This was the territory of which Penn now determined to secure possession if possible, a task which promised no great difficulty, as the English crown claimed sovereignty over all that portion of North America lying between the thirty-fourth and the forty-fifth degrees north latitude, on the strength of the discovery of its coast line by English navigators. King James the First had given a patent for part of these possessions to an English company, the grant including all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and some attempt had been made to found colonies and develop the riches of the country, but later this company was divided into two, one taking the northern portion, the other the southern. This latter, called the London Company, lost no time in fitting up a ship which entered Chesapeake Bay in 1607, sailed up the James River, and landed its passengers at what was afterward called Jamestown, the first English colony in America. These colonists were soon followed by others, and by the year 1621 the settlement had so increased that the London Company, which had retained the right of ownership, exercised through a governor, granted a written constitution to the province, which they named Virginia. In 1624, however, this company, having some disagreement with King James, was dissolved and Virginia became the property of the crown. This being followed by the voluntary withdrawal of the parties owning the northern half of the territory, the tract between the fortieth and forty-eighth degrees, known as New England, was then deeded by James to the Plymouth Company, which made no attempt at colonization itself, but sold land to others, part of which thus came into possession of the Puritan emigrants. In 1639, however, during the reign of Charles the First, their charter expired and the lands still belonging to them, including what were afterward the States of Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, again reverted to the crown. The district lying between the Delaware and Hudson Rivers had been claimed by the Dutch—Hudson, the English navigator who discovered it, having been then in the service of Holland; and here between Delaware Bay and the Connecticut River they had founded their colony of New Netherlands. In 1655 the adjoining territory on the west bank of the Delaware, comprising the present State of Delaware and the southern part of Pennsylvania, had been bought from the Indians by a Swedish trading company at the instigation of King Gustavus Adolphus and a settlement founded under the name of New Sweden. Not proving the commercial success hoped for, this was afterward abandoned. England’s acquisition of New Netherlands as the prize of her naval victories over Holland, the formation of the colonies of New York and New Jersey, the possession of the latter by the Quakers and the drafting of its constitution by William Penn,—all these have been related in the preceding chapter.