Empire of My Heart

Empire of My Heart

When looking back to the Chesapeake colony during the 18th century, it was filled with English travelers who worked as indentured servants to gain passage to the new world. Indentured servants would work up to four or five years before they were able to gain their freedom. Most of the servants would pass away before their time was served because of the high death rate in the colony. Family life was hardly existent, "Only one in three Chesapeake marriages survived as long as a decade" (Divine 60). Many children were raised by other people in the colony. The world was different at the time; laws, expectations, gender roles, and freedoms weren't the same as they were in the Common Era. The story "Empire of My Heart" shows the sign of the times through the married couple William Byrd II and Lucy Parke Byrd.

The Story revolves around the diary entries of William Byrd II. William was born in Virginia 1674; his father was part of the 5 percent of southern planters. Planters were landowners who owned at least 20 slaves in the south, "planters dominated Chesapeake society. The group was small, only a trifling portion of the population of Virginia and Maryland" (Divine 60). Owning slaves at the time was considered a status symbol which made planters role models among the southern states and put them at the top of the hierarchy. William was sent to England at age 7 to attend grammar school and later studied law, remaining in England until his father's death in 1705 where he traveled back to Virginia to inherit his father's estate, Westover, along with inheriting the status of a planter. William began to write to the beautiful Lucy Parke, she resided in Queen's Creek in York and would later marry William.

Lucy Parke was the daughter of Colonel Daniel Parke II and Jane Ludwell Parke. Lucy's father was a planter and also was known for being a womanizer. He later joined the army and left for England in 1697 and by 1705 he was appointed governor of the Leeward Islands. His family didn't accompany him; Lucy's mother was left alone to raise his children and to watch over his property in Virginia. Lucy's father said to both Lucy and her sister "I know it is the desire of all young people to get married...and though very few are as happy after marriage as before, yet everyone is willing to make the experiment at their own expense" (Oates 62). With these words of wisdom along with growing up amidst the relationship between her parents, she was no fool. In William's letters, he constantly tries to woo Lucy with romantic flattery. Lucy was able to read Williams letters with a different perspective, besides knowing how much William said he loved her she also knew that William could provide and give her the stability she never had growing up. By May 4th 1706 William and Lucy were married. William couldn't have been happier with his beautiful wife, but he wasn't prepared for the resistance to come.

Lucy must have looked at her mother in a different light than most girls did at the time. While growing up Lucy saw