Subscribers, or shareholders, met in their quarterly courts to discuss the business of the Company and participate in its management. These courts were the counterpart of our present day corporate stockholders' meetings and were characterized by the same sort of discussions. King James could protest vehemently against the "democratical principles of the Company." He could see in their charters the final death warrant of feudalism. He could execute Raleigh "chiefly for giving satisfaction to the King of Spain." He could revoke the charters in 1624, but he could not stop the rising tide of representative institutions nor darken the great vision of the liberal Elizabethans. A new day had dawned. The General Assembly which met at Jamestown in 1619 was the natural child of the Company. Some of the planters along the James River were shareholders in the Company. They had a voice in its management. In the management of the civil affairs of the Colony it was, therefore, logical that the plantations should elect their representatives to the local governing body. It was thus that the first freely elected parliament of a self-governing people in the Western World came into existence. Its principles were based on those of the corporation chartered and organized for profit by businessmen. The three charters here published, changed successively to meet changing conditions, were the rules and the by-laws for the commercial, economic, and political development of a homogeneous, industrious English society in a land of opportunity. The principal authors and executors of the charters, Sir Thomas Smith and Sir Edwin and George Sandys, were businessmen. They were practical men. They found a practical way to assemble capital and ability, and coordinate them in constructive enterprise. A hundred years before the great Virginia adventure, Luther, Erasmus, and Columbus rang down the curtain on the weary and confined drama of the Middle Ages. Expanding horizons challenged man's vision and intellect. Great courage made Englishmen adventurers in all things.