At his accession to office, after twelve years' labor, and an expenditure of eighty thousand pounds by the company, there were in the colony no more than six hundred men, women, and children; and in one year the company and private adventurers made provision to send over twelve hundred and sixtyone persons.

To the other titles of "the high empress " Elizabeth, Spenser had, just before the end of the sixteenth century, added that of "queen of Virginia;" King James, who was already the titular sovereign of four realms, now accepted as the motto for the London company's coat of arms: "Lo! Virginia gives a fifth crown." A strong interest took hold of the people of England; gifts and bequests came in for "the sacred work" of founding a colonial college and building up the colonial church. There were two poets, of whose works Richard Baxter said that he found "none so savoury next to the Scripture poems." Of these, George Sandys, son of the archbishop of York, himself repaired to Virginia as its resident treasurer, to assist in establishing "a rich and well peopled kingdom;" and George Herbert, the bosom friend of Nicholas Ferrar, expressed the feeling of the best men of England when he wrote: Religion stands on tip-toe in our land,

Readie to passe to the American strand.

The quarter session, held on the seventeenth of May, 1620, was attended by near five hundred persons, among whom were twenty great peers of the land; near a hundred knights of the kingdom; as many more officers of the army, and renowned lawyers; and numerous merchants and men of business. It was the general wish of the company to continue Sir Edwin Sandys in his high office; but, before they proceeded to ballot, an agent from the palace presented himself with the message that, out of especial care for the plantation, the king nominated unto them four, of whom his pleasure was the company should choose one to be their treasurer. Desiring the royal messenger to remain, Southampton entered into a defence of the patent, and added: "The hopeful country of Virginia is a land which will find full employment for all needy people, will provide estates for all younger brothers, gentlemen of this kingdom, and will supply this nation with

commodities we are fain to fetch from foreign nations, from doubtful friends, yea, from heathen princes. This business is of so great concernment that it never can be too solemnly, too thoroughly, or too publicly examined." Sir Laurens Hyde, the learned lawyer, asked that the patent given under the great seal of England, the hand and honor of a king, might be produced. "The patent!" "The patent!" cried all; and, when it was brought forth and read, Hyde went on: "You see the point of electing a governor is thereby left to your own free choice." It was then agreed that the election should be put off until the next great and general court in midsummer term; and a committee of twelve, with Southampton at their head, was in the interim to beseech his majesty not to take from them the privilege of their letters patent. Their right was so clear that the king explained away his interference, as he had intended no more than to recommend the persons whom he nominated, and not to bar the company from the choice of any other.

When at the quarter session, near the end of June, Sir Edwin Sandys, yielding to the ill-will of the king, withdrew from competition, "the whole court immediately, with much joy and applause, nominated the earl of Southampton;" and, resolving "to surcease the balloting box," chose him by erection of hands. In response, he desired them all to put on the same minds with which he accepted the place of treasurer.

He made the condition that his friend, Sir Edwin Sandys, should give him assistance; and these, with Nicholas Ferrar, were the men who for a time managed "the great work of redeeming the noble plantation of Virginia from the ruins that seemed to hang over it:" the first celebrated for wisdom, eloquence, and sweet deportment; Sandys, for knowl edge and integrity; and Nicholas Ferrar, for ability, unwearied diligence, and the strictest virtue. All three were sincere members of the British church: the first, a convert from рарасу; the last, pious even to a romantic excess. All three were royalists, and all three were animated by that love of liberty which formed a part of the hereditary patriotism of an Englishman.

Under their harmonious direction the policy of the former year was continued; and more than eleven hundred persons

found their way annually to Virginia. "The people of Virginia had not been settled in their minds," and as, before the recent changes, they retained the design of ultimately returning to England, it was necessary to multiply attachments to the soil. Few women had dared to cross the Atlantic; but now the promise of prosperity induced ninety agreeable persons, young and incorrupt, to listen to the advice of Sandys, and embark for the colony, where they were assured of a welcome. They were transported at the expense of the company, and were married to its tenants, or to men who were able to support them, and who willingly defrayed the costs of their passage, which were rigorously demanded. The adventure, which had been in part a mercantile speculation, succeeded so well that it was proposed to send the next year another consignment of one hundred; but, before these could be collected, the company found itself so poor that its design could be accomplished only by a subscription. After some delays, sixty were actually despatched, maids of virtuous education, young, handsome, and well recommended. The price rose from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and fifty pounds of tobacco, or even more; so that all the original charges might be repaid. The debt for a wife was a debt of honor, and took precedence of any other; and the company, in conferring employments, gave a preference to married With domestic ties, habits of thrift were formed. Within three years, fifty patents for land were granted, and a state rose on solid foundations in the New World. Virginia was a place of refuge even for Puritans.

Before Virginia had been planted, King James found in his hostility to the use of tobacco a convenient argument for the excessive tax which a royal ordinance imposed on its consumption. When the weed had become the staple of Virginia, the sale of it in England was prohibited unless the heavy impost had been paid, and a new proclamation forbade its culture in England and Wales. In the parliament of 1621 Lord Coke reminded the commons of the usurpation of authority on the part of the monarch who had taxed the produce of the colonies without their consent and without an act of the national legislature.

Besides providing for emigration, the London company, under the lead of Southampton, proceeded to redress former wrongs, and to protect colonial liberty by written guarantees. In the case of the appeal to the London company from sentence of death pronounced by Argall, his friends, with the earl of Warwick at their head, excused him by pretending that martial law is the noblest kind of trial, because soldiers and men of the sword were the judges. This opinion was overthrown, and the right of the colonists to trial by jury sustained. Nor was it long before the freedom of the northern fisheries was equally asserted, and the monopoly of a rival corporation successfully opposed. Lord Bacon, who, at the time of Newport's first voyage with emigrants for Virginia, classed the enterprise with the romance of " Amadis de Gaul," now said of the plantation: "Certainly it is with the kingdoms of earth as it is in the kingdom of heaven, sometimes a grain of mustard-seed proves a great tree. Who can tell?" "Should the plantation go on increasing as under the government of that popular Lord Southampton," said Gondomar, then Spanish ambassador in England, "my master's West Indies and his Mexico will shortly be visited, by sea and by land, from those planters in Virginia."

The company had silently approved the colonial assembly which had been convened by Sir George Yeardley; on the twenty-fourth of July, 1621, a memorable ordinance established for the colony a written constitution. The prescribed form of government was analogous to the English constitution, and was, with some modifications, the model of the systems which were afterward introduced into the various royal provinces. Its purpose was declared to be "the greatest comfort and benefit to the people, and the prevention of injustice, grievances, and oppression." Its terms are few and simple: a governor, to be appointed by the company; a permanent council, likewise to be appointed by the company; a general assembly, to be convened yearly, and to consist of the members of the council, and of two burgesses to be chosen from each of the several plantations by the respective inhabitants. The assembly might exercise full legislative authority, a negative voice being reserved to the governor; but no law or ordinance

would be valid unless ratified by the company in England. It was further agreed that, after the government of the colony should have once been framed, no orders of the court in London should bind the colony, unless they should in like manner be ratified by the general assembly. The courts of justice were required to conform to the laws and manner of trial used in the realm of England.

Such was the constitution which Sir Francis Wyatt, the successor of the mild but inefficient Yeardley, was commissioned to bear to the colony. The system of representative government and trial by jury thus became in the new hemisphere an acknowledged right. On this ordinance Virginia erected the superstructure of her liberties. Its influences were wide and enduring, and can be traced through all her history. It constituted the plantation, in its infancy, a nursery of freemen; and succeeding generations learned to cherish institutions which were as old as the first period of the prosperity of their fathers. The privileges then conceded could never be wrested from the Virginians; and, as new colonies arose at the south, their proprietaries could hope to win emigrants only by bestowing franchises as large as those enjoyed by their elder rival. The London company merits the praise of having auspicated liberty in America. It may be doubted whether any public act during the reign of King James was of more permanent or pervading influence; and it reflects honor on Sir Edwin Sandys, the earl of Southampton, Nicholas Ferrar, and the patriot royalists of England, that, though they were unable to establish guarantees of a liberal administration at home, they were careful to connect popular freedom inseparably with the life, prosperity, and state of society of Virginia.