The code, printed and sent to Virginia by the treasurer, Sir Thomas Smythe, on his own authority, and without the order or assent of the company, was chiefly a translation from the rules of war of the United Provinces. The Episcopal church, coeval in Virginia with the settlement of Jamestown, was, like the infant commonwealth, subjected to military power; and, though conformity was not strictly enforced, yet courts-martial had authority to punish indifference with stripes, and infidelity with death. The normal introduction of this arbitrary system, which the charter permitted only in cases of rebellion and mutiny, added new sorrows to the wretchedness of the people, who pined and perished under despotic rule.

The letters of Dale to the council confessed the small number and weakness and discontent of the colonists; but he kindled hope in the hearts of those constant adventurers, who, in the greatest disasters, had never fainted. "If anything otherwise than well betide me," said he, "let me commend unto your carefulness the pursuit and dignity of this business, than which your purses and endeavors will never open nor travel in a more meritorious enterprise. Take four of the best kingdoms in Christendom, and put them all together, they may no way compare with this country, either for commodities or goodness of soil." Lord Delaware and Sir Thomas Gates confirmed what Dale had written, and, without any delay, Gates, who has the honor, to all posterity, of being the first named in the original patent for Virginia, conducted to the New World six ships, with three hundred emigrants. Long afterward the gratitude of Virginia to these early settlers was shown by repeated acts of benevolent legislation. A wise liberality sent with them a hundred kine.

The promptness of this relief merits admiration. In May, 1611, Dale had written from Virginia; and the last of August the new recruits, under Gates, were already at Jamestown. So unlooked for was this supply that, at their approach, they were regarded with fear as a hostile fleet. Who can describe the joy at finding them to be friends? Gates assumed the government amidst the thanksgivings of the colony, and endeavored to employ the sentiment of religious trust as a foundation of order and of laws. "Lord bless England, our sweet native

country," was the morning and evening prayer of the grateful colony, which now numbered seven hundred men. Dale, with the consent of Gates, went far up the river to found the new plantation, which, in honor of Prince Henry, a general favorite with the English people, was named Henrico; and there, on the remote frontier, Alexander Whitaker, the self-denying "apostle of Virginia," assisted in "bearing the name of God to the gentiles." But the greatest change in the condition of the colonists resulted from the incipient establishment of private property. To each man a few acres of ground were assigned for his orchard and garden, to plant for his own Henceforward the sanctity of private property was recognised. Yet the rights of the Indians were little respected; nor did the English disdain to appropriate by conquest the soil, the cabins, and the granaries of the tribe of the Appomattocks. It was, moreover, the policy of the government so "to overmaster the subtile Powhatan" that he must perforce join with the residents from abroad in submissive friendship, or "leave his country to their possession."

use.

When the court of Spain learned that the English were taking to themselves the land on the Chesapeake, it repeatedly threatened to send armed galleons to remove the planters. In the summer of 1611 a Spanish caravel with a shallop anchored near Point Comfort, and, obtaining a pilot from the fort, took soundings of the channels. Yet no use was made of the knowledge thus acquired; the plantation was reported to be in such extremities that it could not but fall of itself.

While the colony was advancing in strength and happiness, the third patent for Virginia, signed in March, 1612, granted to the shareholders in England the Bermudas and all islands within three hundred leagues of the Virginia shore; a concession of no ultimate importance in American history, since the new acquisitions were soon made over to a separate company. But it was further ordered that weekly, or even more frequent meetings, of the whole company might be convened for the transaction of ordinary business; while all questions respecting government, commerce, and the disposition of lands, should be reserved for the four great and general courts, at which all officers were to be elected and all laws established.

The political rights of the colonists were not directly acknowledged; but the character of the corporation was entirely changed by transferring power from the council to the company, through whose assemblies the people of Virginia might gain leave to exercise every political power belonging to the people of England. At the same time lotteries, though unusual in England, were authorized. They produced to the company twenty-nine thousand pounds; disliked by the nation as a grievance, in 1621, on the complaint of the house of commons, they were suspended by an order of council.

There was no longer any doubt of the stability of the colony. They who had freely offered gifts, while "the holy action" of planting it was "languishing and forsaken," saw the "pious and heroic enterprise" assured of success. Shakespeare, whose friend, the "popular" earl of Southampton, was the foremost man in the Virginia company, shared the pride and the hope of his countrymen. As he heard of James river and Jamestown, his splendid prophecy, by the mouth of Cranmer, promised the English the possession of a hemisphere, through the patron of colonies, King James:

Wherever the bright sun of heaven shall shine,
His honor and the greatness of his name

Shall be, and make new nations.

From Virginia came the first check on French colonization in North America. In the spring of 1613, in a vessel which carried fifteen guns and a crew of sixty men, Argall set forth on a fishing voyage to the Isle of Shoals. In the waters of New England he heard of the establishment of the French on Mount Desert isle. Its founder, Madame de Guercheville, had not only purchased the rights of De Monts, but had obtained a royal grant to colonize any part of America from the great river of Canada to Florida, excepting only Port Royal. Her earliest colony, consisting of three Jesuits and thirty men, had planted themselves on an inviting hillside that sloped gently toward the sea, and were sheltered in four pavilions, which had been the gift of the queen dowager of France, Mary of Medici. Of a sudden they beheld a ship tricked out in red, bearing the flag of England, with three trumpets and two drums sounding violently, sailing under favoring winds into their harbor swifter

VOL. I.-9

than an arrow. It was Argall, with a force too great to be resisted. After cannonading the slight intrenchments, and a sharp discharge of musketry, he gained possession of the infant hamlet of St. Saviour. The cross round which the faithful had gathered was thrown down, the tents were abandoned to pillage, and the ship in the harbor seized as a prize, because captured within the limits of Virginia. The French were expelled from the territory, but with no further act of inhumanity or cruelty; a part of them found their way to a vessel bound for St. Malo, others were taken to the Chesapeake.

On making his report at Jamestown, Argall was sent once more to the north, with authority to remove every landmark of France in the territory south of the forty-sixth degree. He raised the arms of England on the spot where those of France and De Guercheville had been thrown down, razed the fortifications of De Monts on the isle of St. Croix, and set on fire the deserted settlement of Port Royal. In this manner England vindicated her claims. In less than a century and a half the strife for acres which neither nation could cultivate kindled war round the globe; but for the moment France, distracted by the factions which followed the assassination of Henry IV., did not resent the insult to her flag; and the complaint of Madame de Guercheville was presented only as a private claim.

Meantime the captivity of the daughter of Powhatan, who had been detained at Jamestown as a hostage for the return of Englishmen held in captivity by her father, led to better relations between Virginia and the Indian tribes. For the sake of her liberation the chief set free his English captives. During the period of her stay at Jamestown, John Rolfe, "an honest and discreet" young Englishman, daily, hourly, and, as it were, in his very sleep, heard a voice crying in his ears that he should strive to make her a Christian. After a great struggle of mind and daily and believing prayers, he resolved to labor for the conversion of the "unregenerated maiden;" and, winning the favor of Pocahontas, he desired her in marriage. The youthful princess received instruction with docility; and soon, in the little church of Jamestown which rested on rough pine columns fresh from the forest, she stood before the font

that out of the trunk of a tree "had been hewn hollow like a canoe," "openly renounced her country's idolatry, professed the faith of Jesus Christ, and was baptized." "The gaining of this one soul," "the first fruits of Virginian conversion," was followed by her nuptials with Rolfe. In April, 1614, to the joy of Sir Thomas Dale, with the approbation of her father and friends, Opachisco, her uncle, gave the bride away; and she stammered before the altar her marriage

Every historian of Virginia commemorates the union with approbation; men are proud to trace from it their descent. Its immediate fruits to the colony were a confirmed peace, not with Powhatan alone, but with the powerful Chickahominies, who demanded to be called Englishmen. But the European and the native races could not blend, and the weakest were doomed to disappear.

Sir Thomas Gates, who, in March, 1614, had left the government with Dale, on his return to England employed himself in reviving the courage of the London company. In May, 1614, a petition for aid was presented to the house of commons, and was heard with unusual solemnity. It was supported by Lord Delaware, whose affection for Virginia ceased only with life. He would have had the enterprise adopted by the house and king, even at the risk of a conflict with the Spaniards. "All it requires," said he, "is but a few honest laborers, burdened with children." He moved for a committee to consider of relief, but nothing was agreed upon. The king was eager to press upon the house the supply of his wants, and the commons to consider the grievances of the people; and these disputes with the monarch led to a hasty dissolution of the commons. It was not to privileged companies, parliaments, or kings, that the new state was to owe its prosperity. Agriculture enriched Virginia.

The condition of private property in lands among the colonists, depended in some measure on the circumstances under which they had emigrated. For those who had been sent and maintained at the exclusive cost of the company and were its servants, one month of their time and three acres of land had been set apart, besides an allowance of two bushels of corn