Early in March, the Virginia Council in London addressed a letter to the Mayor and Aldermen, beseeching them to take an active interest in Virginia, as "an action concerning God and the advancement of Religion, as well as the honour of the Kingdom." The Lord Mayor responded by sending copies of their letter to the several city companies, asking them to "make some adventure in so good and honourable an undertaking." The clergy of the Church of England now evinced the warmest interest in the movement. Sermons and tracts were written and sent broadcast throughout the country. Among the prominent bishops, deans, and reverends who earnestly pleaded for the conversion of the savages, we find our "Docteur of Divinitie," Rev. William Symondes. The enthusiasm for Virginia caused by these efforts of the clergy, the change in the charter, and the news of the decay of the plantation are thus described by Strachey, in the elaborate style of the day:-- "Not a yeare of a romain-jubilee, noe, nor the Ethnick Queene of Ephesus, can be said to have bene followed with more heate and zeale; the discourse and visitation of it took up all meetings, times, termes, all degrees, all purses, and such throngs and concourse of personal undertakers, as the aire seemed not to have more Lights than that holie cause imflamed Spirits to partake with it." Zuñiga was almost beside himself. He wrote to his King, entreating him in the most earnest manner to "give orders to have those insolent people in Virginia quickly annihilated." On May 11 Edward Reed wrote from London to Mr. Coke of Wedgnocke: "The sickness increaseth. The Virginians go forward next week." The expedition of nine vessels, carrying men, provisions, and the plague, sailed from Plymouth toward the end of May, 1609.[57] Gates and Somers were each severally authorized, whichever might happen first to reach Jamestown, to supersede the existing administration until the arrival of Lord Delaware, who was not to embark for several months, and did not reach Virginia until more than a year after the fleet sailed. Newport, Gates, and Somers, finding it impossible to adjust the point of precedence among themselves, embarked together by way of compromise, in the same vessel, the _Sea Venture_. In the same ship John Rolfe and his first wife sailed (the second was Pocahontas), also George Sandys, Strachey the historian, and the Rev. Mr. Bucke; also Namontack and Matchumps (Machumps?), two of Powhatan's Indians who were, it appears, in England in May, 1609.