History shows value of political image overblown
At a time when America’s founding narratives are receiving increased scrutiny, it is important to recognize that questions of political imagery and reality go back to the foundation of American colonial settlement. At the very moment when the survival of England’s first permanent settlement was in doubt, merchant investors sought to solve the problem by hiring a figurehead.
Lord Delaware, the first governor of Virginia, was chosen because of his noble birth around which a set of myths were created to add luster to the man and the qualities he was meant to bring to the venture. The claims made concerning his impressive background are false.
Status and image were all important. Some consider Lord Delaware’s colony the “Trump University” of its day: Settlers were lured by false promises and leaders fomented violence and risked international ignominy. Thomas West, Lord De La Warr (Delaware), whose name is memorialized in Joe Biden’s home state of Delaware, was an influencer, paid to represent the colonial brand, to hawk settlement to potential colonists who could pay their own way. But wary family members could have advised “don’t believe the hype.”
Delaware today is widely known as the home of corporate charters, but its namesake, Lord Delaware, was the “poorest baron in the kingdom” of England. It is said that the governor was selected for his great wealth, outsized investment in Virginia, his knowledge gained at the center of the government, and his military experience.
But Delaware never served as a royal advisor, never fought in the military, and his purported wealth was deliberately misrepresented. He did not provide capital to develop the colony, but rather was an employee who took a foreign posting to boost his depleted fortune. He was hired as the public face of the colony, to indicate elite approval and to send a message to foreign powers concerning English determination to settle the Americas. He was the only nobleman of his generation who could be persuaded to venture across the Atlantic.
Of late, “The 1619 Project” has been promoted as the essential founding moment of the colonies. But the story, like most, is complex.
Lord Delaware and his small fleet arrived on the coast of Virginia in 1610 just in time to prevent the abandonment of Jamestown after the Starving Time, the worst drought in 600 years. He encountered ships of the depleted settlers sailing away, having packed up the colony. He ordered them back and cleaned up the temporarily abandoned site.
While Delaware’s tough talk and firm action galvanized his underlings, it was brief. Physically unwell, after only 10 months in America he snuck out of the colony with many of the military men he had brought as well as Jamestown’s only surgeon. His contemporary claim to fame rests on a brutal attack on the indigenous people nearby, another significant chapter often omitted from civics lessons and history books.
Delaware, who enjoyed a lifetime appointment, died on his way back to the colony in 1618. His wife and son quickly unloaded the 40 shares of stock he had been awarded in the Virginia Company as fast as the market would allow.
Investors chose as his successor governor a self-made man of modest background, proven local experience, with an enterprising wife who had ventured to the colony on her own. They put him on a three-year contract.
The lessons of Lord Delaware are more relevant than ever today. They suggest that a firm hand is important only in an immediate crisis. For long term institutional support, capitalist enterprise and the democratic debate it enables produce lasting results.
E.M. Rose, MBA, Ph.D., is the author of “Lord Delaware, First Governor of Virginia and ‘The Poorest Baron in the Kingdom’” (Virginia Magazine of History and Biography, September 2020), completed while a visiting fellow at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture and The Jamestown Rediscovery Foundation.