As soon as possible after Dermer's unexpected arrival in England, he was again fitted out and sent to join Rocroft, who had meanwhile gone to Virginia. Having missed his associate in the enterprise, whom he had expected to find at Monhegan, Dermer sailed along the coast, making observations, from Sagadahoc to Martha's Vineyard, and then on to Virginia. Finding Rocroft dead, he wintered there, and went back to New England in the spring.[142] Apparently on this visit, he returned Squanto to his native Plymouth, where Dermer seems to have wished to plant. “I would,” he wrote, “that the first plantation might hear be seated, if ther come to the number of 50 persons, or upward”—a desire which was to be fulfilled within a few months by the coming of the Pilgrims. Footnote 142: This I take to be the explanation of the voyages, though he may have returned to England between them. It seems certain that he was on the coast in 1620. _Cf._ Dermer's letter in Purchas, _Pilgrimes_, vol. XIX, pp. 129 _ff._; Gorges, “Briefe Narration,” pp. 61 _ff._; and Bradford, Plymouth, pp. 95-98. Meanwhile, the colony in South Virginia, at Jamestown, had been passing through a long series of troubles, which on more than one occasion had nearly ended its career. Those in its first years led the company to publish _A True and Sincere Declaration_ as to the affairs of the settlement, in which the form of government was given as one of the roots of the evils which had “shaken so tender a body.”[143] As a result of changes effected by the two subsequent charters, which they obtained in 1609 and 1612, the London patentees were incorporated as a joint-stock body, and their territory increased to a strip four hundred miles wide, extending from coast to coast, which they were empowered to grant to others.[144] The old Royal Council was replaced by one elected by the members of the company, thus becoming subject, not to the king, but to the fifty-six city companies, and to the six hundred and fifty-nine individuals, who formed the membership of the enterprise at the time of the 1612 charter. Governmental powers were also bestowed upon it, and the colony thus became a proprietary province, with a trading company as proprietor.[145] Footnote 143: Reprinted by Brown, _Genesis_, pp. 338-53. Footnote 144: Hazard, _Hist. Coll._, vol. I, pp. 58-81. Footnote 145: Osgood, _American Colonies_, vol. I, pp. 56 _ff._