The First Charter of Virginia ;April 10,1606

The author or authors of the first charter of Virginia was appointed by King James on April 10, 1606. The charter; which was like a contract, was meant for the Virginia Company, and anyone else who was planning on going to Virginia to set up colonies. The tone of the document was, formal, persuasive, and somewhat serious. The purpose of the charter was to persuade people to move to the colonies, by giving a set of rules, and a list of benefits, and legal agreements. The purpose of the argument is to set up a legal agreement for the future inhabits of the colonies.

The charter shows a level of persuasion that brings a wide variety of people to Virginia. King James’s goal was to explore, find gold, silver, or copper, and to do all this he would need to have some kind of land grant for the people to go off of. Which means that during that time thee dominate “ruler” was Spain, and England wanted the same benefits that the Spanish were getting. For example: The Spanish found a good amount of gold and valuables that made them wealthy and powerful. Spain owned most of the southern portions of America which progressively put them ahead in their findings. King James wanted something that would benefit England in the same way it would benefit him as a ruler. So to get his people willing to go to Virginia he would need to persuade them with a contract of benefits, rules, and land. It was persuasive because they wrote out that who ever goes to Virginia gets land and any of the resources with that land. And any Gold or silver the colonist find they get 80 % of.

The ethos (emotion) of the paper was greed, selfishness, and deception. The reason I say this is because although the passage seems dull and low key it’s reading between the lines that makes me realize that the emotions portrayed by the writer are clearly for self gain. In the American promise history book on pages 69-74, there is a more expansive view on why King James makes the charter. The passage portrays how the voyage to Virginia was not at all a pleasant one or successful, in fact it primarily resulted in massive early deaths. Of coarse not everyone from the voyage died but a large percentage did. For example: on page 73 “during the “starving time” winter of 1609-10, food became so short in supply that one or two famished settlers resorted to eating their recently deceased neighbors. When a new group of colonist arrived in 1610, they found only 60 of the 500 previous settlers still alive.” They went hoping for a new opportunity and instead found nothing but new diseases, and no food.

The pathos (character, and creditability) the character and creditability of this Charter is that they fulfilled their promise to the settlers for example; they did say they would give land to the people who chose to go, and in fact when they reached their destination they received land. Everything stated in this passage was what the settlers could get when traveling to Virginia, but none of them knew that there really weren’t any rich elements or for that matter any gold in the new land. So the credibility of King James wasn’t completely diminished however, most of the promises he gave were far stretched and inconsistent. He had good intentions but most of his ideas and designs were selfish. The logos (logic) there logic was “they wanted to make a habitation, plantation, and to deduce a colony of sundry of our people into that of America commonly called Virginia.” The settlers mainly came to America to obtain more resources, power, and gain benefits for England. They wanted to find gold and silver so the Virginia Company set up colonies hoping for a gold rush.

The first charter of Virginia was unsuccessful at best, on paper it sounded like an amazing opportunity, one that would not come again. However, upon arrival all that the settlers found was death, starvation, disease, and hostility from Natives. Eventually the colonies were able to work together to avoid these previous obstacles that nearly wiped out Virginias first settlers.