England, of all European nations, was perhaps most fitted to profit by this enlarged sphere of operation. She had even then, apparently, an excess of population, and “the timid character of king James having thrown out of employment the gallant men who had served under Elizabeth, both by sea and land, no other choice was left to them but either to engage in the quarrels of other nations, or incur the hazards of seeking a new world.” The expeditions sent out by the intelligence of Sir Walter Raleigh, had turned the public mind to Virginia. Gosnold, a bold seaman, whose ship first sailed directly across the Atlantic, and who entertained the highest opinion of the capabilities of the New World for colonisation, had long endeavoured to persuade his friends to make trial of it for that purpose. Schemes of this kind were revolving in the minds of various people at the same time. Sir Ferdinand Gorges, who had learned much regarding America from George Weymouth, entertained the most favourable ideas on the subject; Sir John Popham, the lord chief justice of England; the assignees of Sir Walter Raleigh, and Richard Hakluyt, the historian of maritime adventure, all favoured the establishment of a colony in the New World. Gosnold at length induced three persons to engage with him in the enterprise, Edward Maria Wingfield, a merchant of the west of England, Robert Hunt, a clergyman, and the brave and energetic John Smith, a man of singular perseverance, indomitable courage, and possessed of every quality necessary for the successful adventurer. These, assisted by the influence of Popham and Gorges, succeeded, in 1606, in obtaining from James I. a patent for the establishment of a colony in Virginia. The English monarch claimed the whole of that portion of North America lying between the 34th and 45th degrees of north latitude, from Cape Fear on the coast of North Carolina to Halifax in Nova Scotia. This territory was now divided into two portions, North Virginia, extending from the 41st to the 45th degree, and South Virginia, from the 34th to the 38th degree. The first was granted to a company of “knights, gentlemen and merchants of the west of England, incorporated as the Plymouth Company;” the second to a company of “noblemen, gentlemen and merchants, mostly resident in London,” and which was called the London Company. The intermediate district, included in neither patent, was open to both companies, yet neither were permitted to extend their settlement within a hundred miles of the other.