THE CHARTER TAKEN AWAY.--For Virginia the future now looked bright. Her tobacco found ready sale in England at a large profit. The right to make her own laws gave promise of good government. The founding of home ties could not fail to produce increased energy on the part of the settlers. But trouble was brewing for the London Company. The king was quarreling with a part of his people, and the company was in the hands of his opponents. Looking upon it as a "seminary of sedition," King James secured (1624) the destruction of the charter, and Virginia became a royal province. [8] STATE OF THE COLONY IN 1624.--The colony of Virginia when deprived of its charter was a little community of some four thousand souls, scattered in plantations on and near the James River. Let us go back to those times and visit one of the plantations. The home of the planter is a wooden house with rough-hewn beams and unplaned boards, surrounded by a high stockade. Near by are the farm buildings and the cabins of his bond servants. His books, his furniture, his clothing and that of his family, have all come from England. So also have the farming implements and very likely the greater part of his cows and pigs. On his land are fields of wheat and barley and Indian corn; but the chief crop is tobacco. [9] EFFECTS OF TOBACCO PLANTING.--As time passed and the Virginians found that the tobacco always brought a good price in England, they made it more and more the chief crop. This powerfully affected the whole character of the colony. It drew to Virginia a better class of settlers, who came over to grow rich as planters. It led the people to live almost exclusively on plantations, and prevented the growth of large towns. Tobacco became the currency of the colony, and salaries, wages, and debts were paid, and taxes levied, and wealth and income estimated, in pounds of tobacco. FEW ROADS IN VIRGINIA.--As there were few towns, [10] so there were few roads. The great plantations lay along the river banks. It was easy, therefore, for a planter to go on visits of business or pleasure in a sailboat or in a barge rowed by his servants. The fine rivers and the location of the plantations along their banks enabled each planter to have his own wharf, to which came ships from England laden with tables, chairs, cutlery, tools, rich silks, and cloth, everything the planter needed for his house, his family, his servants, and his plantation, all to be paid for with casks of tobacco. [Illustration: FOUNDATIONS AT JAMESTOWN.] GOVERNOR BERKELEY.--Despite the change from rule by the company to rule by the king, Virginia grew and prospered. When Sir William Berkeley came over as governor (in 1642), her English population was nearly fifteen thousand and her slaves three hundred, and many of her planters were men of much wealth. Berkeley's first term as governor (1642-1652) covered the period of the Civil War in England.