Introduction
Virginia became a Royal Colony after being a failing colony established by the Virginia Company to make money for its stockholders. The document provides instructions from the East Anglian Puritans to William Berkeley, the first royal Governor, who governed in 1639. The colony was in a state of disarray when he arrived. Berkeley spent more than 30 years. He developed Virginia’s political structure at that time. Following Charles II’s abdication, he enlisted the top of the royalist class to become “Roundheads” in Cromwell’s army. Most of these Royalists had previously resided close to London or Bristol while they were back in England. Over time, a complex web of marriages was used to unite Virginia’s ruling class.1 The advice given in the instructions for the colony includes suggestions on how to establish a new government, safeguard the preservation of Christianity, and best assure the colony’s economic stability (Jones, 223). The article also provided a vision for these colonists’ accomplishments and potential identities.
Discussion
Virginia followed a Church of England-centric religious philosophy. Governor Berkeley established legislation to ensure that the Church of England would be the sole church. Tithe payments were required on landowners (Pagan, p. 269). Each time parishioners skipped office church services, and they were fined a shilling. Quakers and Puritans who missed Anglican services were punished, and if they didn’t pay tithes, they risked being flogged2. For this reason, Virginia did not produce any Puritan congregations.3 The Puritans recommend their theological views that are stated in five words: covenant, depravity, grace, love, and election” (Fisher. p. 23). The first was the concept of depravity, which to Calvinists indicated that as a result of Adam’s original sin, “natural man” was utterly corrupted.
The Puritans believed that evil was a real force in the world and that there was a cosmic battle between light and darkness. Another concept was grace, defined as a “motion of the heart” and was God’s gift to the chosen and the means of their redemption. Grace was not only a concept; it was also a sense of what has been called “ecstatic communion with the supernatural (Meyer, p. 6). The Puritans were given a breathtaking feeling of spiritual independence that they referred to as “soul liberty.”4 The covenant was the third concept. They also based their religion on the covenant God established with Abraham in the book of Genesis, which offers redemption with several commitments but no prerequisites.
Divine love made up the fourth concept. Some of humanity was only preserved because of God’s heavenly love. The Puritans also believed that they had an obligation to love one another in a godly manner (Furlow, p. 22). The Calvinist election theory maintained that only a selected few were allowed into the covenant and was the sixth concept.5 According to their understanding of limited atonement, Christ died exclusively for the chosen and not for the whole of mankind (Amani, p. 14; Harris et al., 81). These concepts caused several conflicts in Puritans’ thoughts. Puritan theology evolved into a collection of unsolvable logical conundrums about how to balance human accountability with God’s omnipotence. Another logical conundrum was finding illumination in a universe of darkness and living morally in a world of evil. The final was balancing a believing Christian’s freedom with the infallible authority of the Bible.
Virginia’s power structures were hierarchical, emanating from the King through the Governor via his political appointees. The powers also constituted elected members of the Burgess and, eventually the commoners and enslaved people who were dominated from on high. The idea of liberty as the ability to govern others that the Virginian aristocracy held was syncretistic with the mindset they adopted toward their African slaves (Slaughter, p. 421). The system did not work properly in leading the people in the colony.6 A more democratic system would bear more fruits to ensure a progressive government7. The Anglican concept of Order as Hierarchy incorporated Virginia Order methods. Virginia’s hierarchical social order required all residents to uphold its structure and regulations, and the County Sheriffs—who the Governor chose on behalf of the Crown—enforced these laws and norms. Since the hierarchical system was intended to be enforced depending on their position, offenders in Virginia faced vastly varied penalties.
Gentlemen-felons were sometimes given the option of having their honor destroyed by being branded with a “cool iron,”8 which left no mark (Heather, p. 12; Jewel, p. 16). The underprivileged and ignorant, however, were hanged. Similar to the mother nation, many offenses carried the death penalty. Death was not the end of punishment. For the most terrible crimes, the corpse was either sent to doctors for dissection or was hanged in chains on a public roadway as a deterrent to other criminals9. It was believed that masters against enslaved people, husbands against spouses, parents against children, and gentlemen against familiar people all had a right to use violence” (Fisher, p. 399–401). In Virginia, social status was an extended structure of respectful ties. As Virginia’s gentlemen submitted to the King, the yeomanry were supposed to defer to gentlemen. Servants were also expected to wait to their yeoman owners, and enslaved Africans were forced to submit to Europeans of all social classes.
Conclusion
The legal system strengthened this hierarchical structure by imposing harsh punishments for violations. Slavery was initially established in Virginia, the first of the North American English colonies. More trade is recommended between colonies to ensure a steady colony economy. There are numerous benefits of trading with one another (Hazard, p. 1). The first importance of well-defined trade is peace among the people. Economic specialization and marketing, in which individuals focus on what they do best and then trade the results of their labor, will be fruitful. Others will also similarly concentrate on their areas of excellence, resulting in significantly higher levels of goods and services production. There will also be a proper and well-structured method for using labor and resources.10 This process is what establishes and maintains the “free market” system’s marketplaces. Trade helps creativity because open economies enable new concepts and technology to spread more swiftly from their origins.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Butler, James Davie. “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies.” The American Historical Review 2, no. 1 (1896): 12–33. Web.
Dunn, Richard S., Mary Maples Dunn, Scott M. Wilds, Richard Alan Ryerson, Jean R. Soderlund, and Ned C. Landsman. The Papers of William Penn, Volume 2: 1680-1684.
University of Pennsylvania Press, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. (1982). 1.
Gehring, C. T. (Ed.). Delaware Papers (Dutch Period): A Collection of Documents Pertaining to the Regulation of Affairs on the South River of New Netherland, Genealogical Publishing Company, Meadow Mill, U.S.A. (1981). 1648-1664.
Gloria Dei Church (Philadelphia). “Historical Accounts of Swedish Settlement along the Delaware River and Financial Records of Gloria Dei, 1653-1760,” 1653. Web.
Hazard, Samuel. Colonial Records of Pennsylvania. Google Books. Volume 2. Published by the State. T. Fenn, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 1852.
Myers, Albert Cook. Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware, 1630-1707. Google Books. C. Scribner’s Sons, 1912.
Records of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas of Bucks County Pennsylvania, 1684-1700. Edited by The Colonial Society of Pennsylvania. Meadville, Pennsylvania: Tribune Publishing Company, 1943.
The Kentucklan In New York. “An Historical Romance of the Old Dominion.” In the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA, 1834. Web.
Ward, Christopher. “THE DUTCH & SWEDES on the DELAWARE 1609-64,” 1930. Web.
Weslager, C. A. “New Sweden on the Delaware: 1638-1655.” Gothenburg, Sweden. 1988, Middle Atlantic Press.
Secondary Sources
Baker, Benjamin. African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals. David Hackett Fischer. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2022.” 2022. 1-3.
Campbell, Mary, and Lucille Jewel. “Death in the Shadows.” Hastings Race & Poverty LJ 16 (2019): 157.
Furlow, David A. “New England Roots Run Deep in Texas: A 400th Anniversary Salute, Part 1.” TSCHS J. 9. 2019. 22.
Harris, M. Keith, Anne E. Marshall, James Marten, Kristopher Maulden, and Matthew E. Stanley. “The Loyal West: Civil War and Reunion in Middle America.” Kentucky Historical Society. Vol. 116, No. 1 University of Illinois Press, U.S.A. 2018. 79-98.
Jewel, Lucille. “Death in the Shadows.” University of Tennessee Legal Studies Research Paper 372. 2019. 157-192.
Jones, Jonathan. “Nostalgic Exile.” The Romance of Regionalism in the Work of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: The South Side of Paradise (2022): 223.
Kaufmann, Eric. “American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: Anglo-Saxon Ethnogenesis in the ‘‘Universal’’Nation.” Nation 8211. 1776. 18.
Meyer, William B. “First effective settlement: Histories of an idea.” Journal of Historical Geography Volume 65. Illinois, U.S.A. 2019. 1-8.
Modarelli, Michael. The Transatlantic Genealogy of American Anglo-Saxonism. Routledge, Virginia, U.S.A. 2018.
Pagan, John Ruston. “Loyalty and Insecurity in Charles II’s Virginia.” In Loyalty to the Monarchy in Late Medieval and Early Modern Britain, c. 1400-1688, pp. 253-272. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Virginia, U.S.A. 2020. 16.
Slaughter, Joseph P. “The Virginia Company to Chick-fil-A: Christian Business in America, 1600-2000.” Seattle University Law Review. 44. Virginia U.S.A. 2020. 421.
Whiteside, Heather. “Company Colonies and Historical Layering: Understanding the Virginia, Somers Isles, and Hudson’s Bay Companies.” Review of International Political Economy. 2022. 1-25.
Footnotes
- Gehring, C. T. (Ed.). Delaware Papers (Dutch Period): A Collection of Documents Pertaining to the Regulation of Affairs on the South River of New Netherland
- Butler, James Davie. “British Convicts Shipped to American Colonies.”
- Records of the Courts of Quarter Sessions and Common Pleas of Bucks County Pennsylvania
- Dunn, Richard S., Mary Maples Dunn, Scott M. Wilds, Richard Alan Ryerson, Jean R. Soderlund, and Ned C. Landsman. The Papers of William Penn, Volume 2: 1684
- Baker, Benjamin. African Founders: How Enslaved People Expanded American Ideals.
- Kaufmann, Eric. “American Exceptionalism Reconsidered: Anglo-Saxon Ethnogenesis in the ‘‘Universal’’Nation.”
- Modarelli, Michael. The Transatlantic Genealogy of American Anglo-Saxonism
- Ward, Christopher. “THE DUTCH & SWEDES on the DELAWARE
- The Kentucklan In New York. “An Historical Romance of the Old Dominion.”
- Hazard, Samuel. Colonial Records of Pennsylvania. Google Books. Volume 2. Published by the State. T. Fenn, Pennsylvania, U.S.A. 1852.