[Illustration] The code of laws provided for the government of the proposed colonies was complicated, inexpedient, and characteristic of the mind of the first Stuart. For each colony separate councils appointed by the King were instituted in England, and these were in turn to name resident councillors in the colonies, with power to choose their own president and to fill vacancies. Capital offences were to be tried by a jury, but all other cases were left to the decision of the council. This body was, however, to govern itself according to the prescribed mandates of the King. The religion of the Church of England was established, and the oath of obedience was a prerequisite to residence in the colony. Lands were to descend as at common law, and a community of labor and property was to continue for five years. The Adventurers, as the members of the Company were termed, were authorized to mine for gold, silver, and copper, to coin money, and to collect a revenue for twenty-one years from all vessels trading to their ports. Certain articles of necessity, imported for the use of the colonists, were exempted from duty for seven years. Sir Thomas Smith, an eminent merchant of London, who had been the chief of the assignees of Sir Walter Raleigh and ambassador to Russia, was appointed treasurer of the Company. But the body of the men who composed the expedition had little care for forms of government. A wilder chimera than the impractical devices of the selfish and pedantic monarch possessed them. “I tell thee,” says Seagull, in the play of _Eastward Ho!_ which was popular for years, “golde is more plentifull there than copper is with us; and for as much redde copper as I can bring I’ll have thrise the weight in gold. Why, man, all their dripping-pans ... are pure gould; and all the chaines with which they chaine up their streets are massie gold; and for rubies and diamonds, they goe forth in Holydayes and gather ‘hem by the seashore, to hang on their children’s coates and sticke in their children’s caps, as commonly as our children weare saffron gilt brooches and groates with holes in ‘hem.” A life of ease and luxury is pictured by Seagull, and, as the climax of allurement, with “no more law than conscience, and not too much of eyther.”[227] The expedition left Blackwall on the 19th of December, but was detained by “unprosperous winds” in the Downs until the 1st of January, 1606-7. It consisted of three vessels,—the “Susan Constant,” of one hundred tons, with seventy-one persons, in charge of the experienced navigator Captain Christopher Newport (the commander of the fleet); the “God-Speed,” of forty tons, Captain Bartholomew Gosnold, carrying fifty-two persons; and the “Discovery,” of twenty tons, Captain John Ratcliffe, carrying twenty persons. The crews of the ships must have constituted thirty-nine of the total of these, as the number of the first planters was one hundred and five. In the lists of their names,