=27. Growth of Virginia.=—Meanwhile the colony had had various ups and downs under several governors,—Lord Delaware, Sir Thomas Dale, the tyrannical Samuel Argall, Sir George Yeardley, and Sir Francis Wyatt,—but had on the whole become firmly established. Dale was strict, but successful in controlling the rougher elements; he also encouraged the policy of allowing settlers to become individual proprietors of land. Argall was speedily recalled for his misconduct. Liberal sentiments then prevailed in the colony, and its inhabitants were allowed, during Yeardley’s administration, to hold a yearly representative assembly, or legislature (1619), the first of its kind in America. This long step toward self-government, together with the increasing importance of the tobacco crop, gave Virginia a decided impetus, which the contemporaneous introduction of slavery, in the persons of twenty blacks landed and sold at Jamestown by a Dutch ship in 1619, did not at first affect. The presence of white slaves in the persons of indentured servants—a class recruited from convicts, vagabonds, and kidnapped children—produced some confusion. But colonists of position and means soon began to exert an influence opposed to disorder, and through Sir Francis Wyatt the Company promised to stand by its grant of free institutions. =28. Charles I. and the Virginia Burgesses.=—In 1622 the colonists endured a loss of three hundred settlers, from an attack by the Indians whom they had maltreated. The collapse of the Company (1624) made Virginia a crown colony, dependent on the king, who was succeeded the next year (1625) by his son, Charles I. Charles, needing money in order to be able to govern without his Parliament, tried to get a profit out of a monopoly of the tobacco trade, but the colonial assembly, or Burgesses, as they were called, withstood him (1629). The convening of this assembly to discuss such a matter was an important precedent in the government of the crown colonies; but the assembly, although it could resist the king’s demand, could not prevent a royal governor like Sir John Harvey from making himself obnoxious.[24] THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW YORK. [Illustration: HENRY HUDSON.]