The "Governors and Councillors established for the Plantation of Virginia" were apprised of sundry errors which it was necessary to rectify, besides "outrages and follies" committed by the President of the Council of Virginia. The managers of the enterprise, "perceivinge that the plantation went backwards rather than forwards," held special meetings at the Earl of Exeter's house and elsewhere in London, and after consultation with Hakluyt, Hariot, and others, "of all the inconveniences in the three supplies (1606, 1607, 1608), and finding them to arise out of two rootes--_the forme of government_, and length and danger of the passage by the southerly course of the Indys, they determined to petition the King for a special charter,"[54] etc. Accordingly a new charter was drawn up by Sir Edwin Sandys, then leader of the independent party in Parliament. The twenty-first article of this charter was, in view of future events, most significant. It inserted these words in italics: "_and every of their children which shall happen to be born within any of their Limits ... shall have and enjoy all Liberties, Franchises and Immunities of free Denizens and natural subjects with any of our other Dominions, to all intents and purposes as if they had been abiding and born within this Realm of England or any other of our Dominions_." To this chartered right--"the unalienable rights of freeborn Englishmen," our forefathers appealed when they protested against the royal form of government in America. The special charter was promptly granted by James the First, but it had to go through a long routine before it could be signed and sealed by the King. By the new charter, the limits of the colony were extended two hundred miles north and two hundred miles south of the mouth of James River; the western boundary, the undiscovered ocean. The members of the London Council were to be chosen by the Company, not appointed by the King; Virginia was to be ruled by a Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, and Admiral, who were empowered, in case of necessity, to declare martial law. These officers were now appointed: Sir Thomas, Lord Delaware, was to be Governor and Captain-General; Sir Thomas Gates, Lieutenant-Governor; Sir George Somers, Admiral. These were men of rank and high character. It was supposed that Wingfield, Ratcliffe, and Smith had been too obscure for their position. A fleet of nine vessels and five hundred settlers, men, women, and children, were to be sent out to do the work which the little trio, _Susan Constant_, _Discovery_, and _Goodspeed_, had undertaken when they dropped down the Thames in 1606.