Governor Sir George Yeardley

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Historical records indicate that two knights died in Jamestown during the 17th century – Sir Thomas West, in 1618, and Sir George Yeardley.

Sir Yeardley’s step-grandson ordered a tombstone for himself in the 1680s with the same inscription as the black limestone one.

This led researchers to suspect that the 1627 tombstone belonged to Sir George Yeardley.

Sir Yeardley was born in Southwark, England, in 1588 and arrived at Jamestown in 1610 after surviving a shipwreck near Bermuda.

http://www.thefullwiki.org/George_Yeardley

Sir George Yeardley (1587 - 1627) was a plantation owner and three time colonial Governor of the British Colony of Virginia. A survivor of the Virginia Company of London's ill-fated Third Supply Mission, whose flagship, the Sea Venture, was shipwrecked on Bermuda for 10 months in 1609-10, he is best remembered for presiding over the initial session of the first representative legislative body in Virginia in 1619. With representatives from throughout the settled portion of the colony, the group became known as the House of Burgesses. It has met continuously since, and is known in modern times as the Virginia General Assembly.

Early life

George Yeardley was baptized 28 July 1588 in St. Saviour's Parish, Southwark, Surrey. Yeardley was the son of Ralph Yeardley (1549-1604), a London merchant-tailor, and Rhoda Marston (d. 1603). He chose not to follow his father into trade, but instead became a soldier and joined a company of English foot-soldiers to fight the Spanish in the Netherlands. As captain of a personal bodyguard, he was selected to serve Sir Thomas Gates during his term as Governor of Virginia.

The Shipwreck

Yeardley set sail on 1 June with the newly appointed Gates aboard the Sea Venture, the flagship of the ill-fated Third Supply expedition to Jamestowne. Leaving England in 1609, after seven weeks at sea and eight days from expected landfall the convoy ran into a tropical storm and the Sea Venture was shipwrecked in the Bermudas. No lives were lost, despite numerous problems and civil unrest amongst the former passengers, causing Gates to declare martial law, in 10 months time two small ships were built, the 30 ton Deliverance and the pinnance Patience, they arrived at Jamestowne 23 May 1610

Jamestown

The shipwreck survivors found the colonists of Jamestown in desperate condition. Most of the settlers had died from sickness, starvation, or been killed by Indians. Sir Thomas Gates agreed with the Jamestown settlers to abandon the colony and return to England. He ordered Captain George Yeardley to command his soldiers to guard the town preventing settlers from setting fire to the structures that were evacuated. Lord de la Warr soon arrived bringing supplies to save the struggling colony. Captain Yeardley was co-commander of the early Forts Henry and Charles at Kecoughtan. In October 1610, Lord De La Warr ordered Captain Yeardley and Captain Edward Brewster to lead 150 men into the mountains in search of silver and gold mines.

Marriage and Deputy-Governorship

In 1613 Yeardley married Temperence Flowerdew, daughter of Anthony Flowerdew of Hethersett, County Norfolk, and his wife Martha Stanley of Scottow, County Norfolk. Temperence had also sailed for Virginia in the 1609 expedition aboard the Faulcon, arriving at Jamestowne in August 1609, and one of the few survivors of the Starving Time.

In 1616 George Yeardley was designated Deputy-Governor of Virginia. One of his first duties was to come to an agreement with the Chickahominy Indians that secured food and peace for two years. He served from 1616-1617. Yeardley was appointed Deputy-Governor again in 1625.

Knighthood and Governorships of Virginia

Sir George Yeardley was knighted at Newmarket, England, on 24 November 1618, six days later he was commissioned Governor of Virginia. He was granted 300 acres (1.2 km2) of land to help defer the cost of maintaining himself as governor.

In 1618, he patented 1,000 acres of land on Mulberry Island. [1] He owned another private plantation upriver on the south side of the James River opposite Weyanoke, named Flowerdew Hundred.

Flowerdew Hundred plantation dates to 1618 with the patent of 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) on the south side of the James River in Virginia. Sir George Yeardley, a Governor and Captain General of the Virginia Colony, named the property after his wife, Temperance Flowerdew. The plantation elected two representatives to the first General Assembly in Jamestown in 1619: one was an ancestor of President Thomas Jefferson. With a population of about thirty, the plantation was economically successful with thousands of pounds of tobacco produced along with corn, fish and livestock. Sir George paid 120 pounds (possibly a hogshead of tobacco) to build the first windmill in British America in 1621.

The plantation survived the 1622 onslaught of Powhatan Indians losing only six people. It remained an active and fortified private plantation unlike many others in the area, such as the Citie of Henricus. The windmill was an English post design and was transferred by deed in the property’s 1624 sale to Abraham Piersey, a Cape Merchant of the London Company.

Yeardley led the first representative Virginia General Assembly, the legislative House of Burgesses, to meet on American soil convened at the church in Jamestown, 30 July 1619. One of the first acts of the this representative body was to set the price of tobacco. Yeardley was appointed Deputy-Governor again in 1625. He served a second time as Governor from 4 March 1626/7 until his death 13 November 1627. Sir George Yeardley is buried in the church at Jamestowne, Virginia.

Yeardley married Temperance Flowerdew, daughter of Anthony Flowerdew and Martha Stanley. The couple had three children:

Argoll Yeardley (31 August 1618 - 29 October 1655).

Elizabeth Yeardley (1620-1660)

Francis Yeardley (December 1623 - August 1657)

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George Yeardley /////////// He chose the life of a soldier and joined English footsoldiers to fight in the Netherlands against Spain. He was in charge of a company of bodguards to protect Sir. Thomas Gates when he was Governor of Virginia. He was one of the 60 subscribers to the Virginia Company 23 May 1609. He sailed to Virginia in 1609 in the ill fated Seaventure. He arrived in Virginia 9 months later and when Thomas Gates ordered Jamestowne to be abandoned he left Yearley in charge of a company of soldiers. Captain Yeardley was in charge of forts at Fort Henry and Fort Charles. In 1613 he married Temperance Flowerdew dau of Anthony Flowerdew of Hethersett, County Norfolk, England. She had sailed for Virginia in 1609. He was designated Deputy Governor in 1616. He was designated Governor of Virginia 18 Nov 1618, and 6 days later he was knighted. George Yeardley was knighted at Newmarket 24 Nov 1618. //////////// He built a plantation of 1000 acres of land called Flowerdew Hundred which was later sold to Capt. Abraham Peirsey. Sources (1)

Sir George Yeardley (1587 - 1627) was a plantation owner and three time colonial Governor of Virginia Colony and a survivor of the wreck of the Sea Venture. In 1613 Yeardley married Temperence Flowerdew.

https://www.encyclopediavirginia.org/Yeardley_Sir_George_bap_1588-1627

Sir George Yeardley served as deputy governor (1616–1617), governor (1619–1621), and royal governor (1626–1627) of the Virginia colony. Born in London, he met Sir Thomas Gates while fighting for the Netherlands and joined him in Virginia in 1610. There, Yeardley served as captain and then lieutenant of the guard under the colony's new martial law and briefly as deputy governor when Sir Thomas Dale departed to escort Pocahontas to London. After returning to England himself, Yeardley was appointed governor in 1618 and charged with implementing a set of reforms that came to be known as the Great Charter. He instituted the headright system and summoned the first General Assembly. He also likely purchased some of the first Africans to arrive in 1619, making him one of the first slaveholders in Virginia. On 1,000 acres granted by the Virginia Company of London, Yeardley established the Flowerdew Hundred plantation, where he built the first windmill in British North America. As company politics became more difficult, he resigned as governor in 1621 but remained involved in colonial affairs, especially after the surprise attacks by Virginia Indians in 1622. After the Virginia Company dissolved in 1624, Yeardley returned to London to deliver a report on conditions in the colony and there, in 1626, was appointed the new royal governor. His health soon failed, however, and Yeardley died in Jamestown in 1627.

Early Years

Yeardley was baptized at Saint Savior's Church in the Southwark section of central London on July 23, 1588. He was the second son of Ralph Yeardley, a merchant tailor, and his second wife, Rhoda Marston Yeardley. Little is known of his early life and education. About 1605 he served under Sir Thomas Gates in a company of foot-soldiers in the army of the States General of the Netherlands during its war with Spain. At the time, Gates had become involved in the Virginia Company of London, and in 1609 he led an English fleet of nine ships and 600 passengers to resupply the struggling colony. Yeardley and Gates both were aboard the flagship Sea Venture when it encountered a hurricane and washed ashore in Bermuda. After spending ten months on the islands, the crew and passengers built two new boats, the Patience and Deliverance, and arrived in Virginia on May 21, 1610.

At Jamestown they discovered a colony nearly destroyed by the Starving Time and violence with the Indians of Tsenacomoco. In an attempt at instilling military discipline, Gates immediately issued the first of a set of regulations known as the Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall. A few weeks later the new governor, Thomas West, twelfth baron De La Warr, arrived and confirmed martial law. In the meantime, Gates appointed Yeardley captain of the guard and, in 1611, promoted him to lieutenant. Two years later, when Sir Thomas Dale founded the plantation Bermuda Hundred, Yeardley served as his second in command there.

On April 19, 1616, after Dale, then the acting governor, departed to escort Pocahontas and John Rolfe to London, Yeardley became deputy governor. He served until May 15, 1617, and the arrival of De La Warr's new deputy, Samuel Argall. During this time, the Pamunkey leader Opechancanough convinced the independent Chickahominy Indians, who had made a treaty years earlier with Dale, that his absence nullified any agreements. Yeardley confronted the Chickahominy and insisted that the treaty had been with the English colony, not simply Dale. Although the Indians appeased Yeardley in the short term, they soon joined the paramount chiefdom of Tsenacomoco.

Great Charter

Yeardley returned to England in mid- to late 1617, and on October 18, 1618, married Temperance Flowerdew. They had two sons and a daughter, all of whom were born later in Virginia. Flowerdew herself was a veteran of the colony, having sailed in the same fleet as the Sea Venture but on the Faulcon, a ship that had missed the hurricane and arrived safely in Jamestown. It's not clear whether Flowerdew, who may have been married in 1609, remained in the colony during the Starving Time.

On November 18, 1618, the Virginia Company of London appointed Yeardley the colony's governor and presented him with a detailed set of instructions. Often referred to as the Great Charter, the document articulated a number of important reforms. It established the headright system, which promised fifty acres of land for each person who paid his or her own passage or any other person's passage to Virginia. It used land to defray the cost of funding the government by granting its officers land and tenants, including slaves and indentured servants. It called for the founding of an Indian college. And in order to end martial law, it replaced the military government with a Crown-appointed governor and advisory council, while authorizing the governor to summon a General Assembly to legislate as appropriate.

A week after Yeardley's appointment, on November 24, 1618, King James I knighted him at Newmarket, in Suffolk County, England. In a letter to Sir Dudley Carleton, dated November 28, John Chamberlain mocked Yeardley's new honor, writing that it "hath set him up so high that he flaunts it up and down the streets in extraordinarie braverie with fowerteen or fifteen fayre liveries after him." The tone reflected concerns within the Virginia Company, in particular that Yeardley would be too lenient with English and Indians alike. Sir Thomas Smythe, one of the company's chief officers, was skeptical of his leadership in part because Yeardley had aligned himself with a faction led by Sir Edwin Sandys, which would seek alliance with the powerful Rich family and in a year's time take control of the company.

The new governor embarked for Virginia aboard the George on January 19, 1619, arriving in Jamestown on April 18.

Governor

Yeardley immediately implemented the headright system and apportioned sections of land for various government officials, including 3,000 acres and 100 tenants for himself and future governors. He also called for the election of two burgesses from each of the colony's eleven settlements. From July 30 to August 4, 1619, they met in unicameral session with Yeardley, the six-man governor's Council, and the secretary and treasurer of the colony—the first representative assembly in British North America. Yeardley named Secretary John Pory, his wife's first cousin, as the assembly's Speaker.

Virginia's government no longer operated by decree, and Yeardley found it difficult to overcome resistance to many of the company's reforms. Planters were not anxious to diversify the economy, finding quick profit in tobacco; neither were they welcoming of better relations with the Indians of Tsenacomoco. Land was set aside for an Indian school on the north side of the James River, east of present-day Richmond, but it was not immediately built. George Thorpe, a member of the Council, wrote to Sandys in 1621 that he had planted vines at the college site but was having no luck with silk worms. And increasing factionalism within the Virginia Company only made it more difficult for Yeardley to govern effectively.

Late in August or early in September of 1619 two English ships arrived at Point Comfort carrying Africans stolen from a Portuguese slave ship bound for Vera Cruz, New Spain (present-day Mexico). Yeardley dispatched representatives to meet the second of the two ships, the Treasurer, but it had fled by the time they arrived, probably because the Virginians had refused to sell supplies to its captain. Yeardley may have been concerned that the captain's letters of marque—paperwork that allowed civilians to attack and plunder Spanish and Portuguese ships—had expired at a time when the king sought better relations with the Spanish. Complicating matters was the fact that the Treasurer was owned in part by Samuel Argall (after whom Yeardley had named his first son) and Lord Robert Rich, earl of Warwick, a wealthy investor in the Virginia Company.

By upsetting Warwick, Yeardley had also upset the alliance between the earl and Sandys, a longtime opponent of piracy and Yeardley's political patron. In 1620, Sir Thomas Gates, Yeardley's old commander, joined others in the company who favored a more military-style government in protesting Yeardley's appointment. Pory defended Yeardley to the Crown, writing that he had invested his own funds in the colony without seeking unnecessary profit, but in 1621 Yeardley resigned. He agreed to remain in office until the arrival, on November 18, 1621, of his successor, Sir Francis Wyatt. He also accepted a position on the governor's Council.

Land, Servants, and Slaves

During his second stay in Virginia, Yeardley became one of the chief landowners in the colony, with a comparably large number of indentured servants and enslaved laborers. At the time of his appointment as governor, the company granted him 1,000 acres on the south side of the James River between present-day Richmond and Williamsburg, a plantation he named Flowerdew Hundred, after his wife. In 1621, Yeardley paid 120 pounds to build a windmill there, the first in British North America, before selling the plantation to Abraham Piersey in 1624. Also in 1621, Esmy Shichans, an Indian leader known as the Laughing King, gave Yeardley between 3,000 and 4,000 acres on the Eastern Shore, and three years later he patented 100 acres that included 7.5 acres in urban Jamestown. In 1627 he obtained 1,000 acres on Mulberry Island, on the north side of the James River about ten miles below Jamestown. He called the new plantation Stanley Hundred, after his wife's mother, Martha Stanley.

On February 16, 1624, the colony muster recorded Yeardley living in Jamestown with his wife, three children, eight white servants, and two unnamed black women, with other servants and enslaved Africans likely laboring at Yeardley's other properties. Unlike with the white servants, the names and origins of the black women went unnoted, suggesting they were enslaved and making Yeardley one of the first slaveholders in Virginia. They may have come from one of the two ships that arrived in 1619. By the next year, when another muster was held on January 25, 1625, Yeardley's holdings had increased substantially. He now claimed thirty-nine laborers, including twenty-four in Jamestown, eight of whom were black. In January 1627, Yeardley received eighteen indentured servants who had once belonged to the Virginia Company, and in October of that year he also received a group of so-called Duty boys, English vagrants who had been shipped to the colony in 1620. They had since served seven years of their indentures and owed seven more.

Even while out of office, Yeardley remained involved in colonial matters. On March 22, 1622, the Indians of Tsenacomoco attacked settlements up and down the James River, killing as many as a third of Virginia's non-native inhabitants, including six people at Flowerdew Hundred. Yeardley led marches against the Pamunkey in 1622 and the Chickahominy in 1623, and in June 1622 explored the Chesapeake Bay in search of safe settlement sites for the survivors of the attack.

Later Years

In 1624, Governor Wyatt returned to England on personal business, leaving Yeardley to serve briefly as interim governor. At the same time, the factionalism and financial problems of the Virginia Company of London, combined with the shocking setback of the 1622 attack, convinced the Crown to dissolve the company. Yeardley himself sailed for England with his wife, arriving late in September or early in October 1625, to deliver a letter to the Privy Council on conditions in the colony. On March 14, 1626, King Charles I appointed Yeardley the new royal governor. He departed for Virginia a month later with instructions to continue diversifying the economy, this time into fruit, corn, and cattle. Yeardley took up the position in June 1626, but by then his health was beginning to fail. He wrote his will on October 12, 1627, and added a codicil on October 29. He died at Jamestown on November 10, 1627, and was buried in the church there three days later. Lady Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley married the new governor, Francis West, in March 1628 and died in December of that year.

In 2018, archaeologists at Historic Jamestowne and Preservation Virginia announced that they were in the process of excavating a grave in the Jamestown Church they believed to be that of Sir George Yeardley. The Washington Post heralded the discovery, noting that Yeardley "represents two of the chief veins in American history—representative government and slavery, which took root in the same summer, in the same place, in the person of the same man."

Time Line

July 23, 1588 - George Yeardley is baptized at Saint Savior's Church in the Southwark section of central London.

ca. 1605 - George Yeardley serves under Sir Thomas Gates in the army of the States General of the Netherlands.

June 2, 1609 - The largest fleet England has ever amassed in the West—nine ships, 600 passengers, and livestock and provisions to last a year—leaves England for Virginia. Led by the flagship Sea Venture, the fleet's mission is to save the failing colony. Sir Thomas Gates heads the expedition.

July 24, 1609 - A hurricane strikes the nine-ship English fleet bound for Virginia on a rescue mission. The flagship Sea Venture is separated from the other vessels and irreparably damaged by the storm.

August 11, 1609 - Four ships reach Jamestown from England: Unity, Lion, Blessing, and Falcon. Two others are en route; two more were wrecked in a storm; and one, Sea Venture, was cast up on the Bermuda islands' shoals.

Winter 1609–1610 - While the English colonists starve in Virginia, the shipwrecked crew and passengers of the Sea Venture make camp in Bermuda. They build two new boats, the Patience and Deliverance, from Bermuda cedar and the scavenged remains of the Sea Venture.

May 24, 1610 - The party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates arrives at Jamestown. Gates makes George Yeardley captain of his guard.

1611 - Sir Thomas Gates promotes George Yeardley to lieutenant. He is now second in command to Sir Thomas Dale at Bermuda Hundred.

April 19, 1616 - With the departure of Sir Thomas Dale, who is escorting Pocahontas to London, George Yeardley becomes deputy governor.

May 15, 1617 - On about this day, Samuel Argall arrives from England in Virginia, where he assumes the office of deputy governor to the absent Thomas West, baron De La Warr.

Mid- to late 1617 - George Yeardley returns to England from Jamestown.

October 18, 1618 - George Yeardley and Temperance Flowerdew marry in England. They will have three children.

November 18, 1618 - The Virginia Company of London issues its "Instructions to George Yeardley," which include the establishment of the General Assembly and the headright system. These instructions come to be known as the Great Charter.

November 24, 1618 - King James I knights George Yeardley, the new governor of Virginia, at Newmarket, County Suffolk.

1619 - Sir George Yeardley establishes Flowerdew Hundred plantation on 1,000 acres of land on the south side of the James River. It is named for his wife.

January 19, 1619 - Sir George Yeardley, the new governor of Virginia, sets sail for the colony on the ship George.

April 18, 1619 - Sir George Yeardley arrives in Jamestown and assumes the position of deputy governor. Government under the Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall ceases.

Summer 1619 - Governor Sir George Yeardley calls for the election of two burgesses from each of Virginia's eleven settlements to sit on a new unicameral legislature that also includes the governor's Council, the colony's secretary, and the treasurer.

July 30, 1619 - The General Assembly holds its first meeting with Governor Sir George Yeardley, the governor's Council, and twenty-two burgesses in a unicameral session in the church at Jamestown.

Late August 1619 - The White Lion, captained by John Colyn Jope, arrives at Point Comfort, where Jope sells "20. and odd Negroes" in exchange for food. These are the first Africans to enter the Virginia colony. Four days later, the Treasurer arrives and its captain, Daniel Elfrith, sells two or three of the enslaved Africans aboard.

1620 - Sir Thomas Gates joins other Virginia Company of London "hard-liners," or those who favor a military-style government, in protesting the appointment of Sir George Yeardley as Virginia's governor. They consider Yeardley's policies to be too lenient.

1621 - Sir George Yeardley resigns as governor. Indians grant him land on the Eastern Shore and he builds a windmill at Flowerdew Hundred, the first in British North America.

November 18, 1621 - Sir Francis Wyatt assumes the position of governor. His predecessor, Sir George Yeardley, joins the governor's Council.

March 22, 1622 - In a coordinated surprise attack by Indians on English settlements in Virginia, Flowerdew Hundred loses six people. Sir George Yeardley later leads attacks against the Pamunkey and Nansemond Indians.

June 1622 - Sir George Yeardley is directed to explore the Chesapeake Bay in search of safe settlement sites for survivors of the recent Indian attack.

1623 - Sir George Yeardley leads a march against the Chickahominy Indians.

1624 - James I authorizes Governor Sir Francis Wyatt to return to England on personal business and names Sir George Yeardley to serve as governor in the interim. He also designates John Harvey a member of the governor's Council and provides that in the event of Yeardley's death during Wyatt's absence, Harvey will become governor.

1624 - Sir George Yeardley sells his plantation Flowerdew Hundred to Abraham Piersey, who renames it Piersey's Hundred.

February 16, 1624 - A muster records Sir George Yeardley living in Jamestown with his wife, three children, eight white servants, and two enslaved Africans.

January 25, 1625 - A muster records Sir George Yeardley has holding thirty-nine laborers, including twenty-four in Jamestown, eight of whom were enslaved Africans.

Late September or early October 1625 - Sir George Yeardley and his wife arrive in England with a letter to the Privy Council on conditions in Virginia.

March 14, 1626 - King Charles I appoints Sir George Yeardley royal governor of Virginia.

April 19, 1626 - Sir George Yeardley, the new governor of Virginia, departs England aboard the ship Ann.

1627 - Sir George Yeardley patents 1,000 acres on Mulberry Island, calling the new plantation Stanley Hundred, after his wife's mother, Martha Stanley.

January 1627 - Sir George Yeardley receives eighteen indentured servants who had once belonged to the Virginia Company of London.

October 1627 - Sir George Yeardley receives a group of so-called Duty boys, English vagrants who still owe seven years on their indentures.

October 12, 1627 - His health failing, Sir George Yeardley writes his will.

October 29, 1627 - Sir George Yeardley adds a codicil to his will.

November 10, 1627 - Sir George Yeardley dies at his home in Jamestown.

November 13, 1627 - Sir George Yeardley is buried in the church at Jamestown.

March 1628 - Francis West and Lady Temperance Flowerdew Yeardley marry.

December 1628 - Lady Temperance Yeardley West, the wife of Francis West and widow of Sir George Yeardley, dies.