In Queen Elizabeth's letters patent to Sir Humfrey Gilbert, "for the inhabiting and planting of our people in America," there is--together with a characteristic assertion of the royal prerogative--a provision that the laws of the Colonies "be not against the true Christian faith or religion now professed in the Church of England." A rough, ungovernable set composed the expedition, including "morris-dancers, hobby-horses, and May-like conceits to delight the savage people;" yet the captain of one of the vessels, named Haies, must have been a man of religious purpose, for after the melancholy misadventures which had befallen him and his companions in Newfoundland, he observes generally with respect to such enterprises: "we cannot precisely judge (which only belongeth to God) what have been the humours of men stirred up to great attempts of discovering and planting in those remote countries, yet the events do shew that either God's cause hath not been chiefly preferred by them, or else God hath not permitted so abundant grace as the light of His Word and knowledge of Him to be yet revealed unto those infidels before the appointed time."[473] The errors and sins of the first English adventurers and colonists have been exposed with an unsparing justice, if not with something more; but the religiousness of certain noble-minded men, amongst them, such as is illustrated by the facts just indicated, and by others of a similar kind, has been often most unfairly overlooked. I. Charters which were granted by the English Crown before the Civil Wars for settlements in foreign lands, prove how extensive were our Colonial dominions even at that period. We have space to touch only upon those which were most important. [Sidenote: _Virginia._]