The Jamestown Experiment Read Online Free

great undertaking across the Atlantic was startlingly secret to the people who were risking their lives in a largely unknown land.
    The Virginia Council additionally laid down a general criminal code and jury system for the colony alternatively regulating behavior and protecting the rights of the settlers. “Tumults, rebellion, conspiracies, mutiny, and seditions…together with murder, manslaughter, incest, rapes, and adulteries” comprised the list of crimes that warranted the death penalty. The English settlers were entitled to having “twelve persons so returned and sworn [who] shall according to their evidence…be given unto them upon oath, and according to the truth in their consciences either convict or acquit ever of the said persons so to be accused and tried by them.” Trial by jury was an ancient right of Englishmen, but whether it would always be applied fairly or merely receive lip service remained to be seen when the colonists were in America. 44
    The council also enumerated a list of lesser offenses that would receive a milder punishment. The range of penalties included “reasonable corporal punishment and imprisonment, or else by a convenient fine, awarding damages, or other satisfaction to ye party grieved.” The misdemeanors incorporated a number of moral offenses in the attempt to regulate personal behavior for the common good. Drunkenness, idleness, loitering, andvagrancy were acts contrary to the survival of the colony and would be punished. 45
    The council also gave some practical instructions on what the settlers were to do once they landed. The commands were guided by the objectives of what the investors and planners were attempting to achieve. Although what they directed made general sense, it also denied the settlers some flexibility in adapting to events as they happened in Virginia.
    The first piece of advice was to choose a site for the colony by sailing up a navigable river. The river should offer the most favorable opportunity to find the Northwest Passage to the “other sea” (the Pacific) to control the China trade through a shorter route to the west. It should also be the “most fertile and wholesome place.” Another critically important consideration was that the location must be defensible against the Spanish enemy. The council mentioned the example of the destruction of the French colonies in Florida as proof against settling on the coast and offering an inviting target of plunder.
    Once the colonists landed, they were to divide the men into teams to fulfill the mission of settlement. Forty of them were to build a common storehouse for their supplies. Thirty were to be employed in tilling the soil and sowing crops of corn to feed the settlers. There would thus be a communal character to the survival of the colony rather than individual initiative to spur on hard work. “First build your storehouse and those other rooms of public and necessary use before any house be set up for any private person and though the workman may belong to any private persons yet let them all work together first for the company and then for private men,” the instructions noted. Captains Newport and Gosnold were to take another forty on a voyage of discovery armed with pickaxes to “find any mineral,” whether gold, silver, or copper. Besides the searchfor great wealth, the hunt for a river stretching across the American continent to the “East India Sea” was part of the quest for unlimited riches, especially if they could find the legendary cities of gold and control the fabled passage.
    The individuals of the council were acutely interested in protecting their investment and promoting Virginia among other prospective investors. They desired news of the commodities, soil, woods, and other sources of wealth to “advertise” the English colony in Virginia. But they were not terribly interested in any honest appraisal that might damage the perception of the venture in England, warning the leaders