While this plot was simmering, and Smith was surrounded by treachery
inside the fort and outside, and the savages were being taught that
King James would kill Smith because he had used the Indians so unkindly,
Captain Argall and Master Thomas Sedan arrived out in a well-furnished
vessel, sent by Master Cornelius to trade and fish for sturgeon. The
wine and other good provision of the ship were so opportune to the
necessities of the colony that the President seized them. Argall lost
his voyage; his ship was revictualed and sent back to England, but
one may be sure that this event was so represented as to increase
the fostered dissatisfaction with Smith in London. For one reason or
another, most of the persons who returned had probably carried a bad
report of him. Argall brought to Jamestown from London a report of great
complaints of him for his dealings with the savages and not returning
ships freighted with the products of the country. Misrepresented in
London, and unsupported and conspired against in Virginia, Smith felt
his fall near at hand. On the face of it he was the victim of envy and
the rascality of incompetent and bad men; but whatever his capacity
for dealing with savages, it must be confessed that he lacked something
which conciliates success with one's own people. A new commission was
about to be issued, and a great supply was in preparation under Lord De
La Ware.
XIII. SMITH'S LAST DAYS IN VIRGINIA
The London company were profoundly dissatisfied with the results of the
Virginia colony. The South Sea was not discovered, no gold had turned
up, there were no valuable products from the new land, and the promoters
received no profits on their ventures. With their expectations, it
is not to be wondered at that they were still further annoyed by the
quarreling amongst the colonists themselves, and wished to begin over
again.
A new charter, dated May 23, 1609, with enlarged powers, was got from
King James. Hundreds of corporators were named, and even thousands were
included in the various London trades and guilds that were joined in the
enterprise. Among the names we find that of Captain John Smith. But
he was out of the Council, nor was he given then or ever afterward any
place or employment in Virginia, or in the management of its affairs.
The grant included all the American coast two hundred miles north and
two hundred miles south of Point Comfort, and all the territory from the
coast up into the land throughout from sea to sea, west and northwest.
A leading object of the project still being (as we have seen it was with
Smith's precious crew at Jamestown) the conversion and reduction of the
natives to the true religion, no one was permitted in the colony who had
not taken the oath of supremacy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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