envies our prosperities, and by all their ignominious scandals they can devise, seeks to dishearten what they can those that are willing to further this glorious enterprise. To such I wish, according to the decree of Darius, that whosoever is an enemy to our peace, and seeketh either by getting monipolical patents, or by forging unjust tales to hinder our welfare--that his house were pulled down, and a pair of gallows made of the wood, and he hanged on them in the place." The Earl of Southampton was grandson of Wriothesley, the famous Chancellor of Edward the Sixth, father to the excellent and noble Treasurer Southampton, grandfather to Rachel Lady Russel. In his later years he commanded an English regiment in the Dutch service, and died in the Netherlands, 1624. Shakespeare dedicated some of his minor poems to him; the County of Southampton, in Virginia, probably also took its name from him. Captain Smith, who had been unjustly displaced by the company, approved of the dissolution of their charter. Yet, as no compensation was rendered for the enormous expenditure incurred, it can be looked upon as little better than confiscation effected by chicane and tyranny. A parliamentary committee, of which Sir Edwin Sandys was a member, in the same year, 1624, drew up articles of impeachment against Lord Treasurer Cranfield for his agency in bringing about the dissolution of the charter.[177:A] Nevertheless, the result was undoubtedly favorable to the colony, as is candidly acknowledged by that honest chronicler, Stith, although no one could be more strenuously opposed to the arbitrary means employed. An Assembly had been held in March, 1624, and its acts are preserved: they are brief and simple, coming directly to the point, without the redundancy of modern statutes; and refer mainly to agriculture, the church establishment, and defence against the Indians.[177:B] The following is a list of the members of this early Assembly:-- Sir Francis Wyat, Knt., Governor, etc. Captain Francis West, | John Pott, Sir George Yeardley, | Captain Roger Smith, George Sandys, Treasurer, | Captain Ralph Hamor, And John Pountis, _of the Council_. BURGESSES. | BURGESSES. William Tucker, | Nathaniel Bass, Jabez Whitakers, | John Willcox, William Peeine, | Nicolas Marten, Raleigh Crashaw, | Clement Dilke, Richard Kingsmell, | Isaac Chaplin, Edward Blany, | John Chew, Luke Boyse, | John Utie, John Pollington, | John Southerne, Nathaniel Causey, | Richard Bigge, Robert Adams, | Henry Watkins, Thomas Harris, | Gabriel Holland, Richard Stephens, | Thomas Morlatt, R. Hickman, _Clerk_. FOOTNOTES: [170:A] Stith, 243, 268.