The charter for the plantation of Virginia, in the year 1606, bears witness to the arbitrary power of James I.; but it also distinctly recognizes as part of the proposed "noble work," the propagating of the Christian religion to such people as yet lived in darkness and in miserable ignorance of the true knowledge and worship of God. Robert Hunt, "an honest, religious, and courageous Divine," stands out amongst his companions as most conspicuous for his piety and goodness; and one of the first acts, performed under his influence by the whole company as they landed upon the new domains, was to receive together the Holy Communion. Captain John Smith--a young man at the time of his embarking for Virginia, possessed of great genius, and bearing a high character, whose heroism and romantic deliverance by the lovely and noble native girl, named Pocahuntas, is well known--has left the following relation of the first religious services which were conducted in the new-found home of the brave voyagers. "I have been often demanded by so many how we began to preach the Gospel in Virginia, and by what authority, what churches we had, our order of service, and maintenance for our ministers, therefore I think it not amiss to satisfy their demands, it being the mother of all our plantations, intreating pride to spare laughter, to understand her simple beginning and proceedings. When I first went to Virginia, I well remember, we did hang an awning (which is an old sail), to three or four trees, to shadow us from the sun, our walls were rails of wood, our seats unhewed trees, till we cut planks; our pulpit a bar of wood nailed to two neighbouring trees. In foul weather we shifted into an old rotten tent, for we had few better, and this came by way of adventure for new. This was our church, till we built a homely thing like a barn, set upon cratchets, covered with rafts, sedge, and earth, so was also the walls; the best of our houses of the like curiosity, but the most part far much worse workmanship, that could neither well defend wind nor rain, yet we had daily common prayer morning and evening, every Sunday two sermons, and every three months the Holy Communion, till our minister died. But our prayers daily, with an homily on Sundays, we continued two or three years after, till more preachers came. And surely God did most mercifully hear us, till the continued inundations of mistaken directions, factions, and numbers of unprovided libertines near consumed us all, as the Israelites in the wilderness."[474]