Middletown transcript., 1881-10-28
A GLANCE AT OLD TIMES IN THE
VIRGINIA PENINSULA.
BY j. EsTEN COOKE.

, Heeo bAAO 4OfbA hOctlb VI 1AOAh
which the life-blood flowed toward the
extremities, the stage of all the old
dramas, of the jarring passions, the
fierce collisions, of the pageants, the
splendors, the animosities, of former
times.
1t is very curious to go away to this
old land and visit some of the historic
localities. They are there still, and
easily reached but to have anything
suggested to us by the sight of them,
we must remember what took place
there. The world will not read the his
tory of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. because it
has never been written. There never
was richer material, more striking COM
edy and tragedy-but the dust covers it.
A days journey in steamboat from
Richmond down James river, around
Old Point to the head of York river,
takes the traveller completely around
old Virginia, and all the famous locali-
ties pass in succession. At Dutch Gap,
where James river makes great bend,
and comes back, after seven miles, to
within hundred yards of the same
spot, few bricks and grass grown
mound mark the site of the former
"City of Henricus.' 1t is a lonely
plateau now, from which you look down
on the silent river but once the place
was thriving, and had its church and
forts-Faith in Hope and others and
Sir Thomas Dale, High Marshal of Vir-
ginia reigned here. He was very sin
gular parsonage, this good Sir Thomas.
When people would not go to church,
he thurst avis through their tongues
and once when conspiracy burst forth
against him, he broke the offenders on
the eOheeI-an incident of American his
tory perhaps not generally known. He
was indeed a very great "mixture. -
He labored hard for the convention of
POcahontas said that if he could make
her Christian, he would consider his
long tolls in the colony rewarded and
good Alexander Whitaker, the minister
at Varina, recognized with enthusiasm
the maIshal's knowledge of divinity,
which be rare in martial man, New
ertheless, he bored the tongues, broke
on the wheel, ard was a diplomatic for
he sent to Powhatan, asking the hand |
of his young daughter IN marriage,
though nothing was better known than
that there was a Lady Dale in England
He, it was, too, who sent Argall to
drive away the French intruders on
Virginia Soil, at Mount Desert, on the
coast of Maine and that buccaneer Off
cial on his way back reduced the Dutch
fort at Albany another invasion of the
sacred soil.
Here, at the City of Henricus, Poca-
hontas also lived with her husband,
John Rolfe, and had a child born to
her, who transmitted her royal Indian
blood to, among others, the famous Ran
dolph, of Roanoke. And still another
resident of the place was Governor
Wyatt, author Of. famous proclamation
forbidding men and women to engage
themselves to taoo persons at one time. Es-
pecially were the fairer sex cautioned
against this misdemeanor they were
not to C contract themselves to two sew
eral men at one time, - for women are
"yet scarce and in much request, and
this offence has become Uery common,
whereby great disquiet arises between
parties, and no small trouble to this.
government. !" The enormity must
therefore cease, and "every minister
should give notice in his church that
what man or woman soever should use
any word or speech tending to a con-
tract of marriage to two several persons
at one time, as might entangle or breed
scruples in the consciences, should un-
dergo corporal correction, or be punished
by fine and Imprisonment, according to
the quality of the person so Offend
ing ="
This was actually formal proclama-
tion of his Excellency, and must have
aroused fearful forebodings in the bellies
of the time. 1t is not recorded that
any of them were ever whipped, but
there was the law for it, and the age
was matter-of-fact They cut off peo-
ple's ears here at Henricus and else
where put them in the pillory ducked
scolding women in the parish ducking-
stool and in Princess Anne threw poor
Grace Sherwood into the water to as
certain whether she was a witch.
All along James river, as the traveller
descends it, are the famous old locali-
ties Bermuda Hundreds third
Virginia settlement Westover, the
residence of Colonel Byrd Brandon;
Berkeley and the ruined church at
jamestown, where the first stone of the
American Republic was laid by Smith
and the rest. This lonely spot is the
stage of the whole first epoch of the
plantation - Of the hot rivalries, the
hatreds, the wrangles of the factions
the starvation, the hope and despair,
and the sudden rescue from destruction
when my Lord Delaware providentially
appears, lands from his ship, and falling
on his knees, thanks God that he has
arrived in time to save Virginia. Moth
ing is more moving than this old trag-
edy of the first years, with it's shifting
scenes and its fiery passions. The dust,
however, lies thick upon the chronicle,
and few have taken the pains to blow it
away. jamestown, to the men of to-
day, has only sentimental attraction
as the locality of the first settlement /
but it is much more than that. To the
remarkable man, John Smith, and the
IL