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William Claiborne
William Claiborne (also spelled "Clayborne", b. c. 1600 – d. c. 1677) was an English surveyor and early settler in the colonies/provinces of Virginia and Maryland and around the Chesapeake Bay. Claiborne became a wealthy merchant and planter, as well as a major political figure in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the founder of one of the First Families of Virginia. He featured in disputes between the colonists of Virginia and the later settling of Maryland, partly because of his earlier trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which provoked the first naval military battles in North American waters. Claiborne repeatedly attempted and failed to regain Kent Island from the Maryland Calverts, sometimes by force of arms, after its inclusion in the lands that were granted by a 1632 Royal Charter to the Calvert family. Kent Island had become Maryland territory after the surrounding lands were granted to Lord Baltimore by Charles I, King of England.
Claiborne was an Anglican, a Puritan sympathizer, and deeply resentful of the Calverts' Catholicism. He was one of the signers, along with Virginia Governor John Pott, Samuel Matthews, and Roger Smyth, of a letter to the King's Privy Council, dated 30 November 1629, complaining that Lord Baltimore refused to take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy to the Church of England. He sided with Parliament during the English Civil War and was appointed to a commission charged with subduing and managing the Province of Virginia and Province of Maryland, both British colonies at the time. He played a role in the submission of Virginia to parliamentary rule in this period. Following the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, he retired from involvement in the politics of the Virginia colony. He died around 1677 at his plantation, Romancoke, on Virginia's Pamunkey River. According to historian Robert Brenner, "William Claiborne may have been the most consistently influential politician in Virginia throughout the whole of the pre-Restoration period".
Claiborne was born in Crayford parish in the county of Kent in England to Sarah Smith James, the widowed daughter of a London brewer, and was baptised on August 10, 1600. His father, Thomas Clayborn, was an alderman and lord mayor from King's Lynn, Norfolk, who made his living as a small-scale businessman involved in a variety of industries, including the salt and fish trades. His elder half brother may have been Sir Roger James, a shareholder in the Virginia Company of London. The family name have various alternate spellings, as was common in the day, including Cleburn, Cleyborne, or Claiborne (the last of which he later adopted). William Claiborne was the younger of two sons. The family's business was not profitable enough to make it rich, and so Claiborne's older brother was apprenticed in London, becoming a merchant involved in hosiery and, eventually, the tobacco trade. He entered Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge on May 31, 1617.
Four years later, Claiborne was offered a position as a land surveyor in the new colony of Virginia, and arrived at Jamestown, on the north shore of the James River in October 1621, in the retinue of the colony's new governor, Sir Francis Wyatt. The position carried a 200-acre (80 hectare) land grant, a salary of £30 per year, a house and the promise of fees paid by settlers who needed to have their land grants surveyed. Claiborne mapped out "New Towne", an expansion of the growing Jamestown (which was becoming James City). His political acumen quickly made him one of the most successful Virginia colonists, and within four years of his arrival he had secured grants for 1,100 acres (445 hectares) of land and a retroactive salary of £60 a year from the Virginia Colony's council. Meanwhile, the native Powhatan people had been disturbed by the influx of immigrants, particularly new villages established on traditional farming lands, the subsequent need to purchase food from the settlers, and the enforced placement of Indian youth in "colleges."[clarification needed] Months after Claiborne's arrival, in March 1622, they attacked Jamestown and other plantations, killing hundreds in what became known as the Indian massacre. The settlers retaliated, killing hundreds of tribesmen and their families, burning fields, and spreading smallpox. Claiborne survived the attack, but recommended that the king take over the colony's management.
Claiborne achieved financial success using his political success. Appointed to the Governor's Council in 1624, he was named the colony's Secretary of State in 1626. Around 1627, he began to trade for furs with the Susquehannock people who lived further north on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, traveling or trading southward on two of its largest tributaries, the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers. Claiborne wanted to establish a trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which he planned to make the center of his mercantile operations along the Atlantic Coast. Claiborne found both financial and political support for the Kent Island venture from London merchants Maurice Thomson, William Cloberry, John de la Barre, and Simon Turgis.
In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, arrived in Virginia, having traveled south from Avalon, his failed colony on Newfoundland. Calvert was not welcomed by the Virginians, both because his Catholicism offended them as Protestants, and because it was no secret that Calvert desired a charter for a portion of the land that the Virginians considered their own. After a brief stay, Calvert returned to England to press for just such a charter, and Claiborne, in his capacity as Secretary of State of Virginia colony, was sent to England to argue the Virginians' case. This happened to be to Claiborne's private advantage, as he was also trying to complete the arrangements for the trading post on Kent Island.
Calvert, a former high official in the government of King James I, asked the Privy Council for permission to build a colony, to be called Carolina, on land south of the Virginia settlements in area of the modern-day North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Claiborne arrived soon afterwards and expressed the concerns of Virginia that its territorial integrity was being threatened. He was joined in his protests by a group of London merchants who planned to build a sugar colony in the same area. Claiborne, still intent on his own project, received a royal trading commission through one of his London supporters in 1631, one which granted him the right to trade with the natives on all lands in the mid-Atlantic where there was not already a patent in effect.
Claiborne sailed for Kent Island on May 28, 1631, with indentured servants recruited in London and money for his trading post, likely believing Calvert's hopes defeated. He was able to gain the support of the Virginia Council for his project and, as a reward for London merchant Maurice Thomson's financial support, helped Thomson and two associates get a contract from Virginia guaranteeing a monopoly on tobacco. Claiborne's Kent Island settlers established a small plantation on the island and appointed a clergyman. Around this same time, a trading outpost called "Palmer's Island Post" was built on Garrett Island. While the settlement on Kent Island was progressing, the Privy Council had proposed to Sir George Calvert, former Secretary of State for the King that he be granted a charter for lands north of the Virginia colony, in replacement for the unsuccessful settlements of his earlier colony of Avalon in Newfoundland (eastern modern Canada), in order to create pressure on the Dutch settlements further north along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers (modern states of Delaware, New Jersey and New York). Calvert accepted, though he died in 1632 before the charter could be formally signed by King Charles I, and the Royal Grant and Charter for the new colony of Maryland was instead granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, on 20 June 1632. This turn of events was unfortunate for Claiborne, since the Maryland charter included all lands on either side of the Chesapeake Bay north of the mouth of the Potomac River, a region which included Claiborne's proposed trading post on Kent Island, mid-way on the Bay. The Virginia Assembly, still in support of Claiborne and now including representatives of the Kent Island settlers, issued a series of proclamations and protests both before and after when the news of the granting of the Maryland charter reached across the ocean, claiming the lands for Virginia and protesting the charter's legality.
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William Claiborne
William Claiborne (also spelled "Clayborne", b. c. 1600 – d. c. 1677) was an English surveyor and early settler in the colonies/provinces of Virginia and Maryland and around the Chesapeake Bay. Claiborne became a wealthy merchant and planter, as well as a major political figure in the mid-Atlantic colonies, and the founder of one of the First Families of Virginia. He featured in disputes between the colonists of Virginia and the later settling of Maryland, partly because of his earlier trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which provoked the first naval military battles in North American waters. Claiborne repeatedly attempted and failed to regain Kent Island from the Maryland Calverts, sometimes by force of arms, after its inclusion in the lands that were granted by a 1632 Royal Charter to the Calvert family. Kent Island had become Maryland territory after the surrounding lands were granted to Lord Baltimore by Charles I, King of England.
Claiborne was an Anglican, a Puritan sympathizer, and deeply resentful of the Calverts' Catholicism. He was one of the signers, along with Virginia Governor John Pott, Samuel Matthews, and Roger Smyth, of a letter to the King's Privy Council, dated 30 November 1629, complaining that Lord Baltimore refused to take the Oath of Allegiance and Supremacy to the Church of England. He sided with Parliament during the English Civil War and was appointed to a commission charged with subduing and managing the Province of Virginia and Province of Maryland, both British colonies at the time. He played a role in the submission of Virginia to parliamentary rule in this period. Following the restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, he retired from involvement in the politics of the Virginia colony. He died around 1677 at his plantation, Romancoke, on Virginia's Pamunkey River. According to historian Robert Brenner, "William Claiborne may have been the most consistently influential politician in Virginia throughout the whole of the pre-Restoration period".
Claiborne was born in Crayford parish in the county of Kent in England to Sarah Smith James, the widowed daughter of a London brewer, and was baptised on August 10, 1600. His father, Thomas Clayborn, was an alderman and lord mayor from King's Lynn, Norfolk, who made his living as a small-scale businessman involved in a variety of industries, including the salt and fish trades. His elder half brother may have been Sir Roger James, a shareholder in the Virginia Company of London. The family name have various alternate spellings, as was common in the day, including Cleburn, Cleyborne, or Claiborne (the last of which he later adopted). William Claiborne was the younger of two sons. The family's business was not profitable enough to make it rich, and so Claiborne's older brother was apprenticed in London, becoming a merchant involved in hosiery and, eventually, the tobacco trade. He entered Pembroke College at the University of Cambridge on May 31, 1617.
Four years later, Claiborne was offered a position as a land surveyor in the new colony of Virginia, and arrived at Jamestown, on the north shore of the James River in October 1621, in the retinue of the colony's new governor, Sir Francis Wyatt. The position carried a 200-acre (80 hectare) land grant, a salary of £30 per year, a house and the promise of fees paid by settlers who needed to have their land grants surveyed. Claiborne mapped out "New Towne", an expansion of the growing Jamestown (which was becoming James City). His political acumen quickly made him one of the most successful Virginia colonists, and within four years of his arrival he had secured grants for 1,100 acres (445 hectares) of land and a retroactive salary of £60 a year from the Virginia Colony's council. Meanwhile, the native Powhatan people had been disturbed by the influx of immigrants, particularly new villages established on traditional farming lands, the subsequent need to purchase food from the settlers, and the enforced placement of Indian youth in "colleges."[clarification needed] Months after Claiborne's arrival, in March 1622, they attacked Jamestown and other plantations, killing hundreds in what became known as the Indian massacre. The settlers retaliated, killing hundreds of tribesmen and their families, burning fields, and spreading smallpox. Claiborne survived the attack, but recommended that the king take over the colony's management.
Claiborne achieved financial success using his political success. Appointed to the Governor's Council in 1624, he was named the colony's Secretary of State in 1626. Around 1627, he began to trade for furs with the Susquehannock people who lived further north on the shores of the Chesapeake Bay, traveling or trading southward on two of its largest tributaries, the Susquehanna and Potomac rivers. Claiborne wanted to establish a trading post on Kent Island in the mid-way of the Chesapeake Bay, which he planned to make the center of his mercantile operations along the Atlantic Coast. Claiborne found both financial and political support for the Kent Island venture from London merchants Maurice Thomson, William Cloberry, John de la Barre, and Simon Turgis.
In 1629, George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore, arrived in Virginia, having traveled south from Avalon, his failed colony on Newfoundland. Calvert was not welcomed by the Virginians, both because his Catholicism offended them as Protestants, and because it was no secret that Calvert desired a charter for a portion of the land that the Virginians considered their own. After a brief stay, Calvert returned to England to press for just such a charter, and Claiborne, in his capacity as Secretary of State of Virginia colony, was sent to England to argue the Virginians' case. This happened to be to Claiborne's private advantage, as he was also trying to complete the arrangements for the trading post on Kent Island.
Calvert, a former high official in the government of King James I, asked the Privy Council for permission to build a colony, to be called Carolina, on land south of the Virginia settlements in area of the modern-day North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. Claiborne arrived soon afterwards and expressed the concerns of Virginia that its territorial integrity was being threatened. He was joined in his protests by a group of London merchants who planned to build a sugar colony in the same area. Claiborne, still intent on his own project, received a royal trading commission through one of his London supporters in 1631, one which granted him the right to trade with the natives on all lands in the mid-Atlantic where there was not already a patent in effect.
Claiborne sailed for Kent Island on May 28, 1631, with indentured servants recruited in London and money for his trading post, likely believing Calvert's hopes defeated. He was able to gain the support of the Virginia Council for his project and, as a reward for London merchant Maurice Thomson's financial support, helped Thomson and two associates get a contract from Virginia guaranteeing a monopoly on tobacco. Claiborne's Kent Island settlers established a small plantation on the island and appointed a clergyman. Around this same time, a trading outpost called "Palmer's Island Post" was built on Garrett Island. While the settlement on Kent Island was progressing, the Privy Council had proposed to Sir George Calvert, former Secretary of State for the King that he be granted a charter for lands north of the Virginia colony, in replacement for the unsuccessful settlements of his earlier colony of Avalon in Newfoundland (eastern modern Canada), in order to create pressure on the Dutch settlements further north along the Delaware and Hudson Rivers (modern states of Delaware, New Jersey and New York). Calvert accepted, though he died in 1632 before the charter could be formally signed by King Charles I, and the Royal Grant and Charter for the new colony of Maryland was instead granted to his son, Cecilius Calvert, on 20 June 1632. This turn of events was unfortunate for Claiborne, since the Maryland charter included all lands on either side of the Chesapeake Bay north of the mouth of the Potomac River, a region which included Claiborne's proposed trading post on Kent Island, mid-way on the Bay. The Virginia Assembly, still in support of Claiborne and now including representatives of the Kent Island settlers, issued a series of proclamations and protests both before and after when the news of the granting of the Maryland charter reached across the ocean, claiming the lands for Virginia and protesting the charter's legality.
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