In June, 1624, the expected paper from Virginia came to hand, and the cause was argued the same month at Trinity term on a writ of _quo warranto_ before Chief-Justice James Ley of the King's Bench. The legal status of the company was unfavorable, for it was in a hopeless tangle, and the death record in the colony was an appalling fact. When, therefore, the attorney-general, Coventry, attacked the company for mismanagement, even an impartial tribune might have quashed the charter. But the case was not permitted to be decided on its merits. The company made a mistake in pleading, which was taken advantage of by Coventry, and on this ground the patent was voided the last day of the term (June 16, 1624).[25] Thus perished the great London Company, which in settling Virginia expended upward of L200,000 (equal to $5,000,000 in present currency) and sent more than fourteen thousand emigrants. It received back from Virginia but a small part of the money it invested, and of all the emigrants whom it sent over, and their children, only one thousand two hundred and twenty-seven survived the charter. The heavy cost of the settlement was not a loss, for it secured to England a fifth kingdom and planted in the New World the germs of civil liberty. In this service the company did not escape the troubles incident to the mercenary purpose of a joint-stock partnership, yet it assumed a national and patriotic character, which entitles it to be considered the greatest and noblest association ever organized by the English people.[26] However unjust the measures taken by King James to overthrow the London Company, the incident was fortunate for the inhabitants of Virginia. The colony had reached a stage of development which needed no longer the supporting hand of a distant corporation created for profit. In Virginia, sympathy with the company was so openly manifested that the Governor's council ordered their clerk, Edward Sharpless, to lose his ears[27] for daring to give King James's commissioners copies of certain of their papers; and in January, 1624, a protest, called _The Tragical Relation_, was addressed to the king by the General Assembly, denouncing the administration of Sir Thomas Smith and his faction and extolling that of Sandys and Southampton. The sufferings of the colony under the former were vigorously painted, and they ended by saying, "And rather (than) to be reduced to live under the like government we desire his ma^tie y^t commissioners may be sent over w^th authoritie to hang us."