far back as the discovery of America they had been recognized by Acts of Parliament. In the beginning, English commerce with the continent was handled by Italians, the Hansa, and the domestic Staplers, but the Fellowship of Merchants Adventurers now gradually superseded the others in the trade to the Low Countries. The Fellowship regulated prices by regulating the supply, and instituted a stint whenever necessary. Were a port hostile, trade was diverted elsewhere. Ultimately the Fellowship drove out the Staplers, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the Merchants Adventurers were in their prime.

Although these companies took no part in the colonization of America, yet they showed the way in which commercial enterprises could be carried on, and furnished a model for their organization; while their monopoly of the continent led to search for other markets, and ultimately the guilds at least were to aid the cause by contributions. America had been discovered in the attempt to reach the Indies, the objective point of all early expeditions, and attempts to the northwest and northeast through the Arctic Ocean were unsuccessful. It is true the Muscovy Company imported timber and naval stores from the Baltic and Arctic seas, but the rigor of the climate left these open only part of the year, and Drake's circumnavigation of the globe revealed the feasibility of a new route to the East. The result was the adventuring in 1599 of £30,000 in that trade and next year the formation of the East India Company, a trading corporation managed from the first largely by London merchants, among whom was specially prominent Sir Thomas Smythe. He was the first governor of the Company, and about a hundred of his fellow members were afterward interested in the Virginia enterprises.

The year after the Spanish Armada, the Rev. Richard Hakluyt published a book of travels by Englishmen, and nine years later he began his more famous work, The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques & Discoveries of the English Nation, made by Sea or Over Land, and these books soon

had plenty of company. It is said that there were even during the reign of Elizabeth at least one hundred and five authors of books or tracts concerning maritime and colonization affairs. The Azores were well known, being the port of call of many fleets to the west as well as the scene of battles, and Newfoundland was regularly visited for its fisheries and claimed by both France and England. Among those sailing to the west at different times were Bartholomew Gosnold, George Somers, Gabriel Archer, and Christopher Newport; and their patrons were Shakespeare's patron the Earl of Southampton, Lord Cobham the fatal friend of Raleigh, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, as well as Sir Walter Raleigh, whose interest now was centred more especially in Guiana. It seems strange to us to think of Guiana as a proposed colony for the English, and yet we must remember that the whole world was then opening before them. They did not know which part was better suited to their genius, and, in fact, only time was to tell. At first they sought Russia and Newfoundland, then Guiana and the East Indies, and only later were they to appreciate the commercial importance of Virginia. And this was a broad name in those days. Just as the Spaniards claimed all of temperate America under the name of Florida, the English were disposed to claim as Virginia all from the peninsula of Florida up to the regions of Newfoundland. In course of time, a compromise line was to be drawn, but at first America and Virginia were to the British almost synonymous. Thus a voyage in 1605 of Captain George Weymouth to what we now call New England was considered an expedition to Virginia; and when he returned in July he brought back five natives, who attracted even more attention than the crocodiles and wild bears from Hispaniola which Newport presented to King James. A treaty of peace with Spain was finally ratified on June 15, 1605, purposely leaving obscure the question of boundaries in America, but rendering it possible to make settlements without armed conflict, and the Indians brought back by

Weymouth but whetted the curiosity of the English. Adventurers, we learn from Ben Jonson's play, Eastward Ho! were still ready to sell away competent certainties to purchase with any danger excellent uncertainties, and in this same play we have our first Virginia colonel. They still dreamed of gold, for the piece represented the natives as using it for domestic vessels and street purposes, while rubies and diamonds were gathered by the seashore and given to children.

Sir Walter Raleigh had been received very coldly by the new king, and a leading man of the new colonization was to be the Lord Chief Justice, Sir John Popham. For although it seems that in some sense Gosnold was the first mover of the plantation and interested Edward Maria Wingfield, John Smith, and others, it was not much advanced until some of the nobility, gentry, and merchants were enlisted also. There had been already in the time of Henry VIII. “The Mysterie and Companie of the Merchant Adventurers for Discoverie of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places unknown," different from the Adventurers in wool; but they had not much success, and the new company to be formed was for more strictly commercial purposes. Its beginning was an agreement between Weymouth and Sir John Zouch for a "marchante voyage" to Virginia, but it was at last realized that such an enterprise as colonization should be undertaken by public authority. A paper giving reasons. for raising a fund for the support of the colony in Virginia justly says "that private purses are cold comfort to adventurers and have ever been found fatal to all enterprises hitherto undertaken by the English by reason of delays, jealousies, and unwillingness to back that project which succeeded not at the first attempt." There was reason for haste, because Henry IV. had already found France pacified sufficiently to begin looking to America again, and had granted to De Monts a patent to inhabit Acadia, described as Virginia north of forty degrees. In England the Gunpowder Plot no doubt delayed matters, and only recently have we learned the keenness with which Pedro de Zuñiga,

the Spanish ambassador at London, watched and reported on the plans for new attempts at colonization.

Finally in April, 1606, a charter, drawn by Popham and revised by Coke, passed the seals, naming as grantees Thomas Gates, George Somers, Richard Hakluyt, Edward Maria Wingfield, Thomas Hanham, Raleigh Gilbert, William Parker, and George Popham. While the instrument is expressly spoken of as a license and patent, it was characteristic of the new king that it should be very different from patents granted by Elizabeth. That sovereign had confided extensive powers to the undertakers in each instance, reserving to herself only certain rights of sovereignty and an interest in the products, while the learned and pedantic James preferred to regulate all details himself. It was evident that he did not embrace colonies abroad within the humble plan which he afterward said he conceived on coming to England of sitting still seven years in order to learn the laws of this kingdom before venturing to make new ones. He divided the adventurers into two colonies, the first being composed of the London petitioners, who should operate between the thirty-fourth and forty-first degrees of latitude; and the second comprising the men of Plymouth, Bristol, and Exeter, whose field lay between the thirty-eighth and forty-fifth degrees. These respective colonies should have dominion for fifty miles north and south from their settlements, as well as a hundred miles to sea and a hundred miles inland, but were not to build within one hundred miles of each other. Each should have a council with a seal showing the king's arms and portraiture, while in England there should be a superior council to control them both, also with a seal, all nominated by James. Power was given to build settlements, defend themselves, coin money, control trade, import goods without duty for seven years, and the king agreed to patent to their nominees lands colonized, to be held as of the manor of East Greenwich in the county of Kent, in free and common socage and not in capite, thus in effect preventing military tenures

in the colonies. There was also a wise provision forbidding piracy, and, possibly by inadvertence on the part of the king, possibly by wisdom on the part of the adventurers or Coke or Popham, there was inserted the famous provision which is the foundation of American liberty and institutions. It is the paragraph numbered fifteen, reading as follows: "Also we do, for Us, our Heirs, and Successors, Declare, by these Presents, that all and every the Persons, being our Subjects, which shall dwell and inhabit within every or any of the said several Colonies and Plantations, and every of their children, which shall happen to be born within any of the Limits and Precincts of the said several Colonies and Plantations, shall have and enjoy all Liberties, Franchises, and Immunities, within any of our other Dominions, to all Intents and Purposes, as if they had been abiding and born, within this our Realm of England or any other of our said Dominions."

The councils might order all matters according to such laws, ordinances, and instructions as should be in that behalf given and signed with the king's hand or sign manual and pass under the privy seal. Had this patent continued in full operation, therefore, it might have played a great part in favor of royalty in the civil wars which were to come; but modifications will concern us at a later period. For the present, the king drew elaborate instructions in November for the government of his loving subjects in Virginia. He did permit the councils to fill vacancies and to select their own presidents, but this latter provision, putting the presidency at the will of the actual majority, was to work badly. He directed that Christianity was to be preached among the colonists and the natives. Jury trial was preserved, offences defined, and the local councils constituted into courts for trying and punishing all cases. Judicial proceedings were to be summary, without writing, with the exception of the judgment, which was to be signed by the president and the members of the council acting. Trade was to be regulated by keeping everything in joint stock,