates seemed foreign and unauthorized to

615 Ibid, 11. 616 Barbara Ritter Daily, “Lechford, Thomas,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), https://doi-org./71097. 617 Thomas Letchford, Plain Dealing: Or, News from New England (London, 1645), 3. 618 Ibid., 5. 241

Forbes. He insisted that New Englanders (and other religious minorities) rely on Parliament and a secular civil law to handle social reform, rather than striking out on their own. With “hopefull expectation they [might be] entertained with a happie latitude, and agreement by means of this

Assembly, and the wisdom of the Parliament.”619 Per Forbes, New Englanders and people like them in England threatened the social order in large part because they refused to bide by standard procedures and operated with their own customs. Along similar lines, Lechford criticized the judicial system in New England to emphasize their radicalism. He posited that the majority of

New Englanders, who were not members of the church, had no means of receiving justice in a system in which they played little role. What juries existed “seldom” found anything distinct from the magistrates, according to the author.620 These passages indicate that Lechford had come to dislike the restrictive nature of New England. His training as a lawyer greatly shaped his arguments, which rely on the need to protect freedoms guaranteed by common law. Even though the people of Massachusetts had created a coherent system for resolving social conflicts and administering law, Lechford believed they had done so in disregard of the liberties of all English people, not just ones with a particular set of beliefs.

Major John Childe’s pamphlet New-England’s Jonas, published in 1647, also assaulted

New England’s approach to law and political participation. The pamphlet comments on a larger fracture in Massachusetts Bay between the Congregational establishment and Presbyterian

Puritans, including Childe’s brother Robert, who desired political access despite no membership in one of the Bay Colony’s Churches.621 Such conflict was an extension over discussion about

619Forbes, An Anatomy of Independency, 13. “The Assembly” here refers to the Westminster Assembly, an effort to create a national Presbyterian church in England like the one that had existed in Scotland for nearly a century. Scots participated in the Assembly. 620 Letchford, Plain Dealing, 27. 621 See Newall, “Robert E. Child and the Entrepreneurial Vision,” 223-240. 242 the relationship between religion and political liberties ongoing in the British Isles during the

1640s and the Civil Wars.622 John Childe’s description of events in New England (which he did not witness firsthand) alleges the residents of Boston flaunted the name of the King and treaded on the justice of the English Commonwealth. He reported about New England issuing arbitrary fines in violation of the freedoms of Englishmen. Additionally, he described an account of

William Hubbard, the minister, and how he bravely invoked the Crown in his self-defense. “Mr.

Hubbard said the Warrant was insufficient, being not sent out in his Majesties name, he being sworne to the Crown of England … [and that] our Government here was not more then a

Corporation in England, and that we had not power to put men to death by vertue of the Patent, nor to do some other things we did.”623 The Quarter Court of Boston ignored this objection, and fined Hubbard, “in sedition and contempt of the said government.”624 This incident resulted in several people, including Childe’s brother, imploring the government of Massachusetts for their rights as Englishmen. In doing so, the pleaders specifically cited the repugnancy principle, or the idea that no law in an English colony should be contrary to the laws of England itself. The author noted that the laws of England “have procured to the Nation much honour and renown amongst strangers, and long peace and tranquility amongst themselves.” Deviations from this, such as

Massachusetts refusing to let members of the Church of England have political rights, would create problems.625 Childe argued that the free-born rights of Englishmen to participate in assemblies and control their own property, secure in other colonies, should be upheld in the New

622 Spurr, English Puritanism, Ch. 12; Hughes, Gangrena and the Struggle for the English Revolution, 55-129; Braddick, God’s Fury, England’s Fire, 345-346. 623 Major John Childe, New-Englands Jonas Cast Up at London: or, A Relation of the Proceedings of the Court at Boston in New-England against Divers Honest and Godly Persons (London: 1647), 4. 624 Ibid., 5. 625 Ibid., 9. 243

England colonies as well. The author mused “[in Massachusetts] is a deep and subtle plot against the Lawes of England, and liberties of English subjects” afoot.626

John Childe did not witness the events himself, nor did he sign the petition. This pamphlet indicates, however, that even during the 1640s, as fundamental transformations took place in the relationship between the Crown and the people, some Englishmen viewed New

England as a troublesome pot of discord and an interrelated problem. The Childe petitioners challenged one form of Puritan Protestantism, just as the Congregational churches of

Massachusetts presented a challenge to Presbyterians. As opponents of New England saw it,

Massachusetts’ General Council seemed willing to suspend traditional English liberties for the sake of its own religious and political goals. This raised dangerous precedents, for if the best interests of the commonwealth could be ignored there, they might be ignored in England as well.

New England’s subversion of the social structures created a threat to social cohesion anywhere.

This pamphlet depicts the fracturing of Puritanism on a wider Atlantic scale, which would have consequences across the whole Empire.627 They represent a trans-Atlantic political culture in action, adjusting to new arguments about religious, authority, and the social order that emerged in the 1640s. Notably, it was Presbyterians and Parliamentarians, not Royalists, who were most critical of the New England Way in pamphlets. Their concern about chaos and untamed religious disunion transferred across the Atlantic, and they saw their fears manifested in New England just the same as at home.628

626 Ibid., 12. 627 These squabbles would lead to repeated fissures until Oliver Cromwell eventually mandated the tolerance of all Protestant sects during the Protectorate he lead from 1653, and even then, many complained. 628 For more on religious conflict and intra-Protestant struggles during the English Civil Wars, see Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas During the English Revolution (London: Penguin, 1972); Hughes, Gangrena, 55-70; 244

Defenses of New England Supporters of New England did not let these attacks go unanswered. Several New

Englanders responded took different approaches to emphasize a collective point: New England was not seditious, and their society preserved English ways, rather than destroying them.

Emphasizing congruence with English Law and custom was an important line of argument for these authors.

John Cotton, one of New England’s more famous clergymen, provided an example in his

Abstract, or the Lawes of New England as they are now established in England.629 In this volume, Cotton laid out the current laws of New England so anyone could conclude they did not contradict those of England. He stressed that New Englanders conducted civil law in accordance with typical English customs and that they punished crimes and maintained order accordingly.

Cotton’s tract thus argues in religious terms why New England had a calling which sometimes seemed contrary to the Crown’s wishes; however, this was only because it was the godly thing to do.630 Other New Englanders emphasized their loyalty to England in fraternal rather than legal terms. William Hooke’s published sermon New Englands teares for old Englands feares stressed unity and the genuine concern that the people of New England had for their brothers in England.

The book states the sermon was originally preached in the Plymouth Plantation on 23 July 1640, and then sent to England for publication.631 Therefore, Hooke had both an audience of church

629 A majority of pro-New England tracts were written by New Englanders themselves. Their works were sent in manuscript form to London for publication and dissemination, so that they could participate in the “marketplace of ideas” at the center of the empire. 630 John Cotton, An Abstract, or the Lawes of New England as they are now Established (London, 1641), 15. Privileging the law of God over other legal systems was not a foreign concept in England during the 1630s and 1640s, and thus Cotton placed his legal defense of New England in larger conversations about the relationship between religion and law during this period. See Charles W.A. Prior, “Religion, Political Thought and the English Civil War,” History Compass 11:1 (January 2013), 24-42. 631 Hooke was originally from Axemouth in Devon, and at the time of publication resided in the town Taunton, Plymouth Plantation. William Hooke, New Englands teares, for old Englands feares (London:1640), title page. 245 attendees in America and readers in England in mind and spoke to both as part of one larger public. The preacher hoped to “acquaint one another with the sorrowes and calamities of their friends and brethren and agree to contribute and cast in their sorrowes and sympathize when their friends are afflicted.”632 Upon hearing the news of tumults in England, Hooke compared his fellow New Englanders to friends of Job, how could provide comfort in a time of trouble.633

Hooke offered an exceptionalist interpretation of English identity based on law:

“There is no Land that claimes our name, but England, wee are distinguished

from all the Nations in the world by the name of English. There is no potentate

breathing, that wee call our dread Soveraigne, but King Charles, nor Lawes of any

Land have civilized us, but Englands; there is no Nation that calls us Countrey-

men, but the English.”634

Thus, Hooke described concern for events, mishaps, and conflict in England as a natural extension of the brotherly love which Jesus had preached. In effect, this sermon argues that concern for the King’s temporal laws and English customs were one way to observe Christian values, and residents of New England ought to practice them. By publishing this sermon in

England, it seems Hooke might have hoped English subjects at home might feel the same way about those who had gone to America.

Others were not as tactful, and instead defended the New England way as an antidote to lapsed order and tradition in England. For example, Thomas Shephard’s 1644 Pamphlet New

Englands lamentation for old Englands present errours argued that Old England had fallen into a

632 Ibid., 1. 633 If this sermon occurred in July 1640 in New England, it may have been in response to News of the Short Parliament and the rapid decay of relations between King and that Parliament a few months earlier. 634 Ibid., 16. 246 state of religious aberration, and only New England had maintained true religion.635 Shephard, a minister in Newton and later Cambridge, Massachusetts, played an active role in the shaping of religious orthodoxy of the Bay Colony, participating in the trial that sent Antinomians like Anne

Hutchison and John Wheelwright into exile from the Bay Colony.636 Antinomians believed in free grace, and that personal spiritual revelation held as much weight as Biblical laws and the rules of organized churches. This threatened the magistrates as well as the ministers of

Massachusetts, and supporters of Antinomianism were banished in the late 1630s.637 Shephard supported Congregationalism, seeing all other forms of Christianity as a threat to the New

England way. He argued that the sword had inevitably fallen on the land because there had been too much growth of “corrupt opinions among persons formerly well reputed and modest,” leading to a plague of Anabaptists, Separatists, and Antinomians decaying the moral fabric of

England.638 This contrasted with Massachusetts, where “Magistrates, gracious and zealous . . . ministers, aged, experienced, holy and wise” had protected the social fabric.639 This author made his point clearly: the rigid discipline of the New English socio-political order, which some in

England attacked, in fact protected against the evils that the Civil War represented. New

Englanders were joined by people in England in their religious defense of independency of churches. Henry Burton, one of England’s most prominent Puritan preachers and an opponent of

635 Thomas Shepard, New Englands lamentation for old Englands present errours, and divisions, and their feared future desolations if not timely prevented (London: Printed by George Miller, 1644). 636 Michael Jinkins, “Shephard, Thomas,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi-org./25325. 637 Antinomianism itself was a complex and non-uniform set of beliefs, with adherents on both sides of the Atlantic. See Como, Blown in the Spirit, for a discussion of the Antinomian underground in 1620s-40s England. On the “Antinomian Controversy” and the banishment of Antinomians from Massachusetts, much as been written. For recent treatments, see Michael Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636–1641 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002); Adrian Weimer, Martyrs' Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 58-78. Many of the exiles moved to what became Rhode Island. 638 Shepard, New Englands lamentation, 1-2. 639 Ibid., 3. 247 episcopacy, cited New England favorably. “[Congregationalists] plead no other maintenance then the New Testament holds forth, yet not denying the Magistrate and State a power to appoint maintenance for the preaching of the word, as is done in New England, to those that are not members of Churches.”640 Burton thus argued that New England’s non-seperation of church and state right religion and thus provided a stalwart English society and religion.

~~~

These examples provide a sample of how the press of the 1640s framed New England’s independent tendencies and connected New England to the wider picture of English society.

Presbyterians and disgruntled former planters alike commented on the New Englanders’ penchant for looking inward, attacked those colonies for restricting the free rights of Englishmen to participate fully in the political life of those colonies. While writers approached the issue from different angles, they shared conviction that these colonies were radical and provided a threat to a healthy English political society not just in North America, but globally. In turn, defenders of

New England stressed that political, religious, and legal activity of New England was both a valid expression of English liberties and a better, purer one at that. Either way, the press allowed for English subjects to bring the example of New England into larger debates about their world during stressful times. To them, New England presented not a periphery but an integral part of the English world, either as an example to emulate or as a case study of what to avoid.

Conclusion: Public Sphere of the Western Hemisphere

A variety of texts, including letters, dispatches, government reports, and books, communicated ideas about America to the public, and influenced the ways that English people

640 Henry Burton, A Vindication of Churches, Commonly Called Independent (London:1644), 57. 248 may have conceived America. Those who could read and write used literacy and documentation to access power and participate in an Atlantic political and civil discourse. The political language deployed in the documents invoked omnipresent English cultural concepts like duty to the king and to fellow English people, the benefit of the commonwealth, and the need to maintain order in a proper society. The concerns of Atlantic subjects differed little from those of those still in

Britain. Most were concerned simply with protecting their property, keeping the peace, and protecting right religion. Literacy and writing offered opportunities to advocate for these goals and they kept English people abroad tethered to structures of the state, political patronage, and the public sphere in which they could advocate for themselves as individuals and as a group.

The sum of these texts, in combination with the petitioning process and the court system, created a toolbox with which English subjects could involve the state in their Atlantic ventures.

From small scale farmers to fishermen to appointed governors, subjects of all classes and genders used a variety of avenues to interact with the state and with the whole of English political culture. They knew of traditional means to access the state and its uses in Europe, and readily applied it to the Americas from the first years of English settlement there. Most emigrants from England not just thought about but acted out their Englishness in an uninterrupted fashion.

While the distance and economic insecurities of the journey overseas often proved difficult, life in the Americas was inseparably linked to the English state and the greater commonwealth.

During the years before 1642, they knew that the King’s authority was a powerful asset and understood that it applied to his American domains just the same as his British ones. Even as the ability to access royal prerogative for personal or corporate gains broke down during the civil war, subjects still interacted with larger English society and kept aware of the evolving situation, as they knew the effects of political upheaval would span the ocean. 249

Conclusion: In Atlantic Ways

On 5 April 1652, a group of Maryland planters gathered to submit themselves to the

Commonwealth of England, the Parliamentary government in place after the execution of

Charles I and termination of the monarchy in 1649. Like several other plantations, Maryland had significant royalist support during the Civil Wars. Their acting Governor, Thomas Greene, had declared his support for Charles II’s claim to the throne in absentia, despite orders from the plantation’s proprietor Lord Baltimore to support Parliament. Yet, the Maryland planters acquiesced without a fight when Commonwealth commissioners arrived to enforce the new regime.641 Led by Thomas Ward, a local justice of the peace, sixty-seven Maryland planters swore “[to] promise and engage ourselves to be true and faithful to the Commonwealth of

England now established, without King or House of Lords.”642 This political statement of supposition aligned Maryland with the Commonwealth, and its signers undoubtedly thought that obedience to the new government provided them the best chance to maintain their liberties as guaranteed by Maryland’s Charter, avoiding a takeover from the center. Their choice of location for the signing suggests that they were thinking about their situation within the larger empire.

Rather than meeting at St. Mary’s City, the capital of Maryland in 1652, the planters chose to meet at Kent Island to sign their political declaration. By re-constituting their political loyalty to the English central government there, they perhaps desired to reinforce their claim to the island against Virginia’s rival claim, so that Parliament, like the King, would uphold it. Considering

Virginia had rejected the Commonwealth with forceful resistance and the summoning of troops

641 Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 92-93 & 118. 642 Letter to the Commonwealth of England, April 5th 1652, Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, MD, MS 2018, pp. 1 r. 250 rather than mere words, as had Maryland, the Marylanders would have potentially had the upper hand in arguing for their claim at this juncture.643 The document suggests Marylanders’ use of political symbolism as means to support their goals for America transcended their interactions with the Crown and could be applied to other components of the English state. Their extensive experience negotiating with the state and defending their claim to Kent Island against Virginia’s claims facilitated this resolution and trained the planters to think about their relationship with the

English state as a reasonable partner able to assist them. Their relationship with the monarchy would also resume where it left off after the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660.

Throughout this dissertation, we have seen that English Atlantic subjects saw themselves no differently than any other subject when it came to their rights and relationship to the Crown and used a plethora of traditional methods used to tackle problems in a newly trans-Atlantic

English world. Individuals, groups of individuals, and corporations all had a developed understanding of themselves and their relationship with the state, growing from existing English social structures and political culture. When they traveled to America, traded with America, or discussed America, their understanding of this relationship shaped their thoughts and actions.

They were aware that the royal prerogative, based in civil law, transcended the different jurisdictions of the empire, and provided an important means to address Atlantic social conflicts.

They also had awareness of traditional English custom, their property rights under common law, and a sense of justice that gave structure to their interactions with England. Their choice to actively seek the intervention of the King or his Council and the discrete actions the state might take indicates that ordinary subjects played a critical role in the development of the Atlantic world they inhabited. While the Crown had its own goals and implemented policies to achieve

643 Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 116-118. 251 those goals, it also effectively played its role as a body which gave the people what they desired.

English subjects had little interest in separating from London, and actively sought its help in protecting their interests and investments.

An examination of different sources from the pre-Commonwealth period shows that

English people were adept at using different strategies, some legal and some non-legal, some formal and some informal, to accomplish their goals and shape the Atlantic Empire. The prerogative court system offered multiple options to pursue legal recourse. These courts operated on a principled equitable justice, but one not bound by precedents and open to empathic arguments. When evidence was scant or traditional common law jurisdiction did not apply, the courts could provide help. They allowed planters, merchants, tobacco purchasers, widows, and fisherman alike to express grievances and convince the state to use its authority to help them in tense confrontations or from gave misfortunes. Early modern England was already a highly litigious society, and the expansion of that litigiousness to the Atlantic naturally flowed from

English behavior patterns. Outside the courts, petitions provided a means for people and corporate bodies to address problems and seek opportunities. The petition allowed people to ask for charity, monopolies, privileges, and aid pertaining to their American ventures, and was widely used to develop the commercial productivity of the empire. Further, books, pamphlets, letters, reports, and dispatches also allowed individuals and companies to participate in the shaping of America. These individuals controlled some of the information available to the government, which in turn could define America in the English consciousness and thus how

England conceived its purpose in America, and the potential of building plantations there.

Subjects in Southern colonies and Newfoundland used these methods more than New England planters due to specific religious, political, and legal ideas held by the Puritan planters there, but 252 all understood the role of the Crown in America and how it might potentially help or hinder their activities.

Close reading of surviving sources shows individuals approached their efforts as a negotiation between themselves and the state, rather than as an absolute request or as a demand for justice. The parties who brought suits, petitioned, or wrote to the Crown or Parliament about

American events knew that to successfully get the state to intervene, they had to show that all

English society would benefit. In most cases, subjects had to show three parties- the individuals or corporations making a request, the commonweal, and the state- had to benefit. Because they knew this, they shaped their communications appropriately, emphasizing not only individual or local economic benefits, but trans-Atlantic and imperial ones, indicating how government intervention would create order and harmony which benefited the cause of peace, right religion, or stability in the Stuart domains. Subjects found creative ways to show this common good, and those who could master this give-and-take could not only profit socially and commercially themselves, but also shape the larger course of Atlantic life and England’s approach to administering this region. Even in cases where their requests were more like charity than a business proposal, subjects still made overtures to helping the common good. While sources are scarce during the 1640s, remaining documents show that this negotiation with the state continued even after the King had left London and Crown and Parliament were engaged in Civil War.

Thus, the institutional mechanisms by which these conversations took place proved strong enough to trace even individual parties within the wider makeup of the English state.

Lastly, this dissertation has shown that there was a significant American dimension to the public sphere of early seventeenth century England, and that American subjects of the Crown participated in these conversations actively and purposefully. During this period, English 253 subjects took a great deal of interest in affairs of politics and power and used not only local conversations and manuscripts but widely circulated letters, print, and petitions to participate in the marketplace of ideas and argue for or against certain state policies. All the Stuart Kingdoms, including England, Scotland, and Ireland, became tied together by a common public sphere.

American plantations proved no different. Planters there and proponents of colonization in

Europe used the same methods of public engagement to participate in conversations about the role of the state and how it should interact with their day to day lives and execute its powers.

Their writings and public comments in courts of law showed conscious reflection on their relationship with the Crown as well as a broader system, not yet defined as a “British” empire but coming into its own as a network of ports, financers, and state actors.644 The public sphere provided a major link between American planters and those who remained in Europe and was one way planters self-consciously remained attached to their homeland. Their voluntary participation in networks of political communication permitted them a chance to advise their

King and his council on a better course in America, or ask for favors, monopolies, or state action against their opponents.

Taking these conclusions together, this project has shed new light on the processes that people who created the English Atlantic world used to tie themselves to the center before 1650, and how important the initiative of the people was to the actions of the state. There was a twofold benefit for people who wished to involve the state in their affairs. During the 1650s, when a series of non-monarchical governments began to implement more serious structural controls over the plantations, the English Atlantic was already closely connected through mutual

644 See Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire, for the development of a “British Empire” as a concept in public discourse, which primarily occurred in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and not the period covered in this dissertation. 254 give and take between the central government and the people. While the Crown itself no longer existed, the concepts of justice, law, order, and mutual aid among individuals, the commonweal, and state allowed the new government to justify its actions readily, despite some resistance, and portray itself as upholding traditional values and supports within English society.645

The layers of authority and trans-oceanic communication augment and further open analysis of the seventeenth century British world as a society with layered jurisdictional spheres, locally and nationally, tethered together by the Crown and the central government in London

(excepting the interregnum, which replaced the Crown with alternative structures in the English state.) Like the hamlets of England, the villages of Scotland, and the imposed English plantations and towns of Ireland, the English plantations in America ran on a mixture of very specific local offices and customs, regional governments and courts, colony-or-country wide institutions, and pan-British governmental structures such the prerogative courts. English planters’ duplication and re-creation of existing traditions shows how attractive and normal this system seemed to

English people during the seventeenth century. The many overlapping layers of legal and political authority that linked the Stuart realms was normal, and the people assumed this model was built-in to the character of the people. Attempts to undo these norms provoked resistance in any part of the Kingdom. Like in the British Isles, subjects found the Crown and problem- solving methods attached to it useful for themselves and the communities they lived in. This contributed to the disturbances of the Civil War era and why the American colonies, still sparsely

645 As Carla Gardina Pestana argues in The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, loyalty to the monarchy and resistance to the Parliamentarian and later Commonwealth government caused those government to use force and coerce obedience in a way the Crown had never done. This led to significant state-building, at the expense of making the negotiation between planters and the state more one-sided. 255 populated and economically fragile, were so disturbed by the shock to the system caused by infighting within the English government.

This research also has additional implications for understanding the development of the

English empire after the Civil Wars of the 1640s and ’50s and into the late seventeenth century.

After the Restoration, management of the American plantations became increasingly bureaucratic and regulated. The Lords of Trade, organized by the Crown 1675 to provide advice on colonies, regulated the English colonies and handled the business from them with a much greater emphasis on procedure and letter-of-the-law administration than prerogative, extending and codifying the work done by the Committee for Plantations in the 1630s.646 The Navigation

Acts of 1651 forbade the colonies to trade with other empires directly, making them route their economy through London. This greatly benefited the merchant-enterprise of powerful people with commercial houses and monopolies in England but caused significant resentment in the

Plantations.647 There is also the question of increasing attempts after 1670 to turn proprietary colonies into royal colonies, and install governors over the various parts of empire as a way for the state to control the economy and make it service London.648 Looking at these new policies in relation to existing conversations between the planters and the state in the first forty years of colonization, the controversies around these actions can be re-framed in terms of continued

646 For the basic history of the Lords of Trade in the seventeenth century, see Winfred T. Root, “The Lords of Trade and Plantations, 1675-1696.” American Historical Review 23:1 (January 1917), 20-41. More recent studies have tended to examine the role the Lords of Trade played in specific markets, like the slave trade or the trade to the East Indies, but a systematic book-length assessment of the Lords of Trade before the American Revolution has not yet been undertaken. 647 There is considerable scholarship on the Navigation Acts and the effect they had on harmonious relations within the English Empire. The acts were once seen as an unambiguous attack on free enterprise born of inefficient mercantilist policy, and therefore one of the earliest incidents on the path to the American Revolution. This view has been significantly nuanced and the acts are now considered a more typical expression of central government power to regulate the economy and benefit the commonweal. See Gary M. Walton, “The New Economic History and the Burdens of the Navigation Acts,” The Economic History Review 24:4 (November 1971), 533-544; Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 157-182. 648 Johnson, Adjustment to Empire, 3-9. 256 dialogue between the goals of the state, London Merchants and proprietors, and the planters themselves (who, of course, were not a unified body and could want different things depending on which region they lived in, their profession, etc.) Resistance to the imposition of more regulation appears not as reaction to innovation, but as a violation of trust. Planters understood their right to interact with the state and negotiate for help in return for their service growing the empire and its economic might. The Crown’s increasing bureaucratization and a reduction in the

“personal” feeling associated with equity flowing from the King may have contributed to English planters’ increasing feeling of alienation in the late seventeenth century into the eighteenth century.

In their own time, however, the planters, merchants, and corporations which established an English presence in America did so with England on their minds. They actively desired to work with the Crown in the process of building the empire, for the benefit of not only themselves but also the glory of England, the power of the commonwealth, the benefit of the Crown, and the pursuit of their version of right religion. The political society they fashioned did not stress individualism or creating a society separate from the past, but a continuation of the customs of life that English people were used to and believed went back to time immemorial. The English in

America and Britain shared together in their political world, centered in London, manifested in local communities.

257

Appendix A- Atlantic Cases in the Court of Requests (REQ 2 486- 566) Table 1- Court of Requests Cases and Responses

REQ Doc Date Case Title Cause of Suit Record of 2 # Defendant's Response? 1 486a 11 1636 Corke v. Slade Tobacco- Damaged Yes Product 2 486b 99 1639 Howard v. Trigge Tobacco- Substandard Yes and Hadley Product 3 488 80 1638 Warner v. Clark Bonds No and Trigge 4 491 9 1637 Parr v. Goody Estate in Virginia No 5 492 15 1638 Rolland v. Corke Unpaid Wages Yes 6 492 81 1636 Crispe et al v. Damages to Ship in Yes Ruburn et al Maryland 7 497 2 1632 Saten v. Hull Tobacco- Disputed No Ownership 8 499 134 1632 Scott v. Style & Sugar- Ownership of Yes Gore Refinery 9 499 220 1632 Day v. Stovie Unpaid Loan Yes 10 500 140 1625 Ball vs. Unifect et Tobacco- Ownership & Yes al Inheritance 11 503 5 1636 Brown v. Greenwell Bonds No 12 503 132 1630 Mason v. Symons Tobacco- General Trade No 13 508 29 1636 Lloyd v. Corke Tobacco- General Trade Yes 14 511 9 1636 Bugge v. Geffrey Fish Yes 15 515 37 1637 Lowe v. Seafield Tobacco- General Trade No 16 516 141 1633 Deane v. Bell & Tobacco- Substandard Yes Fynch Product 17 518 38 1626 Willis v. Skulk Bonds Yes 18 519 24 1631 Maye v. Barnes Tobacco- Ownership & No Inheritance 19 521 80 1640 Scott v. Lindsey Bonds Yes 20 521 140 1638 Driller v. Lavender Tobacco- Damaged Yes et al Product 21 523 95 1638 Reddington v. Hunt Tobacco- General Trade No 22 524 249 Undated Julian et al v. Tobacco- General Trade No Lovell 23 525 20 Undated Hullware v. Seward Tobacco- Smuggling No 24 526 114 1634 Hayes v. Fisher Tobacco- General Trade No 25 527 52 1635 Boden v. Phillips Sugar No 258

26 527 13 Undated Cobyns v. Roberts Tobacco- Damaged No and Street Product 27 528 11 1634 Hayes v. Gallant Tobacco- General Trade No 28 534 20 1633 Stafford v. Wragge Tobacco- General Trade Yes 29 534 119 1634 Bishop v. Hartwell Newfoundland Fishing Yes Venture 30 538 29 1636 Wise v. White Tobacco- Ownership & No Inheritance 31 539 4 1637 Harrison v. Tobacco- Ownership & No Lewgate Inheritance 32 541 19 1636 Marmaduke v. Tobacco- General Trade No Harrelly 33 542 1 Undated Clark v. Upham Tobacco- General Trade No 34 542 70 1630 Rooks v. Day Shipping & Provisioning No Virginia 35 545 39 Undated Buyres v. Carter Tobacco- Smuggling No 36 547 214 1637 Salthead v. Tobacco- General Trade Yes Lavender 37 548 64 1640 Ferde v. Matthew et Newfoundland Fishing Yes al Venture 38 549 104 1627 Chester v. Booth Service and Labor on St. Yes Kitts 39 549 8 1629 Seibar v. Corke Shipping & Provisioning No Virginia 40 550 307 1628 Edwards & Keyes Tobacco- General Trade Yes v. King 41 551 171 1640 Cooper v. Temple Tobacco-Customs and Yes Licensing 42 553 205 1632 Kaman v. Headly Shipping & Provisioning Yes Virginia 43 553 27 1631 Harrington et al v. Shipping & Provisioning No Berkeley et al Virginia 44 556 93 1633 Greenwood v. Estate in Virginia Yes Greenwood 45 556 120 1632 Houghton et al v. Shipping & Provisioning Yes Buggs St. Kitts 46 560 28 Undated Thompson v. Unpaid Wages Yes Hardcastle 47 560 4 Undated Cooper v. Street Tobacco- General Trade Yes

259

Appendix B- Atlantic Cases in the Court of Chancery

Table 2- Chancery Cases

Record Number Date Case Title Cause of Suit Record of Defendant's Response? 1 C2/ChasI/N13/49 1641 Nevett v. Hayes Tobacco- General Yes Trade 2 C2/JasI/C25/64 1607 Chancellor v. Tobacco- Yes Richant Substandard Product 3 C2/ChasI/G22/20 1643 Greenstreet v. Shipping & Yes Roberts Provisioning America 4 C2/ChasI/N14/17 1630 North v. Tobacco- Patents No Wedley 5 C2/ChasI/B50/30 1647 Bakely v. Shipping & Yes Roberts & Provisioning Dennis Virginia 6 C2/JasI/W6/68 1630 Waters v. Unpaid Debts- No Darling Virginia Company 7 C2/JasI/B10/64 1612 Armour v. Unpaid Wages No Major 8 C2/ChasI/ B123/54 1649 Bakely v. Continuation of Yes Roberts & Case #5 Dennis 9 C2/ChasI/A32/3 1635 Abraham v. Newfoundland Yes Humbley Fishing Voyage 10 C2/ChasI/C110/43 1630 Capps v. Tucker Sassafras Yes 11 C2/ChasI/R50/28 1626 Roe and Smith Tobacco- Patents Yes v. Opwick 12 C2/ChasI/F3/44 1634 Farley v. Van Property in St. Kitts Yes Stienkist 13 C2/ChasI/G27/42 1635 Goodwin v. Tobacco- Bonds No Marsh and Sherwood 14 C2/ChasI/P7/5 1639 Pasley v. Tobacco- General Yes Coatbury Trade 15 C2/JasI/B19/47 1615 Bacon v. Wade Tobacco- Patents No & Wright 16 C2/JasI/C22/80 1624 Cropley & Tobacco- Yes Clark v. Howe Substandard Product & Howell 260

17 C2/ChasI/L48/48 1648 Leare v. Newfoundland Yes Kellond Fishing Voyage 18 C2/ChasI/L63/49 1645 Lathbury v. Shipping & Yes Wilding et al Provisioning Virginia 19 C2/ChasI/B67/33 1643 Hartwell v. Unpaid Profits from No Berkeley Virginia Shipping 20 C2/ChasI/P31/51 1632 Pershall v. Mills Shipping & Yes Provisioning Virginia 21 C2/ChasI/T10/50 1642 Townshead v. Inheritance of estate Yes Pynder & in England Harvey 22 C2/ChasI/N3/37 1645 Neal v. Grahm Shipping Debts Yes et al. 23 C2/ChasI/R20/22 1629 Rossingham v. Unpaid Wages to Yes Yardley Virginia Planter 24 C2/ChasI/R46/11 1649 Kneylles v. Tobacco- Debts Yes Manning 25 C2/ChasI/S12/9 1639 Steed v. Land- St. Kitts No Brockett 26 C2/ChasI/S8/27 1627 Smith v. City of Investment in No London Virginia Voyage 27 C2/JasI/D5/10 1621 Dishembe v. Newfoundland No Dorne Fishing Debt 28 C2/JasI/G7/52 1617 Gurney v. Newfoundland No Green Fishing Debt 29 C2/JasI/G11/56 1618 Green v. Continuation of Yes Gurney Case #29 30 C2/JasI/P44/56 1618 Partige v. Newfoundland No Martyn & Fishing Debt Grubbs 31 C2/ChasI/J11/11 1641 Jackson v. Debt related to Yes Gibbs Barbados 32 C2/ChasI/T35/25 1635 Tapson v. Tyler Sugar Yes 33 C2/JasI/P8/5 1620 Poole & Beaver Pelts Yes Holmes v. Corke 34 C2/ChasI/P21/25 1647 Percival v. Nags Estate in Virginia Yes 35 C2/ChasI/W14/56 1630 Woodlow v. Sugar Yes Sommers Island Co. 36 C2/ChasI/T19/31 1648 Thompsonv. Unpaid Wages Yes Alsop & Marlow 261

37 C2/ChasI/S85/52 1627 Staples v. Newfoundland Yes Tooker Fishing Voyage 38 C2/ChasI/W48/20 1631 Woodall v. Disputed Inheritance Yes Percival in Virginia 39 C2/ChasI/W126/146 1628 Wright v. Speak Unpaid Wages No & Gobert 40 C2/ChasI/H11/19 1638 Harley v. Inheritance of estate Yes Cornwallis in Maryland 41 C2/ChasI/C15/23 1645 Cornwallis v. Property Destruction Yes Ingle in Maryland 42 C2/ChasI/B54/26 1646 Bland v. Jewett Tobacco- General Yes Trade 43 C2/ChasI/Y7/34 1639 Werth v. Tobacco- General No Yardley Trade 44 C2/JasI/U2/55 1613 Virginia Co. vs. Virginia Company Yes Lewison 45 C2/ChasI/H21/54 1642 Folne v. Inheritance of estate Yes Cornwallis in Maryland 46 C2/ChasI/B117/23 1638 Woodall et al v. Tobacco Theft in No Harris and Bermuda Gooding 47 C2/ChasI/A4/12 1641 Alwycke v. Tobacco- Yes Ingle Destruction of Product 48 C2/ChasI/D23/70 1626 Delbridge v. Shipping & Yes Barber Provisioning Virginia 49 C2/ChasI/M40/64 1623 Mortlake v. Inheritance in Yes Robinson Virginia 50 C2/ChasI/D38/56 1638 Dauber v. Inheritance in Yes Claiborne Virginia 51 C2/JasI/S3/48 1621 Shakell v. Brett Tobacco- General No Trade 52 C2/ChasI/H56/35 1637 Haws v. Miller Shipping & Yes Provisioning Virginia 53 C2/ChasI/B110/47 1625 Bayham v. Return of Inherited Yes Smith Property from America 54 C2/JasI/B4/35 1621 Bargrave v. Tobacco- General No Martyn Trade

262

Bibliography Archival Sources Bodleian Library, Oxford, United Kingdom Malone Collection: MS 2 Papers of Sir John Bankes: MS 8, 17, 43, 54 British Library, London, United Kingdom Add MSS 12496, Collections Made for Sir Julius Caesar Eggerton Manuscripts: 2359 Huntington Library, San Marino, California BR: Brock Collection 584 EL: Eggerton Family Papers 1683, 7007, 7015, 7019, 7024, 7025, 7029, 7034, 7036 HA: Hastings Collections: 501, 9169, 9170 HM: Howell Family Papers: 17 Kent Historical Society, Maidstone, Kent Cranfield Papers: Ov 20-1, 20-2, 23, 32, 33, 34, 43 Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore, Maryland Manuscript Collections: MS 2018: Letter to the Commonwealth of England, April 5th 1652 Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts William Pynchon Papers: MS N-670 The National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, London, United Kingdom C 2: Chancery Bills and Answers C 8: Chancery Bills and Answers CO 1/6-12: Colonial Office, America and West Indies, 1574-1660 REQ 2/486, 488, 492, 500, 508, 511, 516, 518, 521, 526, 542, 548, 549, 551, 553, 556, 560: Requests Bills and Answers

263

Published Primary Sources A Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affares of Virginia, with the Names of the Adventurers, and surnames of those adventured in that action. London: His Majesties’ Council for Virginia, 1620. A relation of Maryland together, vvith a map of the countrey, the conditions of plantation. London: 1635. Alexander, William. An Encouragement to Colonies. London:1624. Bemis, Samuel, editor. The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1940 Bradford, William. Of Plymouth Plantation. Edited Samuel Eliot Morison. New York: Alfred K. Knopp, 1952. Burton, Henry. A Vindication of Churches, Commonly Called Independent. London:1644. Caesar, Sir Julius. The Ancient State, Authority, and Proceedings of the Court of Requests. London, 1596. Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, vol. 1, 1574-1660. Edited. W. Noel Sainsbury. London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1860. Childe, Major John. New-Englands Jonas Cast Up at London: or, A Relation of the Proceedings of the Court at Boston in New-England against Divers Honest and Godly Persons. London: 1647. Coke, Sir Edward. The Fourth Part of the Institutes of the Laws of England. London: Edward Clark and Sons, 1817. Originally Published London: 1644. ______. Selected Writings of Sir Edward Coke, vol. I. Edited Steve Shepard. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003. Cotton, John. An Abstract, or the Lawes of New England as they are now established. London, 1641. ______. An Exposition upon the Thirteenth Chapter of the Revelation.London, 1655. Eburne, Richard. A Plaine Path-way to Plantations. London, 1624. Forbes, Alexander. An Anatomy of Independency, or, A breife commentary and moderate discourse upon the apologetically narration of Mr. Thomas Goodwin and Mr. Philip Nye. London, 1643. The Federal and State Constitutions Colonial Charters. Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1909. Hooke, William. New Englands teares, for old Englands feares. London: 1640. 264

Hooker, Thomas. A Survey of the Summe of Church Discipline. London, 1648. James VI and I. Basilikon Doron. Edited J. P. Sommerville. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Originally Published Edinburgh, 1599. ______. A counter-blaste to Tobacco. London: 1604. ______. The True Law of Free Monarchies. Edited J. P. Sommerville. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. Originally Published Edinburgh, 1599. Leadam, I.S.. editor. Select Cases of the Court of Requests. London: B. Quadrich, 1898. Letchford, Thomas. Plain Dealing: Or, News from New England. London, 1645. Mather, Richard. Church-government and Church-covenant Discussed. London: 1645. Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan New Canaan Containing an abstract of New England. London: 1637. Records of the Colony and Plantation of New Haven from 1638 to 1649. Edited Charles J. Hoadly. Hartford: Case and Tiffany, 1857. Shepard, Thomas. New Englands lamentation for old Englands present errours, and divisions, and their feared future desolations if not timely prevented. London: Printed by George Miller, 1644. Smith, John. The generall historie of Virginia, New-England, and the Summer Isles: with the names of the adventurers, planters, and governours from their first beginning, ano: 1584 to this present 1624. London, 1624. ______. A true relation of such occurrences and accidents of noate as hath happened in Virginia. London: 1608. A true and sincere declaration of the purpose and ends of the plantation begun in Virginia by the Virginia Company of London. London:1610. Wheelwright, John. A Brief and Plain Apology. London, 1657. White, John. The Planter’s Plea, or The Grounds of Plantations Examined. London: 1623. Winthrop, John. “A History of New England 1630-1649,” vols. 1-3. Edited. James Kendall Hosmer New York: Barnes and Noble, 1908. Secondary sources Abbott, John C. A History of Maine. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1892. Andrews, Kenneth R. Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1984. Armitage, David. The Ideological Origins of the British Empire. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 265

Armstrong, Catherine. Writing North America in the Seventeenth Century: English Representations in Print and Manuscript. New York: Routledge, 2007. Atkins, Jonathan M. “Calvinist Bishops, Church Unity, and the Rise of Arminianism.” Albion 18:3 (Autumn 1986), 401-427. Baker, John. History of the Laws of England. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2003. ______. An Introduction to English Legal History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Bangs, Jeremy. Strangers and Pilgrims, Travellers and Sojourners: Leiden and the Foundations of Plymouth Plantation. Plymouth, MA: General Society of Mayflower Descendants, 2009. Baker, John. Introduction to English Legal History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019. Barrea-Orsorio, Antonio. Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire and the Early Scientific Revolution. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006. Beaver, Daniel C. “Fruits of Unrulie Multitudes: Liberty, Popularity, and Meanings of Violence in the English Atlantic, 1623-1625.” Journal of British Studies 59:2 (April 2020), 372- 395. ______. Hunting and the Politics of Violence before the English Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ______. Parish Communities and Religious Conflict in the Vale of Gloucester, 1590-1690. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1998. Beier, A.L. Masterless Men: The Vagrancy Problem in England 1560-1640. New York: Methuen, 1985. Bellany, Alistair. The Politics of Court Scandal in Early Modern England: News Culture and the Overbury Affair, 1603-1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Benton, Lauren. A Search for Sovereignty: Law and Geography in European Empires, 1400- 1900. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Beresford, M. W. “The Beginning of Retail Tobacco Licenses, 1632–41,” Bulletin of Economic Research 7:2 (1955), 128-143. Bilder, Mary Sarah. “English Settlement and Local Governance.” In The Cambridge History of Law in America: Volume 1. Early America, 1580–1815, edited Michael Grossberg and Christopher Tomlins. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 63-103. ______. The Transatlantic Constitution: Colonial Legal Culture and the Empire. Cambridge MA: Harvard, Harvard University Press, 2004. 266

Blackmore, Richard J. “Pieces of Eight, Pieces of Eight: Seaman’s Earnings and the Venture Economy of Early Modern Seafaring.” The Economic History Review 70:4 (February 2017), 1153-1184 ______. “The Legal World of English Sailors, c. 1575–1729.” In Law, Labor, and Empire: Comparative Perspectives on Seafarers, 1500-1800. Edited Maria Fusorio et al. New York: Springer, 2015. 100-120. Blanchard, Ian. “Population Change, Enclosure, and the Early Tudor Economy.” The Economic History Review 23:3 (Dec. 1970), 427-445. Blomley, Nicholas. “The Territorialization of Property in Land: Space, Power and Practice.” Territory, Politics, and Governance 7:2 (2017), 233-249. Blue, Jon C. The Case of the Piglet’s Paternity: Trials from the New Haven Colony, 1639– 1663. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2015. Bowie, Karin and Raffe, Alasdair. “Politics, the People, and Extra-Institutional Participation in Scotland, c. 1603–1712,” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 797-815. Bowen, Lloyd. “Structuring Particularist Publics: Logistics, Language, and Early Modern Wales.” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 754-772. Breen, Timothy H., and Foster, Stephen. “The Puritans' Greatest Achievement: A Study of Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts.” Journal of American History 60:1 (June 1973), 5-22. Braddick, Michael. God's Fury, England's Fire: A New History of the English Civil Wars. London: Penguin, 2008. ______. State Formation in Early Modern England, c. 1550– 1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ______. “Cranfield, Lionel, First Earl of Middlesex,” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/6609. Bremmer, Francis J. John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003. ______. Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism. New York: Springer, 2016. ______. “The New England Way Reconsidered: An Exploration of Church Polity and the Governance of the Region’s Churches.” In Church Polity and Politics in the British Atlantic World, edited Eliot Vernon and Hunter Powell. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020, 155-173. ______. The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1976. 267

Brenner, Robert. Merchants and Revolution: Commercial Change, Political Conflict, and London's Overseas Traders, 1550-1653. New York: Verso, 1993. Brooks, Christopher. Law Politics, and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ______. “Bankes, Sir John,” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/1288. Burgess, Glenn. Absolute Monarchy and the Stuart Constitution. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996. ______. The Politics of the Ancient Constitution: An Introduction to English Political Thought, 1603-1642. State College: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Canny, Nicholas P. “English Migration into and across the Atlantic during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” In Europeans on the Move: Studies on European Migration 1500– 1800, edited Nicholas Canny. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. 37-74. ______. ‘The Ideology of English Colonization from Ireland to America’, William and Mary Quarterly 30:4 (1973), 573–98. Canty-Letsome, Rozella. “John Winthrop’s Concept of Law in Puritan New England,” Duquesne Law Review 16 (1977-78), 331-358. Capp, Bernard. “The Religious Marketplace: Public Disputations in Civil War and Interregnum England.” English Historical Review 129:536 (February 2014), 47-78. Capern, Amanda L. “Maternity and Justice in the Early Modern English Court of Chancery.” Journal of British Studies 58:4 (October 2019), 701-716. Carey, Daniel, and Jowitt, Claire, editors. Richard Hakluyt and Travel Writing in Early Modern Europe. London: Ashgate, 2016. Cathcart, Alison. “The Maritime Dimension to Plantation in Ulster, c.1550-1600.” Journal of the North Atlantic 12:1 (Spring 2019), 95-111. Cave, Alfred A. The Pequot War. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995. Cell, Gillian T. English Enterprise in Newfoundland 1577-1660. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1969. ______. “The Newfoundland Company: A Study of Subscribers to a Colonizing Venture.” William and Mary Quarterly 22:4 (October 1965). 611-625. Chambers, Andrew. Godly Reading: Print, Manuscript and Puritanism in England, 1580-1720. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Clegg, Cyndia. Press Censorship in Caroline England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. 268

Clifton, Robert. “Popular Fear of Catholics During the English Revolution.” Past and Present 52:1 (1971), 23-55. Coast, David. “Rumor and “Common Fame”: The Impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham and Public Opinion in Early Stuart England.” Journal of British Studies 55:2 (April 2016), 241-267. Codigonla, Luca. The Coldest Harbour of the Land: Simon Stock and Lord Baltimore's Colony in Newfoundland, 1621–1649. Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988. Coggswell, Tom. The Blessed Revolution: English Politics and the Coming of War, 1621-1624. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988. ______. “'In the Power of the State': Mr. Anys's Project and the Tobacco Colonies, 1626- 1628.” English Historical Review 123:500 (February 2008), 35-64. Collinson, Patrick. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement. London: Methuen, 1967. Como, David. Blown by the Spirit: Puritanism and the Emergence of an Antinomian Underground in Pre-Civil-War England. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2004. Cooper, James Fennimore. Tenacious of Their Liberties: The Congregationalists in Colonial Massachusetts. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Cramsie, John. Kingship and Crown Finance Under James VI and I, 1603-1625. Woodbridge, UK: Boydell and Brewer, 2002. Craven, W. F. The Dissolution of the Virginia Company. New York: Oxford University Press, 1932. Cressy, David. Charles I and the People of England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. ______. Coming Over: Migration and Communication Between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ______. Literacy and the Social Order: Reading and Writing in Tudor and Stuart England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Cust, Richard. Charles I: A Political Biography. New York: Pearson Longman, 2005. ______. The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626-1628. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. ______. “The ‘Public Man’ in Late Tudor and Early Stuart England.” In The Politics of the Public Sphere in Early Modern England. Edited Peter Lake and Steve Pincus. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007, 78-96. Daniels, Bruce C. New England Nation: The Country that the Puritans Built. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Darcy, Eamon. The Irish Rebellion of 1641 and the War of the Three Kingdoms. Woodbridge: Suffolk: Boydell Press, 2013. 269

______. “Political Participation in Early Stuart Ireland.” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 773-796. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Fiction in the Archives: Pardon Tales and their Tellers in Sixteenth- Century France. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1987. Daybell, James. “Gender, Politics and Archives in Early Modern England,” in Gender and Political Culture in Early Modern Europe, ed. James Daybell and Svante Northem Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 25-46. ______. The Material Letter in Early Modern England: Manuscript Letters and the Cultural Practices of Letter-Writing, 1512-1635. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2012. Del Lungo Camiciotti, Gabriella. “Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern Culture: An Introduction.” Journal of Early Modern Studies 3 (2013), 17-35. Delblanco, Andrew. “Looking Homeward, Going Home: The Lure of England for the Founders of New England.” New England Quarterly 59:3 (September 1986), 358-386. de Waele, Michel. “Honneur national et destin colonial : le sort de l'Amérique française, 1627- 1632.” Histoire, économie & société 35:4 (2016), 68-84. Dent, Chis. “Patent Policy in Early Modern England: Jobs, Trade, and Regulation.” Legal History 10:1 (2006), 71-96. Dodd, Gwilym. “Kingship, Parliament and the Court: the Emergence of ‘High Style’ in Petitions to the English Crown, c.1350–1405.” The English Historical Review 129:538 (June 2014), 515-548. Donagan, Barbara. “Atrocity, War Crime, and Treason in the English Civil War.” The American Historical Review 99:4 (Oct. 1994), 1137-1166. Donoghue, John. Fire Under the Ashes: An Atlantic History of the English Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. Eales, Jaqueline. Women in Early Modern England, 1500-1700. London: Routledge, 2005. Egerton, H.E. “The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Privy Council in Its Relations with the Colonies,” Journal of Comparative Legislation and International Law, Third Series, 7 (1925). Elliot, John H. Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006. Elton, G. R. The Tudor Constitution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1960. Emmer, Pieter, editor. European Expansion and Migration: Essays on the Intercontinental Migration from Africa, Asia, and Europe. Amsterdam: Berg, 1992. 270

Feilding, John. “Arminianism in the Localities: Peterborough Diocese, 1603–1642.” In The Early Stuart Church, edited Ken Fincham. New York: Springer, 1993, 93-113. Fischer, David Hackett. Albion’s Seed: Four English Folkways in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Fissel, Mark. The Bishops' Wars: Charles I's Campaigns Against Scotland, 1638-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Fitzmaurice, Andrew. “The Civic Solution to the Crisis of English Colonization, 1609-1625.” The Historical Journal 42:1 (March 1999), 25-51. ______. Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonization, 1500-1625. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Flannigan, Laura. “Litigants in the English ‘Court of Poor Men's Causes,’ or Court of Requests, 1515-25.” Journal of Law and History 38:2 (May 2020), 307-334. Fletcher, Anthony. The Outbreak of the English Civil War. London: Edward Arnold, 1981. ______. Reform in the Provinces: the Government of Stuart England. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986. ______and John Stevenson. “Introduction.” In Order and Disorder in Early Modern England. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987, 3-41. Forsyth, Andrew. Common Law and Natural Law in America: From Puritans to the Legal Realists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Fortier, Mark. The Culture of Equity in Early Modern England. London: Ashgate, 2005. Foster, Stephen. The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570-1700. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Fox, Adam. Oral and Literate Culture in England, 1500–1700. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. ______. "Rumor, News, and Popular Political Opinion in Early Modern England.” The Historical Journal 40:3 (Sept. 1997), 596-620. Fuller, Mary C. Voyages in Print: English Travel to America, 1576-1624. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Games, Allison. Migration and the Origins of the English Atlantic World. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1999. Gaskill, Malcolm. “Reporting Murder: Fiction in the Archives in Early Modern England.” Social History 23:1 (1998), 1-30. Gerbner, Scott D. “Law and Religion in Colonial Connecticut.” American Journal of Legal History 55:2 (June 2015), 149-193. 271

Gleech, Frederic W. Powhatan's World and Colonial Virginia: A Conflict of Cultures. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Glover, Jeffery. Paper Sovereigns: Anglo-Native Treaties and the Law of Nations, 1604-1664. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014. Goldie, Mark. “The Unacknowledged Republic: Officeholding in Early Modern England.” In The Politics of the Excluded, c.1500-1850. Edited Tim Harris. New York: Springer, 2001. Gragg, Larry. Englishmen Transplanted: The English Colonization of Barbados, 1627-1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Greene, Jack P. Peripheries and Center: Constitutional Development in the Extended Polities of the British Empire and the United States 1607-1788. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1986. ______. Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of Early Modern British Colonies and the Formation of American Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988. Habermas, Jürgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger. Cambridge: Polity, 1989. Hadfield, Andrew. Literature, Travel, and Colonial Writing in the English Renaissance, 1545- 1625. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Halliday, Paul D. Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England's Towns, 1650- 1730. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Hamilton, Marsha L. Social and Economic Networks in Early Massachusetts: Atlantic Connections. State College: Penn State University Press, 2009. Hansen, Marcus Lee. The Atlantic Migration, 1607–1860, A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1940. Harris, Tim. “Publics and Participation in the Three Kingdoms: Was There Such a Thing as ‘British Public Opinion’?” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 731–53. ______. “Revisiting the Causes of the English Civil War,” Huntington Library Quarterly 78:4 (Winter 2015), 615-635. Hart, James S. The Rule of Law: 1603-1660: Crowns, Courts and Judges. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2003. Haskell, Alexander B. For God, King, and People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2017. Hatfield, April Lee. Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in the Seventeenth Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. 272

Hemphill, C. Dallet. “Women in Court: Sex-Role Differentiation in Salem, Massachusetts, 1636 to 1683.” The William and Mary Quarterly 39:1 (Jan. 1982), 164-175. Herrup, Cynthia B. “Law and Morality in Seventeenth-Century England.” Past and Present 106 (Feb. 1985), 102-123. Hindle, Steve. The State and Social Change in Early Modern England, 1550–1640. New York: Springer, 2000. Hirst, Derek. Authority and Conflict: England, 1603-1658. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1986. ______. “Making Contact: Petitions and the English Republic,” Journal of British Studies 41:1 (January 2006), 26-27. Hoerder, Dirk. Cultures in Contact: World Migrations in the Second Millennium. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2002. Hohenburg, Paul M., and Lees, Lynn Hollen. The Making of Urban Europe 1000-1994. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994. Horn, James P. Adapting to a New World: English Society in the Seventeenth Century Chesapeake. Williamsburg: University of William & Mary Press, 1994. ______. “To Parts Beyond the Seas: Free Emigration to the Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century.” In "To Make America": European Emigration in the Early Modern Period. Edited Ida Altman and James Horn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 85-130. Horning, Stephen. British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America. Lebanon, NH: University of New England Press, 2005. Horowitz, Henry. A Guide to Chancery Equity Records and Proceedings 1600-1800. London: Public Record Office, 1995. ______and Polden, Patrick. “Continuity or Change in the Court of Chancery in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries?” Journal of British Studies 35:1 (January 1996), 24-57. Horton Jr., Charles E. “John Pott: America's First Physician-Governor and Revolutionary.” Bulletin of the New York Medical Academy, 59:7 (July 1983), 678-85. Hourning, Audrey. Ireland in the Virginian Sea: Colonialism in the British Atlantic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2013. Houston, Rab. “Custom in Context: Medieval and Early Modern Scotland and England.” Past and Present 211:1 (May 2011), 35-76. Hower, Jessica. “Under One (Inherited) Imperial Crown: The Tudor Origins of Britain and its Empire, 1603-1625,” Britain and the World 8:2 (September 2015), 160-180. 273

Hoyle, R. W. “The Masters of Requests and the Small Change of Jacobean Patronage.” The English Historical Review, 126:520 (June 2011), 544-581. ______. “Petitioning as popular politics in early sixteenth–century England.” Historical Research 75:190 (November 2002), 365-389. Hubbard, Thomas K. A History of St. Kitts: The Sweet Trade. London: Macmillan, 2002. Hughes, Ann. Gangraena and the Struggle for the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. ______. The Causes of the English Civil War. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990. Hulseboch, Daniel J. “The Ancient Constitution and the Expanding Empire: Sir Edward Coke's British Jurisprudence.” Law and History Review 21:3, (2003), 439-482. Innes, Stephen. Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England. New York: W.W. Norton, 1995. ______. Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-Century Springfield. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. Jarvis, Michael J. In the Eye of All Trade: Bermuda, Bermudians, and the Maritime Atlantic World, 1680-1783. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010. Jinkins, Michael. “Shephard, Thomas.” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi-org./25325. Johnson, Richard. Adjustment to Empire: The New England Colonies, 1675-1715. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1981. Johnson, Tom. “The Preconstruction of Witness Testimony: Law and Social Discourse in England before the Reformation.” Law and History Review 32:1 (February 2014), 127- 147. Jones, W. J. The Elizabethan Court of Chancery. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967. Judson, Margaret. The Crisis of the Constitution: An Essay in Constitutional and Political Thought in England, 1603-1645. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949. Kantorowictz, Ernst. The Kings Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957. Kerly, Duncan. An Historical Sketch of the Equitable Jurisdiction of the Court of Chancery. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1890 Kerr, Ronald Dale. “The Missing Clause: Myth and the Massachusetts Bay Charter of 1629.” William and Mary Quarterly 77:1 (March 2004), 89-107. Kishlansky, Mark. “Tyranny Denied: Charles I, Attorney General Heath, and the Five Knight’s Case.” Historical Journal 42:1 (March 1999), 53-83. 274

Klinck, Dennis R. Conscience, Equity and the Court of Chancery in Early Modern England. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2010. Konig, David. Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex County, 1629-1692. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979. Kupperman, Karen Ordahl. The Jamestown Project. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 2007. Langelüddecke, Henrick. “I finde all men & my officers all soe unwilling”: The Collection of Ship Money, 1635–1640.” Journal of British Studies 46:3 (July 2007), 509-542. ______. “Law and Order in Seventeenth-Century England: The Organization of Local Administration during the Personal Rule of Charles I.” Law and History Review 15:1 (Spring 1997), 49-76. Lake, Peter. Anglicans and Puritans? Presbyterianism and English Conformist Thought from Whitgift to Hooker. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. ______. “Anti-Popery: The Structure of Prejudice.” In Conflict in Early Stuart England: Studies in Religion and Politics, ed. Richard Cust and Anne Hughes. New York: Longman, 1989. 72-102. ______. The Collection of Ship Money In Cheshire during the Sixteen-thirties: a case study of Relations between Central and Local Government.” Northern History 17:1 (1981), 44-71. ______and Pincus, Steve. “Rethinking the Public Sphere in Early Modern England.” Journal of British Studies 45:2 (April 2006), 270-292. Land, Aubrey C. Maryland: A Colonial History. Millwood NY: KTO Press, 1981. Laurence, Anne. Women in England 1500-1760: A Social History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Levy, Bary. Town Born: The Political Economy of New England from Its Founding to the Revolution. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Levy, F.J. “How Information Spread Among the Gentry, 1550-1640.” Journal of British Studies 21:1 (Jan. 1982), 11-34. Lindley, Keith. “The impact of the 1641 rebellion upon England and Wales, 1641–5.” Irish Historical Studies 18:70 (Sept. 1972), 143-176. Lindsay, David. Mayflower Bastard: A Stranger Amongst the Pilgrims. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2002. Lockridge, Kenneth A. A New England Town: The First Hundred Years: Dedham, Massachusetts, 1636-1736. New York: Norton, 1970). Lovejoy, David S. “Plain Englishmen at Plymouth.” New England Quarterly 63:2 (June 1990), 232-248 275

Macmillan, Ken. The Atlantic Imperial Constitution: Center and Periphery in the English Atlantic World. New York: Springer, 2011. ______. “Benign and Benevolent Conquest? The Ideology of Elizabethan Atlantic Expansion Revisited.” Early American Studies 9:1 (January 2011), 21-61. ______. Sovereignty and Possession in the English New World: The Legal Foundations of Empire, 1576-1640. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Mahoney, Paul G. “Contract or Concession--An Essay on the History of Corporate Law.” Georgia Law Review 34 (1999), 873-894. Main, Jackson Turner. Society and Economy in Colonial Connecticut. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985. Maloy, J.S. “Bodin’s Puritan Readers and Radical Democracy in Early New England.” Journal of the History of Ideas 78:1 (January 2017), 1-25. Mancke, Elizabeth. “Chartered Enterprises and the Evolution of the British Atlantic World.” In The Creation of the British Atlantic World. Edited Elizabeth Mancke and Carole Shamas. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005. 237-262 ______. “Negotiating an Empire: Britain and its Overseas Peripheries, 1560-1780.” In Negotiated Empires: Centers and Peripheries in the Americas, 1500-1820. Edited Christine Daniels and Michael V. Kennedy. London: Routledge, 2002. 235-267. Mann, Bruce H. Neighbors and Strangers: Law and Community in Early Connecticut. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press 1987. Marsh, Alfred Henry. History of the Court of Chancery and of the Rise and Development of the Doctrines of Equity. London: Carswell and Co., 1890. Marsh, Christopher. Music and Society in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Martin, John Frederick. Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. McLaren, A.N. “Delineating the Elizabethan Body Politic: Knox, Aylmer and the Definition of Counsel 1558–88.” History of Political Thought (Summer 1996), 224-252. Menard, Russell M. “A Note on Chesapeake Tobacco Prices, 1618-1660.” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, 84:4 (October 1976), 401-410. Mendle, Michael. “News and the Manuscript Culture of Early Modern England.” In The Politics of Information in Early Modern Europe. Edited Sabrina Alcorn Baron and Brendan Dooley. New York: Taylor and Francis, 2001, 57-77. Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: From Colony to Province. Boston: Beacon Press, 1953. 276

Miller, Robert T. “Religious Conscience in Colonial New England.” Journal of Church and State 50:4 (Autumn 2008), 661-676. Moch, Leslie Page. Moving Europeans: Migration in Western Europe Since 1650. Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press, 1992. Mokyr, Joel. A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017. Montaño, John Patrick. The Roots of English Colonialism in Ireland. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Morgan, Edmund S. American Slavery, American Freedom. New York: W.W. Norton, 1975. Muldoon, James. “Colonial Charters: Possessory or Regulatory?” Law and History Review 36:2 (May 2018), 355-381. Muldrew, Craig. “The Culture of Reconciliation: Community and the Settlement of Economic Disputes in Early Modern England.” The Historical Review 39:4 (1996), 915-942. ______. The Economy of Obligation: The Culture of Credit and Social Relations in Early Modern England. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998. Nebeker, Eric. “The Broadside Ballad and Textual Publics.” Studies in English Literature 1500- 1900, 51:1 (Winter 2011), 1-19. Nelson, William E. The Common Law in Colonial America: The Chesapeake and New England. 1660-1750. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. ______. The Utopian Order of Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630-1686.” American Journal of Legal History 47:1 (January 2005), 183-230. Newell, John P. “Richard Newall’s voyage to Newfoundland in 1623: New insights into Sir William Alexander’s attempts to establish a Scottish colony in Nova Scotia.” The International Journal of Maritime History 28:1 (2016), 102-107. Newell, Margaret E. “Robert E. Child and the Entrepreneurial Vision: Economy and Ideology in Early New England.” The New England Quarterly 68:2 (June 1995), 223-256. Nichols, Andrew D. A Fleeting Empire: Early Stuart Britain and the Merchant Adventurers to Canada. Montreal & Kingston: Queen’s University Press, 2010. Norton, Mary Beth. “Gender and Defamation in Seventeenth-Century Maryland.” The William and Mary Quarterly 44:1 (Jan. 1987), 3-39. Nunn, Nathan, and Qian, Nancy. “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas,” Journal of Economic Perspectives, 24:2 (Spring 2010), 163–188. O’Neill, Lindsey. The Opened Letter: Networking in the Early Modern British World. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015. 277

Pagden, Anthony. Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c.1500-c. 1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Parkes, Joseph. A History of the Court of Chancery. London: Longman Rees, 1828. Patterson, Catherine F. “Conflict Resolution and Patronage in Provincial Towns, 1590–1640.” Journal of British Studies 37:1 (1998), 1-25. ______. “Quo Warranto and Borough Corporations in Early Stuart England: Royal Prerogative and Local Privileges in the Central Courts.” The English Historical Review 120:488 (Sept. 2005), 879-906. Peacy, Jason. Print and Public Politics in the English Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ______. “Print and Public Politics in Seventeenth Century England.” History Compass 5:1 (2007), 85-111. Peck, Linda Levy. Court Patronage and Corruption in Early Stuart England. London: Routledge, 1990. ______. “’ For a King not to be bountiful were a fault’: Perspectives on Court Patronage in Early Stuart England.” Journal of British Studies 25:1 (January 1986), 31-61. Pestana, Carla Gardina. The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2004. ______. The World of the Plymouth Plantation. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2020. Peterson, Mark. The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Empire, 1603-1865. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. Pollard, A.F. “The Growth of the Court of Requests.” The English Historical Review 56 (1941), 300-303. Pollock, Linda A. “Honor, Gender, and Reconciliation in Elite Culture, 1570–1700.” Journal of British Studies 46:1 (January 2007), 3-29. Potter, Stephen R. Commoners, Tribute, and Chiefs: The Development of Algonquian Culture in the Potomac Valley. Charlottesville, University of Virginia Press, 1994. Pope, Peter. Fish Into Wine: The Newfoundland Plantation in the Seventeenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. Preston, R.A. Gorges of Plymouth Fort. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1953. Prior, Charles W.A. “Religion, Political Thought and the English Civil War.” History Compass 11:1 (January 2013), 24-42. Questier, Michael. “Arminianism, Catholicism, and Puritanism in England During the 1630s.” Historical Journal 49:1 (March 2006), 53-78. 278

Raymond, Joad. The Invention of the English Newspaper. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. ______. Pamphlets and Pamphleteering in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Riordan, Timmothy B. The Plundering Time: Maryland and the English Civil War, 1645-1646 Baltimore: Maryland Historical Society, 2004. Ritter Daily, Barbara. “Lechford, Thomas.” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, https://doi-org./71097. Root, Winfred T. “The Lords of Trade and Plantations, 1675-1696.” American Historical Review 23:1 (January 1917), 20-41. Roper, L.H. Advancing Empire: English Interests and Overseas Expansion, 1613-1688. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2017. ______. The English Empire in America, 1602-1658: Beyond Jamestown. London: Routledge, 2015. Rose-Troup, Frances. The Massachusetts Bay Company and Its Predecessors. New York: Clearfield, 1930. Ross, Richard J., and Stern, Philip J. “Reconstructing Early Modern Notions of Legal Pluralism.” In Legal Pluralism and Empires, 1500-1850, edited Lauren Benton and Richard J. Ross. New York: NYU Press, 2013. Rowley, Anthony R. “How England Learned to Smoke: The Introduction, Spread, and Establishment of Tobacco Pipe Smoking in England before 1640.” PhD diss., University of York, 2003. Rudock, Alywin A. “The Trinity House at Deptford in the Sixteenth Century.” The English Historical Review 65:257 (Oct. 1950), 458-476. Russell, Conrad. The Crisis of Parliaments: English History, 1509-1660. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971. ______. The Fall of the British Monarchies, 1637-1642. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. ______. Parliaments and English Politics 1621 – 1629. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979. ______. “Parliament, Royal Supremacy, and the Church/” Parliamentary History 19:1 (March 2008), 27-37. Rutman, Bruce. A Place in Time: Middlesex County, Virginia, 1650-1750. New York: W.W. Norton, 1984. Schneider, Gary. The Culture of Epistolary: Vernacular Letters and Letter Writing in Early Modern England, 1500-1700. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 2005. 279

Scott-Warren, Jason. “Reconstructing Manuscript Networks: The Textual Transactions of Sir Jason Powle.” In Communities in Early Modern England: Networks, Place, Rhetoric. Edited Alexandra Shepard and Phil Withington (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). 18-36. Seed, Patricia. “Taking Possession and Reading Texts: Establishing the Authority of Overseas Empires.” The William and Mary Quarterly 49:2 (Summer 1992), 183-209. Sensbach, Jon F. Rebecca's Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Shagan, Ethan H. “Constructing Discord: Ideology, Propaganda, and English Responses to the Irish Rebellion of 1641.” Journal of British Studies, 39 (1997). ______. The Rule of Moderation: Violence, Religion and the Politics of Restraint in Early Modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011. Shammas, Carole. “The ‘Invisible Merchant’ and Property Rights: The Misadventures of an Elizabethan Joint Stock Company.” Business History, 17:2 (July 1975), 95-108. Shapiro, Barbara. Political Communication and Political Culture in England, 1558-1688. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2012. Sharpe, Kevin. The Personal Rule of Charles I. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992. Shepard, Alexandra. Worthless Witnesses? Marginal Voices and Women’s Legal Agency in Early Modern England.” Journal of British Studies 58:2 (October 2019), 717-734. Skinner, Quentin. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Slack, Paul. The Invention of Improvement: Information and Material Progress in Seventeenth- century England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Somerville, C.J. The News Revolution in England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Sommerville, J.P. Royalists and Patriots: Politics and Ideology in England, 1603-1640. London: Routledge, 2014. Sosin, Jack. English America and the Restoration Monarchy of Charles II: Trans-Atlantic Politics, Commerce, and Kinship. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980. Spurr, John. English Puritanism 1603-1689. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998. Steckley, George F. “Litigious Mariners: Wage Cases in the Seventeenth-Century Admiralty Court.” The Historical Journal, 42:2 (June 1999), 315-345. Steele, Ian K. The English Atlantic, 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. 280

Stern, Philip. The Company-State: Corporate Sovereignty and the Early Modern Foundations of the British Empire in India. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Stoyle, Mark. Soldiers and Strangers: An Ethnic History of the English Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005. Stretton, Tim. Marital Litigation in the Court of Requests. Camden Fifth Series, vol. 32 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. ______. Women Waging Law in Elizabethan England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. ______. “Written Obligations, Litigation, and Neighbourliness, 1580-1680.” In Remaking English Society: Social Relations and Social Change in Early Modern England. Edited Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard, and John Walter. London: Woodbridge 2013. 189- 210 Stewart, Laura. “Introduction: Publics and Participation in Early Modern Britain.” Journal of British Studies 56:4 (October 2017), 709-730. Stone, Lawrence. The Causes of the English Revolution, 1529-1642. London: Routledge, 1972. Sutto, Antoinette. Loyal Protestants and Dangerous Papists: Maryland and the Politics of Religion in the English Atlantic, 1630-1690. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015. Sweet, James. Domingos Álvares, African Healing, and the Intellectual History of the Atlantic World. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011. Sweet, John Wood. “Introduction: Sea Changes,” in Envisioning an English Empire: Jamestown and the Making of the North Atlantic World. Edited Robert Applebaum and John Wood Sweet. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005. Temin, Peter. Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. Tipton, Baird. Hartford Puritanism: Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, and Their Terrifying God. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. Tittler, Robert. The Reformation and the Towns in England: Politics and Political Culture, c. 1540-1640. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Todd, Margo. Christian Humanism and the Puritan Social Order. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ______. “For Eschewing of Trouble and Exorbitant Expense: Arbitration in the Early Modern British Isles.” Journal of Dispute Resolution 1 (2016), 7-18. 281

Tomlins, Christopher. “Chartering English Colonies on the American Mainland in the Seventeenth Century.” In Law, History, Colonialism: The Reach of Empire (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 26-45. ______. Freedom Bound: Law, Labor, and Civic Identity in Colonizing English America, 1580-1865. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. ______. “The Legal Cartography of Colonization, the Legal Polyphony of Settlement: English Intrusions on the American Mainland in the Seventeenth Century.” Law and Social Inquiry 26:2 (April 2001), 315-373. Travers, Len. “Winslow, Edward, Colonial Governor.” Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29751. Tyacke, Nicholas. Anti-Calvinists: The Rise of English Arminianism, C. 1590-1640. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987. Underdown, David. Fire from Heaven: Life in an English Town in the Seventeenth Century. New York: Harper Collins, 1992. Walter, John. “Confessional Politics in Pre-Civil War Essex: Prayer Books, Profanations, and Petitions.” Historical Journal 44:3 (September 2001), 677-701. ______. Crowds and Popular Politics in Early Modern England. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006. Walton, Gary M. “The New Economic History and the Burdens of the Navigation Acts.” The Economic History Review 24:4 (November 1971), 533-544. Warechen, Sarah. “Covenanter Propaganda and Conceptualizations of the Public During the Bishop's Wars, 1638-1640.” The Historical Journal 52:1 (March 2009). Way, Peter. “Militarizing the Atlantic World: Army Discipline, Coerced Labor, and Britain’s Commercial Empire.” Global Currents 13:3 (Summer 2013), 345-369. Webster, Tom. “Early Stuart Puritanism.” In The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism, edited John Coffey and Paul C.H. Lim. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 48-66. Weimer, Adrian. Martyrs' Mirror: Persecution and Holiness in Early New England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Wells, Jennifer. “English Law, Irish Trials and Cromwellian State Building in the 1650s.” Past and Present 277:1 (May 2015), 77-119. Whisker, Richard. “Barrett, Edward, Lord Barrett of Newburgh.” Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Wiedner, W.H.D. “Precedent in Equity.” Law Quarterly Review 57 (1941), 245-279. 282

Williamson, Margaret Holmes. Powhatan Lords of Life and Death: Command and Consent in Seventeenth-century Virginia. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003. Willms, Sarah. "The Five Knights' Case and Debates in the Parliament of 1628: Division and Suspicion Under King Charles I." Constructing the Past 7:1 (2006), 11. Winship, Michael P. “Freeborn (Puritan) Englishmen and Slavish Subjection: Popish Tyranny and Puritan Constitutionalism, c.1570–1606.” English Historical Review 126:510 (October 2009), 1050-1074. ______. Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill. Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2012. ______. Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636– 1641. Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002. ______. “The Most Glorious Church in the World”: The Unity of the Godly in Boston, Massachusetts, in the 1630s.” Journal of British Studies 39:1 (January, 2000), 71-98. Withington, Phil. “Public Discourse, Corporate Citizenship, and State Formation in Early Modern England.” The American Historical Review 112:4 (October 2007), 1016–1038. ______. Society in Early Modern England. New York: Polity Press, 2010. Wittke, Carl. We Who Built America: The Saga of the Immigrant. Cleveland: Western Reserve Press, 1939. Wood, Andy. The Memory of the People: Custom and Popular Senses of the Past in Early Modern England. Cambirdge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ______. “The Place of Custom in Plebeian Political Culture: England, 1550–1800.” Social History 22:1 (1997), 46-60. Wrightson, Keith. Earthly Necessities: Economic Lives in Early Modern Britain. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002. ______. English Society: 1580-1680. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1982. ______. “Two Concepts of Order: Justices, Constables and Jurymen in Seventeenth-century England.” In An Ungovernable People. The English and their law in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Edited J. Brewer and J. Styles (New Brunswick, 1980), 21–46. Zaller, Robert. The Discourse of Legitimacy in Early Modern England. Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2007. Zaret, David. “Petitions and the ‘Invention’ of Public Opinion in the English Revolution.” American Journal of Sociology, 101:6 (May 1996), 1497-1555. Zehediah, Nulah. The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy 1660-1700. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. 283

Zlatar, Antonina Bevan. Reformation Fictions: Polemical Protestant Dialogues in Elizabethan England. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011.

VITA

Benjamin Herman

Education

2021 PhD, History, The Pennsylvania State University Exam Fields: Early Modern Global, Modern Europe, and Transnational History

2017 M.A., History, The Pennsylvania State University

2014 B.A., History, The University of Delaware

Awards and Fellowships

External 2018 North American Conference on British Studies Pre-Dissertation Grant 2018 Pennsylvania Historic and Museum Commission Keystone Fellowship

Internal 2021 Hill Dissertation Completion Fellowship 2020 College of Liberal Arts Dissertation Support Fellowship 2019 Warren W. Hassler Graduate Fellowship 2018 Stitzer Seed Grant 2017 New Directions Pilot Fellowship 2017 Stitzer Seed Grant 2016 Stitzer Seed Grant