Legal Settlements: Jurisdiction in the English Atlantic, 1603-1643 Ryan Matthew Bibler San Jose, CA Bachelor of Arts, California State University, Sacramento, 2007 Master of Arts, University of Virginia, 2009 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Virginia May, 2015 ii Abstract This dissertation examines the proliferation of English jurisdictions that accompanied and in many ways drove early seventeenth century English Atlantic settlement. It presents a process of jurisdictional definition, refinement, and performance by which the king, his council, and all the proprietors, governors, and planters engaged in Atlantic enterprise established frameworks for government in the king’s Atlantic dominions. In establishing English jurisdictions in Atlantic places, these actors both extended England’s legal regime to new shores and also integrated places like Barbados and Virginia into the king’s composite monarchy. The dissertation seeks to integrate two historiographies that are often held distinct: the story of domestic English legal development and the story of “imperial” legal development. By viewing legal development and English Atlantic settlement through the lens of jurisdiction this study shows that the domestic and the imperial were inextricably intertwined. Yet the novel circumstances of Atlantic settlement prompted significant legal innovation, particularly as the prominent model of colonial government shifted from corporate authority to proprietorial authority. As jurisdiction became commoditized with the introduction of proprietary grants, colonial legal development began to diverge and the possibility of a distinct imperial sphere began to emerge, though it remained nebulous and ill-formed. iii To my parents, Jim and Nancy Bibler iv Table of Contents Abstract …..……………………………………………………………………………………….ii List of Abbreviations ……………………………………………………………………………...v Acknowledgements ...……….……………………………………………………………………vi Introduction ……………………………………………………………………………………….1 Chapter One: Royal Charters and the Framing of English Atlantic Jurisdiction ………………..16 Chapter Two: Quo Warranto and the Demise of Corporate Colonial Government …………….52 Chapter Three: The Proprietary Patents: Property, Power, and Privilege ……………………….84 Chapter Four: Authority in Action ……………………………………………………………..127 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………………...164 Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………………………169 v Abbreviations APC W.L. Grant and James Munro, eds, Acts of the Privy Council of England, Colonial Series, 1613-1680 (Nendeln, Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint LTD, 1966) CSPC W. Noel Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, 1574-1660 (London: Longman, Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860) CSPD Mary Anne Everett Greene, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I. 1623-1625 (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, & Roberts, 1859) NRS National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh TNA The National Archives, London vi Acknowledgements In the last eight years I have received support and encouragement from a number of individuals and organizations, without which I would not have completed this project. At the University of Virginia, I must thank Max Edelson, Brian Owensby, and Risa Goluboff for reading the manuscript and providing thoughtful comments on the dissertation. Thanks also goes to Joe Miller, who helped shape my thinking early in my graduate career. I owe my greatest thanks to my advisor Paul Halliday, whose guidance, advice, and patience never wavered throughout the years. Paul's insights pushed me out of many intellectual funks, and his encouragement helped me press on with the project when I wasn't sure I'd finish. In finishing this work, I received financial support from several organizations and benefited from the services of a number of archives and libraries. The North American Conference on British Studies and the Malone-Gallatin Fellowship both provided generous grants that allowed me to experience first-hand the places that lie at the core of this story. In Britain, the archivists at the National Archives in Kew proved their usual efficient and accommodating selves. And the staff at the Scottish records office in Edinburgh saved my bacon by expediting the transfer of several bundles of critical off-site documents. Across the ocean in Barbados, the friendly and helpful staff at the Barbados Museum and Historical Society helped me navigate the island's earliest records. And in the U.S., the Huntington Library in San Marino let me walk their beautiful gardens, while the Rockefeller Library in Williamsburg gave me a summer in 1775. vii Over the course of my graduate career, I had the pleasure of establishing lasting relationships with many awesome people. Thanks to my friends John Terry, Alec Hickmott, Mary Hicks, Chris Cornelius, Trevor Hiblar, Caitlin Morris, and John Collins for making their home, McElroy Villa, a glorious sanctuary for many years. Our nights arguing about baseball or drinking beers around the chiminea will stick with me forever. Those nights (and many others) would have been much less enjoyable without Tom Butcher, Evan Farr and Anne Daniels, Severin and Emily Knudsen, Evan McCormick, and Sarah and Cody Perkins. Thanks guys. As crunch time approached, Katherine Boguszewski was a steady source of support and advice, and shared all of my ups and downs with good humor. Finally, I owe my greatest thanks to my family. My brother Justin (also a PhD candidate during this period) was always ready to commiserate about the trials, and celebrate the joys, of graduate work. Our late-night conversations kept me on track and never failed to spark new thoughts and avenues of inquiry. He and my sister-in-law Andria opened their home to me for two excellent months while I researched in L.A., and provided loving support throughout. My brother Kevin and his family were always curious about my work and made Christmas vacations a happy time. And, of course, this dissertation could not have happened without my parents, Jim and Nancy. They’ve patiently shepherded me through my long and eventful education. From my community college days in Santa Barbara, where I had dreams of becoming the next titan of Silicon Valley, until my dissertation defense, they never questioned my decisions and offered nothing but love and support. The words might be mine, but in a very real way, this dissertation belongs to them. 1 Introduction This is a story about jurisdiction. It recounts the proliferation of English jurisdictions that accompanied, and in many ways enabled, English settlement in North America and the Caribbean during the first four decades of the seventeenth century. These jurisdictions, which drew their authority from the fundamental bond of obedience and protection that tied the English king to each of his subjects wherever on the globe they resided, served to integrate the king’s new dominions into the larger composite monarchy over which he ruled. Furthermore, because these jurisdictions derived from the king’s royal authority, the law that they enclosed was English law. Yet as colonial governors, magistrates, and other delegated authorities judged, they refined and adapted the English legal concepts with which they were familiar to meet the pressing circumstances of geography, climate, economy, and society that they encountered in their new homes. In doing so, they defined new law and new custom, which though they differed from the law to which the king’s subjects in England had access, was yet part and parcel of an expanded English legal regime. The following chapters examine the way in which the king, with the support of his Council and the various trading corporations and proprietors to whom he granted control of these Atlantic spaces, along with the thousands of planters and settlers who sought new lives in places like Barbados and Virginia created, defined, and defended jurisdiction and in doing so extended English law across the ocean. Jurisdiction, as these chapters will demonstrate, accomplishes a great deal. In the context of early Atlantic settlement, jurisdiction was both what marked out a particular Atlantic space as a possession of the English crown and what determined how the laws of England should (or should not) apply in those territories. In this way, jurisdiction enabled the law to see these new 2 dominions and, by seeing, for the crown to govern the king’s subjects who resided there. Yet jurisdiction also demanded that the king’s government and the king’s laws be flexible, for the rules and procedures that obtained in one jurisdiction did not necessarily hold in another. As new territories became English dominions, and the crown became responsible for overseeing a growing range of jurisdictions, the king and his advisors were often compelled to adapt existing legal remedies or create new judicial procedures to ensure the king’s justice reached all his subjects. In this way, jurisdiction was the thing that both distinguished the king’s overseas dominions from his other territories, but that also joined those dominions together into a single, coherent, albeit significantly expanded, legal regime. In these ways, jurisdiction served as an engine of expansion, enlarging both the dominions of the English crown and, in doing so, the laws of England. Definitions Given the significance of jurisdiction to the early history of England’s Atlantic colonies, the question remains: