The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
extract is from the document known as The Company's Chief Root of
Differences, etc. I have compared this copy with that in the MS.
Records of the Virginia Company, Library of Congress, and find only
slight verbal differences. At the instance of Warwick the authors of
this paper--Lord Cavendish, Sir Edwin Sandys, and John and Nicholas
Ferrar--were put under arrest in their own houses for this
"impertinent declaration." The Warwick party had made "threats of
blood" to deter Southampton from complaining to the king.
[Sidenote: Note 14, page 53.]
Birch's Court and Times of James the First, i, 311. Chamberlain to
Carleton, May 16, 1614: "Sir Thomas Gates is come from Virginia, and
brings word that plantation will fall to the ground if it be not
presently supplied. He speaks of wonderful commodities that are to be
had there if we could but have patience and would be at the cost to
bring them to perfection." Out of this necessity for some present
support came the great lottery. It was recommended by the Privy
Council to the Mayor of Canterbury, February 22, 1615. There was a
"running lottery" of smaller adventures in Paul's Churchyard before
the "great standing lottery" was instituted, and then there were other
"running lotteries" "in many other places after." Purchas, p. 1773. No
doubt there were corruptions and abuses in these lotteries. The
merchants prospered while Virginia languished. Its unpopularity is
attributed to "malignant tongues," in the MS. Records of the Virginia
Company, i, 158, and the overthrow of the lottery may have been part
of the plot of those who sought soon after to wreck the company
itself.
[Sidenote: Note 15, page 55.]
My attention was first attracted to the date of the Great Charter of
November 13, 1618, by a minute in the handwriting of Secretary
Williamson in the Public Record Office, as follows: "Those Adventurers
& Planters by Vertue of y{e} s{d} Lett{rs} Patent of Incorporacon &c.
made a Great charter of Lawes & Ord{rs} for y{e} govermn{t} of the
Country. It bore date at London, Nov. 13{th} 1618." Col. Pprs, i, 11.
The proceedings of the first Assembly in Virginia are preserved in the
Public Record Office in Pory's Report. This report gives the only
information we have regarding the provisions of this long-lost
charter. An abstract of these proceedings is printed in the Calendar
of Colonial Documents, and the whole document was reprinted in the New
York Historical Society Collections, second series, vol. iii, and yet
more carefully in the Colonial Records of Virginia, 1874. There is an
allusion to this charter in the Briefe Relation, 1624. Various
Virginia land grants deduce their authority from the Great Charter of
Laws and Orders of November 13, 1618, as we learn from a note in the
Aspinwall Papers, p. 14. There are many allusions to the charter of
1618 in the Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company in the Library
of Congress.
[Sidenote: Note 16, page 56.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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