Among the vessels that came over to Virginia from England, about this time, is mentioned a bark of five tons. A fleet sent out by the Virginia Company brought over, in 1619, more than twelve hundred settlers.[146:A] The planters at length enjoyed the blessings of property in the soil, and the society of women. The wives were sold to the colonists for one hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco, and it was ordered that this debt should have precedence of all others. The price of a wife afterwards became higher. The bishops in England, by the king's orders, collected nearly fifteen hundred pounds to build a college or university at Henrico, intended in part for the education of Indian children.[146:B] In July, 1620, the population of the colony was estimated at four thousand. One hundred "disorderly persons" or convicts, sent over during the previous year by the king's order, were employed as servants.[147:A] For a brief interval the Virginia Company had enjoyed freedom of trade with the Low Countries, where they sold their tobacco; but in October, 1621, this was prohibited by an order in council; and from this time England claimed a monopoly of the trade of her plantations, and this principle was gradually adopted by all the European powers as they acquired transatlantic settlements.[147:B] Two persons unknown presented plate and ornaments for the communion-table at the college, and at Mrs. Mary Robinson's Church, so called because she had contributed two hundred pounds toward the founding of it. Another person unknown gave five hundred and fifty pounds for the education of Indian children in Christianity; he subscribed himself "Dust and Ashes;" and was afterwards discovered to be Mr. Gabriel Barber, a member of the company. FOOTNOTES: [144:A] Belknap, art. Argall, citing Declaration of Va. Council, 1623, and Burk's Hist. of Va., i. 319; Smith, ii. 39, where Rolfe gives the true date, 1619; Stith, 171; Beverley, B. i. 37; Chalmers' Annals, 49; Burk, i. 211, and Hening, i. 146, all (as Bancroft, i. 177, remarks,) rely on Beverley. It may be added, that they were all misled by him in making the date 1620. I was enabled to rectify this date by an intimation from the Rev. Dr. Wm. H. Foote, author of "Sketches of Virginia." [145:A] Burk, i. 211. [145:B] Bancroft, iii. 402. [146:A] They were disposed of in the following way: eighty tenants for the governor's land, one hundred and thirty for the company's land, one hundred for the college, fifty for the glebe, ninety young women of good character for wives, fifty servants, fifty whose labors were to support thirty Indian children; the rest were distributed among private plantations.