Ireland contributed to the affluence and the security of that island. When, therefore, a company of men of business and men of rank, formed by the experience of Gosnold, the enthusiasm of Smith, the perseverance of Hakluyt, the influence of Popham and Gorges, applied to James I. for leave "to deduce a colony into Virginia," the 1606. April 10. monarch on the tenth of April, 1606, readily set his seal to an ample patent.

The first colonial charter, under which the English were planted in America, deserves careful consideration. A belt of twelve degrees on the American coast, embracing the soil from Cape Fear to Halifax, excepting perhaps the little spot in Acadia then actually possessed by the French, was set apart to be colonized by two rival companies. Of these, the first was composed of noblemen, gentlemen, and merchants, in and about London; the second, of knights, gentlemen, and merchants, in the west. The London adventurers, who alone succeeded, had an exclusive right to occupy the regions from thirty-four to thirty-eight degrees of north latitude, that is, from Cape Fear to the southern limit of Maryland; the western men had equally an exclusive right to plant between forty-one and forty-five degrees. The intermediate district, from thirty-eight to forty-one degrees, was open to the competition of both companies. Yet collision was not probable; for each was to possess the soil extending fifty miles north and south of its first settlement; so that neither might in the beginning plant within one hundred miles of its rival. The conditions of tenure were homage and rent; the rent was no other than one fifth of the net produce of gold and silver, and one fifteenth of copper. The right of coining money was conceded, perhaps to facilitate commerce with the natives, who, it was hoped, would receive Christianity and the arts of civilized life. The general superintendence was confided to a council in England; the local administration of each colony to a resident council. The members of the superior council in England were appointed exclusively by the king; and the tenure of their office was his good pleasure. Of the colonial councils, the members were from time to time to be

ordained, made, and removed, according to his instructions. Supreme legislative authority over the colonies, extending to their general condition and the most minute regulations, was reserved to the monarch. A duty, to be levied on vessels trading to its harbors, was, for one-and-twenty years, to be wholly employed for the benefit of the plantation; at the end of that time was to be taken for the king. To the emigrants it was promised that they and their children should continue to be Englishmen. Lands were to be held by the most favorable tenure.

The first written charter of a permanent American colony, which was to be the chosen abode of liberty, gave to the mercantile corporation nothing but a desert territory, with the right of peopling and defending it, and reserved to the monarch absolute legislative authority, the control of all appointments, and a hope of an ultimate revenue. The emigrants were subjected to the ordinances of a commercial corporation, of which they could not be members; to the dominion of a domestic council, in appointing which they had no voice; to the control of a superior council in England, which had no sympathies with their rights; and, finally, to the arbitrary legislation of the sovereign. The first "treasurer' or governor of the London company, to whom chiefly fell the management of its affairs, was Sir Thomas Smythe, a merchant zealous for extending the commerce of his country, but without a conception of popular rights, and not in the least inclined by his character to mitigate the authority of the corporation.

The summer was spent by the patentees in preparations

1606.

for planting a colony, for which the king found a Nov. 20. grateful occupation in framing a code of laws; an exercise of royal power which has been pronounced in itself illegal. The superior council in England was permitted to name the colonial council, which was independent of the emigrants whom it was to govern; having power to elect or remove its president, to remove any of its members, and to supply its own vacancies. Not an element of popular liberty was introduced. Religion was established according to the doctrine and rites of the church within the realm;

and no emigrant might avow dissent, or affect the superstitions of the church of Rome, or withdraw his allegiance from King James. Lands were to descend according to the laws of England. Not only murder, manslaughter, and adultery, but dangerous tumults and seditions, were punishable by death; so that the security of life depended on the discretion of the magistrate, restricted only by the trial by jury. All civil causes, requiring corporal punishment, fine, or imprisonment, might be summarily determined by the president and council; who also possessed full legislative authority in cases not affecting life or limb. Kindness to the savages was enjoined, with the use of all proper means for their conversion. It was further ordered that the industry and commerce of the respective colonies should, for five years at least, be conducted in a joint stock. The king reserved to himself the right of future legislation.

Thus were the political forms of the colony established, when, on the nineteenth day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and six, one hundred and nine years after the discovery of the American continent by Cabot, forty-one years from the settlement of Florida, the squadron of three vessels, the largest not exceeding one hundred tons' burden, with the favor of all England, stretched their sails for "the dear strand of Virginia, earth's only paradise." Michael Drayton, the patriot poet "of Albion's glorious isle," cheered them on their voyage, saying,

Go, and in regions far

Such heroes bring ye forth

As those from whom we came;

And plant our name

Under that star

Not known unto our north.

Yet the enterprise was ill concerted. Of the one hundred and five, on the list of emigrants, there were but twelve laborers, and very few mechanics. They were going to a wilderness, in which, as yet, not a house was standing; and there were forty-eight gentlemen to four carpenters.

Dissensions

Neither were there any men with families. sprung up during the voyage; as the names and instructions of the council had, by the folly of James, been concealed in a box, which was not to be opened till after the arrival in Virginia, no competent authority existed to check envy and disorder. The superior capacity of Smith excited jealousy; and hope, the only power which can still 1607. the clamors and allay the feuds of the selfish, early deserted the colonists.

April.

Newport, who commanded the ships, was acquainted with the old passage, and sailed by way of the Canaries and the West India Islands. As he turned to the north, a severe storm, in April, 1607, carried his fleet beyond the settlement of Raleigh, into the magnificent Bay of the Chesapeake. The headlands received and retain the names of Cape Henry and Cape Charles, from the sons of King James; the deep water for anchorage, "putting the emigrants in good Comfort," gave a name to the northern Point; and within the capes a country opened, which appeared to "claim the prerogative over the most pleasant places in the world." "Heaven and earth seemed never to have agreed better to frame a place for man's commodious and delightful habitation." A noble river was soon entered, which was named from the monarch; and, after a search of seventeen days, during which the comers encountered the hostility of one savage tribe, and at Hampton smoked the

calumet of peace with another, on the thirteenth of May 13. May the peninsula of Jamestown, about fifty miles above the mouth of the stream, was selected for the site of the colony.

Thus admirable was the country. The emigrants themselves were weakened by factious divisions. So soon as the council was duly constituted, its members proceeded to choose Wingfield president; and then, as by their instructions they had power to do, they excluded Smith from their body, on a charge of sedition. But the attempt at his trial was abandoned, and by "the good doctrine and exhortation" of Hunt, the man without whose aid the vices of the colony would have caused its immediate ruin, was restored to his station.

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While the men were busy in felling timber and providing freight for the ships, Newport and Smith and twenty others ascended the James River to the falls. They visited the native chieftain Powhatan, "the emperor of the country," at his principal seat, just below the site of Richmond. The imperial residence was a village of twelve wigwams! The savages murmured at the intrusion of strangers into the country; but Powhatan disguised his fear, and would only say: They hurt you not; they take but a little waste land." About the middle of June, Newport set sail for England. What condition could be more pitiable than that of the English whom he had left in Virginia? Weak in numbers, and still weaker from want of habits of industry, they were surrounded by natives whose hostility and distrust had already been displayed; the summer heats were intolerable to their laborers. Their scanty provisions had become spoiled on the long voyage. "Our drink," say they, "was unwholesome water; our lodgings, castles in the air: had we been as free from all sins as from gluttony and drunkenness, we might have been canonized for saints." Despair of mind ensued; in less than a fortnight after the departure of the fleet, "hardly ten of them were able to stand;" the labor of completing some simple fortifications was exhausting; and no regular crops could be planted. During the summer, there were not, on any occasion, five able men to guard the bulwarks; the fort was filled in every corner with the groans of the sick, whose outcries, night and day, for six weeks, rent the hearts of those who could minister no relief. Sometimes, three or four died in a night; in the morning, their bodies were trailed out of the cabins, like dogs, to be buried. Fifty men, one half of the colony, perished before autumn; among them Bartholomew Gosnold, a man of rare merits, worthy of a perpetual Aug. 22. memory in the plantation, for he was its projector, and his influence had alone thus far preserved some degree of harmony in the council.

1607.

Disunion completed the scene of misery. Wingfield, the president, accused of appropriating public stores and designing to abandon the colony, was deposed. Ratcliffe, the new