In May, 1623, a commission was issued authorizing Sir William Jones, a justice of the common pleas, Sir Nicholas Fortescue, Sir Francis Goston, Sir Richard Sutton, Sir William Pitt, Sir Henry Bourchier, and Sir Henry Spilman,[170:C] to inquire into the affairs of the colony. By an order of the privy council the records of the company were seized, and the deputy treasurer, Nicholas Ferrar, imprisoned, and on the arrival of a ship from Virginia, her packets were seized and laid before the privy council. Nicholas Ferrar, Jr., was born in London in 1592, educated at Cambridge, where he was noted for his talents, acquirements, and piety.[171:A] Upon leaving the university he made the tour of Europe, winning the esteem of the learned, passing through many adventures and perils with Christian heroism, and maintaining everywhere an unsullied character. Upon his return to England, in 1618, he was appointed king's counsel for the Virginia Plantation. In the year 1622 he was chosen deputy treasurer of the Virginia Company, (which office his brother John also filled for some years,) and so remained till its dissolution. In the House of Commons he distinguished himself by his opposition to the political corruption of that day, and abandoned public life when little upwards of thirty years of age, "in obedience to a religious fancy he had long entertained," and formed of his family and relations a sort of little half-popish convent, in which he passed the remainder of his life.[171:B] Carlyle[171:C] thus describes this singular place of retirement: "Crossing Huntingdonshire in his way northward, his majesty[171:D] had visited the establishment of Nicholas Ferrar, at Little Gidding, on the western border of that county. A surprising establishment now in full flower, wherein above fourscore persons, including domestics, with Ferrar and his brother, and aged mother at the head of them, had devoted themselves to a kind of Protestant monachism, and were getting much talked of in those times. They followed celibacy and merely religious duties; employed themselves in binding of prayer-books, embroidering of hassocks, in almsgiving also, and what charitable work was possible in that desert region; above all, they kept up, night and day, a continual repetition of the English liturgy, being divided into relays and watches, one watch relieving another, as on shipboard, and never allowing at any hour the sacred fire to go out." In October, 1623, the king declared his intention to grant a new charter modelled after that of 1606. This astounding order was read three times, at a meeting of the company, before they could credit their own ears; then, by an overwhelming vote, they refused to relinquish their charter, and expressed their determination to defend it.