Captain Percy now addressed himself to the comfort, advancement, and protection of the colony. The danger of Spanish invasion was ever present with the leaders at Jamestown. With perfect ease the Spanish caravels could sail up the James, anchor immediately before the hamlet which they called a "Cittie," and make short work of its slender defences. It is known[63] that Philip, importuned day by day to strangle the colony in its infancy, had ordered a vessel to be manned and sent from Florida, as a scout, to the Virginia waters. This ship had seen a great vessel flying the red cross in the waters near the capes, had ventured near enough to reconnoitre; and, convinced that this was a lookout ship of a formidable squadron, had run away as fast as tide and wind could carry it. In reality there was no ship at the spot,--none whatever,--and the threatening sail had been a phantom of Spanish imagination. Captain Percy sent "some 16 proper men" to build a fort at Point Comfort near the site of the present Fortress Monroe. Percy named the fortification in honour of the founder of the Percy family, "Algernoune Fort." This fort was afterward destroyed by fire and another commenced by the colonists, but not finished. The name was unfortunate. The early settlers were fond of short alliterative names: "Pace's Pains," "Piping Poynt," "Pryor's Plantation," "Beggar's Bush." Had the President called his fort "Percy's Point," I am persuaded it could have held its name until to-day. "Beggar's Bush," as a name for a country place, is peculiar. Historians invariably explain that Fletcher's play suggested the name, but I am by no means sure that its owner was a reading man. He was probably a Huntingdonshire man, who remembered in the wild, new country a familiar saying of the old. "He is on the way to Beggar's Bush," was the comment when a man lived beyond his means or evinced extravagant tendencies. Beggar's Bush was a tree on the left hand of the London road from Huntingdon to Caxton, halfway between the rich and the poor part of the country. "I have heard," says old Thomas Fuller, "how King James being in progress in these parts with Sir Francis Bacon, the Lord Chancellor, and having heard that morning how Sir Francis had prodigiously rewarded a mean man for a small present: 'Sir Francis,' quoth he, 'you will quickly come to Beggar's Bush, and I may even go along with you if both be so bountiful.'" The numbers at the plantation had again been reduced by sickness to about two hundred people, who were at war with the Indians, and in need of ammunition. "The hand of God was heavy on the Colony, and the hand of God reacheth all the earth! Who can avoid it or dispute with him?"