the end of the gamble: the termination of the virginia lotteries in march 1621

The End of the Gamble: The Termination ofthe Virginia Lotteries in March 1621*

E M I LY RO S E

Johns Hopkins University

The sudden cancellation of the Virginia lotteries during the first sitting of the parliament of1621 was not part of a general parliamentary attack on monopolies but a calculated politicalact intended to pressure the Virginia Company of London to pay more taxes than requiredby its charter of 1612.The appropriate context for considering the cancellation is the financialdifficulties of James I and the search for funds by Sir Lionel Cranfield. The cancellationcoincided with a rejection of a new charter for the company, possibly incited by CountGondomar, the Spanish ambassador in England.The cancellation of the lotteries was the mostimportant turning point in the history of Jamestown and started the company on itsdownward spiral.

Keywords: lotteries; Jamestown; Virginia Company; Edwin Sandys; Lionel Cranfield;James I; monopolies; Gondomar; gambling; 1612 charter

Establishing a colony was an expensive business. Unable to rely solely on the deeppockets of a few wealthy merchants and aristocrats in the capital, or on the largesse ofthe royal family, the Virginia Company of London turned to the general public tosupport its ambitious plans to develop English settlements in the New World. TheCompany had founded Jamestown,Virginia in 1607 but failed to raise sufficient funds tomaintain and expand the colony: by 1614 it was begging parliament for support. Withno other sources of significant income, funds for Virginia derived from public lotteriesspanning the country, which had been licensed by the company’s charter of 1612.1 The‘running’ lotteries brought thousands of pounds into the coffers of the cash-pressedcompany and underwrote the costs of sending many ships to Virginia. In the autumn of1620 the company noted that the money from the lotteries had made it possible to send800 people to the colony.2 This success was all the more surprising because a major tradeand agricultural depression gripped the country and parliament was called to meet in the

* The year, old style, is taken to begin on 1 January. For comments on earlier drafts, the author would liketo thank James Marrow, Theodore Rabb, Andrew Thrush, Robert Zaller and the anonymous reader for thisjournal, and is especially grateful for Christopher Thompson’s close reading and helpful discussion.

1 The Three Charters of the Virginia Company of London, with Seven Related Documents, 1606–16, ed. Samuel M.Bemiss (Williamsburg, 1957). The lotteries became especially important after the closing of the company’smagazine which had enjoyed monopoly profits on supplying goods to the colony.

2 Robert C Johnson, ‘The “Running Lotteries” of the Virginia Company’, Virginia Magazine of History andBiography, lxviii (1960), 156–65; Robert C. Johnson, ‘Lotteries of the Virginia Company 1612–1621’, VirginiaMagazine of History and Biography, lxxiv (1966), 259–92.

Parliamentary History, Vol. 27, pt. 2 (2008), pp. 175–197

© The Parliamentary History Yearbook Trust 2008

new year to consider how to finance a war looming on the Continent.The lotteries werethe ‘real and substantial food by whichVirginia hath been nourished’, but they were shutdown abruptly in the spring of 1621 after members of parliament raised questions abouttheir integrity.3

The demise of the lotteries in the spring of 1621 was a significant turning point inthe fortunes of the Virginia Company. In the wake of their cancellation all plans for anew charter to reorganise the company were abandoned.The end of the lotteries was thebeginning of a long period of conflict between representatives of private enterprise andpublic authority over Virginia, and between company and court that culminated in theabrogation of the charter and the dissolution of the company in 1624, after whichVirginia was made a crown colony. By then, however, thanks to the profits from thelotteries and the discovery of tobacco, the colony was firmly established. The idea tophase out the lotteries had long been considered by the company, but the decision tosuspend them that emerged in parliamentary debate was essentially a political manœuvrethat originated within the confines of Westminster.

The cancellation of the lotteries deserves closer attention than it has received here-tofore. This was not a minor administrative move of interest only to those concernedwith issues of personal behaviour, such as the morality of gambling.The cancellation wasof national significance, for it had constitutional implications and tax consequences, andit produced reverberations in international trade and foreign policy. All these develop-ments were intimately related also to royal dynastic ambitions and domestic health policy.In this article, I look closely at the end of the lotteries, the legal and political context inwhich it occurred, and the impact it had on colonial development.

Lotteries frequently inspired complaints, and those sponsored by the VirginiaCompany were no exception. Many contemporaries thought that the lotteries swindledpeople out of their money. Critics questioned the costs of running the lotteries,bemoaned the tardy delivery of prizes, mistrusted the fees paid to their managers andlocal sponsors, and repeatedly demanded a full accounting.There were objections also tolegal restrictions which stifled criticism of the lotteries.The surviving sources are highlypartisan and not always reliable, but it is possible, nonetheless, to distinguish betweenwhat they say and what they mean.

Thus far, historians have assumed that members of the House pushed for the cancel-lation of the Virginia lotteries in much the same way (and for comparable reasons) thatthey clamoured for the end of various royal monopolies which raised consumer prices,interfered with business, and lined the pockets of courtiers and favourites. They haveimplied that the king opposed the lotteries in response to popular fervour and in anattempt to appease parliament with a measure likely to be appreciated in the provinces.4

The parliamentary diaries and records of the period, however, provide little evidence ofa popular outcry against the lotteries. The proposal to terminate them was first intro-duced on a Saturday morning and the decision was announced by mid-day Monday. Fewwere in the House to hear the brief debate over the lotteries, and the men who spoke

3 The Records of the Virginia Company of London, ed. Susan Myra Kingsbury (4 vols, Washington, 1906–35),i, 451.

4 Charles M. Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History (4 vols, New Haven, 1912), i, 138; WesleyFrank Craven, Dissolution of the Virginia Company:The Failure of a Colonial Experiment (New York, 1932), 183;Theodore K. Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, Sir Edwin Sandys, 1561–1629 (Princeton, 1998), 227–8.

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against it were a varied group, made up both of representatives allied with the court aswell as those associated with the ‘country’ interest.

The cancellation of the lotteries should be seen in a much broader context than thepurported charges of accounting irregularities and individual corruption. It can berelated to three principal factors: first, the intense competition for funds during a severenationwide depression, when lottery money directed to theVirginia colony was availableneither to go to the crown in taxes to support James’s foreign policy, nor to underwritedomestic investment or financial enterprises sponsored byVirginia’s competitors. Second,because the lotteries were licensed by the crown, they provided part of the leverage thecrown wielded over an incorporated endeavour entirely dependent on royal privileges.In return for such charters James expected specific quantifiable benefits from hismerchants, ‘voluntary’ payments that theVirginia Company was reluctant to make.Third,James’s support of the Virginia colony played an important, and not yet adequatelyappreciated, part in the complex and ongoing negotiations between the English andSpanish monarchs; the lotteries and the letters patent by which they were authorisedwere an element of those negotiations.

It is in the parliamentary interplay between domestic and international policy, financialcompetition, and local complaints that the politics behind the lottery cancellationbecomes clear. The end of the lotteries may have appealed to a number of members,especially MPs who were worried about financial corruption. But accusations of finan-cial mismanagement alone were not sufficient to close them down. The lottery cancel-lation was but one step in a protracted conflict between James’s government and theVirginia Company officials.

Rather than the result of popular discontent, the cancellation was a shrewd move bya seasoned politician working for the crown. Sir Lionel Cranfield, privy councillor,master of the wards, former surveyor-general of the customs, soon to be lord treasurerand a leading crown spokesman in the House, seized the initiative to attack the lotteries.The decision to terminate the lotteries was a clear signal to the Virginia Company thatthe crown would not tolerate any diminution of its anticipated income, even to promoteand support the first permanent English colony in the New World, which was facinggrave problems. For his efficiency in managing the royal budget, James rewarded Cran-field with a peerage. But Cranfield, the new Lord Middlesex, paid dearly for this rewardin the parliament of 1624. He was impeached as part of a counter-attack led by managersof the beleaguered Virginia Company who never forgave him for his role in ending thelotteries.

The cancellation provoked the managers of the Virginia Company to move againstSpanish tobacco and, reluctantly, to support a limit on English domestic production.From being energetic proponents of free trade, the managers, of necessity, became fiercedefenders of monopoly privileges.The cancellation of the lotteries marked the beginningof the end for the ambitious colonial projects begun under the leadership of Sir EdwinSandys, and of the ’great migration’ that the lottery profits financed. After opposingtobacco production and focusing on developing a variety of staple profitable commodi-ties, those interested in Virginia became ardent tobacco cultivators. Following the can-cellation the company shifted its focus to the colony’s only significant export product,ensuring that the termination of the lotteries would play a major role in the debates onEnglish government policy concerning tobacco.

177The End of the Gamble


1. The Debate in Parliament

Few members were present in parliament on Saturday morning, 24 February 1621, whenthe subject of the Virginia lotteries was raised. Of the eight parliamentary diaries whichsurvive for this period, only four offer any information about the initial complaints.5

In a debate on finance, Sir Hamon Lestrange began by suggesting that ‘the lotterymight be stayed’ and that the money then going to Virginia should go first to the king,a proposal supported by Sir Francis Barrington.6 Sir Dudley Digges followed and appearsto have acquiesced to the proposal to suspend the lotteries.7 Since it was suggested thatthe House invite the earl of Southampton, the head of the company, to do so, thequestion then arose whether the House could summon an individual.8

Sir Lionel Cranfield buttressed Lestrange’s statement and made a motion to urge theking to end the lotteries, a proposal with which the House agreed. It was Cranfield’s ideathat they inform the king rather than the head of the Virginia Company and Sir FrancisGoodwin backed him up.9 The House agreed that Cranfield should be the messenger. SirThomas Wentworth then went a step further and moved that the lottery be includedamong the grievances and that the company’s patent and lottery proclamation should bebrought in.10 This was the first hint that the issue went beyond lottery income, and thatthe Virginia Company itself was under attack. Alarmed, Digges then spoke against theidea, ‘that so general a good may not be interpreted a grievance’, noting that the lotterywas ‘to a good and publique end’ and completely voluntary.11 When Sir William Strodealleged that there was or might have been ‘misemployment amounting to a subsidy inone shire’,William Becher responded ‘that it was to a publique end’ and echoed Digges’sargument that participation was voluntary and not enforced.12

This issue was soon resolved and there was no further debate. After the vote of theHouse, Cranfield went to the king with the request that the Virginia lottery besuspended.13 The official notes for the entire week are apparently lacking, however,because the clerk of the Commons, John Wright, was ill and the notes of his son, whotook his place, were never inserted in the Commons Journal.14

5 Edward Nicholas’s diary in Proceedings and Debates of the House of Commons, ed.Thomas Tyrwhitt (Oxford,1766); Commons Debates, 1621, ed.Wallace Notestein (7 vols, New Haven, 1935), [hereafter cited as CD]. JohnHaward’s diary in the Wiltshire RO remains unpublished. It covers only the winter sitting of 1621.

6 CD, ii, 135; vi, 7.7 CD, vi, 7–8.8 CD, iv, 100. Sir George More, the longest sitting MP, declared that there was a precedent for so doing.9 CD, vi, 8.10 CD, v, 489; iv, 100; vi, 8. The licence for one or more lotteries was included in the Virginia Company

charter, or letters patent, of 1612.This privilege was apparently enhanced by a proclamation (no longer extant)which apparently precluded any criticism, see n. 106 below.

11 CD, vi, 7–8; iv, 100; v, 489.12 CD, vi, 8; iv, 10.13 This paragraph relies on the explanation of Andrew Thrush, section editor 1604–29 of The History of

Parliament. I am grateful for the opportunity he offered to discuss this article and for his kindness in allowingme to see the unpublished material prepared for The History of Parliament of this period.

14 The key debate on 24 February is missing from the official account: there is a gap in CJ, i (1547–1628).For some unknown reason, John Wright ‘fell out of favour with the court and was arrested after the 1621session’, Sheila Lambert, ‘The Clerks and Records of the House of Commons, 1600–1640’, BIHR, xliii (1970),217.

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The crown replied at once and Cranfield brought the king’s message to the nextsitting of the Commons on Monday. The king, he reported, ‘will suspend them for thepresent and dissolve them if uppon further examinacon they be found greivous’.15 In hissummary, Wentworth notes that the king responded that, in addition to the lotteriesbeing suspended, there should be none like it again.16 Holland recorded that ‘his Majestiedoth most willinglie grant their petition for the stay of the running lotary and will, if itshalbe thought a greevance, take the pattent quite away’.17

By differentiating between ‘staying’ and ‘dissolving’ the lotteries, Cranfield seemed tosuggest that the king offered the company both carrot and stick: the immediate suspen-sion of the lotteries pending an investigation, the possibility of their restoration, and thethreat of permanent termination.

A close reading of the extant parliamentary diaries indicates little opposition. Otherthan Cranfield, only five men are recorded to have spoken against the lotteries –Lestrange, Wentworth, Barrington, Godwin and Strode – and they failed to make anyspecific charge or accusation other than a general one of possible mismanagement. Ifothers spoke, their comments were not of sufficient significance to be recalled.

Two of the MPs who argued against theVirginia lotteries were closely identified withcrown policies: Lestrange and Wentworth. Hamon Lestrange was a back-bencher fromNorfolk who rarely addressed his fellow MPs.The least noteworthy member of a familylater described as ardent royalists, Lestrange was to suffer considerably for his devotion tothe crown during the Civil War, as did his better-known relatives. It is not surprising thatLestrange initiated the debate: as was the case later in 1621, ‘the decision to employ abackbench M. P. was intended to mollify the Commons, allowing them to feel that theywere not responding to a ministerial demand’.18 Thomas Wentworth, later the earl ofStrafford, aspired to success at court and was the man responsible for using blatantpressure to get his friend Calvert, a leading crown spokesman and secretary of state, intothe parliament through his influence on a seat in Yorkshire.

Three others were once considered ‘country’ MPs: Barrington, Goodwin and Strode.Sir Francis Barrington, fiercely loyal to the Rich family, was not yet regarded as anadversary of the court.19 Barrington, who sat for Essex thanks to the influence of hisneighbour Robert Rich, the earl of Warwick, took it upon himself to side with theopponents of Sir Edwin Sandys. Sandys and Rich were leaders of the Virginia Companywho had fallen out in the previous year, before the earl of Southampton was elected to

15 Sir Nathaniel Rich missed Saturday’s proposal and was ill on Sunday, but he noted the king’s responseon Monday, 26 February, CD, v, 518–9. John Pym took notes on Monday, but did not mention the lottery,nor did John Smyth of Nibley.The ‘Belasyse’ diary (identified by Thrush as a copy of the unpublished RichardDyott diary in the Staffordshire RO) fails to mention any initial objections to the lottery, merely noting thaton Monday the king agreed to suspend it at the request of the House because ‘he never liked the lotterie. Heever suspected it would prove hurtfull and distastefull; and therfor at the request of the howse he wouldsuspend it; and if upon further examination it be found a grievance he will suppresse it’: CD, v, 14.

16 CD, v, 489.17 CD, vi, 12.18 Glyn Redworth, The Prince and the Infanta:The Cultural Politics of the Spanish Match (New Haven, 2003),

33, discussing a finance bill presented in the autumn sitting.19 John K. Gruenfelder, Influence in Early Stuart Elections, 1604–1640 (Columbus, 1981), 155, overstates the

case in declaring Barrington ‘a consistent opponent of the court from 1618’. For Rich’s firm support ofBarrington, see Mary Elizabeth Bohannon, ‘The Essex Election of 1604’, EHR, xlviii (1933), 395–413.



continue Sandys’s policies. Barrington’s brief contribution to the debate was summed upin one word, ‘idem’, signifying agreement with the previous speaker. The leading Richfamily member, the earl’s cousin Nathaniel, was not in the House that day.

Sir Francis Goodwin, a Buckinghamshire gentleman, is best remembered as a pro-tagonist in the Goodwin v. Fortescue case of 1604, which established the principle that theHouse could judge the election of its own members. He defeated a privy councillor inBuckinghamshire, but initially was not allowed to take his seat. Closer scrutiny of thatelection indicates that Goodwin was less estranged from the court than previouslythought.20 Like many MPs, Goodwin was a charter member of the Virginia Companybut never an active shareholder.

Sir William Strode of Devonshire was preoccupied with the economic life of hisregion.21 He worked closely with Sandys in the parliament of 1604 and continued ongood terms with him. Like Cranfield and Wentworth, he was one of the investors namedin the third charter of theVirginia Company (1612), and as such, he probably knew morethan most about how important the lotteries were to the success of the colony. Strode,who sat for the borough of Plympton Erle, was deeply concerned with financialmismanagement and was the first to raise the question of the Virginia lotteries theprevious Thursday, drawing attention to the fact that the original lottery proclamationforbad any criticism.22 Strode had long wanted the lottery management investigated, notcancelled. Most likely, he hoped to call into question the administration of Sir ThomasSmythe, Sandys’s predecessor as head of the Virginia Company (1606–19), whose lotteryaccounts were never satisfactorily settled.23

Strode was likely part of the earlier attack on Smythe’s accounts, forcing him out ofthe Virginia leadership in 1619 in favour of Sandys.Virginia shareholders charged thatSmythe had ‘acted in bad faith’, and they demanded ‘an account of his expenses and themoney gained by lottery’.24 The Virginia lotteries had been particularly successful inDevon, with documented lotteries (heretofore unnoted) occurring in 1619 in the markettowns of Tiverton, Totnes, and Torrington, as well as the much larger county town of

20 R.C. Munden, ‘The Defeat of Sir John Fortescue: Court Versus Country at the Hustings?’, EHR, xciii(1978), 811–16; Linda Levy Peck, ‘Goodwin v. Fortescue: The Local Context of Parliamentary Controversy’,Parliamentary History, iii (1984), 33–56; Eric N. Lindquist, ‘The Case of Sir Francis Goodwin’, EHR, civ (1989),670–7.

21 This William Strode (1562–1637) should not be confused with his second son William Strode (1599?–1645), one of the five members impeached by Charles I, or with William Strode (1589–1666) of Barringtonnear Ilchester, Somerset (whose father was a clothier of Shepton Mallet, Somerset), or the poet and dramatistWilliam Strode (1602–1645) who never sat in parliament: History of Parliament Trust, unpublished article onWilliam Strode for the 1604–29 section. I am grateful to the History of Parliament Trust for allowing me toconsult this article and other entries on members of the 1621 parliament in draft. This material is hereaftercited as HP with the name of the relevant entry and is used with the kind permission of the History ofParliament Trust.

22 On 22 February 1621 in the debate on proclamations, Strode raised the issue of the proclamation for thelottery ‘wherein it is enjoined that no man must speak against it’: CD, ii, 121.

23 Smythe submitted his accounts to the company auditors, but the Sandys faction repeatedly claimed thatthey were not settled.The surviving records are entirely partisan so the credibility of the charges is difficult toevaluate.

24 William Camden, V. Cl. Gulielmi Camdeni, Et Illustrium Virorum Ad G. Camdenum Epistolæ (1691), letterof March 1619: mala fide ageret . . . et rationem pecuniae expensae et per sortilegii imposturam collectae exegerint (trans.Dana F. Sutton).

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Exeter and nearby Bridgwater (Somerset) and Dorchester (Dorset).25 The lottery man-agers had remained in Devon for more than six months because it was so lucrative, soStrode may have felt that his constituents were particularly hard hit and resentful aboutthe commercial success of the draw. A cleric in the neighbouring county of Somersetnoted that the Virginia lottery ‘is thought to have carried away many hundred pounds,so that money was never plenty here since’.26 A local business agent likewise wrote to hisemployer that there ‘will be a great hindrance in your sale of iron or the taking up ofmoney upon any goods or merchandise at this time in England’ because of ‘thebewitching lotteries of Virginia’.27

Strode was also a good friend and strong supporter of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, thecaptain of Plymouth fort, who was looking to raise funds for his own colonial venturein New England and who received a notably cold reception from the west countryfishing towns he targeted in 1620.28 Strode may have thought that the Virginia lotterieswere taking away money that might have been used to support his friend’s endeavours.But the lottery had been on his mind for a long time, well before the running lotteriescame to Devon and before Gorges planned his new venture, for in 1615 Strode hadalready raised questions about the operation of theVirginia lotteries in London.That casein Star Chamber against one of the early managers was ultimately dismissed on thegrounds that it was a matter of state and further prosecution might lead to the overthrowof the colony.29

The parliament men who supported Virginia and the lotteries were clearly taken bysurprise that Saturday morning. It appears that neither of the colony’s chief defenders wasin the room at the time: Sir Edwin Sandys, the former head of the company (1619–20),MP for Sandwich, and his deputy John Ferrar, MP for Tamworth.The opponents of thelotteries were likely waiting for their absence, a rare occurrence for Sandys, who was anotable speaker and indefatigable MP.30 Smythe (who sat for Saltash, Cornwall in thisparliament) did not address the question of the lotteries and was probably not present forthe debate. Sir Dudley Digges, MP for Tewkesbury, member of theVirginia Council and azealous colonial investor, spoke up for the lotteries in their stead. Well versed in theproblems of colonial finance, Digges did what he could on the spur of the moment.Having initially conceded that the Company should suspend the lottery, whenWentworthdenounced them as a grievance, he recovered sufficiently to defend them as a positivething for the country.A prolific author and energetic promoter of Virginia (where his sonwould eventually be selected governor), Digges, with Smythe, then head of the Virginia

25 Emily Rose, ‘The Real and Substantial Food of Virginia’: Lottery Financing of the Early Colony,1612–1621 (forthcoming).

26 A Plain Pathway to Plantations (1624) by Richard Eburne, ed. Louis B. Wright (Ithaca, 1962), 79.27 The Lismore Papers: Selections from the Private and Public Correspondence of Sir Richard Boyle, First and Great

Earl of Cork: Series 2, ed.Alexander Grosart (5 vols, 1887), ii, 244:Antony Wye to Richard Boyle, 22 June 1620,(kindly drawn to my attention by Nicholas Canny).

28 R.A. Preston and Richard Arthur, Gorges of Plymouth Fort; a Life of Sir Ferdinando Gorges (Toronto, 1953),186ff.

29 William Hudson, ‘A Treatise on the Court of Star-Chamber’, in Collectanea Juridica: Consisting of TractsRelative to the Law and Constitution of England, ed. Francis Hargrave (2 vols, 1791), ii, 136. This was the caseagainst one of the lottery managers.

30 It is unlikely that Sandys ‘remained quiet’ because he saw the lottery privilege as ‘a grievance that heobviously could not bring himself to defend’, as stated by Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, 227–8.



Company, and alderman Robert Johnson, had entered for publication an advertisement‘the Lotterye’s best prize’ at the Stationers’ Office in May 1612.

William Becher, MP for Leominster, who also spoke on behalf of the lottery, was aclient of James’s favourite, the marquess of Buckingham and later clerk of the privycouncil. Becher sat for Leominster, but he had been elected as well for Shaftesbury, mostlikely on the recommendation of the earl of Pembroke, a large investor and avidsupporter of Sandys in the Virginia Company.31 Becher, like Digges, insisted that thelottery was a voluntary undertaking and that no one was required to purchase a ticket.

The man most eager to denounce the lotteries was Lionel Cranfield, MP for Arundel,a Virginia investor, but more significantly, a royal official trying hard to manage crownfinances.32 Cranfield deftly turned Lestrange’s proposal about suspending the VirginiaCompany lotteries into a direct attack. The short-lived debate on the lotteries wasmanipulated so that Cranfield could step in and graciously announce their cancellation,appearing to respond to the demands of the House. Cranfield was not acquiescing to thewishes of the members, he was guiding them. His rationale was to ‘let Virginia loserather than England’, an exhortation phrased in traditional terms of caring for thecommonwealth.33

By Monday, when Cranfield brought the king’s reply, the decision was made and thedebate was over.The carefully crafted and memorable phrases of Cranfield’s anti-lotteryspeech and the king’s swift support suggest that it was all worked out beforehand. Thepoliticians recognized as soon as Cranfield spoke that the lotteries were finished. Beforethe week was out the privy council drew up instructions concerning the suspension ofthe lotteries (4 March) and it was proclaimed the following Thursday (8 March).34 Thetermination was confirmed on 23 June.35

There had been little heated debate and no popular recrimination. There was nooccasion for calm scrutiny and close examination of the complaints. The head of thecompany, the earl of Southampton, was never contacted, nor given the opportunity toexplain or respond. Although Wentworth urged the House to consider the lotteries ‘agrievance’, the complaint never went to the committee on grievances, headed by SirEdward Coke (previously headed by Sandys in the parliament of 1614).

Everything ran counter to the usual practice in dealing with unpopular monopolies.Typically a date was assigned in advance so that all parties would be prepared for aninquiry, which included affidavits, witnesses and specialised legal counsel.36 The summarytreatment of theVirginia lottery stands in marked contrast, for example, to the debate on

31 HP, Becher.32 For the most recent analysis of the challenges Cranfield faced see John Cramsie, Kingship and Crown

Finance under James VI and I, 1603–1625 (Woodbridge, 2002), 180ff.33 CD, ii, 135.34 James I, By the King Whereas at the Humble Suit and Request of Sundry Our Loving and Well Disposed Subjects,

Intending to Deduce a Colony, and Make a Plantation in Virginia (1620 [1621]), printed in Royal Proclamations ofKing James I, 1603–1625, ed. James F. Larkin and Paul L. Hughes (2 vols, Oxford, 1973), i, 500–2; reproducedin facsimile in John Carter Brown Library, Three Proclamations Concerning the Lottery for Virginia, 1613–1621(Providence, RI, 1907).

35 CD, vii, 464.36 Elizabeth Read Foster, ‘The Procedure of the House of Commons against Patents and Monopolies,

1621–24’, in Conflict in Stuart England: Essays in Honour of Wallace Notestein, ed. William Aiken and BasilHenning (1960), 67.

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the alehouse monopoly awarded to Sir Giles Mompesson and Francis Mitchell or to thegold and silver thread monopoly – both of which were voted grievances and subject tomuch discussion.The agents for the gold thread monopoly charged a tax of 60%, and onat least one occasion threatened to starve the wife and children of one retailer reluctantto pay.37 The pressures involved in buying a Virginia lottery ticket were hardly in thesame category: as lottery supporters emphasized, it was at the purchaser’s discretion.

The speed of the condemnation of the Virginia lottery is striking. The cases of mostother monopolies and patents subject to criticism in parliament wended their way slowlythrough the system as James continued to profit from them while delaying withinvestigations and subterfuge. Some of the patents most forcefully condemned by thehouse of commons in the spring of 1621 were revoked by royal proclamation in Julyonly after months of denunciations and scandalous revelations.38 The king demonstratedno sense of urgency in dealing with them, having awarded many to his friends andcourtiers. He apparently let Mompesson escape to the Continent, for example, daysbefore his impeachment, which occurred at least four days before his alehouse patent wasfinally abolished.39 Just a few years later Mompesson was reported to be back in Englandand trying to collect from his alehouse monopoly on the ground that it had not beentechnically abrogated by parliament. In contrast, the Virginia lottery patent was handledprecipitously and definitively.Terminating the lotteries was an easy concession for Jamesto make as it did not cost him any money and it made Cranfield look like a reformereager to take action and accommodate the wishes of the populace.40

The brief parliamentary skirmish over the Virginia lotteries had less to do with theprotection of naïve Englishmen from a proclivity for gambling than to do with thecrown’s desperate search for money to support the lavish Stuart court and the impendingContinental war. Having identified an untapped source of funds, Cranfield astutelymanœuvred the lottery cancellation through parliament before the company’s share-holders could adequately defend them. By Monday morning, James was talking notmerely of suspending the lotteries, but also of taking away the lottery patent forVirginia.It would take another three years for the crown to take away the Virginia charter anddissolve the company.

2. The Context of the Cancellation

Despite the rhetoric, the cancellation was not part of a dispute over the operation orfinancial management of games of chance. It belonged, instead, to a larger dispute aboutthe rights and privileges of the Virginia Company, which, in turn, reflected broaderconcerns in the house of commons about rights and privileges and the king’s prerogative.

37 William Robert Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies(3 vols, Cambridge, 1912), i, 177.

38 Proclamations, ed. Larkin and Hughes, i, 511.39 Proclamations, ed. Larkin and Hughes, i, 499, 502: the proclamation for his apprehension was issued on

3 Mar., and for his banishment, on 30 Mar. 1621.40 See, e.g., how Cranfield took credit for naval reforms that he obstructed: Michael Young, ‘Illusions of

Grandeur and Reform at the Jacobean Court: Cranfield and the Ordinance’, HJ, xxii (1979), 53–73.



There had already been some complaints about the lotteries and frequent calls for thecompany to put an end to them, but most of these came from within the company itself.The sheer embarrassment for a company to have to rely on such a peculiar form of venturecapital was reason enough to call for the end of the lotteries, regardless of possible financialmismanagement. The company often considered cancelling them, but found, like manygovernments today, that it could ill afford to give up such a lucrative and attractive form ofincome. It appears that the company did suspend them for a while, but Sandys revivedthem when he took office and promoted them even more vigorously.41

The accounting problems and other difficulties in administering the lotteries werelongstanding: the company had published lists of winners but had yet to award all theprizes for the lotteries that had taken place in London from 1612 to 1615.42 At least twoearly lottery managers were taken to court for theft and fraud.43 It is not clear that the‘running’ lotteries on which the company relied after 1616, and which moved from townto town, provoked the same accounting problems as the London lotteries, because theyappear to have been concluded within a month or two.Their debilitating effects on smalllocal economies was marked, however, especially during a time of general economiccontraction and illiquidity.44 The new management of the company repeatedly triedto settle the prizes and raised the issue at successive company meetings in an attempt toaudit Smythe’s accounts, but the auditors claimed that they could not find any books toaudit.45 The wrangling over the lotteries, like other disputed financial issues provoked byroyal charters and letters patent, could have endured for months or years.46 In the caseof the Virginia lotteries, however, the government had reason to move suddenly, afteryears of inaction.

41 As Christopher Thompson has suggested, the company may have decided as early as November 1618 toabandon the lotteries as a fundraising device, but returned to them when Sandys took over the leadership in1619. It appears that the company planned to phase out the lotteries in May 1619 (Records, ed. Kingsbury, i,216). It ordered them dissolved in the winter (i, 279: 1 Dec. 1619) before extending them yet again for sixmonths. In July 1620 (i, 390) the lotteries were extended again until the end of the year. The Richs latercharged that ‘the companie could not have beene soe poore if the lotteries had not beene suspended. By whichmeanes Sir Edwyn made his way easie to be treasorer of Virginia and when he had obteyned that placeimmediatlie he was a meanes to sett upp the runninge Lotteries againe’ (iv, 141).

42 On 8 Apr. 1620 Wroth was formally asked to look into prizes for the standing lottery, ‘who hath takena great deale of paines therein and therby gained much experience’, Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 335.

43 William Leveson in 1613 (Chancery), printed in Records, ed. Kingsbury, iii, 48ff; John West in 1615 (StarChamber), summarized in CD, vii, 463.

44 For the national context see ch. 3, ‘The Depression Years 1620–24’ in Barry Supple, Commercial Crisis andChange in England, 1600–1642: A Study in the Instability of a Mercantile Economy (Cambridge, 1959).

45 In May 1619, just after Sandys’s election as the head of the company, he announced that the lotterieswould continue through November, unless someone could ‘give just information of any particular abuse’.Theaccounts of the five shilling lottery were examined and closed soon after, and in June, Sandys aimed ‘to settlethe lotteries’. In January 1620 the books were turned over to the auditors. In April the company consideredthe question of unpaid prizes and Sandys raised the topic again in May and July.At that meeting it was learnedthat lotteries were ‘very much disgraced’.

46 There are many such cases of financial investigations endlessly drawn out in parliament. See, for example,Strode’s complaint in parliament about the French Company monopoly (also headed by Smythe), whichthreatened the prosperity of his Plymouth constituents. Strode produced evidence that the charter had beenobtained by bribery, but when the government excused the patentees, the House became entangled in debateand no further action was taken. The case of Mompesson was also prolonged: Sandys was criticized by theHouse for his hasty condemnation of the patent as ‘a grievance’ before Mompesson had been given anopportunity to speak. HP, Strode, Sandys.

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At issue were three separate matters: financial, constitutional and diplomatic. Thecancellation of the lotteries was first and foremost an emphatic royal response to the newcharter proposed by the Virginia Company – a charter which threatened the king’sincome, his royal prerogative and his carefully cultivated relations with Spain.47 Thequestions of financial fraud and the king’s proclamation against criticizing the lotterieshad dogged the company since the Star Chamber case years earlier.There is no evidencethat the chief complainant in that case, Walter Fitzwilliam, entered the debate in 1621,although he apparently sought election to parliament from Peterborough as a means ofsecuring protection from his creditors.48 What brought the lotteries to the fore as a topicfor parliamentary consideration was the presentation to the shareholders that verymorning of the new charter for Virginia.

It is no coincidence that the lotteries were shut down at the precise moment thatthe Virginia Company introduced a revised charter of incorporation – the two eventswere closely linked. A charter granted by the crown through letters patent was theonly way to restructure an English corporation. The company had begun consideringa revision to the Virginia charter as soon as Sandys took control in 1619. Threeprevious charters (1606, 1609 and 1612) had put the company on a firm footing, overtime giving shareholders more control and managers more responsibility and account-ability.49 The Virginia Company planned to adopt a new name, new titles for itsexecutives, a new corporate seal, new accounting procedures in London and new lawsin Virginia. The company wanted also to clarify the legal limit of its borders and tomaintain its rights to fish off the north Atlantic coast, something Sir FerdinandoGorges claimed as a monopoly for his revived New England company whose charterpassed the great seal in November 1620. When the Virginia Company appealed, theking delayed delivery of Gorges’s patent and indicated his willingness to approve anew Virginia charter, ‘being confident they would be careful to insert nothing thereinthat might be prejudicial either to his power or profit’.50 The king also requiredsubmission of a draft to his attorney general, Thomas Coventry. Sandys presented theproposed charter to an ad hoc meeting of the company in February, before reviewingit with the king’s learned counsel; only in mid April did he return with the com-ments of the attorney general.51

The king was right to worry about his profit. Corporate charters included a standardseven-year tax exemption for novel trades and industries as an incentive for developinginnovative markets. Those tax exemptions of the 1612 charter had expired in 1619,

47 As Christopher Thompson has noted in discussion, even if the charter had been confirmed by parliamentand passed into law with royal assent, down to 1689 the sovereign retained the right to suspend the operationsof statutes and to dispense with their provisions. NoVirginia charter, therefore, could have abrogated the king’srights, but it could have made for some awkward moments.

48 HP, Fitzwilliam. Sir Miles Sandys, Sir Edwin’s brother, may also have sought election to parliament in1621 as a means of gaining immunity from his creditors. HP, Sandys.

49 Three Charters, ed. Bemiss.50 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 438.51 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 445. After the new charter was submitted to the government it disappeared and

Kingsbury (i, 100) notes that no trace of it remains in any governmental repository (sign manual warrants,signet docquet book, chancery or patent rolls). It was never mentioned again.



perhaps one reason Smythe was not eager to fight to retain the Virginia leadership.52 Acompany petition for an extension had already been turned down by the privy council,and even before the expiration, the crown was pressuring the company to pay more thanit was obligated to by its charter.53

Cranfield, a former surveyor-general of the customs (1613–19) and a merchant whohad been a ‘farmer’ of the tobacco customs, focused on a promising source of new fundsfor the chronically indebted king. By 1621 most of the usual sources had dried up. In thewinter of that year James borrowed additional funds from his brother-in-law, the king ofDenmark, in order to pay back old loans; in February the house of lords protested againsthis sale of titles; in March the City turned down the lord treasurer’s request for a loan;and it took much of the summer to negotiate a loan from a syndicate of the leadingmoney lenders in London. A new charter with standard exemptions would curtail theinfluence James could bring to bear on merchants he was accustomed to havingaccommodate him.

The difference this time round was the discovery of tobacco. Since the last Virginiacharter was sealed in 1612 the crown had come to recognize the soaring value ofcolonial tobacco. John Rolfe had sent an experimental shipment in 1614.Two years laterimports from Virginia jumped to 2,500 lbs. By 1618 the colony was producing 40,000lbs, and by 1620, more than 50,000 lbs. The Virginia Company had counted on thetraditional provision in its charter protecting infant industries, which exempted it frompaying any duty in excess of the usual tariff of 3d. per pound of tobacco, but the crownrefused to give up such a desirable source of funds.

Cranfield was demanding and sophisticated in his successful efforts to squeeze thecompany. He took to heart Sir Francis Bacon’s admonishment that ‘your majesty’s estaterequires in point of treasure not only fidelity and judgment but invention and stirringand assiduity and pursuit’.54 Cranfield’s actions in 1619 and 1620 are financially complexand explained in detail elsewhere, but they have not previously been associated with thecancellation of the lotteries.55

With an eye on higher taxes, it was the crown and not the Virginia Company whichfirst demanded restrictions on tobacco planting in England. In September 1619, andpossibly even earlier, the crown prohibited cultivation in the counties around London.56

Cranfield first proposed the idea of this prohibition to the king, who then instructedLord Treasurer Bacon to take action.57 The lord treasurer enthusiastically pointed out thatrestricting domestic planting would mean £3,000 more income per year from the farm

52 Although Smythe was ousted by a Sandys-Rich coalition, it is not clear that he was willing to fight toremain in office in the Virginia Company. Bermuda’s charter was sealed in 1615 so the tax breaks had not yetexpired, and Smythe retained his post in the election to head the Somers Island (Bermuda) company whichoccurred soon after.

53 Acts of the Privy Council (46 vols, 1890–1964), xxxv, 400: 4 Dec. 1617.54 The Letters and Life of Francis Bacon, ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie Ellis and Douglas Denon Heath

(7 vols, 1874), vii, 87: Bacon to the king, summer 1620.55 George L. Beer, The Origins of the British Colonial System, 1578–1660 (New York, 1908); Craven,

Dissolution; Frederick C. Dietz, English Public Finance 1558–1641 (2 vols, 1964).56 Acts of the Privy Council, ed. Lyle, xxxvii, 34–5: 28 Sept. 1619.57 ‘I have conferred with Sir Lionel Cranfield according to his Majesty’s special commandment touching

two points of value for the advancement (the one present, the other speedy) of his majesty’s revenue’. FrancisBacon, ed. Spedding et al., vii, 62: Francis Bacon to the marquess of Buckingham, 22 Nov. 1619.

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of the impositions, although he had qualms about the legality: ‘perhaps there will occursome doubt in law, because it restraineth the subject in employment of his freehold at hisliberty’.58 Later in parliament these objections were to be raised repeatedly.59 The kinghad no such reservations. Buckingham assured Bacon that his majesty was ‘not intendingin that point to stand upon any doubt of law, nor to expect the judges’ interpretation;nor to allow any freehold in that case; but holding this the safest rule, salus reipublicaesuprema lex esto’.60

Despite the incentive dangled before it, the company still resisted and claimed to havereceived a decision from the previous attorney general that it was not liable for anyincreased taxes.61 But the government was prepared to use any means necessary tocompel the company to come to terms. Cranfield made it clear that it could force theissue simply by re-evaluating the basis on which even the minimum tax was calculated.The Virginia Company complied and in 1620 agreed to pay an increased tobacco tax,of 9d. more per pound than required for a seven-year period, in return for which the banon domestic production was duly proclaimed and enforced.62 By 1620 the rent forcollecting tobacco duties was £8,000 a year, and in July 1621 Cranfield acknowledgedthat it was now worth £15,500 a year to the crown and in danger of being lost ifdomestic planting was not inhibited.63 He stressed to Buckingham the urgency of action,‘it being now no time to lose or impair so great a revenue’.64

At a time when colonial tobacco was valued at 8s. or 10s. per pound for tax purposes(Cranfield had threatened to value it at 20s.), but in practice sold for only about 3s. perpound (and usually far less), there was yet an additional, unanticipated levy. Producerswere now charged fees for inspecting the colonial product. This added another 4d. perpound (originally planned to be 8d.) – a tax that the English ambassador in Hollandknew was implemented ‘on the pretence’ that tobacco ‘needed to be better garbled orcleansed’.65 In contrast, the tax for Virginia tobacco sold in Holland in 1620 was justone-half pence per pound.66

James viewed any corporate group as available to provide financial services and had nomisgivings about pressuring those to whom he awarded privileges. As Bacon explained,often much discretion was involved. ‘How many directions are there concerning this

58 Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding et al., vii, 62: Bacon to Buckingham, 22 Nov. 1619.59 See, e.g., Sir Edward Coke, ‘it is against the lawe and libertie of the subject’. CD, v, 74: 17 Apr. 1621; and

Sir Robert Bevill, ‘likes not the prohibition of plantation in England’: CD, iii, 147: 3 May 1621.60 Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding et al., vii, 64.61 Sandys reported to the Virginia adventurers what they wanted to hear: that ‘Mr Atturney Generall

delivered his cleere opinion to the Lords [of the Privy Council] that the Company by their patent were freefrom imposicion’: Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 281: 15 Dec. 1619. There is no other corroboration for thisstatement.That attorney general, Sir HenryYelverton, was in the Tower for inserting things in the patent of theCity of London which had not been on the warrant.

62 Proclamations, ed. Larkin and Hughes, i, 457, 481: 30 Dec. 1619, reiterated on 29 June 1620, after thecompany agreed to the higher taxes.

63 Godfrey Goodman, The Court of King James the First, ed. J.S. Brewer (2 vols, 1839), ii, 205: Cranfield toBuckingham, 28 July 1621.

64 Goodman, Court of King James, ii, 205: Cranfield to Buckingham, 28 July 1621.65 The Letters of John Chamberlain, ed. Norman Egbert McClure (2 vols, Philadelphia, 1939), ii, 245:

Chamberlain to Carleton, 5 June 1619; Proclamations, ed. Larkin and Hughes, i, 446: Garbling Proclamation, 10Nov. 1619.

66 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 422: 15 Nov. 1620.



harsh business of getting treasure, that are fitter to be given by your majesty in privateto a lord treasurer than communicated? Nay fitter to be done by him ex officio than asby direction? and again how many things are there in execution fitter by him to be donede factu et sine strepitu.’67 James had already threatened other chartered institutions. He hadsuspended the Merchant Adventurers’ charter and required more than £70,000 torestore it to them in 1617. In 1620 he threatened the City of London with the loss ofits patent and imprisoned the attorney general who had drawn it up. He forced thepatentees for the transportation of tin to take a new lease at a higher price and squeezedso hard they surrendered it.68 At the same time that he was pressuring the colonialtobacco producers, he was pressing the currant importers to surrender their patentedprivileges, insisting that ‘the farmers of the currants do by instrument under their sealrelinquish to the King all their claim thereto by any general word of their patent’.69

Many merchants were prepared to oblige the king in return for a share of monopolyprofits. Dependent on royal privileges for many of his diverse mercantile endeavours(most notably the East India Company), Sir Thomas Smythe was willing to compromiseon the issue of his companies’ charters. He had confessed in the last parliament that hewas prepared to surrender the French Company charter, agreeing that ‘the patent shouldbe brought in’.70 His gentry successors as leaders of the joint-stock Virginia Company,proved far more recalcitrant.

Cranfield excelled at ‘this harsh business of getting treasure’ for the king. He succeededto such an extent that a royal preacher looked directly at him when describing ‘a fittreasurer for the devil’, during one sermon.71 The termination of the lotteries sent anunequivocal message to the Virginia Company that the colony relied on privilegesawarded by the crown and that these could be taken away as easily as they could begranted. It would be hard to imagine a greater incentive for the company to co-operatein paying additional tobacco duties, and not to put their existing charter at risk bypursuing new privileges.The crown followed up this instance of pressure with a broaderresolution: in May, the day after the Virginia Company re-elected the earl of Southamp-ton, the king forbad any company charters from being examined by parliament. Jamesroutinely expected to profit from the charters he granted under the royal seal; it wasnotable that neither he nor his favourites benefitted from the Virginia lotteries despitethe large sums which flowed through the coffers of the managers. Like other companies,the Virginia patentees could now be expected to show their gratitude when, and if, theking chose to reinstate the lotteries.

James emphasized ‘his power’ as well as ‘his profit’: the proposed new charter forVirginia raised constitutional issues well beyond the question of disputed tax obligations.The company sought more than a new charter of privileges from the crown; it alsowanted parliamentary confirmation of those privileges. In spite of his protestations of

67 Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding et al., vii, 87: Bacon to the king, summer 1620.68 Dietz, English Public Finance, ii, 157.69 Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding et al., vii, 62: Bacon to Buckingham, 22 Nov. 1619.70 Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons), ed. Maija Jansson (Philadelphia, 1988), 112, 117: 20

Apr. 1614.71 Goodman, Court of King James, ii, 203.

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concern for the company, James had repeatedly abrogated the Virginia patents.72 Fearfulof the king’s fickleness, the company sought to buttress royal assurances with an actpassed by a representative assembly. Parliament did not often confirm royal patents, butit had previously confirmed the charter of the Muscovy Company (after the capture ofNarva in 1558) and Raleigh’s enlarged patent of 1584 after his establishment ofRoanoke.73 Many members of the house of commons and the house of lords held sharesin Virginia and passage therefore seemed likely. Parliamentary confirmation of a newcharter would not have eliminated royal pressure, but it might have helped insulate thecompany from royal demands.

The company acted decisively to prepare for parliamentary confirmation of the newcharter and other bills of importance to the colony. Influential peers provided seats in1621 for keyVirginia administrators who had never before sat in parliament, such as JohnFerrar, the company deputy, and John Smyth of Nibley, who had attended every recentcompany meeting.74 Sandys made the election in Kent a personal referendum on hisdispute with Sir Thomas Smythe.75 One of the earliest paid lobbyists in England, EdwardBennett, wrote a six-page pamphlet with a small production run for the company, mostprobably delivered free to members of parliament, and was rewarded with companyfunds ‘for his frequent attendance’ in the house of commons.76

With memories of the 1614 ‘Addled’ parliament still in mind, Sandys worked fever-ishly to have the new Virginia charter ready for a vote as soon as possible. Theshareholders were equally concerned.The day before parliament opened they questionedthe executives ‘how farre they had proceeded in drawing up the newe patent which wasintended to be confirmed by acte of Parliament, the proceeding and good successewhereof would exceedingly animate and encourage all the adventurors’.77 Sir SamuelSandys, MP for Worcestershire, began by asking if his brother Edwin could be excusedfrom parliamentary business so that he could finish drafting the newVirginia patent.78 Heexplained ‘that neither ease nor unwillingness to serve the king, country and this Housekept him away but the great haste of a business of weight, lying upon him, made him

72 He had imposed excess tobacco taxes; he had obstructed the free election of the company officers; andhe had granted exclusive fishing rights to the New Englanders.

73 Later colonial investors would also seek parliamentary confirmation of their royal patents. In 1629 a billwas introduced to confirm Bermuda’s 1615 patent: Beer, Origins, 303. Both the 1627 Guiana patent awardedto the earl of Warwick and the 1630 Providence Island patent included clauses about seeking parliamentaryapproval, to which the king would give his consent:A.P. Newton, The Colonizing Activities of the English Puritans:The Last Phase of the Elizabethan Struggle with Spain (New Haven, 1914), 88–9. In 1670 the Hudson’s BayCompany received parliamentary approval of its royal charter for seven years, but failed to receive a renewal andafterwards relied solely on the royal grant: Percival Griffiths, A License toTrade:The History of the English CharteredCompanies (1974), p. xi.

74 Lord Paget influenced Ferrar’s return for Tamworth and the earl of Southampton procured Ferrar’selection from the Isle of Wight, for which he sat: HP, Ferrar; Smyth of Nibley was elected with help from theBerkeley family of Gloucestershire for whom he served as steward and legal advisor: HP, Smyth.

75 CD, vii, 567–71.76 Edward Bennet, ATreatise Divided intoThree PartsTouching on the Inconveniences thatTobacco Hath Brought into

this Land (1620 [1621]). Based on printing costs, the edition could have been as small as 200 copies: DavidQuinn, ‘A List of Books Purchased for theVirginia Company’, Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, lxxvii(1969), 391. Only two copies are known.

77 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 437.78 CD, iv, 18; ii, 28: 6 Feb. 1621. Sir Samuel had a personal interest: his daughter’s husband, Sir Francis Wyatt,

had just been selected to be the new governor of the colony.



absent’.79 Sir Edward Giles stated flatly that Virginia must not keep him from Englandand the House denied the request – probably because Sir Edwin Sandys, the second-longest serving member, was the leading figure in the Commons on economic and tradeissues.80

The country was facing an economic crisis and trade depression as well as a potentialwar, and finance topped the agenda. When James called parliament, he was more than£900,000 in debt and seeking funds for action on the Continent. Within two weeks,under the careful management of the leaders of the Virginia Company, the House votedto give the king the unprecedented gift of two subsidies (worth £150,000) withoutdemanding redress of its grievances in advance. The swift and striking vote of funds, a‘present of love to the king without any other consideration’, is generally attributed toSandys, but the Spanish ambassador credited the earl of Southampton.81 This extraordi-nary move was intended to demonstrate goodwill to the crown and should have servedas a sweetener for the Virginia charter; it would also have led the two leaders of theVirginia Company to expect little difficulty with its proposed bills.

Until the end of February 1621, the Virginia Company had reason to believe thecrown would approve its actions.The day after parliament opened, the king indicated tomembers of the privy council, Lord Doncaster and the earl of Southampton, that hewould approve a new charter forVirginia, ‘which afterward according to their own desiremight also be confirmed by an act of parliament’.82 Sandys acted quickly. On Thursday22 February, he presented the new Virginia charter to an ad hoc shareholder’s meetingwhere it was discussed and approved. The company then voted to have a committee‘procure the king’s warrant to Mr. Solicitor to make the [patent] ready for his majesty’ssignature’ and it was desired that the lords on the company’s council would take ‘painesto procure the said warrant and to hasten the dispatch thereof with some expedicion’.83

What happened between the beginning of February and 26 February that changedthe crown’s attitude toward Virginia and led to the devastating and unanticipatedcancellation of the lotteries, which crippled the company? No new revelations aboutgambling caused this change of heart. James realized that there were constitutional aswell as fiscal issues involved with the Virginia charter. From the king’s perspective,seeking parliamentary approval for a royal charter was an infringement of royal preroga-tive as well as royal finances (even though as king he could still legally set aside any andall provisions of a charter after the fact). No matter what the provisions of the charter– whether it included tax exemptions or not – receiving parliamentary confirmationwould mean that the colony was part of the nation.The king, however, did not considerVirginia subject to parliament, but an independent appendage of the crown. He hadrejected the first motto presented to him for the colony which referred to the unbeliefof the natives ( fas alium superare draconem), preferring ‘en dat Virginiam quintum’ (‘thus

79 CJ, i, 513: 7 Feb. 1621.80 CD, ii, 28: 6 Feb. 1621.81 CD, ii, 91: 15 Feb. 1621. For Sandys, see HP, Sandys, and Robert Zaller, The Parliament of 1621: A Study

in Constitutional Conflict (Berkeley, 1971), 47–9; for Gondomar on Southampton, see Redworth, The Prince andthe Infanta, 22, n. 15.

82 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 438: Southampton reported the king’s comments to the quarterly shareholdermeeting on 31 Jan. 1621.

83 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 444: 22 Feb. 1621.

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Virginia gives a fifth crown’ – added to those of England, Ireland, Scotland and France).James clung to the notion that it was his fifth crown and his royal council of Virginiaand not that of the nation – although it was not his money and efforts that hadestablished the colony.

Secretary of State Calvert enunciated the king’s position that the colonies were not aconcern of the English parliament. ‘It belongs to the king’s prerogative power to governthe countries that he discovers and conquers; we are not to make laws for them untilthey be annexed to the crown of England.’84 He explained that the fishing ‘bill [is] notproper for this house because [it] concerneth America’.85 Sandys, in contrast, argued thatVirginia was held ‘as of East Greenwich’, part of the demesne of the king, and thereforepart of England.86 The Virginia Company representatives in the House did not considerEngland’s first colony across the Atlantic to be a separate and distinct dominion, but theking did, and parliament eventually bowed to his will. It never did legislate for thecolonies. Although bills about fishing off the coast of North America were debatedthroughout the 1620s, no such bill ever passed both Houses.87

English relations with Spain also played a part in disputes over the Virginia colony.James trod a careful path in his attempt to deal with conflicting claims over colonialinterests in America and in his support of his son-in-law which challenged Spanishsupremacy in Europe. One of the key figures in this was the Spanish ambassador DiegoSarmiento de Acuña, count of Gondomar. It was most likely Gondomar who drewattention to the problems with the proposedVirginia charter after the king had indicatedhis initial approbation. When James first read the proposal of the Virginia Company ‘itpleased his majesty to say (having read the letter) that he found nothing therein whichmight not in reason be granted’.88 The diplomat and the king, who called themselves ‘thetwo Diegos’, enjoyed long discussions on literary and political topics but Gondomarnever lost sight of his mission to keep the English from aiding the Dutch and fromthreatening Spanish possessions in the New World. To that end it appears that heemphasized the seditious nature of the Virginia leaders. He had successfully complainedto James about Walter Ralegh’s Orinoco expedition in 1618 and about Roger North’sexpedition to Amazon in 1620 so it should be no surprise that he raised objections tothe proposed charter that would only strengthen and encourage the English colony onthe Chesapeake in 1621. According to one account, the ambassador famously instructedJames that the Virginia Company was ‘a seminary for a seditious parliament’.89 TheVenetian ambassador, who received much of his information from the Spanish ambas-sador, reported something similar to his government. In discussing the leaders of parlia-ment, chief among them Sir Edwin Sandys, the Venetian ambassador emphasized that

84 CD, v, 99.85 CJ, i, 626: 24 May 1621; see also CD, ii, 386.86 CD, v, 99: ‘Virginia is united already in some manner to England, for Virginia doth hold of East

Greenwich by socage’. Gorges’s revived New England colony, in contrast, was held ‘by the sword’ and the partof that granted to Nova Scotia was held from the Scottish crown.

87 Leo Francis Stock, Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments Respecting North America (Washington,1924).

88 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 438: 29 Jan. 1620.89 ‘Copy of a Petition from the Gov and Company of the Sommer Islands’ in Arthur Woodnoth, A Short

Collection of the Most Remarkable Passages from the Originall to the Dissolution of the Virginia Company (1651), 4.



James ‘considers them the roots of sedition’.90 Such an opinion soon permeated thecourt: Prince Charles later complained to Buckingham about those ‘seditious fellows’ inthe House.91

Although Gondomar’s interference in the Virginia Company has long been dismissedby many historians, the Virginia Company executives had no doubt about its effect,claiming that Gondomar had used his influence to destroy the plantation.92 Sandys wasconcerned not to offer the Spaniards outright provocation or any excuse to attackthe colony. The previous year he had risked the anger of his Virginia colleagues on thecouncil, and in a pre-emptive effort to limit any political fallout, he reported to theSpaniards in England that some pirates had stopped in Virginia. He thought that bytaking a lead in prosecuting attacks on Spanish shipping in the West Indies, he couldsuccessfully disassociate theVirginia Company from any negative consequences.Avoidingdirect confrontation, Sandys and Gondomar engaged in a subtle and delicate hostility:Sandys by going to the privy council about the English pirates, Gondomar by going tothe king about the proposed charter. Sandys’s rival in the Virginia Company, the earl ofWarwick, in contrast, was an unapologetic hawk eager to take advantage of a war in theWest Indies.

The obstinacy of the Virginia executives threatened matters dearest to the king in1621, just as Sandys’s contrariness in James’s first parliament had destroyed any hope ofhis desired union between England and Scotland. James and his councillors decided thatthe risks of an untrammelled Virginia Company led by Sandys and Southampton weretoo great. The seemingly abrupt cancellation of the Virginia lotteries was therefore nota straightforward affair. In the same way that the attack on the gold and silver threadmonopoly, while appearing to be a simple matter of fripperies, was a thinly-veiled strikeat the duke of Buckingham, so the attack on the lotteries was a strike at the Virginialeaders. The cancellation made clear that the interests of the Virginia Company andothers involved in the economic life of the colony were to be subsumed to those of thecrown.Without lottery money and with increased tobacco taxes the company appearedto be at an utter standstill.

3. Reaction and Retaliation

The decision to cancel the Virginia lotteries in February 1621 focused contemporaryattention not on gambling, proclamations inhibiting free speech, or corporate oversight– the ostensible reasons offered for the parliamentary and royal actions – but on thetobacco taxes which were the underlying cause of conflict between the crown andthe company.

The day Cranfield announced that ‘his majesty would be pleased to suspend thelotteries’, the Virginia Company managers sitting in parliament went into action.That same Monday, 26 February, Sir Edwin Sandys, addressing a full house, gave an

90 Charles Howard Carter, The Secret Diplomacy of the Hapsburgs, 1598–1625 (New York, 1964), 291, n. 9.91 CSPVen, xvii, 75: Girolamo Lando to the doge and senate, 2 July 1621; Goodman, Court of King James,

209–10.92 Peter Peckard, Memoirs of the Life of Mr. Nicholas Ferrar (Cambridge, 1790), 109ff.

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impassioned speech about the loss of trade and ‘the decay of money’.93 He slipped aproposal into this speech for a limit on Spanish tobacco imports and some protection forthe infant tobacco industry of Virginia. Sandys’s speech, widely reported by contem-poraries and often quoted by historians, is rarely connected with Cranfield’s action onthe lottery, but should be viewed as a response. Sandys demanded an end to theimportation of Spanish tobacco and a prohibition on tobacco planting in England. Bothmoves were intended to boost sales of Virginia’s only significant export product – atsame time the company was trying to reduce the production of tobacco in the colony.

Sandys and Cranfield thus went head to head about Virginia tobacco imports. Theantagonism between the two men culminated the following year in the acrimoniousfight over the 1622 tobacco contract and Cranfield’s subsequent impeachment, led bySandys, in the parliament of 1624. Sandys’s and Cranfield’s biographers do not date, andoffer no explanation for, the bitter breach between the two men but they were clearlyat loggerheads by May 1621.94 The provocation for the break was not merely theescalating insults they threw at each other in parliament that month.

Contemporaries recognized the close connection between lottery money and domes-tic tobacco production. The Virginia Company had previously considered asking thegovernment to inhibit the planting of tobacco in England, but had rejected the idea asunseemly. In November 1619, the executive council of the company decided that anyrequest for a prohibition ‘might be a scandall for Virginia, as that it could not subsistwithout that weed’.95 This refusal to attack domestic tobacco followed directly on theenthusiastic report of the lottery manager about the success of the provincial lotteries. Heassured the executives that ‘as [the money] cometh in, it shall all go for the payment offormer debts and duties’, and he had already discharged £2,000.96 Only the subsequentloss of the lottery money in February 1621 once again forced the issued of domesticprohibition to a head.

The company encountered no royal resistance to a ban on domestic tobacco, a productfrom which the crown could not profit. Indeed, in anticipation of such a ban, James hadalready secured from the Royal College of Physicians a convenient opinion, in 1619, thatEnglish-grown tobacco was harmful.97 Even earlier the privy council had admonishedthe sheriffs of Middlesex and Surrey not to allow planting in the counties aroundLondon.

Closing the door to Spanish tobacco was a different matter. Immediately after theEaster recess, Sandys (as chairman of a sub-committee of the grand committee on trade

93 CD, ii, 139; iv, 104–6; v, 14, 490–3, 516; vi, 10–11, 297: 26 Feb. 1621.94 R.H.Tawney, Business and Politics under James I: Lionel Cranfield as Merchant and Minister (Cambridge, 1958);

Menna Prestwich, Cranfield, Politics under the Stuarts (Oxford, 1966); Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman.95 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i. 258: 3 Nov. 1619.96 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 257: 3 Nov. 1619.97 The opinion that homegrown tobacco was much less wholesome than that imported from countries

where it grew ‘naturally’ is nowhere recorded in the archives of the Royal College (communication of thearchivist Susan Em, January 2003) but was repeated for Prince Charles (Royal College of Physicians, Annals,1638) after the privy council wrote on his behalf that he had been ‘credibly informed’ that taking tobaccogrown in England and Ireland, as opposed to that grown in Virginia and elsewhere, was very unwholesome.James’s distaste for tobacco manifested in his famous Counterblaste (1604, repr. 1616) was more general. The1619 opinion of the physicians was the first step in justifying a ban on the domestic product by virtue of theroyal prerogative ‘for the benefit of the commonwealth’.



chaired by Cranfield) presented a report that linked the import of Spanish tobacco to thedecay of currency and proposed to limit it. Cranfield argued, however, that banningSpanish tobacco would counter the Treaty of London of 1604 and infringe on thecrown’s control of foreign policy. In response, the Virginia Company pointed out thatSpain required all tobacco to enter Seville and put prohibitive imposts on select foreigngoods.

Playing to the House and standing on the legal notion that the crown had the rightto ban harmful products, Cranfield then suggested that all tobacco should be banned.98

In this he was echoed by Sir Robert Heath, the solicitor-general, described by anopponent as ‘a great agent in new suits and projects for greedy courtiers’.99 But thisproposal of a total ban was only an idle threat.The levy on Spanish imports constituteda useful luxury tax for the English crown.Although James personally disliked tobacco, hewas addicted to the taxes it raised.100 In response to Cranfield’s threat, Sandys proposeda bill that gave Virginia and Bermuda a monopoly of the English market by totallyexcluding Spanish and other foreign tobacco – something the crown wanted to avoid.After much hard work and three readings, his bill passed in the house of commons, butdid not make it through the house of lords in the autumn, where Cranfield now sat asearl of Middlesex.101

Many have accused Sandys of hypocrisy for protecting Virginia’s tobacco trade bylegislation while demanding free trade for English merchants abroad, but he consistentlydefended enhanced opportunities, enlarged electoral franchises, and open markets. Hedid not waver in his fight for the outports against London. It was only when Cranfieldannounced that the Virginia lotteries would be cancelled that Sandys returned to, andargued for, the idea of import protection for the infantVirginia industry.As noted above,in private meetings two years earlier while the lotteries were operating profitably, he haddeclined the opportunity to push for a ban on domestic tobacco production. Sandys’schange of course was an immediate and desperate response to the abrupt and devastatingblow of the cancellation of the lotteries, an act he could not hope to counter or revoke,which explicitly contravened the rights enshrined in Virginia’s royal charter of 1612(which promised the company six months notice of any cancellation). Sandys knew thatit would be a losing proposition to fight directly against the crown, so, as he had doneon other occasions, he tried to work around the difficulty.

The ruinous effects of the lottery cancellation cannot be underestimated, and thespeed with which the decision was taken made it that much worse. John Ferrar, thedeputy treasurer, reported the demoralising news to the shareholders in May and notedthat it would take at least five more weeks to settle the accounts. ‘The soddaine [sudden]

98 CJ, i, 581; see also CD, v, 77: Ferrar responded that banishing tobacco would imperil the 4,000 Englishcolonists.

99 CD, v, 77. Paul E. Kopperman, Sir Robert Heath, 1575–1649: Window on an Age (Woodbridge, 1989),217n., attributes Heath’s motion to his dislike of tobacco, but there is no other evidence of a personal aversionto nicotine. The characterisation of Heath comes from James Whitelocke’s description to the aldermen ofLondon in his unsuccessful attempt to win the position of recorder or legal advisor of London. Heath won thejob with Buckingham’s strong backing, HP, Heath.

100 See, e.g., Centre for Kentish Studies, Sackville Papers, Ov56: Cranfield’s copy of the ‘agreementconcerning the king’s right to be sole importer of Spanish tobacco’.

101 In the first sitting, January to June 1621, Cranfield sat in the Commons. He received his title in July andin the second sitting, November to December 1621, he sat in the house of lords.

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suppressing of lotteries have caused that money came not in as they expected . . . thecompanies stock lyeth now altogeather in plate and therfore was not so presently able tobe turned into money without great losse.’102

The cancellation of the lotteries and the resulting crisis for the Virginia Companyprovoked a permanent and acrimonious breach between Cranfield and Sandys, who hadheretofore been sufficiently close that Sandys had asked Cranfield to be his son’sgodfather.103 Cranfield’s actions on the lottery are quickly passed over in his twobiographies, but they were not forgotten by the Virginia Company officials who con-sidered his behaviour malicious. The company exacted its revenge in the same publicarena where its defeat had occurred: in parliament. In May 1624 Sir Edwin Sandys andNicholas Ferrar led an attack on Cranfield that resulted in his impeachment, the loss ofhis offices, an egregious fine, and imprisonment at the king’s pleasure.104 King James wasunable to prevent the downfall of his loyal servant. James’s favourite, the duke ofBuckingham, who had his own dispute with Cranfield, supported Sandys in 1624 inexchange for his co-operation on other issues in that parliament.The cancellation of thelotteries had unintended consequences far beyond what either side contemplated.

4. Conclusion

The lotteries ended suddenly but repercussions lasted for years.The lottery cancellationput an end to the Virginia Company’s varied industrial projects and its plans for anew charter, prompted calls for changes in government tobacco policy both domesticand foreign, broke the close working relationship between Edwin Sandys and LionelCranfield, and led to Cranfield’s impeachment in 1624.

The cancellation of the lotteries was calamitous for the Virginia Company.The majorsource of colonial funds vanished and there were no alternatives on the horizon. Fewnew settlers ventured to sail to Jamestown and further plans for organising large-scaleimmigration had to be put in abeyance. The termination of the lotteries put severepressure on the company to co-operate with the crown in revising its schedule ofpayments for customs duties.

Many have argued that the Virginia lotteries were cancelled because of bad manage-ment and financial irregularities. Although accusations of this type were bandied about,in 1621 no one provided such details or proposed any formal charges – unlike the fraudcase prosecuted eight years previously. Company documents refer to accusations anddisrepute, but when, in December 1621, lottery manager Gabriel Barbor opened hisbooks and solicited specific charges which he could rebut, none were forthcoming. Nospecific charges were mentioned in parliament, and in November 1621, after the lotterieswere cancelled, and again at a stockholders’ meeting in January, the manager of therunning lottery repeatedly asked for detailed charges which were never lodged. Hisaccounts were laid on the table for all to see.The company gave him his quietus est and

102 Records, ed. Kingsbury, i, 470: 2 May 1621.103 Rabb, Jacobean Gentleman, 209.104 TheVirginia Company’s revenge on Lord Middlesex, in the parliament of 1624 is a topic I hope to treat

in greater detail in a separate study. Although many groups and individuals had reason to dislike him, it wasSandys’s and Ferrar’s four hour ‘invective oration’ against him which set his downfall in motion.



signed off on his financial statements. Civic officials commended the performance of themanager, and in later years he was employed by the Virginia leaders (of both ‘factions’)and by the crown on matters of financial delicacy. Only in 1623, more than two yearsafter the cancellation, did one faction in the company raise the issue of whether therunning lottery manager had absconded with funds and bribed the auditors – anaccusation that was never pursued.105 Although it cannot be affirmed that they wereuncorrupt, there is no evidence that the lotteries were cancelled because of any seriousbelief in financial malfeasance.

Others maintain that the lotteries were abrogated for constitutional reasons – becauseno private benefit could be awarded by royal proclamation. Yet that legal argument wasscarcely mentioned in the debate surrounding the cancellation, nor is it included in theking’s proclamation terminating the lottery.106 The issue of the lottery proclamation hadalready been raised in 1615; it was not a matter of a new proclamation in 1621 as somesurmise.There is no evidence that concern about the lottery proclamation prompted theHouse to complain or the king to act.

Historians have accepted that there were good and justifiable reasons for cancellingthe lotteries.107 The company had repeatedly considered shutting them down because ofcomplaints, and the volume of these complaints increased as the economic depressiondeepened after 1620.108 Little connection can be made, however, between the internaloperations of the Virginia lotteries, the call for cancellation in parliament, and thecrown’s decision to end them. Whatever practical difficulties the lotteries may haveencountered, the court’s motivation for terminating them appears to have been linked toits own priorities and to its eagerness to compel the Virginia Company to pay tobaccotaxes higher than those specified in the 1612 charter.

The cancellation of the Virginia lottery privilege demonstrates King James’s duplicity,his interference with commercial operations, and the breaking of his own letters patent.It also demonstrates an instance of Cranfield’s deft handling of parliament, suggestingthat the crown was hardly as impotent in managing the House as some scholars suggest.

The cancellation of the lotteries was one of a series of acts that attacked the VirginiaCompany and its charter.These included the king’s demand in the spring of 1620 thatthe company ‘choose the devil if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys’; the grant of thepatent in the autumn of 1620 to the New England (Plymouth) colony, which threatenedVirginia’s fishing privileges; the cancellation of the lotteries in the spring of 1621; andthe imprisonment of the Virginia Company’s leaders, Sandys, Southampton and Seldenin the summer of 1621. These events should be studied individually, but they belong,as well, to a larger pattern of Jacobean pressure on chartered enterprises. The 1621suppression of the Virginia lotteries was an example of the iron fist in the velvet glove;Cranfield made it appear as if the king was responding to his subjects, but he was not.

105 The detailed focus of a proposed investigation is spelled out in ‘A note of some things to be inquiredinto’ of May 1623, which survives in Rich’s papers, printed in Records, ed. Kingsbury, iv, 153.

106 As noted above, Wentworth refers to the patent and proclamation, but it is not clear that his argumenthas to do with the legality per se of the proclamation; he simply demanded that it be brought in and annulled.The major criticism was that the lotteries had been authorised by royal proclamation and that this proclamationhad forbidden anyone to speak against them’: CD, ii, 121; iv, 90.

107 Prestwich, Cranfield, 308, is typical in maintaining that ‘royal action seemed called for’.108 Supple, Commercial Crisis, 52ff.

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The loss of the lottery income in 1621, far more than the events of 1622, when thePowhatan Indians attacked and killed more than 300 colonists, spelled the end toSandys’s ambitious plans for the Virginia colony, which included silk fabrication, ironproduction, glass manufacture, salt making and the construction of sawmills. These ‘vastand wilde’ projects were already in serious trouble and underfunded by 1620, but the endof the lotteries spelled their demise.109 If, as contemporaries believed, the lotteries were‘the real and substantial food ofVirginia’, then the colony’s ‘starving time’ began after thefirst quarter of 1621 when James issued a proclamation indefinitely suspending themwithout notice. The investors had to comfort themselves with the words of their ownlottery advertisement: ‘Let no man think that he shall loose, though he no prize possess;his substance to Virginia goes which God, no doubt will bless.’110

109 Records, ed. Kingsbury, iv, 117: among the charges laid against the managers, the Richs claimed ‘the vasteand wilde projects of Sir E. S. have ruyned plantacons’.

110 ‘Londons lotterie: with an incouragement to the furtherance thereof, for the good of Virginia’ (1612).The sole extant copy, probably saved by John Selden, survives in Magdalene College, Cambridge, Pepys Ballads,i, 190–1.

