George Yeardley - Marriage and Knighthood and Governorships of Virginia

Marriage and Knighthood and Governorships of Virginia

On 18 October 1618, Yeardley married Temperance Flowerdew, daughter of Anthony Flowerdew of Hethersett, County Norfolk, and his wife Martha Stanley of Scottow, County Norfolk. "Exactly a month later he was appointed to serve three years as governor of Virginia, and was knighted by James I during an audience at Newmarket on 24 November". Temperance Flowerdew had also sailed for Virginia in the 1609 expedition, aboard the Faulcon, arriving at Jamestown in August 1609. She was one of the few survivors of the Starving Time.

In 1619, he patented 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) of land on Mulberry Island. He owned another private plantation upriver on the south side of the James River opposite Tanks Weyanoke, named Flowerdew Hundred. It is often assumed that Yeardley named this plantation "Flowerdew Hundred" after his wife, as a kind of romantic tribute. However, the land appears to have been in use by Stanley Flowerdew, Yeardley's brother-in-law, before it was patented by Yeardley, so the plantation may have been associated with the Flowerdew name before Yeardley's patent. Note that Yeardley named his Mulberry Island plantation "Stanley Hundred", undoubtedly after his Stanley in-laws. In other words, both of Yeardley's plantations were named in honor of his wealthy in-laws.

Another Flowerdew relation, John Pory, served as Secretary to the colony from 1618-1622. And when Flowerdew Hundred sent representatives to the first General Assembly in Jamestown in 1619, one was Ensign Edmund Rossingham, a son of Temperance Flowerdew's elder sister Mary Flowerdew and her husband Dionysis Rossingham. Clearly, the Yeardley-Flowerdew alliance was as much to do with power politics and social status as with romance.

With a population of about thirty, Flowerdew plantation was economically successful with thousands of pounds of tobacco produced along with corn, fish and livestock. In 1621 Yeardley paid 120 pounds (possibly a hogshead of tobacco) to build the first windmill in British America. 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.

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.

Yeardley led the first representative Virginia General Assembly, the legislative House of Burgesses, to meet on American soil. It convened at the church in Jamestown on July 30, 1619. One of the first acts of 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 March 4, 1626/27 until his death on November 13, 1627. He is buried in the church at Jamestown, Virginia.