A Declaration of the State of the Colony: Type facsimile edition

Edward Waterhouse’s Declaration of the State of the Colony is the Virginia Company's official response to the Powhatan attack on the plantation in the spring of 1622. The attack, often called the “Jamestown Massacre,” cost the lives of 25% of the population of the colony (individually listed by Waterhouse in a harrowing catalog of the dead). It led to massive retaliation by the English. It also significantly changed the ideological basis of the colonial project in Virginia from one based on naïve hopes that Indians would voluntarily subordinate themselves to the English towards an aggressive colonialism of dispossession. Waterhouse’s text also sought to reassure potential English investors and migrants that the attack would prove a boon to the colony. For this reason, he appended to his account a treatise on the Northwest Passage by Henry Briggs, an account of the charitable donations the colony had secured, and a broadside containing information about the supplies needed by colonists. The British Virginia edition of Waterhouse’s Declaration, edited and introduced by Dylan Ruediger, is the most accessible edition of the text available to students and scholars. It is presented here in two formats, a photographic facsimile of this rare text featuring searchable, full color images of the copy held by the Virginia Historical Society (F229 .W32 1622), and a type facsimile that retains original spelling and layout. ; https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/britva/1002/thumbnail.jpg