The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624Craven, Wesley Frank
History
The Virginia Company Of London, 1606-1624
Craven, Wesley Frank
Virginia -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Virginia Company of London
The actual bounds of the Jamestown colony under the first Virginia
charter ran 100 miles along the coast and 100 miles inland from the
coast. This, at any rate, was the area to which title was promised by
the charter. The second charter gave title to an area reaching 200
miles both northward and southward along the coast from Point Comfort,
at the mouth of the James, and "up into the Land throughout from Sea to
Sea, West and Northwest." In these greatly enlarged bounds one
immediately detects three major interests: (1) a desire to control the
entire extent of any passage that might be found to the South Seas, (2)
the hope that something might be accomplished in Carolina, and (3) the
need for a title to the whole of the Chesapeake, whose exploration had
been completed by Captain John Smith in the preceding summer. In this
exploration Captain Smith had pointed the way for the colony's later
expansion, but at the moment the adventurers seem to have viewed the
Chesapeake as having value chiefly for its fish and trade and for
further exploration. Dissatisfied with Jamestown, as a place that was
both unhealthy and exposed to attack from the sea, they advised Sir
Thomas Gates, on the eve of his departure for Virginia in the spring of
1609 as the newly appointed lieutenant governor of the colony, to move
his principal city above the falls on the James, where he would enjoy
every advantage in an attack by a European foe, or better still, that
he locate it on the Chowan River in modern North Carolina, "foure
dayes Journey from your forte Southewards." In an earlier passage of
his instructions, he had already been advised that he should be guided
by the general principle of seeking the sun, "which is under God the
first cause both of health and Riches."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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