In the meantime some controversies had arisen between the governor and the assistants over the selection of two of their number to return with the ships as factors for the company to their associates in London. For none desired to go. After much persuading by the governor, Christopher Cooper agreed to be one of the two. But the next day, through the persuasions of “divers of his familiar friends,” he changed his mind, and withdrew his acceptance. Thereupon the whole company with “one voice” requested the governor himself to go. He, it was argued, could better and sooner than any other obtain the supplies and necessaries for the comfort and development of the colony. But he refused. He could not so soon return he declared, leaving behind so many whom he “partly had procured through his perswasions to leave their native countrey” and embark in this venture, without discredit. At his return in England some enemies of himself and of the enterprise “would not spare to slander falsely both him and the action, by saying hee went to Virginia but politikely, and to no other end but to leade so many into a countrey in which hee never meant to stay himselfe, and there to leave them behind him.” Besides, it had been agreed that the colony should presently remove fifty miles farther up into the main. If this should be done, and he being absent, his own stuff and goods might be spoiled, or pilfered in transportation, so that at his coming back he would be forced to provide himself of all such things again; and he had already had some proof of the insecurity of his property when once absent from the colony for only three days. Now stronger pressure was brought by his associates, and they agreed to give him their bond, “under all their handes and seales” for the safe preservation of all his things at his return to Virginia, so that if any were lost or spoiled such would be made good to him or his assigns. Under this pressure and with the execution of the bond, he reluctantly reversed his decision, and made ready to go. Since Captain Ferdinando was now impatient to be off, the governor had only half a day’s time to prepare for sailing. He left Roanoke on the morning of the twenty-seventh and at midnight boarded the fly-boat. The next morning both ships weighed anchor. Before he left the plantation White had agreed with the assistants that should the colony move from Roanoke before his return they should carve on a tree trunk or other conspicuous post, the name of the place to which they had gone.