DALE, SIR THOMAS (d. 1619), British naval commander and colonial deputy-governor of Virginia. From about 1588 to 1609 he was in the Netherlands with the English army originally under Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester; in 16o6 he was knighted by James I. ; from 1611 to 1616 he was actually though not always nominally in chief control of the colony of Virginia either as deputy-governor or as "high marshall," and he is best remem bered for the energy and the extreme rigour of his administration there, which established order and in various ways seems to have benefited the colony. Under him began the first real expansion of the colony with the establishment of the settlement of Henrico on and about what was later known as Farrar's Island ; about 1614 he took the first step toward abolishing the communal sys tem by the introduction of private holdings, and it was during his administration that the first code of laws of Virginia was effectively tested. This code, entitled "Articles, Lawes, and Orders—Divine, Politique, and Martiall," but popularly known as Dale's Code, was notable for its pitiless severity, and seems to have been prepared in large part by Dale himself. He left Virginia in 1616 and shortly after his return to England was given command of a fleet sent against the Dutch, defeated the enemy near Batavia in the East Indies late in the year 1618, arrived at Masulipatam in July 1619, and died there on Aug. 9, following.
An account of Dale's career in Virginia is given in Alexander Brown's The First Republic in America (1898) ; a scholarly discussion of "Dale's Code" by W. F. Prince may be found in vol. i. of the Annual Report of the American Historical Association for 1899 (19oo), and the code itself is reprinted in Peter Force's Historical Tracts, vol. iii., No. i1.