10. When Sandys sent these women to America, he charged the colonists with the expense of the voyage, as the company was bankrupt. An assessment was made, and the rate fixed at a hundred and twenty pounds of tobacco for each passenger--a sum which the settlers cheerfully paid. There were merry marriages at Jamestown, and the social condition was much improved. When the second shipload came, the cost of transportation was a hundred and fifty pounds for each passenger, which was also paid without complaint. [Sidenote: =A Code of Laws.=] 11. In July of 1621 the London Company gave to Virginia a code of written laws, and in October Sir Francis Wyatt, who had been commissioned as governor, began to administer the new constitution. The colony was found in a flourishing condition. The settlements extended for a hundred and forty miles along the banks of James River, and far into the interior. But the Indians had grown jealous of the colonists. Pocahontas was dead. The peaceable Powhatan had likewise passed away. Opechancanough, who succeeded him in 1618, had long been plotting the destruction of the English, and the time had come for the tragedy. [Sidenote: =The Indian Massacre.=] 12. Until the very day of the massacre, the Indians continued on terms of friendship with the colonists. On the 22d of March, at midday, the work of butchery began. Every hamlet in Virginia was attacked. Men, women, and children were indiscriminately slaughtered, until three hundred and forty-seven had perished under the hatchets of the savages. 13. But Indian treachery was thwarted by Indian faithfulness. A converted Red man, wishing to save an Englishman who had been his friend, went to him on the night before the massacre and revealed the plot. The alarm was spread, and thus the greater part of the colony escaped destruction. But the outer plantations were entirely destroyed. The people crowded together on the larger farms about Jamestown, until of the eighty settlements there were only eight remaining. Still, there were sixteen hundred brave men in the colony; and the next year the population increased to two thousand five hundred. [Sidenote: =The Charter Cancelled.=] 14. The liberal constitution of Virginia soon proved offensive to King James. A committee was appointed to look into the affairs of the London Company. The commissioners performed their duty, and reported that the company was unsound in its principles, that the treasury was bankrupt, and that the government of Virginia was very bad. 15. Legal proceedings were now instituted against the company, and the judges decided that the patent was null and void. The charter was canceled by the king, and in June of 1624 the London Company ceased to exist. But its work had been well done. A torch of liberty had been lighted on the banks of the James, which all the tyranny of after times could not extinguish. CHAPTER XI. VIRGINIA.--THE ROYAL GOVERNMENT. [Sidenote: =Royal Governors.=]