Table of Contents List of IllustrationsIntroductionBibliographyTable of ContentsIntroduction…...………………………………………………………........II. IllustrationsCover: The First Virginia Assembly, 1619Artist unknown Frontispiece Sir Edwin Sandys, Knt of Nourbourne Kent Artist unknown Page Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618 Illustration by T. H. Robinson Page Sir George Somers’ Third Supply Fleet, 1609Artist unknown Page Sir George Somers Discovering Bermuda the Hard Way, 1609 Illustration by Richard Caton WoodvillePage Sir Thomas Gates, Governor of Virginia, 1610Artist unknownPage The Baptism of Pocahontas at Jamestown, 1613Painted by John Gadsby ChapmanPage Pocahontas at the Court of King James I, 1617Artist unknownPage The First General Assembly, 1619For Miller & Rhoades 1957. Artist is unknownPage Landing of Negroes at Jamestown from a Dutch Man-of-War, 1619Painted Howard Pyle Page Jamestown during Sir George Yeardley’s governorship, 1621Artist unknownPage Jamestown Massacre, 1622 Engraving by Matthaeus MerianPage Charles I, King of England, 1600-1649 Painted by Antoon van DyckPage George Calvert, 1st Lord Baltimore, 1578-1632Artist UnknownPage Sir William Berkeley, Governor of Virginia (1642-1652 /1661-1677)Painted by Sir Peter Lely,Page Charles the King walked for the last time through the streets of London, 1649Illustration by Archibald Stevenson ForrestPage Sir William Berkeley Surrenders Virginia to the Commissioners of the Commonwealth (1652) Painted Howard Pyle Page Oliver Cromwell, “warts and all,” 1599-1658Painting by Pieter van der FaesPage The Restoration: Charles II Lands at Dover, 1660Painted by Charles M. Padday Page James, Duke of York, As Lord High Admiral, 1633-1701Painted by Henry GascarPage Charles II Signs the Charter of Pennsylvania, 1681Mural by Violet OakleyPage Anthony Ashley-Cooper, The 1st Earl of Shaftesbury, 1621-1683After a portrait painted by John GreenhillPage Thomas, Lord Culpeper, 1st Baron of Thoresway, 1599-1660Artist unknown Page Thomas, 2nd Lord Culpeper – Governor of Virginia, 1635-1686 1st Proprietor of the Northern Neck ProprietaryArtist unknown Page Nathaniel Bacon and His Followers Burning of Jamestown (1676) by Howard PylePage Thomas, 5th Lord Fairfax, 1653-1709 2nd Proprietor of the Northern NeckArtist unknownPage Col. Richard Lee II (1647-1714)Artist unknownPage Gentlemen at a Meet in Colonial Virginia (circa 1750)Artist unknownPage Burgesses Meeting in the Old Raleigh Tavern, 1774Painted by Howard PylePage Charles Thomson (1647-1824) Painted by Joseph Wright (1783)Page Thomas Jefferson Reading the Declaration of Independence, 1776 After a painted by Howard PyleThe Birth Of Virginia’s Aristocracy explains how the first civil society formed in Virginia, what purposes it served, who its members were and what happened to it as it aged. The self-transformation of its leading families into an "aristocracy" was the final stage in the development Virginia's first civil society. The author claims that there was more to it than their ongoing acquisition of wealth and political power. Virginia's aristocracy formed, the author claims, after—and because of—the seldom mentioned transfer of allegiance by Colonel Richard Lee II from his squabbling, fragmented community to a distant English Lord. After eighty years of growth and division,The body of the book's text is a narrative that sets the stage for Lee to make his puzzling submission. It remembers the efforts that were expended to establish a colony in the Virginia wilderness. It recounts the enlightened moments when the Virginia Company’s desperate leaders endorsed the concept of private property and authorized the creation of America’s first legislature. It highlights the forty years needed by Virginia’s emerging gentry to gain control of the colonial government and the power to sell their tobacco to a world market. It explains the change that occurred when Charles II gained the English throne in 1660—how his advisors under the direction of his calculating brother implemented policies to channel the wealth of the colony into their impoverished king’s pocket and how this conflicted with Virginia’s autocratic governor who was doing the same thing for himself. It introduces Thomas, 2nd Lord Culpeper and examines his motives and methods in gaining a share of Virginia’s wealth. And how Culpeper’s death opened the way for his son-in-law, the debt-ridden 5th Lord Fairfax, to take possession of Culpeper’s Virginia properties. Fairfax’s frustrating efforts to collect rents on his Northern Neck Proprietary bring the reader at last to Colonel Lee. Society formation in Virginia takes on a slightly different complexion when one considers that the process as it unfolded in this new world setting bore no clear resemblance to the process theorized by the political “scientists” who were writing on the subject at that time in England.Thomas Hobbes published Leviathan (1651) shortly after the final royalist defeat in the English Civil War. He acclaimed his analysis of man in society as the beginning of modern Politics Science, a discipline that Aristotle had invented two thousand years before. John Locke incorporated many of Hobbes’ misconceptions about the process in which civil society forms into two treatises on government. The first of these contained his refutation of Sir Robert Filmer’s patriarchalism. His 2nd Treatises of Government rationalized his claims that the authority of the state derives from the sovereignty of the people and that it is their right to define their common good and to make law to accomplish it by the will of their majority. Locke published his Two Treatises on the eve of the Glorious Revolution (1689). In doing so he provided the theoretical foundation for the constitutional monarchy that Parliament established after the abdication of James II and for the political revolution that produced the United States of America.The fragmented social construct that developed in Virginia was one of many unintended by-products of an ongoing effort to create a profit-generating colony. While the birth of Virginia’s aristocracy is little more than a footnote in this perennial enterprise, the author finds it interesting because of the seemingly inexplicable act of Colonel Lee. The body of the text is a narrative that sets the stage for Lee to make his puzzling submission. It remembers the efforts that were expended to establish a colony in the Virginia wilderness. It recounts the enlightened moments when the Virginia Company’s desperate leaders endorsed the concept of private property and authorized the creation of America’s first legislature. It highlights the forty years needed by Virginia’s emerging gentry to gain control of the colonial government and the power to sell their tobacco to a world market. It explains the change that occurred when Charles II gained the English throne in 1660—how his advisors under the direction of his calculating brother implemented policies to channel the wealth of the colony into their impoverished king’s pocket and how this conflicted with Virginia’s autocratic governor who was doing the same thing for himself. It introduces Thomas, 2nd Lord Culpeper and examines his motives and methods in gaining a share of Virginia’s wealth. And how Culpeper’s death opened the way for his son-in-law, the debt-ridden 5th Lord Fairfax, to take possession of Culpeper’s Virginia properties. Fairfax’s frustrating efforts to collect rents on his Northern Neck Proprietary bring the reader at last to Colonel Lee. The author interprets Lee’s acknowledgment of the Fairfax line as his liege lords as an expression of a new frame of mind. With his seemingly unnecessary act of self-submission, Lee transferred his allegiance from the squabbling amalgam that surrounded him in Virginia to a hereditary hierarchy that ascended ultimately to the King of England. In short order, Lee’s social peers followed him with their own transfers of allegiance. These voluntary avowals changed the way Virginia’s leading men and their families saw themselves. Where they had been members of the most privileged class of colonials, after their submission to the Lords Fairfax they were members of Mother England’s most exclusive socio-political network. They conducted themselves in this proud estate—and sustained the rule of the English Monarch—until their impertinent kinsman declared American independence seventy-six years later. Money is arguably the most important character in this story. It tracks through all six phases of the colony’s development:1)Colonization (1587-1618): during which time those who held the charters to the lands in Virginia undertook to find wealth in their new world wilderness.2) Sandys' Commonwealth (1619-1624): during which time the London Council of the Virginia 3)First Royal Commonwealth (1625-1652): during which time the King of England authorized his agents to appoint leading colonials to prestigious posts and to help them build wealth in exchange for their cooperation.4)Virginia Commonwealth (1653-1660): during which time the “Tuckahoes” of Virginia’s Tidewater organized the colony’s government on the lines of Parliament’s new republican system—in which the legislative branch of the government dominated its executive. 5)Second Royal Commonwealth (1661-1700): during which time a conflict developed between the governor of Virginia and his lieutenants and the Kings of England and their ministers, all of whom sought to manipulate the instruments of the colony’s government to enrich themselves. 6)Old Dominion (1701-1776): during which time members of Virginia’s “aristocracy” counseled the King on matters of state, but ruled in their own counties.If there is a hero in this story it is Sir Edwin Sandys (pronounced sands). Sandys’ great accomplishment tends to be overshadowed by the corruption that proliferated during his administration and caused the Virginia Company to fail shortly after he completed his term as its Treasurer. Although he failed as an administrator, this failure does not diminish his standing as a political philosopher and social visionary. Under Sandys’ leadership, the Virginia Company’s Jamestown colony transformed from a floundering commune into a thriving marketplace. Sandys orchestrated this transformation by harnessing the industry of individuals in pursuit of private profit. That is, he promoted the common good by giving individuals means to pursue their own interests. He did this by providing settlers who paid their own way to his company’s new world colony fifty acres of land and the right to participate in a general assembly where they could make the laws of their community. Civil society in Virginia grew on these foundations.Sandys was right in his belief that commonwealth is a necessary condition for prosperity—and hence for civil society. He was wrong to think that the common good it would promote would benefit every member of the community. The story told in the following pages confirms that the Jamestown colony began with a stratified social system and that it continued that way throughout its lifespan. The body politic that constituted Virginia’s civil society never included the community’s tenants, servants or itinerants. As the colony grew, the benefits of its government, the authority of its administration and the prosperity that accompanied private industry all accrued to the individuals who controlled its land and thus its wealth. After four score years, the primary beneficiaries of this prosperity ennobled themselves as a class by forming a hereditary system. In doing this, the people at the top of Virginia’s societal pyramid conferred upon themselves the consummate social benefit—perpetual supremacy. Thomas Jefferson believed that this hierarchical system would undermine the republican government of his newly independent state. To prevent this, he devised a plan to move control of the colony from it colonial oligarchy to a class of yeoman farmers that was forming in the state’s western lands. Jefferson failed in his effort, but his objective was accomplished in stages after the American Revolution. The final segment of the book reconstructs Jefferson’s subtle plan.
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