Sir John Harvey was born sometime around 1581 or 1582. A ship master and owner, he may have been of the Harvey family that was prominent in the Dorsetshire town of Lyme Regis on the south coast of England. His younger brother, Simon Harvey, became principal procurer of food and wines for the household of James I in 1621 and was knighted two years later.
Harvey spent three years in Guiana with Robert Harcourt and attempted to establish an English colony there in 1616 before he ventured an investment as a planter in shares in the Virginia Company in 1620-1622.
On October 24, 1623, he was appointed by the Privy Council to the commission including John Pory, Abraham Piersey, Samuel Mathews, and John Jefferson, though the last-named did not act, to investigate personally conditions in the colony of Virginia as the Crown proceeded toward the dissolution of the Virginia Company. Harvey had already secured a commission (July 9, 1623) from the court of the Virginia Company for his ship the Southampton to carry passengers and goods to Virginia. Here he had difficulties with a mutiny on the Southampton and with an unfriendly Virginia Assembly, which recognized the hostility of the royal commissioners to the Virginia Company and especially resented Harvey's vain effort to secure their endorsement of a paper to the Privy Council voicing their thankfulness to the king for the proposed change in the government of the colony.
During his stay of more than a year Harvey succeeded in collecting a census of valuable data on the state of Virginia. In the fleet before Cadiz in November 1625, Harvey was captain of the Friendship and did not return to Virginia until the death of his patron Buckingham.
He was commissioned governor and captain-general of Virginia on March 22, 1628, and served from 1630 to April 28, 1635, was reappointed April 2, 1636, and served from January 18, 1637, to November 1639. His interest in Virginia throughout seems to have been dictated by the desire of personal profit. While in Virginia in 1624 he had secured a patent of six and one-half acres of land in "the new Town" in James City.
Pursuant to instructions he sought to secure a tobacco monopoly for the Crown, to develop the production of grain, to foster trade, to find new avenues for exploitation of Virginia's potential resources, and to put the colony in a defensible position with respect both to the Indians and to enemies from across the sea.
Credit has been given him for securing the headright system of land grants. By encouragement given to Baltimore in the settlement of Maryland contrary to public opinion in Virginia, by his support of Kemp and Baltimore in the controversy about Kent Island and his repudiation of Claiborne, by his use of proclamations and collection of taxes under the guise of fees, by harsh and covetous policies toward individuals, as in his treatment of the preceding governor, Doctor John Pott, he aroused bitter hostility among the people. He therefore found himself without support in the council, where he had sought to form a party loyal to him, but where he had no power of control under his instructions. Opposition focused in a session of the burgesses in May 1635, at which the people appeared before their representatives and presented their petitions of grievances against him. The prosperous planter Samuel Mathews led the opposition in the council. Harvey was deposed, arrested for treason, and sent to England on the same ship with Francis Pott and Samuel Harwood, who carried papers from the burgesses stating their charges against him.
Arriving in England, July 14, 1635, he secured the arrest of the two burgesses. King Charles, having difficulties of his own with a recalcitrant people, restored Harvey to his governorship as an assertion of royal control in the colony. On his return to Virginia, Harvey named a new council, had Mathews and several other councilors arrested and sent to England, and seized their property. A clergyman, Anthony Panton, who had been removed from his Virginia parish by Harvey, and the exiled councilors and merchants interested in the Virginia trade soon succeeded in bringing about the unpopular governor's recall and the restitution of the properties he had confiscated.
On the arrival of his successor, Sir Francis Wyatt, Harvey was brought before the courts on various complaints, and his property was taken to satisfy his creditors.
He seems to have returned to England in 1641, broken in health and fortune. In 1646 the House of Lords drafted an ordinance to clear him of his delinquency.
The date and place of Harvey's death and burial are not known, but he certainly died before July 16, 1650, when the will was proved in the Prerogative Court of Canterbury.
Harvey's policies in carrying out his instructions, especially in regard to the grant to Lord Baltimore, and his rapaciousness supported by his arrogance brought him into conflict with the leaders and the people of the colony. He was generally called "an obnoxious ruler. "
Harvey married Elizabeth, the daughter of Abraham Piersey, whose first husband was Richard Stephens, and who as a girl of thirteen had come to Virginia in 1623 in the ship Southampton, of which Harvey was captain.
