It is undoubtedly true that the largest influence in the development of this spirit came from the Puritans and Pilgrims of the New England colonies, bred under the bracing and strengthening power of that creed which bears the name of a great Frenchman, John Calvin, and trained in that tremendous sense of personal responsibility which so often carries with it an intense feeling of personal value and force. Yet, after all, if we look at the matter closely, we shall see that there was no very great difference among the colonists of various stocks and regions in regard to their confidence in themselves and their feeling that they both could and should direct their own affairs. The Virginians, languishing and fretting under the first arbitrary rule of the London corporation which controlled them with military severity, obtained a "Great Charter of Privileges, Orders, and Laws" in 1618. This gave to the little body of settlers, about a thousand in number, the right of electing their own legislative assembly, and thus laid the foundation of representative government in the New World. A little later, in 1623, fearing that the former despotism might be renewed, the Virginia Assembly sent a message to the king, saying, "Rather than be reduced to live under the like government, we desire his Majesty that commissioners be sent over to hang us." In 1624 the Virginia Company was dissolved, and the colony passed under a royal charter, but they still preserved and cherished the rights of self-rule in all local affairs, and developed an extraordinary temper of jealousy and resistance towards the real or imagined encroachments of the governors who were sent out by the king. In 1676 the Virginians practically rebelled against the authority of Great Britain because they conceived that they were being reduced to a condition of dependence and servitude. They felt confident that they were able to make their own laws and to choose their own leaders. They were distinctly not conscious of any inferiority to their brethren in England, and with their somewhat aristocratic tendencies they developed a set of men like Lee and Henry and Washington and Bland and Jefferson and Harrison, who had more real power than any of the royal governors.