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1. Beginnings
- University of Virginia Press
- Chapter
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5 1 The migration of large numbers o f people from one part of the world to another is an endlessly fascinating process, and none more so than the movement of English-speaking peoples to North America and the Caribbean in the seventeenth century. The twenty-one families that are treated in this study represent only a m inute part of t he total group, but they played an i nordinately important role in the creation of society in Virginia. By studying them more can be learned about Chesapeake culture, its roots and influence. Where d id the immigrants come fr om? It has b een arg ued that most of the people who migrated to Virginia in the seventeenth century came from the south and west of England. But of the nineteen out of the group of twenty-one whose place of or igin can b e definitely established, five came fr om the north (Cumberland and Yorkshire), three from the west (Monmouthshire, Gloucestershire , and Somerset), four from London and the Home Counties (London, Middlesex, Kent), and seven from the West and South Midlands (Warwickshire, Worcestershire, Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire). So it is difficult to identify them with any particular regional English culture. Even adding another twenty elite families, whose names are as familiar as the twenty-one but only a few of whom had a member on the council, does not change the pattern much. There were three from the north, including one from Scotland. Another six were from B eginnings They have few Scholars so that everyone studies to be halfe Physitian halfe Lawyer & with naturall accuteness would amuse thee for want of books they read men the more. —The Re ve re nd John Cla yt on, 1684 6 A “ Topping P eople” the West and South Midlands (Worcestershire, Staἀordshire, Gloucestershire, Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire). Five were from London, and fou r from the east (Essex, Kent, Norfolk). Finally, two were from Hampshire. Those characteristics attributed to the south and west of England, from where it is argued the bulk of the 40,000 to 50,000 i mmigrants to Virginia came between 1645 and 1670—a highly developed sense of honor, a hierarchical conception of liberty, predatory sexual habits, a long custom of slavery, etc.—do not apply, unless they were also characteristic of England’s other regions.1 Several other factors, common to most of the group, are of great importance. Six of the group can positively be identified as younger sons of county families who had little or no inheritance, and another nine, including two of the younger sons, had relatives and/or sponsors in Virginia when they arrived. Fifteen were merchants or came fr om mercantile backgrounds; five were either born in or had spent substantial time in London, and there is reason to believe that many of the remainder had London connections. Martin H. Quitt, looking at a much larger elite group, has asserted that the two primary factors in loosening the ties of t hese men with the mother country were that they were younger sons and that they had London mercantile experience. London merchants, Quitt explained , were a “competitive, achievement-oriented lot” as opposed to county families, who in general had a disdain for trade. Experience in London provided “an alternative role model” for young men who spent time there. These factors apply equally well to most of the twenty-one council families in this study. Adding the fact that many of them had relatives in Virginia makes the impulses that led them to leave home clearer.2 The early careers of several of the immigrants show how the process of migration worked. Richard Lee I (1618–1664) was the younger son of a cloth merchant from Worcester. His older brother John had been apprenticed in 1633 to a merchant kinsman in London, and Richard probably joined him there. Circumstances also suggest that it was in London that he met Si r Francis Wyatt, who brought Lee to Virginia with him when he came as governor in 1639–40 and who, on t heir arrival, made him clerk of the quarter court. The next year Lee married Anne Constable, a member of Wyatt’s household. This was a good beginning in a ne w land. Wil liam Byrd I (1652–1704) pr ovides another example . The son of a London goldsmith, he was sent to Virginia to live with his merchant-planter uncle Thomas Stegge before 1670. Stegge, who was a member of...